Russia and China Bullying Central Asia, U.S. Says.
And in other news, U.S. denies its government ever waved its Big Stick on other nations around the world to achieve its own political and economic and political agenda (but mostly economics).
Category: Politics
Environmentally Friendly with Style
I was reading an article about biodegradable diapers and bumped into this site: Treehugger. And from there, I saw this eco-friendly online store: Vivavi, and this eco-friendly design school, Ecosa Institute.
There seems to be an increasing number of environmentally conscious population in the United States, especially here in California. When I was back in New York, terms like “organic”, “environmental” and “vegetarian” are associated with Yuppies from the Upper Westside of the town.
In the Bay Area, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are pretty busy places. Steve Jobs is known to frequent Whole Foods since it’s only blocks from Apple’s main campus.
This reminds me of the notion of a “sustainable” business with minimal footprints mentioned by Ray Anderson (his info here and here) in the DVD The Corporation. If CEOs of Fortune 500 companies can think the way he does, the world would be a far better place. It’s rare to see a business with some conscience. Most others do it because of pressure from their customers or regulatory constrains (ahem-GE-ahem). But whatever it takes, it’s a popular thing to do now. So everyone’s doing it.
Since I started talking about diapers, here’s a company a former kozmo.com employee founded in NYC to deliver diapers (and some other stuff) — MaxDelivery.
White House Silence on Rove’s Role
The New York Times is reporting that the White House Silence on Rove’s Role in C.I.A. Agent Leak. Until the unraveling of the man behind the leak, the Bush Administration repeatedly assured the public its seriousness in punishing the source of this life-threatening leak. But now Bush all of a sudden is quite and has nothing to comment?
“Are you going to fire him?” the president was asked twice in a brief Oval Office appearance with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore. Both times, the president ignored the questions.
Then a White House aide signaled that the session was over. “Out those doors, please,” the aide told journalists. “Thank you very much.”
When it comes down to punishing others, even without a shred of evidence, Bush’s administration was all over the place and showed “resolve”. But when it comes to punishing one of their own, where’s the “resolve” and strong stance now?
I have no sympathy for the jailed journalist as well. It’s one thing to cover a sensational story for the sake of journalistic creativity. But when someone else’s life can be in danger because of your story, especially that of a public servant in a sensitive position, journalistic integrity should take a back seat and allow the human side of the journalist to take control. Everyone’s a human first; all other roles we play in our lives are secondary and are simply labels we carry with relatively meaningless substance.
FDA Dithers Over Cloned Food
Based on this article from Wired News, FDA Dithers Over Cloned Food, I wonder how the FDA can determine the safety of a product with such limited research in a short time span.
Even more ridiculous, some farmers are pushing the FDA, a safety net for consumers, to lift the ban based on “common sense”.
Bob Schauf, a dairy farmer from Barron, Wisconsin… called the ban “ridiculous. It’s a phobia more than anything scientific. We need to get FDA to come along and say it’s fine. They’re as normal as any other animal. Common sense has to take over soon.”
The fact that non-scientist farmers try to tell a primarily scientific organization to do one thing another is just stupid.
This is something we see all too much in a corporate-driven (and thus profit-driven) society. The upsetting part about the dairy industry’s objection to the voluntary ban wasn’t because of long term health concerns, but it’s because they thought the consumers would “feel” weird about such products.
Now, if they could find ways to conceal products being labeled as “cloned”, I suspect everyone would be drinking milk from cloned cows.
Thailand and Its Wonders
Coming back from his short trip to Thailand, Cheehoi shared some of his experiences with us. He concluded that Thai Buddhist architecture is probably the most spectacular of all religious architectures in the world. It’s hard to find reasons to disagree with him.
Coming back from his short trip to Thailand, Cheehoi shared some of his experiences with us. He concluded that Thai Buddhist architecture is probably the most spectacular of all religious architectures in the world. It’s hard to find reasons to disagree with him.
I bought an interesting book when I went back in 2002 — Thai Ways by Denis Segaller (ISBN 974-202-006-X). It provides a lot of insights to this wonderful culture and its graceful people. I wish I knew about this book when I was still living in Thailand. I liked this book so much that I even wrote a review on Amazon.com!
Even though most political analysts say that the King of Thailand has no direct power and serves only as a symbol of culture and religious figure, I’d say just the opposite is true. During the 1992 bloodless coup (gotta give it to the Thais to have a series of “bloodless coups), the country was in such a disarray that it took the words of the King to bring peace to the land. Even the macho coup leaders had to bow in front of His Excellency and submit to his power. I doubt George Bush Jr., supposedly the most powerful leader in the world, can command that kind of respect from its people with gun barrows.
On a similar note, there was a big controversy in 2002 when an American opened a restaurant using a poster of the King on its advertising campaigns in local papers. The poster depicted the King as a hip-hop punk with highlighted hair bands. Americans see it as something funny and a sign of freedom of speech. But in the eyes of the Thais, who are serious about their King, they see it as an insult. It’s as serious as if someone says to your face, “Your mother is a dirty whore. I had a good time with her.”
Boonsom Watanapanee, deputy counsul general of the Royal Thai Consulate in New York, puts it best, “… I know you can make jokes with the president, with Queen Elizabeth, but not with my king.”
This international incident developed to a point where the government of Thailand threatened to break all diplomatic relations with the United States unless the poster was never used again and that the owner apologized to His Excellency the King. Being culturally insensitive, the expected result was, of course, the owner’s refusal. She still thought that was just a harmless joke and planned to run the ad again! It only took an insensitive American to get on the local radio show to mock the King some more. Even I, a non-Thai national, got very offended about the King of Thailand being mocked as such.
Yeah, freedom of speech is sacred. But so is respect and a little sensitivity.
Thai Police Certificate
It’s finally here!
After weeks of fact-finding and agonizing time spent waiting, my Thai Police Certificate finally arrived as part of documents needed for our application for Canadian PR.
Grace and I had a bet on which country’s police certificate would be completed first. Taiwan won, hands down. It was done within days (having every bit of information online didn’t hurt).
Naturally, the bet came down to between Thailand and Malaysia.
Thailand didn’t provide much online. But at least a form was available with some instructions from a Thai Embassy in Canada. Armed with that information, Grace still had to call a couple of Thai Embassies in the States to really get the nuts and bolts of the process down.
The same couuldn’t be said about Malaysia, however. The only available information I found was from an Australian Embassy where Malaysia has special diplomatic relations with, hence the instructions were useless. And when Grace called the Malaysian Embassy in L.A., they bounced her between different departments before someone was able to give her something informative. And the person even gave her a tip: “It’d take 3-6 months to process”. The person hinted that it’d be safer to bet on the “SIX” month side of the timeline. And that was back in March.
To be fair, Thai Embassy wasn’t much better. Grace had to call three different embassies just to get everything (L.A. branch bounced calls to automated machine; NYC branch simply defers responsibility to other branches; Chicago branch was the only decent one with a very nice staff). And when she finally talked to someone, instead of a lame “three to six months” guarantee that the Malaysian Embassy provided, the Thai Embassy basically said “it’ll be done when it’s done” without any specific timeline. However, the nice lady on the phone did stress that the process would be “a lot” faster if someone in Thailand were to follow-up physically; my mom came to mind immediately. I also had to get finger printed (for the first time in my life), not one sheet, but THREE sheets of original finger prints.
Taiwan has its issues; efficiency certainly is not one of them. The push of its e-government, where almost every bit of information a citizen would need to make his/her life easier is onilne, has been a very successful one. I can’t even attest to that kind of efficiency about government agencies in Silicon Valley, where the dot-com boom was supposed to have revamped how the government operates.
So efficiency test results: Taiwan one — Thailand/Malaysia: zero.