The Best of Photos in 2005

Photography makes my heart sing. Even now, sometimes I wish I’d stayed majoring in photography instead of getting into computers. For a while, my dream was becoming a photographer for The National Geographic Society having been influenced by my high school teacher, Paul Griffin. My favorite photographers at the time were Sam Abel, Galen Rowell and W. Eugene Smith and eventually included James Nachtwey (more).

Here’s a list of sites with best of photographs for 2005.
BBC News
Time Magazine
World Press Photo

Dental Visit

Stopped by the dentist today… The assistant must have taken a dozen or more x-rays of my teeth. They said this is part of the procedure required before anything can be done to my fractured tooth. That, plus 10 minutes of the actual dentist peering into my mouth, lectured on the importance of flossing (which I do), cost me $220. And no, I didn’t even get my tooth fixed.

But they gave me a quote for a list of things to work on in the following visits:

Tooth #8 (upper front-right tooth filling) — $360
Tooth #9 (upper front-left tooth filling) — $360 (also chipped when I was a kid; needs to be redone)
Tooth #20 (cavity) — $290
Tooth #29 (cavity) — $290
Tooth #2 (cavity) — $380

Total: My left arm and right leg (or $1,680)

In Thailand, I can get all that done, plus mouth cleaning and whitening for less than 1/3 of the price with the same quality and standards (Thai dentists that I know of are almost exclusively trained in the UK or US). But then again, I am in America. And I pay the price for it.

Panicked. I Googled some more and made sure those online insurances WILL cover some of the operations. For those of you who are unemployed and looking for an individual or family plan, Deltacare dental plans in the San Francisco Bay Area is probably the best bet. There are other ones like Aetna, GE (and some cheesy one called “Patriot” ) simply aren’t as popular among dental offices I called. But everyone seemed to know Delta.

With insurance, my initial visit with all those x-rays would have been free (on paper anyway; I’ll find out the next time I visit a different dentist). And those front tooth fillings would cost, at maximum, $150 each. Big difference. So that’s my $220 lesson for today.

The catch is, of course there’s always a catch, I can’t make any appointments before February 1st, 2006. For some reason, insurance companies like having rules like that. The rule says, if I signed up after 21st of any given month, the coverage doesn’t start until the 1st day of the second month (meaning, skipping one month). SO STUPID! Argh… I am sure there’s a “good reason” for this kind of rule. But it sure as well un-human centered. And I thought these kinds of rules, especially when it comes to healthcare, are supposed to make things easier for the patients.

So I paid $170 to sign up for both Grace and I (don’t think Bryan needs a dentist anytime soon just yet). Hopefully the savings will add up to at least that amount.

Tomorrow I take my car to get checked up. Let’s see what the damage is there. But for sure, it seems like $600 – $800 worth of repair is in order. ARGH! I can see in America (or any country really) how the poor can easily become poorer with no healthcare. They just can’t win with or without insurance (since the really poor simply can’t afford either).

Intelligent Design Not Fit for Classroom

Today a U.S. District Judge rendered the teachings of Intelligent Design unsuitable inappropriate for classrooms in America.

It’s odd for anyone to even consider teaching what clearly belongs to theology and religion in the realm of science. NPR (again) did a very well researched story on the subject matter. And of course, not that I have anything against people of religious faith, but I think politics, religion and everything else should just leave science alone. How sad is it that it took a court to decide what’s science and what’s not. And furthermore, IF the court ruled in favor of the creationists (or the pro-intelligent design camp), where will American scientific creativity and curiosity go? Isn’t exploring the unknown a crucial key to driving technological and scientific advances? By having Intelligent Design in the science curriculum, it’s basically just saying that some things are impossible to find out, and that’s attributed to the Intelligent Design.

Just leave science alone!

Death Penalty and Social Justice

I ranted on Jason’s blog about Tookie’s execution. I thought I might as well get into it while it’s still fresh on my mind…

Personally I think death penalty is an inefficient system of getting rid of people that the society is tired of dealing with. First of all, it takes years of waiting in line just to be executed because the death row is so backed up that a criminal would basically need take a number and wait. But partially it’s also because most people file for appeals to either get their sentences reduced, thrown out of court or just to buy more time. It’s not unusual to sit on the death row for 20 or even 30 years before someone on the death row is executed. And this is what I have trouble with: With all the time and resources spent on locking those prisoners up in maximum security prisons, why not spend that exact same amount to help them become better people? It’s alarming to see that prison constructions are being more aggressively funded than higher education these days… Not to mention that United States has the highest prison population in the world. Even more interestingly, some people have come up with the brilliant idea to make profit off of the prison system (more prisoners a private prison can lock up, more money the company gets from the government). What the hell? It’s turned into an industry of its own!!

A better solution to reduce crime and prison population is education. Invest on educating in early childhood education (many educators believe this is when personalities are developed); invest on educating the parents to take better care of the kids so that they don’t mistreat the kids and turn them into social f*uck ups; invest in facilitating individuals who are casted as “social misfits” and help them fit in!!

Again, NPR aired a fascinating insight on the topic with Sister Helen Prejean (author of “Dead Man Walking ) and Lawrence C. Marshall, an activist against the death penalty.

United State is a very Christian country. I mean, virtually all of its presidents are Christians of some kind. It’s so Christian that when President Kennedy, a Catholic (the Original Christians, I call them) was elected president, it was a big deal (WTF?!). The country is so Christian that the word God appears everywhere (or so it seems)… It’s in the Pledge of Allegiance (ver. 1.1, where the words “under GOD” were added in 1954), in currency (In God We Trust. God forbid that money is fake.), when one swears into court (put your hand on the Bible… blah blah… so will help you God. What if a Muslim wants to be sworn in on a Koran? Would they let him do it?), and when George W. Bush was elected twice into the White House under the pretense that he’s a reformed born-again Christian (what bull… more on him later).

For a Jesus and God loving nation, it sure as hell acts like one (the “hell” part). Would Jesus himself pull the electric switch?

The Bush family… ah~ what a lovely household:

Jeb and George W. Bush, among many others, have also expedited the appeals process, to execute as many prisoners in as short a period of time as possible, which increases the likelihood of error. As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush was the most active executioner in the nation, killing on average one prisoner every other week (The Nation, January 8-15, 2001).

Source: The Nation

I highly recommend listening to this broadcast hosted by KQED.

Bloggers the Tech World’s New Elite?

A “Slashdotter” commented:

“Wall Street Journal tech columnist Lee Gomes says that the top tech blogs ‘aren’t part of some proletarian information revolution, but instead have become the tech world’s new elite (WiredAtom Editor’s note: Here’s a PDF version in case WSJ decides to make the article unavailable). Reporters for the big mainstream newspapers and magazines, long accustomed to fawning treatment at corporate events, now show up and find that the best seats often go to the A-list bloggers. And living at the front of the velvet rope line means the big bloggers are frequently pitched and wooed. In fact, with the influence peddling universe in this state of flux, it’s not uncommon for mainstream reporters, including the occasional technology columnist, to lobby bloggers to include links to their print articles.'”

Suckas!

via [Slashdot]

Worst American President, EVER!

Yahoo is running an article on why some Americans (and historians) consider George W. Bush the worst American president EVER! Even worse than the previous worst president, James Buchanan, which some argue that is a very tough record to beat.

Some of the reasons why GWB is being considered the worst of the worst:

  • He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
  • He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
  • He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
  • He has repeatedly “misled,” to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
  • He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign ( Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
  • He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
  • He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
  • He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic’s oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

The article ended in saying:

Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.

Yeah, I am not sure about that dickhead, I mean, Dick. He’s one shady son of a biatch. Speaking of shady characters, the entire Bush cabinet is f*cked up (with the exception of Colin Powell whose legacy was ruined by lying on behalf of GWB in front of the United Nations to make the case for the war in Iraq. Let’s face it, GWB just wanted to make his dada proud by kicking an ass that his father couldn’t. Ah~ the Bush Dynasty… America’s very own monarchy in the making.

Speaking of Dumb and Dumber, U.S. Rejects New Talks on Climate Change.

I am shocked! Say it ain’t so…

Postpartum Practices — the Chinese Way

A writer at BBC documented her journey after giving birth to her Chinese-English son in England. Being half-Scottish herself, her experience with the Chinese “superstitions” in dealing with a woman’s body after child birthing has brought her surprises.

When my mom visited after Bryan’s birth, she also softly imposed (she said they were just “suggestions” ) some of very same “superstitions” on Grace during the first month immediately following birth giving. Grace thinks most of those “rule” were just what they are, superstitions. But upon talking to Chinese women from an older generation, almost everyone swears by the importance of following those practices, including wearing socks at all times, close take hot showers with windows closed (even in summer), avoid drinking cold drinks… etc. They swear that the reason Westerners age so rapidly after giving birth is because they don’t take care of their bodies.

According to traditional medical practices, a woman’s body is at her weakest having lost all her Chi (“life force”, or “energy” ) to the child birthing process. With all her pressure ponits opened (they had to be opened to allow the birthing process to go smoothly), the woman’s body is most vunerable to “bad energy”… Thus the need to keep the woman’s body all wrapped up to protect those pressure points.

Like the author of the BBC article, Grace also suffered some consequences from not following a couple of the strict rules. My conclusion is, what my mom said may be superstitions, but they’ve been around for thousands of years, and there’s a good reason why generations after generations of women obey those practices religiously. Simply ignoring the tradition is to ignore thousands of years of collective wisdom, even if that means there’s no immediate scientific proof for any of those things yet.

For more information, check out the following sites:

Environmentally Friendly Conumption

Last year Grace’s mom gave us a gift basket from Bath & Body Works. In it were a couple of bottles of foaming hand soaps. The design of the bottle is such that when you push down the dispenser, the liquid soap foams on its way out of the bottle to your hands. The system works great; the combination of little things for this bottle is just right — each push at the dispenser generates just enough soap, not too much, not too little; the foaming liquid soap never hardens at the exit point of the dispenser (like traditional liquid soaps), which if it did, would then block the flow of the liquid soap, forcing the user to push the dispensing mechanism harder, making the dispenser to dispense more soap than needed, which then creates waste (on both the soap and the water needed to wash it off); the foam is easy to wash off and leaves a rather pleasant scent on your hands.

But of course, nothing can be this perfect when it comes to corporate interests v.s. human interests. As it turns out, the dispensing unit won’t foam any kind of liquid soap other than the specific formula supplied by Bath & Body Works. Sure this is to make sure people don’t buy the dispensing unit they invented and fill it up with someone else’s product inside. I can understand and relate to the market strategy. But surely, they make refills for those wonderful, perfectly working dispensing bottles!

F*&k, no. And that’s the part that really ticked me off about Bath & Body Works. They put all that R&D into coming up with this wonderful dispenser (or maybe they just hired some two-bit Chinese factory to do it) and a foaming formula that works, but they’d rather people throwing away perfectly working dispensers than to sell refill bottles for those units. Is it corporate greed or just plain stupidity? I am inclined to say B&BW is the latter.

In some European countries, providing refillable bottle designs and supplies is part of the recycling legislation. Simply recycling millions of bottles consumers throw away every year is no longer enough to curb millions of tons of perfectly reusable bottles going to waste. This was something that Brian shared with me when he started noticing Austria’s recycling policies. The United States, being the number one consumer waste generator in the world, should take a page from Austria’s recycling program in that aspect. Like Brian, I hate it every time we throw a perfectly reusable bottle away. Unfortunately I don’t see this as something that will ever be legislated in the U.S. because of powerful lobbying efforts driven by greedy corporate interests. What a shame.