incoherent mumblings of a procrastinator

Promiscuous Proxy

2011-06-16T12:22:00.002-04:00

At work, I'm working on a project jokingly called "promiscuous proxy" so promiscuous girl has been totally stuck in my head for days. At the next meeting, I really want to get up and say, "On start-up each application needs to be able to identify itself to the central service layer. Basically, it needs to say, promiscuous proxy, wherever you are, you've got what I need and I've got what you want."

A long time

2011-06-14T02:37:00.000-04:00

Wow, I almost forgot this blog even existed.

The last post was much too long ago, and the past few posts have all been spread too far apart. A lot has changed: I've moved back to New York City and i've changed jobs. My mother remains equally worried about my procreative future, recently running a rant about how plastics used to create bubble tea turns Taiwanese boys into girls, but she'll always be that way.

Maybe now that I'm back in NYC, I will get back into this too...

Paging Dr. Gupta

2010-12-14T03:17:00.000-05:00

In recent months, my mother has become enamored with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the charismatic associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. His accomplishments are numerous and I could not possibly list all of them (you can read about him in detail here!) but I'm quite sure my mother, as well as most of America, knows Dr. Gupta as CNN's chief medical correspondent.

I learned of my mother's growing admiration for Dr. Gupta when one day, out of the blue, she sent me an e-mail with no message, no context, just a single long link:

BPA may reduce sperm count

Allow me to reiterate the fact that this email was just a solitary link. No message explaining her thoughts, no words listing her worries, just a link. I found it very bizarre, but knowing my worry-wart mother it seemed like her usual behavior. I decided to ignore it and move on with my life. Little did I know that Dr. Gupta would soon give my mother something else to worry about. Not too long afterwards, I received another e-mail in my inbox with no message, no context, just another long link.

Men and sex: Survival of the quickest

Now I became alarmed, not because of the content of my mother's links (in fact, the article on premature ejaculation would probably be very reassuring for any gentlemen out there who may have had to deal with the issue) nor because of the frequency of her worries, but rather the recurring theme of her worries. My mother seemed to be very worried about my sex life or more specifically, my penis. This time I was unwilling to let the matter rest.

Me: Why did you send this to me?

Mom: Oh you know, I'm just worried about your health.

Me: ... Worried about a specific aspect of my health for any specific reasons?

Mom: Oh, I just saw these articles and I became worried.

The conversation was hardly enlightening, but I have never once talked to my parents about relationships, dating, or sex and I wasn't about to start now so I decided not to pursue the conversation any further. I thought that mother would be too awkward to approach the topic again, but I thought wrong.

FDA warns consumers to avoid sexual enhancement pills

Mother, is there something that you're worried about?

Until I am needed again

2010-07-28T00:59:00.007-04:00

(In a coarse and obviously forced baritone) Early Monday morning. A blanket of fog rolls onto a dreary city, suffocating the miserable residents in its unforgiving chill. Even in the middle of July, the people of this city have no choice but to surrender all hope of warmth and comfort to this cold ghost, and pray for a break in the shadows and a transient kiss from the sun.

But that kiss never comes, not even a hug or a courteous hand shake. There's not much love in this city, and the people living here certainly reciprocate the same sentiments. Drugs and prostitution have replaced the hugs and hand shakes of civilized society. Rampant muggings and murder are just tacked on to be extra nice. To the people of this city, this is all merely a fact of life now. The fog not only seems to blind the sight of what's in front of you, but the sight of what is right, wrong or sane as well. Tourists seem to stand out like stray beams of light, at least until the fog suffocates them too.

From a distance, I notice something strange, something out of place. In the middle of the road, between the aimlessly ambling homeless, lies a solitary black leather wallet. I pick it up and investigate the contents for evidence. A few credit cards, a library card, forty four dollars, and a Baltimore drivers license. Figures. Tourist, and from a cuddly city like Baltimore.

I dig deeper into its guts and eventually, I make it talk. A key card to the Fairmont hotel. Of all the places in the city, its that enormous asylum perched at the top of the hill. Its a tough hike, but a job needs to get done.

Dripping in cold sweat and calves twitching in fatigue, I slip in undetected. The concierge stands behind a monolithic desk at the back, dressed in a marching band jacket with gold braids sewed into his shoulders to remind himself to look important.

I drop the wallet in front of him. "This was found lying on the street several blocks away," I whisper in my raspy voice.

"I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're saying," the concierge blithely responded.

"There's a key card to this hotel inside. I need to return this to its rightful owner."

"Oh, ok. Well I can just go ahead and scan this for you..."

"Does the resident of the hotel match the ID in the wallet?" I ask as you can never be too cautious.

"Why, yes he does! This is a very nice thing you're doing here. I'm sure he will be very glad to be getting this back. Just a moment, let me get security to return this."

As the concierge handed the wallet off to the security guard, I disappeared out the door, leaving a wind-swept trail behind me. When I was already out the door, I could hear the concierge turn back and say, "Oh by the way sir, I didn't catch your na-" only to be greeted by the specter of my former presence.

I had to hurry back into the blinding mist of the choking city (and I was late to work). This city that needed me. This city that needed me to return more lost wallets.

Addendum: San Francisco is not nearly as dark and gritty as I make it sound here (in fact, I doubt any city, even Baltimore, feels this grim) and the weather and people are also quite pleasant, but, as you know, I had to stay in character.

Making New Friends

2010-03-23T01:07:00.006-04:00

Attractive girl at the bar: Hey you.
Me: (Turns around looking left and right)
Girl: No, you!
Me: (Points at himself) Me?
Girl: (Nods)
Me: Oh no you must be mistaken.
Girl: Haha, you're funny...

(About two hours and many drinks later)

Girl: You know you're kinda cute. I kinda want to sleep with you.
Me: (Chokes on drink)
Girl: But you're definitely not the foolish kind of guy to just sleep with a girl you just met.
Me: No, I assure you, I'm very foolish.
Girl: Nah, you're more of a friend. Oh what to do...
Me: ... Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Girl: Yeah, let's not have sex.
Me: That is not what I was thinking.

So I've been out here in San Francisco for about a month now and I've been making some new friends. I guess things are going well.

Going West

2010-01-27T00:39:00.010-05:00

Last year, the company I work for purchased another company that is based in San Francisco. A few months ago, we began the merger process and some of my colleagues began making trips out to SF to facilitate the process. Some of my coworkers were even temporarily or permanently moved for the merger. Seeing an opportunity, I decided to follow in the footsteps of my ancestors and seek riches at old gold mountain (旧金山) as a (ruby on) rail worker* so I requested to be moved out there myself. Before I could even grasp how much of my life was changing, I was approved for the move. A few days ago, I booked my one-way ticket to San Francisco. I'll be leaving New York City on February 14th.

I always wanted to move around a lot and go on zany adventures across the globe, but turbulent shifts in location can come at the price of developing a strong career. There are plenty of other obstacles to mobility including work, significant others, kids, mortgages, etc. Being merely twenty-three, single (nobody likes you when you're twenty-three), essentially free of attachments, and with the same job ready for me in San Francisco, I figured why not. There's only going to be so many opportunities in my life where I can just pick up and move so why not now.

Of course, moving does not come without any fears or risks. Just about everyone I know is in NYC including the vast majority of my close friends. One of my close friends who has been living in SF is even moving out, though staying in the Bay Area. I basically don't know anybody in SF, which is a little scary, but then what's life without a little risk?

Now don't get me wrong, I love New York. I always have and I probably always will. I've lived here for over a half a decade now and I definitely consider myself a local. Although I grew up in a (boring) suburb outside of (fucking cold) Boston, I know New York like the back of my hand, better than I ever knew Boston or even my home town (growing up, my parents didn't let me out much...). However, despite all the love, sometimes change is good.

Wish me luck! :D

* This is just a pun since I'm a programmer. I actually probably won't be working in Ruby, but rather C++/C#/Java/Perl, which is unfortunate. :(

when you get the money, you get the power

2009-12-06T18:14:00.000-05:00

Last night, despite the heavy rains drowning the city, I made the hike into the village to celebrate a friend's birthday. It was a joyous evening of much celebration where many imbibed upon the sweet nectar of Trappist monks, or as I like to call it... monk-juice. Even as the evening wore down and we prepared to depart home, I remained engulfed in the rapture of the evening. Feeling excessively optimistic of my credit limit, I offered to pay the entire bill on my credit card while collecting individual compensations in cash.

Well over a dozen party-goers were present so the bill accumulated to quite a princely sum. Regardless, as long as I received cash in return it was hardly a problem for me. Unfortunately, I also completely forgot that I did this, and thus the problem.

The next morning, confused as to how I got home and severely hung over, I opened my drawers to get dressed. As I opened my sock drawer, which happens to be the same drawer where I keep my wallet, I was shocked to find cash. Lots of cash. Hundreds of dollars in cash. My drawer was so filled with cash it looked like it came from a scene in Scarface.

After a brief moment of elation, my spirits suddenly sank. The joy of discovering a stockpile of cash was abruptly replaced by a bead of dread that dribbled down my spine. Here in front of me were hundreds of dollars in cash that I could not remember receiving and that I could not explain. What did I do to get this much cash?

Did I rob something or somebody? Did I make a hit? Did I buy and sell drugs? Did I sell myself? Quickly, I frantically searched through my clothing from last night, looking for blood stains and white powder. Nothing.

I began to call up my friends to figure out what may have happened. Paying the check with a credit card is not the most memorable part of an evening so I did not get many answers when I opened with the broad question, "what happened last night?" At least my friends were able to confirm that during the period we were together, I did not rob, steal, deal, or pimp myself. Phew, I suppose...

Eventually, it just came to me that maybe I just paid the bill in credit and collected (a shitload of) cash. This is something I tend to do to take advantage of my credit card points and I tend not to save receipts so I began to inquire about how the bill was paid. My friends answered immediately and my fears were quickly settled, but it certainly made for a very exciting morning.

Nyan-Nyan

2009-07-04T15:50:00.010-04:00

Recently, a website has emerged from obscurity to completely redefine the world of posing for photographs. The largest impact can be found in the realm of myspace and facebook self-portraiture. Of course, I am referring to the site known as asianposes.

Now everywhere, across the nation, young people at parties (especially asian parties) and in their dorms or bedrooms are abandoning the lookatthisfuckinghipster or the awkwardfamilyphoto for the okay, the heart, and the namesake of this blog post, the nyan-nyan. Even I could not resist.

I've been aware of this site for a number of weeks now, but I've held back from posting anything about it so that I could have ample time to prepare my own asianposes.

Hey, there!

I'm so confused,

and mad, ...

and oh-so-sad (zomg I'm so emo!)...

... because my tooth hurts.
(Asianposes.com actually calls this last pose "punch in the face", but I think that's a misnomer).

So uh, do you work out?

2009-06-02T09:39:00.002-04:00

Last night I went to gym and after my workout I hit the showers. Everything was going smoothly, like my usual routine, until after I finished showering and started drying off. I noticed through the crack to the side of the shower curtain, there was a man standing around. He just standing around in the shower room. There were a million showers so there was no way he was looking for a shower. I thought that was weird but I ignored it and when I left to my locker he was gone.

When I got to my locker and started changing back into my normal clothes, this man suddenly came up to me and said, "Hey, I just wanted to say, you have a beautiful body! How often do you coem here? What do you do? Wow, it looks like its really paying off." I found that about 10% flattering and 90% creepy.

I tried to answer his questions as quickly and with as little interest in continuing the conversation as possible. To have somebody come up to me and comment about my body is uncomfortable enough, but we were both also completely naked, which made it super-duper uncomfortable. Mercifully, he left as quickly as he appeared.

Now to be honest, I do not by any means have a beautiful body. Its mediocre at best, but this guy was freakishly, serious health-risk obese. Honestly, I think he just hasn't seen a really beautiful body in a really long time so I really think he just wanted to talk to someone about what it takes to slim down and went about that in the most awkward way possible. Of course, everyone I've asked thinks he was hitting one me, but maybe he was just an awkward guy? I mean really how does one guy approach another guy, who is a complete stranger, to discuss the latter guy's muscles? No matter how you do that, you're at least 10% creepy.

For the first time in History

2009-05-21T13:40:00.002-04:00

(Picture taken from New York Magazine)

This week is Fleet Week in New York, which is an event that I normally do not care for, but this year is a little different. My roommate cannot stop mentioning all the hot men in uniform she has seen all over the city and that just got "It's Raining Men" by The Weathergirls stuck deep (real deep) in my head. Honestly, when I think of a bunch of hot men coming all over a city, "Its Raining Men" is what I think of.

Today at work, with that song still stuck in my head, I knew I just had to listen to that song at work. On repeat. Which was fine (people listen to music here on headphones all the time) until I accidentally yanked my headphone out of my speakers and blasted the song across the office.

That was really embarassing.

Its been a long time since I last mumbled incoherently...

2009-02-13T23:35:00.003-05:00

... but a lot has been changing in my life recently and I'm still taking the time to adjust. Graduating from college was a big deal, but it was also a long time ago and it's about time I moved on. No matter how much time passes at my desk in the office, miles away from my video games and PJ's, a part of me remains in denial of the relentless march of time. Especially the part of me that continues to partake in binge drinking on week nights.

It's ironic that the first night since graduating where I felt like I was back in college is the same as the first night I went drinking with coworkers. It's even more ironic that it happened to be a Thursday night, an epicurean evening for most undergrads, but just a slightly lubricated late afternoon for most mature adults. (Actually, that's not ironic at all, its just a coincidence, but using "ironic" incorrectly seems to be in vogue as of late so I intentionally used it incorrectly. Now isn't that ironic.)

Although another day of work was just looming over the horizon, it was rare for me to be in a casual setting with my coworkers so I decided to just drink without inhibitions, as I usually do when I'm not around coworkers. My plan to drink without inhibitions succeeded much too well. At one point in the night, I blacked out and the next thing I knew, I really had to throw up so I just opened the door and threw up.

How does that happen? How does one just open a door and throw up so conveniently? When is one ever placed beside a door so conveniently? Well, it just so happened that I was sitting in the back seat of a parked unlocked car so everything just sort of came together. But why was I in the back seat of a parked unlocked car? And why was I the only one in the car? Why was the car completely turned off?

I had no idea, but frankly I didn't care. I was freezing, the time was 6:00am, I felt like shit, and I had work the next day. I knew I just needed to get out of there and I figured I could probably figure out how I wound up there sometime later.

As I left the car, I turned back to look at the car. This car was not a cab, but rather some random white Toyota Camry (or something like that). I don't own a car, I don't really know anybody who owns a car in New York City and generally I take cabs home, not random white Toyota Camrys. Why the hell was I in some random car?

As I left to the nearest intersection to grab a cab and get home, I noticed my unconscious ass was parked on 75th and 2nd. I live in Astoria. My coworkers and I were drining in East Midtown. Why the hell was I in the Upper East Side?

Whatever. I grab a cab, get home, and wake up the next morning for work. Of course this morning I am hung-over out of my mind. In fact, I was still feeling sick. Even as I was walking to my office I felt the urge to throw up and that's exactly what I did, right on the steps to a boutique investment bank. At least for a moment I felt really good, one for expelling toxins from my body and two for fulfilling a nice moment of class vengence.

When I finally got to work, everybody in the office kept jabbing me in the ribs with classy old-timer lines like "Howya doin' champ?", "How ya feelin buddy?", etc. Needless to say, I felt pretty shitty, but I felt even worse when I learned that I was so drunk the night before that my direct boss had to toss me in a cab and send me home. Not only that, but as she was putting me in the cab I told her "No no no, wait wait wait, there's a couple ladies I gotta see tonight before I go home." Fantastic, so now my boss thinks I make booty calls. I'm so glad she's still in her twenties and somewhat more lenient for my kind of antics.

Unfortunately, that's the most my coworkers could tell me. I still have not found out how I wound up in that white Toyota Camry (or something like that) in Upper East Side. There have been many theories postulated as to how I could have wound up in such a position, but none of them hold much weight.

A kind samaritan found me and tried to take care of me... so rather than taking me to a hospital he or she leaves me in an unlocked parked car? That's a really half-assed way of taking care of somebody and it leaves your car interior really vulnerable to puke stains.
A driver bumps me and I fall down. I fall because of the alcohol, but from the driver's perspective, he or she just killed me, so they try to hide the evidence by putting me in the car... but then wouldn't I find myself in the trunk?
I got in a fight with the taxi driver and kicked out onto the curb. Then searching for another car, I just crawl into the closest one I can find... but who leaves their car unlocked in New York City?

Among those three theories, the last one seems to be the most reasonable. In which case, if you woke up one morning to find a pile of puke besides your white Toyota Camry, then I'm sorry.

Maybe I should post a craiglist missed connection to reconnect?

The recession is getting between us...

2009-01-29T02:12:00.002-05:00

Today a friend linked me this delightful New York Times article. To summarize, the article discusses how the recent recession has torn apart relationships and even marriages between former Wall Street stars (BSD or big swinging dicks a la Michael Lewis) and their Gucci-studded former gold diggers. Perhaps the term gold digger is much too harsh. Undeniably, a bad at work will follow any Joe or Jane Doe home and financiers are currently enduring long continuous runs of bad days at work in a stressful industry, but I just can't shake off my cynicism when I hear about how these couples are "suffering" after living in irrational exuberance for the past few years. Nonetheless, the stories depicted in the article at least seemed understandable as they focused on how a turbulent workplace can ruin a relationship, a situation any body can relate to, even a big swinging dick.

The article was a little amusing and a little trite, but that was only scratching the surface. It linked a much larger blog known as Dabagirls: Dating A Banker Anonymous, which really reveals this world in their own words. Just a few brief examples of excellence:

Thanks to the recession, I now have a completely devoted BF, which is exactly what I wanted. So I should be happy, right? Wrong. I’m bored and can’t stop thinking about my perpetually unattainable Euro ex-boyfriend who is recession proof courtesy of an offshore trust account.

Michael Douglas once said that greed leads to evolution (yeah, that speech) and if all women were like this anonymous DABA, it certainly would!

One of the ugly truths about older successful men in finance is that despite having lavish homes, gorgeous wives, a few adorable kids and multi-million dollar bank accounts, they often yearn for more. “More” may be a distraction as innocuous as golf. It could also be a darker vice—gambling, drugs or prostitutes a la Spitzer. Unfortunately, it is rare man, rich or poor, that can withstand the temptation of forbidden fruit. That’s where I come in. My name is “Courtney” and I’m the other woman.

Wow, that's all I can say about that one...

Honestly, I doubt the authenticity or sincerity behind some of these posts (I suspect the first one was a somewhat misguided attempt at humor), but it still makes a really interesting read.

The best stuff on the internet

2009-01-12T22:13:00.002-05:00

"For those who wanna know, i am getting my doctorate in human resource development Why Because im a people person"

-- THE_REAL_SHAQ

For those of you who haven't heard yet, (the real) Shaq has a twitter account, and its quite the resource for deep thoughts and sharp witticisms.

Flip FAIL, but almost!

2008-12-29T15:37:00.002-05:00

This is actually a really amazing video, and the guy's okay!

Taken from none other than FAILBlog

Günther

2008-12-16T23:54:00.003-05:00

Ever since I discovered the Swedish musician, club owner, and former model Mats Söderlund, better known by his stage name Günther, I have not been able to get enough of him. Honestly, where have you been all my life? How can you not love an artist with song titles like "Tutti Frutti Summer Love", "Ding Dong Love", and "Tweeny Weeny String Bikini". His combination of childish rhymes, sketchball mustache with mullet, and complete douchebag style is absolutely irresistable. If you're still unconvinced, then I present to you..

Exhibit A: Oh you touch my tra-la-la.

Exhibit B: Oh la-la. Cha-cha-cha.

Exhibit C: Ding-dong, it's a Christmas song.

Merry Christmast.

I can has toyz!!! (and cheezburger...)

2008-12-09T22:04:00.003-05:00

zomg, its decided. this is the cutest cat (burglar) ev4r.

A real-life cat burglar has left his owner feeling less than purr-fect - by swiping dozens of cuddly toys from nearby homes.
Frankie the tom cat has got his claws into 35 teddies and soft toys in the last year.
Owner Julie Bishop believes the two-year-old feline is sneaking into her neighbours' homes.

He drags each one of his finds through the catflap before depositing them on the same spot in the living room.

What only makes things better is the fact that...

In the past year alone Frankie's haul has included teddy bears, leopards and a giant squeaky beefburger.

I can has cheezburger indeed...

There she is!! Again!

2008-12-01T02:13:00.002-05:00

Continuing my existing coverage of the "There she is!!" Flash animation series, I just realized that the fourth and penultimate episode has been up on Newgrounds since August! Hooray for more awesome, dialogue-empty animation and controversial relationships.

Atlas Hugged

2008-11-29T16:02:00.003-05:00

There's something for everyone on the internet. For just about any sexual fetish or fantasy that you can imagine, there is surely some website out there that caters to your interest, whether that interest is plastic(NSFW!), wrapping Roy Orbison in cling-film, or even a single-minded drive for self-improvement, productive achievement, personal happiness, and laissez-faire capitalism. Honestly, the internet has everything.

Among the links above, most people are probably most shocked to see the Ray Orbison stories. They are pretty bizarre, but frankly I've known about Ulrich Haarburste's (published) stories about wrapping Roy Orbinson in cling-film for over a year now so that feels like old news to me. However, I only recently heard about the fountainhead of romance recently from a small featurette in New York magazine.

Oh, if only I had discovered this website sooner! Perhaps then I may have already met delightful individuals such as...

mxjohnxm, Greenville, South Carolina
“One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.”

You can tell this guy's a true player by how he pulls out that old misanthropy line.

thustotyrants, Selden, New York
[I am] short, stark, and mansome.

You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.

How sweet and charming! No wonder this website has been such a well-kept secret.

Its a beautiful morning for a pleasant jog in the park on a treadmill.

2008-11-29T03:32:00.003-05:00

I have always enjoyed going for brief jogs in the park or along the river front during late spring, summer, or early fall. During my time at Columbia University, my path of choice ran through Riverside park and now that I live in Queens, Astoria Park has become my new center for recreation. I loved bathing in the warmth of sunlight and the salty smell of the estuaries at the base of the Hudson as my mind wandered into introspection during my longer runs. However, once October rolls around and the cold of fall truly sets in, it simply become too cold to go outside. Jogging outdoors suddenly becomes so unpleasant when the frosty air nips at your face and tightens every patch of exposed skin. At these times, I must settle with running on a treadmill at a local gym, which feels much too repetitive and interminable for all the obvious reasons. Also, for some reason I find running on a treadmill much harder on my knees. If only there were some way of finding a compromise between the pleasures of jogging outside vs running on a treadmill...

Apparently, some innovative technology companies have taken this question very seriously, but somewhere along the way, they obviously lost their original vision and all sense of purpose.

This has been a historic evening

2008-11-04T23:16:00.008-05:00

Oh by the way, Obama won. Just thought you might want to know. Yes, we did.

Bringing an old (but good) memory back in light of the spirit of the moment.

Also, it may be an inappropriate moment to bring this up, but all the recent blog posts have made me question something - something very important... Is it 'a historic' or 'an historic'? Honestly, this has been troubling me all night and the blogosphere has yet to come to a consensus.

I still suck at art...

2008-10-13T01:50:00.004-04:00

More tablet practice... I've got a looooong way to go... I wasn't even sure if I even wanted to make this post or just spare myself the humiliation. :(

More tablet practice... I've got a looooong way to go...

I started out today with a great idea for a strip that I've wanted to draw for a few weeks now. Everything was going great this afternoon when the pressure sensitivity on my tablet was really getting reflected in my line. However, sometime during the day, probably when I went out to get some groceries, the pressure sensitivity suddenly stopped working and I was left with just a discrete line again - no different than drawing with a mouse, albeit a very agile mouse.

Distraught and without any will to continue my previous drawing, I just figured I'd doodle instead. I still have great lengths to go to get used to using this thing afterall.

I suck at art.

2008-10-05T15:02:00.002-04:00

Recently, I purchased a drawing tablet in hope of renewing my drawing hobby. Until college, I was quite the prolific doodler, though I would never claim that anything I drew ever amounted to art. Frankly, I was just a huge anime nerd who liked to doodle during class. However, under such conditions one things progressively led to another and thus the monstrosity below.

[ Me. ]

I took me a while to get used to the tablet. Up until now I have always sketched on paper and scanned before working on computer so this is my first time working directly on computer and the first time I've ever attempted coloring. The above drawing was done on Photoshop (though I should probably be vectoring in Illustrator) and I've learned quite a few things from just my first try.

My hands are a lot steadier on paper, but perhaps this is because of the loss of graphite on paper texture. I can even tell that my hands got a lot steadier as I got used to the tablet and the lines I made later were much smoother than the lines I made when I started.
The pressure sensor sucks. This is a pretty cheap tablet for beginners and amateurs, but honestly shading with the pencil is a lost cause with this set up.
Eventually I remembered why I was so excited to get a tablet as now I could move shapes, undo, draw on different layers, etc.
Choose your colors well, because its a major pain to change your colors after you've already done a lot of work with them. I am actually totally incapable of tanning, unlike my cartoon doppleganger.
Short-cut keys are your friend. Good thing I'm already well-acquainted with all the Photoshop shortcuts.

The line that separates the boys from the menstruation.

2008-09-16T22:17:00.007-04:00

During the summer after ninth grade, as I prepared to take the SAT II Biology exam, there was one thing I feared more than anything else. Menstruation.

Somehow, we never covered menstruation in our biology class so I knew close to nothing about the subject. We had lightly touched on hormones, but we mostly talked about adrenaline, not menstruation. I had also been studying with the SAT II Biology prep books published by REA, which I later realized was the worst brand of examination preparation books ever, and which dedicated a vastly disproportionate amount of the exam to menstruation. Detailed questions in the REA practice tests that required familiarity with every hormone and neurotransmitter involved in menstruation gave me hot flashes. But worst of all, being an obese, nerdy, short and awkward fourteen-year old with extremely limited contact to few if any girls and even then only through the impenetrable membrane of the internet, I could only assume that fifty percent of the people taking the exam would know everything about the topic.

Having already mastered the Krebs cycle, the Calvin cycle, and the Calcium-Potassium barrier but with only a few weeks left before the exam, I (incorrectly) believed that this would be the final barricade between myself and a perfect score. Oh, if only I had this video to guide me back then:

All's well that ends well, and even without the instruction of this video, I did very well on the exam that turned out to be significantly easier than the absurdly fucking difficult REA practice exams. ^_^

Props to Marilla Li for sharing the video via Google Reader.

Donkey Kong Punch

2008-09-12T01:19:00.003-04:00

Wow, I cannot believe any produced ever approved this film. Not because the idea of a Donkey Punch is so chauvinist and offensive, but because... well, I think this trailer speaks for itself.

Moral Dilemmas

2008-08-30T00:58:00.004-04:00

Recently, I have been telling a lot of my friends this moral dilemmas story that I find particularly interesting. I tend to tell this story a lot and I always get new interesting results.

A man and a woman love each other, but because of war, famine, disease, etc. they become separated into two cities, East City and West City, that are located across a large river. There is only one ferry service capable of going across the river. One day, the woman, who is in West City, goes to the port to take the ferry across to East City to be reunited with her love. The boatman who owns the ferry monopoly, has learned of her very peculiar situation and knows that given her circumstances, she would be much more inclined to pay a higher price to cross the river. Attempting to profit from her situation, the boat man charges her an exorbitant fee (let's just say 10,000 USD instead of a standard fare of 20 USD), which the poor woman cannot pay. Learning of her unfortunate circumstances, the richest man in West City offers to pay for the woman's ferry fare in exchange that she sleeps with him for one night. After all, the woman is very beautiful and very desperate, while the rich man is lonely and capable of helping her. The woman agrees, she sleeps with the rich man, she pays the boat man, and she is reunited with her lover in East City. The man and the woman get married and live happily for a number of years.

Several years after this course of events, the man's best friend travels to West City and during his travels, by pure freak accident, he learns about the entire series of events. Upon returning home, he tells his friend, the man, every detail of the story. The man holds very strong principles about cheating and adultery so he leaves his wife, the woman. Distraught and heartbroken, the woman kills herself.

Now for the dilemma part... Among the six characters in this story, the man, the woman, the friend, the rich man, and the boat man, how would you rank them in terms of most right or the one you agree with most to the least right or the one you agree with least.

Given that this is my blog, I suppose its important that I list my own rankings: 1) the woman, 2) the rich man, 3) the boat man, 4) the friend, 5) the man. Now, rather than expound upon a lengthy explanation of my own reasoning, I would rather pose a series of points and counter points. Having told this story many times to many different people, I've heard many extremely different responses. Some of which I agree with entirely, some of which I can understand but do not entirely passionately believe in, and some of which I vehemently disagree with.

Some common responses:

The friend is obviously the most moral because he didn't do anything wrong, he just did what friends do.

I actually could not disagree with this more. I cringe every time I get this answer for one very obvious reason: The friend didn't have to tell the man. Assuming that the friend knows the man very well, a natural assumption for a best friend and an assumption that everyone has made thus far, then he would have known how the man would react to that story. In that case, he had the choice of telling his friend and seeing their happy marriage fall apart or he could have withheld the information and let them live in ignorant happiness forever. To say that the friend "just did what friends do" is implicitly imposing a certain set of judgments of what defines a friend.

Some have responded that telling your friends the truth is simply what a friend does and should do, but I completely disagree. That is not what a friend does but what an informant or a witness on the stand does. I believe that a friend is someone who watches out for you, which I do not believe this friend did.

Alternatively, one could argue that by telling the man, the friend took a passive role and left the critical moral decisions to the man, whereas if the friend had withheld the truth from the man, he was imposing his own system of morals upon the man, something which the man would not have appreciated. Indeed, who is the friend to decide what it is better for the man? But then do not friends exist to take an active role in their friends lives for their mutual benefit?

The boatman was only conducting business, which he has every right to do.

A lot of people have made this claim, which I find very disturbing and alarming. This statement makes many extremely capitalist assumptions and the fact that most people have been unable to detect these capitalist assumptions frightens me. Indeed, the boatman is actually just doing something known as price discrimination, a common concept taught in every economics class. Basically, for economies where there is a price-maker, which defintiely describes this ferry monopoly, it is more efficient to give people who are willing to pay more higher prices. This is exactly what took place in the story as I'm sure anybody would pay more to be reunited with long lost love than for leisure. This is the same reasoning that goes into raising ticket prices for flights that are sooner rather than later. If one really really needed to be somewhere in two days, then one would be willing to pay more for the ticket.

But what gives the boat man the right to charge anybody any price he wants in the first place? Why does the boatman own a monopoly over transportation over the river? Why don't the givernments own the ferry service? Roads, bridges, trains, and ferries are actually publicly owned in most of the US, Canada and Europe. What gives the boatman the right to even own that boat? Did he make the boat? Did he earn it? Was there meritocratic competition for ownership of the boat (perhaps he's the best damn boat man in the world) or did he inherit it? Why can't there be another boat?

Indeed, the story does not provide enough details to answer any of these questions, but that's what makes it a moral dilemma. This situation with the boatman basically leads to the question, which is more important, property rights or the general happiness of other people. In Leviathan, Hobbes defined property as nothing more than that which one can prevent other individuals from consuming. In a state of nature, people defended property themselves, while today we have laws that garauntee property. An economist would argue that its possible to respect both property rights and the general happiness of other people if the boatman charged a fare that was equivalent to the monetary equivalent of the utility the woman would have gained from reunion with her lover minus the opportunity cost of attaining that much money. But its so hard to quantify love and I suppose that's why they call economics the dismal science.

Some rare responses:

The woman cheated on the man and thus she does not deserve his love.

I've only heard this once so I'll just assume most people understand the problem with this statement. Basically, it makes a very simple assumption that sleeping with someone else constitutes cheating and someone that cheats does not deserve to be involved with the one they are cheating on. Although I would agree that one who cheats on his or her lover does not deserve that lover, the ambiguity lies within the statement that sleeping with someone else always constitutes as cheating.

Now before anyone flips out on that last sentence, I do acknowledge that most of the time, sleeping with someone else does constitute as cheating. This is a social expectation that has been pounded into every single one of our heads in every single movie, serial or song that has ever covered the topic. But why is it that extramarital or extra-whatever sex is universally considered a breech of the trust that exists in a loving relationship? If one masturbates while in a relationship, that is not considered cheating even though technically the masturbator had sexual relations with him or herself instead of his or her partner (an absurd concept, I know). If someone involved in a relationship solicits a prostitute during a period of extended separation from his or her lover (we all have urges), is that necessarily the same as cheating? Does sex only need to include the other partner, meaning that a threesome including the partner does not constitute as cheating?

I know a few people who would argue for celibacy until marriage or at the very least, exclusion of sexual activity for a person you love. Even among those who hold such principles for themselves, there are very few people judge other people as moral or immoral based on those principles. The idea that sex is something one only does with someone one loves has been refuted ever since prostitution became a profession (for those who don't know, that's since ever). Modern society has broken down this concept even further with casual sex, friends with benefits, and no-strings-attached. Nonetheless, almost everybody today agrees that whenever someone is involved in a relationship, that is where casual sex ends and sex becomes exclusive to the relationship.

But why is this so? That question is not meant to imply that it shouldn't be so (I for one would be very deeply hurt if anybody I was ever invovled with decided to participate in casual sex with other people), but that there are reasons why we feel this way. We want to be loved, desired, and needed exclusively by the one we love. In this story however, the woman neither loves nor desires the rich man, though she may need the rich man for money that the man cannot provide and does not even know she needs. In fact, the only reason she sleeps with the rich man is because she loves, desires, and needs to be with the man and the rich man is only a means towards an end.

The woman killed herself, which eliminates any possibility of ever getting back together with the man, which is just stupid.

I've only heard this argument once and it was very surprising so I was unable to come up with an adequate response at the time. That was a moment I heavily regret because of my dislike of this type of anti-suicide argument. Clearly this argument follows the reasoning that one should never kill oneself as long as there is a sliver of hope of attaining happiness. This argument is clearly rooted in utilitarianism as it suggests that no matter how small the probability for happiness may be, the expected result is greater than zero, which would be the result if one commits suicide. However, this completely ignores the pain one experiences while alive before finally attaining that happiness or death by other means. This pain is also very probably and larger in magnitude than zero, which is the pain one would experience if one commits suicide. (Technically, for a more sophisticated mathematical analysis of this issue, we should actually be looking at it as a time series problem.)

Honestly, I cannot complain enough about how much I dislike that argument. It just feels like it rooted in an "anything is possible!" optimism that I thought we all learned in middle school was complete bull shit.

The rich man should be at the top since he is the only character that does not directly influence or affect another character and he is the only character that increased the general happiness of all characters.

I've actually only met one person who ever placed the rich man at the top of the list (paying for sex is an act that's very easily and often implicitly villified), but this individual actually had a very strong argument to support this point. Indeed, the rich man did not impose any situation upon the woman, but left the decision to her. Additionally, the rich man is really the only character who provided a pathway for a state of greater happiness for the entire system. If you remove either the price-discriminating boat man or the friend from the story (you can't remove the man or the woman because then there would be no story), then the man and woman would be living happily together. However, if you remove the rich man from the story, the man and woman remain separated.

Some final comments:

All the comments above generally reflect my own line of thinking as I ranked the characters. In case you forgot its 1) the woman, 2) the rich man, 3) the boat man, 4) the friend, and 5) the man. Although its easy enough to gather where I would place the rich man, the boat man, and the friend based on my comments above, why I specifically placed the woman at the top and the man at the bottom has been left out. I must confess that my personal biases plays a large part into how I placed them at the ends.

I really hate the man (no, I do not mean "the man" in reference to the persisting system of race, class, gender or sexual-identity oppression, but rather this man in the story). He has taken this "moral" of his above the woman he loved and his own happiness. Will upholding this moral really make him, her, or anybody else happier? I'm clearly using a utilitarian/general happiness principle method to put down the man, which I suppose may be a little unfair since the man is clearly coming from a completely different point of view. I suppose this clearly reveals that I am much more invlined towards a utilitarian judgement than the man in this story, but utilitarianism vs categorical imperative vs minimax utilitarianism vs etc. is not a discussion I want to get into.

Not only does the man pursue his "morals" to the point where it makes everybody unhappy, but its also a "moral" about being with a woman that has slept with someone outside of a relationship and that just reeks of religion. (Well, I guess I just came out of the atheist closet...) Whereas I can understand principled ideologies such as human rights and pacifism, I cannot even begin to understand this principles. Not only am I opposed to a principled judgment of actions and individuals, but I think this particular principle is complete crap.

While I hate the man, I love the woman. Her character seems like a tragic hero that makes many sacrifices to change the state of the system only to have those sacrifices ironically reverse her intentions. She is the only character that really sacrificed a part of herself and made herself vulnerable to attain a greater state of happiness. Furthermore, I just find it very tragic how despite her attempts to exercise agency upon the story, she's the most powerless character as she is passed like an object from character to character. And she's fighting for love! I just cannot help myself against that kind of motivation! Albeit, none of the things I have mentioned necessarily justify her as a moral character, but I suppose that reveals my own romantic bias.

In the end, there is no right or wrong reasoning for ordering the five characters in this story. This is not a riddle that is meant to be solved, but rather an exercise to push people to carefully examine their own moral judgment. Its intended to evoke personal biases that one may never have known existed. Personally, although I have always known that I am atheist with a utilitarian predilection, I never realized that I was also a bit of an irrational romantic.

Hero

2008-07-20T12:13:00.003-04:00

Last night, three friends of mine and I went to a club in the Lower East Side. As soon as we entered, we immediately proceeded to the dance floor and got as close to the performing stage as we could. As soon as we got to the front of the crowd, a friend who was female and very inebriated stuck out a hand clutching a purse behind her towards another friend and I. Reacting to her hand and the purse, my friend, who also happens to be my roommate, instinctively took the purse and held onto it as he stood in place, nodding to the (mad awesome) music of The Annex.

Noticing the purse exchange, I asked my friend, "Why are you holding that purse?"

"Oh, she gave it to me, I'm just holding it for her," he responded. Both of us being experienced aficionados of the New York City nightlife, he clearly expected me to understand that our female friend ahead of us was merely trying to divest herself of that bulky, irritating and inconvenient purse as she proceeded to get down on the dance floor. Indeed, purses, cell phones, and wallets have been passed to me many many times in the past so I knew that this was a common occurrence. However, I also knew that our friend had already given me her wallet to hold for her earlier that night. I knew that was not her purse.

"I don't think that's her purse." I responded with urgency. Just as I said that, a dashing young damsel swiftly dashed past us towards the stage. She appeared distressed as she frantically examined every part of the stage, on top, along the bottom, towards the corners, etc. My roommate witnessed this frenetic searching and assumed the obvious, that this stranger was searching for her purse, the purse currently in his hands.

Reacting quickly, he swiftly slipped the purse back onto a dark, unobtrusive area of the stage. He then tapped the woman on the shoulder and asked, "Excuse me ma'am, but are you searching for something?"

"Yes!" She exclaimed, "My purse! My life! I can't find it!"

With a smug smirk on his face, my roommate pointed to that same dark, unobtrusive portion of the stage and asked, "Could this be it?"

"OMG! My purse! You found it!" She shouted as her face lit up in relief. She reached up to hug him while whispering in his ear, "You're my hero... thank you..."

"All in a days work ma'am," my roommate replied. I'm proud to live with a hero.

Skipping in New York

2008-06-28T17:30:00.003-04:00

For anybody that has paid attention to the frequency of my blog posts (yes, I am speaking to all one of you out there, including myself) you should be pushing me to express my creative self more often! I have much less time to write blog posts now that the monotonous drudgery of regular employment has begun its daily beating on my sanity. (Actually, I really like my manager, I find the work I do mentally challenging without being stressful, and I'm ambitious about improving my skills before advancing my career or going to graduate school - hence the longer than normal hours, but optimism on the internet is lamer than identity theft). In order to compensate for this long gap of posts, its time for some more post backdating! This post has been intentionally dated for the morning after...

Not much has changed since college. Yet again, I have shattered records and exceeded my ridiculous-inebriation-story potential. I have more drunken legends than Michael Phelps has gold medals, despite the fact that this post is dated before Michael Phelps won all of his gold medals. Last night/this morning, I managed again to extend my life of binge drinking while cutting my total life-span.

Yesterday night started out just like any other epic night in Saint Marks. A few friends and I gathered in the street of Dionysus to celebrate a friend's departure from a much abhorred paralegal position. We ate, drank and made merry across several of the block's establishments until I woke up. Indeed, I had blacked-out yet again, though none of my friends who joined me the previous evening noticed that I was particularly drunk. Apparently, despite losing the ability to retain short-term memory, I still continued to function and converse coherently with my usual wit. Hence, no one was worried when I left to go home by myself.

I woke up at 5am, seated in a plastic bench with my face down on a similarly plain beige plastic table at a fast-food restaurant. I never managed to catch the name of this eatery as I was overcome by a desperate need to throw up. I ran outside as fast as I could and immediately tossed on the side of the building. As soon as that physical eruption of fluids passed, I realized I had no idea where the fuck I was and for some unknown reason, I wasn't wearing any shoes. I looked for the nearest sign and discovered I had found my way to East Midtown when I should have been in Queens. Hey, at least I was only a bridge away, that's more than i can say about some other nights I've experience. My parents were coming to Queens later that day to help me move into my new apartment so somehow, I had to get to Queens.

Pushing the no-shoes situation lower in my priority queue behind finding my way home, I wandered around Midtown barefoot hailing a cab. Even though it was 5am on a Saturday, there were plenty of cabs to be found. God, I love this city. As soon as I made it back to my apartment, I retreated to my room and proceeded to sleep a short but deep sleep that was only interrupted by run-to-that-toilet-and-vomit fits. As 1pm rolled around, I was fully awake and completely hung-over. That also happened to be when my parents rolled around with much of my stuff from their house. Unfortunately, I didn't notice them for another hour.

Early that morning, during one of my vomiting fits, I realized I had lost my cell phone. In which case, it was damn good thing that I came back to Queens instead of going to a friends house as otherwise, I would have had no way of knowing when my parents were at the apartment. Even though I strategically positioned myself at a window, I failed to notice my parents for sometime until I finally found my mother in a hysterical state of mind.

She's always hysterical, whether its because I break a bone or a stub a toe, so I still didn't think anything was amiss. However, as soon as I greeted my father, he screamed, "Where the fuck have you been? [His words, note mine] Do you know how much of my time you have wasted? Why did you shut off your cell phone?"

Working all the language neurons I could manage despite a terrible headache, I uttered, "Uh, I think I lost my cell phone."

"You lost it because you drank too much didn't you!" My father retorted. Now, up until this very moment in my life, my parents have not known about a single sip of alcohol that has ever passed my lips. Especially not those gulps I took in high school, when I was still living with them, and much less the great big chugs I take now. Indeed, I have done quite a good job covering up after myself, even after the large parties I hosted in their house while they were away. Hence, he could not have arrived to this conclusion from my track record. The evidence must have been obvious. I must have reeked of alcohol. Given the situation, there was no point in hiding it anymore. After a brief pause, I confessed, "Yeah..."

My parents displayed their usual disapproval of everything I do, like talking to people instead of studying, staying fit instead of studying, and expressing my opinions instead of obeying their every word and studying. When a roommate joined me at our apartment an hour later, he confirmed my suspicion that I reeked of alcohol. Heck, I even had to stop for another vomiting fit while my parents were helping me move. The veil of mystery had clearly been lifted.

Every day for the following three weeks, my mother proceeded to spend several hours a day sending me newspaper articles about scientific studies linking alcohol to brain damage. She confirmed something I always suspected, but never completely knew, she knew nothing about me, my personality, my social life, and my life at school.

Just to note, I eventually recovered that lost cell phone... ...a month later. After I had already purchased a newer but crappier phone. A kind stranger from Roosevelt Island found it on the street in Midtown Manhattan and made several unsuccessful calls on it (I disconnected the service after two days) before he finally called someone from my phone book and returned it to me. Well, I'm just glad I got it back.

[Note: The title of this post is taken from a completely unrelated song by Cynthia Lin, professional in the software industry turned folk musician.]

This is the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life...

2008-06-25T03:35:00.003-04:00

Wow. This is the most incredible video I have ever seen. This video is so amazing that it has simply left me speechless. Honestly, this video deserves an Academy Award for its own category: Pop-culture Icon Interacting with Randomly Collected Surreal Virtual Environments. Honestly, this video has everything, from David Hasselhoff to arctic cruises to angels to anthropological excursions, and to think all you really need to make such a work of genius is Windows Movie Maker. According to Wikipedia, this has been an internet sensation since 1997 (wow, pre-YouTube) so I guess I'm a little late in the game. Nonetheless, I consider this to be a video that endures the ages, much like David Hasselhoff himself.

Interracial relationships in flash animation

2008-06-10T22:21:00.003-04:00

Four or five years ago, I stumbled upon this disgustingly cute flash animation (link to high quality New Grounds flash version, modern youtube version above) and then immediately forgot about it. Just recently, while reading through my multiple anime blogs, I discovered this post that revealed, to my delight that the original creator made sequels! In fact, the second chapter/episode/step titled "Cake Dance" was published on New Grounds and other flash websites as long ago as two to three years ago. Just recently Sambakza (the creator) has just released the third step "Doki&Nabi" in the series with plans to make a fourth and final step.

The animation in all three videos remains crisp, smooth, and fluid through some surprisingly complex movements (Nabi spins around a lot) and the adorable character designs manage to be both oh-so-cute and minimalist without becoming too crude. The soundtrack is pretty nice too! However, the supreme achievement these simple flash animations is how the creator manages to create a narrative with zany humor, amusing characters, conflict, and even some sentimental romantic emotions with almost no text or dialogue. Perhaps I am simply just a very visual person as poetry has virtually no appeal to me, but I find this absolutely amazing. The way Sambakza manages to use only universal visual symbols and signals, without the aid of any mellifluous prose, to grasp emotion is simple yet sublime.

Another good example of this would be the unrelated video below "Kiwi". Unlike "There she is!!", "Kiwi" is melancholy, complex, and deceptively cute. Here the artist, Dony Permedi, uses less than three minutes with uses absolutely no text to convey a complex character with dreams and determination. The shocking ending even provides a cathartic moment that reveals the costs of ambition.

Update: Indian migrant workers hunger strike in Washington D.C.

2008-06-07T21:09:00.002-04:00

The New York Times published an article today on the Indian migrant workers who have been on a hunger strike for the past week to ensure that the U.S. Justice Department investigates their case. As I've already mentioned in a previous post, these migrant workers are claiming that they have become victims of human trafficking after they paid upwards of $15,000 - $20,000 for what they believed were permanent resident visas that would lead to a green card. As the article reveals, since the hunger strike began, several of the migrant workers have been hospitalized, including one man who fasted for 23 days. The Justice Department has also confirmed that they are investigating their case so their visas have been extended until the case is resolved. Further details pending...

This entire situation reveals the vulnerability of migrant workers on the H2B visa. The workers originally went on strike because although they were given reasonable salaries, their living/working conditions were cramped, suffocating, and charged for unreasonable rates on their salaries, and because they were mislead to believe that their H2B visas would lead to green cards. As soon as they went on strike, they were fired, which officially terminated their status as legal immigrants and gave Signal International the right to forcibly deport them. With this structure, how can migrant workers ever hope to form a union or make any demands of their employer? Could domestic unions ever welcome migrant workers despite xenophobia and resentment for displacement from their own jobs?

The secret banking lives of the super rich and wealthy

2008-06-06T20:49:00.003-04:00

The New York Times released an interesting article today on the secret banking lives (and potential tax evasion strategies) of the super rich and wealthy with offshore bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Just to quote:

Switzerland does not consider tax evasion a crime, and using undeclared accounts is legal there.

Woah. I did not know that. Supposedly, Swiss banking practices, especially for UBS, reach as far back as the Middle Ages when I suppose most taxes were exercised on crops rather than nominal wealth and income. That really adds a nice Da Vinci Code, ancient Carolignian fortunes tone to the whole story. One former employee of UBS named Bradley Birkenfeld is actually blowing the whistle on UBS after he became angry "over what he considered the bank’s wink-and-nod standard regarding tax evasion" and for being asked "to sign papers saying that they [bankers such as Birkenfeld], not the bank, would be responsible if they broke non-Swiss tax laws."

I actually worked for UBS last summer at their New York City office where they have their Wealth Management - High Net Worth individuals office. You could always tell when someone was destined for that particular floor. The Gucci bags just gave them away. They also had a massive crystal ball in their well decorated, polished hard-wood lobby. As for the rest of us, the bankers, technicians and operations folk, we were content with our carpets and dry-wall cubicles. The Wealth Management bankers also had the funniest job titles like "Wealth Management - Millionaires".

[Note: I like back-dating posts so that it looks like I'm consistently actively posting...]

American Necrophilia

2008-06-04T23:57:00.004-04:00

One of the most provocative statements of this essay claims that "war is necrophilia". The statement is both startling and cathartic, associating war, specifically the ongoing Iraq war, with all the emotions of shock and disgust that reject necrophilia and simultaneously evoking the sentiment that will haunt the American subconscious for years. The essay excerpted from the newly released book Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians by Chris Hedges, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New York Times. The language Hedges uses and the eye-opening interviews he includes reveal a particularly dark and tormenting image of the Iraq war, an image left out of the mass media spotlight. As I read through the essay, I couldn't help but recall almost every film and book I've seen and read about the Vietnam war.

This reminded me of The Things They Carried when Rat randomly massacres a water buffalo.

And we were approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, because it was doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it. And he didn't -- motherf---er -- he shot it, and it went in the jaw and exited out.

This reminded me of Full Metal Jacket, when one of the squad members (was it Cowboy?) posed with corpse of a Nothern Vietnamese soldier.

... in one incident, soldiers laughed as an Iraqi corpse fell from the back of a truck. "Take a picture of me and this motherf---er," said one of the soldiers who had been in Mejía's squad in 3rd Platoon, putting his arm around the corpse.

Of course, as Hedges himself describes, soldiers now in Iraq use the term "haji" exactly as how soldiers used the term "gook" in Vietnam. I never really realized how close those books and films were to reality. I suppose I had some abstract knowledge that American soldiers perpetrated a number of war atrocities during the Vietnam War, not limitted to the My Lai massacre, corpse mutilations, and random napalm droppings, but the US involvement in Vietnam ended a decade before I was born and so it seemed very distant. Given that the Iraq War is progressing right now, the depravity imbued in those acts of violence suddenly appear much more vividly. Additionally, whereas the existence of atrocities perpetrated by the US during the Vietnam war is a generally accepted fact, the same does not apply for the ongoing Iraq war.

Vegetative Days

2008-05-31T23:12:00.004-04:00

Over the past week and a half, I have received the same question over-and-over again, from friends, relatives, but especially parents. "What the hell do you do all day?" Well for your information I am enjoying my freedom to do absolutely nothing. Nothing mostly being reading a lot of blogs, watching a lot of anime, and enjoying the "random article" function on Wikipedia. (Note: I must say, Wikipedia is useless for academic purposes but its the most comprehensive listing of nerd knowledge I have ever seen.) Very soon I will never have the freedom to be alive yet inert ever again, or at least for a very long time. Honestly, my productivity can be best described as: watching caramelldansen over-and-over again.

All vegetables and no meat makes Tian a Bittman...

2008-05-27T17:02:00.005-04:00

I love a big, hearty medium-rare steak. I also love pork-chops, chicken wings, beef and broccoli, cheeseburgers, and many more meat-based (or even entirely meat) dishes. I always have and I always will. However, more recently New York Times writer Mark Bittman and a significant and embarrassing amount of weight gain over the past semester have pushed me to turn over a new leaf... with a fork.

As Bittman has written about and spoken about (see link or embedded video above) numerous times, Americans consume far more meat than recommended by the USDA, a relatively lax agribusiness favoring standard in the first place. In fact, Americans not only eat more than the recommended amount, they eat several times more! Americans eat so much meat that we are actually harming the environment with our meat consumption.

As anybody who has studied basic biology or ecology knows, only 10% of total biomass is passed through consumption. In other words, 10% of the energy in plants is passed on to animals (including us) eating those plants and 10% of that subsequent energy is passed on to animals eating those plant-consuming animals (again, including us... not to suggest that we are eating ourselves, but as omnivores we are eating other plant-consuming animals such cows. Whatever, I'm sure you get the point). Using cows as a specific example, we are only consuming 10% of the plant energy cows consume, plant energy we could have consumed directly - not necessarily in the form of cow feed, which despite popular belief actually contains no grass but mostly grains and formerly even processed not-fit-for-human-consumption meat (Mad Cow Disease anybody?), but other human-consumed crops. In fact, not only is much of our crop agriculture devoted to feeding ranch animals, but even if we ignore the fact that ranch animals must be fed by crops, ranches produce much fewer pounds of food per acre than crop fields. Obviously, agriculture would be much more efficient per acre if we were all vegetarians.

Nonetheless, humans are not herbivores and most of us (myself included) love meat. We want meat. Despite the popular belief that meat consumption is necessary for sufficient protein, the truth is we actually don't need to eat meat at all. We can get more than enough protein in our diets from beans, legumes, eggs (if you don't consider that a meat), cheese (if you're not vegan), etc. All of the above also contain much less saturated fat. But who cares? We don't eat meat because we have to, we eat meat because we want to. And even though crop fields are more efficient than ranches, as long as we have the resources to afford meat, why the hell shouldn't we eat meat?

Actually, we cannot afford to eat meat. At the very least, we cannot afford to eat meat like Americans. Planet Earth does not have the resources to support American meat consumption, but unfortunately for all of us, everybody wants to eat like an American. As incomes rise around the world, everybody is eating more like Americans, meaning more junk food, more snacks, more fast food, and more meat. This strain on our agriculture and economy is already becoming blatantly visible as food prices rise around the world. The recent hype surrounding corn ethanol fuel is only fueling this problem as more crops are diverted from food. This year the problem is particularly bad due to storms in Asia that have caused a worldwide shortage of rice crops. Indeed, if global warming is the source cause of these storms (and it probably is), then it is unlikely that this will be the only year that we encounter these crop shortages. This Boston Globe article even piles on dirt (or arable land to be more exact) to our list of environmental problems.

So I've going to try to become a vegetarian, or at least get as close as possible. Technically, the most economically shrewd idea would be to pig out as much as possible on meat now before it becomes expensive, but I don't think that's the environmentally ethical. As Bittman states, we need to rethink food and that's what I intend to do. Admittedly, I am not philosophically, animal-rightsy vegetarian so I would never berate someone else for eating meat and I would never blink twice if all I had to eat was meat. In fact, I would probably be the last person (ever) to advocate for animal rights, except in extreme cases. I actually find the violent tactics used by some animal rights vigilantes absolutely appalling and I find the way most animal rights activists wish to abolish the consumption of dog meat culturally arrogant and usually racist (potential future post idea!). Rather, I suppose I could be labeled as an environmentalist and anthropocentric vegetarian, but as this Salon article suggest, environmentalism is poorly marketed as "Love Earth" when it really should be "Love Ourselves".

Now I say I will try to become a vegetarian because I'm honestly not sure how long this is going to last. I think there are only so many bitter vegetable I can endure before I'm a Bittman. (Har har, get it? Like the name of the New York Times writer and "a bitter man"! Get the title of this post now? I just wish I could have tied Obama into this somehow...) As I mentioned before, I love meat but health and environmentalism have pushed me to renounce my dearest, yet I feel its only a matter of time before I succumb to desire. But then again, Bittman himself isn't a vegetarian! He just doesn't eat very much meat so maybe he knows something that I don't.

The gender gap

2008-05-25T20:42:00.004-04:00

This is an interesting and very controversial article about the gender gap in hard sciences. Personally, I feel this article is excessively biased towards suggesting that biological differences account for the gender gap in IT and does not leave enough room for socializing factors. I recall once reading (don't ask me where, I would never be able to confirm it so take this with a grain of salt...) about how boys generally tended to out-perform girls in the hard sciences, except among Asian Americans. This suggests that socializing factors play a major role in our development since society doesn't push most girls to study the hard sciences, except model minority Asian Americans of course. But then again I cannot recall where I read that so there's no reason to believe that this fact is true...

Indian migrant workers in New Orleans go on a hunger strike for racial justice

2008-05-25T15:43:00.004-04:00

Immigration reform has been a big topic in the news lately. It has been a major topic throughout several candidate debates for the 2008 election and its becoming such a major problem that even conservatives are starting to budge. The current Republican candidate, in stark contrast to the remainder of his party (i.e. Tom Tancredo), has actually event attempted major bipartisan reform of the existing immigration system. In fact, it is one of the few issues where the even the current president (yeah, remember that guy?) has actually strayed from the extreme right. However, let's examine more carefully exactly what the Bush administration has proposed for immigration reform.

The Bush administration has been a major proponent of the H-2B Visa, or guest worker's visa. Given that a large number of immigrants only plan on staying in the United States temporarily to make some money before returning to home, this seems like a good idea. This also appeases most nervous white Americans who are so frightened of dangerous immigrants spoiling their sanctified NASCAR culture with their primitive jungle ways. However, in practice, the H-2B Visa operates as little more than a loophole for slave labor, as the following video reveals.

A group of over 100 Indian skilled workers have essentially been fooled into paying $20,000 for American green cards, only to find themselves in forced labor under the Signal International corporation. Of course, Signal denies any knowledge that the guest workers were tricked, blaming the Indian recruiters instead, and claims that they have provided suitable wages and working conditions for the workers. On March 6th, the workers walked out of their job and on May 14th, they began a hunger strike in front of Congress demanding Continued Presence in the United States under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. (Much more details can be found on this blog here.) Apparently the hunger strike ended this past Thursday, though I don't know came as a result.

Human trafficking is the third most profitable black market enterprise in the world, just behind the drug trade and black market arms dealing, and despite popular belief, the majority of human trafficking is not related to prostitution (though it certainly does represent a portion of the human trafficking industry), but rather forced labor. In practice, the guest worker program benefits large corporations, such as Signal, while harming vulnerable poor guest workers, such as the 100 or so Indian workers in this story, and poor workers at home, who are left unemployed. Although the 100 workers in this story seems like a tiny group relative to the 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants living in the US right now, major immigration reforms will bear implications upon 20 million of those people. As the 2008 elections approach, we need to be better informed about the consequences of these policies, especially as November rolls around and McCain completes his metamorphosis into the spawn of Bush.

Well I guess this is growing up...

2008-05-21T16:00:00.001-04:00

[Note: The above picture of the 2008 Columbia University Commencement was taken by me but rather by an anonymous student, most likely (judging by the angle of the shot) from the Columbia Business School. Thank you Google image search.]

Today marks my final day as an undergraduate student at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. (I've been extremely discreet with personal information on this blog thus far but there's 300 other students in SEAS so whatever). Graduation leaves me with a strange feeling that I would not categorize as either happy, sad, excited, or anxious. On the one hand, I'm extremely excited to be living completely independently, but at the same time rent and bills make a major headache. I'm ecstatic to be working full-time in New York City, but at the same time, I'm anxious to be working full-time in New York City.

Aside from that, what the hell do I plan on doing with all my free time when I'm not at work? I've been so active in college-centric student organizations for the past four years that I honestly don't know what to do with myself anymore (and it would be mad creepy if I routinely returned to visit the aforementioned student organizations). Am I going to gain a ten pounds or more when I start working like every other recent entry to the working world I know? How the hell do real grown adults actually meet people? (I can't imagine asking someone for their sign - I'm a scorpio and that's a whack line).

Most importantly of all, where is my career going? Do I really plan on getting a masters degree, much less a doctorate degree? How long do I really plan on working for this company? Am I going to live in New York City for the rest of my working life? I probably should have thought these questions out a little more before I started interviewing for jobs or heck, even before I chose a major.

Given the uncertainty that fills the awkward month-long gap period between school and work, I can't think of a better phrase to express my confusion than the wise words by the modern sages of Blink182, "Well, I guess this is growing up..." Plus, its rare that I have an opportunity to legitimately quote Blink182 (I have the next one saved for when I turn 23).

No, it's not yellowface, it's called a façade

2008-04-07T03:14:00.005-04:00

Boston Globe recently released an interesting article about the film "21", which I've ranted about at length in a previous post. The Globe had quite a few interesting things to say about Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House, which inspired the film "21", including the following:

"Bringing Down the House" is not a work of "nonfiction" in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead of describing events as they happened, Mezrich appears to have worked more as a collage artist, drawing some facts from interviews, inventing certain others, and then recombining these into novel scenes that didn't happen and characters who never lived. The result is a crowd-pleasing story, eagerly marketed by his publishers as true - but which several of the students who participated say is embellished beyond recognition.

Ouch. I'm not sure if this is official policy with the New York Times Book Review, but if you ask me, calling a supposed work of non-fiction a fiction is a major critique. This article from the Globe only makes me want to watch "21" even less (yes, even beyond the boycott-level of not-watching "21") and it makes me want to avoid Mezrich's book altogether. Personally, I am a strict adherent to the belief that a work of non-fiction should be exactly that, non-fiction. Embellishing the emotions of certain characters or the tone of a scene is one thing, but creating new characters and scenes is something else altogether. Even if they are composites of real characters and scenes that doesn't mean the composite actually exists, that's like saying a Griffin exists because its based on two real animals.

However, regardless of the authenticity of Bringing Down the House and consequently "21", I do not think that does anything to change my argument in my previous post on "21". Many individuals who claimed to be involved in the original MIT gambling teams have actually recently stated on various message boards that the movie "21" is not racist because the original story has been altered so much that it has nothing to do with the original individuals, much less their race. This completely misses the point as the story of Bringing Down the House and "21" were inspired by the real-life stories of Asian Americans and we deserve the justice of being portrayed by Hollywood as we are, especially in stories inspired by us. In fact, not only was the story inspired by Asian Americans but their race played a role in the scheme (at least according to Mezrich) since Asian "model minority" gamblers were generally ignored by security. All film adaptations of books take a certain level of creative license to make the film more appealing for the box office. Scenes are always omitted, condensed, or spliced for the sake of length and dialog is heavily edited to be more vibrant for the big screens. In the case of "21", Hollywood producers have chosen to edit out Asian characters to make a film more appealing, only reinforcing Asian stereotypes. Can you imagine if they made The Pursuit of Happyness with a white leading actor, even if the exact plot and dialog of the film did not match up with the original book or series of events? Also, if the movie is so distant from the original series of events, then why was Jeff Ma personally involved in preparing Jim Sturgess for the role?

Speaking of Jeff Ma, he has actually been a supporter of "21". He has been quoted for saying that he was more shocked to see that his character in "21" had a deceased father than to see that he was white. He also stated that he was glad to be portrayed by Jim Sturgess, since Sturgess could accurately portray his own personality well, regardless of his race. In fact, he even went on say that he's glad that he was not played by someone Korean or Japanese just to find an Asian face. Ma's apologist color-blind logic also misses the point. Of course, it's important to match an actor/actress with the right role, but to suggest that race is irrelevant in this selection process is to suggest that people, society, everybody looks at Jeff Ma and looks at Jim Sturgess and, aside from a few slight differences in height, weight, age, and hair color, only sees the personality underneath. Certain associations are carried with race and to suggest that society exists beyond those associations is naïve. Indeed, existing beyond those associations would be ideal but reaching that stage does not require ignoring those associations, in fact that would only reinforce the status quo, but making any effort to reach that stage (which I would argue is not possible - social constructions will exist so long as society exists) requires acknowledging and deconstructing those associations.

I can understand how Jeff Ma does not wish to be racially-typed as an Asian American character, but rather wishes to be portrayed as a person even if it means being played by a white actor. However, I believe one's race generally defines a large part of one's life because it defines how society sees you. When you move to a new school as a little kid and you're automatically placed in the advanced math class, kids pull on their eyes to make fun of you and people call you "chink" and "gook", it's specifically because you're Asian. Albeit these may be particularly extreme experiences with race that Mr. Ma may never have experienced, but I still find it difficult to believe that Mr. Ma's race has had no influence on his character and personality.

Lastly, I'm sick of hearing people say, "But there are Asian American actors in the supporting cast," as though Asian Americans should be satisfied with getting any roles at all. (You know us Asians, you give us a foot we ask for a yard...) What if they made a film about the United Farm Workers with a white leads playing Caesar Chad and Philip Von Kruiz? Oh, but its okay because there are Latino and Filipino supporting cast members. Indeed, I certainly don't want to demoralize Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira for taking those roles, but my complaints have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the film's producers. Getting Asian American actors more screen time is only one of the issues at hand here, another is improving how Asian Americans are portrayed in Hollywood.

[Note: I'm actually writing this post on 5/27/08 and backdating it like Steve Jobs with a handful of stock options. Yes, I realize that as of 5/27, this argument is dead. I still have not seen the movie, which should be out of theaters by now, and I probably won't ever see the movie.]

They might as well have filmed it in yellowface

2008-03-23T18:00:00.004-04:00

Anybody who regularly watches TV has probably seen the ads for the upcoming Hollywood film "21". Like most Hollywood trailers, this one also reveals much too much about the plot, making the film not really worth seeing. The film is about six MIT whiz kids who develop a sophisticated method of counting cards in Blackjack. After spending months perfecting their skills, they move on to Vegas to take the city by storm. Suddenly they're caught in a glamorous world of sex, money and alcohol, but the seedy Vegas underworld is getting suspicious.

The story sounds like another Vegas movie along the lines of Ocean's 11, 12, and 13 (just with mathematics a little more advanced than counting beyond the fingers on your hands), but surprisingly enough, it actually happened. In the early nineties, six MIT students did in fact take advantage of Vegas casinos. Their entire story was documented by Ben Mezrich in his New York Times best-selling non-fiction "Bringing Down the House".

The two main characters in the book are Kevin Lewis and Jason Fischer. The character of Kevin Lewis has actually been directly ported into the film as Ben Campbell to be played by Jim Sturgess of "Across the Universe" fame. (He's the guy on the front of the promotional picture at the top). Kevin Lewis and Jason Fischer are actually fictitious names Mezrich invented to protect the identities of the actual individuals. Not very long ago it was revealed that Kevin Lewis is actually Jeff Ma and Jason Fischer is really Mike Aponte.

Now is it just me or does Jim Sturgess look nothing like Jeff Ma. I smell something fishy here...

If my nose is correct, I believe this is the smell of racism. Meznich, author of the original text "Bringing Down the House", agrees with me as he states in a 2005 talk at MIT.

During the talk, Mezrich mentioned the stereotypical Hollywood casting process — though most of the actual blackjack team was composed of Asian males, a studio executive involved in the casting process said that most of the film’s actors would be white, with perhaps an Asian female. Even as Asian actors are entering more mainstream films, such as “Better Luck Tomorrow” and the upcoming “Memoirs of a Geisha,” these stereotypes still exist, Mezrich said.

So when an Asian American man does something smart and dashing in real life, racing through a Vegas-style life of sex, drugs, and money, Hollywood decides that all those traits and such a lifestyle is much more befitting a white man, with perhaps an Asian female.

Were they simply unable to find some Asian American actors? Obviously that couldn't have been the case since they casted Aaron Yoo for the part known only under the single moniker "Choi" (yet another ethnically ambiguous Asian side character, I wonder if he's related to Cho Chang). Did they want Sturgess's star power to attract an audience? What star power? They already have superstars Kevin Spacey and Lawrence Fisburne, what do they need a relatively unknown kid from a recent emo film about the sixties?

This is actually very old news, as is especially evident from the fact that Mezrich's talk was in 2005, and several Asian American blogs have already had a lot to say on the matter, with probably much more eloquence than I can pretend to have. Nonetheless, I just wanted a chance to ask Sony Pictures, why didn't you just put Sturgess in yellowface? At least it would have been more accurate...

Pretty embarassing...

2008-03-18T22:31:00.005-04:00

Today, I discovered on Last.fm that "Girls just wanna have fun" by Cyndi Lauper is my fourth most played track. That's pretty embarrassing.

It's actually tied for fourth with "Eienn" by Do As Infinity, which I would say is my favorite song. I don't even know how this happened. I think the particular track in question though, actually comes from the DDR Supernova soundtrack, which I do listen to quite frequently (hence, "Graduation" by BeForU as my number one track). That is however, equally embarrassing.

Things I do when I'm bored in Butler

2008-03-04T15:46:00.004-05:00

This is what i think about when I'm bored.

[UPDATE] Now that I have more time I should really clean-up my post. Rather than the stream of consciousness on graph paper as you see above, here are two cleaned-up edits of two pieces of the above doodle (one with color!)

It's so cuuute! I want one! (Though it does feel odd to fetishize myself in effigy...)

Title: Unexpected
Artist; Tian Xie
Pencil on Graph Paper

This work is intended to instantly evoke feelings of surprise and spontaneity as a critique of the gender binary in society, before settling into an understanding. Indeed, even the artist began this work on an impulsive swing of inspiration, before comprehending even his own graphite scratches. Perhaps sometimes the random sparks of intuition speak louder reality than cognitive planning.

But seriously, I don't how this idea came to me. I just started drawing a man, that became an androgynous she-man, that became David's biggest fan.

Everyone should watch Miname-ke. Just do it.

2008-02-28T03:47:00.007-05:00

I really regret making that post about Moyashimon. I wrote the post for Moyashimon after I just saw the first episode. I was so excited that I acted on impulse. Unfortunately, despite Moyashimon's incredibly cute microbes and awesome opening and ending (indeed quite obviously, repeating an excellent one or two minutes at the start and end of every episode does not a make a great anime) it really failed to live up to my expectations. Had I waited just another few episodes, I probably would not have had the desire to ever comment on its existence and saved myself a few relatively unimportant minutes of typing and Youtube searching. Alas...

This particular anime, on the other hand, is one that I am absolutely positive about. Unlike Moyashimon, as I write about Minami-ke now, I have watched the entire series from beginning to end (Minami-ke is actually only thirteen episodes so this is not a difficult feat for even a single weekend. There is a sequel now being broadcast in Japan but more on that later...) and I have felt same warm sentiments for this series from the first time I saw the opening to the last time I saw the ending. I love Minami-ke!

Minami-ke is the story of the ordinary lives of the three Minami sisters, Chiaki, Kana, and Haruka. These three girls are generously separated in age - Haruka is in High School, Kana is in Middle School, and Chiaki is in higher Elementary School - and for reasons unexplained have been left to live on their own. Life may not be easy without parents, but as long as they have each other, they manage somehow and with hilarious consequences. Like any good student attending a prestigious University, I will now analyze and deconstruct all the reasons why I love this series (we do this for fun, really).

Realism. There are no giant robots, no moon power, no death gods, no ninjutsu, no fighting (okay, well, some fighting), no transforming Aryans, no angels portending of the Apocalypse caused by an encounter with a super-creepy giant replica of your mother, no deus-ex-machina seeds that remain unexplained to the conclusion of the series, and definitely no lonely nerdy guys surrounded by hot women who want him. Minami-ke faithfully adheres to the concept of a slice-of-life anime and keeps all of its creativity and humor character-driven. As strange as some of the characters in this series may be, some people are really weird too. This is among few animes that I can actually imagine happening somewhere in Japan (another noteworthy slice-of-life anime that truly pulls this off would be Azumanga Daioh).

Impressionism. Alright, I admit it. Just as I commented above, judging an anime on the first minute that's repeated every single episode is probably the shallowest way to judge a series. This is almost literally judging a book by its cover. Nonetheless, I still maintain that an awesome opening can really add another layer of awesomeness. I really enjoy getting excited and set in the mood to watch this awesome(sigh... my vocabulary is so limited) anime, so I must give props where it is due. (Also, whereas the original Minami-ke has an awesome opening, the sequel has a terrible opening, which I feel really takes away a certain charm from the show). The ending sequence is also equally enjoyable, which pushes me to watch the whole twenty-five minutes to completion.

The Opening... ITZ SOOOOO CUUUUUUTE

The Ending... ITZ SO CUTE TOOOOOOOOOO

Gender Identity. Minami-ke raises an important dialog on how gender identities form and evolve through personal experiences and how society rejects certain unorthodox identities to reinforce the existing social hierarchy of Minami-archy. You go Mako-chan! Fight heterorthodoxy! Mako-chan's appearance in episode number I'm-not-telling-you-which-so-you-can-be-surprised just killed me. I laughed to the grave as I grasped for another shot at life at my sides.

Nihilism. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear, does it really make a sound? If Hosaka prepares elaborate bento-boxes for Haruka but never manages to offer the fruits of his labor, does he ever really become bishounen idol? Indeed, Hosaka is by far my absolute favorite character. Ever. His disconnect from reality, complete lack of shame, and absolute embrace of absurd fantasies could make a great series by itself.

Filial Piety. Despite the set of awesome side characters, at the end of the day, the three Miname sisters are the primary focus of the series and the spotlight is in no way wasted on them. Miname-ke is truly a character driven series and even without Hosaka and Mako-chan, the interaction of the three Miname sisters are enough to drive this series. Aside from all the humor and comedy, there are also a few scattered tender moments between the sisters. It's not easy for three young sisters to make it on their own after all, but this show manages to be touching without becoming sentimental.

I love Minami-ke and you will too! Honestly, this show simply touches so many different levels of humor I can't imagine anybody disliking this series. Find it at the anime fansub torrent nearest you!

Study Habits and Habitations

2008-02-28T03:34:00.005-05:00

As any college student knows (well, at least any college student that actually studies) those tiny cozy cubicles in the library are always the first spots to get claimed. Personally, when I study in the library, I am making the trip for the intense studying environment and large tables. I actually find the confinement of a desk and especially a cubicle to be very claustrophobic. Confinement of the workspace leads to confinement of the mind! Free yourself lest your thoughts die of asphyxiation!

Nonetheless, despite my fickle personal preferences, any cursory survey of the library instantly shows that those suffocating cubicles are actually in very high demand. A cubicle unoccupied by an individual will surely be occupied by books, a laptop and papers (a surrogate person) instead. The race for cubicles can get rather competitive, but why race for cubicles when you can make one yourself?

Albeit, not all of us carry around large cardboard presentation boards, but that doesn't mean we can't start.

The 2nd Annual New York City Asian American Student Conference

2008-02-13T22:01:00.003-05:00

It's that time of the year again...

Two years ago, several students from Columbia University's Asian American Alliance (AAA - Prepare yourself, this is the first of many acronyms with many A's to come...) and Asian Pacific American Awareness Month (APAAM) came together to hold "Do Something!", a conference to discuss Political issues concerning Asian Pacific Islander Americans (APIAs) and a music festival featuring local APIA talent. Last year, a bunch of the same people from Columbia University's AAA met up with some people from New York University's Asian Heritage Month (AHM) and together these two groups (with a lot of help from APAAM again) held the New York City Asian American Student Conference (NYCAASC) at NYU. This year, a few people from the same old crowds are coming back together for an encore. Hence, I present to you, the 2nd Annual New York City Asian American Student Conference.

Everything is still in the very early planning stages (in fact, the website still needs a day or two to come up...) but always being the go to guy for visual design among Columbia University student groups, I produced the marketing goods (and I mean good, if I do say so myself =P) below for distribution at this weekend's East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) conference.

Microbes are soooooo cuuuute!!!

2008-01-08T06:40:00.000-05:00

Given the amount of leisure time I spend watching anime, I talk about it very sparingly and then only with sympathizers of the cause. However, I'm finding to talk about this particular anime as much as I possibly can.

Recently, I've been watching Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture. Yes, that's right. It's an anime about agriculture. But then again, there was already an anime about baking bread, a popular series for that matter, so I suppose this is not too far astray from the mold.

Speaking of mold... The story of Moyashimon revolves around Sawaki Tadayasu, who appears to be an ordinary college student at an agricultural university in Tokyo. Sawaki however is far from ordinary. He actually possesses a very special ability to see, understand, and interact with microbes (sound kinda like golden hands?) such as yeast or mold (aha! now you get the mold segway). The microbes he sees are also happen to be really really kawaii~!!! (^_^)

Here are the absolutely adorable opening and ending videos.

(Tangent Begin)

On another note, the ending song happens to be done by POLYSICS, which
is a pretty awesome band. Although this is completely unrelated to Moyashimon, here is a video of my favorite POLYSICS songs:

(Tangent End)

Strangeness aside, I'm already finding this anime quite entertaining. Watching the professor suddenly suck on the anus of a fermented bird (dont's ask, just watch the first episode) just made me desperately reach for my sides in laughter. The missing person bondage researcher with athlete's foot (again, just watch) was also fantastic. Plus, the various microbes are just really cute so I'll keep on watching.

On a totally different but anime-related note... very very excited for the return of Haruhi and the S.O.S. brigade with the new season of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi coming up this Spring, but not so excited for the new season of Code Geass.

More Alcohol, Touthaches, and Flowers

2007-12-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

This post is a continuation of this post. I highly recommend you read the previous one to understand anything I'm writing about.

Given that its already the end of the year and all the events that I am about to described took place in early October, I figured it was about time I brought this tale of excessive inebriation to a close.

Where we last left our hero (myself), I had just left a bouquet of flowers for the victim of my drunken tendencies when I noticed a pain in my front right incisor, another victim of my drunken tendencies. As soon as I afforded the time to do so, I looked up local dentists with my dental insurance and phoned every single practice within 2.5 miles. The desperation of my actions was directly proportionate with the intensity of my toothache.

Among all the practices I phoned, only one office offered to see me the next afternoon. Even for an emergency situation like mine, it can still be very difficult to schedule a next-day dentist appointment so I was thrilled to know that this particular practice in Manhattanville could see me anytime tomorrow at my convenience. As I learned the next day, there was a reason why making an appointment at this particular practice happened to be so easy.

I scheduled the appointment for the next one-hour block I had open in my schedule, which happened to be immediately after a job interview I had the next day. Consequently, I wound up showing up in front of that building the next afternoon dressed in full business formal attire and draped in confusion. The building appeared to be relatively vacant and buzzer didn’t seem to be working. I wound up calling the practice on my cell, at which point one of the student dentists answered and came to my assistance at the front door.

The state of the building could be explained in three succinct words: Columbia University Expansion. For those unfamiliar with recent events related to Columbia University, over the past forty years Columbia has been gradually purchasing buildings north of 120^th Street in West Manhattanville in order to expand the size of the University. In recent years, this expansion plan has accelerated significantly to finally cover 17 acres. Just recently, Columbia has received the green light to begin development in the area, which will continue over the next twenty-five year. For more information on Columbia Expansion, here’s a New York Times article covering the recent decision to allow Columbia University to go ahead with its plan.

The obvious consequence of Columbia’s expansion is gentrification of West Manhattanville. Although Columbia owns 17 acres, the buildings are scattered across over 35 acres of land. Once Columbia begins constructing towers in the area (towers that will most likely be half brick and mortar, half glass, and all ugly like the most recent Columbia monstrosity, Lerner Hall) the value of the area will rise. As the general land value rises, landlords throughout the area will raise rents, potentially displacing thousands of residents and businesses.

Some landlords have even tried to get the jump on Columbia expansion, renovating their buildings and raising rents before Columbia even got approved to begin construction. Such was the situation for the particular dental practice I was visiting. The reason the building appeared to be so vacant was because the landlord had already raised rents and kicked out the majority of residents, leaving the dental practice among few survivors. The reason the buzzer was broken was because the landlord removed the old buzzer system but never replaced it, making it impossible for potential clients to get buzzed in to see the dentist. The buzzer is only one among many tactics the landlord had used to kick out the dental practice, including removing the plaque in front of the office and refusing to repair a wall in the office, which also prevented the office from getting heat.

Long story short, Columbia University was indirectly forcing my dentist to close his practice. Since he was very old (very very old) he did not have the time, energy, or money to start a new practice, but he was not yet ready to retire. My dentist relayed his entire story to me while he was examining my teeth, meaning that he ranted on Columbia University at length in extreme anger and frustration all the while he had many sharp instruments in my mouth. This did not produce a terribly comfortable situation for me, especially since I am a student at the aforementioned university.

At the end of another one of his diatribes, he asked me, “Where did you say you went to school again?”

“NYU…” I falsely answered.

“Oh yeah, that’s right.” He responded.

Relieved at having evaded yet another awkward situation, I left with instructions to contact the practice again in a week. Apparently, smashing my face into the wall may have damaged the nerve in my tooth, but there was no way to know for certain yet. The pain would eventually go away, but that may either be because the nerve has healed, which is good, or because the nerve has died, which is bad. In the event that the nerve dies, I would need a root canal to remove and fill the deceased nerve, preventing infection.

A week later my front right incisor had become slightly discolored (AND ZOMG SO UGLY!!!11! -_-; ), a telltale sign that the nerve has died. I phoned the practice as soon as I noticed to get a referral for an endodontist, but even after several attempts, I repeatedly received a message that stated the number had been disconnected. Perhaps his landlord had finally gotten to him?

Regardless, I needed to find a dentist immediately. Just as I had done before, I went through a list of local dentists under my insurance and this time I managed to contact an even closer dentist. After a much less eventful visit, I left with a referral and an appointment for an endodontist.

Never having had a root canal before in my life, I was rather frightened. However, the entire experience turned out to be incredibly unremarkable and not painful at all (though, the root canal was on one of my incisors, not a molar). The entire procedure seemed to be so unremarkable that my dentist and his assistant bantered on office gossip as they performed the operation. In the end, I left with a minor ache in my front right incisor and bag full of pain killers (Yay! Vicadin! Yay!) in case the pain got any worse.

Given urgency of my situation, I made sure to schedule the endodontist appointment to the soonest one-and-a-half hour time block I could afford. Whereas my first dentist appointment immediately followed a job interview and I came dressed in full business formal attire, this appointment immediately preceded a job interview, and again I came dressed in full business formal attire. The endodontist appointment cut things a little close – the actual procedure was actually very fast, but the wait in the waiting room was very long, so as soon as I was done, I dashed out of the office and hopped in a cab for Columbia University (in case you were confused earlier, I am a student at Columbia, not NYU) to make it to my interview.

I managed to make the interview in the time, but unfortunately, the Novocain did not. The Novocain the dentist administered for my root canal had not managed to wear off by the time I appeared for my job interview. I proceeded to carry out my entire interview tawking wike dis widout moving my wips. I attempted to explain myself, but you can only go so far for appearing inarticulate.

And that’s the whole story. Overall, from one evening of excessive inebriation, I managed to lose the trust of an unfortunate girl, the nerve inside of my front right incisor, a full-time job, and I almost lost my glasses (again).

Honestly, I need to be wary of that bottle.

Go go Mighty Morphin Zyuranger!

2007-12-01T04:02:00.000-05:00

For those of you born in the mid to late 80's and grew up in the United States, many of you probably remember watching the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as a child. I remember that I used to come home from school everyday, excited to turn on the TV to see what evil schemes Rita Repulsa would come up next! Despite only being a little kid at the time, I was already very conscious of the fact that I was not like most of my white classmates and I remember watching the Power Rangers specifically because it was among the few shows on television that regularly featured someone who seemed to be in the same predicament. Obviously, I am referring to Trini the Yellow Ranger (did you ever notice how they made the one asian character the Yellow Ranger and the one black character the Black Ranger? Not to mention that the other female character became the Pink Ranger) played by the late Thuy Trang. After Thuy Trang and much of the original cast left the show, I lost interest and gradually stopped watching altogether. This is not to say that I only watched Power Rangers because of Trini and the appearance of an Asian American cast member (many problems appeared after the change in cast) but those certainly were contributing reasons. These new teenagers clearly did not have nearly as much attitude.

Feeling nostalgic for Power Rangers recently, I wound up looking for the opening with the original cast on YouTube.

Now among those of you who remember watching Power Rangers, how many of you knew that the show was originally Japanese? Mighty Mophin Power Rangers was actually an "Americanization" (a word that should be included in the official English dictionary after films like The Ring, Dark Water, The Grudge, Shall We Dance?, The Departed, etc) of the Japanese show "Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger", which literally translates to "Dinosaur Squadron Zyuranger" even though Mammoths and Saber Toothed Tigers are actually mammals and Pterodactyls are technically reptiles. For the American show, Saban merely re-shot scenes where the Japanese cast appeared out of their ranger outfits with American actors. Fight scenes where the Japanese cast remained in costume (hiding away those asian faces...) were spliced into the American scenes.

While searching for the Power Rangers opening, I started looking for footage of the original Japanese Zyuranger and found this awesome video.

Here are all six (yes, that's right, including the Green Ranger) of the rangers together. It's Morphin time!

Among everyone who saw the original Power Rangers, I'm absolutely certain that all of you hands-down remember the "death" of the Green Ranger. Well, here's the Japanese version (ignore the fan-made music video that follows).

Now that most people who watched Power Rangers as a young child are in their twenties and after several iterations of the show, Power Rangers feels like it has a lot of history in the United States. However, the ranger series has a much much longer history in Japan. Whereas Power Rangers only appeared in the US in 1992, in Japan the Super Sentai series (as Power Rangers was called) actually started in 1975 with Himitsu Sentai Goranger!

I actually managed to find some rare footage of the original opening for Goranger.

I also dug up the first episode. Gotta love the retro style happenin here.

I love how the bad guys are taking a bus full of school children hostage. The good vs evil binary never tasted so good.

I am lost.

2007-11-18T04:07:00.001-05:00

[UPDATE 11/18/07 9:22PM] I am found! Thank you Lerner Hall Janitorial staff!

I have recently lost the bag that holds my life, and I think I'm lost without it. Not only does this bag have sentimental value (it has accompanied me on all my travels since I was but a sophomore in high school) but it has a lot of important stuff in it too, namely all of my notebooks, work, and textbooks. Without everything in that bag, I'm kinda screwed, so if you do happen to see it, please let me know.

No. I did not lose the bag because I got drunk.

Never, Never Gonna Give You Up

2007-10-26T02:48:00.000-04:00

Last night, I obtained an enormous set of Barry White mp3s through (uhm) confidential means and loaded them onto my iTunes library. Don't ask me why but I've been going though a bit of a 70s Soul music phase lately. Under my current iTunes settings, my entire iTunes library is shared among my local network. Since I am a college student living in a college dormitory, this instantly shares all of my newly acquired Barry White files with the entire building.

All this tinkering with iTunes made me wonder, what do other people think of me?

I'm sure every college student has had this exact same moment some time or another while browsing through shared libraries on his or her network. This phenomenon easily extends beyond the reach of iTunes to include anybody who has every browsed another person's file library over a p2p file sharing program. While glancing through somebody's music selection, have you ever wondered who is that person behind the p2p firewall?

I don't mean "Who is that person?" as in his or her name and address, but rather who he or she is in a much more abstract and metaphorical sense. I mean, "Who is napstar_roxors2121?" as in what is his or her personality? Where did he or she grow up and how did he or she come to discover and covet The White Stripes? And did they really personally rate Aqua with five stars?

One's music selection says a lot about one's personality, but usually when you meet somebody new, you meet him or her along with his or her music selection at the same time. In the past you needed to know somebody' name and address before they gave you a tour of their record collection. Nowadays however, with the distance that modernity has placed between us, you might even get to know somebody through their facebook profile, myspace page, and iTunes shared library before you ever meet. All of these resources contain many elements of the owner's personality so its not entirely impossible to imagine the individual behind the embarrassingly large Powerman 5000 collection. You might even become accustomed to somebody's "personality" and even rely on ssj4gotenks777 to supply your hankering for some JPOP. I can imagine several instances where I have relied on somebody else's shared library for a few certain albums that I always returned to now and then.

I'm sure everyone who has ever gone through an anonymous music library has done the same, but have you ever constructed an individual based on his or her music preferences? Have you ever imagined what kind of personality this library must have such whether he or she is somber, bubbly, intellectual, or angry? Ever wondered how he or she might dress or wear their hair? When you see a long series of hip-hop songs, surely some image comes to mind. The same applies to a long series of emo bands or obscure bands you've never heard of.

All of the above is directly related to the fact that I just added a gigantic set of Barry White albums to my iTunes library. I am no way kidding when I say that this set is huge. The number of Barry White songs is absolutely astronomical (around 400) and while scrolling through my iTunes library, rows with the words "Barry White" occupy a reasonably large section of real estate. Who is this skyxie guy that loves Barry White so much? What is the purpose of having so many Barry White songs, some of which are even duplicates from different albums? What is this guy planning on doing with so much Barry White? Exactly what kind of person has hundreds of Barry White songs?

To be honest, I think this guy is pretty baller.

Too much hype is never a good thing.

2007-10-22T04:28:00.000-04:00

At a rap/hip-hop concert, have you ever noticed the loud guy (or girl) who seems to come along with the rapper? Both of them have mics but only the rapper is rapping. The other guy is just yelling - always yelling in rhythm and occasionally yelling with the rapper. What's stranger is that this guys leaves with the rapper after the concert and follows the rapper all the way to the next concert and the remainder of the tour.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is know as the "Hype Man". The most well-known "Hype Man" in history would probably be Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, who is often credited for creating the established role of "Hype Man". Aside from Flavor Flav though, there are countless other examples, none of them particularly different from the next. There are only so many ways one can yell "Put your hands up!" after all.

I've always found the existence of the "Hype Man" as an established position on a rap group to be rather ridiculous. Back-up singers are always necessary, whether its in jazz, pop, R&B or rap, but to make those back-up singers an established and notable part of the group is another matter, especially in rap. I mean, what do these people put on their resumes? Professional Yeller? Vocal Publicist?

Obviously, I'm not a big fan of the "Hype Man" but they don't really bother me too much either. There are plenty of people who have gotten famous for unfounded and confusing reasons. (Paris Hilton anybody?) However, this weekend, I became deeply bothered by a "Hype Man" at one particular concert. Very deeply bothered.

Ever heard of the rap group Yo! Majesty? If you have then you probably know the story I am about to tell. Over the weekend, I went to a concert featuring The Islands, Enon, and Octopus Project. I didn't know all of these bands when I bought the tickets - I mainly went to hear The Islands and Enon, but I left feeling very satisfied with all of their performances. Yo! Majesty was also performing at this concert. All the other bands performing were playing either rock or electronica so as a rap group, Yo! Majesty dramatically stood out from the crowd. But that's an understatement. Yo! Majesty did not just stand out from the crowd, Yo! Majesty stood up in front and flashed the entire crowd.

No, seriously. That is exactly what they did.

At one point in their performance, the "Hype Man" (or woman rather) took off her shirt and bra and proceeded to continue the remainder of their performance topless. The crowd was aghast and ashamed or at least, I know I sure was. I couldn't believe my eyes and proceeded to ask everyone around me what happened, as though she must have had an extreme wardrobe malfunction. This was not in any way a wardrobe malfunction, but rather a "hype malfunction".

To begin with, Yo! Majesty's "Hype Man" was absolutely terrible. Perhaps the rapper had some talent, but the Hype Man's incessant and unnecessarily loud yelling not only made the rapper inaudible, but stretched her own vocal limits to the extent that her voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard. I already felt enormously embarrassed for their atrocious performance, but now the Hype Man was taking her shirt off. And for what? For hype? If anything ever lit up giant headlights to a billboard labeled "Cheap Thrills", this would be it.

If Yo! Majesty ever came up to me and asked how they could improve their act, I would tell them to drop their Hype Man, and that is all. Honestly, I wasn't able to hear enough of their music to make any additional comments. Need I also mention that their topless Hype Man was also noticeably unfit?

Alcohol, Toothaches, and Flowers

2007-10-11T15:08:00.000-04:00

Anybody that knows me, knows that I have quite a number of epic tales of excessive inebriation from across the world, stretching as far as distant exotic locations such as Beijing and Shanghai, to a few blocks down Broadway here in New York City. Being an undergraduate college student, I suppose nothing less than drunken adventures and swashbuckling escapes from the law are expected. I suppose I have made the most of my youth and energy, but I made a little too much.

Last week, yet another quest was added to my epic memoirs as friends gathered to celebrate the twenty-second anniversary of a close friend’s escape from the womb. The time was joyous and many jovial toasts were made to life and happiness. I don’t exactly remember how many there were but clearly too much. As party began to die out, I found myself drunk, staggering, and restraining an uncontrollable urge to lift heavy objects.

I don’t quite understand why I do it or why I even feel the need to do it, but for some reason, whenever I become thoroughly inebriated I feel a strange urge to pick people up - picking people up as in physically lifting their bodies. This applies to both males and females. Not only do I fail to understand the unusual compulsion, but it’s also not a very good idea since I’m usually very unbalanced while under the influence of alcohol. This time, like many other times, I yet again succumbed to the urge to lift another human being. Again, like many other times before, it was a very regrettable idea.

As soon as I lifted someone up - the girl immediately in front of me as she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - I immediately lost my balance and sent myself (and her) careening into a wall. I wound up ramming her head into the wall pretty hard, but I took the brunt of the damage. I sat down in front of the pillar of my unbecoming as horrified onlookers rushed over to investigate the damage I had done. The girl was hurt, but more or less okay, I couldn’t say exactly the same about my face.

Almost as though they were a chorus, all the concerned onlookers chanted in unison “You’re bleeding!” Indeed, it appeared as though I was bleeding from two newly punctured wounds on my face, my nose and the gums surrounding my two front teeth. A friend who attended the party just happened to be a trained EMT and not especially trashed, so he was rushed over for a more technical observation of the damage. He performed the standard procedures on me and concluded that I should be fine. However, I didn’t feel fine.

Since I slammed my face into the pillar, I was smiling and grinning as though I were thoroughly amused. My intention for doing so was because I felt extreme pain in my two front teeth and I was gravely worried that my teeth were loose. I was not amused. In great fear that I would suddenly have a gaping hole in the front of my face, I asked the nice EMT, “Will I still be beautiful?”

Perhaps that was not the most modest choice of wording, but I don’t think anything else could have more succinctly phrased my primary concern at the time. The EMT asked me many questions about how I was feeling, but I evaded all of them, unwilling to leave the question of “Will I still be beautiful?” unresolved.

For the most part, I was fine. I did not suffer a concussion (nor did the poor girl in my arms) nor did I break my nose. I just became hysterical and started running around the house, maintaining the same stupid smile and yelling, “Am I still beautiful? Will I still be beautiful tomorrow?” Trying to calm down, friends brought me to bed.

The next morning came and thanks to much compensatory water drinking the night before, I didn’t have a headache but my teeth were in severe pain. Given my general feeling of discomfort, I immediately tossed all of my clothes into my laundry bin and went to take a shower. Emerging from the shower like emerging from the dead, I felt renewed and ready to begin a new day. It just so happened that I needed to leave immediately for an important gathering of student leaders so I prepared to head out.

But where the fuck were my glasses?

I must have looked around for my glasses for two hours and with each passing minute I only became increasingly more anxious. Those who know me know that I am extremely nervous about losing my glasses. In the past, on two separate and isolated occasions, I have lost a pair of glasses due to getting extremely drunk and blacking out. Losing my glasses has basically become a running joke every time I go out drinking. With almost complete certainty, on any given drinking night a friend will try to play a trick on me by taking my glasses. At this point in time, it seemed as though history had repeated itself.

At one point I began calling everyone who had gathered around my bloodied face the night before to put together the pieces of what happened last night. I called the nice EMT who noted that I wasn’t wearing my glasses when he came over to check up on me. I called more people and I seemed to be getting mostly conflicting stories. As it turned out, while investigating my face, someone had removed my glasses and put it in my shirt pocket.

My shirt pocket! My shirt in the laundry bin! Glory! Rapture! Rejoice!

I dashed to my laundry bin and fished out my glasses. At last I was complete again. However, the location of my glasses was not the only detail I learned between my many witness interrogations. I also learned that the unfortunate girl I rammed into the pillar the night before happened to have a life-long phobia of being picked up.

That made me feel like shit.

The recovery of my glasses turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory, but I refused to let myself go to such dishonor. The next day, I went out and purchased a bouquet of flowers for the damaged girl as an apology. Given my luck, I figured she would turn out to be allergic to flowers. When she finally returned to find the colorful gift left on her doorstep, I was forgiven, and all was alright with the world.

Or was it??? I asked myself as I touched my top right incisor.

(To be continued… )

Why corn ethanol has more to do with political engines than scientific engines...

2007-09-24T19:09:00.000-04:00

A New York Times blog has posted an interesting entry on the many different biofuels currently being studied throughout the world. This of course includes corn ethanol, which has been particularly popular in the United States, but also sugar cane ethanol, the primary alternative fuel rising from Brazil, and cellulosic ethanol, the new frontier in biofuels.

For anybody who has done even the most minimal amount of research on biofuels knows, corn ethanol is all hype. Corn ethanol is only marginally cheaper than gasoline and really does not deserve much investment. So then why has the American government invested so much in ethanol research? Politics.

America happens to have a very large contingency of corn farmers and the government has always provided a large amount of support for these groups given their size. Ever wondered why America soft drinks are always produced with High Fructose Corn Syrup whereas in all other nations they are produced with much better tasting sugar? Due to government subsidies to corn farmers and tariffs on sugar, corn is so cheap that soft drink producers would be insane to choose to use cane sugar over High Fructose Corn Syrup. Just recently, the US government has also dumped a ton of funds into research to improve corn ethanol.

Developing ethanol from corn started in states such as Iowa where corn was readily available and did not require transportation. Outside of these particular localities however, corn ethanol is not very promising as an alternative energy source. However given the large number of American corn farmers, the government is investing funds in an unpromising project. The huge amount of government support for corn farmers is now not only inefficient economics but also inefficient science.

On the other hand, at least other governments and research bodies free of political pressure are pursuing other more efficient energy alternatives. Cellulosic engines may even run on garbage! (Back to the future 2 anybody?)

Why the faulty Chinese products scare is messed up.

2007-09-21T16:18:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE 11:15pm] The New York Times has followed up its previous article with this one. There's a nice little quote hidden in there from Dara O’Rourke, associate professor of labor and environmental policy at UC Berkeley.

"Mattel used China as a scapegoat for its own problems and that the toymaker is now paying the price for that."

That quote says a lot about the Chinese exports scare, but forgets to note the racial issues involved. Namely, if Mattel were producing at the same price in any other country, would they have tried to use that country as a scapegoat just as they had with China? A related question would be, why did the country fall for it so easily?

Finding a scapegoat to avoid blame and dodge shareholder fallout is one issue, but there's clearly more to it. Maybe given national sentiments at the time toward Chinese exports for other regulatory violations (toothpaste, pet food) Mattel just thought they could get away with it? Or maybe they just shared the same sentiment?

------
Earlier this morning, Mattel issued an apology to China (yes, to the entirety of China - thats a lot of apologies) for its excessive recall of toys from China.

"Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys''

Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, also acknowledged that the ''vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers.'' A few other notable quotes from the New York Times...

Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: ''We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers."

... new research from two business professors shows that recalls due to problems with the U.S. maker's design accounted for the vast majority -- about 76 percent -- of the 550 U.S.toy recalls since 1988...

''if shifting manufacturing to China resulted in poorer quality goods, then the number of toys recalled due to manufacturing should be greater than the number recalled due to design,'' the report said. But that is not the case.

Mattel's apology reflects how the Chinese product scare has been blown out of proportion. Amid the series of recent China recalls, faults endemic to American design became attributed to Chinese manufacturing. Anyone who has paid attention to recent commentary on Chinese exports know that this is not the only consequence of "Yellow Paint Peril". The fact that Mattel issued the apology to China, as opposed to the specific manufacturers or even just Chinese manufacturers, reveals how this issue has not only affected the reputations of the manufacturers involved or even just Chinese industry, but rather China as a whole. I would extend that range to include Chinese outside of the P.R.C. as well.

There are certainly many regulatory problems in China and having worked in China I have seen some of these issues first-hand. Nonetheless, its important to consider why the Chinese product scare exploded the way it did. Why was it so easy for Mattel to overlook the design faults in their toys as they recalled millions of toys on the basis of lead paint added by Chinese manufacturers against Mattel standards? Discuss.

déjà vu, the future and fate

2007-09-18T04:18:00.000-04:00

Just about everyone, at some point in their life, has had a moment of déjà vu. Déjà vu is generally identified as a disturbing feeling that you have been someplace or seen something already when such a case is actually impossible. Given the supernatural tones of such a moment, the phenomenon of déjà vu is often attributed to reincarnation, omens, spirits, and, of course, alterations in the matrix.

However, what about those very specific instances of déjà vu where you are certain that you have been someplace or seen something already, but in a dream. The same creepy feelings crawl across your spine in response, but unlike the more general definition of déjà vu, in this specific case you know exactly where and when you had been there or seen that, and it was in a dream. Someway, somehow you had dreamt of the future.

This has actually happened to me quite often. Throughout my life there have been countless incidents where I have dreamt of some event that eventually became reality. Unfortunately, in almost every instance of this in the past, the event predicted in my dream and realized in reality was incredibly insignificant.

Just to provide an example of how insignificant my premonitions are, once I had a dream of a friend walking down along Broadway. At one point, she suddenly stopped to comment, “Oh, its starting to rain.” A few days later, that very event occurred exactly as I predicted.

However, I should not completely belittle the value of my supernatural powers, as there was been one particular instance where they became useful. Once in high school, I had a dream that I was taking my English final and was completing a section on Macbeth. I came to one question and was completely stumped, unable to finish the exam. At that point I woke up and asked myself, “Hmm, what is the answer to that question?” Having become intrigued by my dream, I looked it up.

I did not know it at the time, but two days later that exact question appeared on my English final. However, in this alternate dimension, I had looked up the answer ahead of time. Now I knew how to answer the question, Schrödinger’s cat was alive and well, and the space-time continuum would never be the same again. Just imagine, in some alternate universe, I might not have graduated high school cum laude.

Nonetheless, there have also been moments where despite complete knowledge and an attempt to use my supernatural powers, my will has proven futile. Once in high school, I had a dream where I tripped over a brightly colored tall plastic bucket in the kitchen and hurt my knee. This seemed very strange to me as I had never seen such a plastic bucket in my house. A few days later, rain was pouring down very hard and a small leak appeared in my kitchen roof. My mother and I proceeded to travel to the nearest Walgreens to seek aid and supplies to prepare for the potential inundation (I exaggerate).

While at Walgreens, my mother picked out a bucket to contain the rain dripping in the kitchen. Much to my bewilderment, it was the exact same bucket that appeared in my dream. I was suddenly struck with déjà vu and I forcefully convinced my mother to absolutely by all means avoid purchasing that bucket. Not caring one way or the other, so long as she had a bucket, she simply picked out a different bucket. I made sure that it was of a different shape and color. Smug and overconfident in my challenge against fortuna, we left the Walgreens.

Despite my supernatural powers, despite my will against the heavens, and despite all common sense of buying a short bucket instead of a tall bucket to avoid tripping hazards, in the late afternoon, I tripped over the bucket. Immediately after tripping, I flipped over and fervently rubbed my knee. I chain smoked explicatives till the air around me was suffocating in curses and a cold chill ran up my spine. It was at that point that I realized… This was fate.