Blog

Spring has sprung, and there is some traces of snow melting before our eyes, but can we remember what we want to forget? Haven’t seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but based on the reviews, I can see that we live these attempts to remember and forget every day. I’d love to wipe out the memories of this winter. The movie sounds awesome — it has a high Fresh-o-Meter — maybe we’ll see it on the way to San Diego next weekend with P-.

Saw The Big O Part 1. This anime is basically (dark) Batman meets big-ass Godzilla sized Japanese robot warrior. The major premise is that because of some unknown type of warfare, the entire city-state has lost their memory, but nothing physical has been destroyed, so they are reconstructing civilization based on what they have around them. Recommended.

Judged a moot court competition on Thursday. The plot: reality show producer puts cast(aways) on U.S. territory out in the middle of the Pacific. Turns out it was a former nuclear and biological weapons test site and everyone gets sick and dies, including the producer. The network scores high ratings. The producer, 2 weeks before kicking the bucket, pleads guilty of manslaughter for the castaways’ deaths and points the finger at the network. The government wants to prosecute the network using what the producer said in court, but she’s dead and she can’t be cross-examined. It’s much more intricate, involving attorney-client privilege, public relations firms, Homeland Security, and a bothersome Supreme Court case, but that’s the outline. For those legal geeks here, the bizarre thing is that we have an inanimate defendant pressing its Confrontation Clause rights against a dead woman. Definately not what the Founding Fathers were thinking about.

Food craziness : today dimsum at Dim Sum Go Go, a work dinner party at Tavern on the Green. Thursday, we did La Paella in the East Village, recommended.

And the basketball stuff continues. And my bracket’s not looking too bad right now. Sort of. Depends on the results of the Pittsburgh-Central Florida game.

Developments in the case of James Yee, the Asian-American/Muslim/army chaplain who was in Guatanamo Bay; Army appears to be dropping the espionage charges – but Capt. Yee will still face a (relatively minor) penalty for downloading porn on the government-issued laptop. Oh, and apparently, the adultery charges too. Ah, well.

Friday’s arts: NY Times’ Holland Carter writes on the Asian art exhibit in Washington, D.C. – such nice writing and sounds like a great exhibit.

I’ve been noticing the latest commercials on Mr. Peanut (the Planters mascot), and they never seemed to stir much in me; plus the latest Mr. Peanut appearance during the NCAA games are odd – where Mr. Peanut plays some basketball with the various college mascots – the animation uses too much bold, black lines. Looks too fake-cartoony to me. Personally, I think Mr. Peanut has too much of a shiny sheen that doesn’t look right. NY Times ad man, Stuart Elliot, notes that Mr. Peanut’s transformation is less about his Fred Astaire debonair but more on a slick attitude that goes with the times – and change may not be too good for Mr. Peanut.

The latest Entertainment Weekly’s interesting – Hugh Jackman on the cover and a preview of his upcoming movie – “Van Helsing.” More curiously, EW profiles the tv show “Las Vegas,” which I concede isn’t too bad a show – watchable (although I haven’t watched a full hour of it in awhile – it is admittedly nothing too heavy-weight) – but the article clarified some of the characters who kept confusing me (i.e., James Caan’s character is a higher level executive in that casino after all; and yeah, Nikki Cox’s character was a prostitute in the pilot episode, wasn’t she?). So, maybe “Las Vegas” deserves a second look one of these days.

Back to basketball – get ready for Round 2 of the tournament.

Back to blogging; the hiatus, due to the fact that
(a) been busy – work can be exasperating;
(b) I did do two blogs on 3/15 – and even added that postscript on 3/16, so that wasn’t good enough for you? 😉 Eh;
(c ) did you really want more pointless rambling from my messy mind that soon anyway?; and
(d) spent last night on-line shopping on Barnes and Noble – got to take advantage of the discount that was good until 3/21. I bought yet another Learn-Chinese (Cantonese) item, as part of the neverending-yet-to-be-fulfilled quest to improve my pathetic Chinese language speaking ability.

I was watching first round NCAA basketball tournament, Division I, as we speak – and I was actually (gasp) rooting for Princeton. Yeah, I’d root for the alma mater rival, just to see the not-likely-hope of seeing an Ivy League team progress in the March Madness – but that was just a dumb move on my part, as usual (N.B.: Princeton, seeded 14, lost to Texas, the 3rd seed; fortunately, what I had actually put down on my brackets was Texas, but I was still hoping for Princeton, so that part of my brackets wasn’t completely screwed). But, if you really want to see a school with great academics and athletics, you’re better off rooting for Stanford or Duke, I guess. I’m still waiting to watch some part of my brackets go bust by the end of tonight.

And for timeliness, Slate.com’s Explainer explains “Why is it Called ‘March Madness’?” There are tidbits in that article to amuse trademark law enthusiasts.

Slate.com tends to have moments where there are lacking of articles to note and then strange bursts of great reads. The last couple of days were some of the greater reads days. Among other things, check out Dahlia Lithwick’s “Jurisprudence” articles for yesterday (Lithwick notes how some members of Congress apparently do not understand the concepts of having three branches of government or having checks and balances, as demonstrated by their proposing a bill to “veto the Supreme Court” – or, as the bill is officially called, “The Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004”) and for today (Lithwick’s comments on Justice Scalia’s memorandum explanation for his refusal to recuse himself in the case against VP Cheney).

Fascinating NY Times article on the whole issue of social promotion of NYC grade school kids (recap for those not in the know: NYC Mayor worked his way to have the Panel on Education (the ex Bd. of Ed.) to vote to approve his end-to-social-promotion policy). For me, the article encapsulates a problem: we debate about “issues” but the reality is that we keep changing how we frame or define the issues anyway and, the bottomline is that, by constantly framing the issues differently, we can’t even abide by our own discussions and thus we have no answers to real, perennial, social problems.

As the article notes, political liberals say that the issue is about “nurturing kids” (ending social promotion = bad; repeating 3rd grade is humiliating) and political conservatives say that the issue is about “mastering basic skills” (ending social promotion = good; get left back and you’ll finally learn how to do math and read). But, real education experts cut through the chase and say that it’s neither/nor – it’s about what services do you provide for kids. This is a question to which the usual partisan politicians have no real, easy answer (after all, they’re thinking that saying “I don’t have one quick solution” is not what they want to tell the voters – and that assumes that they believe the voters are so stupid as to reject the complicated, grayer answer).

Fascinating NY Times article on language and world views: contrasting how China and Japan view their own places in the global neighborhood and noting how such world views are expressed in their respective written languages. The Japanese language apparently distinguishes between who are Japanese and who aren’t (even if one is of Japanese ancestry), while the Chinese language apparently considers overseas Chinese as, well, Chinese (even if one is as incapable of speaking the mother tongue). My conclusion: there’s no such thing as a monolithic “Asian.” China and Japan have their own self-perceptions to deal with.

Food articles!… Ed Levine on Cheesecake! (the debate on what’s the best cheesecake in NYC will never go away), and Nigella Lawson on cooking for one’s own comfort (I’ve read the criticism about Lawson as a foodie writer, but I’ve enjoyed how she really displays the comfort in comfort food).

Now back to the brackets…

So it’s nearly 2am, working to get a presentation out for 9:30am meeting. Looks like winter still hasn’t left NYC. Meanwhile, it is cold here in Taipei but am getting ready to go back to California.

Working late and all the way until I fly out. It’ll be weird.

Seems like everyone is busy, no time to blog for 4 days hmmmm.

=YC

I finished reading the latest Star Trek: New Frontier book, “Stone and Anvil” (2003, hardcover edition). I read Star Trek books depending on the plots and characters and writers writing (and how frustrated I am with “Star Trek: Enterprise”). I’ve enjoyed Peter David for his good humor and fascinating characters. They do tend to get cartoonish and outlandish – but if done right, his writing is good reading.

Basically, “New Frontier” follows the adventures of the crew of the USS Excalibur (yeah, there are some blatant allusions to the Arthurian mythos), led by Starfleet Capt. Mackenzie Calhoun – a Capt. Picard protege who was M’k’n’zy of Calhoun on his home planet Xenex. When he was a teenager, M’k’n’zy led his people to overthrow the alien overlords, the Danteri, who were never the nicest of people. Since then, Calhoun, as he is now known to the humans and so on, is barely holding onto the grips of modern civilization and Federation ideals of diversity, democracy, exploration, and so on. Reminding him of those things is his sidekick, Elizabeth Shelby (best known as the tough blonde Starfleet officer of the “Star Trek: the Next Generation” penultimate Borg episode, “Best of Both Worlds” (wherein Picard became a Borg)).

In “Stone and Anvil,” Calhoun is confronted by the sad reality that one of his most loyal officers, Ensign Janos, is a murderer of one of Shelby’s subordinates. But, how did this happen and why; and meanwhile, Peter David (as usual) shifts from the storyline taking place in the present to chapters where we examine Calhoun’s past – how “Mac” got through Starfleet Academy (struggling) and came to accept his destiny as a Starfleet officer (grudgingly, yet loving the idea of command) even if it meant moving away from the love of his life (and, fortunately for him, regaining her later on; but it took about 11 books to get there).

The book is very much about one man’s journey (Calhoun), in parallel to another man’s downfall (Janos). I had quibbles about Peter David’s writing of the “Now” parts (i.e., the Janos storyline, wherein the Excalibur crew try real hard to help him) – the humor got a little overdone (Calhoun, you see, has the strangest crew on this side of the galaxy); but the “Then” parts (i.e., Calhoun’s past) were nicely portrayed – Calhoun was such an imperfect young man and he knew it – sort of, but he learned it the hard way. I still think that Peter David’s portrayal of Shelby tended on the Ally McBealish side, but I liked how she had her more sensible moments (in both the “Then” and “Now” parts). All in all, good subway reading.

Postscript (I thought I’d make this a comment, but, nah…): if you’d like, you can check out my thoughts on the previous New Frontier book, “Gods Above”, wherein Calhoun and Shelby deal with Beings who say they’re gods, but sure are mean about it. Thankfully, “Stone and Anvil” ended without the usual cliffhanger – heartwarming/heartbreaking ending. Peter David really ought to give his New Frontier books endings like these more often.

Bracket time for the NCAA basketball championship, which begins Thursday (or is it Wednesday?) – let the Madness begin!

Some interesting Slate.com reading:

Dahlia Lithwick reviews Ch. Justice Rehnquist’s book on the other closest election in US history (the 1876 one, where Hayes beat Tilden – which led to the end of Reconstruction and somewhere in all that Tilden had his own sex scandal). She posits that Rehnquist’s writing on that subject may actually hint at his thought processes of the Bush v. Gore (S. Ct. 2000) case. She notes:

“And while [Rehnquist] concludes that virtually every time a justice took on some executive function, it proved disastrous—from John Jay’s efforts to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain, to Robert Jackson’s yearlong prosecution of the Nuremburg trials, to Earl Warren’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination—he ends, oddly, with a resounding defense of the five justices who took part in the 1876 commission [that gave the presidency to Hayes].”

Hmm. Maybe I ought to read this book – it’s curious that Rehnquist would view the actions of Jay/Jackson/Warren so poorly – each action had such incredible impact on global/American affairs and was only fitting due to each man’s experiences (Jay was a diplomat in an earlier career; Jackson the judge from a country that beat the Germans in WWII; and Warren, a former prosecutor, if memory served me correctly).

“How do you say Pres. Roh’s name?” – Slate.com’s Explainer explains that, despite the Romanization, the impeached South Korean’s president’s name is pronounced “Noh” not “Roh.” No one ever said that transliteration/Romanization of Asian names is easy, I guess.

The latest Bushism gives new meaning to saying “Huh?” toward the things out of the American President’s mouth.

The latest “Ad Report” – Seth Stevenson gives an “A” grade to the Nike ad revolving around an alternate universe where tennis champ Andre Agassi is a Boston Red Sox shortstop (my thought, when I first saw the ad: “What? Andre, how could you?!”); Marion Jones, Olympic track runner, an Olympic gymnast (really odd); Randy Johnson, major league baseball player, a major league bowler (a tall one at that); Serena Williams as a volleyball player (transporting her tennis moves, apparently); and NFL Michael Vick as a NHL hockey player. I’d had to agree with Stevenson – that is an awesome Nike ad (and a scary alternate universe).

NY1.com – cool story about the Second Avenue Deli celebrating its 50th anniversary, with its 1954 prices (for Monday only). That means a $10.00 corned beef sandwich (2004 price) is 50 cents, plus cup of java for a nickel. Hehe.

So it goes…

Spring’s not coming soon enough, and March has too many weird fluctuating temperatures. ‘Nuff said there.

Yesterday’s NY Times’ article, “Brown University to Examine Debt to Slave Trade” was interesting: Brown – being the Ivy League school with an African-American president, a long history and influence in American history, and a liberal institution – might very well be the ideal place to explore the issue of reparations for the descendants of American slaves. Dr. Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown, is appointing a committee to explore the historical and other relevant issues of Brown’s ties to American slavery and the feasibility of slave reparations (if it is recommended or maybe something else may help reconcile slavery’s effects). I’m always not sure of what to make of slave reparations in the American context and worry about what it really means (yeah, yeah, wishy-washy lawyer talk/political moderate or what have you talking). So, I at least felt relieved to read the following paragraphs on Dr. Simmons’ view and Brown will consider in its impending two-year investigation:

“Dr. Simmons [the great-granddaughter of slaves], one of 12 children of an East Texas tenant farmer and a house cleaner, said she was motivated by a sense that the multifaceted subject of reparations had too often been reduced to simplistic and superficial squabbles.

“‘How does one repair a kind of social breach in human rights so that people are not just coming back to it periodically and demanding apologies,’ she said, ‘so that society learns from it, acknowledges what has taken place and then moves on. What I’m trying to do, you see, in a country that wants to move on, I’m trying to understand as a descendant of slaves how to feel good about moving on.’”

I certainly agree that “reparations” (whatever they may be) do get reduced to simplicity and superficiality. Too many complicated matters get reduced to simplicity: i.e., when society discusses race, the discussion gets reduced to mere “you bad/me good” stuff. But, nothing is that simple (although, hey, I may be wrong about that – maybe something out there is that simple). Personally (and I may be completely wrong on this), there are lots of good questions that need to be addressed: how do you repair the social breach in human rights? Can we look at a combination of options, and not just put the weight of the world on one option or another? Can we do that without condemning one option or another, as if the option selected is still entirely bad? ( – because, it probably isn’t). Part of dealing with race in America (or other similar kinds of dilemmas in the world) is education – litigation and settlements and things like that may not be the best ways to do. We may never be able to grant the promise that was never quite provided to former slaves back in the end of the Civil War (somehow, I figure the mule and 40 acres of land aren’t that useful the 21st century and I don’t think that throwing money at people will work either), but can we try something and at least go with it with the positive view that trying can be considered a good start? Hmm.

NY Times had a nice profile on Al Leiter, NY Mets pitcher, and his renaissance man ways – he’s a Republican with liberal leanings (i.e., he may have a political future, after his pro baseball career end); he likes Bruce Springsteen (umm, I can’t say much about that); he can talk articulately about baseball (i.e., he would make a great commentator); and he cares enough about baseball that maybe he might stick around to help it remain America’s institution. Hmm.

Now, I’m no drinker and I know next to nothing about whisky, so reading this article by Slate.com’s David Edelstein about whisky tasting was intruiging. Not only did I get to learn a heck of a lot about whisky, I thought it was nice, tight writing.

If you like, check out today’s Sunday Doonesbury. Incredibly funny and a nice point, too, about George W. Bush (or, referring him as the way Doonesbury cartoonist Trudeau draws him as “the guy symbolized by an asterisk”) vs. his father, George H.W. Bush (the president who I’d give a lot of credit for taking foreign affairs seriously, even if he seemed too internationalist and chummy with world leaders for his own good to the mind of a lot of people).

And, going for alliteration, today is Selection Sunday – NCAA will announce who’s going to the Championship tournament and what rankings. Time to make one’s brackets ready and by the next Sunday, I and lots of others will rip those brackets in half. And, yeah, it’s not like my alma mater is in the Tournament (like, ever?), but I always have hope that one day that our league (no, we’re not a conference like Pac-10 or ACC or what, and we’ve no Dukes or Stanfords, with the balance of athleticism and intellect) will make a good show at the NCAA (even if it means that the dreaded rival is the one doing the good show).

Yes, yes, I said that I would blog about a book and I will (tonight or tomorrow; I have to get my thoughts collected about that book). Otherwise, have a nice week.

Missed your “Simple Saturday” posting SSW :o. I love alliterations.

Looks like a really cold spell in NYC again. I must say that winter this year all over the world (i.e. California, Taiwan, Malaysia, NY/NJ) has just been bizarre. I wonder what that means by way of global warming.

Hmmmm…

=YC

So while a lot of my Malaysia trip was loads of fun, I didn’t speak of the “horrors” of doing business there. This one experience sort of typifies the infrastructure limitations of Malaysia and how sometimes I wonder how it would ever drag itself into the modern world. Right now, it’s just a step above Philippines and Indonesia and Thailand but only because those places are just so backwards. Vietnam don’t know much about but they can’t help where they are; they can blame the US for bombing them back to the stone age during the war.

So the situation is this. I needed to receive a faxed copy of my I-130 petition from my lawyer. What should’ve taken 30 minutes turned into a 4 hour morning and early afternoon ordeal. I use jfax so that I could download it anywhere in the world and print it out. Theory is great and works fine in the US… but then there’s the Malaysia experience. Because B- stays in the Cheras neighborhood of KL, we had to find a local i-cafe. We did but it was so slow and we couldn’t actually view it or print it out. Firstly, all the internet cafe’s have pretty much disabled any pict viewers, I guess to protect against porn surfing. So there was nothing on the i-cafe machines that could read a .TIFF file. Doh. Secondly, if if I could find a viewer that could read it, I couldn’t print because internet cafe’s usually don’t have printers. Their machines are just gaming stations, who needs to print? Ipoh was slightly better. B- lives near Coffeenet which is a nice i-cafe. Just they don’t have microphones but lots of sound.

So, we’re running around in downtown KL itself, talking with the lawyer. Now, this itself was a difficulty. My lawyer couldn’t call through to our cell phones which I know exists because when I use a calling card to call Bridget from the US, I sometimes can’t get through too. The solution, buy a Malaysia calling card and call the lawyer. Simple right? Nope, not really. We bought a Flexicard from Digi Malaysia. Well, we couldn’t use that card to dial either from the public phones or the one phone we found at an i-cafe in KL near the bus station, Puduraya. Finally, getting desperate because we needed to get this out, we called on B-‘s friend who happens to work in a big company. Being the Deputy General Manager, he would have the stuff for us to print out. So yup, we gave up, called him and ended up printing out everything in his office, after 3 hours of running around town.

=YC

I’m here in front of Amy’s Bread in Chelsea Market. We were surfing using the in-house wireless network while sitting on a stone bench in front of the bakery when whey just wheeled out a whole rack of free bread! You should have seen the mob swarm up! P– ran up and got us two bags, but she came out of there all covered in flour. Just so you know — 6:30 pm when they close.