My Opinions

Today, let's sit down, have a nice cup of coffee, and talk about .....

Healthcare People Skill 101

To believe and not to believe - Applying Pigeon Hole to Religion

Now, lets be a mathematician for a second, and apply the aforementioned principle to religions. Religions claim that there is only one God and their religion is the only "true" regligion. Yet, there are multiple religion in this world, so there must exist one religion that is not "true". Simple enough, then either Christianity or Islam is not "true", unless their god are actually the same thing; yet there are hundreds of billion beliving in some fake religion. It would then be "obvious", just like any other proof, to say that religion can be created out of nothing and there can be potentially billion of die hard followers.

Marrying Young

UC Hypocritic Divestment

Few days ago, there was an unusual rally at UCLA about supporting UC Regents to divest investment from those companys supporting genocide in Sudan. The motivation behind it makes sense, but I dont think the idea of divestment make any sense. Yes, genocide is totally wrong. There is no doubt about that, but what are we actually doing? We are hurting those employer who has nothing to do with the genocide. Those people may lose their job as a result, fail to make a living, and to keep food on the table for their children, just because we hypocritically "try" to do something noble, so that we can feel better about ourselves

Homeless People

I felt sorry for him. If I were homeless, I would have to live on the street, worry about getting food, shower, shelter, I don't think I will be very happy if people give me those dirty sconful look. Of course no one want to be the homeless guy "from the street", and no one wants to have worms growing from their feet. Despite the fact that he does look nasty, I am glad that I gave him the care I should have given, simply because homeless people are people too, just like anyone else, and they too should be respected.

Thinking back homeless people are not that bad, crazy cocaine / PCP drug addicts that pull knives on you is even scarier.

By the way, we ended up sparying four bottles of air freshers in the ambulance, after the call is done.

Insulting Cartoons

When I was back in college, I remembered having a muslim as my roomate and I was joking around, just like "Hey what up, mother fuckers?" as my delightful greeting after I came back to school. I was totally not aware how serious this casual statement was. I totally admit it was totally my fault, and I was being inconsiderate. He got really pissed off and started throwing chairs, tables at me. I was lucky enough to be alive. Never again, I joked around with him anymore.

Despite that incident, I do not ever overgeneralise. I think plainly thinking that "All muslim throw chairs" are plainly wrong, and naive.

On the news of Spring 2006, "The drawings of Prophet Mohammed were first printed in a Danish newspaper ... " "A radical Islamic cleric called for the killing of broadcasters and newspaper editors who showed insulting cartoons of Muhammad.", "UK you must pray, 7/7 is on its way."

Yes, everyone have a freedom of speech, freedom of press, but that only applies only when it does not hurt or harm anyone. It is no doubt that those european editors fuck up this time. They should not have apply their own standard of freedom of speech to other culture, not considering how other people would feel. On the other hand, I myself is not islamic, but it seems that killing and bombing because of some cartoon is a little bit too much. Since I have no idea how serious it is to draw some holy figures, I will not comment on it, but I do think everyone should calm down before they move on to violence.

All these things happened, because people overgeneralised everything. Those people, who made the cartoons think that all muslim is ... whatever they were trying to show, is plain naive; And those radical muslim, who blow up buses thinking that all the europeans, including those random innocent people on the street, should deserve their punishment, is too radical. You are you, Me is me. Him is him, it is totally wrong to overgeneralise. I hope one day everyone will realise that.

WTO Protest

At the first glance, I immediately want to raise the question of why are there Koreans protesting in our land (I have nothing against Korean, I have a lot of close Korean friends and they are very nice. I love them all), and throw bottle against, burn shit, creating chaos to demostrate against WTO. Do the protestors really think that they can get through the police barrier? What is their point? If someone get killed as a result, I will be pretty pissed off.

Being a little apolitical, I have no idea what this WTO is. In order to get a fair view on their reasoning being their protest, I need to understand what they are protesting about. I do a quick research on the internet and this is what I find out. Basically WTO is a meeting where representatives gather and make important decision about trading between countries. The protesters are complaining because they claimed that the developed countries try to make all import and export to developing countries tariff free. With subsidies and advance technology, developed countries can sell their food to those developing countries at a low price. With WTO proposed tariff free import policy and without government subsides, farmers in the developing countries are forced to sell their crops dirt cheap to remain competitive, further degrading their already poor living standards.

I took a minute to think about what I read, and I agree there is a valid reasoning behind the protest. In a way, this is like a chain store lobbying to sell their products at a low price forcing other small local shops to go out of business, or a group of big kids bullying other small kids, trying to set their own rules. Is that how one call "free trade"?

However, this does not mean that one can burn other people cars, smash windows on buildings, hurt other people. Although protesting does catch attention, no matter how rowdy the protesters are, it would not change a thing. Representative from developing countries will vote against it and developed country will vote for it, considering that they represent the people of their own country.

And finally I don't think it is okay to break the law in order to make a point. There are other ways to catch attentions, like protesting naked, jumping off to the sea, etc

War Against Iraq

To tell you the truth, I have mixed feeling about this war. As an American, I do not really like the policy of United States being so nosey, constantly intervening with other countries, telling them to respect rights, and to be democractic, etc. With all these problems in American, the president should focus on restoring the econonmy instead of spending million of dollars to send troops to somewhere, further worsening the deficit. As a plain old citizen, I just want the economy to be good; everybody have jobs, get their raise, and live their comfortable peaceful life.

But now let's forget everything I just wrote, and look at some painful history

During World War II, 300,000 Chinese were murdered by Japanese in Nanjing Massacre

On 1994, 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu were killed in the 100 days Rwandan Genocide. UN was trying to help, but they were greatly underpowered and underfunded. (and Clinton do not want to have anything to do with it)

Between 1975 - 1979, approximately 1,700,000 Cambodians were killed in Cambodia.

I guess many of us, including me, may not even heard of these horrible history until now. We only care and talk about it only if Americans are involved. Because the fact that American are involved in Iraq, that's why we see the same old Iraq headlines every single day on TV.

Yet, what about these people who are murdered massively, but silently without us knowning? Is it because they are not important? or is it because we do not care? Sadly, I need to say that the people die in the 2004 Iraq War was not anything close to those number above. Yet, I do not hear anything say "Stop the war. Stop the killings" when those genocides happened.

As a Chinese, I need to thank American for helping China to fight against the Japanese back in World War II. Imagine, what happen if China is still dominated by Japan and each day, many innocent people are murdered, robbed, stabed, and tortured. I don't think I want to live if I were born in such world. If Amerian didn't not help, there was no chance to end such domination.

So in a way, I do think that if the war against Iraq helps those people there, I wouldn't say the Iraq war was not justified. And at last, I want to say thank you for all of the soldiers and other UN peace keepers fighting in Iraq and other war torn countries, for the sake of people there. You guys are the true heros, and deserve every single bit of my respect.

If you were to ask if I want to be a solider fighting for freedom of other people. I would say no simply because I don't fight really well, and more importantly, I am just a common, average selfish bastard that only cares about myself and nothing else. (Hopefully you sense my sarcism here.)

Hydrogen Car

Chinese Medicine

Eating Placenta for Lunch

I was learning how to deliver babies one day, and somehow our conversation changes from delivering the placenta 20 - 30 minutes after the baby was born, to those Asian custom of eating placenta.

Imagine ...

After the baby is born, some people wait eagerly on the side for the placenta to come out. When it comes out, ...

"Are you done with that?" while pointing at the placenta

"Can I eat that after you are done?"

I found that quite funny, and at the same time I think eating placenta is a little gross... I do heard of chinese female saying that placenta is nutritious because of its high female hormone content, but does having high female hormone content necessarily good for female? I have heard that high female hormone concentration in the body can reduce the chance of osteoporosis, but it can cause also breast cancer. If there is nothing wrong with the body, I just think it does not do any good to the body to eat something extra, not to mention eating body parts of other is a little ... hmmm ... gross.

P.S. Wanna see something sick. Here is something sick for you http://home.kimo.com.tw/honxian/infant.htm Just look at the pictures. Don't visit that web page if you have just eaten.

Research by the people for the people

Compared to other major, such as philosophy, literature, many will consider Computer Science as a practical major because one can relatively get a pretty descent, maybe even highest paying job right after college, and one can actually "do something" having knownledge of making software, electronics, and stuff. This is what I thought when I first get into this field.

After doing research is this field for a few years, I found computer science researcher is getting to the point that they are simply "bullshiting", just like one would try to write something out of nothing for an english class. They basically would invent some problems that does not exist and try to solve them, just to show that they are able to so that they can add an extra entry to the list of publications on their web site. Or they will make a whole lot of unrealistic assumptions and given all these assumptions, they are able to do anything, prove anything, solve anything fast. Or they will have all this complicated math trying to look complicated, and at the end, they do not have any real world application. Or they will look at some ancient problems like the old TCP/IP and try to publish something boring out of it. I found all these research not only pointless, but also nauseating.

The subjective naive me

"You are computer science major, so can you help me fix the printer?" "You study computer science, you should be able to set up a wireless route, right?" "What do you do? Do you open photoshop and draw stuff all day?" "Do you know how to use the microsoft word?"

I get these a lot. What are we? Some sort of household maintainence guy? Do we do hard core research on installing cable modem?

"If that is not what you do, hmmmm okay I know... you program!"

Sigh....

When I was an undergrad, everyone learn how to program java in two weeks. And this is the only time I actually learn how to program. For the next three years, we learn theory to solve problems and most importantly how to learn on our own. Programming is only considered as the "easy", "simple", or even "obvious" skill to do when you are talking to a real computer scientist. (I am not a true computer scientist by the way)

People jump onto conclustion without having a clear understanding on what a certain thing is. In a way, that certainly make sense. Back in the days, I took an introductory psychology class and thought that I have some idea what psychology is. I thought it was a whole bunch of cracy people (like the famous idiot Sigmund Freud) claiming some theories out of nothing and call them theory without any experimentation. It turns out that not all psychologist, contrary to belief, just a few of them works as a psychologist listening to people whole day about their psychological problems. It turns out that psychology help one to raise their EQ by understanding his own emotion. It turns out that there are subfield of psychology that heavily based on controlled clinical trials. I find out how stupid I was by making all these naive conclusions simply based on my experience on an introductory psychology class. And now I still don't have a slight clue what psychology is.

The moral of the story is ..
not to have an opinion on something if you do not have a complete understanding of what it is.

Reverse Discrimination

I read the news about some white people turned down by a graduate school because the school give priorities or advantages to the minorities.

That makes me angry.

I do understand where this affirmative action came from in the beginning. The reason behind the school admission policy is that by lowering the standard for minorities, the school gives the minorities a chance, and therefore helping the minorities out, doing "good" to the society.

Why do we categorize people based on their ethicity? Does ethnicity necessarily imply chances or resources? If someone is black or hispanic, does he mean that he wasn't given a chance and therefore by lowering the standard, that makes school admission commitee feel better? Why not use family background, standard of living, income as a basis of evaluation rather than using this same old word, "race"?

As everyone know, getting to medical school is tough. Not only one needs to get an average of 3.8 GPA, one needs to do a whole bunch of things outside class. Then there are this minorities who get 3.0 GPA and get into school because they are minorities (well they may be something special about them. I may be too biased if I say that), while everyone else hide in the library for 7 or 8 hours a day, volunteer in this and that hospital while getting only 3 or 4 hour of sleep everyday. Isn't this reverse discrimination?

Not only I do not agree with this reverse discrimination policy, aka affirmative action, I do not think that ethnicity necessarily correlates with opportunity. If you look back in history, many great scientists did not born in rich families. They succeeded because they worked hard. It is not unusual to hear people grew up in provety with no electricity, and they "steal" light from their neighbor to get their studying done, and they ended up being the next nobel laureate. But nowadays, is it common for the "minority" to have electricity nowadays in this developed country? In American, if one work hard enough, there are always something called community college which welcome everyone, while provides quality education, regardless of background and race. People, if they have enough motivation and determination, can then prove themselves by getting good grades and transfer to well known college, and go from there.

But then some people don't value their chance or opportunity given to them. They (I am not talking about minorities here, just people in general) procastinate, drink, party all day and night, instead of value the free education the government have for them. Somehow they blame on some unrelated external factors, hoping that by being in a certain catagory, they will be given an advantage. Of course this is a natural instinct. If there is something that can be an advantage for an application or whatever, why not use that? Why not demostrate on the street to fight for "the right" to have an advanage for being in a certain catagory.

I really hope that one day when we apply for graduate school, they would not ask for any background information, like gender, ethnicity, income, etc.