Nurture Tiger that would be a Threat

Oh my, tiger jumped out of cage and killed somebody! See this news.

Zoos are relatively safe, we don't hear much news about dangers at the zoo. But there is this potential threat. Oh my, that potential threat became kinetic this time.

The old (Chinese) proverb "Nurture Tiger that would be a Threat" says if we keep someone potentially dangerous around, it will eventually come back to bite you. This usually refers to people, such as an dishonest employee, or some disloyal general who is ready to overthrow the emperor.

This death would make zoos tighten up their cage (or the designing of it). Lawsuits may result and the victim's family may receive some $ as settlement. That's it. A precious life is lost. Sadly, everybody else's life goes on.

Perhaps it is time to evaluate. Do we need zoos? Animals are expensive to keep. Tigers eat up lots of chickens! Is there enough people willing to pay $ to visit (and to smell) them to pay for the $ require to feed them? Wildlife belongs to the wild. Trapping them isn't so fun for the animals either?

Wildlife are going extinct due to over hunting. We killed most of them and trapped the remaining ones. Sorry folks, it IS a cruel world. If we let them go free, they will take up precious real estate, and will more likely to bite you. So zoos seem to be a good solution to keep the wild alive and contain them so we are safe.

If we are to have zoos, let's make sure it is absolutely safe. Otherwise, nurturing tigers is a threat.

Christmas

Shopping for gifts! Get togethers! Christmas programs at churches! Songs at shopping malls say "it's the most wonderful time of the year". It is not so wonderful; it is the most hectic. Christmas and New Year are only 1 week apart and many people take the whole week off. Some lazy people take the entire December off.
That's why it is "Happy Holidays".

People go crazy for shopping. Entire toys department at department stores are wiped clean. For stores it is THE time of their year to collect money. Makes me wonder: why DON'T you get toys for the children any other time of year?

People jammed the airlines for Christmas get together. Makes me wonder: why DON'T you visit your family any other time of year?

Who actually remembers Christmas is celebrating Jesus' birthday? By the way. Jesus himself never mentioned anything about celebrating his birthday. He ONLY told people to remember him in the Last Supper, for going on the cross. He never told people to buy gifts for each other to celebrate his birthday! Perhaps people are copying the mysterious wise men who gave baby Jesus gifts. BTW, those are not toys. Gold is a good gift for Joseph and Mary (and also for me) :) What about the scents and the myrrh stuff?? What are they good for?

Note: The Bible actually didn't say there were 3 wisemen. People inferred that each guy bought 1 gift. These mysterious guys never come back to celebrate Jesus' subsequent birthdays. In fact, these guys actually never appeared again in the New Testament. Just who are these guys? About that star that they followed: is it the Haley's comet that came every 76 years, or some other comet? But it STAYED at the stable. Is it a UFO?? Is there an explanation from astronomy?

If we copy these wise guys, we should simply buy baby gifts when they are born, that's all. No need to fuss buying Christmas gifts every year.

Here is a little known Bible statement about gifts: Acts 20:35. Paul says:

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'

Another mysterious thing: This supposedly Jesus's statement was not included in the gospels! Ok, let's not start scholar debate, just suppose Jesus told him directly during their meeting in Damacus, ok?

However, Christmas does bring some joys to kids. They receive gifts and just have happy moods. Heartful folks also have a reason to visit some old and lonely elderly folks at elderly homes. Let them have it. Let them have moments of joy and a merry Christmas.

The Immortal Game

Chess players (even amateur players) should read about the Immortal Game. It is named that way for a reason. Read all about it in Wiki.

It is extremely entertaining to see how white sacrified everything in almost silly looking moves to capture the black king.

Wiki has a great animation GIF to show each move for this short game. For me, this gives me a more big WOW than watching olympic atheletes do amazing diving or some ice skating champion completing some outrageous difficult moves.

I saw a recent full book length discussion of this game. See
here.

Chess is difficult
Chess is actually a VERY difficult game. Every move has some gives and takes, and it takes patiences, strategy, and just lots of know-hows to be considered a real player out of amateur level. The 8x8 board is small. There is only a few moves for setup before a clash between the knights, pawns and bishops take place. (The rooks and queen are usually supposed to quietly watch these clash happen early in the game)
Books may help me improve my game but they are too hard to read at present form.

Books are hard to read
Chess books are impossible for me to comprehend. It is hard to read them. Chess moves are captured in notations like 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4. Impossible for me to follow unless I play along with a real set. ISO: great looking wood set at a good prize. However, who has time to study this challenging recreation game, sometimes labeled BORING game? Life seems to have much much more higher priority than chess.

Levels vary
It is absolutely no fun to play with real beginners who let me capture their pieces like a hungry man go to a buffet (and can't figure out which square the queen go during setup). It also isn't so fun to let expert players capture my pieces like the hungry man either. My level? slightly better than someone who just learned the moves.
It is hard to find live players. Yes, the computer and the internet tirelessly play with you. But this is intended to be a human game.

Ideally chess is learned by better player coaching a more beginner player in a chess club or something. Again, who has time for that? That's a great teenage activity!

Interactive Chessbook, anyone?
Chess book is a GREAT candidate for an interactive book. There should be a media player style control that lets you see moves visually for example games, and let you actually play with a computer on end games. If electronic book readers can do that, that is a great step forward for technology over reading dead PDF files. There are many java or javascript chess move renderers out there, just not incorporated with a book. Unfortunately I am too amateur to author an interactive chess book.

Geography fun

Test your geography knowledge:
http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq

I am sure most students will find out how little they know. Students pay too little attention to world geography, because it doesn't matter to them. For instance, where does the location of Washington DC matter?

While that is true, knowledge of pretty much EVERYTHING doesn't really matter isn't it? What does the knowledge of water = H20 matter either?

But folks, not all knowledge have a practical "use". It is for the purpose of understanding! Students need to have a understanding of who they are and the world they live in. Everyone should know where their country is on earth and where the major countries are. Knowledge of map also helps understand history.

Parents: buy your kids toy globes! and maps! Show them around! Ask them to locate the city you live in. Ask them to play game of locating countries and cities. Explain to the kids the tilt of the earth gives the seasons! Explain to them the earth's rotation gives us day and night. Parents are the best possible teachers for their own kids.

More Gun Violence from Emotional Disturbed

Besides the friends and families of the poor victims of the Virginia Tech Cho Sum Hui incident a while ago, it seems like America has almost forgotten the horror of the emotionally disturbed with guns. This has not completely faded from my mind as we see another horrible incident at Omaha shopping mall, where a disturbed teen shot 9 people including himself.

This guy lost job at McDonald and just emotionally disturbed. He lived in a friend's house like a homeless puppy. He was a complete loser and yet he wants to be famous and be remembered. Look, there is a difference between famous and infamous. Shooting innocent victims is a horrible, infamous way to get onto the headline.

We have 2 problems here.
1. Just how guns should be controlled?
2. How to help the emotionally disturbed?

Guns: just how does that kid have access to the AK-47? only police should have guns! Only the military should have AK-47! Better yet: nobody owns guns, everybody live in peace (now that's daydreaming). Repeal the 2nd Amendment! Collectors: there are much more stuff that are fun to collect, like rare coins. Please don't collect lethal weapons! Don't shoot wildlife! Let them live in peace! But this is the freedom that Americans treasure, even risking losing life to criminals and reckless emotional disturbed.

The kid is emotionally disturbed. Uncaring parents? Who knows. But I am sure the parents (and stepparents) played a major role in his disturbed life. Parents! You must take care of your kids! If you don't who do you suppose to do that?

Ok, 19 year old dude. Losing your job at McDonald is not the end of the world. You need to STAND UP against anything that is not working out for you.

But how do you do reasoning with the emotionally disturbed?

When will the next emotionally disturbed person shoot?

The Science of ...

A LONG time ago I saw some email forwarded from the academic world: the science of Santa Claus. So there are so many households that Santa need to visit on Christmas night, so many cities to travel. The reindeers would have to fly so many miles/hour and and have so much powerful fuel and he only had so many microseconds in each household to accomplish all these feat. That article was a short reading and look semi serious.

I subscribe to "How Stuff Works: Daily Stuff Feed" from iGoogle, and today there is a full length version. I see a trend in scientific writing: the science of fictional things. I've seen book titles about the physics of Superheroes, magics of Harry Potter, and even Buffy the Vampire.

Opinion: there is NO need to investigate the science of super heroes and fictional characters such as Santa. These are fairy tales. Let fairy tales be fairy tales. Look folks, all Santa is a marketing hype to urge you to buy stuff. If these scientist read kung fu fictions are they going to analyze the energy from bone crushing techniques of the 18 Anti-dragon Palms? Scientists probably should have better things to do.

"How Stuff Works" is often a great source of information. Curious folks, especially kids should read it! (But select topics more meaningful than Santa Claus)

Media storage evolution

Floppy beginning
In the beginning of computing there was the 5.25" floppy. (ok, not exactly at the beginning of computing, but close enough, wacky things like tapes and 8" floppy weren't that available anyway). Then there was the "high density 1.4M" 3.5" floppy. All disk drives can read and write to it, no problem. That meg was massive storage place for little things like a WordPerfect docs and a couple program source files. Now people demand much more. Now there are fat document files, huge images, and needed a much higher capacity storage. And there was the 700Meg CD.

CD
But the problem with CD is that it is written with laser, so can't erase and write again like magnetic floppies. The CD has completely replaced the cassette as media for music. For a time, everyone was content with CD-ROM. CD writers/burners were not so common when they first arrive, until the thirst for portable data storage exceeded the floppies.

DVD
Then there is the DVD, ideal for storing videos. It is like a hyper CD that can store 4.7 Gig! Wow that's a lot of data, but still not a lot of video, because videos are BIG. Look, it takes at least 24 image files for a SECOND of video.

VHS tapes are gone like cassettes, being totally replaced by DVD. All videos are now in DVD, including things like home videos and wedding videos. I will need a DVD burner to make copies. I just bought one, an external one, so I don't have to fiddle with internals of a computer, and it is easy to use it on another computer.

My DVD burning experience
Whoa, it takes at least 10 minutes to copy an image of a DVD, and takes 20 minutes to write to a DVD! Almost half an hour to copy a DVD. Now that's slow.

I have a complain with Nero. What? you copy image by first selecting a recorder type of "Image Recorder" (which means the hard disk) by click the "Burn" button which actually "burns" the image on my hard disk, and then change recorder type to the DVD drive and then "Burn image" to the DVD?? Look, these steps ought to be on 1 screen, with clear instructions. I am disappointed at Nero.

Here is a shocker. the copied DVD can't play on my original DVD drive!! Waita minute, I copied it, and my original drive can't play it? Ok it is an old DVD drive. The copied DVD can play on the DVD burner (when acting as a reader) and on another computer and on the inexpensive Memorex DVD player so I am not complaining too loud. But I want an explanation. Also, there OUGHT to be just ONE type of DVD. Not non sense incompatiable things like DVD+R and DVD-R. One shall stand, one shall fall.

About things like 8x, 16x, 20x speed. Just what am I comparing to? what is 1x? Not clear for the regular customer.

Little USB Flash drives
Then there was the USB flash disk drives. It is an amazing product (due to research in some very difficult solid state physics I suppse). No need to fuss slow burning. It also exchange files much faster with your computer. Now they are very cheap to get. But I doubt you would be renting videos on USB flash disk one day. How about someone invent a DVD player (or media player) that you can plug in a USB drive?

I imagine one day all medias go obsolete. That is, no one owns any videos in the form of VHS or DVD or whatever. I predict one day everything stored on the computer or the internet and you load it from there. Want to get a copy of my home video? I upload on my server and you download from there. I simply give you a password. Ok, this isn't exactly the future, people are already doing this. I just predict everyone trust their storage on computer more than the trusty little portable storages like floppy, CD, and DVD.

Piems -- poems for pi

Mathematicians are fascinated by π. After seeing a few neat things about it perhaps you will be fascinated by it too. One quick fact about π is that it is irrational, that is, it cannot be represented fully in finite number of decimal digits. The first few digits are of course 3.14159... No one has yet found patterns within the digits, and daring people hold π reciting contests to test their memorization ability! The world record is 100,000 digits! Ok, I think it is an absolute waste of time to memorize any digits of π beyond perhaps 5 digits. But the trick they use is fairly interesting. They use humorous poems known as piems!

For example, here is one:
How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics

Notice the length of each words: how = 3, I = 1, need=4, a = 1, drink = 5, alcoholic = 9, making 3.14159. This menomic poems make it easier to remember than remembering raw digits.

Besides the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and All Cars Eat Gas in music that privledged child piano players learned, it is interesting to see menomic in math.

See details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology

Menomic and memory... perhaps it is a serious psychology topic.

Some people apparently had too much time in their hands. Please don't spend time memorizing digits of interesting numbers such as π, e, or φ.

Zero to the zeroth power

Wiki is a great resource for almost every topic you can think of, including the academic topics.
There are vast resource on math for almost every topic there is out there.
I like the clearly formatted information in there, and nicely presented proofs for many interesting theorems there.

Reviewing my elementary math book on the problem of 0⁰ here, I decided to see wiki says:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defined_and_undefined#Zero_to_the_zero_power

This is a bit shocking to me:

Modern textbooks often define 0⁰ = 1. For example, Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth and Oren Patashnik argue in their book Concrete mathematics:


"Some textbooks leave the quantity 0⁰ undefined, because the functions 0^x and x⁰ have different limiting values when x decreases to 0. But this is a mistake. We must define x⁰ = 1 for all x, if the binomial theorem is to be valid when x = 0 , y = 0, and/or x = −y . The theorem is too important to be arbitrarily restricted! By contrast, the function 0^x is quite unimportant."

I am no Donald Knuth or the other famous guys. A peak at Donald Knuth's multi-volume classic books on computer science will make most so called "computer science majors" faint. But I beg to differ on their view on 0⁰.

Evaluate 0⁰ on your calculator you will likely get an error.

Here are two conflicting rules about division when x=0:
Rule 1: zero raised to anything is 0. Zero multiply by itself, however many times, is still 0.
Rule 2: anything raised to 0 is 1.

Rule 2 works because you can write x⁰ as x^{1 - 1} = x / x = 1.
But watch out, this trick only works when x is non zero.

In the case of 0⁰, there is a conflict here: which rule win? Since rule 2 involves a division by 0, an invalid move. So I think mathematics should not allow 0⁰.

For binomial theorem, why bother define it for x and y = 0, or x+y=0?

Also, if you define exponents x^y = exp(y ln x). Plug in x=0, y=0. ln 0 is undefined, so it doesn't work either. So I insist 0⁰ is not defined.

Ok, back to real world, I am sure nobody cares whether 0⁰ is defined or not.

Ebook

Today Amazon.com announced the Kindle, a ebook reader for a hefty price tag of $400. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA
for details. For $400, I can get a lot of paperback books.

This thing is essentially a wireless computer without a mouse, or hard disk, with a high tech paper like screen. Is it black and white only?
So it is a specialized scaled down computer with wireless capability. So if you think that way, $400 is not a lot.
Can I play a round of space invaders on it? probably not. can I browse the web for things other than books? probably not.
But the goal of this product is probably not web surfing, but reading books.

Is nifty ebook readers going to replace paperback books and newspapers?

I hate newspapers. They are very environmental unfriendly and messy. It is not entire new idea to read news on a handheld PDA(it probably requires sync from a computer though). Many people don't have to read newspaper everyday, only whenever big news on the headline. Even then, they can just watch news or read the newspaper's website. Is everyone willing to pay a subscription service?

Replacing multiple volumes of thousands of pages with computer is also not entirely new idea. The PDA and the tablet PC (is it popular?) already attempted it.
Sometimes books have its advantage. I can highlight, make hand drawn notes on the margins, etc. I think it is rather hard to do it with a ebook reader. Although book is low tech compared to any computer, a bookshelf can also be a proud display at home. You can proudly display your love for English literature by showing a full set of Shakespeare, or your scientific knowledge with some Hawkings, Einstein, etc.

I perfer a more versatile device, like a full scale laptop, but not all the wiring (the mouse is a wiring). But a laptop won't be as lightweight as an ebook reader. I demand color on books. I want to interact with the book by tapping with finger or stylus.

The PDA is it! It can read PDF files. Though the PDA only has a small screen, it is easy to carry and it is more versatile. I prefer PDA over ebook reader. What I want to see is hyper-PDF files: where I can interact with it like Flash or java applets.

So my prediction is that eBook reader is not going to be real successful.

JSP and Error 500

Java Server Page (JSP) is hardly new. I do have some minor complains with it. First of all, how come the import syntax is so different? Ok I tolerate that.
I rather not mess with custom tags. Fact: if you let people do custom tags, they WILL write horrible code with it. So if something is broken, is it your JSP? the custom tag? where is it broken? Debugging other people's code is bad enough already, I don't need extra compiled stuff to look into. Fortunately I don't deal with a lot of custom tags.

Another thing, JSP is compiled into a servlet at run time. So if you have a syntax error like forgot to close a brace. It can be a nightmare to find where did you miss it. Ok this is fairly minor. A good editor may be able to detect your errors before you run.

The real complain is a Internal Server Error 500 when something goes wrong. Oh you got a null pointer assignment somewhere? boom, 500 Error. Nothing else you can see what's happening. I want to see the stack trace! It may say something in the log. Unfortunately it may not say anything, and you may not have access to it due to stupid security settings.

All JSP programmers should know about <%=variable%> as output, and know it is equivalent to out.println(variable). This displays the variable on screen. Use this to your advantage to show your stacktrace. Waita minute, how to get the stack trace? You need a try block and the important e.printStacktrace() method. Unfortunately, e.printStacktrace() writes to System.out, not the regular "out" you want...

Fortunately printStackTrace is overloaded with a flavor that takes a stream, but you need to convert it to a PrintWriter.
Here is the trick,

try {
// suspicous code
} catch (Exception ex) {
ex.printStackTrace(new java.io.PrintWriter(out));
}

Thou shalt handle the Back button

All web applications should handle the Back button, enough said.

How many times have you seen stuff like this? This is happening in even in renowned program such as PeopleSoft:

"Warning: Page has Expired The page you requested was created using information you submitted in a form. This page is no longer available. As a security precaution, Internet Explorer does not automatically resubmit your information for you. "

That's simply because they have a <form action="post">, on EVERYTHING. Even on going from page to page. If I see that warning you have a failed app.

How many times you see apps that says "do not use the back button"?
Losers who don't know how to work with the back button resolved by telling me not to use it.
Well you can't restrict me! Heck, there is no easy way to hide the buttons!
Some sad souls even use javascript's window.open to pop up a new window with no buttons to prevent that. Well I can STILL use the little known ALT-left arrow trick to simulate a back button. The solution is to handle it, not avoid it in some sad ways.

Tips to all web programmers out there: only use action=post when you actually have a form to input data, otherwise just use links! Make the action on the page process it (save it, do some searching, whatever), and redirect to another page, like a thank you page or display query data. That way the back button will go back to the original page, and not in an embarassing state which caused the warning. This is a simple trick that expensive corporate web apps should know.

Sequence and Series

Open a typical THICK calculus book, you will see the topic sequence and series.
(A sequence is a bunch of items, separated by comma: For example: 1,3,5,7,9,...
A series is the sum of such items: 1+3+5+7+9...)

The theme of calculus is using a breakthrough concept of the infinitely small. We use infinitesmal small changes in y over x to calculate the slope of the tangent line, and integrating area under curve by adding infinitely small rectangles. But it doesn't make sense to be adding up infinitely many things, even if they are small. In order for this to be fully defined, we need the limit.

The topic of sequence and series are often seen as an application of calculus and it also relies on limits.

But, why study sequence and series? Who cares if a certain series converge or diverge?
I see no need for regular calculus 101 and 102 students worry about this.

For the math aficionado, one may find the condition for divergence interesting. For the ever increasing odd series above, of course it diverges. But not all ever decreasing series converge, consider the following 2 series:

1+1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5+...
1+1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16+...

Both are decreasing, one may guess both will eventually converge. But no, the first one (known as the harmonic series) diverge. We can write a simple computer program to add a few hundred terms to see that. In the second series. each term is multipled by a factor smaller than 1, and one can show such cases always converge (these are known as geometric series).

What is really interesting is the following series:

1+1/2²+1/3²+1/4²+1/5²+...

This series converges... to π²/6! How does this relate to π? Oh my. Write a little program to verify this yourself. Ok, I give you the little routine.

public void zeta2() {
double sum = 0;
for (int i=1; i < 300; i++) { 
  sum += 1.0/(i*i);
}
System.out.println("total="+sum);
}

This series is known as the Zeta function. It is lengthly and no so trivial to show how this relationship work, but thanks to the internet, it is readily available. This is usually not covered in a typical calculus book, however THICK.

The neat stuff of math is what students need to see, not mundane boring exercises. Non-math majors should also be shielded from the ultra technical math formalism too. I suggest either take out sequence and series altogether from calculus curriculum or add this topic. This topic is my most recent entry in my book.

China moon probe and doomsday theory

Another major triumph of the advancement of the Chinese space program: China sent a probe to the moon: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view_article.php?article_id=99002.

You are probably not going to find this piece of news on CNN or American newspapers. We only hear the heroic reports of NASA astronauts fixing solar panel. America's "World News" don't report much about the world other than those of American interest.

So China has once again demonstrated its increased capability.
Last time when it blew up its own satellite, it is already making some people scare.

Was the intent of exploring space a scientific progress or demonstration of might?
I think it is sort of both.

Doomsday sayers would see this as a threat and predict East vs West major military conflict ahead (sparked by Taiwan's insistence on independence, which thankfully has been quite quiet lately). Such predictions is not helping anyone (so please stop even saying such predictions). We don't need doomsday theories.

I am not going to promote doomsday theory by saying the dragon has waken up and another Chinese dynasty is going to dominate the world either. China does not need to dominate the west. Although economy is booming in China it still have a LONG way to go to feed its billions AND getting gas for all the cars AND keeping its product safe. Don't worry, the dragon is not going to bite you.

The fact is this: America is no longer able to maintain its world leader position.
We are not able to win the war on terror and just keep pouring money and war weary soldiers out. The American dollar is so weak now. Oil at almost at whooping $100 a barrel. Congress is not able to change course and it focus on stupid issues like digging out some World War I stuff. America simply has no prominent effective leaders in sight and no good solutions to its problems. It is not looking good ahead for America.

Crime Prevention and Freedom

California is burning, for days. More than half a million people need to evacuate. Hundreds of homes destroyed. Headaches ahead for insurance companies measuring up the claims. The number of origins of fires indicate perhaps it was not caused by natural causes such as lightning, rather, by evil arsonists. Are we under fire attack from Al quealda? Experts say arsonists may not be external enemies of United States, it can be wacky kids obsessed with fire, disgruntled people seeking revenge, or oh-my-gosh firefighters themselves who want to show heroism.

Whatever it is, it is horrible destruction. I am suprised I haven't heard ultra conservative people saying it is an Act of God punishing those who practice um, inappropriate lifestyles in California.

If it was really arson, the guys who did this deserve burning at the stakes. Save that lethal injection to someone else. The trouble is: it is hard to prevent such horrible acts. Who is watching every forest for such offenders? It would be very hard to catch this guy.

One solution is the government creating patroling robot thrones like those seen in the video game Half Life 2. Those things monitor EVERYONE! OMG, that is totalitarianism like those in Half Life 2 and in the classic novel 1984.

Waita minute, Chicago (and many other places) already have such things: the police cameras at intersections that detect speeding and running red lights. We are one step toward totalitarianism!

How much freedom are we willing to give up to prevent crimes? Now that's a PhD thesis material.

Hamlette

At Burger King, I discovered a new breakfast menu item: the 1 dollar Hamlette.

Ok, the bk.com site is not so working properly so I can't get you a link. BK needs to fix the site!

This is a egg and cheese sandwich with ham, sort of like a omelette with ham on a bun. It is smaller than the classic croissant. The crossiant is a hefty item, so the hamlette's size is right. The price of $1 is also so right.

How many people notice the name sounds like the Shakespeare classic Hamlet? Sounds like a smaller form of Hamlet. The suffix -let is also used in java applets, portlets, and piglet in the Winnie-the-Pooh world.

"To be or not to be, that is the question. "

Why is this line so famous? I don't know.
Today, Shakespeare stuff seems lengthy babbling in obselete language. It is so hard to make students enjoy this stuff. So Hamlet has a bad uncle who killed his dad and married his mom.... Hamlet saw the dad's ghost and seeked revenge, or was he obsessed with mom marrying his uncle? I never fully understand this thing (and have little intension to).

The also related classic Algebra 1 joke equation for that line is solving for x in x² = 4b².

Of course, it is +2b or -2b: 2 b. or not 2 b.

Terror buster

You are not going to believe what the CIA comes up with for anti-terrorism logo:

See this link:
http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/cia_terrorist_buster_logo.html

Do we need this logo? How does this battle terrorism?

Calculus music

I found the following from the web:
http://www.calculus-help.com/funstuff/carols.html
Out of the songs here, I like this one.

Riemann Sums
(sung to the tune of Jingle Bells)

Riemann Sums, Riemann Sums
Counting Areas
Of rectangles whose widths get small
We need to count them all
Riemann Sums, Riemann Sums
Counting Areas
Of rectangles whose widths get small
We need to count them all.

We learn to integrate
It's really lots of fun.
It's easier to find
Than those old Riemann Sums
We learn to sub a u
When things get sort of hard
But most of all we tabulate
When we get sick of parts.
[repeat the refrain]

Note: Without the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, integrating would be a nightmare with Reimann sum... scientific progress would probably be HALTED. The fundamental theorem is such important result that it deserves such big name.

Hacking and Comics

http://xkcd.com/ is a great fun site for geeks. Ok, that is not a very favorable label. Let's call them technological people. Artwork is not great, just stick figures, but sometimes there are some great jokes. You are a techie if you understand all. Dilbert of course is another well known tech comics, and Dilbert seems to focus on wackyness of people instead in recent years.

If you understand this comic: http://xkcd.com/327/, you know about a hacking technique known as SQL Injection!



This is a well known, simple to implement trick used by hackers.

We usually implement a search box by creating a SQL statement out of the search string entered by a user and then carry out the search and display result. One symbol to watch out for is the single quote, and the double dash. Single quote is for closing literals, and double slash is the start of comments. Every SQL programmers know that.

Check out the third box in the comics. The intended query may be

SELECT * FROM STUDENTS WHERE LASTNAME='Robert'

when the user enters "Robert" in the search box. Watch that single quote and double dash used together! The query becomes

SELECT * FROM STUDENTS  WHERE LASTNAME='Robert'; DROP TABLE Students;  --';

Whoa! The evil user sneaked in the DROP TABLE statement which wiped out the data! That double dash ignores the rest of the commands that can generate a syntax error.

Anti-Virus software and firewall do not totally prevent hackers.

What do you suggest to improve this code? (I have several suggestions, stay tuned)

Pushed off the cliff

In Hong Kong, a physchologically disturbed mom tossed her 12 year girl and 9 year old boy off their building apartment and then jumped. The three in family instantly died. (and this is not the first such incident in Hong Kong)

Horrible reality.

This is a very poor family and the father has cancer, draining away the resources of the already poor family. The hefty fees of doctors aren't helping either.

Doctors should work like lawyers: they shouldn't get paid unless they cure the patients. Now THAT'S healthcare reform.

So the mom is getting more and more psychologically disturbed. Death to her, is better than life. She sees no hope in the kids either, probably believing no one else can take care of them. There is supposed to be help from the social workers. However, just what resources can they provide? Can anyone provide a cure for cancer and get them financially back on track?

But the kids are innocent! Ok, perhaps the mom and dad are probably not so guilty either. She should have seeked for help... Should have been a bit more optimistic.

But the woman is already pyschologically disturbed. How can anyone reason with her?
If she DIDN'T jump, the most we can do is give her multiple life sentences. Is that a solution either?

But how many cases like these are out there? Sometimes, pain is disclosed only when it is too late. So many folks struggle, yet so little help is available.

That's the dark side of life.

Yet we shouldn't think that way. We SHOULD think life is preferable than death. Watch the ants! Chinese proverb and Solomon proverb says. The Chinese version says, look, the ants are fighting to live. Solomon says, look, the ants are working hard, you lazy bumps.

Huge CTA fare hike

From the transitchicago.com site and bulletins all over the trains, if no additional funding from the state, on November 4th:

Rail fares will rise to $2.00 (using Chicago Card/Chicago Card Plus) or $2.50 off-peak and $3.00 peak (using Transit Cards or cash). Peak periods are 6:30-9:30AM and 4:00-7:00PM on weekdays.

Don't just read the first sentence. Look folks, this is not increasing 25 cents to $2.00. It is going up to whooping $3.00 if you use cash! (Is it a discrimination of some sort if you don't use the Chicago Card?) Just how many people are going to take the trains during non-peak hours?

CTA is now whining VERY loud for fundings. Their message urge: write or call up your state congressman.

I don't even know who are my congressmen. I am already an elite, I know the names of the 2 state senators to the US government. Go ask 100 random people from Illinois, I am sure not many able to tell you that. Ok, I am now supposed to find the name of the unknown state congressmen (not Durbin or Obama), and whine to them how much I need the CTA to stay at the ok-I-can-bear-with-fare of $1.75. Do you think they can help?

If the state government can relieve us from this, where did that money going to come from? Taxpayers like myself.

The end result will be people will boycott the CTA, and drive, and making commute miserable. CTA still won't get funding because less payers pay. Riders spend more time and money on commute. Lose-lose situation forseeable.

Deadly Day for Marathon

I never go admire in oooh-and-ah for people who live in super huge mansions or drive sleek sports car. These guys may have inherited a fortune or got lucky in their investments, or even do something illegal... Ok even if they are in real successful in business in perfect upright way, how about live in a more humble life and donate some $ to the needy. But I admire in ooh-and-ah for those who can run marathons. No amount of money can buy a tough body.

It takes a lot of training and a lot of determinition. Anyone who can finish a 26 mile marathon, even not the slowest guy is a huge accomplishment. If any of my friends ask me to support them financially when they run for certain charities I would certainly give!

There is a downside of the marathon: they have to block roads for hours. Um, how about just running along the lakeshore back and forth? I am sure that is more than 26 miles. Don't block my neighborhood's traffic please.

There is even a darker side of marathon: it can be deadly, especially on a 90 degrees October day.

A 35-year-old police officer who looks perfectly healthy died at the marathon. The news says "it is not confirmed if it is heat related until an autopsy is performed". Duh, what else can it be? There are also hundreds taken to the hospital.

Dear folks, please check your hearts to make sure you are capable before running. Be sure to STOP and REST when you can't handle. There is no need to risk your life to the finish line.

Waita minute. Why do they run the 26 miles in the first place??

Ok it is a road-blocking, public, 'look-ma-I-am-tough-guy' sports event. The first marathon was ran because there was some Greek guy trying to run back to his hometown to announce their enemies are defeated. Unfortunately phones weren't invented back then. Both that Greek empire and their enemies are long gone. We now run marathons to challenge the human capability. Why do people twist and jump and somersault and all that in Olympics too? Also trying to max out human capability. I believe if we run perhaps just 5 miles, regularly, to maintain health, is good enough isn't it?

Perhaps the honorable police officer would live if it is not 90 degrees in October. His real cause of death cannot be found in the autopsy. It is the horror of global warming.
Too much damage has been done on earth and it is striking back. If all that determinition in marathon training is used to come up with solving such crisis, I believe there may be better days for earth tomorrow.

Great stuff on HongKong Radio RTHK

Besides radio talk, there are many education materials! This is the site: http://www.rthk.org.hk/
Great flash animation and great background music!

I especially like:

Chinese history
http://www.rthk.org.hk/chiculture/fivethousandyears/index.htm

Chinese poetry
http://www.rthk.org.hk/chiculture/chipoem/

I think great education material revitalized with great animation is a field of tremendous potential.
Imagine how history books become more lively if I can hear Martin Lurther King speak while reading his biography. Imagine how much better a teach-yourself-piano or guitar book will be if we can hear a tune. Ok, this is not entirely new idea. I already have a piano book that points me to a particular track on the accompanying CD. How about just click/tap right on it. Can't be done on just paper, of course.

Books turning to ebooks with electronic reader is becoming more common. Modern ebook reader actually looks like reading paper now.
Children have been playing with pseudo animated books for years, like press a button to hear Mickey Mouse talk.
How about letting readers click on books like Flash programs on a computer to enhance reading experience?

My almost impossible long term goal: learn enough flash and art skills to enhance my java applets for my book.
Ok, I probably will never have the time and effort nor the talent.

Constitution and Christian Nation

I read this note in CNN

McCain also said he agreed with a recent poll that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. "I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation," he said.

People simply don't know the Constitution and don't know the Bible. Where do you find 3 branches of government in the Bible? The Constitution founders deliberately leave out any reference to deity. Here is what's in the Constitution: the first amendment, which guarantees religious freedom.

Politicians ought to talk issues, how to solve problems, and not trying to draw votes from clueless believers.

McCain explained his statement:

On Sunday night, McCain sought to clarify his remarks while campaigning in Hollis, New Hampshire. "What I do mean to say is the United States of America was founded on the values of Judeo-Christian values, which were translated by our founding fathers which is basically the rights of human dignity and human rights," he said.

Ok, what about the slaves, the Native Americans, and the indenture servants building the railroads? In modern days, what about the American soldiers ruthlessly killing poor civilians in various conflicts?

Why invite him?

Why bring the Iranian president to talk in America?
We have satellites and all that stuff. He can talk from his own home.
We already know his stand on the Holocaust and nuclear programs.
If the inviter and the crowd is not really going to welcome him why bring him here in the first place. Getting him here only brings unrest.

There are wackos in America with guns who kill random people. Just imagine what will happen if someone (either wacko or not) did that to him. Yikes, we will be immediately drawn to yet another war. I wish the Iran president a perfect safe trip home, to prevent further unrest.

Perhaps tension can loosen if someone buy him a new jacket.
Unrest is what America needs least.

Bonjour Paris (part 4)

Telephone
In America we have area code, 3 number prefix and 4 number suffix, like 312-123-4567. In Paris they have 10 digits, in groups of 2, like 12 34 56 78 90. I didn't make any phone calls in Paris (who do I call?), but when I pick up the phone, the dial tone is higher pitch than American phones. I suppose the ringing is different too, but can't confirm. I am not going to call just anybody to test out the ringing sound.

Ambulance and Police Sirens
Their siren is constant: bee-bu-bee-bu. In Chicago, the sound seems to have much wider range. Both police cars and ambulances are smaller than those in America.

Grand palaces, beautiful gardens, elaborate churches
The glory of the monarchs of yesterday still remain in Paris. There are so many palaces and gardens that it is hard to name and visit them all. The Louvre is one of those. It even has its own mini Arch of Triumph. There are also many well maintained gardens/parks in the city, the most beautiful one we've seen is Jardin Luxembourg. We found many people relaxing and young energetic people playing soccer.

There are also many elaborate churches of the old days, the most well-known one is of course the Notre Dame. There was some service going on while dozens of people walking around inside. How about you host service some other time or we come visit another time? People don't seem to be serious about religion there, many old churches seem to be abandoned or became museums.

Flea market and street markets
We visited a flea market, in a seemingly not very wealthy neighborhood. Many items are sold and not just clothing. Many products are made in China! (How do you escape that?) Prices are rather inexpensive but of course qualities isn't that great. At a street market by the Italian town, they even have seafood and roast chicken sold at side street. Whoa, even these guys have credit card machines.

Chinatown/Vietnam town
We visited the sort-of Chinatown close to the Italian town. It is actually mix of Vietnamese and Chinese town. Only a few restaurants and a few grocery stores there, rather depressing if you want to look for authentic Chinese cuisines. Some Chinese restaurants within Paris lay out all the (cold) food for display and when you buy them they microwave for you (now that's not authentic way to serve Chinese food).
However, there are many, many great Japanese restaurants in Paris.

End Note
Paris is a VERY nice place if you like European style old stone buildings. If you have a lot of Euros to spend it is a great vacation place. Today most people don't know or even care the glory of the monarchs in the old days, but their great palaces remain. If you have even more Euros to spend it is perhaps great idea to take trains to London or other places in Europe and let your adventure continue.

Bonjour Paris (part 3)

Dining in Paris
Dining experience in Paris is quite different from America. First, there is usually no smoking/non-smoking section. The menu (la carte) expects you to order a "formula". Starter dish + main dish, or main dish + desert. A starter dish is called an entreé, I would have guessed it means the main dish.
The "formulas" I see in menu reminds me great mathematicians from France: Pascal, Fermat, Cauchy, etc. Are French people more interested in math?

Water comes in bottles. When you order water you get a little jar. Ice is not provided (unless you ask I suppose). Coke is pronounced like "co-ka". Coke zero seems to be popular. Diet coke is called Coca-coca light. I see no Pepsi there.

Tips already included. That's good. I don't have to calculate. Whoa, every restaurant waiter/waitress have their own (wi-fi operated?) credit card machine. When you ask for check, they use the machine right in front of you.

Surprise 1: large soda cans
Here is a surprise. Soda cans are not 250 ml (nicely 1/4 of a liter), it is 330ml!
And, they also use a strange "cl" unit, which is 10ml, so their cans says 33cl. This totally surprises me, European folks have bigger appetite than Americans in pops?
Also, it is the French who are the metric proponents. The liter and the milliliter is standard scientific notation. What's up with this "cl" unit?

Surpirse 2: different keyboard!
At a car dealer, we saw a little computer that links to the car dealer's company site. When I look at the keyboard I am shocked: they don't use the QWERTY keyboard! It is only slightly different, with A,M,Q,Z in different places! The French alphabet is exactly the same as English alphabets (different pronounciations though). Why can't they have the same layout?

At the department store
It is interesting to see how different countries indicate a sale. In America, we say "10% off". In Hong Kong, I see "Less 10%". In Paris, I see "-10%". People know how to work with negative numbers there. And in a directory saying 3rd floor has what items, 2nd floor has what items, I am suprised to see 0 floor for ground floor, and -1 floor for basement! When do you see negative floor numbers in basement in America? We either say "Basement" or "B1". I suppose typical French students understand negative numbers much earlier than American students. Ok, I am not into fashions. Things do look good but I don't see very, very significant difference from American stores in merchandises, except the suits. Suits tend to be much tighter fit in Europe.

At the museums
There are plenty of museums in Paris. Don't have time to see them all. We saw the 2 most famous: the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. Lots of VERY lively sculptures, and lots and lots of paintings. Art students will love these museums. Mona Lisa is re-made famous by the (controversial) Da Vinci Code. Math and art enthusiasts may know that it involves the golden ratio φ! But it is actually a very small picture and nothing really visually standout comparing to the many big and beautiful pictures around it. Ok I am not an artist.

At the Café
In America people take a big cup of coffee with them, like 32 oz Dunkin. In Paris I didn't see 1 person carrying big coffee. Here they like expresso and cappincino, both are in small cups. Expresso is strong stuff, and they give you cube sugars (not packets or sugar substitutes or cream).

At the Bakery
Americans loves donuts, and ham/sausage sandwiches, and other calories heavy breakfast items. Perhaps Parisians don't. Crossaints are simple crossaints (no meat). It is hard to even find donuts. That perhaps explain there aren't as many overweight people in Paris. There are many Au Bon Pain in America, I didn't see one in Paris, though I saw many Pomme et Pain (Apple and bread). They seem to like apple pie a lot.
They don't have hot dog buns! They poke a hole through the long bread and stick a hot dog in.
(To be continued)

Bonjour Paris (part 2)

The Hotel (ok, I need a ^ on top of the o in "hotel" if I am to write en francais)
Before you go to a trip to foreign place you will need to exactly pinpoint your hotel on your map. Google map can do foreign countries too so it is a great help. For honeymoon(!), it is best to pick the as-luxury-as-you-can-afford hotel. So I shelled out about 200&euro a day for a Orbitz proclaimed 4 star hotel. The hotel is quite small compared to typical hotels in America. Whoa the hallway is so tight. A 6foot person would bump his head on the hallway. Whoa the room is so small! Oh the bed's springs are so worn out my rib case hurts, almost. I'm glad hot water works, so I am good. There are a few things the world cannot agree on: 1) date format mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy. 2) electicity voltages and plug shape. Besides North America, just about everyone elses uses 220V. I do have a plug changer. The hotel provides 110V or 220V. (now that's good) So all we need is a plug changer. Just why the world can't agree on voltage and plug shape?

Hotel location is important. You don't want to be too far from all the actions, or too middle (night noises). Choosing hotel in foreign place takes a bit of luck. I am glad the hotel is just a minute of walk away from Metro stations. But Metro stations are all over so it is probably not too difficult to find one anywhere in central Paris. The hotel attendant does speak English, though not real good.

Impression of Paris, in general
Most are small stone buildings about 5 stories high. Is there any skyscrapers in Paris? Graffiti all over the place in train ride from airport. Many street cafes, but not quite the same experience as American dining. Air pollution is light, making such experience possible and enjoyable. The neighborhoods don't look scary to be in, even at late night. America is banning smoking completely almost, but Paris would be a smoker's heaven. People also love wine, a must-have for every meal for them.

The Eiffel Tower
We decided to head out to the #1 landmark of Paris: the Eiffel Tower. There is even a (rather strange looking) programming language named Eiffel so I long see what the tower looks like. In day time it looks like a big tower of rusty iron. Given I work near the Sears Tower in Chicago, Eiffel looks pretty small. At night it is decorated with lights, even flashing lights. Two amazing sights at the Eiffel Tower. 1) Beer bottles ALL OVER THE PLACE! Some soccer (football) tournament is happening and people drink no less than Americans there. 2) There are military personnels with heavy-duty automatic weapons patroling the area! It is a nice tourist magnet for France. It is next to La Seine, the river that runs through Paris. Old palaces and other landmarks are within walking distance.

The Arc of Triumph
Our next must-see landmark is the Arc of Triumph, where Napolean built to show is prowness, with BIG stone arch. Many streets are pointing to the arch so cars are all over. It is decorated with a lot of engravings. Ancient people love to do that type of work. Have you seen modern structures with highly artistic stone engraving? There is a huge shopping street known as Champs Elysee with the top expensive stores (with a few car dealers too). It leads you to more old palace attractions.

(To be Continued)

Bonjour Paris (part 1)

About French (the language)

I took French in high school and in college although Spanish is much more common. I didn't like the sound of machine-gun talk of Spanish as seen in Channel 26 or 44. Upside down question mark and exclamation is too wierd looking. French is fairly close to English. English readers can probably guess some French sentences because of such similarity, for example, sandwich == sandwich. Watch out for same spelling with different meaning though. You will see "pain" all over the place, it means bread. But it is not the bread Americans are used to, "pain" are the long bread. Waita minute, "buffet" is not all-you-can-eat?

A beginning foreign language course is also a great fun way to increase GPA. A beginning class with textbooks full of pictures can't be too difficult.
Studying foreign languages may startle you: adjectives don't have to go in front of the noun it modifies (as in French). Heck, you don't even have to write from left to right (as in Chinese or Hebrew or Arabic).

Even the globally accepted numeric symbols 0..9 don't have to be written the same way. The French prefers to lengthen the little, optional slash in the number 1 so it looks like a captial A without the horizontal line. The 7 needs to have a dash across to distinguish 1 and 7. Oh my they don't use the decimal point! They use a comma instead. So π is approximately 3,14159. They simply use a space for thousands separator. Ok, they are not afraid of people inserting an extra number there.
They prefer 24 hour clock over 12 hour clock. They don't even use the colon between hour and minutes even though it is in every alarm clock I've seen. So they write 6:00pm as 18h00.
I already know this before I go to Paris. Still some more culture shocks to come after getting there...

Need some l'argent (money)

The franc is gone, now they do Euros. US dollar is at all time low, so 100 US dollars is equivalent to 70 something Euro, according to some websites I've seen. I went to my trusty savings account bank in US, "Do you have Euro?", The answer is no. "Ok, do you know where is a currency exchange?", so I got pointed to the nearest one. "Do you have Euro?", The answer is also no. Ok, all you have is Mexican Peso? So I relied on my credit card. But yikes do I even have a PIN for credit card? No I don't. I don't allow myself to cash advance on 19.8% interest. I'm glad the ATM card work fine. The current exchanges in Paris, marked by "Change", will only give me 57 euros! I know my numbers en francais (in French)... but when the lady tells me, I must go, "combien, en anglais s'il vous plait" (How much, in English please). My listening skills in French needs some work. Another culture shock: they use the euro in the BACK of the amount, like 20€, or use as a decimal point: 20€10. Many people in Paris speak English, but not all.

Train to the city
Paris's Charles de Galle airport is about 40 minutes from the main city. Show the address of your hotel and the Information guy should be able to tell you what train or bus to take. We took the RER train, and it costed about 8 Euros. The trains are not as new and cool as I expected. I can see graffiti all over the city from the train. Another culture shock: you must press a button to get off the train at the station! (or flip a switch in regular trains within the city).
Paris's metro system is way cool. It can take you anywhere within the main Paris region, with a total of 14 lines. You should have a street map with train station clearly marked to get around... You can use credit card to buy tickets. But yikes, no English at all on the ticket machine. "Vous parlez anglais?" at the train station returns a "non!" I'm glad I can read/guess the instructions.

(To be continued)

Another outrageous comment

I read the following from Chicago Tribune:

The president, in a press conference that lasted little longer than a half-hour, repeatedly played off his own image as a poor student, noting that he likes to remind people that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has "the PhD… I'm the C student," he said, but look who's the leader and who's the adviser.

Now that's an outrageous.

So he is saying you don't need to work hard in school, having a C can actually be better than those who got PhD.
What is that No Child Left Behind thing? isn't it supposed to encourage students to do better? But this comment is exactly saying the opposite.

While that statement can be absolutely true, your boss (and your friends) were probably a poorer student than you but make much more money and in control more.
It takes much more than academics to "succeed" in real life. Ok, it also depends on your definition of "succeed."

But this is POOR influence on students.

This is not encouraging kids to learn, succeed in school, and go for the A marks. Grade marks buys you nothing, but it is something to aim for. It can be a stimulus to learn. Having a B or C is not the end of the world either, kids.

America do not need such comments. American students need to work much much harder in language ability, math, science. Future America need educated intellecutals to run this country and to face the problems of tomorrow.

The PhD is the advisor because the shameless C student leader is outrageously incompetent.

I am married!

Unbelievable but true. I have went through all the wedding plannings, went through a day of strict wedding schedule, have the pastor sign official paper and mailed it back, and went to a week of honeymoon on Paris. (Yes I will write extensively about Paris later)

That is a defining moment of life. Life (after 30s) is a 2 player game. We are built that way. And yes, everything is different after you're married. Most SHOULD be different in a good way.
Anything different in a bad way needs to be trained to become a good way, because life IS a 2 player game.

Marriage is best at your 20s where your life is at peak. 30s are still ok. The earlier 30s the better. I don't want to think wedding at 40s and beyond.

Time pushes you to new stage of life. If you are in 30s you should not be thinking about what to wear in your high school prom (ok, unless you are doing high school at 30s). You are not going to think wedding decoration at 70s? (ok, unless you really are getting married when you are at 70)

When single, you need a LOT of friends to help you on your wedding. You especially need a few buddies as best man and groomsmen. How many buddies do you have that qualifies to be your BEST man? Ok if you have a brother or a similar age cousin you don't have to think.
Ok, it depends on how big a wedding you want to have. Having a quiet, just 2 families wedding is no fun though?

You don't need to be overstressed in wedding planning. Do it as if doing any major project: identify what you need to do, do it! When possible, delegate it to people who you trust (that's why you need a lot of friends). Reading other people's plan help. But it is best to have your own plans. You are your own most trustworthy ally.

Sick Congressmen

Shameful new news bit: Idaho congressman found with sexual misdemeanor in public washroom.
In another older tidbit: another congressman was caught sending sexual explicit messages to teens. Outrageous abhorrent acts.

Why are the people running our country so unworthy?

I expect high standards from these high profile jobs. Waita minute, that's BASIC moral standard.

Just how corrupted are the leaders of the country right now?

The House of Representatives was intended to be filled with energetic young people, with age requirement of just 25. The Senate requirement is a bit older, but still young at 30. Now we have dirty old men. How sad is this.

To all such shameful congressmen: resign, disappear from the media, live in exile, repent, beg forgiveness. That's the best course of action for you. BTW, you will live in history book forever in the list of sicko.

Earthlink struggling

Saw a news article saying once long time ISP has some problems. http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2007/08/27/daily20.html

I became an Earthlink customer when I needed modem dialing.... There were no DSL in 1996. I also liked to maintain a personal homepage... There were no blogging back then. I also needed a non-work email account! There were no hotmail or yahoo mail back then. I also needed to run a restaurant homepage, and it was quite expensive.

There were also no internet package bundle with phone company like AT&T+Yahoo DSL.

I picked Earthlink... the biggest player back then was America Online, but there were lots of problems in volume handling. I chose a more reliable 2nd place instead.

I was a happy customer. Easy install. Rarely have any problems.

I was Earthlink customer until I have a house and need a new phone line. Cheaper to bundle internet with phone service.

Now there seems to be less noise about choosing Internet Provider. Everyone go to big cable or phone companies for that now. ISP: perhaps you are also a dying industry, along with cassettes, VHS, films...

Maddening weather

Lightning! Thundercrashes! followed by pouring rain! I saw water rushing out from my neighbor's gutters! Then, a lightning lighted up the sky and when it is done flashing my monitor become black! I've got a power outage! My lightbulb still works, but half as bright. Then it is gone too. My land based phone also stopped working. The only working device I have at home is my cell phone!

How powerless are we without electrical power. No TV, no computers, no light, nothing. Fortunately electricity came back on after a few hours.

It is unusual to see such big rain in Chicago lasting for so long. We are lucky. Wisconsin is all flooded and homes destroyed, and lightning kills! Yikes, maddening weather.

Is global warming striking us?

Unfortunately there is little we can do to undo the damages done to the environment as we watch Dean and other alphabetically ordered hurricanes continue to strike.

Fortunately not in Chicago.

Stock Scares and Spell Check

I never quite understand stocks and markets. Perhaps that's why I am not a rich man. It is complex and has a LOT of psychological factors. Ooh somebody is fearing bad mortage loans. News spread, and boom, stock crash. HUGE, black headlines saying this is biggest crash since 911. So many people dead in flood and earthquakes don't get this much coverage.

In the past few years, real estate became outrageously expensive. People are crazy for get-rich-quick schemes of buying and finding the victim to sell to. Banks are hungry for business so they let more people borrow. Of course such market is going to bust. We've all seen it. Why are you surprised?

Here is the link I am reading, http://www.cnbc.com/id/20319066, and I only read 1 sentence, copy and pasted here.

"Wall Street's mood is significantly better today than it has been in recent days, after the Federal Reserve surprised the markets by cutting its discount rate by an aggressive half-percentage point, from 6.25% tp 5.75%."

I don't quite understand how changing a percentage can stabilize stock crash but that's not what I want to discuss here.

Is "tp" Turbo Pascal? or is it a typo. Ok, perhaps they fixed it by the time you check out the page. Editors are so rush to get this story out without spell check. And this is the FIRST sentence. Don't look for MY spelling mistakes in my blog here. I don't make a living as a newsreporter. I demand better spelling ability from news websites.

Poor Ways to Run Business on Software

1. Use Crappy Products from Crappy Vendors

So there was a sales team with uniforms, hard handshake and rocking flash/powerpoint demos that fooled you into a crappy product. You also agreed to pay them outrageous amount of support $. Later you found out it is impossible to tweak and you call them to help. You have to pay them additional $200 an hour for consultants (who bill you $50 a meal). What idiot consultant will do the work right and get out? It is a recipe for pension, and their grandkids education fund.

Poor product with outrageous support cost is not good business. Know when to dump crappy products. Don't run a business on top of it.

2. Hire Consultants to do work; leave your employees fixing their work

Some people tend to believe they MUST pay somebody else to get the jobs done when they have employees themselves. Then, regular employees who did not participate in that type of work are told to maintain such work. Look, you must trust your employees being able to do new work. What tech knowhow these outsourced guys have? Both your employees and the outsourced guys look at job sites to find work. Maintaining other people's work is boring and difficult because they didn't write in the first place.

3. Set it and forget it

Informercials sometimes are fun to watch. There is some cooking machine you can set it and forget. It won't burn your kitchen. Good. This happens to old apps. Somebody wrote code, deploy it, and forget it. No one knows where the source codes are and how to maintain anything. These are probably done by consultants, what do they care.
No one can afford losing source codes, must archive them, must have build-from-scratch instructions and build files. Someone must know how old apps work. Reward people financially for maintaining good docs.

4. No room for testing

Myth: 80% design 20% coding. If you design it right you write once and you are done. Outrageous myth. When you design you are in dream mode, you don't know what you say will work unless you code-compile-run. Must let your developers code and tell you how long things will take.

But the most outrageous thing is no testing. QAs come in too late and sometimes development teams don't even have any QAs. Some QAs dare to come ask developers for unit test plans. Where is YOUR plan? Also, schedule DEMANDS delivery after 1 week of testing anyway. So what if anyone finds anything. Most often there is no time to fix stuff. Why have such stiff schedule? if schedule can't be moved, why even test?

Better approach will be test as you go. Have QA team, more than 1 non-technical person please. Involve QAs early. Have QAs test frequently. Involve in the whole process. Skim on the paperworks please.

5. Security tie hands of developers

When an support issue come in, there is usually no way to log in as the user having problem and see what's going on. This is tying your hands in helping to put out a fire. Where are the logs. Give me access to it!

Crumbling Infrastructure and Lost weapons

Minnesota bridge simply crumbled and fell into the Mississippi River. Ill-maintained bridges (more than 70,000 of them) cause every one in the nation wondering whether the bridges they cross everyday are safe.

This is happening in the most powerful nation in the world?

Ok, where are the funding for maintaining the bridges and other important infrastructure items? Perhaps all money went to fight for the war? But we are not handling the war so well either.

Another news: Lost weapons: 190,000 of them, some fell in the hands of the insurgents in Iraq.

Oh my, just how mess up are we?

America, it is time to wake up! Get your acts together! Fix things!

But we are so lazy, we like fries and we become obese. Many Americans statistics are depressing.

America can do, and should do better than that. However, it probably takes more than a new president to fix all our problems.

Wonderful Math News

Actress Danica McKellar from the 1980s TV show Wonder Years is now a mathematician who wrote a math book for teenage girls: Math Doesn't Suck. See this link for details.

I like the Wonder Years, although I did not watch a lot (and didn't like the narrator involved). Teenage is truly the most wonderful time isn't it? A young boy's crush for attractive classmate is so pure and wonderful.

The attractive classmate is now a mathematican. This is great celebrity news comparing to news from other young lady celebrities such as the troubles of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. (but I like Lindsay!)

Although you don't have to be a mathematician to be "smart". Staying out of trouble is the basis of smart.

Now about the math book. I'd like to see it!
I probably won't need to buy a copy for myself because I probably know all the stuff in there. :) But I'd like to see how such information is presented to young girls. How to convince them math doesn't suck. If I know a young girl who needs help in math I'll buy her a copy.

America needs a learning revival, a renaissance! (Not just in math).
Spread the news that it is great to learn! Drugs and drunk driving gets you nowhere!

Here is the most wonderful, heart-warming line from the news link above, "The actress once struggled with the subject around the seventh grade, but a teacher helped her through."
The actress now probably achieved in math more than the 7th grade teacher now. 7th grade math is EASY, but helping students to learn is sometimes not so easy. Now that Danica has mastered 7th grade math (and much more), she is now doing the harder part: helping others learn. The wonderful work of great teachers are one of the true wonders in life.

If Danica can still locate the teacher, I think she should give the teacher a copy.

No More Air Stunts Please

At Ohio a veteran stunt pilot was killed while performing a stunt. The next day the show continues.

How outrageous is this?

Look, if another air stunt accident happen not only the pilot dies and the plane destroyed, the debris can fall on the fans, or on innocent bystanders.
People seem to have absolutely no sympathy and just want to continue to watching this (sorry, boring) stuff.

Look, just how fun it is to watch loops and colored smokes come out? Besides, there are BIG risks involved. This is just not worth risking lives to do this. Just what do air stunts accomplish? Other than oohs-and-ahs. When an accident occur, should we mourn for the fallen one and realize this is something not to continue?

Pilots have difficult job to do. Just look at the complexity of their control panels. It is already huge accomplishment to know how to fly a plane. Their job is to handle a plane safely, don't need to perform stunts.

Another plane related news: news choppers crash into each other. Whoa. Newsreporting has gone too far. Just a reporter saying "there is a high speed chase" is enough. Pilots and Photographers' lives are too precious to risk. Also, I don't need a chopper giving me how busy is the Dan Ryan. A camera from a taller building will do. Too big risK (and too costy) for this type of reporting.

Some people die for money; some birds die for birdseeds. Pilots should not die for stunts and aggressive journalism.

5 Biggest Unsolved Problems for 5 Dollars

The discount bin at bookstores contain old books and extra copies of unwanted books. One type of books in particular is abundant in the discount bin: astronomy books. The universe is so big and full of wonders yet most people only focus on the everyday business in the relatively tiny earth. So great astronomy writers: think twice before publishing another masterpiece. Wonders of the world are many; but readers are few. Besides astronomy books, sometimes among the unwanted books are little treasure books.

I found The Five biggest Unsolved Problems in Science for about 5 dollars. This is a great read for high school students and beyond. It also comes with great cartoon commentary. It is written by professors who know what they're talking about, yet done a great job at explaining it to general public. This book talks about a basic, yet big unsolved problem in physics, biology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy.

What does mass come from? What chemical reactions form life? Weather forecasting possible? What is structure and function of the proteome? Why is the universe expanding?

Posing questions is easy. Just list them (I just did). This book does a lot more. It starts with a good discussion of scientific method itself. You get a very nice presentation of backgrounds of the current discoveries in each field. This is like going to a great introductory class with your favorite professor. Each subject has an exciting journey of discovery. Though I have to admit I find the biology and chemistry section a bit difficult because I have little prior background.

I like the touch of comedy in the cartoon commentaries throughout.

About Science: we have come a long long way from philosophers who tell us ideas out of nowhere. But yet as we discover more, we discover how little we actually know. The universe is still full of mysteries and wonders.

GUI Web Swing

I am not talking Spiderman. Nor talking specifically about ultra difficult Java swing. Rather I am talking about the swing of preference from thin client to thick client in web app.

Pre-Web
In the beginning of personal computing (pre-Web) there was 80x25 character MS-DOS. Newbies wonder where was the husband MR-DOS, and do you have to make an appointment to see DR-DOS. Oh those days are old. People demanded more than standard input/output. Blinking cursor and scrolling text to top of screen is not enough. Then standard controls such as buttons, scrollbars, menubars are invented and graphics interface GUI simply push DOS out the window.

The problem is this: it is much more difficult to program in GUI. Programmers who only knew command-line programming will almost certainly faint if they see a Windows SDK Hello World program for the first time. Ok, take a deep breath and look here when you are ready.

Paradigm Shift
The whole paradigm is different! No longer a program has a beginning and and end. Windows take over! It is event driven! When someone click a button, Windows will notify you! You've gotta handle the message. Complex programming is one of the cost of prettier UI. Fortunately, few need to handle raw Windows programming now.

Given such complexity, if there are no other tools to make it easier, I'll say the number of programmers would be as few as the number of Latin scholars because only the elites can handle this type of stuff.

Fortunately there are easier things such as Visual Basic and Delphi that makes such programming easier. As we get a good handle on writing full blown GUI apps, then there comes the World Wide Web.

Swing to thin client
Whoah. Information from another computer can be seen in yours! Soon, everyone and their dogs have websites. In the old days it was like reading newspaper, everything is read-only. Then people demanded interactive sites! and online commerce! Then HTML is supplied with a few basic controls such as editbox and submit buttons and voila. HTML buttons and controls are so very easy. (ok, the processing is a bit harder, that's another topic). Program become simpler: HTML form, submit, load another form.

With HTML and browsers, full blown applications suddenly become less important. It seems like Microsoft Office are what everyone will ever need. The world is content with basic (and boring) controls such as editbox, radio button, textareas. This is thin client. Most are happy with display->submit->display scheme of http.

Swing to thick client
When asynchronous Javascript (AJAX) was added in IE5, nobody even noticed, but suddenly someone make use of it and added more interaction. This makes apps more functional. Everyone is fascinated by the zooming ability of google maps (compared to old yahoo maps).

Now people are tired of boring controls, people demand heavier, richer clients, inside a webpage. Java has swing library for so long, yet it is super duper complex and hard to make it run on a webpage. Java's AWT was fairly easy, but not very powerful, and now nobody likes Java applets.

Flash is THE thing. Powerful, lots of cool effects, graphic intense (but expensive). Just look at how many cool sites and games are written in Flash. Java GUI is simply inferior. Flash had not met the fate of Java applets where is it labeled as dangerous and browsers won't even load it. But it isn't so easy to do a flash app. The GUI of Flash is quite complex, and it isn't a typical code-compile-build that programmers are used to.

It seems all books focus on the graphics aspect of it. Can it have some data entry forms, talk to database and do some business? Possible, but not obvious.

The pendulum is swinging back to thick clients. Customers now demand more functionality that combines beautiful UI.

Enter Adobe Flex: script based language that produce Flash files.
It lets you build flash business apps quickly. But it is strangely combining javascript-like code and form description code. And it may take a while to get used to. Sun (Java) tries to do the same, with JavaFX. They mess up their own good Java language! Sun loses another battle if you ask me.

I have long waited for fun new things in programming. Flex is it.

Let's see if I turn my math demo programs to Flash....

Transformers

Steven Spielburg brought the long forgotten 20+ year old cartoon/comics back to life. The 1986 TF movie was and still is THE greatest movie I've ever seen. It will be hard to surpass it. Steven Spielburg does not guarantee great movie. War of the Worlds was a disappointment. I watched some promo materials of the Transformers and didn't like the modern, ugly alien looking robots. They are supposed to be human-like. Thankfully this movie has a lot of actions and not so disappointing.

Cars turning into robots. Robots in disguise. Perhaps long ago some Japanese guy somehow "see" a robot within a car and created this cartoon series. The Transformers started on earth and the story was long moved back to Cybertron with little humans involved. The 1986 movie ended with a Golden Age: Cybertron was restored and (yes!) the autobots have won. This time we are back to earth.

The last time I saw the cartoons was with unpopular new things such as headmasters and Throttle Bots and even Beast things. Everyone is too tired of it and it deserves a 20 year rest. I am glad the movie didn't include the annoying newer things.

This story also share some similarity with the 1986 movie: with the spy character Decepticon cassette Laserbeak spying on the autobot. This time you get a UGLY looking thing (Soundwave?) tapping info from the Pentagon about "the cube". This ugly thing makes this movie disgusting. :(

For half the movie the transformers don't talk. Ok, Bumblebee (now a cool Camero instead of a Beetle)'s voice is damaged, what about the Decepticons? They never talk in their Cybertonian language. Prime and others also come on too late.

Wassup with that scorpion-like Decepticon destroying things in the beginning. The Transformers were NEVER monster destroyers like War of the Worlds. But Hollywood demand actions and blow-em-ups. Human soldiers: do you realize your weapons are quite worthless against the Transformers after rounds of shooting?

We should watch the Transformers like watching people with various personality with a robot body: the philosophical and willing-to-sacrifice leader Optimus Prime. The pure evil of Megatron. The jealousy of Starscream, and the loyalty of others. They also play different roles: Ratchet (the ambulance) is supposed to salvage damages, Jazz the break dancer and Bumblebee as a close friend to human and the comic relief. Starscream deserves some time revealing his ambition in this movie.

Ok, we turned the clock back to the first few episodes. There were no "giants", no dinobots. And yikes, Prime has that Ax/Sword and Megatron has that medival club which only appeared once! What happened to the laser guns and prime's signature cannon? There are perhaps too many guns from the human already. Ratchet, Ironhide, and even Starscream are supposed to be DEAD from the 1986 movie. Their comeback signifies the clock has turned back to their time on earth.

This movie adds modern factor: Where did you learn our language? Prime says "from the World Wide Web". Where did you learn about the glasses? "from eBay". This makes modern teenagers chuckle.

The Deceptions: yikes they are ugly, and only autobots are supposed to be cars. There are only a few Deception cars. This movie has a bunch more. What are they? Who is the guy in mustache? They need a bit of colors.

Explosive actions throughout. It is good they bring back the classic "one shall stand, one shall fall" duel between Prime and Megatron. But these guys don't get it. It ought to be QUIET. Just Prime and Megatron: nothing else. The fight deserves to be longer, and Megatron ought to talk more and be more evil in general. He also needs a cannon in his right arm.

It is not all about autobots rages their battle to destroy the evil forces of the decepticons. The comic scenes of the autobots hiding in Sam's house is fun. Bumblebee releasing lubricants is also fun.

The movie ended with unleashing the power of the cube, rough equvalent to Hot Rod unleashing the power of the matrix to destroy Unicorn in 1986. But why does prime insist to put inside him to sacrifice? Besides, prime doesn't look that defeated.

Added bonus: Megan Fox. Of course she adds this movie's appeal to teenagers. Good movie: ***.

Ugly little spy robot and autobots besides Bumblebee come in too late take 1 star off.

Take for Granted

Yesterday my car won't start. Battery is dead. That is AFTER I reached QUeenie's workplace to pick her up. Can't really pick her up.

The Volkswagon had gave me more serious problems before, but never not able to start. One time the battery died on me when I am braking! I have to restart in middle of intersection and fortunately it was able to start. But not last night.

So I called up a hero to come over to jumpstart. Ok it worked! The cable is the FIRST thing I bought when I got my car. Good that I have it.

Last time when the battery died in middle of road (but able to restart) I took it to the dealer. Some hoses and pipes needed clean up and the battery was weak, the guy says. But changing the battery would cost me a whooping $200. The battery never seem to have a problem so I ignored it, and it worked for months until yesterday. I shouldn't have ignore. But too busy in life.

TODO: change that battery. And it requires some wild wrenches that another friend has. Isn't it great to have friends you can rely on?

We take for granted many things: like turning the key would start car. Actually a hundred things must work before the car can start. We turn on the faucet and water come out, and there are many pipes need to install for this to happen.

Heck, even waking up is tremendously complicated process of the brain that even scientists have no complete idea of how that works. There are too many things we take for granted. So be thankful.

Solving Checkers

Checkers is a fairly simple game (meaning simple rules) that many kids enjoy. All pieces are the same, and Whoa, you can keep killing the opponent's pieces by repeating jumping. If a foolish move is made, your opponent can wipe out a lot of your pieces in 1 move. I don't like it as much as chess because there is not as much strategy involved.

This seemingly simple game turns out to be a very difficult program that sparkled big research, and now the perfect checker program that cannot be beaten is written. See here for details.

Though Deep Blue beat the top human player, according to the article, chess is much more difficult than checker and require a lot more research to solve.

Ok, big the point is: why bother solving these games? Someone has to pay years to fund this type of research.

I hope this problem does have some practical use for that money to be well spent.

This reflects human curiosity: the if-there-is-a-problem-i-am-going-solve-it attitude. I wrote a little Sudoku program to solve the popular puzzle too.

This also is the fame factor, which explains why people do strange things to get on the Guiness book of records. Perhaps the CNN article justified all that years of programming work. Ok, my Sudoku program is not going to win any fame (a mere trial-and-error approach)

Ok, I've got a suggestion: have the perfect checker program play another instance (copy) of it. Fun to see how programs try to outsmart each other? Sometimes I have computer chess play against each other.

Which program will win? Draw all the time isn't so fun anymore? (like tic-tac-toe)

Horrible Iraq reports

Some reports I've read say bloodthirsty American soldiers shooting innocents in Iraq is common place. They won't talk, just shoot. See here. Of course, you don't see this type of report on CNN.

The American public either don't care or helplessly watch ourselves become a nation of terror. The sad fact is: many of us don't even know.

But this is nothing new. Time has diluted the memories of those who read about horrible acts of American soliders slaughtering villages in Vietnam (and MUCH more, some of which are not in your history books)

You give young people AK47 (and all sorts of other weapons) and put them into a zone where their life can end anytime due to roadside bombs and suicide bombers. What do you expect them to do?

If you are surrounded by aggressive foreigners who killed your friends and families and you have no food, no job, nothing, what would you do?

Endless cycles of revenge do not solve anything.

We've got to have plans to withdraw. Withdraw first, deal with everything else later. Besides, that Iraqi president say withdraw anytime, right? Just how many tax dollars and innocent lives are we going to waste?

IBM talks math

I saw this link from IBM's website.

That stuff in the background is all high school freshman Algebra 1 stuff. A basic education requires every high school students know all that. (But most will forget it VERY quickly) When was the last time you saw a hyperbola? Survey a hundred random college graduates on street, I am sure not more than 5 able to tell me the equation of a hyperbola. (ok, x^2+y^2=1 gives you a unit circle, but x^2-y^2=1 ) gives you a unit hyperbola).

Math majors are in demand, article says.

Although you hear reports like that, pure math guys still won't be able to find work (unless you are REAL good so you can do professional math research at universities.) In school I used to work minimum wage as office boy in the math office and I stuffed hundreds and hundreds of rejection letters into envelopes. Look, there are only a few spots in schools, you won't be able to get in unless you are REAL good. Fierce competitions in the few spots in teaching too.

Ok, perhaps you don't have to work in academic institution. You can work for the industries. But where is math in need? Financial markets or some high tech research institution. You will need FAR FAR more than Algebra 1 and even Calculus 1,2,3. And you can't just learn math alone. Financial things, statistics, computer science are must for a math related career. I think math skills is only a small part of a successful math related career.

The headline should say: quantitative analysts with good math skills wanted.

To promote more interest in math, we need a very fun, high budget math education TV show, like Bill Nye the science guy. I don't need to watch adults doing fractions on channel 20 filmed in 1970s again. We should demand more from adults. Fractions is an elementary school topic.

I do not embrace programming frameworks

In the beginning (ok, around 1994) there was HTML, it is so easy that everyone learned how to do <b> <i> tags.
But the most powerful tag is the <img src=file.gif> tag. You can add images! If the WWW only has text and no images, it would never grow to be this big. It was easy back then.

Soon there was need to do form entry! Textboxes, memo fields, radio buttons and dropdown were added. Though crude UI are pale compared to full blown Windows app people were still happy, even to this date.
Now it gets a bit harder. How do we process that form data? Little programs known as CGI to parse text was the first answer,

then there was quick-and-dirty VBScript, and there was Servlets, then everyone was tired of out.println("<title>Hello</title>"); that JSP was invented. A bit tougher than plain HTML but still very manageable.

If it is easy then there is no industry! So got to make it elaborate! Computer scientists need PhD theses. Industries need products! Ok, HTML is just markups and fixed set of tags. Too easy! So got to make it difficult to appear professional! How about you define your own tags: Enter XML. That alone flooded industry for parsing and all sorts of programs to support it.

Here is a fact of life: people write sloppy code if they can.

ASP and JSP are easy but they allow you to write sloppy stuff where you put your presentation code, logic and database code

all in one file. It isn't necessarily BAD, because at least I only have 1 file to look.

The industry's solution to remediate that is design patterns and frameworks! People blindly embrace them without really knowing the evils or merits of such things. XML configurations! Everyone is excited with it so let's let that spice up the framework with properitary XML configs. That makes the easiest tasks difficult. What file is called next? What method will be called by the frameworks? It becomes a very difficult question in frameworks as they are tied by hairy XML configs. Waita minute you are giving me a bunch of NEW HTML tags in the form of tag libraries? I wish JSP never even allow you to define your own tags. If you let people define their own tags, they go wild.

The disciplined programmer can do their own code nicely, without restricting themselves into any frameworks. Sometimes frameworks take away the creative factor in programming.

Oh frameworks can have new versions. And new versions are not compatible with older ones? Now that's nuts. Just why do I have to bend myself to fit your new framework? and new versions of it?

If people write sloppy code in easy environments, they would also write sloppy code in your framework. If something is broken, is it from the bad code or from the bad framework? Are frameworks good or are they evil?

10 year anniversary of 1997

It has been a decade since the Chinese take over of Hong Kong. "One Country Two Systems" put into test! Magazines have predicted doom of the Pearl of the East. Many had little confidence of mainland China's ability to run Hong Kong. Yet Hong Kong is still here, not quite as miserable as many have predicted.

Who remembers the Opium Wars? Though it was pure evil agression, most people in Hong Kong no longer detest the British as they are no longer pushing opium on us. Rather, many embrace foreign rule.

Most enjoyed the freedom and prosperity in Hong Kong as we watch the turmoils in China over some dark periods. Many have feared China's takeover. The 1989 Tinanenmen Square incident alone had many fear tanks running over in Hong Kong and people seek hard to find ways to immigrate out. Besides military actions I am also afraid of forcing us to use simplified Chinese!

This is the reason why I am in America.

Look, if your country's citizens embrace foreign rule or living as foreigners that reflects your country has some problems?

Few has imagine the growth of Chinese economoy nowadays in pre-1997 days. Nowadays many are learning Chinese and hope to do business there. China suddenly become the worlds biggest market and producer.

It is too early to China will rise to the top of the world as the next dominant player in world stage. There is MUCH more catch-ups China need to do, including basic things like product safety. Weed out that government corruptions. Have a plan to help the poor folks in poverty. Educate the vast number of people. Weed out those poor translated English signs in Beijing is a good step. But to fix all of it, do we have to wait for China to host Olympics in every city?

For Hong Kong, it is best to not to influence too much and let them handle their own affairs as Deng has promised. Now what about after that 50 years. Ok, we'll let a whole new generation worry about these. The economic growth of China has also cost much of the air pollution in HongKong. Fix them!

Tigers are wild but they don't eat their own kids

This is a phrase saying even the baddest guys don't harm their own children. Well, this is a regular tiger that is, not a psycho tiger.

Recent local news dominate the headline: dad killing his wife and 3 kids, shot himself and claiming the poor victim wife did it.

Of course, that turns out not to be the case. The father did it!

The Sun-Times talked to experts and come up with this explanation:

Fathers often wipe out their families simply because they're tired of them. They want to be free again, without going through the hassles and obligations of divorce and child support.

Look. What kind of freedom you want to get by wiping out your family? You probably get death penalty, or you lose all your freedom in multiple-life sentences.

The very moment you get married you should expect family. Waita minute, isn't it because you WANT family in the first place to get married? Of course, psychos don't reason.

In America, there may be outrageous situations where you can even get free from murder with some outrageous lawyers. I hope that won't be the case.

When families become burdensome: work with your family, not wipe them out.