What Price College Sports

Would you believe a human life in one case. The Oregonian reported in a lengthy Sunday story about the mistakes made in the search for James Kim. The direct supervisor of the search-and-rescue coordinator ignored a late-night call from her about the case because he was watching an Oregon State football game on television. She was overwhelmed by the demands of the search. She failed to call for help from the National Guard, which meant that heat-detecting helicopters stayed on the ground in the crucial two nights James Kim slept in the forest. I have always wonder why Americans are so fanatic about college football and basketball. After all, there are plenty of professional sports year round for people to watch (and to bet on). I always think that this is bad for the kids since we are sending them the wrong signal, as indicated by the increasing number of college athletes leaving school early, and the number of high schoolers skipping college altogether. But it looks like the cost is a lot higher in some cases.

Red VS Blue

Senator Tim Johnson remains in the hospital in critical condition. When he felt ill and was sent to the hospital yesterday, in-coming Senate majority leader Harry Reid went to the hospital to visit him twice. I wonder if Senator Reid would have done the same thing if his party's majority is more than 1 vote or the ill senator is a Republican. If Senator Johnson is unable to serve, then his replacement will be appointed by a Republician governor and will server until the next general election.

The 103 Million Dollar Man

It cost the Boston Red Sox 103 million dollar to sign Daisuke Matsuzaka for 6 years.
I wonder if he will turn out to be a stud or a dud. There have been both for players coming from Japan. The Yankee's Hideki Matsui is definitely a stud, worthing every penny of his contract. But another Hideki (Irabu formerly of the Yankees) and another Matsui (Kaz formerly of the Mets) both did not live up to expectation. I wonder why the Red Sox decided to make a 103 million dollar gamble. After all, there are other quality pitcher available. The Yankees singed Andy Pettitte for less, and Barry Zito is still available and probably can be had for less.

Big Brother

It turns out that the FBI has found a way to remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. They don't need to get a hold of the phones. They simply download software to the phones remotely. And it works even when the phone is powered off. I wonder what other ways are used by the government to watch us without us knowing about it. If the government knows how to do it, I wonder how long it will take for the bad guys to gain this knowledge. That is if they don't already have it already. Do you know who is listening in on you?

snooze

It turns out that even lung cancer isn't enough of a wake up call for some smoker with lung cancer and had surgery for it.

"Over 40 percent smoke at least at some point after surgery and about 37 percent are smoking regularly at one year. These are conservative estimates. We really think that over half the patients pick up a cigarette again after having their cancer surgery." said Dr. Mark Walker, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine.

I wonder if there is anything short of death that would make these smokers quit. This shows how addictive tobacco is. Most things this addictive and are also bad for us is now illegal. The latest of such substance is trans fat, which has been ban in New York City. I wonder if tobacco would be next. Probably not until the tobacco company can't make any more money out of it.

James Kim: 1971 - 2006

The search for James Kim ended tragically with the discovery of his body. The only silver lining is that his wife and two yound children survived and are in remarkablely good shape physically. I have read some very heated discussion on the net on whether he should have stayed with his family or not. With perfect hindsight, we can all say that had he stayed he would have survived like the rest of his family. But none of us were there so we don't know what it was like. After all, he didn't leave to find help until after they had been out there for over a week. I wonder what I would have done if I was him. Authorities have described his efforts as superhuman. I just hope that I would be able to keep my family alive the way he did if I was ever in a similar situation.

If you would like to make a donation to the Kim family or send something to them, please visit this page.

End of Hunger

Since we still produce enough food for the entire population of the world, ending hunger is still an achievable goal. But in reality the actual situation is not that good now. Many people still go hungry everyday, even in developed countries like the US. I wonder how mush worse it will be when the population has grown to a point where we can't produce enough food for everyone. The US government is apparently very serious when it comes to ending hunger. It is renaming the annual hunger report to the food security report. So as of now there are no hungry people in the US, just folks with very low food security. I wonder what the intelligence security of those folks who came up with this idea is.

If I Did It...

Just when I though that we have heard the last from O. J. Simpson, he will discuss how he would have committed the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend "if I did it". I wonder why he would do such a thing. It turns out he has a very good reason. He is trying to sell some books. I guess some folks would really do anything for money. I wonder if this is just a start of a whole series of books like the dummies series. I am sure there are plenty of materials to write about that is of interest to a wide audience. A few that I can think of off the top of my head (in alphabetical order):

Barry Bonds - I did not use steroids, but if I did it...

Bill Clinton - I did not have sex with that woman, but if I did it...

Bobby Knight - I did not hit my player, but if I did it...

Anna Nicole Smith - I did not marry for money, but if I did it...

Humane Killing

I wonder what took so long but someone finally invented a humane shellfish killing machine. You may ask why but apparently there are places with laws requiring humane killing of animals including crabs, lobsters, and crayfish. The inventor of this machine happens to be a lawyer. So I guess suing or defending inhumane shellfish killers in court weren't bring in enough money for him. I wonder which is more humane, humane killing by such a machine or death due to natural causes. By the way, I also wonder if humane killing some how make the shellfish tastes better. I doubt it since if it was the case the maker of the killing machine would be jumping all over that. Afterall, taste better is a much better marketing point than humane.

Robocall

With the National Do Not Call Registry, I am no longer getting calls from telemarketers. But with the election just days away, I am getting robocall instead. I wonder if there will ever be a similar law to opt-out of receiving election campaigning related calls. Probably not since that would need the votes of people whose jobs are in many case dependent on it. How many people you know would vote themselves out of a job? There wouldn't be any gerrymandering if politicians don't but their own interest first above ours, would it? I wonder how long it would be before we can election related robo-email in our inboxes.

Mud Slinging

Election day is less than a week away. That means it is time once again to be bombarded with campaign ads again. This time around, there are so many negative ads that I wonder if there are any positive (or at least non-negative) ads at all. I actually came across two. But both are from candidates so far ahead that they will be winning by a landslide. I heard an ad on the radio that is so low that I would not have believed it if someone had told me about it. A candidate is being attacked for investing in mutual funds that own stocks in Pfizer and Philip Morris. Do you check every day to see what stocks are owned by the mutual funds that you have invested in? I guess I shouldn't run for public office since I bought Pfizer stocks directly myself. I wonder how many good and capable people we have kept away from running for public office just because they don't want to be subjected to personal attacks.

Happy Birthday

Today is the iPod's birthday. Five years and many supposedly ipod-killers have gone by. The iPod is still the best selling digital music player, dominating the market. The latest want-to-be iPod-killer is Microsoft's Zune. I wonder if the Zune will live up to all the hype and be the iPod-killer that Apple/iPod detractors are claiming that it would be. I don't think so. iPod is more than just a fad. It is 5 years old and it is still go strong. Long live the iPod.

The biggest flop

A few of the sites that I visit regularly (gizmodo, engadget, and crave to name a few) all have coverage of 10 Biggest Computer Flops of all time. This is a first so I had to check the list out. I was very surprise as to what make the top two entries of the list. I wonder how many of the "flops" the author of the list has actually hand-on experience with. I had actually have the pleasure of working on the NeXT computer. No only was the hardware very fast, the OS (NEXTSTEP) is one of the best that I have ever worked with (and I have woked with a few since I have been working in the IT industry for a long time). Yes, commercally speaking NeXT was not a successful. But its technology is still around. It is the basis of Mac OS X after NexT was bought by Apple when Steve Jobs returned to save the company he founded. The only thing that was worse than puting NeXT at number two is to put the Xerox Alto at number one. I still remember the times when computer users all used terminals to connect to large, centralized computers (I told you I have been in IT for a long time). The Alto was way ahead of it times and praved the way for WYSIWYG, GUI, point-and-click computing. Yes, it didn't make Xerox any money. But it is research like this that makes the US the leader in high-tech. The transistor did not make AT&T (Bell Labs) any money, so is it one of the biggest flop in electronics? I would definitely not call them mistakes, they are actaully early versions (call them beta if you like) of two of the biggest successes in computing history. If anyone is going to start a list of the ten biggest flop in making a top ten list, I would like to nominate this list to the list.

BOOM

After repeatedly being warned of grave consequences for nuclear testing, North Korea went ahead anyway. And there are indications that they may do it again. After not being able to stop North Korea from developing and testing nuclear weapon, the world is now warning North Korea not to export its nuclear weapon or know-how. I wonder why North Korea would listen this time. Even if they agree not to do it, they may just be doing it in secret anyway. After all, back in the days when the US was still talking to North Korea one-on-one, they signed the Agreed Framework. But North Korea cheated. I wonder what would stop them from cheating again. Since we can't stop them and we can't trust them, I wonder if there is anything anyone can do but to live with the fact the North Korea will have nuclear weapon and will sell that technology if they chose to. Or maybe we should just evacuate Seoul and bomb them back to the stone age. Since that's (the bombing part for sure, not sure about the evacuation part) what we are going to do when some terrorists buy an A-Bomb from them and set it on in the US anyway.

One <your favorite cause here> Per Child

The BBC is reporting that Libya has agreed to provide its 1.2 million school children with the $100 laptop. Note that it says school children. So I guess children not going to school are not counted. I wonder how close that is to One Laptop per Child in Libya.

Everytime I think about the One Laptop per Child project, I can't help it but wonder what good does a laptop do to a child who is lacking life's basic necessities. I am talking about the really basic stuff, like pottable water, food, and basic health care. According to the FAQ on OLPC's web site, laptops are:

are a wonderful way for all children to learn learning through independent interaction and exploration.

But what about children who are too thirsty, hungry, or sick to learn? Wouldn't it be better to channel our effort into projects like:

Pottable Water per Child

Food per Child

Basic Health Care per Child

Actually someone is working on pottable water, check out PlayPumps. Bringing clean water to 10 million people over the next three years is a pretty good start to pottable water per child.

superpower

They say that after the Cold War there is only one superpower left. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of superpower is:

a: an extremely powerful nation; specifically : one of a very few dominant states in an era when the world is divided politically into these states and their satellites
b : an international governing body able to enforce its will upon the most powerful states

I wonder which country they are referring to as the superpower. If you ask me the United States does not fit the definition above since it is not very successful in enforcing its will up other states. The US has made it very clear that it does not want either Iran or North Korea to have nuclear weapons. Well, North Korea has just tested one, and Iran is on its way to getting one. Nothing the US has done in stopping them has worked. Along with Iraq, these two countries are labelled as the Axis of Evil by President Bush so I don't think the US isn't trying hard enough. One may argue that it still fits the first definition since it is extremely powerful. But if it is so powerful, why is it not winning the war in Iraq? Many people would actually say that it is losing that war. Maybe North Korea should be the sole superpower since it has been able to ignore what all the other nations warning and do the things that it was told it cannot do.

trans fat tax

It seems to me the ban on trans fat is picking up momentum. I heard on the radio this morning that my home state, New Jersey, is considering doing so. I wonder where they will draw the line. After all, there are many things that are just as bad (if not worse) for us. How about a ban on tobacco? Tobacco is certainly worst since second hand smoke hurts non-smokers also. Oh yeah, I forgot about the big tobacco company and their lobbyists. The US had tried out-lawing alcohol before and we all know how that turned out. So how about if we following the tobacco example and impose a trans fat tax. Afterall, we are charging people so that they can get lung cancer. Why not also charge people so that they can clog up their arteries?