228

Today is Peace Memorial Day in Taiwan, in commemoration of the 228 incident.

Calories

Ruby Tuesday's Colossal Burger: 1,940 calories, 141 grams of fat. Not including the fries on the side.

Ruby Tuesday's Fresh Chicken and Broccoli Pasta: 2,060 calories, 128 grams of fat.

Uno Chicago Grill's Pizza Skins appetizer: 2,050 calories, 48 grams of saturated fat.

Wow.

[Courtesy of Center for Science in the Public Interest]

Satya quote

Not that anyone necessarily cares, but I'm quoted in the recent issue of Satya magazine in an article on bird flu. I'm on the second page, under "The Lesser Evil".

Criminals in the army

Can't help but note that no one noticed my blog's new banner, with ancient Chinese. Do you know how hard it is to do that? Particularly in New Blogger?

Anyway, from the New York Times:

New plans for a larger overall force... mean that [Army] recruiters would have to meet higher quotas.

To keep filling the ranks, the Army has had to keep lowering its expectations... So the Army has found itself recklessly expanding the granting of "moral waivers," which let people convicted of serious misdemeanors and even some felonies enlist in its ranks.

Last year, such waivers were granted to 8,129 men and women — or more than one out of every 10 new Army recruits. That number is up 65 percent since 2003, the year President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. In the last three years, more than 125,000 moral waivers have been granted by America’s four military services.

Most of last year’s Army waivers were for serious misdemeanors, like aggravated assault, robbery, burglary and vehicular homicide. But around 900 — double the number in 2003 — were for felonies.... Handing out guns to people who have already committed crimes poses a danger to the other soldiers they serve with and to the innocent civilians they are supposed to protect.

Help foie gras ducks!

[Update: We won! Keep up the good work.]

Please, this will only take a few seconds. Go to this page and, at the bottom, send an email to Giant Eagle to get them to stop selling foie gras. The letter is already written, just type your name and press send.

Foie gras production has been banned in a dozen countries, and in California and Chicago, for its cruelty. Pipes are shoved down birds throats to inject huge amounts of grain several times a day to get birds livers to grow 10 times their normal size, which is eaten as a delicacy. The suffering of birds during force-feeding and from the efects of resulting disease are great. Please, help these birds. It only takes a moment. Click here and do it!

And when you do, post a comment about how good it feels, to encourage other readers to do so :)

Gays

I came across this line in an article on gays kissing in the New York Times: "After considering herself exclusively lesbian for decades, Sarah Van Arsdale, a novelist, not long ago found, to her surprise, that she had fallen in love with a man."

I have seen this happen a lot, where a supposedly gay person decides that they are not gay after all, or that they are bi. So why do gay rights activists always insist that homosexuality is something you're born with and that self-described "ex-gays" are some kind of evil abomination psychologically twisting people to live a lie?


Speaking of which, I am extremely annoyed about gay groups complaining about the Snickers superbowl advertisement. Jokes about men having to act a certain "manly" way are truly ubiquitous. They're on every sitcom. Friends had an entire episode about how a man shouldn't be a nanny. Scrubs again and again has JD doing something not manly enough and having to make up for it by talking about muscles or something. People refer to this stuff all the time. And it's perfectly acceptable. Why is the Snickers ad any different? If using lilac-scented shampoo or plucking eyebrows for a photo shoot is so unmanly that it can be made fun of, why would men kissing be treated differently? Of course, you know where I stand -- our society is rife with anti-male bigotry, and we would never stand for it if these stereotypes were on display against women, blacks, Jews, whatever.

Ok, let's finish on a rant-free note. I fell in love with Tori Amos' music for her emotion-rich songs like "Winter", but I just listened to a live performance of "Waitress" which was very different, nothing like it sounds on the CD, basically a completely different style -- and it was good, if you're into that jazzy grooving kind of music. Would be good to see live. So, I thought I'd share, perhaps haters like Shirley might feel differently about this one. Probably not, though.

Lies

My global warming report lives on: I am quoted for three full paragraphs in today's Christian Science Monitor!

I don't lie. I have nearly never lied since late 1984. Nearly. I hope it means that people trust me. But apparently it puts me out of step with most Americans, according to the Washington Post:

1) Experiments have found that ordinary people tell about two lies every 10 minutes, with some people getting in as many as a dozen falsehoods in that period.

2) One experiment found that nearly 85% of college students had lied in the course of a romantic relationship, most often about another relationship. (These were lies that people voluntarily admitted, so the real number is probably higher.) Nearly to a person, the liars said they were trying to protect the feelings of someone they cared about.

3) A study asking people to recall the worst lie they had ever told and the worst lie ever told to them found that many young people reported that the worst lie ever told to them was by a parent who concealed news that someone they loved was sick or dying. By contrast, parents never thought of such deceptions as particularly serious ethical breaches -- in fact, they saw them as acts of love.

I remember the day I found out that my parents lied to me. I'm not sure when, but I was less than six. It was not something earth-shaking -- my parents told me the food wasn't fish so that I would eat it -- but the idea that I would be so deceived by my parents was a shattering betrayal to me which has remained strong in my memory to this day. I think, whatever the small tactical advantages of dishonesty in the short run, maintaining trust is basically always more important.

Even outside the trust of personal relationships, I can tell you that I would almost always rather hear the truth than the white lie, because I take all these little cues and use them to make up my understanding of the world. The person who says, "Um, sure, those shoes look nice" when they don't mean it may be dooming me to wearing the hideous things again and again. The person who says, "I liked your article" could unknowingly contribute to my abandoning my career and trying to be a writer.

What do you think? Do you want the truth?

Year of the Fire Pig... and Seinfeld

Happy Chinese New Year! Now the 15 days of the Spring Festival have begun. It is the year of the fire pig. In addition to the 12-year animal cycle, there is a cycle of elements too, and the whole thing repeats every 60 years. I, for example, am a water cow. My sister Shirley is a wood rabbit. And Ariella is a water pig.

Which means, that she is a pig, and this is her year! Rumors of dubious authenticity but which have become widespread claim that this is the year of the golden pig which comes once in 600 years and promises wealth. There's no evidence that anyone believed this until recently.

Yesterday I went to a Chinese New Year event at Columbia University that lasted for 5 hours of performances of widely varying skill-levels. The person who played the pipa was amazing, but a lot of performers were absolutely headache-inducingly terrible. That will be the last time I do a Chinese New Year's event. But the fun part was afterwards going to the diner nearby that was featured on Seinfeld. The inside isn't the same as on the show, but it has the same feel. And there was a bunch of Seinfeld pictures on the walls. Can you almost hear the theme music? If that wasn't cool enough, I had an apple pie -- and french fries! These are things I don't eat normally, so it really felt that I was doing the American diner experience, no less exotic in its way than eating Ethiopian with your hands or eating Japanese while sitting on the floor. If only Kramer walked in...

Grey's Anatomy

I saw Last King of Scotland. Good movie. I saw Lost, which was (still) awesome. But what surprised me was that I saw Grey's Anatomy, a show that never really impressed me, but it was really good. I teared up, which almost never happens. I also noted the theme, about who notices you if you disappear, and I noted when Christina says of Meredith, "She's my person", and I can't tell you how good it is to know I have a person. This might not make sense if you didn't see the show.

I recently said to someone, "I think there's something romantic about strong feelings of every kind, they make life richer. Even when they're miserable, there's something to appreciate in the richness." The show made me think about this again, and smile.

Chinese New Year!

Saturday night is Chinese New Year's Eve! Get out the red envelopes, the fire crackers, clean your homes to sweep out the bad luck, eat your year-cake and oranges. Happy year of the pig!

 My theme song for today: Fix You, by Coldplay. This song reminds me of a friend who was crazy about Chris Martin, and told me to listen to this group. This was the song I listened to. That friend is gone, but this song remains. For some reason this amounts to a bittersweet association that rises up angel-like when I hear it.

Brain scans

Here's an interesting article on neuroethics. Apparently scientists have been able to give subjects two numbers, which they could choose to add or subtract, and using brain scans the scientists could not only tell which the subjects decided to do, but they knew what the decision was even before the subject was aware they had made the decision. Some of the frightening implications of such technology for scanning people's minds is discussed.

Happy Valentine's Day

I feel myself overtaken with a fear of the future that grips me inside.

It doesn't help that I got up at a crazy early hour to make a one hour trek through the sleet pelting my face to help a "friend" out who, I found out, had found someone else to do the job.

But it's Valentine's Day, so be happy for all the people out there in love, whether or not you are one of them. Many get depressed today, but you shouldn't. The magic of love shimmers in the air today, and just knowing that should make you smile.

Makes me smile, anyway :)

it is at moments after i have dreamed

Since I've been neglecting the blog for a few days, and with Valentine's Day tomorrow, I thought I'd share a poem by perhaps my favorite poet, e.e.cummings:

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

Pandas

Pandas are so cute when they rock and roll all night (and party every day).

Sports

I was thinking of the superbowl, and how it's boring as plaster, and like any person thinking such thoughts, I was inspired to craft a poem. Writing poems is for losers, but crafting poems, that makes me a craftsman. Er, craftsperson. The key is that you should tell me what you think, and don't be nice, pick it apart, be brutal, my feelings won't be hurt, I want to really know. The sad thing is, it's been more than a year since my last poem.

Sports

I never did understand
The watching of sports.
Like the ocean at night,

It’s black waves invisible,
Pummeling the moonlit sand
With full force, and ceaselessly,

For no reason. Unaware
Of tiny ears adrift
In the roar of its solace.

Frogrange

I like this pic.

Good things in the cold

Yesterday I had the best cupcake in my life. It was a homemade vegan s'mores cupcake, moist, graham-crackery, delicious. I also went to Cafe Viva, a little pizza spot which has good vegan slices. Other good stuff happened too ;)

We smell better

New York City was registering wind chills of minus 11 degrees F. It was painfully cold. And there I was, waiting on the platform for a train for 25 minutes. You people with cars have no idea. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I went to a new dentist, who had all sorts of cool technology. X-rays were digital, and could be blown up on the computer screen and shown in psychadelic colors like it was Photoshop. And instead of just looking at my teeth, he used a fiber optic camera attached to a TV screen, so I could see every little cavity blown up to huge proportion in front of me. And cavities there were... five of them! Dammit.

If you didn't already have a good enough reason to go veg, here's another. We just smell better. According to a recent scientific paper titled "The effect of meat consumption on body odor attractiveness":

Seventeen male odor donors were on "meat" or "nonmeat" diet for 2 weeks wearing axillary pads to collect body odor during the final 24 h of the diet. Fresh odor samples were assessed for their pleasantness, attractiveness, masculinity, and intensity by 30 women. Results showed that the odor of donors when on the nonmeat diet was judged as significantly more attractive, more pleasant, and less intense.

My sister asked me if Sarah Silverman was funny. My answer is, watch clips of her act: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Right now I'm thinking, I'd sure like some ganache-tastic cupcakes. Mmmm...

Go Colts! Superbowl forever!

The superbowl was AWESOME!!! Colts totally rule! Hayden totally kicked it out of there. I *love* football.

This weekend I visited the only municipal rock climbing facility. I need a membership to use it, but I'm thinking of it, it looks really cool.

I also saw the documentary An Unreasonable Man about Ralph Nader. It was so romantic. I hate that guy for what he did, and many of the interviewees expressed their unbridled loathing -- My former boss from U.S. PIRG, Gene Karpinski, was heavily interviewed -- but the movie was an unabashed pro-Nader propaganda piece. It was fine, but I don't particularly recommend it.

Finally, I responded to the mysterious disappearance of all my favorite shirts but slightly jumping the gun on the upcoming Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year) with some 新年新衣 ("New year, new clothes") in Soho. After looking for months without luck for shirts that *pop*, I have discovered the secret: seasons. You have to wait for the dead of winter, right when the nice spring clothes come into bloom.

I decided to see how much my investments are growing, and in the last month I'm up $1000. That's like a free grand. I could easily see how, if I were working a high-paying job and putting away a good deal, I'd soon be making enough investment income that I wouldn't have to work at all. Are you investing? If not, start. The magic of exponents means that you are rewarded enormously just for starting a little bit earlier. Really enormously. Do it.

And, if you're wondering, I'm not sure what position Hayden is, I think he's the goalie. And I think that bears are somehow involved. :S

Squid & Whale

Last weekend I went to the Museum of Natural History, about which Jon Stewart has raved twice on his show. (By the way, John Oliver is the best!) It was a lot like the one in DC which I'd seen a million times, only this one was way more expensive than free. Also, I didn't see the eponymous exhibit from the movie "The Squid and the Whale". I also went to the famous Mudspot cafe, which didn't stand out for me despite the "best of" reviews.

You know who else is awesome? Demetri Martin.

Micius say...

I was reading about 墨子 (pronounced Mwo-dz), who by happenstance shares my Chinese family name. This ancient Chinese philosopher known as Micius had a school of thought that competed with Confucianism during the warring states period (around 400 BC), though it eventually died into obscurity only to be revived in modern times. Fascinatingly, his beliefs seem similar to mine, and were certainly millennia ahead of their time, at least judging by western philosophical tradition.

While Confucius stressed living by ritual and tradition, Micius stressed reflecting on your successes and failures and improving. He was all for innovating rather than patterning life after ancient ways. He encouraged asceticism and self-restraint over extravagance. He believed people should use their senses to analyze the world and determine truth from falsehood, which developed into a school of logic. He was effectively a utilitarian, and judged actions by the benefit that results. He denounced warfare, and would go from king to king trying to stop them from attacking other kingdoms. He believed government should be based on merit and not by class. He was also against music and dancing because these are "useless". I'm not sure I agree with that one, but the rest seems stunningly right for someone 2400 years ago.

He advocated universal love, in which all people would be considered equally valuable. Other schools of thought considered it patently absurd that a person would care about their neighbor's family as much as about their own. But is this not the same Biblical precept of "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? What do you think -- is the principle that all people are of equal value, and that we should love all our fellow man, inconsistent with preference for family?

Anyway, while nowadays it's much cooler to quote Confucianism or Taoism, I think it's cool that I'm a 墨 (Mwo).