FroglySpeaking 坐井觀天

Modern Barcelona of Catalunya

2012-01-19T17:17:00.003-05:00

If you had a chance to read my last blog Old Barcelona of Catalunya, you might have recognized that there is a good historical reason for a strong Catalan identity which has been the case indeed. In fact, I have been carefully using Catalan language for all the names as what locals do. Although the official Spanish (based on Castilian spoken in the Castile region) is closely related to Catalan, people in Catalunya refer refer to it as castellano as an equal to Catalano.

Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalunya) has been in existence as early as 1283 under the Crown of Aragon. It was abolished in 17^th century at north when northern Catalunya was ceded to France by Spain in the Treaty of the Pyrenees, and in the 18^th century at the south when Philip V—the first Bourbon king of Spain won the War of the Spanish Succession and began the rein of a centralized Spain.

Catalunya government was restored in 1932 during the Second Spanish Republic but it was short-lived when the rebelled Nationalists commanded by Francisco Franco defeated the Republicans in 1939 in the Spanish Civil War that began in 1936. Catalans paid a heavy price during and after the Spanish Civil War as a main pillar of the Republic, fighting against Franco’s dictatorship. Catalunya regained its autonomy under the Spanish Constitution of 1978 after Franco’s death in 1975 when the current Parliamentary Monarchy was formed.

Today, Catalunya is one of the 17 autonomous communities (and 2 autonomous cities) of Spain. It enjoys the highest degree of autonomy among them. It has its own Parliament, President and Executive Council. It controls its education, law enforcement, and budget etc. but not nearly as much for the revenue which creates a lot of complaints especially among the Catalan nationalists. The recent debt crisis and austerity measure of Spain that requires the budgets of autonomous communities be approved by the central government first has deepened the worries of the Catalan nationalists. Just as an indicator of how strong the belief in autonomy, Catalan language, once banned from public schools under Franco, is now taught in primary and secondary schools in Catalunya with Castellano (official Spanish) as the second language. It took us a while for us to realize that we will never find museum brochures in Spanish; they are marked as Castellano, next to those marked as Català.

With this long introduction, we are now ready to see Fundació Joan Miró designed by Josep Lluís Sert, which was first open in 1975 to honor Catalan’s own son - the internationally renowned artist Joan Miró (do make sure you pronounce it as Catalans do: [ʒuˈam miˈɾo]). The museum is within a short walk from MNAC on the Montjunic hill I described in my last blog.

Joan Miró was born in 1893 in Barcelona and grew up in the Barri Gòtic neighborhood (introduced in my last blog as well). At this moment, there is a major special exhibit Joan Miró. L'escala de l'evasió (The Ladder of Escape) where 170 pieces of his life time works are presented. His early work, while more traditional and realistic, do suggest his awareness and sensitivity in culture and social political issues. Among those paintings, the most important one is The Farm (see photos at right) that marks his first transition in his long career.

Miró started this painting of his parents’ farm in Mont-roig del Camp (in southern Catalunya) and finished it from memory as he settled in Paris. The details and visual effects conveyed can captured his deep feelings with the Catalan life in his unique style. As the Wikipedia article quoted, Ernest Hemingway, who later purchased the piece, compared the artistic accomplishment to James Joyce’s Ulysses and described it by saying, “It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there. No one else has been able to paint these two very opposing things.” The painting was a gift to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C by Mary Hemingway, widow of Ernest Hemingway.

Miró had never really left Catalunya in his life. When he was in Paris, he returned to Mont-roig every year till Spanish Civil War broke out. He developed his symbolic language and sense of nationalism which appear in much of his work. His 1925 painting Head of a Catalan Peasant is an excellent example. In this and many later paintings of his, the presence and the abstraction of barrentina, the traditional red hat worn by Catalan people and peasants, is more than obvious (see below for the photo of the painting along side with a photo of people wearing barrentina from Wikipedia).

Later he developed further his symbolism with ladder as the connection between earth/reality and the heaven (sun, moon, stars) which appeared in many of his work (see e.g. The Dog Barking at the Moon to the right), thus the title theme of the special exhibit.

Miró eventually made the island of Majorca, his wife’s hometown, his home where he died. Residing in Franco’s Spain, he was never shy in expressing his disdain for the dictatorship government as shown in e.g. his 1974 paintings of The Hope of a Condemned Man I,II, III.

Living through turbulent time in Spain and Europe of early 20th century, Miró has always had war and chaos in his mind as can be seen in his 1938 painting Woman in Revolt (photo to the right) where a woman is running away from her burning village. It was completed right after Miró work The Reaper (aka Catalan peasant in revolt), the mural commissioned from the Government of the Republic for the 1937 Paris International Exhibit. Unfortunately it was lost after the exhibition and can only be seen through photo record. It nevertheless is yet another strong accusation of the atrocity against his homeland by the Fascist. The Reaper was exhibited right next to the famous painting of Guernica (of Basque Autonomous Community of Spain) in a similar vein by none other than the great Spanish/Barcelona artist Pablo Picasso who needs no introduction.

Picasso was also anti-war and had taken strong stand against Franco’s dictatorship including vowing never to return to Spain as long as Franco was alive (another famous Catalan who made a similar vow was the famous cellist Pau Casals). Unlike Miró’s however, Picasso's works were largely devoid of political or nationalist emotion. In the old city of Barcelona, there is the Museu Picasso (Picasso Museum) that has been attracting attention with growing popularity since its opening in 1963. The museum now occupies five consecutive grand palaces with 22 rooms around beautiful courtyards with palm trees, following the architectural plan by Jordi Garcés. Here one finds excellent collection of Picasso’s early work before he changed the world, supplemented with some of his later works.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was born in Málaga in Andalusia (an autonomous community in southern Spain) and was not a Catalan. However his family moved to Barcelona when he was 13 years old and he spent his formative years as a student of arts and protégé in Barcelona where he considered as his true home. Until his self-exile from Franco’s Spain, he divided his time in Paris and Barcelona. Among the most important collection of the museum is the complete series of Picasso’s 1957 work of his interpretations of the 1656 master painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. Of course Diego Velázquez is considered one of the greatest painters ever and is the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. The painting Las Meninas can be seen at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. With the photos below, you can contrast Picasso’s with Velázquez’s original work. By the way, the photos of all the paintings here were sourced from Google Image database since neither museums allow photography.

When it comes to architecture, Barcelona is a city of wonder and second to none in the world. Modernisme català, the Catalan Art Nouveau movement from late 19^th century to early 20^th century in search of the Catalan identity was centered in Barcelona. One great example is the Palau de la Música Catalana near Plaça de Catalunya. Designed by the famed modernist Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1850–1927), it seats over 2,000 and is tugged away in the back of alleys. With natural light shines through the enormous stained glasses skylight and around the three story theater, great concerts and performances have been and continue being enjoyed by people almost daily.

For most, however, the modern Barcelona is synonymous with Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), one of the greatest architects of all time, with quite a few of his work being on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. As one travels in and around the city, one just can’t help but noticing some of the most astonishing structures with unique designs and façades; there is simply nothing like it anywhere else.

One of the reasons why we find so many architecture treasures probably has much to do with the prosperity of Barcelona. It has been a significant economic and geopolitical center of Mediterranean Sea for a very long time. Although there was a setback when the political center of Spain moved to Castile after the Catholic Monarch was established in late 15^th century, it enjoyed the fruits of early industrialization that created many wealthy individuals and families who could afford to build enormous mansions and commissioned architectural genius like Gaudí. One such a rich and influential Caltan in the 2^nd half of the 19^th century was Count Eusebi Güell who had commissioned Gaudí to design his mansion Palau Güell near La Rambla of the old city and Parc Güell, the failed housing development that was never completed and became public park (see photos at right).

Another example is the Casa Milà (aka La Pedrera meaning the 'The Quarry') was built for the wealthy and flamboyant Catalan couple Roser Segimon and Pere Milà. The story goes that Gaudí’s condition for accepting the job was that he would have a free hand to do whatever he wants without budget limit. You can see for yourself the result of it as the photos show below. When we were there, the building was closed to tourists for whole week due to maintenance. I wasn't able to take photos of interior and the roof; you can however find many such photos from web sources by searching e.g. the Google image database.

Yet another incredible work of Gaudí's is the Casa Batlló which is only a short walk south of Casa Milà on the same street - Passeig de Gràcia which is the most expensive and boulevard of Barcelona full of high end shops. The house was built for the textile industrialist Josep Batlló. What soon becomes obvious to visitors when entered is that you will hardly find a single straight line in this 6 story mansion. Countless varying artistic details are being carefully integrated into functions of every room and floor with their distinct purposes, from fireplace through main reception room to attic and chimneys on the roof. The building is simply one piece of art and you feel like you live in and are a part of a sculpture. It is not a collection of nice looking decorations; it is a one gigantic piece of art with shape, color, lights, atmosphere, all included. To be honest, I have never experienced anything like that before. For once, I felt I finally understood the dream of every inspired architect – to build a structure that is the integral of best arts and engineering.

Looking to northeast when on the roof of Casa Batlló, you can see the completed towers of the Basilica de la Sagrada Família (Basilica of the Holy Family) a mile away. Sagrada Família is the crown jewel and the life-long project of Gaudí’s that he started in 1883 at age 31. While the design and architecture plan was completed before his unexpected death in 1926, the construction of it has been continuing at varying rate for the last 130 years, depending on the level of private donations (including ticket sales) as an expiatory church. The church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI on 7 November 2010. It is hoped to be completed by 2026, in time for the commemoration of the 100th year of Gaudí’s death. From the design and the symbolism used, this is the best place to see and understand Gaudí’s expression of his belief as an extremely religious man.

The Basilica has three grand façades. The Nativity façade to the northeast is about the birth of Jesus and was constructed between 1894 and 1930 inclusive of four towers. The Passion façade to the southwest is about the suffering of Jesus during his crucifixion. Its four towers were completed in 1976 and the work of the details of the façade were begun in 1987 by a team of sculptors, headed by Josep Maria Subirachs. The construction of the Glory façade to the southeast began in 2002 and is still ongoing. It is about the celestial Glory of Jesus and represents the road to God: Death, Final Judgment, and Glory.

When completed, Sagrada Família will have 18 spires/towers. The cross on top of the main tower will rise to 170 meters (560 ft) high soaring into the sky to become the tallest church in the world, symbolizing the connection of heaven and earth. The interior of the Basilica is even more breath taking. The central naïve vault is at 60 meters high supported by columns that resemble tree trunks and branches signify God’s creation of nature. Sunlight passing through the large stained glass windows of the Basilica projects colorful lights on the columns and floors. Most importantly, when visiting Sagrada Família, one feels the humility and selflessness that is not coming from the altar, the immense size and elaborate sculptures of biblical figures like many churches do. Rather, it is coming from the expression of respect for nature and god of the heart and soul of a genius architect who stretched his human talents to the limit. Below are some photos of the interior of Basilica de la Sagrada Família and a 3-D model picture from a project by Toni Meca which shows what it would look like when it is completed.

A four day visit like what we just did is too short to appreciate Barcelona and Catalunya. We will have to go back sometime to visit it along with neighboring areas like Montserrat (Gaudi’s major inspirations) and Figueres (Salvador Dali’s hometown). Adéu (Catalan for goodbye), Barcelona! We will be back.

Old Barcelona of Catalunya

2012-01-16T18:52:00.004-05:00

Situated on the shore of western Mediterranean Sea at the northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, Barcelona is a major cultural center and one of the most beautiful cities of the world. It is the second largest city of Spain with a population of 1.7 million. It is the capital of Catalunya, an Autonomous Community of Spain that is consisted of four provinces - Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. To understand Barcelona and Catalan people, one needs to go back in time to appreciate its roots and changing geopolitical significance.

Catalunya has an area of 32,000+ Km² which is about the size of Maryland state of U.S. and a little smaller than Taiwan. Remains of ancient Neolithic people from over 4000 years ago have been found in the area. Being on the Mediterranean Sea, it was colonized by ancient Greeks over 2500 years ago who settled around the Roses area.

The Iberia Peninsula was never immune from the continuous wars in Europe, despite of being isolated from the rest of the Europe on land by the Pyrenees mountain ranges between France and Spain that peak over 10,000 ft at places. It was on the side of Phoenician’s Ancient Carthage (located in what is today Tunisia) against the Roman Republic who were vying for the supremacy in the western Mediterranean Sea.

Although Hannibal (247–183 BC) had led Carthaginians and allies crossed over the Alps with impressive victories in its legendary surprise land attack of Romans in the 17 years long Second Punic War (208-201 BC), Romans eventually prevailed and emerged as the dominant power over Mediterranean Sea and the area became a colony of Roman Empire for the next 400 years.

After the collapse of Western Roman Empire in the 5^th century, the Visigothic Kingdom, one of the Germanic successor states of the Empire controlled the region till the early 8th century when Muslim Moors of the Umayyad Caliphate conquered Iberia Peninsula at the beginning of the 8^th century. Unlike Andalusia of the southern Spain which was ruled by Moors for the ensuing 800 years, Catalunya regained autonomy after only a brief occupation and became a buffer state under the protection of the Frankish Kingdom of the north. Indeed Barcelona was the political center of the Count of Barcelona which ruled Catalunya from 9^th till 17^th century. At its peak, Crown of Aragon which was formed by the dynastic unionof Aragon and the County of Barcelona in 1137 ruled the western Mediterranean Sea with outlying territories in Naples and Sicily and reached as far as Athens in the 13th century.

Barcelona was made into a fort around 15 BC by Romans. Today one can still see the foundation stone laid by the Romans at the Temple d’August near the Plaça Sant Jaume. While the old Roman city wall is no longer visible, one can navigate through the narrow stone-slab streets of the old city that evolved, grew and expanded over the next two thousand years through the Middle Ages to become today’s Barcelona.

To explore and enjoy the city without worrying about transportation, we chose to stay at an inexpensive but nice and modern “minimalist” Hotel Curious in the Ciutat Vella (means Old City in English) district. It is conveniently located on a street right off La Rambla, a 0.7 miles long street of Barcelona that connects Plaça de Catalunya with the 200 ft tall Monument a Colom next to the port. La Rambla was built on a dry river bed and now the busiest street of Barcelona. It has a wide pedestrian mall in the middle that is filled with tourist and locals, café tables/seats, souvenir and flower stands, as well as street performers. Here is an evening shot of it and an interesting street performer who manages to float in the air indefinitely and none of us could figure out how it was done.

The north end of the street is Plaça de Catalunya which is the major transportation hub of Barcelona and where the old medieval Barcelona meets the expansion since 19^th century. Walking southeast towards to the Mediterranean Sea, one will soon pass by La Boqueria, a large 800 years old traditional market popular with locals and tourists alike. A little further south, near the staircase to the Metro Liceu station, you will see, if you look down, the pavement mosaic by the famed Catalan artist Joan Miró. If you look up, the building at the left has an unusual façade with decoration of umbrellas as it was initially an umbrella store. A few steps further, the 165 years old Gran Teatre del Liceu, or simply Liceu, stands at the right which is one of the premier European opera houses where Wagner's Lohengrin was first performed in 1883. It is still active today presents frequently Italian and German operas and ballets. Below are some photos of these scenes.

At the southern end of La Rambla near the Sea, there stands the Monument a Colom which was completed in 1888 at the site where Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage to the Americas. Ironically, it was Columbus’ expedition of Americas in 1492 that marked the beginning of the Spanish Empire and the shift of economic center of Europe away from Mediterranean to Atlantic and thus diminished the economic and political importance of Barcelona/Catalunya. The Catholic Monarchs (bestowed by Pope in 1496) of the dynastic union of Queen Isabella I of Castileand King Ferdinand II of Aragon (in 1469) who shaped the colonial and modern Spain had its court in Toledo of Castile. The court of the Catholic Monarchs was later moved to Madrid in 1561 that became the political center of Spain till this day.

East of La Rambla, a 2-3 hours tour of the maze like Barri Gòtic quarter streets will take you back two thousand years and walk you through the medieval times. Walking north on Carrer del Bisbe Irurita Catedral from the Plaça Sant Jaume where city hall is located, you see the beautiful “Bishop Bridge” that connecting the old residence and office of the bishop which is now the Presidential Palace of Catalunya. Further up the street, tugged away behind the alley on the left, is the tranquil Baroque Plaça de Sant Felip Neri. It is hard to imagine a little over 70 years ago in the morning on January 30th, 1938, bombs were dropped there and many civilians including children were killed by Franco’s warplanes during the three years Spanish Civil War. The history has not been forgotten, nor did the stone façade of the church that was permanently scarred and still protesting silently to this date.

Turning to east, one comes to the 700 years old grand Gothic Barcelona Cathedral which is dedicated to Eulalia of Barcelona, co-patron saint of Barcelona. Behind the Cathedral, one can find a gothic cloister where 13 white geese are kept to memorialize the fact that Eulalia was 13 when she was martyred. Southeast of the Cathedral is the Palau Reial Major that was the royal residence of the counts of Barcelona and Kings of Aragon. In its complex, there is the 14^th century gothic Salo del Tinell room where Queue Isabel and King Fernando received Columbus after his return from America. It was also where the Spanish Inquisition (of Barcelona) took place. It was believed that the walls of the room would move if the accused are not truthful !

To get a sense of the Catalan culture and arts that thrived through the medieval days of Europe, one must visit the wonderful National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). It is housed in the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc hill, overlooking the Plaça d'Espanya and Font Màgica fountain below. The museum has one of the best collections of Romanesque (10^th-13^th century) arts in the world. Of particular importance are its unique collections of murals and sculptures of Romanesque churches and chapels on Pyrenees mountains of Catalunya (see photos below). They remind me of the murals found at places like Mogao Caves of China which were painted between 5^th to 14^th century (corresponding to the Middle Ages) but at a much larger scale.

MNAC is organized in galleries by period, from Romanesque to Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and finally Modern era. Strolling through these galleries in chronological order, one gets a distinct impression in few hours of the changing time and society over one thousand years. In particular, the trend and development towards to humanism is unmistaken. The subjects of the artists have become increasingly secular and diverse. The story tellings and expressions have gone from completely religious focus to the other extreme of self-examinations.

This concludes my highlights of Old Barcelona. Next stop is the Modern Barcelona. Talk to you soon!

Person of the Year

2011-12-21T13:55:00.000-05:00

Ever since 1927, Time magazine reveals its choice of Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year till 1998) by its editors at the end of every year for the person or persons “who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.”

For obvious reasons, the majority of the selections have been political leaders in U.S. and the world. Most of them proved to be excellent choices in hindsight if not then. For ones related to China, Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek were named in 1937 when they led China to fight against Japanese invasion. Deng Xiao-Ping was named in 1978 when he returned to power and began a series of reforms in China. Somehow, Time missed opportunities of putting Mao ZeDong up although it did eventually include him in 1999 on its list of Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century (again, regardless good or evil).

The first time when Time magazine named an unorganized and anonymous group of people as Man of the Year was in 1966, against the backdrop of escalating Vietnam War and the (Afrian-American) Civil Rights Movement in U.S. It gave them the name The Inheritor and the profile: “ … ran the mile in 3:51.3, and died under mortar fire at An Lao. He got a B-minus in Physics I, earned a Fulbright scholarship, filmed a documentary in a Manhattan ghetto, and guided Gemini rendezvous in space. He earns $76 a week with Operation Head Start in Philadelphia, picks up $10,800 a year as a metallurgical engineer at Ford, and farms 600 acres of Dakota wheat land. He has a lightning-fast left jab, a rifling right arm, and reads medieval metaphysicians. He campaigned for Reagan, booed George Wallace, and fought for racial integration....”

Almost half a century later in the December 14^th 2011 issue, Time magazine chose The Protester as the 2011 Person of the Year. The cover story recounted the waves of protests like brush fire such as the Arab Spring from Tahrir Square of Cairo in Egypt to streets of Damascus in Syria, and those in Europe from streets of Madrid, Athens to London and Moscow, and in U.S., the movement of Occupy Wall Street. The cover story notes that “All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. ”Unlike the Inheritors of 1966, there is no ideological consistency and it is global this time. The most indicative of all and the one thing the Protestors do share in common is what Time’s quote of Miral Brinjy, a 27-year-old blogger and TV-news producer who grew up in Saudi Arabia: "I know what I don't want."

There is no doubt that such discontent and frustration expressed on the street have been simmering for quite sometimes and have reached boiling point in 2011. All they were waiting for was another straw or a spark. For the Arab Spring, it was literally the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi when he set himself on fire with gasoline and a match in desperation. In Occupy Wall Street, it was the peaceful protest initiated and planned by the Canadian activist group Adbusters at the Zuccotti Park near Wall Street with the sole purpose to draw attention to the growing income and wealth inequality. But you can easily trace it back to preceding years as seen in the Tea Party movement, or as expressed earlier by singer and song writer James McMurtry in his 2006 AMA (American Music Association) Song of the Year - "We Can't Make It Here" below (see the lyrics here)

There is no doubt that Internet and social media have brought the potential and dynamics of crowd forming to a new level. And there is no doubt that accelerated news cycle and increasing sensationalism by mass media has fueled and incited extreme reactions and promoted polarizations, intentionally or not.

The potential for destruction of the power of crowd has always been feared by many especially those who are in power and favor status-quo. Occasionally, we find few crafted ones such as Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong who made use of the crowd psychology like suggestibility and contagion to advance their agenda and position at the national scale. Crowds by definition are transient and dynamic. The emotion can explode and dissipate in no time with few memorable moments or meanings in between. How many of us still remember the Vancouver riot 6 months ago? To jug your memory, here is the famous photo of the Kissing Couple of the Vancouver Riot that was just named by Esquire magazine the Photo of the Year 2011.

Gustave Le Bon, the French social psychologist and pioneer of crowd psychology, told us more than 100 years ago in his influential 1895 book La psychologie des foules(English translation The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind) that one key characteristic of crowd is that it “can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence.”He observed that crowd is formed when the heterogeneous intellectual individuals are overwhelmed and taken over by common ordinary quality of unconsciousness. Have you ever had the temptation or encouraged by the anonymity and done something that you normally wouldn’t do when you disappeared into a crowd?

Now year 2011 is coming to an end, the more challenging and open question is if and how the energy of the Protestor can and will be transformed into positive lasting changes and new orders. The alternative would be painful but sometimes necessary, which is to go through the full cycle of the crowd development from snowballing to crashing, followed by opportunities to rebuild the new from ashes.

Wish you Happy Holidays and Exciting New Year!

The Ultimate Patriotism

2011-12-13T18:03:00.001-05:00

For quite some time, many eyes have been on Italy who is one of the key dominoes at risk in current Europe’s debt crisis. Like many other European countries where public funding for arts is the primary source of income for organizations and facilities devoted to arts, the ever increasing pressure on reducing government spending/debts and the implementations of austerity measures have inflicted severe damages on the development and sustaining of Italian’s culture programs, opera included.

Opera was born in Italy around 1600 and its popularity has quickly spread to Europe and eventually the world. It remains to be a dominant form of performance arts in Italy with more than 40 opera houses throughout that country. It is not an exaggeration if one wants to consider opera a symbol of Italian culture.

Indeed the public sentiment and concern had reached the boiling point earlier this year when the world-renowned Italian conductor Riccrado Muti conducted the performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco in Rome on March 12^th, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. Muti interrupted the performance after the chorus of Va' pensiero and turned to the audience to express his concern that Italy would be lost with the continuing onslaughts of cuts in arts funding. He then asked the audience to sing along with the chorus to perform the most unusual encore of Va’ pensiero as demonstration of their patriotism. Below is a video recording of the event.

For those who are familiar with Italian opera, the political symbol of the song Va’ pensiero is unmistaken. Giuseppe Verdi, the 19^th century transformational figure of Italian opera, wrote Nabucco which was first performed in 1842, contributing to the Italy unification movement. It tells the story of the Jews' struggle for freedom after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. by Nebucco, the King of Babylon. The best-known song from the opera is Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate (in English: Fly, thought, on golden wings), aka "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” that many had wanted it to be the Italy’s national anthem.

Often we associate patriotism with actions/reactions of people in response to threats on their country’s physical, social or economic existence or well-beings. However when one’s cultural roots are in danger, the outpouring of spontaneous support and emotion by average citizens as demonstrated by the audience that evening is more than remarkable. Any country whose people care so much about their cultural identity is enough to convince me that they will be able to pull through difficult times. Viva Italia!

Before I go, I would like to leave you a few Youtube videos of beautiful arias of Italian opera with English subtitle. What I have chosen for you are from the opera Turandot which is the last opera of Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924), one of the most popular 20^th century opera composers. The particular production is the legendary 1987 production of Franco Zeffirelli at the New York Metropolitan Opera with Placido Domingo (tenor) and Leona Mitchell (soprano) and Choreographer Ching Chiang 江青.

It was based on a Persian story, set in China (of Yuan Dynasty), about the pursuit of the ice cold Mongol Princess Turandot by the exiled Prince Calàf. The most Chinese part of the opera, apart from the adaptation of the Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower 茉莉花, is the rule for the suitors of the Princess: a suitor must answer three riddles correctly or be executed.

The first 8+ minutes of the video below is the exchange in Act I between Prince Calàf and the slave servant Liù who secretly loves him and desperately wants to convince him not to enter the contest which in all likelihood would result in his death. As one might expect, the Prince, blinded by his ambition, ignores her plea and asks her to take care of his frail father should he fail. The exchanges are Signore, ascolta! "My lord, hear me!" and Non piangere, Liù "Don't cry, Liù" with the scene ended as Prince Calàf enters the contest sounding the gong.

When Prince Calàf answers all three riddles correctly, Princess Turandot is still resisting and does not want to honor the agreement. To win over her heart, Prince Calàf offers her a way out if she can tell his real name. The result was an all night frenzy of the capital city in search of his name as Prince Prince Calàf sings arguably the most popular opera aria of all time - Nessun dorma! (None shall sleep!), with the confidence that he will win the wager. See the three minutes segment (from minute 3:30 till 6:30) of the video below. By the way, the three riddles are: 1) 'Straniero, ascolta!' - What is born each night and dies each dawn?, 2)'Guizza al pari di fiamma' - What flickers red and warm like a flame, but is not fire?, 3) 'Gelo che ti da foco' - What is like ice, but burns like fire? Want to give them a shot?

As Princess Turandot tries to extract Prince Calàf’s name by torture from his slave servant Liù, Liù taught Princess Turandot the true meaning of love before she kills herself to protect the secret. See the first 8+ minutes of the video below.

Enjoy and talk to you soon!

Color Theory in Practice

2011-12-06T20:39:00.002-05:00

In my last blog, I addressed the theoretical aspects of the color theory. In this installment, I shall turn my attention to the practice and the fun part - the visual perception and illusions as well as aesthetics induced by color. I will use some illustrations with my work from projects in the class. If you are familiar with visual arts, you may note the principles have been used extensively by artists for a long time. If you aren’t, you will see that they are present everywhere from fashions and advertisements to interior design and product packaging. And you may then realize that you have been conditioned sublimely already. Here is a quick test: can you name “the little blue pill”.

The focus and interests of artists are obviously different from the scientists or technologists. Scientists seek to understand, explain, and to predict the occurrence of a phenomenon. Technologists seek to create methods and tools that allow people to perform tasks which are otherwise difficult or laborious. Artists on the other hand are interested in expressing themselves and to communicate through human sensory systems using available media and tools. As such, it is the totality of the work when one composes or puts together component parts (in our case, the colors) that interact with each other and with the viewers. Here are some cases in point about the Interactions of colors:

Seeing afterimages is one experience that we all have had regularly but may not be aware of it. It is an optical illusion whereby an image continues to appear in our “vision” after we have stopped looking at the object. It is now known that our eyes automatically adapt to exposure of light to protect them. For instance, if you stare at a bright red object for a while, your eyes will tune out the signals at the red wavelength. As a result, one sees afterimage of the object in green which is the complementary color of red (at the opposite end of the color wheel). Try it, you can easily verify the effect by staring at a bright colored object for a short while and then shut your eyes.

A more intricate effect is the so-called simultaneous contrast that can produce interesting deceptions to our vision. The figure on the left below is my attempt of making the center squares (which are of the same color) appear to be two different colors utilizing the contrast with their backgrounds. The figure on the right below is my attempt of making the center squares (of two distinct colors in this case, as shown by the two rectangles at the bottom) appear to be the same color. Both illustrate the notion of simultaneous contrast.

Yet another famous example is called The Bezold Effect, named after the rug designer Wilhelm von Bezold. He discovered that he could change the appearance of a rug design by simply changing one of the main colors in that design or by adding one other color. My two designs below show his idea. They share an identical pattern in three colors of which two are the same in both designs. Do you see them as two distinct patterns?

Switching gears, more often than not, artists are constrained to use a two-dimensional surface to convey a 3-D experience. A common way of creating the perception of space and depth is to make use of perspectives developed from our visual experiences in life. For instance, we are accustomed to linear perspective whereby objects appear smaller when they are further away from us. We are also used to the relation of overlapping objects when the nearer objects obscure the viewing of objects further back.

Artists and designers have created many interesting optical illusions by intentionally giving conflicting perspectives as shown in, for example, the famous “never ending staircase” of the lithographic print Ascending and Descending by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher. Note no color was needed in such illusions.

Color no doubtedly offers additional dimensions and opportunities as exemplified in realism paintings. For example, we are all familiar with the vanishing point and the atmosphere or aerial perspective where the contrast in color and value are much weaker for objects at distance which appear to be more bluish. Such an effect could be explained with the scattering and obscuring effects by particles in air. Similarly, we often perceive objects in warmer colors (red, orange, yellow) appear to be closer to us than objects in cooler colors (green, blue). It is related to the chromatic aberration as our physicist friends would say.

At end of the day though, each artist need to choose a particular color pallet to express certain mood and atheistic feels. Some have used a single color family to achieve impressive results. One possibility is monochromatic color scheme - nuances and contrast can be created by varying the value of a single color when mixing it with different amount of white or black. The painting below on the left is one example by Pablo Picasso in his Blue Period (now you know why the name). Another possibility is to use different values of gray mixed with a chosen color as the painting below on the right illustrates. It is done by the famous early 20^th century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi who often paints in chromatic grays.

There are of course numerous color schemes that have been documented in color theory and believed to achieve certain style and feel, be it harmony or discord. Examples include triadic (three colors in 120 degree apart on color wheel such as yellow, blue, red used in Burger King logo) and analogous (three or more colors close to each other on color wheel such as red/orange/yellow used in A&P supermarket logo). The grand finale of this semester long class I am taking is to create an art or design work one that uses the principles learned from the class. My choice is create an image of a personal (Chinese) chop/seal.

When I was growing up in Taiwan, I always dreamed of owning a personal chop one day with a design and material of my choice. Such a feeling is not uncommon among Chinese youths since personal chop has been used in China for thousands of years like a public notary seal used in U.S. It is required in business and symbolizes the acceptance of one’s identity by the society as a legal entity. Chop thus has been a subject of Chinese artists and calligraphers through history and my choice for my final project.

The resulting work is shown at the right. My design is based on the traditional red inked square chop with my three-character Chinese name that reads from top-down and right to left. The last character means “seal”. The script I have chosen is the Small Seal 小篆 the first unified script over 2200 years ago under the First Emperor of China. The distinct feature of my design is a self-portrait in the background which is not present in traditional chops.

The color scheme used in this design is double complementary, in particular, the tetrads – red/green and yellow-orange/blue-purple which as 90 degrees apart on the color wheel. It is completed with monochromatic green and chromatic gray with green that are applied to the self-portrait such that it recedes into the background to provide spatial perspective.

Now I have shown you my chop. You can figure out my Chinese name, can’t you? Talk to you soon!

Color Theory - where Science/Technology and Visual Arts meet

2011-11-21T15:49:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wonder what the world would be like if we can only see black and white, and shades of gray? Have you ever wondered what do human’s animal friends and foes see? Many of us played with crayons when young and learned the basics of theory of color in the introductory science class. But if you want to tweak colors in a photo using software like Photoshop, or want to mix color paints to create a new color for desired effects, what works and what doesn’t, and why? What is color and how much do we know about color anyway? Below is the first installment of my report from my current study of Color Theory that is a required basic course for most Fine Arts degrees.

Color begins with light; if there is no (visible) light, there will be no color perceived or to speak of. Everyone has been awed when young by rainbows but it took quite some time before scientists figured out what is rainbow, how they are formed and why they look the way they do. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest physicists, published his seminal work Opticks in 1704 in which he discussed, among other things, how (white) light can be split (by refraction) into color lights with a prism. He identified the seven basic colors of light seen after splitting - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, or “ROY G. BIV” as every American kid was taught in grade school. Of course, light spectrum is continuous and there just aren’t enough names to describe them all with arbitrary granularity. Sir Newton also showed that white light can be created with overlapping lights of colors.

We now know that technically speaking, humans can only detect different “colors” in a narrow spectrum of electromagnetic (EM) radiation between roughly 390 to 750 nanometers (nm) in wavelength, or 400 to 790 Tera Hertz in frequency (see the reference chart below for the whole range of EM radiation). Given such a wide possibility, one should not be surprised that different species of animals and insects “see” the world differently. It turns out that many birds, bees and insects can see ultraviolet (UV) wavelength in 300-400 nm And some snakes, fishes, and mosquitoes can see infrared (IR) of wavelength in 700-3,000 nm range (where humans would need help with a night vision device to “see”). Note that regardless of the color, there are many animals and insects that can also detect objects under much dimmer light compared to humans.

While evolutionary biologists can tell you and I why and how such distinct visual sensory systems came about, scientists now have a pretty good idea how human vision works. In particular, humans have a huge number of neurons (photoreceptor cells) in the retinas of our eyes that can detect and convert the light information to signals and transmit them to the brain for further processing. There are about 120 millions of photoreceptors (called rods) for detection of light beyond some intensity and 5 millions of photoreceptors (called cones) for detecting lights of certain wavelengths (see the diagram to the right of the structure of eye). It so happens that humans have three types of cones that are capable of detection of color Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) that determines pretty much what colors we see.

In contrast, other species of animals and insects have distinct ability in color detection depending on how many types of cones they have and what wavelengths of light they can detect. For example, cats and dogs have only two types of cones and can only detect Yellow and Blue colors but not the red. Some mammals have none and are color blind. On the other hand, some birds and fish have four types of color-sensitive cone cells, giving them greater sophistication in distinguishing colors. And bees have three types of cones like humans but they can detect shorter wavelengths and can see the ultraviolet as mentioned earlier. They use their better color vision to search for nectars and can distinguish flower colors invisible to human. At the other end of spectrum, mantis shrimps have ten types of rods and presumably see a lot finer colorful world. The bottom line is even when some animals, insects can detect radiation in overlapping range of the EM wave, they don’t necessarily see the same colors. For more detailed discussions, you can read the excellent article Color in Nature by Philip Ball.

Astute readers by now have probably noticed that when discussing how colors are detected by our visual system, there was no mentioning of the source of the light. What Sir Newton has focused on was the white light itself as emitted from a light source and its color as seen by the eyes. The source could be the sun, a light ball, a flash light, a TV screen or a computer monitor. And it is an additive process, i.e., our eyes receive all the component lights of various wavelengths combined together. For the rest and majority of the colors of objects we see, eyes receive lights coming from the reflections of the light shined on the objects. Thus if the object absorbs all lights completely, we would see and consider it has color black. In other words, the perceived color of the object (e.g. on a printed page) is the result of subtraction: our eyes receive original light minus whatever wavelengths and amounts of light spectrum that were absorbed by the object. For more detailed discussions, one can start with the Wikipedia article pigment and the references therein.

Artists (and other –ists) before and after Newton have been well aware of the distinctions between color of light and color of an object empirically. However it wasn’t until 100 years later in early 1800s when the German writer/scientist/artist Johann Goethe challenged and addressed the limitation of Newton’s theory of light and laid the foundation of a practical theory that are used in our daily life now. Color theory is in fact still an active area of research as it touches upon and calls for contributions and inventions from artists and scientists ranging from biologist to cognition psychologist to understand and make use of our visual ability fully.

With the introduction above, we are now ready to talk about color models. A good place to start for any theory is a good model – something that provides us the structure and means to approach and discuss an otherwise intractable and complex phenomenon like our perception (and illusion) of color. For historical and technical reasons, there are unfortunately many different color models for different applications (while sharing some of the same vocabulary) that cause a lot of confusion for beginners.

Most of us have heard of the popular RGB color model which is based on the use and additive properties of the additive primary colors Red, Green, and Blue lights to generate a broad range of colors. It is most often found in TV, mobile phone, and computer displays, scanners, camcorders and digital cameras. There is also the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, black/Key) color model used in color printing that relies on the subtractive properties of the primary colors of Yellow, Magenta and Cyan. Alternatively, artists typically use the RYB color model and refer them to 12 colors Color Wheel – three (Red, Yellow, and Blue) subtractive primaries along with nine secondary and tertiary colors that are placed around a circle uniformly. The cool thing with the color wheel is that the pair of diagonally opposite colors – the so called complementary colors, when mixed, neutralizes each other and produces eventually a gray. See the figure to the right that I did in the class using only Yellow, Blue and Red acrylic paints.

Since both RGB and CYMK color models are device-dependent (i.e.: different devices/material necessarily detect or reproduce a given RGB value differently), there is no fixed representation of the color and they do vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and difficult to convert and match. Continuing efforts have been made to create device independent models that can describe all the colors visible to the human eye and are perceptually uniform (i.e., a change of the same amount in a color value should produce a change of about the same visual importance). Of particular interest is the most recent Color Appearance Model standard - CIECAM02, ratified by CIE (Internationale de l´Eclairage or The International Commission on Illumination, an international non-profit organization). The model has been quantified with rigorous subjecting testing in lab and careful measurements of perceptual responses. It is based on the widely used Munsell color system that separates color-making attributes into three independent dimensions - hue, value, and chroma.

A 3-D diagram illustrating the notion of Munsell color system is shown to the right. Technically, Hue codes the distinctive color from red, blue, green and yellow. Value (or lightness vs. darkness) indicates the relative brightness to the brightness of white under similar viewing conditions whereby brightness is the perceived amount of light emanating from the observed object (just think of the brightness associated with different wattage of of common household light bulbs). Chroma is the colorfulness relative to the brightness of white under similar viewing conditions whereby colorfulness is the degree of difference between a color and gray which is neutral in color. Note in this definition, chroma is different from saturation which is the degree of purity of a hue. That is, chroma is the purity relative to gray and thus to other colors while it is only meaningful to talk about (relative) degree of saturation of a color by itself.

So far we have been focusing on aspects of color theory from scientific and technological perspectives. Scientists seek to understand, explain, and to predict the phenomena. Technologists strive for creating methods and tools that allow people to perform tasks which are otherwise difficult. Artists on the other hand express themselves and communicate to people via their sensory system plus imagination. Indeed, artists have been creating visual languages in color intuitively and successfully long before science was even developed. In my next installment of color theory, I will show some illustrative examples of what one can do with colors. Talk to you soon!

7 Billion and Going Strong

2011-11-11T14:27:00.000-05:00

According to the United Nations, the world populationreached 7 billion on Oct 31^st, 2011, the Day of Halloween Day. And the honor of being the 7 billionth baby wentto a girl who was born in the Philippines (see a newsreport and party photo.) If UN’sgoal was to sound the alarm (again) and draw attention to the concern about ourever increasing world population, they have got my attention.

There have been continuing discussions by scholars, analysts,and journalists of the recurring worry – howmuch longer can the planet earth support its ever increasing population and howmany people can planet earth sustain. It turns out these questions are verydifficult to answer with certainty and the estimates vary widely with differentassumptions and extrapolations. Nevertheless, the exact numbers is not nearly as important as the methodologyof the analysis and the few basics and boundary conditions.

To begin with, let us agree on why the population keeps growingand what is required to keep it at a constant level. The answer to the question of “why” should be intuitiveand non-controversial: any system would be growing if the incoming rate exceedsthe outgoing rates in long enough time scale. We experienced it frequently in our everyday life and observed when therates are not balanced. For example, wesaw our kitchen sink backed up when the drain was clogged; we encountered longdelays at bridges and tunnels during rush hours when arrival rate of trafficexceeded the rate of what these conduits can clear. There is no difference for population: whenthe rate of births is higher than the rate of death, we can expect the populationwould grow, ignoring the time lag factor of life span for now.

How have we been doing lately regarding these rates? The frequently used technical term is the (crude)birth rate (CBR) which is simply the number of birthsin a given year for every 1,000 persons in a given region. If you go to Wikipedia and look up the List of countries by birth rate,you can find that for instance, CIA World Factbook estimated in 2009, birthrate by country/region ranged from the highest in Niger (a western Africacountry) at 51.60 (per thousand) to the lowest in Japan and Hong Kong at about7.5, while U.S.’ CBR stood at 13.82 and India was at 21.6.

To make some sense of these numbers, we need to compare themwith the (crude) death rate (CDR) ofthese countries. Death rate in Niger,Japan, Hong Kong, U.S. and India were estimated by the same document at 14.83,9.54, 6.76, 8.38, and 6.23 (per 1,000 people), respectively. In other words, there was an estimated netincrease of population of 37, 0.74, and 4.4 per 1,000 people in Niger, HongKong and U.S. respectively and a net decrease of 2 per 1,000 people in Japan inyear 2009. Since U.S. had a populationabout 300 millions, it simply says there was an estimated 1.3 million netincrease in population.

An alternate and intuitive way of looking at the growth rateof our population is to consider the total fertility rate, which is the averagenumber of children born to each woman over the course of her life. The reasoning goes like this: if the averagenumber of female babies born per woman in her childbearing ages is exactly 1,then the population would remain a constant since that female baby wouldreplace the mother, no more and no less. The equivalent technical term of replacement fertility rate is thus alsofrequently used which is simply the average number of children, either male orfemale, required to replace the mother. Oncewe account for the skew due to chromosome difference (there are slightly moreboys than girls born due to the built-in bias in reproduction process in favorof the Y chromosome) and the infant mortality, the replacement fertility is at about2.1 births per woman for developed countries and more than 3.0 for manydeveloping and underdeveloped countries. Niger’s fertility rate of 2009 was estimated to be 7.07 (according tothe CIA World Fact Book).

Some may argue that we should not worry since the world populationgrowth rate has been declining in recent years and has reached a very modestrate of 1.1%. Ignoring issues of hugedisparities among regions and countries for the time being, should we beworried or not? Professor EmeritusAlbert Bartlett of University of Colorado at Boulder had the following to sayabout the reality of steady growthand how most of us ignore it: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." He was referring to ourfailure in recognizing how explosive it really is of anything that grows at aconstant rate. Watch the lucid lecture he gave below, entitled Arithmetic, Population,and Energy. It should convince youwith just the first 10 minutes of the videos that steady growth is scary unlessit happens to be your investment and bank accounts.

Now we can return to our original questions of how much longer can the planet earth supportits ever increasing population and how many people can planet earth sustain. We are going to focus on the 2^ndpart of the question since we already have the ideas of the growth rate. If we have an estimate of how many people theplanet earth can sustain, we can easily estimate how long it would take for thepopulation to grow and hit that level with the given population increase rate andvarious assumption like what Professor Albert Bartlett has demonstrated.

The big picture looks as follows. We can all agree that the minimum and most basicresources for our survival are obviously food and fresh water (assuming air isnot an issue). It has been estimated that planet earth hasover 300 million cubic miles of water but only 3% of it is fresh water. Further, two third of the fresh water is infrozen form such as ice cap and glaciers which is necessary to keep the earth cooland sea level in check. In all, we haveabout 3 million cubic miles of (mostly renewable) fresh water and only 0.3% (oralmost 10,000 cubic miles) of it is on the surface (in lakes, rivers, snows,etc). The rest are underground and notnecessarily accessible.

You may or may not know what we drink directly is just atiny fraction of our total fresh water consumption. The dominant consumption of freshwater isactually for food production – 70% of the fresh water consumption is foragriculture. With today’s efficiency, weneed for example, 3,000 gallons or over 11 metric tons (11,000 Kilograms or24,000 pounds) of fresh water to grow one bushel (about 25 kg or 56 pounds) ofcorns. We need about 900 metric tons ofwater to grow one metric ton of wheat. And it takes 2,500 gallons or about 10 metric tonsof water to produce one pound of beef.

Some researchers have offered an overallestimate that it takes in average about 3,000 liters (or 3,000 kg) of freshwater to produce food of recommended daily dietary need for just one person. If you assume that fresh water (renewal)cycle is in average 2 years (too short?), i.e., time takes after theconsumption of fresh water till it becomes available and is consumed again, andthat majority of fresh water supply is from surface, then with some simple arithmetics,the earth should be able to sustain about 7.5 billion people with decent nutrition. Now you can understand why there arealready so many starving people in the world given uneven distribution andlocal overpopulations.

We haven’t even talked about the connectedissue of the availability of arable land and other limiting factors which arerequired for food production. The factis China, India, and many countries have been busy buying and leasing land inAfrica to produce food for their domestic consumptions. This should give you a pretty good idea ofwhat is going on. We also have not goneinto the details of the assumption of the living standards for some of thoseestimates. Obviously, there is a huge differencein the per person consumptions of resources for U.S. and for countries like Niger. With all these considerations, RossMcCluneyestimated in his article of How Many PeopleShould the Earth Support? that the planet earthcan support about 6 billion people if U.S. and Western European keep theircurrent level of prosperity and the rest of the world live like Mexicans. Obviously it is too late to debate that as wealready past the 7 billion milestone at the end of last month. He also estimated that the earth can support 20billion people if everyone lives like Mexicans and 40 billion if everyone liveslike people in today’s northwestern Africa. But would you be ok to live like that?

Along with the rich resources and informationcompiled on the EcoFuture web site, onefinds two interesting quotes which still ring true today and worth repeatinghere. One was by the late Isaac Asimov, afamous biochemist and writer. In his Oct1988 interview with Bill Moyer, he said: "...democracy cannot survive overpopulation.Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. Asyou put more and more people into the world, the value of life not onlydeclines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more peoplethere are, the less one individual matters." The other is a popular but un-sourcedquote by the late Robert McNamara who was the Secretary of Defense overseeingthe escalation of Vietnam War and former World Bank President. He supposedly had said: “Short of nuclear war itself, populationgrowth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem willbe solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.”

What McNamara was referring to have been happening in manyplaces at smaller scales including the ongoing Africa Horn as we speak. The “good”news is if the problem is not addressed soon enough, it will be solved for usanyway. Planet earth will continue on fora very long time after you and I died, and with or without humans. The bad news is the solution is going to bereal ugly, much worse than the often criticized China’s one child policy. There will be conflicts, famines, wars, andmassive deaths as people will be fighting for the little remaining availableresources. Meanwhile the continuing deteriorationof the environment and climate change could only accelerate the downward spiraland further reduce the available resources. By then, it will be too late forthe occupants of earth to try to reverse it. What do you think we should do now?

Presidential Leadership

2011-11-07T16:33:00.000-05:00

In the current issue (2011 November 7^th) of TimeMagazine (U.S. edition), ChrisMatthews wrote a 2,000+ words feature article, entitled Five Things JFK could Teach Obama. Chris Matthews is an outspoken and articulatedpolitical commentator. He is an avidadmirer of President Kennedy. He wasvery enthusiastic about and having had high expectation of President Obamaduring last presidential election in 2008.

You may or may not agree with Chris Matthews political viewsor may or may not support President Obama. But the article does make excellent observations about what are missingin President Obama’s leadership for wanting to be a transformative president. Such insights are useful for leaders (andthose aspired to be a leader) in general. Equally important for those who care about the future of Taiwan, much ofChris Matthews’ unsolicited advices for President Obama are strikingly useful toPresident Ma of Taiwan, ROC as well. Since the full article is not accessible without a Time Magazinesubscription, I summarize and discuss it below.

The five things Chris Matthews wants President Obama do are:

1)You’ve Got to Ask ChrisMatthews starts with the frequently quoted phrases of Kennedy’s 1961 Inauguralspeech "Ask not what yourcountry can do for you - ask what you can do for your country". He expands it further and points out that thepresident cannot do it alone, and must ask and invite his fellow citizens to joinhim and to follow him with specific actionable programs. Chris Matthews clearly feels disappointed thatPresident Obama had stopped at asking people after the election and left hisenthusiastic supporters watching at sidelines. His advice for President Obama is simple: start asking.

2)Create a Political Band of Brothers and Sisters ChrisMatthews notes that Kennedy had forged a team of confederates including capableyoung lieutenants who are middle class to the core. In contrast, he has not seen President Obama forgebounds and only see “a band of political neutrals” around him. He can’t stop wondering who would speak up forObama with real passion these days when things get tough. Chris Matthews also relates a story that saysit all: a congressman told Tip O’Neill (who was the Speaker of the House from 1977to 1987) that he couldn’t stand with him on a tough vote and that “I’ll votewith you when you’re right”. O’Neillresponded “I don’t need you when I’am right”.

3)Take Responsibility Chris Matthew points out that PresidentKennedy took the personal accountability for the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion. People in fact responded positively to theadmission as reflected in the approval rating polls. Learned from that mistake, a year later, PresidentKennedy resisted the push by Joint Chiefs for air strike or full scale invasionand successfully resolved the Cuba missile crisis peacefully. President Obama needs to take the heat andexplains why 2009 stimulus bill has not achieved what he said it would for theeconomy and unemployment.

4)Believe! Chris Matthews points out that President Obamahimself has recently quoted from Kennedy’s 1963 American University speech “…Our problems are man-made; therefore they can be solved by man.” He reminds President Obama the most powerful emotionof American people – the astonishing optimismand the can-do resilience. Headvises President Obama to tap into that emotion by pointing to the victories suchas the turnaround of auto industry and brining Osama bin Laden to justice.

5)Show the Vision Chris Matthews reminds all of us that “we knew what Kennedy wanted to do, where hewas going. He showed us his dreams rightthere in his programs: the peace Corps, the space program, nuclear-arms control.” Chris Matthews suggests that “what is missing now is a spirit ofadventure, of common purpose, a positive feeling, even romance about the timesfor meeting the challenges in the world, a stirring national cadence, a senseof mission.” He asks “what are Obama’s dreams? Where would he take us?” and “Tellus, Draw a picture. Throw a cap over a wall.” The last metaphor is especially important. It came from President Kennedy who related a storyof how little Irish boy would get themselves climb over orchard walls by firstthrowing their caps over. Only with thatlevel of commitment and risk taking, can one hope for a complete success.

For those who are familiar with the politics of Taiwan andPresident Ma Ying Jeo’s leadership, I am sure now you can see the similarityand understand why I thought Chris Matthews’ advices are relevant for PresidentMa. How many times have you felt that no one isspeaking up for President Ma with real passion? Where is he taking or wants to take the people of Taiwan? Why hasn’t he admitted to major mistakes andtaken personal responsibilities? Why hasn’t he shown his confidence and tappedinto the resiliency of Taiwan people? Whyhasn’t he forged any alliances? Why ishe standing alone and hasn’t asked people be with him and follow him withactionable programs? My advice to PresidentMa is he needs to read this Chris Matthew’s article, NOW!

Home Vegan: the first 100 days

2011-10-31T11:49:00.000-04:00

It has been 100 days since I began my home vegan diet as discussed in my July blog Timefor Drastic Measures 釜底抽薪. Here is a quick update of my experience sofar. By the way, Home Vegan simply means one eats only non-animal products at home - no natural or processed foods derivedfrom animals including meat, seafood, eggs, or dairy products.

My motivation was simple–to reduce long term health risks such as heart diseases, stroke (perhaps certaintypes of cancer too?) without changing my social life. While it will take some time to get indirect measurementsof any sustained improvement (such as cholesterol level, blood pressure, etc.),some immediate trivial benefits are evident.

First off, I have lostabout 5 pounds of weight without any change to my other daily routines. This should not come as a surprise toanyone. Simple arithmetic would suggest asignificant reduction in calorie intakes is possible when one swaps out animal-basedfood with natural high fiber vegan food in one’s diet. The fact is that pound for pound, mostvegetables and fruits bring you only a fraction of what the leanest meat would. And the common rule of thumbs tells us a cumulativereduction of approximately 3,000 calories may bring your weight down by onepound.

The good news is that switching to a home vegan diet wasn’tas difficult or dramatic as I had feared initially: we simply stopped buyingany food that contains animal products and here we went. Perhaps we are lucky that we have been usedto a diet with a lot of vegetables, fruits and high fiber foods (such as brownrice) to begin with. Further, there area lot more variety of vegetables in Chinese markets and grocery stores than in averageAmerican supermarkets. It includes alarge selection of soybean based food with different textures and flavors. By the way, if you had previously prepared andeat vegetables in the more limiting western styles, a simple and fail-safe wayto prepare these unfamiliar vegetables (especially the green leafy ones) is tosauté them with a little cooking oil, salt (and garlic); something even akitchen dummy like me can do.

Side benefits that I did not expect or have thought of:

Saving time in grocery and supermarket shopping: I now skip the majority of the sections/departments in the market.
Saving time in cooking: how many different ways and advanced preparations can you do with fresh vegetables?
Saving money with grocery shopping: while you may spend more per unit for some healthy and fresh food, changes in quantity and ratios will offset it and more.
Much less often in having food caught in between your teeth
Helping with environments: it is well-known that excessive animal agriculture has had negative impact on our planet from water, deforestation, to greenhouse emission.

One big surprise is that I seem to eat less without feelinghungry soon after I started the diet. Thereare many theories about why that is the case. My doctor’s simplified explanation is that one’s body adapts quickly tothe new condition and naturally expects less. The bad news is that I seem to have hit theplateau in about 2 months after losing 5 pounds, not unlike the experience ofthose who do fitness routines to lose weight. While determined to continue with my home vegan diet, I guess I need topull out the exercise DVD my friend sent me and start doing them too!

Last but not the least, do make sure your friends know thedistinction between a HOME vegan and a vegan if you choose to be one. Some of them may get a little concerned if theyshould go out to eat with you. On theother hand, it may be a positive if some of them no longer want to come to yourhouse for party?! Happy Home Vegans!

The Hottest Classical Pianists

2011-10-24T16:03:00.003-04:00

24 years old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang 王羽佳 had her Carnegie Hall solo recital debut on theevening of Oct 20^th. Simple counting of how many concerts a yearCarnegie Hall normally holds should convince you that the event must be filledwith high expectation by Yuja herself and the audience alike. After all there weren’t that many pianists inhistory who had the opportunity to have recital debut at this 120 years old mostprestigious concert hall of the world in New York City.

While there is no doubt that Yuja is a musical prodigy, theroad to Carnegie was never easy. One versionof the popular story about Carnegie Hall says it all: A touriston Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan stopped Jascha Heifetz (a famousviolinist) and asked "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?""Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice!"

Practice she did, since age 6. She spent five years at the CentralConservatory at Beijing till age 14 and six years at the Curtis Institute ofMusic at Philadelphia from age 15 after spending a year in Calgary, Canada studyingEnglish and music.

Before reaching Carnegie Hall, Yuja has been performing numeroussolos and concertos on stage worldwide for last 5 years, initially often at smallerand 2^nd tier venues. Likesome other stars before her, opportunities knocked when she was asked to sub forsuperstars like Martha Argerich, MurrayPerahia, and Radu Lupuand she delivered spectacular performances. DG (Deutsche Grammophon), one of the most respected classical recordlabel, signed her up in 2009. Performing about one hundred 100 concerts ayear, she now spent her life mostly in between airports/planes, hotels andconcert halls. As stars are all liningup, it was pretty clear that she was on her way to the stardom.

In his review entitled FlauntingVirtuosity (and More), Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic of The NewYork Times, had nothing but praises and positive technical comments about herrecital debut. That is not it; he justcould not refrain himself from commenting on the controversy of Yuja’s tight,short orange dress for her last summer’s outdoor performance with the Los AngelesPhilharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (see photo to the right). Hisultimate compliment came at his conclusion of his review: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. What matters is that Ms. Wang has got itas a pianist. The audiences were equallyexcited about her performance as well. She gave four encore performances, lasting almost half an hour at theconclusion of her debut as most audiences refused to leave.

For your convenience and enjoyment, here is the viral Youtubevideo of her performance of Rimsky Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumblebee, arrangedby Cziffra. To give you some idea aboutthe incredible speed: she must be playing these seemingly unstoppable chromaticsixteenth notes at about 10 notes a second in one minutes thirty seconds.

Almost 8 years earlier in Nov, 2003, then 21 years oldChinese superstar pianist Lang Lang 郎朗 had his solo recitaldebut at the same hall. The ad by DG(who had signed up Lang Lang) hyped ''The future of classical music hasarrived. His name is Lang Lang.'' LangLang’s path was similar to Yuja Wang but 5 years or more ahead of her, from theCentral Conservatory of Beijing to Curtis Institute of Music (where they both werestudents of Gary Graffman).

As one of the most sought after and marketed pianists, LangLang’s onstage dynamism has polarized the audiences and music critics. Some loved it but some disliked it and foundhis posture exaggerated and tasteless. Iam more the latter camp although I’d like to continue “supporting” his carrierthrough purchases of his CDs.

Tommasini wrote in his review AShowman Revs up the Classical Genre about Lang Lang’s solo recital debutback in 2003: “… Mr. Lang's head seems tobe so full of his own hype that there can't be much room left for analyticthinking…” and concluded “I lasted through one encore: Schumann's''Träumerei.'' It was not easy to hear that wistfully beautiful melody soyanked around. Surely Mr. Lang played many more encores for his adoring fans.But I didn't want to be a party pooper, let alone impede the future ofclassical music.” Since then, Tommasinihad toned down over time his criticism and noted Lang Lang has been maturing. The real issue of course is not so much abouthow one (should) move when playing the instrument. It is about the coherency of the mind andbody of the true master performers whose gesture and expression would naturallyreflect their interpretation and feelings of the music. Lang Lang did often push his superficial expressivenessover the edge and lost the balance between intellectual and presentation. On a similar note, Yuja’s concert dress shouldnot have been the issue. Her mannerismat the recital debut was in fact shy, focused, and restrained, if anything.

Anyway, below is a video of Lang Lang playing Liszt'sHungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (arrangement by Vladimir Horowitz) in 2006. If you watch it, you would appreciate whyTommasini and many others have been so disturbed by his performance despite hisfantastic skills and stamina. The videodoes not show his facial expression which would have in fact irritated someeven more.

By the way, Yuja Wang had chosen to play Franz Liszt’s PianoSonata in B Minor in the 2^nd half of her Thursday evening recitaldebut. It is probably not a coincidencesince Oct 22^nd was Liszt’s 200 years birthday. Liszt, a prominent composer, was also avirtuosic pianist as well. Althoughthere wasn’t any video recording, his performance style by many accountsinvolved showmanship at the piano with facial expression and gestures that drewcriticism from many. Apparently, Liszthimself had admitted he had done so just to draw more applause. There was no question that he had succeeded indrawing a lot of fans across Europe; so much so that the term Lisztomaniawas coined to describe the frenzy of the fans towards him. Infact, the best way to imagine how it was like is to simply watch some of today’swildest rock star performances including smashing guitars. Yes, Liszt had supposedly destroyed pianosonstage!

In his recent interview,Lang Lang talked about Liszt being his piano hero and Liszt’s HungarianRhapsody No. 2 was his first encounter with classical music as a 2-year-oldwatching a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon on television. Knowing that, it should not surprise any of usthen that showmanship was a part of Lang Lang’s performance. By the way, Liszt did not invent everythingon his own; he got his inspiration to become a virtuoso from seeing a concertby Niccolò Paganini, one of the greatest virtuosicviolinists.

Happy Birthday, FranzLiszt.

Universal Service

2011-10-09T20:08:00.001-04:00

USPS (United State Postal Service) is in (financial) trouble, again!

Every time, when news broke about the financial woes and possibility of USPS going under, there are plenty of analyses, suggestions, and blames from average citizens, academia, to politicians and pundits, many of whom, for reasons ranging from ignorance to having ulterior motives, look for simple causes and quick fixes to a structural policy problem.

There have been no shortages of data, figures, analysis, and proposals in this continuing saga. For example, in his June 15, 2011 article, Devin Leonard of Bloomberg Businessweek reported “…43 percent of FedEx’s budget and 61 percent of United Parcel Service’s pay go to employee-related expenses.” One can point to such a figure and blame the problem on the Postal Union as many had. One can also point to the data as another example of inefficient and evil big government (yes, USPS is an independent government agency) as many had. Some had also suggested privatization as a solution to monetize its “hidden” assets and values including real estate as if the real problem would go away once the book is cooked right to reflect the “true values” of its asset.

It may not be obvious to everyone but there are many parallels between postal service and telecommunication service since they do share some fundamental characteristics. While postal service is about transporting physical objects such as letters and parcels from one individual’s hand to another at a distance, telecommunication services is about moving a (stream of) signal such as voice, data, video from one individual’s mouth and devices to another’s. Further, introductory data communications textbooks would tell you that today’s telecommunication networks including Internet are dominated by the packet-switched technology whereby data packets containing coded user signals with addresses just like letters are routed through switches in the network very much like postal distribution centers .

For quite some time, the ever increasing use of electronic media transported through Internet has put huge dents on the demands for the physical transport provided by USPS. First class mail which is the top revenue generator of the USPS has already experienced a decrease in volume of nearly 20% from 98 billion pieces in 2006 to 78 billion pieces in 2010. Boston Consulting Group has projected the volume will decrease further to 50 billion pieces by 2020. Meanwhile the postage of first class mail has increased 6 times since 2001 from 34 cents to 44 cents today. The problem cries for new service ideas to generate demands and revenues which unfortunately don’t seem to be getting enough attention as cost cutting and fear of laying offs dominate the headlines.

Postal system is one of the oldest means of communication of people. When the parent commanded their kid running down the street to deliver a note or verbal message to a neighbor down the street, a mail had been sent. There is no fundamental difference in function between such an ad-hoc service and early postal system of empires across the world for more than thousands of years.

Recognizing the critically important role of communications of its citizens, governments across the world have set up postal services early. For U.S., the Postal Clause - to establish post offices and post roads - in Article One of the United States Constitution, is one of the 18 only explicitly enumerated powers of Congress that includes “to declare war” and “to borrow money”. Indeed postal service was viewed to be essential in aiding the cohesiveness and holding the states together for the union. Founding father Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general in 1775.

The most important advance of modern postal service is the introduction of the concept of Universal Service by Rowland Hill in U.K. in the 1837 reform of the Uniform Penny Post. It was quickly adopted by other countries including U.S. and has been the standard of the postal service ever since. The critical tenants of Universal Service as the word universal suggests: availability and affordability to all. The obvious example is the first class mail service which is delivered at a flat fee of 44 cents regardless who you are and where you live (including the most remote areas of Hawaii and Alaska!).

In the same vein, the all important Communications Act of 1934 by Congress firmly established the telephone service as a regulated service (by the new agency FCC) and had resulted in the recognition of A&T’s monopoly. And the Title 1 of the Act defined the notion of universal service as applied to wire and wireless communications “… to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges,…”

Fast forward to 1960s, the MCI Communications (Microwave Communications, Inc., now a part of Verizon) began offering long distance communication services to urban business customers and resellers in selected markets using low cost microwave relay networks. It is price competitive to AT&T’s services and highly profitable due in part to the long distance services of AT&T were required to subsidize the local services to achieve uniform pricing for ALL customers.

As AT&T (or more commonly referred to as the Ma Bell or Bell System) continued to lose grounds to competing long distance services for highly profitable business customers, pressure mounted to settle the antitrust suits which ended with the 1984 breakup of AT&T. The 1984 divestiture of Bell System stipulated the Bell System be divided into two parts – a deregulated long distance service plus telecom equipment manufacturing company inclusive of R&D (Bell Labs) held by AT&T and seven independent “Baby Bells” that provide regulated and monopolized local telephone services across United States. The latter would serve as an unbiased interface between end customers and all long distance service carriers.

The divestiture marked the beginning of the end of the era, topic of my last blog – An Era Has Passed. Looking back, it was merely one of the more visible parts of a larger economic-political force – deregulation - that had begun gaining momentum in 1970s and permeated through transportation, energy, communications, and climaxed at the financial deregulation and subsequent global financial crisis of 2007-2009 from which we are still trying to dig ourselves out of the hole.

More similarity between telecom and postal service: FedEx and UPS have been prominent private courier services with global reach in competing with USPS on the lucrative parcel services, not unlike MCI of the late 60’s in competing with AT&T. One advantage of these private services they do not need to provide ubiquitous coverage of end customers as they are not subject to the requirement of universal service. FedEx and UPS in fact have been contracting USPS to deliver their packages to a large number of households, not unlike when a long distance call was connected to end users through local Bell’s or cable service.

This is just one but nevertheless a critical aspect of the postal service that we have been taking for granted for so long. What is really under siege is the notion of universal service, something noble that defines our society and nation. What the crises in USPS (and the twists and turns in telecom industry) asked us again and again was not for another budgetary or accounting gimmick. They are really asking us “what about the universal service?” As far as I am concern, abandoning the principle of universal service would amount to a declaration of class war and is a non-starter. What do we do?

Talk to you soon!

An Era Has Passed

2011-09-26T16:20:00.001-04:00

We have had several opportunities to entertain some visitors this summer, being mostly at home. Given the interests of some of the visitors, we have taken some of them for a peek of the closed Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (see an aerial view at right) a place that was literally my second home for almost three decades.

My first encounter of this beautiful building was when I had my job interview with the Bell Labs in January nearly 32 years ago. My Bell Labs recruiter (Dr. Mo Iwama) picked me up from the Molly Pitcher Hotel at Red Bank in the morning that day and drove me to the building for a two-day visit. I recall it was a cold winter morning with some snow flake left over on the ground from the previous night. As one entered this nearly 500 acres park-like compound (To give you an idea, New York City’s Central Park takes up 840 acres or 6% of Manhattan) from the main entrance at the north-east through its unique dual ring access road, you were first greeted with a gigantic 3-leg water tower whose shape was modeled after the famed 1947 Bell Labs invention of three-terminal transistor (see the photo below by Ralph Brandi) that brought the human race into the modern world of electronics. As one turned the corner and drove towards to the front entrance of the building, an immense 5 story dark glass structure emerged and looked on the visitors silently. This first impression was etched into my and many others’ memory as the building and what it had housed for 44 years (1963-2007) represented one of the most celebrated architecture and research and development accomplishments in history.

The building was designed by none other than the legendary master Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) whose well-known work to the public include the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport, and Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel at MIT (see photos below). The construction of the Holmdel building started in 1959 and was completed in 1962, one year after Saarinen’s untimely death at age 51. The 6-floor building is completely enclosed in large glasses on the sides and on the roof top which reflects 75% of the sun. The building was dubbed "The Biggest Mirror Ever" by Architectural Forum and won the first The Laboratory of the Year competition in 1967, sponsored by R&D Magazine that recognizes innovative designs, materials, and construction for laboratory facilities.

Its present size, after the 1982-85 expansion while retaining the original design, is approximately 350 ft by 1,200 ft featuring a huge cross-shape atrium in the center with natural light reaching down to the garden at the ground floor. During the peak years, it housed 6,000 staffs including a large cafeteria that offered excellent food with a view to the pond and garden at the rear of the building.

In addition to the open atrium at the center of the building, the most interesting aspect of Saarinen’s design is the walled modular offices/laboratories in aisles encircled by walkways. On the interior side, the walkways overlook the central atrium and on the exterior side, it is adjacent to the large glasses that offer unobstructed views of the compound. With the strong corridor effect of the cross aisle design, maximum privacy was achieved and one would have never guessed that there are 6,000 other employees working in the same building. During winter times, one would find people using the perimeter walkways for daily walking exercises under the warm winter sun. For some archival video footages of the history of Bell Labs Holmdel complex, one can start from the following Youtube video:

As a former long time resident of the building, I thought one interesting and important implication of the design was the social equality: no one shall have a windowed office regardless your rank! This unwritten policy was unfortunately broken when one corner of the top floor was closed off to create an “executive office area” to move Ian Ross, then the Bell Labs President, to Holmdel in late 80s. Till this day, I still can’t believe the company could get an exception from Saarinen’s to agree to such a modification. In the larger scheme of things however, it was probably just a collateral damage of the 1984 divestiture under which the regulated monopoly (i.e., tax payers’ utility) of AT&T/Bell Systems is no more.

Like many other stories about old dynasties, the ownership of the Bell Labs Holmdel complex changed hands few times more as AT&T struggled to adapt to the new competitive telecom world and went through business restructuring, spin-offs, mergers and acquisitions. In late 1996, the Holmdel building and 80% of the Bell Labs staffs (and the name), among other assets, became a part of Lucent Technologies, a U.S. based telecom equipment firm whose stock was traded at over $80 a share in Aug 2000, right before the bubbles burst. Lucent was sold to and merged in Dec 2006 with the French Telecom giant Alcatel to become a part of now Alcatel-Lucent whose stock was traded at $2.91 as of last Fri, Sept 23, 2011.

The 472 acre complex was closed down in July 2007. When I moved out of the building early July, there were no more than few hundreds of employees left there and weeds had visibly grown in the empty parking lots. Despite years of efforts in selling off the property by Alcatel-Lucent, the future of the complex is still uncertain as none of the contractual agreements have been carried through. First off, it is not likely any corporation these days would entertain the idea of taking over a 6,000 people capacity suburban office/laboratory facility. The next obvious question has been to create a redevelopment plan for this fabulous property that would be acceptable to developers in making profits and to obtain the needed approval of rezoning by a township which had had different ideas including possible demolition of the building.

Indeed, Preservation New Jersey listed the place on its list of the 10 Most Endangered Historic Sites in New Jersey in 2007. Never had I thought I would be associated in my life time with words like “endangered” or “historical”. But if I look back, the computing and communications world has changed dramatically and gone through revolutions multiple times in last 30 years. I have witnessed and played a part in my career the change from analog to digital, from copper wire to optical and wireless, from voice to anything over Internet, and from time-shared computers and PCs to smart appliances and cloud computing. Yes, I sure can appreciate the sentiments as such a pace of change would have taken generations to complete not too long ago.

Bob Lucky, a former Bell Labs VP, wrote on the Sept 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum, upon hearing the news of the planned sale of the property: For many of us, it is the passing of an era. Even for technology itself, it is an ominous reminder of how the world has changed. When I drive by that lifeless building today, I remember these lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias published in 1818:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Yes, an era has passed. But, regardless how and what the place would become, I am proud and feel fortunate to have worked for one of the greatest institutions in the world and spent countless hours of my prime years in a tiny corner of such a magnificent building.

Talk to you soon!

Is the Other Shoe Dropping?

2011-08-17T15:41:00.001-04:00

Just when U.S. economy began to stabilize and shows signs of recovery out of the Late-2000s recession, politically and ideologically driven fiscal policy debates heat up again like a wild fire that threatens to set the economy back to a much feared double-dip recession. After contentious and protracted political battles for months, U.S. Congress passed the complicated Budget Control Act of 2011 on August 2^nd at the last minute to kick the can of “2011 United States debt ceiling crisis” down the road. Shortly after, as agreed and stipulated by the bill, a congressional “Super Committee” (the formal name is the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) was created which has until Nov. 23, 2011, the day before the Thanksgiving Day, to recommend (a simple majority suffices) to the full Congress for an additional deficit reduction of $1.5 trillion dollars or more over next ten–years.

This carefully chosen (by four House and Senate leaders of the two political parties) 12-members “dream team” is consisted of: for Democrats, Senators Pat Murray of Washington (committee co-chair), John Kerry of Massachusetts, Max Baucus Montana, and House Representatives Xavier Becerra of California, James Clyburn of South Carolina, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland; and for Republicans, Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, and House Representatives Dave Camp of Texas (committee co-chair), Dave Camp and Fred Upton of Michigan.

If you take a look of committee members’ credentials and stands, you would agree that this is the first positive response to the call for “balanced approach” by President Obama throughout the crisis (you know I am being sarcastic, don’t you?) The sixty four trillion dollars question is how the next episode of this political reality TV show is going to be played out?

You might ask why the gridlock? The answer is pretty obvious and a familiar one: the Democrats want no cuts to entitlements and the Republicans want no increase to taxes. At the same time, the majority of people would agree that the rational and most sensible solution to the long-term debt problem is the opposite: cuts in run-away dominant expenses (in entitlements) and increase of total revenue through taxes. But if you were to run on such a platform, do you think you will be elected to any public offices?

You might ask how much is too much debt? Technically, the debt ceiling mentioned above applies to the total federal debt (thus excludes state and local debts) or gross debt that reached about $13.6 trillion or a little over 90% of GDP at the end of Sept 2010. By this latter measure of debt-to-GDP ratio, Japan, the third largest economy in the world (by GDP), has the dubious honor of being the highest which had reached 225%. Singapore, one of the most well-off nations in the world (by GDP per capita) has a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 100%. All these only suggest the difficulties with the single index approach. Note the gross debt consists of two components: public debt – debts held by investors other than federal government (e.g., treasury bonds held by Chinese government), and intra-governmental debt held by e.g. Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds (operated by federal government). To add more to the confusion, there are also debates among the economists if and how the intra-government debts should be accounted for. At the end of Sept 2010, the latter part was over $4 trillion, more than 30% of the total debt.

Let us accept for the moment the notion that the total debt is too high, you might ask then the most important question what should we do and what should we tell the government do? The truth is no one is really sure but that never stopped many from offering opinions as if they do know for sure.

In reality, the government has two powerful tools – monetary and fiscal policies. The former belongs to the independent Federal Reserve which has pretty much used up its ammunitions with its continuing “zero interest rate” policy and Quantitative Easing in response to the recession started by the 2007 financial crisis. The latter is under the control of executive and legislative branches – the congress and the president. It is necessarily political and is where all the confusions and actions have been.

The essence of the current debt debate is simply the question of austerity or stimulus. Unfortunately, economists (Nobel laureates included) do not have a solid grasp of the problems and solutions nor consensus. It gives politicians and media a huge platform to play their agenda as we are all participating, like to or not, in this giant new social economic experiment.

So far, the best available diagnosis of the problem we have been facing appears to be the Balance Sheet Recession. It is a notion developed by Richard Koo years ago from the experience with the Great Recession (aka the Lost Decades) of Japan starting in 1990. Richard is an American educated economist and now the Chief Economist of Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo. He has suggested that what U.S. and Europe have been going through is a replay of what Japan has which is not the familiar traditional recessions of the past decades. The symptom and underlying dynamics is vastly different in that the private sector is not spending because the overriding priority for them is to pay down the debts on balance sheets (that is, income minus liability) that arose from the burst of their asset bubbles.Below is Richard Koo’s April 9, 2011 presentation at a Panel in INET's Bretton Woods Conference.

Richard Koo’s recommended treatment is clear for the balance sheet recession when private sector is not spending and waiting for demand. He argued convincingly with Japan as an example that government, as the only remaining player, must provide stimulus to keep the economy going. He also argued that austerity is the wrong medicine which could result in a spiraling down of economy. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the wave is heading and against which we are swimming. I am for having disciplines in fiscal policy. But it is not a question of big or small government; it is a question of smart or stupid government!

In the 1957 movie classic 12 Angry Men, justice were served because one cool headed juror #8 (played by Henry Fonda) prevailed. Will the 12 member Super Committee produce something good? In real life, with the two-party construct in our political system, there is a strong tendency for adversarial framing in conflicts by the opposing parties, not unlike what happens in our justice system. As a result, it is very difficult for resolution of this protracted political conflict to even pass the antagonism. Grounded and rigorous reasoning gets drawn out by 30 seconds sound bites and videos which is not the way to help solving a complex problem.

Despite the built-in trigger, the Budget Control Act of 2011 contains no credible threat of mutual destruction. I am thus not optimistic that the Super Committee and the congress can come to any meaningful and productive resolution; a “hung jury” would be the more likely outcome. After all, these are merely elected politicians who are supposed to represent us, the 300 millions imperfect, confused, frustrated, and sometimes angry ordinary people. Should we be surprised about how we get ourselves into this situation? A situation which Chinese describes as 盲人騎瞎馬 (南朝宋．劉義慶《世說新語．排調》) - the blind rides a blind horse (a similar metaphor in the West would be the blind lead the blind)? Will we get ourselves out of this mess in time? What I did not tell you was the second half of the quote “盲人騎瞎馬 - the blind rides a blind horse”. It is “夜半臨深池 – coming to the edge of a deep pond in a dark night.” May God bless us all!

Talk to you soon!

The Tithonus Predicament: Immortality and Aging

2011-08-05T15:27:00.003-04:00

In the first chapter of his 2008 book The Living End: the future of death, aging and immortality, Dr. Guy Brown of the University of Cambridge cited the following Greek mythology: Tithonus was a handsome mortal who fell in love with Eos, the goddess of dawn. Eos realized that her beloved Tithonus was destined to age and die. She begged Zeus to grant her lover immortal life which Zeus did. Being jealous and deceptive, Zeus granted Eos’ wish without eternal youth that Eos had neglected to include in her wish. As Tithonus aged, he became increasingly debilitated and demented, eventually drove Eos crazy with his constant babbling. In despair, she turned Tithonus into a grasshopper (or cicada, according to some other versions). Well, this myth may explain why grasshoppers (or cicada) chirrup nonstop, like some demented old men. It raised obviously a much more serious issue – with aging, how desirable could immortality possibly be?

Physical mortality and death must have started as a fairly straightforward notion since it is a visible certainty in life. Dr. Brown calls it the digital theory of life and death; either one is clearly alive or dead, that is, it is either on or off like many familiar devices such as light bulb. For some mysterious reasons however, we seem to be reluctant in accepting death and consequently continue fighting it with fear. This might be more understandable in ancient days when people generally die at a much younger age and we can attribute it to animal’s survival instinct. However, life expectancy of people (at birth) has increased dramatically in last 200 years. It has more than doubled from 30 years to 67 years by the beginning of 21st century. There is no known evolutionary reasons why we need to hang around way after the prime age of reproduction!

Nevertheless the continual increase of life expectancy sounds so promising and tempting, doesn’t it? If the rate of increase holds up and continues, perhaps we can be approaching immortality! Well, it is not so simple. The primary reasons for the significant improvement of the last 200 years were better public health and nutrition. As a result, the leading causes of death then such as infant mortality childhood death and death due to infectious diseases were greatly reduced. For a fascinating visualization of the story, see the following video 200 years that changed the world by the Swedish Professor of International Health Hans Rosling. By the way, wealth beyond some low threshold, is not necessary for high life expectancy. Indeed there isn’t whole lot of differences (less than 10 years) in life expectancy between developed and developing countries. Experience in 1950’s China demonstrated it clearly although the country was extremely poor.

The bad news is if one distinguishes the healthy vs. unhealthy parts of our life expectancy (at birth), Professor Brown showed evidences from UK (thus likely similar for other developed countries as well) that the unhealthy part of late life is the one being extended while the healthy part increased at much slower rate for the last two decades of the 20^th century. In other words, the data support the prediction of The Failures of Success by late Professor Ernest Gruenberg of Johns Hopkins University that expansion, rather than compression, of morbidity - diseased state - is happening. At least partly to blame is our relentless efforts in advancing medical technology to prolong life at all cost. Death is no longer short or quick. Death is a taboo; we herded the old and sick into nursing homes and hospitals to die in desolation. The boundary of death and aging is getting blurred as we are left bare, dying alone ever more slowly with possibly agonizing chronic diseases such as dementia.

A digression; you may ask what is aging anyway? Can we alter it? The first reaction by most of us is likely to associate aging with the “chronological age” which gives a numerical measure of the progression towards to the inevitable but unknown time of death. Behind the chronological age are the more familiar and common signs of aging. Ted Fishman gave a long list of them in his 2010 book Shock on Gray which includes: in 30’s, our metabolism begins to slow down and body to begin redistribute the fat and lose muscle mass and strength; in 40’s, our joints begin to stiffen, hairs begin to turn grey, and vision begin to decline; in 50’s, we begin to forget things, gums start to recede, and for many, high blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol arrive; in 60’s, our skins begin to change with age spots and we begin to walk more slowly and lose some hearing; in 70’s, we have more and more memory lapse, we lose our balances more often and our sensory functions deteriorate visibly; in 80’s, we lose the fat under our skins that now appear thin and saggy, and a significant number of us suffer from dementia.

These signs, while useful in sharing astute observations, are qualitative and less than satisfactory for scientists. One more useful and robust quantitative measure of aging is the rate of aging which is defined as the mortality doubling time, or the amount of time it takes for the population death rate to double.

Surprisingly the Mortality Doubling Time is basically a constant for each species when deaths caused by external events are negligible. It is about 1-2 years for dogs and 14 years for killer whales. For humans, the death rate doubles about every 8 years for population between ages 30 and 80 which is the Gompertz Law of human mortality, named after the English actuary Benjamin Gompertz who discovered this constant in 1825. Not that this law is of fundamental importance to life insurance business as we know it today. It also supports the hypothesis that the “max” life span of human is about 125 years although there are some believe that figure can be much higher as the mortality doubling time appears to slow down after age 80.

Interestingly, human mortality doubling time has not changed since the Stone Age although the value of death rate itself has decreased significantly especially in the last two centuries as we mentioned earlier. Note also that even though the expected lifespan of humans has increased significantly, the appearance and functions of say a 65 years old man a century ago is still more of less the same as those of today; the signs of aging remain pretty stable by age. All these suggest that there is a biologic limit in life. They beg for an answer to the question of why or how does aging work.

At a micro level, there have been many theories and hypothesis about why and how cells die but many mysteries remain. What we do know for some time from modern biology is that each of us is made of about 100 trillion cells where cell is considered the basic functional unit of all known living organisms and is the smallest unit of life. We now know that cells are programmed to die to, e.g., make room for other or new cells to grow and to perform designed functions. Cells may also experience accidental or disease-induced death due to insufficient oxygen and energy/glucose supply from the blood flows. We also know by the Hayflick limit discovered in 1961 that normal cells cannot replicate indefinitely. The bottom line is at the cellular level, normal cells are not immortal and will die in finite time.

At a more macro level, we understand that cells from the same origin together form tissues to perform particular functions and multiple tissues together then form a structural functional unit referred to as organ such as lung, bladder, heart etc. Cells are born, aged, damaged and repaired (for some), and eventually commit suicide or killed. Today’s medical advances have reached a point where we can repair some tissues with stem cells, we can replace parts or whole of some organs including the lung with other’s or with an artificial one. Is immortality possible then even though individual cells are dying at different rate? Have you seen this wonderful British science fiction television series Doctor Who and the arch-villain mad scientist Davros? What does it mean to be immortal if parts or all of us have been replaced or “enhanced”? Are you still yourself?

The key must ultimately lie with the brain. Other than heart cells, neuron is the only cell that cannot be replaced. That is why strokes (and heart attack) can cause irreversible damages once neurons (and muscle cells) are suffocated or scarred. More importantly, unlike heart which is the (mechanical) pump that keeps our organs alive with supplies, brain is defining who we are as it receives and processes signals, and issuing signals that command our body. It weighs only about 3 lb with a volume of about 1130 cm³ for women and 1260 cm³ in men. Some estimated the human brain has about 100 billion neurons and more than100 trillion chemical, electrical and immunological synapses. These neurons develop and work together to perform our daily functions such as muscle control, memory, cognition, language, etc. We pay a 20% premium of our energy consumption to keep it active and healthy. For these and other reasons, clinically, death is defined today as an absence of brain activity (as measured by EEG). A more intuitive and philosophical definition is, as Dr. Brown suggested, “the permanent loss of consciousness.”

Wikipedia entry of consciousness refers to it as “a variety of aspects of the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts”. It also refers as to common definitions such as “subjective experience; awareness; the ability to experience feelings; wakefulness; having a sense of selfhood;” etc. Indeed, as we are born, grow and develop, we continue to accumulate our experiences and undergo changes at every level.

If you think further, the continuity of self is actually maintained through our memory which is formed and shaped from vague and fluid associations of fragments of data scattered among huge number of neurons, unlike digital computers. When youngsters and adults suffer from neurological diseases or brain dysfunction, we consider them “abnormal” inferring from their behaviors and interactions. When old people developed dementia – loss of cognitive ability, we refer them as “not behaving like themselves, erratic, or hallucinating”. (By the way, as a side note, more than 15% of people over age 70 are believed to have some forms of dementia and this percent is expected to increase.) When some suffer from late stage Alzheimer’s disease, there is only present and there is no past any longer. The continuity through memory has been broken and the individual can no longer interact with the world as we know. Where is the self and consciousness then even though he or she is physically alive?

The silver lining is that there are many known ways to address the fear for death and mortality beyond the physical. At the instinctive level, evolutionary needs necessitate our survival genetically via reproduction which is manifested through off springs and families. Our ancestors have also found a long time ago that we one can become immortal by leaving our work, deeds and legacy that are carried forward, however little, indefinitely as parts of the culture and the society. For those who are more curious about the after-life, there is always the religion that has developed various theories and teaches people how to live their lives and deal with death.

For myself, being pragmatic, I would follow Confucius’ 2,600 years old advice in his Analects: Ji Lu asked about serving the spirits. Confucius said, “If you can't yet serve men, how can you serve the spirits?” Ji Lu added, “May I ask about death?” Confucius said, “If you don't understand what life is, how will you understand death?”(translation by Charles Muller) 子路問事鬼神。子曰：'未能事人，焉能事鬼？ ''敢問死。 '曰：'未知生，焉知死？ '”《論語·先進》

Talk to you soon!

Time for Drastic Measures 釜底抽薪

2011-07-19T22:44:00.001-04:00

Over 2,200 years ago, the first Chinese encyclopedic classic - The Annals of Lü Buwei 呂氏春秋 wrote: 今世上卜筮禱祠，故疾病愈來，譬之若射者，射而不中，反修于招，何益於中？夫以湯止沸，沸愈不止，去其火則止矣。故巫醫毒藥，逐除治之．故古之人賤之也，為其末也。《呂氏春秋．季春紀．盡數》. Translated into English, it stated “There is an increase in illness as people resort to prayers and divination that is like moving the target to improve the score of an archer. How could it possibly improve the skill of the archer? To give another analogy, how could one stop a pot of water from boiling if one keeps adding hot water to the pot? What one should do is to turn off the fire instead. That is why our learned ancestors looked down on shaman and medicines for temporary reliefs; they don’t address the root cause of the problems.”

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the Jacob Gould Schuman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry of the Cornell University, did just that. He went after the very foundation of our health and examined the impact of nutrition/diet on our long term health. With rave reviews and half a million copies sold of his 2005 best seller The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health, Dr, Campbell’s advocacy has been drawing a lot of attention. The work also led directly to the drastic change of diets of at least one high profile case – that of the former President Bill Clinton after his second heart surgery in early 2010. Here is the Nov. 2010 Clinton’s interview with CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer on this subject.

So what is this fuss all about? If I can sum it up in one sentence, it is pretty simple and straightforward: Whole food, plant-based diet is good for you. Note plant-based diet does exclude ALL animal products, fish, eggs and dairy products included. The emphasis of whole food is important as well. Highly processed and refined carbohydrates found in white bread, snacks, junk food are NOT whole food and are not good for you.

Being an established and highly respected leading scientist, Dr. Campbell challenged the conventional wisdoms from with-in. He took a revolutionary approach to make sense for us the hopelessly confusing relationship between nutrition, diet and health; something most of us don’t think much of it till we are hit with serious health concerns or if and when we do, we can’t figure out how true each of the contradicting claims is.

Conventional scientific and medical researches focus on isolating individual components/factors and finding combinatorial and statistical relationships between such components and markers/indicators of diseases. Further, for many decades, much of the attention and resources have been directed at research of medicines and technologies that would alleviate acute problems and extend one’s life temporarily as opposed to help preventing diseases and improve our health and quality of life. Take heart disease as an example which is the leading cause of death in U.S., the advances of heart bypass surgery and angioplasty has dramatically reduce the death rate during a heart attack to about 15%. But did you know that “79% of patients showed impairment in some aspects of cognitive function seven days after the operation”, and that benefits of these procedures do not last -“Within ten years, half of the bypass patients will have died, had a heart attack or had their chest pain return.” It is clear that surgery, while saving lives, is not the answer.

What I and many did not know was the impressive finding by few prominent physicians like Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn (formerly with Cleveland Clinic) and Dr. Dean Ornish of U.C. San Francisco in last three decades. They offered convincing evidences that diet and lifestyle changes alone can effectively stop the deterioration and even reverse the coronary heart disease! Dr. Ornish and colleagues published in 1990 their famous Lifestyle Heart Trial (that Bill Clinton cited in his interview above). The results reported that 82% of the heart disease patients in their experimental group that adopted a low-fat vegetarian diet, stopped smoking, took stress management training with moderate exercises showed regression in their heart disease after only 1 year without use of lipid-lowering drugs! By the way, the patients of the control group who received the usual care did not fare too well with worsening chest pains and increased coronary blockage over the same period.

The story did not end with the diet and heart disease. Dr. Campbell presented similarly impressive findings with many chronic health problems such as obesity, type II diabetes, some autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, and some common cancers including breast, prostate and large bowel. While one may argue that for each disease the conditions and component culprits are not exactly the same, one common factor, when looking at the larger picture, emerged consistently that is the linkage to animal-based diet, dairy products included. Indeed, even for the most feared disease of cancer, Dr. Campbell cited studies and experiments that showed certain proteins found in dairy products and animal-based foods promote the growth of tumors. He noted the clear pattern of “nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decrease tumor development.” It is also encouraging to know that compared to bad diet, genetic pre-disposition and occasional exposures to carcinogens are NOT nearly as critical as we might think in the development of cancer.

What does China have anything to do with all these and why was Dr. Campbell book entitled The China Study? It is perhaps not surprising that there have been a lot of arguments and attacks against the findings of benefits of plant-based diet which is difficult to perform large scale epidemiologic study in developed countries like U.S. as one would be hard pressed to find enough samples of subjects with a more plant-based diet. Luckily, in early 80’s, Dr. Campbell, Dr. Junshi Chen (then the Deputy Director of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene of Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine), and Prof. Richard Peto of the University of Oxford pulled off the famous China-Cornell-Oxford Project in China where diseases of affluence and excess (that is what most of the diseases discussed above!) were not present. With the support of Chinese government, the research team was able to take blood samples and conducted detailed interviews and survey, and performed thorough analysis of the diets, lifestyles and diseases of 6,500 residents - 100 samples from each of the 65 rural counties - across China. The data provides epidemiologists unprecedented opportunities to examine and establish clearly the links between diets and health.

In his book, Dr. Campbell summarized the results of China Study that revealed “plant-based foods are linked to lower blood cholesterol; animal-based foods are linked to higher blood cholesterol. Animal –based foods are linked to higher breast cancer rates; plant-based foods are linked to lower rates. Fiber and antioxidants from plants are linked to a lower risk of cancers of the digestive tract. Plant-based diets and active lifestyles result in a healthy weight, yet permit people to become big and strong.” That is, Whole food, plant-based diet is good for you and (too much) animal-based foods are bad for you.

As I read the book, I wonder how come I did not know about these findings and wisdom? How come my doctors continue giving me prescriptions of wonder drugs for some of my chronic problems and did not pursue with me the possibility of changing diet and lifestyle? If you have similar experiences, we are not alone. In fact, the little dirty secret is that most of our medical doctors are not trained with nutritional sciences and they are as confused as we are!

In his book, Dr. Campbell is critical about the existing medical-health care system and status-quo forces from scientific community, to industries and government. To begin with, it is probably a defect in human nature to dream of finding silver bullets and magical pills that will fix all of our health and longevity problems, ignoring the impact of our daily diets and lifestyle. In reality, such a distorted priority merely offers opportunities for research papers, proposals, and grants to conduct gazillions of experiments and opened the doors to more confusing and conflicting results from observations of seemingly related phenomena from ever-so-slightly-different angles and assumptions. You can find anecdotal stories of turf battles and NIH (Not-Invented-Here, not National Institute of Health) syndromes interspersed throughout Dr. Campbell’s. Worse, business interests take advantage of the confusions and often fund purpose-designed research and lobby school curriculum to advance their agenda. To complete the web, the industry craft clever and misleading promotions under the cover of sciences and health to further maximize their own profits. Do you know that the dietary supplement industry recorded about $20 billion dollars sales in U.S. last year and that the pharmaceutical industry is more than 15 times larger?

Many of us have learned at one time or the other that carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are the basic macro-nutrients that provide our bodies with energy that can be measured in calories. But how many of us know how much calories each of us needs daily to maintain a healthy weight given a particular level and style of activities? And after consulting various tools and tables to find the reference figures, how many of us remember how much calories are in each of the foods we bought, cooked, and consumed? Do you know roughly there are 4 calories in a gram of carbohydrate or protein and 9 calories in a gram of fat? But do you know how many grams of carbohydrate, protein and fat are in a 10 oz. ribeye steak or a bowl of rice you ate? Do you know how many carbohydrate, protein and fat are in a plate of Spaghetti with meatballs you just had? And how does cholesterol fit into all these equations?

Let us say you do know all these number. How does it help you to maintain good health for yourself? Do you know you can have a diet meeting the “recommended” nutrition level and calorie but will kill you? The reality is we do consume foods in whole and not in its components from Vitamins and minerals of A to Z, proteins, carbohydrates, etc. Foods are delivered with their nutrients together in one “package” of various forms and get absorbed and transformed in a not-completely-understood fashion by our wonderful body with a complex adaptive digestion system. Oversimplification can be dangerous and can have unintended consequences. For example, many had been led to believe carbohydrates are bad by the popular low-carb Atkins diet when in fact carbohydrates from fiber rich natural vegetables and fruits are essential for good health. Similarly many, especially those in developing countries, were led to believe that animal-protein is of higher quality and more efficient and desired in bridge the “protein” gap when too much of animal proteins are known to be bad for our bodies. The list goes on and on.

The beauty of Dr. Campbell’s work is that in one fell swoop, he showed us a way out of this maze. He demonstrated that while we may never understand all the interactions and positive/negative effects of component nutrients, we do know for sure that unlike animal-based diets, there is no adverse effect of whole food, plant-based diet in quantity. He argue convincingly that as long as one makes sure that one gets sufficient Vitamin B12 (which can be obtained through supplements), persistent whole food plant-based diet alone can improve one’s long term health significantly, along with moderate exercises and without any health supplements or long term medications. For people who have some of those long term health concerns, there is absolute no reason why one shouldn’t take up on Dr. Campbell’s advice seriously.

It may not be easy to change one’s diet or lifestyle drastically overnight and sustain it when these habits are shaped gradually over decades in social and cultural context. I think one practical way to make the change quickly is to first become what I would call a “Social Omnivore” or a “Home Vegan”. Just like a “social drinker” who drinks on social occasions only, if one eats only whole foods, plant-based diet at home (which is most of the time in my case) and usual diets in social occasions or when eating out (which is infrequent), one can reduce the consumption of animal-based diet down to a very low level by my calculation. I would not be surprised that even with such a modest attempt, one stands to reap most of the health benefits.

I am excited about what I have learned from Dr. Campbell’s book. I am optimistic about the prospect of improving my long term health through changed diet and plan to implement it shortly. Wish me luck. If you are interested in knowing more about this subject but don’t feel like to read Dr. Campbell’s 417 pages 6”x9” book, you may want to watch the newly released 90 minute long documentary movie called Forks Over Knives that traces the journey of Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. Talk to you soon!

My Dad would be 100 Years Old Today

2011-07-03T01:07:00.002-04:00

Today is the centennial birthday of my late father who passed away 6 years ago in January 2005.

I don’t know anything about my dad’s childhood. Unlike many others, I never got a chance to ask my grandparents “what did Dad do when he …” as I have never met or known my paternal grandparents; they passed away when my father, their only child, was little. My dad himself did not have any photos nor could he recall much about his parents either as he was raised by his grandma. Although the family wasn’t well off, he did receive a decent education with his uncle’s help and completed his high school at a reputable Methodist School – the Anglo-Chinese College鶴齡英華中學in CangShan 倉山District of FuZhou 福州City in China. Late in his life when he visited us in U.S., he would tell us he did learn some English at that Christian school but could only remember only a few words.

After graduating from high school, it appeared that he had gone working for the Fujian provincial government. He married my mother when he was 27 years old (relatively late in those days?) and she was 20. Eight years later, after Japan surrendered and returned Taiwan to the Nationalist government of China, my father was sent to Taiwan with my mom and 6 years old sister in 1946 as a part of the effort to rebuild a new provincial government. He was then a low level staff assigned to a government operated liquor distiller in the mountain town PuLi, not far from the scenic Sun Moon Lake.

Although my dad was never an alcoholic nor a heavy drinker, he did tend to drink a little too much whenever he had a chance in social gatherings. As I grew up, it had become more and more an issue between my parents as my mother fought hard to stop him from drinking completely. It was probably due to partly her worry about dad’s chronically high blood pressure and partly one of her own brother’s problem with alcoholism. At the end, she reluctantly settled with a more en-forcible policy of “never drink at her presence except for special occasions”. Even when dad reached 90 and lost much of his taste buds, he still liked to get a can of cold beer when he did his daily walks.

My dad had always been a dedicated government employee and enjoyed his work very much. In most part of my life, I remembered his primary job duty was to monitor and assist the fruits/vegetables and meat wholesale markets (of local governments) in managing the supply and price. From time to time, commissioners of local markets may stop by our government provided house to visit him and discuss business. Invariably, with the local custom of never visiting people empty handed, we would end up having some fresh or canned fruits for few days. Once in a while, some might attempt to leave a “red envelop” which was always rejected. What struck me the most however was that he never seemed to be listening to what the visitors were saying. It is not unusual that he and the visitors appeared to be talking at parallel tracks with no intersection. They were always cordial and polite but at the end, I was never sure what was actually concluded if any. Was it how discussions were conducted and how things get done those days? I don’t know and I would never find out from him now. I do remember I said to myself then that I would not want to end up being like him and that I will listen attentively to people.

Like most men in his time, dad did not do much house chores like cooking or cleanings but he did enjoy taking care of the yards and growing flowers and fruit trees. He tried to plant grape vines but failed to turn grapes into wine. When my brother and I had to ride the bus for more than one hour to middle school and high school, he would wake us up every morning before 6:30 a.m. and prepared breakfast for us. It usually includes a fried egg he cooked, and a bowl of hot soybean milk and a freshly baked biscuits he picked up from the nearby market. Once when mom was hospitalized, my brother and I were impressed that he was able to cook a pot of soup for dinner with spare ribs and Bok Choy (or Napa Cabbage). That is pretty much the limit of his cooking skill. In the summer, he sometimes would take us with him on business trips to see places of the island. Perhaps that seeded my interest in traveling?

Dad never commented much about daily routines or disciplined us which were more my mom’s job. But we could all surely sense his concern on our school performance and he was proud when we did well and he was worried when we did poorly. He seemed to feel his best contribution and support would be to make sure we eat well and be happy. I still remember his encouraging smile with anxiety as he waited at a distance outside the classroom where I was taking the grueling middle school entrance exam.

He retired from government service in 1973 when I was fulfilling my mandatory military service after my Bachelor degree. I never asked him if my dream of going to a graduate school in U.S. had anything to do with his decision of early retirement. He was the only bread earner in the house and received a meager monthly salary of a little over one hundred U.S. dollars then. When he retired, he got a one-time retirement benefit of approximately $5,000, of which half was used to buy me a one way airline ticket to San Francisco and to supplement my partial scholarship at the graduate school. I learned later that the other half went into a failed investment on his friend’s venture of making candles. I guess after all I was a better return of investment!

Another significant factor of his decision for the early retirement might have been an opportunity to join a private company (which he did) found by a Chinese American businessman that became the first modern slaughter house in Taiwan. I was probably partially responsible for his 2^nd and final retirement as well, when he finally agreed to come to visit us in U.S. in 1983. When he rushed back home few weeks later, he found out, as he had feared and my mom had predicted that he had been relieved from his General Manager duty and was reassigned to become a consultant. He never blamed it on me. And I never asked him how he felt and offered him any words of consolation.

Few months after my father’s birth, the Republic of China was born on Oct 10^th, 1911, rid of the Qing Dynasty with an armed revolution. Dad liked to say, especially as he grew older, he was of the same age as the nation. He liked even more to joke about his most “pride accomplishment”, surpassing those of the National Father Sun Yat-Sen and his successor, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek: his two daughters-in-law are from the Sun’s and the Chiang’s.

Dad had a pretty good life, I thought, thanks to my brother and sister-in-law who lived with him and cared for him. His quality of life did go down quite a bit during the last two years of his life after two strokes. Gradually he lost the ability to swallow food or drink liquid, then he could no longer speak clearly and later he lost the strength of his limbs as well. The cruelty of it was that he was deprived of two things he loved to do the most: eating/drinking and walking. He passed away at the age of 93. I am glad that I did ask and walk with him once on his routine afternoon stroll when we visited him before he lost his mobility. He led the way down the busy city streets and paused from time to time. We did not talk much but I could feel the same warmth and security of being able to be right next to him just like when I was a kid. I wish I had told him how happy I was to be able to have a walk with him. I wish I had walked with him more. But it is now too late.

Few years ago, I brought back from Taiwan an old family photo album that my late sister had put together decades ago. It has photos of my parents from around the time when they got married. In a few photos, there are some of their friends and/or relatives whom I don’t recognize. There were places and background scenes they had been to that I can’t recognize either. But I will never be able to ask them again.

Look, don’t be like me. Ask your parents any of the little details that might sound not so important to you now. Do something with them whenever you can, as if they might be gone tomorrow. This way, you would not regret later in your life that you could have known more about them and thus about yourself. Oh, one other thing, dad asked me privately if I would take him to see a striptease when he was visiting U.S. the first time at the age of 72. I am sorry that I refused his request as deemed inappropriate. If I had a chance to do it again, I would make up an excuse to my mom and take him to a show.

Dad, I miss you. I will see you when we go home. If there is a heaven, I am sure I will be with you forever after I die. If there is incarnation, I will be your son again.

Dad, happy 100^th birthday; let us drink to that!

Lost in Translation

2011-06-29T18:10:00.000-04:00

World Journal, a popular Chinese Newspaper in US, published a few stories recently about Chinglish or Chinese English. Since English is the most popular language used worldwide, it is not surprising one would find plenty of examples of Chinglish in places like China whose status is rapidly rising on the world stage.

The oldest Chinglish expression I can recall was “long time no see” which is an example of a low prestige Pidgin English and a word by word literal translation of the common Mandarin Chinese greeting 好久不見. By the way, language prestige is a sociolinguistic concept that has been used to study, among others, what happens when a language comes into contact with another. Pidgin is not a native language of any community. It is essentially a simplified low prestige language which is created impromptu, often in trade, by necessity to help communications between people who do not have other common media. You probably have seen it appeared in Hollywood movies when American Indians talked with White Men.

In general, when two languages have equal or similar power or prestige came into contact, they naturally shared some elements and influenced each other. There are obvious “word borrowing” especially when a notion simply did not exist in a society. In English, you may find examples like coolie, typhoon, tea, lose face, brainwash, paper tiger, etc. which were incorporated from Chinese. At the opposite direction, you would find examples like秀, 派对, 沙拉, 三明治, 幽默 (show, party, salad, salad, sandwich, humor, respectively) which were originated from English. The last one is particularly interesting. It is a masterful translation by renowned writer Lin Yutang 林語堂 in early 20^th century that captured both the pronunciation and the mood of “humor”. I have always been wondering however why wasn’t there a native Chinese expression for it? Were Chinese always so serious?

Not too surprisingly, the world has experienced in numerous occasions when two or more languages of different prestige come into contact with each other. In many cases, creole languages were born where parent languages were nativized or fused together to form a new and stable language. Typically the grammar of the new language came from the subordinated group of lower prestige and the vocabulary came from that of the dominant group. Prominent and surviving examples include the Jamaican Creole which is a result of superimposing largely English words on West African grammar and Haitian Creole which is a result of mixing French vocabulary with West African grammar. Both were results of European colonial expansions.

The most fascinating creole language is probably Singlish, a colloquial Singaporean English. As an immigrant city state of diverse cultural backgrounds with about 70% Chinese descendants, one finds the Singlish syntax similar to Southern Chinese and vocabulary coming primarily from English mixed in with Chinese (in particular, Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese), Malay, Tamil, Bengali, and Punjabi. The evolution of Singlish is continuing. Most recently it has incorporated more words from Mandarin Chinese (through formal education), American and Australian slang (through films and TV programs) and Japanese (through Anime). To get a feel for Singlish, below is a funny post on an overseas Singaporean forum.

“Aiyah- your blogpsot ah, velly funnee leh. Question ah - ni cai na li?

I ah, come from same country like you lor. I miss talking cock, eating spicy food and sure proud of my Singlish one . Aiyooo - all this “talk proper English"- kepala sakit ! Why ah? Must be proud leh -we understand each other whaaat......so why make problem one? Of course we talk proper with other not from Singapore- must lah- otherwise ah,very geram to them! They look like they get lost or takut one after they hear you talk Singlish to them. Sayang lah ( Also velly funneee to see).
But to each other .... ok what...right or not? You understand me, I understand you - where got problem?
Like I say ah, you must be velly proud leh, to be like us Singaporean, we can adapt well leh, to anything lor- so long ah, as we remain close with our loved ones back home. We are Singapore - hear me ROOAARRRR lah!!!”

If you want to get a concentrated and life dose of Singlish, you can watch a Singaporean movie. A good choice would be its all-time highest-grossing film – the 1998 comedy Money No Enough.

Singlish illustrates how languages can be mixed and evolved to make communications possible amongst people from very different social and cultural background. At the same time, it also illustrates language shift and possible extinction in real time as well as the development of “bad” English and Mandarin Chinese. Note English was only made the first language of Singapore at the declaration of its independence in 1965 and the Speak Mandarin Campaign wasn’t launched till Sept 1979.

As a high prestige language, Chinese language has had huge influence on East and Southeast Asia languages in history. Chinglish is hopefully a transient issue due to ignorance and laziness in the process of translation from one high prestige language to another. Two frequently cited examples of botched translation of road signs are: 施工進行中Construction in Progress, and小心滑倒Be Careful of Slipping. The powerful but less than perfect Google Translate did it correctly in the former and did not make silly mistakes like “Execution in Progress” that has been widely circulated on Internet. But Google Translate failed in the latter (which was translated to Carefully Slip!) Did the sign maker use Google Translate?)

The former in fact alerts us a more serious problem. It is a bad Chinese, in the first place. Professor Yu Guangzhong余光中, one of the most accomplished contemporary writer, poet and critic discussed in his June 11^th commencement speech at the National Sun Yat-Sen University about the contamination of Chinese language by English. Following his cue, a far better and elegant expression of the sign would be to eliminate the redundant phrase 進行and simply says施工中 which was what I used to see when I was young. If Chinese don’t treasure and practice good Chinese, how could one just blame it on other languages like English?

On the lighter side, to get more laughs, you can visit any of the many websites that are devoted to Chinglish. ChineseEnglish.com is one of them which has a good collection and shows the correct usage and translation. Have fun and stay pure!

Talk to you soon!

Human Rights Diplomacy – a means to an end?

2011-06-18T12:01:00.000-04:00

Many of us, the first-generation immigrants, have had experience with distinct social, political and economic systems. Many of us, proud of our cultural heritage and at the same time, have been awed by the rich opportunities and attracted to the values and systems of America – liberty, freedom, rule of law, democracy, free enterprise, and safety nets like social security, Medicare.

When it comes to America’s international relationships and foreign policy however, many of us have particularly strong and diverse feelings with each of our first hand experiences. There have been a long history of controversies and appearance of double/multiple standards that make us wonder from time to time if America is "a shining beacon on a hill" or a hegemony sugar coated with moral imperatives? I myself was hit with these questions when in 1979 U.S. government reversed its long standing position and recognized the Communist China instead of the Nationalist Chinese government in Taiwan.

In his 2010 book Ideal Illusions: how the U.S. government co-opted human rights, historian and foreign-policy analyst James Peck gave an in-depth account of the evolution, thus the continuity, of American global vision and how rights-based individualism became the central piece of the rhetoric of U.S. foreign policy. Peck’s opening of the book sums it nicely, quoting French political philosopher Betrand de Jouvenel (On Power: The Natural History of its Growth, 1948): “Follow an idea through from its birth to its triumph, and it becomes clear that it came to power only at the price of an astounding degradation of itself. The result is not reason which has found a guide but passion which has found a flag.” And that flag has been Human Rights since late 1970s, as President Jimmy Carter proclaimed “Human rights is the soul of American foreign policy” in Dec 1978 on the 30^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the United Nations).

We learned that a power vacuum developed when the British Empire began to disintegrate in early 20^th century. It took WWII and President Roosevelt to steer America away from the earlier isolationism and non-interventionism and to begin America’s global quest to form a new world order. In the ensuing 30 year fight of the War of Ideas (to counter communism’s appeal advanced by Soviet Union), abstract notion of freedom and fears of the competing ideology that would end American ways of life were transformed into anticommunism and modernization with direct and indirect U.S. aids that outspent Soviet’s.

When more than a decade long military and political interventions at Vietnam ended with the withdraw, the U.S. national security establishment did not stray nor withdraw from the notion of the long term strategic interests and benefits of an American-centered globalism, despite the embarrassing ethical and moral failures throughout the war.

We learned that building on the continuing anticommunism fever and the preaches for the ideal of human rights by President Jimmy Carter, Regan’s Administration in the 80’s pushed forward forcefully the notion of democratization that linked human rights and American interests including the corporate business ones. Proxy wars were justified and waged in Central and South America, and selected places in other continents.

President Regan, the masterful ideological warrior, further raised the antes in every direction and successfully overwhelmed the Soviet Union. The net result was that American foreign policy both in strategy and in tactics, began to converged to a set of interweaved and inter-dependent components that enjoyed the supports, albeit not immune to criticisms, from left to right, from progressive to conservative, from individuals to business, and from dove to hawks, human rights activists included. Every camp was able to find something in it that they wanted to route for and were more willing to look other ways.

We also learned that the web began to be completed during the Bush and Clinton years when U.S. linked freedom, human rights, and democracy with commerce. Market capitalism is an integral part of advancement of democracy and human rights as products and services are traded across the world. The ever popular NGO or Non-Governmental Organization (which could be funded fully or partly by a government) are now actively funding specific activities and exerting significant influences in a distributed fashion that promote particular causes and values. Right-based and interest-based acts, be it U.S. national security interest or multination corporations’, are becoming more difficult to delineate which is the means or end as they became hopelessly intertwined.

One thing seems certain however: the perceived double or multiple standards will continue. If you are perplexed with it, don’t be. After all, the priority and responsibility of all elected officials of U.S. government, from the President and on down, is to care for America’s interest. At end of day, interventions, justified and welcomed under humanitarianism or any other name to aid and uphold the human rights of the victims, were necessarily constrained and applied selectively under complex calculation and trades of short-term and long-term interests of U.S. The scenes are replayed over and over again including during the latest round of Middle East peace negotiation and Arab Spring.

In this parallel track of war of words, “civil society” and “need for reform” are reserved for any one that is not conforming to the “universal values and systems” championed by U.S. and western world. Calls for “open society” and “becoming a member of global community” are applied to those who resist the adoption of the democratic political system and participation of the global trades and consumer/producer supply chain led by U.S. and the west. “War on terror” can be a war against those who threaten the stability with violent means as seen and defined by the incumbent power regardless their grievance and desperation. “Failed states” are those misbehaving governments and “nation building” is to right the wrongs according to the world order and international norm dominated by U.S.

To be fair however, whether you believe in the ideals or in the conspiracy theory of hegemony, the reality is that the game has been and will continue to be played in such a fashion regardless who is the superpower of the time. America is not perfect but it has been a responsible world leader with a clear vision and moral values. One may question the motives and suspect the self-interest of U.S. One may take exceptions of the overemphasis of (individual) human rights at the expense of basic needs and equality for some. One may argue the same standard should not be applied to other less fortunate and less developed with different culture. But no one can deny these ideals are sound and desired. And no one has yet to articulate a more attractive and sustaining alternative.

A whole chapter of James Peck’s book was devoted to Human Rights and China. Being poised to co-compete with U.S. in decades to come with its recent growth, China must respond to several severe challenges before it can be considered a legit world leader: What is its vision of a new multi-polarity and multi-culture world order? How should the individual rights and the social equality be balanced and maintained? How would a harmonious society and equitable distribution of wealth be realized under its dominant state power? Will state capitalism and Confucianism be an adequate substitution for market capitalism, democracy backed with an adversarial legal system? Will China be capable of being a strong and moral world power without the missionary ethos of the west? How would it balance nationalism and globalism and the interests of other nations’ and its own?

Talk to you soon!

Contradiction 矛盾

2011-06-12T21:31:00.001-04:00

Just when we thought we were finally done negotiating with the Chinese-American car salesman the options, purchase price and so on, this Indian-American business manager of the dealership threw one more pitch at us – an optional extended warranty of the vehicle that would cover road service and repair for mechanical/electronic failures in next 7 years. My wife and I smiled at each other; we thought of the same thing simultaneously that this Indian-American would not understand. We were both reminded of the story where the Chinese word for (self-) contradiction矛盾 (Mao Dun) originally came from. The word itself literally means spear 矛and shield 盾. Nearly 2300 years ago, famous Chinese philosopher Han Fei韓非, a leading legalist school scholar, wrote in his book Han FeiZi 《韓非子‧難勢》：「楚人有鬻盾與矛者，譽之曰：『吾盾之堅，物莫能陷也。』又譽其矛曰：『吾矛之利，於物無不陷也。』或曰：『以子之矛，陷子之盾，何如？』其人弗能應之。」

What Han Fei was doing was to illustrate the notion of contradiction with a story a salesman who was selling spears and shield. The salesman told his prospective customers that the shield he was selling was the best in the world which could stand up to any attack. He then went on to sell his spears and declared the spears were the best in the world that can penetrate any object. Of course, the guy was stuck when he was asked what would happen if he uses his spear against his shield. The Chinese word for contradiction 矛盾was thus born. How would you sell the extended warranty service contract of a Japanese car that you said is extremely reliable?

After almost 16 years, our family car, a ’95 Volvo 850, has finally reached the point that it should retire from the service. I still remember vividly how I smashed its front-end including the axle right in front of children’s Chinese school only a month after we bought it. After that, it hasn’t had any major injury or illness, other than the usual wear and tear, and few small organ replacements, nothing that an average mechanics can’t handle. But when its heart and lung had deteriorated to the point that a heart transplant or an open heart surgery would be needed, we decided with sorrow that we should let it go.

Buying a new car is a serious undertaking especially for those who plan to keep the car till it dies. It is an extension of yourself – it does wherever you go and yes, people judge you in part of what car you drive. In practical terms, it is usually the 2^nd most expensive capital purchase for an individual right after the house. Then there are so many choices from the type of car to the make, color, style and accessories.

The most intimidating part of car buying is when you have to deal with car salesmen. We the shoppers are at a disadvantage since the stake is high and yet this psychological warfare is something we don’t often get a chance to practice. Worse, there is no secret that car salesman is one of the least trusted professions, after politician. There are plenty of jokes and anecdotal stories about dishonest car salesman, especially for the used cars. Luckily, with Internet, various free online car shopping services like Edmunds.com and Trucar.com have made the exercise much less painful. It helps you with reference prices so that you can formulate your position before you visit the dealership. That is exactly what we did.

Have you ever been curious about the car salesman profession? What their job is like? What does it take to be a “good” car salesman? How much do they make and is it easy to make a living? Do they have to lie and rip customers off and if so, how do they manage to sleep well at night?

If you are interested in getting some insights, you should read the fascinating article by Scott Jacobs who went undercover for Edmunds.com to be a car salesman for three months. The article was initially published in Jan 2001 and was updated in May 2009. After an interview and answering a series of personality profiling questions, Jacobs managed to get himself hired first at a high volume high pressure dealership of Japanese cars and later a contrasting no-haggle small dealership that sold American cars. Here is what he wrote about when he had his first prospective customer came into his car lot:

“They turned and, in an instant, I saw the fear on their faces. Fear of me! Let me quickly add that I'm not the type of person who normally elicits fear from the people around me. I've been called shy, reserved and quiet — all euphemisms for meek, mousy and at times practically invisible. But here I was with my white shirt and tie, my employee's badge hanging from my belt. I had become the enemy. And they were afraid of me.

What were they afraid of? The short answer is, they were afraid they would buy a car. The long answer is that they were afraid they would fall in love with one of these cars, lose their sense of reason and pay too much for it. They were afraid they would be cheated, ripped-off, pressured, hoodwinked, swindled, jacked around, suckered or fleeced. And, as they saw me approaching, all these fears showed on their faces as they blurted out, "We're only looking!" ”

Now, does it jog your memory of how you felt when you went into a car dealer place and was greeted by one of the aggressive salesmen the last time? Don’t worry for Scott Jacob. He was already equipped with lines for those “lookers”. My favorite is "Last time I was only looking I wound up married." Now, let us go to my office and …

Does this sound vaguely familiar? Sales is not a job for the fainted heart or people who can’t take rejection. There are a lot pressures especially for those who live on commission that include car salesman. The 1992 classic movie Glengarry Glen Ross got it right: it is all about closing the deal. There shall be nothing else but the single-minded obsession to close! close! close!

Indeed the system is designed around creating the max tension, earning and penalty included, to close the sale. New car salesmen are typically paid at a regressive commission at 20-30% of the front-end gross profit of the dealership; the higher the profit, the higher the percentage. Wouldn’t you be trying anything if your next meals depend on it? Wouldn’t you be trying to increase the gross profit whether it is through higher price, lower trade-in value, or by stretching the truth? When the manager’s whiteboard shows visibly you have only sold three cars this month when some of your colleagues sold 20, don’t you feel inadequate? When you know you are at risk of being fired after not having a single sale for days especially after you did have client test drove the cars, wouldn’t you cranked it up another notch?

Oh, before I go, I should get back to the question about how much does car salesman make. I gathered from various articles on the net that car salesman probably make around $30-100K a year. A decent salesman moves about 10 cars a month in average. It may not sound right as we all see so many salesmen standing idle around in the lot or office. But if you figure into the long 60 hours a week with significant down time, this estimate seems not unreasonable. As a reference point, Honda has close to 900 dealerships across the country and sold around 1 million new cars annually in recent years. In other words, the sales volume of a Honda dealership would be around 100 cars a month and is operated at about 10 salesmen in average. It sounds intuitive to me.

Do you still want to be a car salesman? By the way, I have never met a car saleswoman? Have you? I did meet an Internet car salesman though. When he told us that 60% of their dealership’s sales now come through their Internet channel, I figured car salesman’s modus operandi will go through significant changes if it has not already.

Talk to you soon!

To see is to believe 眼見為信

2011-05-28T14:27:00.003-04:00

In my April 27th blog, I showed some photos that I did for one of my digital photography class assignments – The Best Liar. Readers who have knowledge of the events or the subjects involved in the photos could tell easily these were faked and might focus on how well the photos were created which was the primary goal of the assignment. The uninformed or less suspecting ones may however be led to believe or consider the photos are real and the events did take place.

Considering we all have seen way too often documents including photos and videos that were fabricated or manipulated, perhaps we need to revert back to the old idea of “to see is to believe” 眼見為信? But would that be sufficient? Is it possible that what you “see” and what I “see” could be different? If so, then is experience and reality only perceived and not absolute? How do we then determine if an event did occur and something does exist? How do we form our perceived reality any way? How do our brains work with visual and/or other stimuli?

Scientists and philosophers have been pursuing answers to these questions for a very long time at different levels with distinct methods and tools. I will try to stay in or close to the realm of science although improved understandings in science do have ramifications on some of the debates of issues at the boundaries of philosophy, religion, and science.

The mechanical parts of visual systems of animals are more straightforward to study. We do know a lot about how eyes work optically and physically from the single lens systems (such as human’s, bird’s, and whales’) to multi-lens systems (such as insect’s). We know enough about the process of sensing of light and propagation of signals through nerve system to particular parts of brain to create devices like night vision goggles and cameras successfully. Further, efforts in creating “artificial eyes” have been attempted to restore visions of the blinds with encouraging results at a few research institutes. However, good photographers and graphical designers know that human brains can work with eyes in some integral and adaptive manner to enhance our experience/perception including contrast, color, etc. depending on our interest (mind?) and the scene. No camera can possibly reproduce such a sophisticated functionality today.

Worse; much more elaborate manipulations and adaptations can take place without our awareness. The recent research by the prominent psychologist Daniel Simons showed that our perception can be influenced or distracted significantly such that we are “not seeing something that is there”. That is, sometimes some of us may not even “see” certain obvious events that happen right in front of our eyes! I am sure you would swear that you had such an experience with your love ones. But Professor Simons’ famous experiment (that led to his 2010 book The Invisible Gorilla) revealed the surprisingly strong effect of in-attentional blindness (that he defined as “the failure to notice unusual and salient events in their visual world when attention is otherwise engaged and the events are unexpected.”) Can you believe that roughly half of the people participated in his experiments did not “see” a gorilla walking through the scene where several people pass basketballs to each other. By the way, “not seeing” does not necessarily translate to “no impact” as many studies of the effects of subliminal messaging have demonstrated the opposite.

While the “invisible gorilla” phenomena may be surprising, very few people question the results and plausible explanations. In fact, once told or forewarned, no one would miss the appearance of the gorilla. The flip side is much more controversial and puzzling. Yes, I am talking about the phenomena of “seeing something that is not there.” Of course, there are two distinct categories of such phenomena. One is magic that is a clever and intentional use of devices, and/or the property of optical reception and perception of human to make believe, thus to entertain us. Here is a short clip of one of the most watched magic shows at the 2010 Chinese New Year’s Eve Show on CCTV of China. In the show, the renowned young magician Liu Qian 劉謙 from Taiwan pushed his right hand right through a glass table to pick up some coins from underneath.

Since it was advertised as a magic show, no one would think it was actually happening and everyone was asking how he did it in awe. Throughout the human history however, there have been numerous reported and unexplained sightings of phenomena which have been broadly called ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception). This is the second category - the curious and controversial phenomena of “seeing something that is not there.”

Some of these phenomena turned out to be frauds or pranks. Some were explained away as one developed better knowledge of the circumstance and/or science. More often, these stories persisted and new ones continue to pop up which beg for explanations, either affirmative or negative. All these phenomena have one thing in common however: none of them have ever been successfully verified by independent researchers, or repeated in rigorous and controlled environment for a variety of reasons.

A recent case that drew a lot of attention in Taiwan and China was the Finger Reading Study by Professor Si-Chen Lee李嗣涔and his collaborators since early 90s. Professor Lee did his early research in semiconductors and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the National Taiwan University, the most prestigious higher education institution in Taiwan, since 1982 and was appointed the President of the university in 2005. He became interested in developing better understanding of the popular Chinese traditional Qigong applying modern sciences in late 1980s. One thing led to another, he ended up in conducting some parapsychology investigations and has given popular public talks (in mandarin) about his experiments and findings in early 2000’s in Taiwan.

Basically, Lee reported the following amazing and unexpected results in these talks: 1)it is possible to train youngsters between age of 7 and 13 to “read” two digit numbers and Chinese characters in color with fingers (that is, by touch of those figures written on a piece of paper). Lee reported an average of 24% “success” rate was achieved with 152 youngsters who completed a 4 days by 2 hour training session held annually from 1996 to 2003. While he did not clarify what was considered a “success”, the conclusion appeared to have been drawn from applying statistical theory of (p-value) hypothesis testing that the occurrence of correct answers during the experiments is very unlikely due to random guesses. Professor Lee thus suggested that such a paranormal capability is real and can be trained. 2) Lee reported that his research team was able to communicate with a spiritual character about specific questions and topics through trained “ESP-capable” test subjects (according to later investigatory reports, the reported experiments were all conducted with Ms. 高橋舞, the most “capable” kid from the earlier finger reading training). The send (from the test subject to the spirit character) channel address has a web URL like syntax. The received message was displayed visually on a virtual screen seen by the “ESP-capable” test subject (similar to the notion of the “third eye”).

Are these for real? Doesn’t it remind you of anecdotal stories of physic in the west or靈媒,占童 in China? Does it prove in any way the existence of other “universes” or spiritual world(s) as Professor Lee and some believe? Does it have anything to do with the unifying theory that some physicist are developing?

Despite his enthusiasm and scientific/engineering trainings, Professor Lee has not fared any better than other researchers in the field of parapsychology that attempts to bring scientific disciplines to an otherwise mysterious experience. With the promising results of the finger reading experiments, Yung-Jong Shiah 夏允中, a researcher of Professor Lee’s team, went on to obtain his Ph.D. degree in Psychology at the well-known Koestler Parapsychology Unit of the University of Edinburgh, England. From his peer-reviewed publications, Professor Shiah (who is now on the faculty of Psychology Department of Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan) did not succeed in validating the results in more controlled and rigorous experiments with a number of school children in England.

All in all, I don’t doubt the authenticity of some of those reports that there have been individuals or a group of individuals who experienced or “see” certain phenomena. It is a big leap of faith however to conclude something is real when it cannot be reproduced consistentely or independently verified. Professor Lee appears to have gone overboard and got ahead of himself in the hope of drawing interests of others, considering that he had not published peer-reviewed scientific papers beyond literary accounts of the experiments and that he referred to the discredited torsion field as a plausible explanation and basis.

Zhuang Zi 莊子 warned us over 2300 years ago that it is dangerous when one hopes to comprehend the infinite universe with one’s finite understandings 吾生也有涯，而知也無涯。以有涯隨無涯，殆已！《莊子·內篇·養生主第三》.How many times have we seen people got confused models and theory with the reality? The progression of Newton’s universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, Einstein’s relativity theory, and the newly developed String theory, M-theory, Holographic Principle, etc, are small steps that helped us to imagine and to expand our understandings of the universe(s) but they are no substitutes for the real thing and will continue to be revised.

The late Martin Gardner, a famous American science writer and mathematician, wrote on the June 26, 1980 issue of New York Review of Books in a response to a letter by four renowned scientists who defended parapsychology against the harsh criticism of John Wheeler (who called it a pseudoscience). Gardner started his letter by pointing out that “One may have the highest respect for the signers of the above letter—one of them, Brian Josephson, is a Nobel Prize winner—at the same time recognizing that knowledge of physics no more qualifies a scientist to evaluate psychic claims than does knowledge of chess or medieval Latin.” He concluded his letter by saying that “If the four investigations listed in their letter are the best evidence they can muster for the reality of psi, their letter is a sad reinforcement of what John Wheeler had to say.” calling it a “pathological science” and a “pretentious pseudo science”.

Unfortunately nothing seems to have changed after 30 years from the publication of the above exchange and there is still no evidence that any of the reported paranormal phenomena could be reproduced, especially by disbelievers, much less any convincing explanations. It is also not likely an alternative and effective methodology will be developed any time soon for the examination and discussion of ESP if (unspecified) different rules apply as many believers had argued. We continue to be trapped in the contradiction that we are hoping to use our existing experience and knowledge to explain events that are supposedly taking place outside our universe.

Let me pause here and go back to my own reality before I get lost!

The Best of Taiwan

2011-05-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

From time to time, friends and family members asked me for suggestions on where to go and what to do when they visit Taiwan. While it is close to impossible to address different needs and preferences, I thought I would offer a summary list, completed with reference links that could help one formulate his/her own itinerary before delving into detailed tour guides or making arrangement with a travel service.

Before we start, it is useful to get oriented in both geographically and historically. Taiwan is a large tropical/subtropical island in East Asia about 100 miles southeast of mainland China. It is within 3-4 hours of flight time from Japan and Korea at north, and 1 hour from Hong Kong at its southeast. The island is about 1.5 times of the size of New Jersey or one quarter of the size of the New York State. The longest and widest parts of Taiwan are measured to about 250 miles by 100 miles. It is mountainous with over 100 peaks rising 3,000 meters or 10,000 ft or more within tens of miles from the shore at sea level. Taiwan currently has a population of 23 million (New York and New Jersey have approximately 19 and 9 million people respectively) with a quarter of them residing in the greater metropolitan area of Taipei, the capital city at the north of the island.

For thousands of years, Taiwan have been inhabited with Taiwanese aborigines who are Austronesian peoples. While there had been sparse visits and settlements in the area by Chinese across the Taiwan strait, the island first attracted the attention of European colonial powers when Portuguese sighted it in 1544 and named it Formosa (means "Beautiful”). Dutch started their settlements in southern Taiwan in 1624 and later made Anping (a part of today’s Tainan city) the colonial capital. Two years later, Spanish landed and occupied northern Taiwan. The Spanish Formosa did not last however. It fell to Dutch’s hand who took control of the whole island in 1642. In 1662, 18 years after the fall of Ming Dynasty of China, the former Ming commander Zheng Chenggong 鄭成功 defeated the Dutch and claimed Taiwan as the base in a attempt to reclaim mainland China and restore the Ming Dynasty. The name Taiwan is believed to have been originated from the Taiwanese aborigines who resided then in Anping area.

In 1683, Taiwan fell into Qing Dynasty’s hand and was formally annexed and eventually became a province of China in 1885. It was ceded to Japan a decade later however when Qing Dynasty was defeated by Japan in First Sino-Japanese War. By then, there were about 3 million people in Taiwan with the majority being Han immigrants from mainland China occupying coastal lands. It was returned to China (governed by the Nationalist Party) in 1945 when Japan lost and surrendered at the conclusion of WWII. A short four years later in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan when Communist Party won the civil war and overtook the mainland and formed the People’s Republic of China.

In the subsequent 60 years, Taiwan has evolved and transformed into a significant economic power and one of the most developed countries in Asia with a head start out of the involuntary modernization through the earlier Japanese colonization. Yet, it has managed to retain its root in Chinese culture which was further strengthened and infused with imperial treasures, the elites and survivors-alike through the exile of the Nationalist government. Indeed there is no better place to see and to experience more completely what a modern instantiation of Chinese culture can be. Today, it is possible to do a visit of Taiwan in less than a week or just the Taipei area in say 3 days by escorted tours. However if you’d like to explore places in your own pace and customize to your preferences, it is possible to do so on your own or with helps from various travel services.

Chances are you will arrive at Taiwan by plane at the TaoYuan Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport which is less than one hour away from Taipei, the capital city with a taxi/limo fare at about $40-50 dollars (or around 1300 NT dollars). Note no tipping is expected for any services including taxi and for those who do (like in some restaurants), service charge is explicitly included in the bill that saves you from the anxiety of determining what is a reasonable tip. Of course, I am assuming that you have already found a place to stay before you depart. Like most fully developed modern cities, Taipei offers a wide range of lodging from apartment, hostels, to 5-star International chain hotels that you can find from many of the Internet traveling services. What perhaps less known is that some of the universities do offer hotel and guest house services on campus in good value.

When in Taipei, you can take advantage of its wonderful and convenient public transportation system. Its excellent Metro Taipei and extensive bus routes and frequent bus services makes possible for one explore most of the spots listed below (often without transfers) safely. If you don’t mind to spend a little more money and want to cut down the time of travel, you can always hail a metered-taxi on the street – one would be available almost instantly in most parts of the city during regular hours.

For interesting places to see or things to do in Taipei and neighboring area, a good online source in English (and Chinese) is the taipeitravel.net maintained by the Department of Information and Tourism of the city government. Below are my picks grouped in geographic proximity so that you can visit each of them in one trip within a half-day or one day journey. Some of them are within walking distance to each other such that you can do people watching and window shopping as you get to the next stop. Many of them are also accessible by Metro.

1. Southern, Central and Western Districts: Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park, 2-28 Peace Park/National Taiwan Museum, Xi-Men Ding, Taipei Botanical Garden, Longshan Temple & Hua-Xi Night Market/Snake Alley

2. Northern Districts: National Palace Museum, Chiang Kai-Shek Shilin Residence, Shilin 士林night market

3. Northern Districts and excursion to DanShiu: Mattyrs' Shrine 臺北忠烈祠 (there is an hourly changing of guard ceremony), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, DanShui Old Street and ferry terminal area, Danshui Fort San Domingo

4. Eastern Districts: Taipei 101 (one of the tallest building in the world, shops, restaurants, with a panoramic view of city on the top floor), nearby shopping malls, book stores, movie theaters.

5. Full Day excursions

· JeoFen 九份 and Chinkuashin 金瓜石 Goldmine village and museum

· Historical towns and Ceramic and Pottery arts and crafts: Yingge pottery street, pottery factories and museum, Sansia Ching Shui Tsu Shih Temple and Old Street

6. Overnight excursions from Taipei

· YangMinShan National Park, JhuMing 朱銘 Sculpture Park Museum, Yeh-Liu Natural Park

· JiaoSi Hot Spring and YiLan city

Leaving Taipei city, you can explore the rest of the island in one to two weeks on your own or with assistance by travel services without escorted large group tours. In the following, I describe a clockwise around the island itinerary that allows you to explore Taiwan in-depth by staying 2-3 nights at each cluster. You can reverse the direction and/or go straight to any of the cluster and skip some of them if you’d like.

· Cluster A: Take a train or flight to HuaLien city in eastern part of Taiwan. Stay at HuaLien or TaRoKo Gorge National Park to explore the city and the neighborhood. TaRoKo Gorge National Park is one the most beautiful parks that offers abundant hiking opportunities to see the marble and limestone mountains with streams cutting through them. You can also soak yourself in natural outdoor hot spring or rafting on the nearby Siouguluan River.

· Cluster B:Take a train to TaiTung City in southeast of Taiwan. If you have some extra money to spend, you may want to stay at the one of the nicer ZhiBen resorts like the Hotel Royal 老爺大酒店 to relax in upscale hot springs and water park. Take your time to tour the neighboring towns and enjoy activities like GuanShan biking tour 關山環鎮自行車道. Take a ferry or short flight to either Green Island or Orchid Island (LangYu) and spend at least one night there. These two islands are small enough that you can rent a bike or scooter or hike around the island. The latter offers a unique opportunity to visit the aboriginal Yami village and see their arts/crafts. The former used to house political prisoners by the Nationalist government before martial law was lifted in Taiwan.

· Cluster C: Take a train/bus to Kenting, a seaside town near the southern tip of Taiwan. When you are tired of the beach activities and water sports like snorkeling and diving, you can visit the nearby Kenting National Park and see tropical vegetation and the traces of undersea, or spend an evening in town strolling down the bustling main street and check out the night market and bars. You can also make a loop around the southern tip to see fascinating landscapes including coral tablelands, limestone caves, sand rivers and sand waterfalls etc. while stopping by the fortified Erluanbi light house and the HenChun Old Town 恆春古城 before returning to Kenting. A little northwest of HenChun town center off the shore is the National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium. South of the museum is a popular scenic spot for seeing the famous GuangShan Sunset 關山夕照.

· Cluster D: Heading north by bus from Kenting, you reach KaoHsiung City, the 2^nd largest city of the island in 2 hours. When in Kaohsiung, you can reach pretty much all the major attractions by KaoHsiung Rapid Transit (KRT), including Sizih Bay/Former British Consulate, Love River cruise and river bank cafes, Dream Mall, Dome of Light at the Formosa Boulevard Station, and the 2009 Kaohsiung World Game Stadium designed by the famous Japanese architect Toyo Ito. North of Kaohsiung is the Tainan, the oldest city of Taiwan and the Dutch colonial capital in Taiwan four hundred years ago. You can visit the historical sites such as AnPing Fort, ChiKan Tower, Eternal Golden Castle, Confucius Temple, and the Flowers Night market.

· Cluster E: Take Taiwan High Speed Rail to Taichung station and then a bus to Sun Moon Lake, the largest lake in Taiwan. You can explore the lake area by bus or bike around the lake and take a boat tour. You can also take a bus to Puli to visit the town and the nearby Chun Tai Chang Monastery by taxi. Traveling back to the Taichung high speed rail station by bus, you can catch a train to return to Taipei.

When traveling to Taiwan, the first and last thing you should be concerned about is food. It is the last thing you would worry about especially in Taipei, because there is a such a wide range of choices from any number of the inexpensive but delicious Chinese eateries around the corner to many of the gourmet or upscale Chinese and international restaurants. It is the first thing you worry about because there are simply way too many choices in any dimension you can think of! Here are a few suggestions for you to start with if you want to try some of the very best but reasonably-priced Chinese specialities that are not easily available elsewhere including China or Hong Kong.

· Tien Hsiang Lo 天香樓in Landis Hotel亞都麗緻 serves a upscale delicate and creative HangChow (Shanghai region) cuisine

· Dian Shui Lou 點水樓serves excellent Shanghai regional cuisine don’t miss the Jade Buns 絲瓜小籠包 (filled with minced Taiwanese Okra and shrimp)

· Sung Chu Restaurant 宋廚菜館 is famous for its Peking duck that one person can’t finish alone. You can try to drop in but chance of getting seated without advanced reservation is slim to none.

· The Peng’s 彭園 One of the best and most creative Hunan cuisine found anywhere at a good price

· Ding Tai Fun 鼎泰豐 Most people come here for one thing - Steamed pork dumplings小籠包 but other entrees are excellent too

· Beef Noodle Shop 川味老張牛肉麵店 Yes, you are here to have a bowl of delicious beef soup noodle and hope to run into Jackie Chan

· Ice Monster冰館its Jumbo Mango Ice is a wonderful desert treat with fresh mango in hot days which is most of the time in the year

Of course, without advanced planning, you may not be in the neighborhood of these restaurants during your tours and visit. That is not a problem. To begin with, top tourist spots outsourced their in-house food services to famous restauranteurs (for example, the Silks Palace 故宮晶華 at the National Palace Museum). The easiest way to find clean, inexpensive but tasty food with a large number of choices is the food court in large department stores and in the main Taipei Train Station. Night market is an excellent place for bar-food hopping if you are more adventurous and want to try many of the unique local light delights and snacks. If you are a vegetarian or like to try some tasty vegetarian food, you may want to go to some of the vegetarian restaurants such as the popular Spring Natural Vegetarian Restaurant 春天素食 that offers an impressive array of choices in buffet style.

Bon Voage and Bon Appetit!

Born in New Jersey

2011-04-27T17:21:00.000-04:00

My second semester digital photography class is coming to an end. Unlike the first semester where more focus was on the basics and topics where one would do a lot of shooting exercises and rudimentary editing techniques, this semester’s emphasis has been more on thematic combined with technical dimensions such as studio lighting, night photography, fantasy self-portrait, etc. The latter is particular entertaining. Below are the submissions I entered for the homework assignment “Best Liar”.

We also stretched our imaginations with extremely long or short exposure to capture scenes where human eyes/brains fail to notice easily. An example is the paired photos on the right where I used movement of water drips to depict the progression of time.

The grand finale of the class is a photo book where one is free to create a book from scratch with whatever he/she wants. That may sound easy but turns out to be more challenging than what I thought; the least of it was the mechanical details of making covers and binding a book. For one, it is easy to fall into the trap of having a neat idea but can’t get enough satisfactory photos to fill the design. After struggling for two weeks, I finally converged to the following idea and created a book entitled Born in New Jersey.

It was inspired by the 1984 all time hit song Born in the U.S.A. of Bruce Springsteen, one of the most famous New Jersey sons. Below are the lyrics and a Youtube video of it by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (of his Jersey buddies) in Paris on 29th June 1985.

Born in the U.S.A.

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just covering up

[chorus:]
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

[chorus]

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"

[chorus]

I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go

I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

Here is the resulting photo book, my final project for my Digital Photography II class. The photos are displayed in pairs and in the order of opposing pages as they appear in order in the book (not in size necessarily). Hopefully you can imagine the narratives and story without more text. As a hint, the photos were primarily taken at Liberty State Park, Atlantic City, and Jersey Shore beaches. The book is obviously not perfect but it is another step and learning in my pursuit of arts of photography. Talk to you soon!

Madadayo (“Not Yet”)

2011-04-19T12:27:00.000-04:00

Just watched the wonderful 1993 Japanese movie Madadayo that means “not (ready) yet” in English. It is the last film by one of the greatest film directors/writers Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明 who brought world’s attention to Japanese films 60 years ago with his classics like Rashomon in 1950 and Seven Samurai in 1954. The film Madadayo is based on the true story of Professor Hyakken Uchida and focuses on his retirement life after age 60. Through the tidbits of little things in life and the annual birthday parties his former students organized for him, the film explores an old man’s attitude towards to life and death as he kept his humor, perseverance, compassion, and humility with the love and support of his wife and former students.

It was not a coincidence that I rented this movie from Netflix although I first got interested in it because at first sight, it is a movie about a teacher and his students. After watching the movie and in reflection, I realized that I seem to have done more things to get myself “ready” since my retirement, starting first by getting our wills, living wills and estate planning matter in order. My ears and mind seem to naturally become more sensitive to news, statistics, stories, photos, music and literature related to matters on health, aging, and the eventual death. I suppose before retirement, I, like many others, was simply too pre-occupied with living? We hardly have enough time just to take care of urgent issues and schedules to get ourselves through days, weeks and months ahead. How much time and energy can one spend on things might not happen in decades? In the same token, why would or should young folks be concerned with things that might not happen in half a century?

Several weeks ago, I bought and began reading the book A Widow’s Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates (JCO), after I heard an interview on NPR (National Public Radio). JCO is a 72 years old renowned and prolific writer who has been teaching at Princeton University for sometimes. She was just awarded 2010 U.S National Humanities Medal by President Obama. Her writing is full of emotion and grace that one gets distracted by the beauty of her language even for dreadful events like death of her husband of 48 years. As she detailed and cherished her delicate feelings and memory of life and death with her late husband Ray Smith’s, we can only began to appreciate and imagine the enormity of the challenges brought by the death upon those loved ones who have to endure and continue their lives. That is exactly the reason I wanted to read the book – to understand better what my loved ones may feel and face and to make sure I can do my parts to lessen their struggles.

The only comforting thought is that a recent longevity study suggests widows’ longevity does not appear to be correlated with if the widow remarries. NPR’s Brian Lehrer Show recently interviewed Professors Howard Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, the authors of that study The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study. Their analysis was based on data collected by a Stanford University team started in 1921 by Dr. Lewis Terman. The subjects were 1548 “high IQ” young students born in 1910 in San Francisco area.

Among other things, the study found, perhaps not surprisingly, a strong correlation between longevity and social ties/networks (loners be careful!). What is interesting however is the existence of gender difference. For one, widowers who remarried tend to live longer while such correlation does not exist for widows! The reason given is that men have more of their social ties from work and rely more on wives for their social ties. Now I can appreciate more those anecdotal stories that many widows had little interest in getting married again. Quoting an outspoken widowed mother of one of our friends, “why do I want to wash the dirty socks of a man, now I can finally enjoy my days traveling and playing Mahjong with my friends!

Joyce Carol Oates remarried to Professor Charles Gross of the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton in early 2009, a year after her husband’s death.

Back to the meat and potato business. Like most, I had my shares of grieves when family members and closed ones had serious health issues or passed away. For the cases of my parents and my sister-in-law’s father, there were significant expenditures of long term cares even though they lived in Taiwan where the care cost is much cheaper than in U.S. The concern for the financial impact prompted us to look into the possibility of purchasing an increasingly talked-about Long Term Care insurance.

According to the agent we spoke to and the insurance company literature, close to 1 in 2 people in U.S. ended up needing some form of long term care for some period of time before they pass away. This ratio is probably increasing as we speak as we tend to stretch our lives with modern medicines and medical technologies. Clearly such a high rate of occurrence suggests more needs for financial preparedness. Unfortunately, it also suggests that there is a much more limited risk pooling effect that tends to result in higher premium for such an insurance policy. Worse yet, reasonable insurance for catastrophic events don’t seem to exist.

I also learned some interesting data and statistics such as the average length of use of any kind of long term care (at home, assisted living, and nursing care) is about 2.5 years and the average length of stay at nursing care facility is about 6 months (I guess a majority of them never returned after the stay?!) For us who live in a high cost area like New Jersey (and for the matter, California), it turns out that for at home care, it runs about $20-$25/hr with a minimum of 4 hrs. For assisted living, it costs about $4-$6K/month. For nursing homes, it costs about $6-$9K/month. You can do the arithmetic to know any non-trivial length of needs can make a huge dent to one’s nestegg. The good news is that Medicare (for those beyond 65 years old, for now) covers 100% for the first 20 days and 75% for the subsequent 80 days after each incident. If your asset beyond 1 car and 1 house is gone or used up, Medicaid assistance is available but don’t expect 4 star services. Dollars and cents aside, the biggest emotional challenge is that such an event could put your loved ones and their loved ones in a difficult or conflicting position while trying to balance the financial burden with quality of care.

When all said and done, I figured that a better way to think of the Long Term Care insurance is to consider it a form of investment just like you buy stocks and bonds and mutual funds in your diversified portfolio. The way many policies are formulated give rise to a distinct “use-it-or-lose-it” characteristics of the return on investment (or anti-return of investment). If you are “unlucky”, the annual premiums you paid (the “investment”) will generate payouts up to a contracted maximum amount (the best-case “return”). If you (and your loved ones) are lucky, you could lose all your investments. The net result is if you purchase such an insurance, it could provide an additional financial cushion for your loved ones. The only question is if it is worth it. Of course, you have other alternatives such as putting away the premium (or other amount) for the explicit purpose with a more predictable but likely smaller returns.

We don’t know yet if the insurance company consider us “insurable” and how much the actual premium will be. It turns out that the Insurance Company we spoke to assess the risk rigorously. They so far have done a phone interview with us by a registered nurse. Among other things such as getting our health history, the nurse conducted some cognitive and short term memory tests over the phone but I already forgot many of the questions she had asked!

In all, I found all these exercises educational at the least. The planning and preparations help me to put my mind more at ease, knowing I have done my best for my loved ones. I have neatly put all documents and directives in place so that they can have the least amount of burden, anxiety, and stress whenever the eventuality strikes or when I can no longer think coherently or express myself.

Now I shall relax and enjoy more my retired life. Before I go, I must ask you “Mahda-kai?” ("Are you ready?")