Person of the Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

To begin with, let us agree on why the population keeps growing and what is required to keep it at a constant level.  The answer to the question of “why” should be intuitive and non-controversial: any system would be growing if the incoming rate exceeds the outgoing rates in long enough time scale.  We experienced it frequently in our everyday life and observed when the rates are not balanced.  For example, we saw our kitchen sink backed up when the drain was clogged; we encountered long delays at bridges and tunnels during rush hours when arrival rate of traffic exceeded the rate of what these conduits can clear.  There is no difference for population: when the rate of births is higher than the rate of death, we can expect the population would 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 births in 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, birth rate by country/region ranged from the highest in Niger (a western Africa country) at 51.60 (per thousand) to the lowest in Japan and Hong Kong at about 7.5, 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 them with the (crude) death rate (CDR) of these 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 net increase of population of 37, 0.74, and 4.4 per 1,000 people in Niger, Hong Kong and U.S. respectively and a net decrease of 2 per 1,000 people in Japan in year 2009.  Since U.S. had a population about 300 millions, it simply says there was an estimated 1.3 million net increase in population.

An alternate and intuitive way of looking at the growth rate of our population is to consider the total fertility rate, which is the average number of children born to each woman over the course of her life.  The reasoning goes like this: if the average number of female babies born per woman in her childbearing ages is exactly 1, then the population would remain a constant since that female baby would replace the mother, no more and no less.  The equivalent technical term of replacement fertility rate is thus also frequently used which is simply the average number of children, either male or female, required to replace the mother.  Once we account for the skew due to chromosome difference (there are slightly more boys than girls born due to the built-in bias in reproduction process in favor of the Y chromosome) and the infant mortality, the replacement fertility is at about 2.1 births per woman for developed countries and more than 3.0 for many developing and underdeveloped countries.  Niger’s fertility rate of 2009 was estimated to be 7.07 (according to the CIA World Fact Book). 

Some may argue that we should not worry since the world population growth rate has been declining in recent years and has reached a very modest rate of 1.1%.  Ignoring issues of huge disparities among regions and countries for the time being, should we be worried or not?  Professor Emeritus Albert Bartlett of University of Colorado at Boulder had the following to say about the reality of steady growth and 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 our failure in recognizing how explosive it really is of anything that grows at a constant rate.  Watch the lucid lecture he gave below, entitled Arithmetic, Population, and Energy.   It should convince you with just the first 10 minutes of the videos that steady growth is scary unless it happens to be your investment and bank accounts.

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

The big picture looks as follows.  We can all agree that the minimum and most basic resources for our survival are obviously food and fresh water (assuming air is not an issue).   It has been estimated that planet earth has over 300 million cubic miles of water but only 3% of it is fresh water.  Further, two third of the fresh water is in frozen form such as ice cap and glaciers which is necessary to keep the earth cool and sea level in check.  In all, we have about 3 million cubic miles of (mostly renewable) fresh water and only 0.3% (or almost 10,000 cubic miles) of it is on the surface (in lakes, rivers, snows, etc).  The rest are underground and not necessarily accessible. 

You may or may not know what we drink directly is just a tiny fraction of our total fresh water consumption.  The dominant consumption of freshwater is actually for food production – 70% of the fresh water consumption is for agriculture.  With today’s efficiency, we need for example, 3,000 gallons or over 11 metric tons (11,000 Kilograms or 24,000 pounds) of fresh water to grow one bushel (about 25 kg or 56 pounds) of corns.  We need about 900 metric tons of water to grow one metric ton of wheat.  And it takes 2,500 gallons or about 10 metric tons of water to produce one pound of beef.   

Some researchers have offered an overall estimate that it takes in average about 3,000 liters (or 3,000 kg) of fresh water 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 the consumption of fresh water till it becomes available and is consumed again, and that 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 are already so many starving people in the world given uneven distribution and local overpopulations.

We haven’t even talked about the connected issue of the availability of arable land and other limiting factors which are required for food production.  The fact is China, India, and many countries have been busy buying and leasing land in Africa to produce food for their domestic consumptions.  This should give you a pretty good idea of what is going on.  We also have not gone into the details of the assumption of the living standards for some of those estimates.  Obviously, there is a huge difference in the per person consumptions of resources for U.S. and for countries like Niger.  With all these considerations, Ross McCluney estimated in his article of How Many People Should the Earth Support? that the planet earth can support about 6 billion people if U.S. and Western European keep their current level of prosperity and the rest of the world live like Mexicans.  Obviously it is too late to debate that as we already past the 7 billion milestone at the end of last month.  He also estimated that the earth can support 20 billion people if everyone lives like Mexicans and 40 billion if everyone lives like people in today’s northwestern Africa.  But would you be ok to live like that? 

Along with the rich resources and information compiled on the EcoFuture web site, one finds two interesting quotes which still ring true today and worth repeating here.  One was by the late Isaac Asimov, a famous biochemist and writer.  In his Oct 1988 interview with Bill Moyer, he said: "...democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters."  The other is a popular but un-sourced quote by the late Robert McNamara who was the Secretary of Defense overseeing the escalation of Vietnam War and former World Bank President.  He supposedly had said: “Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.”  

What McNamara was referring to have been happening in many places 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 us anyway.  Planet earth will continue on for a very long time after you and I died, and with or without humans.  The bad news is the solution is going to be real ugly, much worse than the often criticized China’s one child policy.  There will be conflicts, famines, wars, and massive deaths as people will be fighting for the little remaining available resources.  Meanwhile the continuing deterioration of the environment and climate change could only accelerate the downward spiral and further reduce the available resources.   By then, it will be too late for the occupants of earth to try to reverse it.   What do you think we should do now?

Presidential Leadership

In the current issue (2011 November 7^th) of Time Magazine (U.S. edition), Chris Matthews wrote a 2,000+ words feature article, entitled Five Things JFK could Teach Obama.  Chris Matthews is an outspoken and articulated political commentator.  He is an avid admirer of President Kennedy.  He was very enthusiastic about and having had high expectation of President Obama during last presidential election in 2008.  

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

The five things Chris Matthews wants President Obama do are:

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

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

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

4)Believe! Chris Matthews points out that President Obama himself 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 emotion of American people – the astonishing optimism and the can-do resilience.  He advises President Obama to tap into that emotion by pointing to the victories such as 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 he was going.  He showed us his dreams right there in his programs: the peace Corps, the space program, nuclear-arms control.”  Chris Matthews suggests that “what is missing now is a spirit of adventure, of common purpose, a positive feeling, even romance about the times for meeting the challenges in the world, a stirring national cadence, a sense of mission.”  He asks “what are Obama’s dreams?  Where would he take us?”  and “Tell us, Draw a picture. Throw a cap over a wall.”  The last metaphor is especially important.  It came from President Kennedy who related a story of how little Irish boy would get themselves climb over orchard walls by first throwing their caps over.   Only with that level of commitment and risk taking, can one hope for a complete success.

For those who are familiar with the politics of Taiwan and President Ma Ying Jeo’s leadership, I am sure now you can see the similarity and understand why I thought Chris Matthews’ advices are relevant for President Ma.   How many times have you felt that no one is speaking 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 and taken personal responsibilities? Why hasn’t he shown his confidence and tapped into the resiliency of Taiwan people?  Why hasn’t he forged any alliances?  Why is he standing alone and hasn’t asked people be with him and follow him with actionable programs?  My advice to President Ma is he needs to read this Chris Matthew’s article, NOW!

Home Vegan: the first 100 days

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

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

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

The good news is that switching to a home vegan diet wasn’t as difficult or dramatic as I had feared initially: we simply stopped buying any food that contains animal products and here we went.  Perhaps we are lucky that we have been used to a diet with a lot of vegetables, fruits and high fiber foods (such as brown rice) to begin with.  Further, there are a lot more variety of vegetables in Chinese markets and grocery stores than in average American supermarkets.  It includes a large selection of soybean based food with different textures and flavors.  By the way, if you had previously prepared and eat vegetables in the more limiting western styles, a simple and fail-safe way to prepare these unfamiliar vegetables (especially the green leafy ones) is to sauté them with a little cooking oil, salt (and garlic); something even a kitchen 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 feeling hungry soon after I started the diet.  There are many theories about why that is the case.  My doctor’s simplified explanation is that one’s body adapts quickly to the new condition and naturally expects less.  The bad news is that I seem to have hit the plateau in about 2 months after losing 5 pounds, not unlike the experience of those who do fitness routines to lose weight.  While determined to continue with my home vegan diet, I guess I need to pull out the exercise DVD my friend sent me and start doing them too!

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

The Hottest Classical Pianists

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

While there is no doubt that Yuja is a musical prodigy, the road to Carnegie was never easy.  One version of the popular story about Carnegie Hall says it all:  A tourist on Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan stopped Jascha Heifetz (a famous violinist) 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 Central Conservatory at Beijing till age 14 and six years at the Curtis Institute of Music at Philadelphia from age 15 after spending a year in Calgary, Canada studying English and music. 

Before reaching Carnegie Hall, Yuja has been performing numerous solos and concertos on stage worldwide for last 5 years, initially often at smaller and 2^nd tier venues.  Like some other stars before her, opportunities knocked when she was asked to sub for superstars like Martha Argerich, Murray Perahia, and Radu Lupu and she delivered spectacular performances.  DG (Deutsche Grammophon), one of the most respected classical record label, signed her up in 2009.   Performing about one hundred 100 concerts a year, she now spent her life mostly in between airports/planes, hotels and concert halls.  As stars are all lining up, it was pretty clear that she was on her way to the stardom. 

In his review entitled Flaunting Virtuosity (and More), Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic of The New York Times, had nothing but praises and positive technical comments about her recital debut.  That is not it; he just could 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 Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (see photo to the right).   His ultimate compliment came at his conclusion of his review: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. What matters is that Ms. Wang has got it as a pianist.  The audiences were equally excited about her performance as well.  She gave four encore performances, lasting almost half an hour at the conclusion of her debut as most audiences refused to leave.

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

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

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

Tommasini wrote in his review A Showman Revs up the Classical Genre about Lang Lang’s solo recital debut back in 2003: “… Mr. Lang's head seems to be so full of his own hype that there can't be much room left for analytic thinking…” and concluded  “I lasted through one encore: Schumann's ''Träumerei.'' It was not easy to hear that wistfully beautiful melody so yanked 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 of classical music.”  Since then, Tommasini had toned down over time his criticism and noted Lang Lang has been maturing.  The real issue of course is not so much about how one (should) move when playing the instrument.  It is about the coherency of the mind and body of the true master performers whose gesture and expression would naturally reflect their interpretation and feelings of the music.  Lang Lang did often push his superficial expressiveness over the edge and lost the balance between intellectual and presentation.  On a similar note, Yuja’s concert dress should not have been the issue.  Her mannerism at the recital debut was in fact shy, focused, and restrained, if anything. 

Anyway, below is a video of Lang Lang playing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (arrangement by Vladimir Horowitz) in 2006.  If you watch it, you would appreciate why Tommasini and many others have been so disturbed by his performance despite his fantastic skills and stamina.  The video does not show his facial expression which would have in fact irritated some even more.

By the way, Yuja Wang had chosen to play Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor in the 2^nd half of her Thursday evening recital debut.  It is probably not a coincidence since Oct 22^nd was Liszt’s 200 years birthday.  Liszt, a prominent composer, was also a virtuosic pianist as well.  Although there wasn’t any video recording, his performance style by many accounts involved showmanship at the piano with facial expression and gestures that drew criticism from many.  Apparently, Liszt himself had admitted he had done so just to draw more applause.  There was no question that he had succeeded in drawing a lot of fans across Europe; so much so that the term Lisztomania was coined to describe the frenzy of the fans towards him.   In fact, the best way to imagine how it was like is to simply watch some of today’s wildest rock star performances including smashing guitars.  Yes, Liszt had supposedly destroyed pianos onstage!

In his recent interview, Lang Lang talked about Liszt being his piano hero and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was his first encounter with classical music as a 2-year-old watching a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon on television.  Knowing that, it should not surprise any of us then that showmanship was a part of Lang Lang’s performance.  By the way, Liszt did not invent everything on his own; he got his inspiration to become a virtuoso from seeing a concert by Niccolò Paganini, one of the greatest virtuosic violinists. 

Happy Birthday, Franz Liszt.