That says a lot...

But probably not what the perpetrators intended it to say.

No, what they intended to say was that "Hey, we can kill anyone who disagrees with us, even 14-year old girls who think they should be educated when the laws of God insist that they should be barefoot and pregnant." Instead, what they said was, "Hey, we are a bunch of grown men with guns who are afraid of a 14-year old girl who might convince people that we're grown idiots with guns who are afraid of a smart 14-year old girl."

And the fact that this guy sent a hit team to kill her speaks of desperation.

Now I just hope that this tragedy can serve a greater good and wake people up to recognize the dangers inherent in not opposing ignorance and the violence that it so often breeds. It is sad that it has cost this young woman so much but perhaps good may come of it after all. At least we can hope that it will...

History being a useful predictor of the future, however, I am not entirely encouraged.

What is fair and what do we deserve?

It's the high point of the political season in the United States and there is a steady refrain of how things should be more fair and clearly the poor (or insert your own group here) deserve more than what they have. I have to admit that this is a subjective subject at best (is it really possible to say "subjective subject"?). When we talk about "fair", what is fair? Fair to whom? The idea that it is fair to take from some and give to others is a Robin Hood-esque idea that makes everyone feel all warm and fuzzy. And I say that as a fan of the story of Robin Hood. However, there is a significant difference between Robin Hood that should be pointed out. Namely, Robin Hood was an individual who sought to assist people from the tyranny of the governing power. However, in many of the arguments bandied about today, the suggestion is that government should be taking from the rich and re-distributing to the poor, or protecting the poor from rich. Should the government take that role? Doesn't that make the government tyrranical - to at least a part of the society that it alleges to represent? At the very least, the Robin Hood comparison is a poor one.

But to cut to the idea of fair, it would be more appropriate to ask if fairness can ever truly be achieved. After all, the reality is that life is not fair. Some people are better looking than others. Some people are taller than others. Some men have more hair than others. Some people are smarter than others. There is no equality in life as people may wish for and it is not possible to make people equal in this fashion no matter how much they may think they deserve it. Yet the refrain is that we should strive for equality, particularly in terms of economics. While I would not argue against striving for equality and giving people equal opportunities, it makes no sense that the fairness being argued for only deprives those with (money) unfairly to give it to those without. Instead of giving people money to make it "fair", give them the same opportunities to make money. Those who can take advantage of those opportunities will get what is both fair and what they deserve. Those people deserve the opportunity to succeed, not the money or the goods that others have earned.

Somehow, though, I fear that this may not make it into the political discourse. *sigh*

Day off

Today was a day off and I had fully intended to take the unexpected reprieve from anything pressing to do to do things that were not quite so pressing. You know, things like writing, reading and generally nothing at all. One thing that was definitely at the top of my list of things not to do - watch television. Yes, I have found that is taking up way too much of time lately for reasons I can't really fathom since I normally do not watch a lot  to begin with. However, there are some shows that I do enjoy watching and Netflix is not proving to be very helpful, either. For me, it's The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order (I've been a huge fan of all of them for years), and a new show this year called Revolution (which grabbed my attention with the numerous commercials that were tied to it during the Olympics). You would think that would be fine since that does not seem like a lot of tv. However, you would be wrong. I am also a bit of a sports fan and my two favorite sports are football and football - the American and the international variety. So I watch the British Premier League during the week and on Saturdays and then American NFL on Sundays, Monday and Thursday nights. And that doesn't even count the occasional things that may pop up that I find interesting.

However, I have been working to reduce that and have gone an entire day without even turning on a television. Instead, I got out of bed and started my day working around the internet - a guilty pleasure that I've not been able to do a great deal of recently. After breakfast, I then did some work for the office (I know, I know, what was I thinking - but I did have some deadlines that were creeping up and I had to get them done because I know I'll be interrupted as soon as I get back to the office) for a couple of hours but that is ok because I wasn't in the office and not pushed to do so. Then I ran a few errands, read for a little while and even managed to take a short nap of about an hour (for me, that can be a short nap, even though I don't like to nap in the first place).

A couple of quick meals mixed in there and now some free writing time this evening. I'm even going to skip the football game this evening (because nothing can make me want to watch the disaster that the New York Jets are becoming this season) and then tomorrow should find me somewhat refreshed and recharged. And, at the end (and even the beginning) of the day, isn't that what we all want?

Books

On my reading list are three that I am really either currently enjoying (yeah, I know, I have a tendency to read a few books concurrently) or looking forward to reading.

• A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
• Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt
• Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

I'm about halfway through the first two and both are good in their own ways. Martin's book is one of the Game of Thrones series (no, I've never seen the HBO show and no intention of doing so) and I have found it to be a very interesting series. His writing style reminds me of James Clavell in how he handles each of the characters and we get any different perspectives. And since Clavell is one of my all-time favorite authors, Martin is currently moving his way up my list of faves.

I'm also about halfway through the Platt's novel which is an engaging recitation of the Taiping Revolution in China and the interaction of the Western powers at that time. Thus far, I have not found it to be a flattering portrayal but, considering the times, that should not be entirely unexpected. Though, I have to admit that I was thinking about this earlier today - how is it that so many ministers spent so much time going to foreign countries to convert the "heathens" and held such low opinions of those same "heathens" yet they were charitable "Christian" souls? Maybe I'm just simple-minded or my opinions on those who convert others to their beliefs do not easily lend themselves to being kind. However, I digress...

I recently saw a review of Beijing Coma and thought it sounded pretty good. Turns out that the local library (though not the branch I normally I visit) has a copy so I've requested it. Hopefully shows up in the next couple of days and that will be something else to enjoy.

I've tried to switch away from the history and social science books that have been more of my interest in recent years to a little more fiction in order to help resuscitate my ability to do more writing on my part. I've got about 5 different short stories going right now (on paper, no less!) and trying to finish at least one (I'm sure Heather is beginning to wonder about this). But I'll get there - have faith (ok, that does sound funny when you consider my religious views at times)!

Attitude

So much of life is not what happens to us but, to overuse a common cliche, our reactions to what happens. So, in my own case, there has been a great deal in my life over which I have had no control and which I would not have chosen to occur. And there were times where I allowed those circumstances to overwhelm me and could not react in the best manner.

However, I have tried to learn lessons from everything that has happened in this life and apply those lessons where applicable. Rest assured, that has not always been easy nor, in some cases, at all possible. Life and death situations have, understandably, been very difficult to approach with anything resembling equanimity and I have struggled through those situations. But life is much more mundane than significant life and death situations (thankfully, those are fairly rare) and that is where the lessons can be more applicable. Frustrations at work, traffic, poor customer service, forgotten services or any number of other things are items that tend to be very temporary and, hopefully, easily resolved. Sometimes, it just takes time away from a given situation to restore some positive thought to one's life. Other times, a new day or a conversation with someone else can offer new perspective on a situation that perhaps is not so bad as it seems at the given moment. Granted, this is not always easy as we can be so wrapped up in a situation we are unable or unwilling to see anything beyond our own limited perspective. But if we can recognize that we are viewing situations from a very limited perspective, perhaps that will help to find ways to alleviate them.

So, for example, while driving today, I hit some rough traffic which I normally find very aggravating - particularly if I'm running late (which I was today). However, I then made myself compare it to the last time I made this particular drive - when I was even later with more traffic - and realized that, in the overall scheme of things, today's traffic was not such an issue to be stressed over.

And this week has been a particularly rough week at my office which has been an issue as my entire team has been impacted by some pretty significant changes - all negative. However, while rough, I have tried to look at each incident individually and recognize that, while they are all hard cumulatively, they are easier to handle as separate issues and try to work with each of them as such. This enabled me to resolve those issues I could and to take a deep breath on those I couldn't and just let them go until the next day - understanding that the next day will hopefully offer a better perspective or, at the very least, a better attitude. And sometimes, a better attitude can make a huge difference.

Random Thoughts

Things noticed on a random basis. The last several times we've been on vacation to various areas, including NYC, Myrtle Beach, Toronto, Atlanta, and Virginia Beach among other places (this is over the last couple of years, mind you, so don't think I have the ability to spend all of my time on vacation), I've noticed a lot of mixed race couples and their children. Maybe I'm just a big ol' liberal in this line of thinking but I think that is the sort of diversity growth that makes the US such a great nation. Fifty years ago, miscegenation laws would have ensured that this would never have happened and now there are growing numbers and they all appear to be doing pretty well (as they appear to all be able to travel based on my own very unscientific notion as we were all doing touristy things in each of those areas). Maybe one day we can stop applying labels to people based solely on the color of their skin and just apply labels based on intelligence, speech, area of residence or any other number of equally prejudicial items...  *sigh*

I haven't seen as much of the Olympics as I would like but it's been a rather busy time (note to self - if I'm that "busy", then I need to learn how to reorganize my time and not be so damned busy!). Ok, so maybe I just haven't cared as much about the Olympics this time around. Or perhaps it's the fact that, in the US, the broadcaster (NBC) is almost entirely focused only on the US athletes and I like to hear the stories of the women from Saudi Arabia who were finally allowed to attend the games for the first time ever and other sundry, and equally interesting, stories. However, I have noticed the medal counts and that the US and China seem to be dominating them. So, it made me wonder about the approach of the two nations. China has specialized sports facilities (circa Soviet Union) where children are identified early and spend their entire lives doing only those sports with no other life - often even away from their families. Great sums are spent by the state and the children are failures if they do not achieve the highest honors. In the US, most athletes are either supported by their families or support themselves while doing their own training on their own time. For them, success is as much about getting medals as it is getting to the games themselves - and US fans take pleasure in learning those stories regardless of whatever medal success they may get. I have to admit that I prefer the US method but maybe that's just because I am steeped in that culture - does that mean the Chinese are wrong?

For the rest of this week, I will enjoy my vacation. I am finishing "The Game of Thrones" (by George R. R. Martin) and enjoying it. I just finished the entire Hunger Games series and found it interesting even if the ending of the last book threw me just a little bit - not sure I liked the evolution of the series. Probably write up some poetry and maybe even a short story (for the writer's group that a certain someone keeps hounding me about and I keep saying we need to start as I need that kick in the butt). And then I'll go back to work next week and die from the thousand or so emails I'm sure I've gotten this week... But that's next week so leave me alone for now...  :-)

How many ways to pay in DC?

So we recently took a quick day trip to Washington DC on a weekend to see some of the memorials and parts of the Smithsonian. Should have been a fairly quick drive to the outskirts where we were going to take the Metro into the city. We've done the trip before and it's usually a pretty good trip. However, on this trip, things went sour fairly quickly. We got to the metro station to find that it was having a problem and therefore non-operational. There was the option of commuting via bus to another metro stop and going into the city from there or driving in ourselves. The idea of having to take a bus to another metro stop (rather than into the city directly) and still having to pay the money to do so did not appeal to us but I didn't have a map to know where to go into the city - a city that I personally hate driving in because the city streets seem to have been laid out by a hyperactive schizophrenic with no sense of direction.

Yet I didn't have much choice. I recalled that L'Enfant Plaza is near the Smithsonian so just needed to figure out how to get there. On a Saturday, provided I could find a parking spot, I could actually avoid any parking fees and now I would be able to avoid the metro fees, too. Which is probably just as well since my taxes clearly weren't enough to help ensure the smooth operation of the metro in the first place - probably because they're being used to pay for the waste and inefficiency so endemic to the city and the government that it hosts. So, using my Android, got the address I needed and mapped out the drive which was only about another 10-15 miles beyond the metro station.

Once I got to L'Enfant Plaza, I received my next surprise - parking was no longer free in this area. If it had been, I'm sure that I would have fond no available parking spots. Instead, there was a plethora of spots available and, once I found a spot, realized that I had no spare change to put into the parking meter. However, in the spirit of the government, er, city finding additional ways of fleecing its citizens and visitors, they have now set it up where you can pay your parking fees using your smart phone. While I am normally a proponent of utilizing technology to create efficiency, I was simply annoyed that what used to be free parking on Saturdays was no longer and they were finding new ways of making people pay. While I have a smart-phone and can do this, there are still many people who don't and this is just another annoyance to trying to visit the city - a city that hosts the federal government that represents us all and for which we pay to maintain it with the taxes that it imposes on us. Yet, in order to visit it, we continue to pay in other ways.

Before I go too far into that rant, let me continue on with my little story. So, after spending 10 minutes setting up an account on  my Android, I find that I can only park for two hours in that location. If I want to stay longer, I have to move my car (again!) and then pay again using the same method. So, I could only go so far from the vehicle to ensure that I had enough time to get back and move it without being ticketed. Which meant that we would be unable to visit the Jefferson Memorial (which was the one thing I wanted to go see that day!) and could only spend limited time at the Smithsonian museums. So, we went to the Air and Space Museum and had a quick lunch before I took the kids to to looking at some of the exhibits. Then I took them back to my better half who went with them while I went back to move the car and pay for another two hours. And, two hours later, I thought I might be able to renew the parking without moving the car again - but couldn't connect to their application this time. So, instead of most of the day enjoying my day in DC, I spent it paying for a failed mass transit system and parking that previously had worked fine. Exactly where do my taxes go?

Maybe it's not such a big issue and this is just the way of things. Perhaps I am just being too demanding and should lower my expectations. It is possible that I am just blowing up a minor annoyance into something far more significant than it should be. However, I believe that there is a growing failure on the part of a leadership that claims to represent us and yet the evidence instead indicates only serves its own interest. But instead of whining about it here, I should spend more time looking for ways to help fix the problem. I just hope that others will feel the same way and there is yet a way to a viable solution for the entire country and not just the entrenched leadership.

And I'll stop my rant now...

Chinese History

I tend to hit the local library every couple of weeks or so because it's a lot cheaper than buying all of the books from the bookstore. Of course, the fact that I have no shortage of books at any time is not something that makes my better half happy at any time but it's one of the few vices (as she would see it) that I have so she's patient enough with them. And, in the last couple of weeks, I've found books on the Chinese in America by Iris Chang (just finished yesterday and an interesting read), Ezra Vogel's biography of Deng Xiaoping (just started and looks like it'll be informative - not to mention I've heard several good reviews of it) and David Cordingly's Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean, a story about the life of Captain Woodes Rogers who was what the title states. I also reserved a copy of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones which I've heard a great deal about and of which there is a mini-series on HBO that I've not and will probably never see. Yes, libraries are a wonderful thing and I am certainly a great believer in them.

But I sometime have to temper my enthusiasm because the library does not necessarily carry all of the books I would like to read at any given time. As a matter of fact, I started thinking about the reading selections available as they pertain to China and Chinese history. If I were to use the library as my source of all information on China, I would only know the history of China mainly from the end of the Qing dynasty through to the current day and projections on the upcoming conflict between the US and China. While I've heard vague rumours about 5000 years of Chinese history, one would not know it from the books available on China in your local libraries. Even university libraries are hardly better in this regard - I had to look long and hard for any books that went much further into Chinese history beyond the Ming when I was in college not so many years ago.

So, now I will ask the few people who actually read my blog if they have any good recommendations for books on Chinese history that extend past the Communist-imposed history or the Qing dynasty? I am truly an avid learner on the subject but feel terribly inadequate in terms of my own knowledge. Oh, and the only real requirement is that they be in English - I am probably eternally a functional illiterate in Chinese. Any and all suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks.

Random Thoughts

Lots of things to think about.

The US election is coming up and, while it seems like President Obama and former Governor Romney have been running for the last four years already, those of us in the US still get to suffer through another several months of political lies, truth-twisting and partisan yelling from both sides with no decent chance of true leadership being the result. I always find it amusing when politicians claim to be public servants who are here to serve the public good. If that were truly so, would they be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to "serve"? Heck, if they have so much money to spend for the opportunity to "serve",  perhaps they could prove how good they are by simply giving the money to the public they claim to represent.

I thought this was pretty interesting. I have pointed out before that racism is real and it doesn't just belong with white people. In US politics, it's a given that Blacks (or should I use African-American - though you will notice I did capitalize Black, think I had this thought somewhere in a previous post) should vote Democratic because of course the Republican Party is comprised of overt white (should I capitalize White?) racists. But I really hate labels. I know Republicans who are not white racists and Democrats who are. What does it prove? Personally, I'd prefer we skip past the process of separating people and bring them together. But, then again, I am an idealist. It'd probably never work in the real world.

I found this to be a step in the right direction. These are the stories that need to be told and I hope that more are eventually brought to light one day. The truth is never easy but it is preferable to lies and cover-ups. It is living proof that the Chinese government cannot sweep away the seminal event that occurred 23 years ago. I only hope that these stories can one day be told by the people who lived them publicly instead of history books that have to be compiled secretly until some unknown date in the future.

Have you ever noticed how many commercials there are (well, at least in the US) for products to make people healthier or better looking? Why does the pharmaceutical industry populate so much our tv ad time? Or the beauty companies? It almost puts the political ads to shame at this point. Except that the political ads just run during an election year while we get stuck with pharmacy and beauty ads all the time. I do feel for those people who get suckered in by the belief that you must look better or take meds to make yourself feel better all the time. And note that I didn't even address the lawyers who advertise their services to drum up clients who should sue for car accidents or meds that may have had ill-intended side effects (OMG, medicines - advertised on tv - can have SIDE EFFECTS?!!!). Nope, can't do that or I'd have to start talkin' 'bout lawyers... Don't wanna go there...

Relaxing

After having gotten through a pretty major project at the office which took up a significant amount of time for the last month, I am back to a more "relaxing" schedule of just 8-9 hours a day, not to mention the near hour's worth of driving back and forth (about 20-30 minutes each way). I almost find myself wondering how I should be spending my time. Oh, wait, I know! I should spend it WRITING!

Yes, and I have been trying to do a little bit more of that. I am currently working on a nice little story for my better half along with a variety of posts here on this blog that I have been saving up over the last few weeks. Yep, getting those creative juices flowing...

It also helps that I've gotten my laptop back from visiting family who had been using it to watch movies online. Now I've gotten them setup with another machine and they're harassing the living daylights out of me and my better half because they are completely computer illiterate. But, hey, it gives us a little bit of time while they're occupied with the movies so it's all good in the end.

In the meantime, I've been able to spend some time writing a wee bit along with some reading (working on a history of China from the end of the Ming dynasty to the present after having finished Dumas' The Three Musketeers earlier this week) and now watching the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament. If it hasn't been pointed out before, I am a huge football (or soccer) fan and really enjoy watching the matches. So, for this past weekend, I watched the US in a rather desultory match against Antigua & Barbuda in a World Cup qualifier on Friday evening, Holland lose in a disappointing match against Denmark and Germany barely get past Portugal (and they were very lucky to do so). Then I watched the second half of the Spain/Italy match (was a pretty exciting second half for a while, too) and now the Ireland/Croatia match. Yes, I can list this as a rather enjoyable weekend. If only they were all this way.

Maybe I should spend some time before the weekend is out fixing the website that I created a few years ago so that the admins of the site can make their own changes rather than emailing me all the time when they type something in wrong... Yeah, I think that may be my task for the next week or two as I get free time... I haven't written any code in almost a year now and don't want to lose all of those skills...