The cold heart of a nation? The death of Yueyue.

This comment is in response to an article in the Guardian by Lijia Zhang entitled, "How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/22/china-nation-cold-hearts

Interesting article on a nuanced subject, with the typical range of comments, from the knee-jerk generalisations to the genuinely informative. It was interesting to me that one of the commentators pointed out that the Chinese proverbs that were quoted to support non-involvement, were actually intended to be critical of that behaviour. I am reminded of an elderly acquaintance, who when asked by a neighbour to borrow a vacuum cleaner, declined with a weak excuse and then gave as her defence, "I have always lived my life by the Biblical precept - neither a lender nor a borrower be"! Not only am I doubtful that Shakespeare meant his quote to be taken that way, but Jesus' position can be summed up by his Golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do to you. It is human nature to choose self-interest over the needs of others, and this story is clearly a case of this, and examples can be found everywhere.

The author is carrying out an exercise that one can see in the press of any culture - the breast-beating that can occur when a nation's pride is dented. One only has to think of the Bulger case in the UK, incidents in the US of people breaking up fights getting shot and the staged muggings on the Paris Metro where no-one helped, to identify similar breast-beating exercises in the press about national character. However, there are clearly also some specific problems that Chinese culture is struggling with - one of avoiding "bad luck" from associating with unfortunate people and another of not getting involved for fear of personal problems. It is sad that it takes cases like these to force national debates, but it is good that the debate is happening. I hear echoes of Paul's cry - oh who will save me from this body of death?

A Physical Basis for Religion

These comments are in response to:

Religion: Biological Accident, Adaptation — or Both

"Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."

OK, so our thoughts about God are related to our understanding that others have minds, thoughts and feelings. Doesn't this mean that people who believe in God relate to God in a similar way that they relate to other human beings? No real surprise here then. So, believing in God works under fundamental processes. The only "strange" thing about it is that this relationship is with someone (imagined or not) who is not visible. Researchers could go on and demonstrate that children who have a relationship with an invisible friend have the same parts of the brain activated. What this means is that we are perfectly able to consider ourselves in relationship with a being that is not physically present.

The problem with the article (especially the title) and much of the reported comment is that it starts by assuming that the physical is the only thing that exists. This is an interesting assumption, but is an assumption nonetheless. Good science starts by stating assumptions.

How about starting instead with the assumption that the material is not all that there is? How about if we start by assuming that there is a consciousness that we can't measure physically? Once we do this we come to totally different conclusions (although these would still support the existence of evolution), and I would argue that we do not have tests that can rule out this premise. I am not saying that this one is right, just that it is a valid alternative that should not be dismissed. For more information from a philosophical perspective, I recommend "Why There Almost Certainly Is A God" by Keith Ward. A well-thought out book that doesn't require you to believe impossible things!

My comments on an IHT Article on skilled immigrant workers in the US returning home

The Real High-Tech Immigrant Problem: They’re Leaving

On reading the comments:
What an interesting set of discussions, wide-ranging and hitting on some good topics ,with the usual range of informed and uninformed opinions. I am an engineer, though not in IT, and I did a masters degree in the US, returned to England, and then was transferred to the US for a number of years before moving on to Hong Kong.

While I am not keen on exceptionalism and ostrich-patriotism, I think that the US has many wonderful people, some great scenery and a great constitution, and I am glad to have had the chance to live there. (End of intro)

In my experience, the US is short of engineers. I would say that this reflects the wage imbalance that is only now being addressed. Why rack up large debts to study engineering, when you can do finance or law and pay back your debts quickly? Of course, the WRONG solution is to allow short-sighted companies to simply import cheap labour from other countries, and many posters have identified this problem. However, the US has benefitted massively from immigration, and many of those complaining about immigrants are only alive because their ancestors managed to get to the US despite the actions of the "Native American" Movement of 1844 (these were British-Americans, who wanted to restrict Catholic Irish immigration) and similar anti-immigrant movements.

I agree with the poster who says that people should direct their complaints against the government and not against those on H1-Bs. Also don't forget that people with H1-Bs are a diverse group, some do indeed want to settle, some want to move home after making some money. Don't tar all with the same brush.

On the unfair advantage of "subsidised education", I believe it is true that Indians do not typically receive subsidised education. I on the other hand received a free university education in the UK. Perhaps I should therefore be the first to propose that you kick those free-loading Brits out before anyone else! Incidentally, despite the characterisation of some posters, some of the Indians who are posting have flawless English, well above the general standard of postings!

In my opinion the (current) global pre-eminence of the US can be attributed to a number of factors, and it is unwise to focus on one or two. By the second world war, the US had recovered from its crippling internal war and had learned to compete very well as a country with a large, relatively open internal market, plentiful cheap natural resources and a relatively low-cost, well-educated work-force in a business environment with legally enforceable contracts. The end of the second world war left it as the only industrialised nation without war damage, and as a major creditor nation, which allowed it to build economic strength. This, naturally enough encouraged immigration of skilled people who, together with descendants of earlier immigrants, built a strong economy, supported by ready investment. What we are seeing now, is a country that is still powerful, with a large internal market, but that is increasingly a debtor nation, with less money to invest in the future, and therefore less attractive to skilled immigrants.

So my conclusions are; remove some of the economic imbalance against engineering (i.e. don't pay gamblers for short-term returns), pay H1b engineers a market wage (which will remove some of the incentive to import people unnecessarily) and hire the best from a long-term perspective (which means treasuring expertise). Don't make it difficult for qualified people who are already committed to the US to continue to work there. Accept that there is going to be some pain in the next few years, but that moving forwards cooperatively is not necessarily a zero sum game and that it can lead to better, if not always richer, times. Look out for your neighbours and follow the Golden Rule. (How about that for an untypically British positive ending...?)

Rabid Responses to Proposal to Raise US Gasoline Tax

I was just reading an article in Wired that suggested that it was time to increase the gasoline tax in the US since prices have dropped. The responses included some fairly vitriolic attacks that cover the full range of knee-jerk responses. As a result I thought I would make a list that addressed them. It is interesting to note that these same comments (fueled by the same rigid myopic world-views) come up on almost every article, so this could be considered a sort of catch-all. You can expect to see all the cliches trotted out - "liberals", "communists", "Europe"(!), , I don't think that all of those writing are idiots, they just are caught up in their own world and experience and don't stop to think about others.

________________________________

Well - I think it is fair to say that most people would not be happy about a tax raise - nothing new there - and some people are clearly hurting. However, most of the responders should stick with the statement that they don't want to pay one, because their reasoning apart from that is less rigorous.
1. We cannot stick with the status quo - we are already borrowing from our children - in fact that is what our grandparents were already doing. Things have to change - oil will not be able to match demand and we already use more than our fair share. Now or later it has to happen, so perhaps we should start preparing for it now. (That desn't mean you have to raise the gas tax now, but you need to change your mindset.)
2. Gas is already taxed, so we are just discussing degree of taxation.
3. We already work together to build roads and to do all sorts of things so working together on an energy policy is not "communism", it is community.
4. You are not really poor, you are just poor relative to the writer. Most people in the world are poorer than you. I know that doesn't make your life easier, but you have more options than you think. Yes, some people have way more money than you, but you won't make yourself richer or happier by complaining about it.
5. Please stop using the "America is the Greatest" argument. It is so woolly that it doesn't mean anything. It is just a cheerleader's chant and shouldn't be used in discussion.
6. Stop complaining about "government" and particularly about it stealing your money. What happened to "we the people"? If you don't like the government, vote and participate or move to Somalia. They haven't had one for years.
7. Stop saying liberals this, liberals that... you are disempowering yourself by lumping your fears together and assigning them to some mythical group mind.
8. Move so that you live closer to work. If that is not possible, change your job or agitate for zoning to change so that you can live closer to work. If you don't do it now, you will need to do it later. There is no need for our dwellings to be spread out as much as they are - it is a privilege, not a right, and it will cost us if we want to keep it that way.
9. I am not necessarily supporting the gas tax, but those who are complaining about new taxes in a recessions, you should note that the writer's proposal would give that money back in lowering other taxes. Our spending is already guided by the taxes in place - he is just remolding them. Watch my lips - "No new (net) taxes"!
10. American post-war loans were typically paid back with interest, so don't think "American charity", think "American wise investment". Also, to bring things up to date, don't forget that the rest of the world has been supporting a profligate lifestyle in the US over the last decade or so, so don't be surprised when other people start asking for a return on their investment. The chinese people have worked very hard with a fraction of the reward that we get, in order to bring us our cheap goods. Things are going to get harder before they get easier.

So,why not harness that American can-do attitude, and instead of swearing at someone who makes a suggestion on the way forward, start coming up with ways to get the country on a more sustainable footing.

______________________________

One modification to one of the points - the Marshall Plan did indeed include aid as well as loans. It was certainly a good thing that the US did it, but a gift isn't a gift if you use it to complain about the recipient later. Incidentally, U.S. assistance hardly exceeded 2.5% of GNP of the recipient countries. In any case, it is quite clear that the economy of the US benefited greatly from the recovering economies of Europe, which does not negate the importance of the gift, but puts it in perspective as more of a win-win option.

Incidentally, the US never paid back debts to France that were incurred during the US Revolutionary War.

While I am at it, another point that is often raised is that the rest of the world keeps on getting into wars, whereas the US is peaceful. In this worldview, both the world wars are seen as belonging to "others", despite the fact that it was the US's squeezing of Japan's fuel supply in a struggle over dominance in the Pacific that meant that Japan had to either back down or attack. The misconception is fueled by the fact that the US has not had a home-grown war in ages - not really since the Civil War (incidentally one of the bloodiest in history) - although there have been internal armed conflicts between political groups and between organised labour and government.

I took this list of American international wars from Wikipedia, which I try not to use as an authority of last resort, but will do for now.

Revolutionary War, Indian Wars, Quasi-War, First Barbary War, War of 1812, Second Barbary War, Sumatran Expeditions, Mexican–American War, Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, Banana Wars, Pancho Villa Expedition, World War I, Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Invasion of Grenada, Invasion of Panama, Gulf War, Somali Civil War, Bosnian War, Kosovo War, War in Afghanistan, Iraq War.

Using a WM6 PDA/Phone to Connect my Mac to the Internet

On arriving in Hong Kong at the beginning of 2007, I bought a MacBook Pro and an HTC Trinity phone (badged as a Dopod D810) running WM5, which has (in theory at least) a 3.6Mbps connection, for which I chose the unlimited download option. My grand idea was that I was not going to go for a home internet connection, since I was planning to kick the TV habit, and I thought I might save a little by not having cable TV, and that this could go towards paying for wireless internet over HSDPA.

I was therefore rather disappointed when I found that I couldn't just connect the two out of the box. On doing some research, I came upon Ross Barkman's site which covers ways of connecting Macs to the internet via phone modem scripts (using DUN, whatever that is!), but couldn't get my Mac to recognise the fact that I had connected the phone to it when I tethered it with a USB cable, and had no idea on how to get the phone to appear under "DUN" anyway!

Happily I then discovered that the latest upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 (can't remember which) included increased support for Bluetooth, and that I could switch on "Internet Sharing" on my WM5 phone, and then pair the two and get a connection that way. The one downside was that the connection was really slow, and it was common to find myself getting 15kB/s download speed (hope I have the bit vs byte thing right). 

As a result I kept on looking for a way to use the USB connection (which would have the added benefit of charging the phone while using it - networking drains the phone's batteries quite quickly). At some point I ended up buying Missing Sync from Mark/Space, and I found that if I interrupted the connection process I would end up being able to see the internet through the connection. This increased the download speed to around 50kB/s, which made me very happy! It wasn't ideal since it didn't work every time and I couldn't work out what the exact sequence was, in a repeatable way.

The next thing that happened was that Dopod (since purchased by HTC) offered a free upgrade to WM6, which I then installed (which required a flashing of the phone chip). At that point the Mark/Space "solution" no longer worked, so I contacted them, and got the following answer.

Hello 

The protocols for the communication has changed for Internet sharing and it does not work when using RNDIS and Missing Sync for Windows Mobile. We simply do not support all the protocols that allow this to happen. We're looking into it for the future.
Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance to you. Have a great day. 

Best regards,

La'Keith
Mark/Space Inc.
Sales Representative 

Unfortunately, receiving that email did not result in me "having a great day", but I cannot really blame them.

So, the summary appears to be that RNDIS does not work with Macs, and that the Mac solution, which appears to be called "CDC Networking" does not work with "Internet Sharing" on WM6 (and I would have thought that it would be unlikely ever to).

Although I could have tried to re-flash my phone back to WM5, I decided that it was a little too risky for me, and I have been enjoying the GPS and Google Maps that came with WM6. My current work-around is that I have found that Windows XP running in VMWare is able to connect to the phone using RNDIS, so I can surf the internet and download most of what I want to using that method (but only when I start Windows up). I would rather go with a Mac solution, but it just isn't fast enough. Apple Software updates are a bit of a problem since they take so long to download using the Bluetooth method, but I just have to do that overnight. I also have to remember to place the phone on something cool when I do that, as it tends to overheat which breaks the connection. Overheating also appears to be a problem with the Mac, and the Bluetooth function sometimes disappears because of that as well... but that is another story...

Looking to the future. I will want to upgrade my phone at some point, and now that I have purchased software for it, it would seem to make sense to stick with Windows Mobile. In general it works fine, apart from the occasional crash... oh, and the fact that the password protection seems to kill the media player (which was one of the reasons I bought a PDA phone - to combine functions and simplify things). However, it doesn't look as though there will be a fix any time soon to let me use my Mac tethered to a WM6 phone. Perhaps I will just go for an iPhone - once the data connection specification has improved (i.e. from 3G to HSDPA or better). Perhaps I will sign up for cable at home... Perhaps I could get DUN to work - I wonder whether it is still possible with WM6?

Useful Websites:

The Tao of Mac - How to Setup GPRS/UMTS Access on a Mac.

Ross Barkman's Site on Modem scripts and keyboard layouts for Macs

On being changeable

Sometimes it bothers me that I am not constant. My mood changes, my tastes change, my looks change, my opinions change, even my cells are always changing, dying and being replaced. Somewhere I read that most of the cells of our bodies are replaced every seven years. On the other hand there is something wonderful about it as well. As a child I hated olives, but now I love them. And there is something wonderful about the process of coming to a new perspective. I shall never forget the day when calculus began to make sense, when I realised that even though you could get close to someone by ribbing them, you could get closer by learning to compliment them. This last week I started off with a very negative view of Chinese attitudes towards Tibet. Partway through I began to understand the visceral reaction that the Chinese public had towards seeing people that were like them (Han Chinese) being killed by mobs on the rampage. And why should the West be so positive about the rioters and ignore the Chinese casualties. And why can't the West see that the Chinese government has tried to get rid of an oppressive feudal system and hasa invested in development for Tibet. Hmm. Yes now I do have a greater appreciation of the public reaction in China, and why they think the Western press is biased. But I am reminded of an attitude shift I am having to go through to accept the fact that some Scots want to be free of the Union with England and that some Northern Irish felt so discriminated against that they wanted to take up arms against "us" and kill innocent people like me! Hmm. The only thing that is constant in this life is change. Thank goodness we can change with it.