Can a Youtube Campaign fail?

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the White House established its own Youtube channel and uploads videos of all sorts almost everyday. From message-driven videos such as President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, to issue-related videos such as UN Conferences or Health Care meetings, to videos that show shed light on what it’s like living in the White House, the channel is full of useful information for anyone who wishes to know more about anything President-related.

Which makes it all the more puzzling to me when I look at the mostly disappointing low view counts for this videos.

Videos on the White House channel rarely break the 10,000 views mark, a number that should be more than reachable considering its source.

Let me reemphasize: Neither Presidents Clinton nor W. even used email, so it is just shocking to me to find that so few people are accessing this White House channel to learn / gather information / come up with constructive criticism.

For example, a few weeks ago, a video was set up for Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to answer questions asked by ordinary Americans. That video currently stands at about 3000 views. The health care debate is the issue of America right now; it is where the White House has chosen to make its first major impact since taking office. You’d think tens of thousands of eager learners would watch this video and others to learn what the White House has to say about their reforms.

Another, even more compelling example, is the videos showing what the White House has done so far with the stimulus money in terms of creating jobs and funding small businesses. One video shows Obama present at a smart grid site in Arcadia, Florida, where a field of solar panels rested behind him as he talked about creating jobs relating to renewable energy. There is also one video of Obama speaking about new small business lending initiatives. Neither of these videos is remotely close to 10,000 views. How do you complain about something if you don’t at least see what they’ve done?

I’d like to think of it this way: there are upwards of say, two dozen, elite universities in America, and over a hundred quality ones. There are also thousands upon thousands of high schools, and only as few as a few thousand of these students watch the White House channel. That number lowers even more if you take out the non-student youtubers. Now, even if university political science students should be skeptical about the factual contents of these videos, or God forbid, be scare that they might somehow be propaganda, they should nonetheless watch them to know what the White House has to say, if anything then, to analyze and criticize it.

I mean, how is it possible that these videos aren’t being watched by a bigger demographic? Are little ol’ me and a few thousand others the only ones interested in what the Obama administration’s up to? Do the students are Harvard, Stanford, or Columbia, not know the channel exists, or do they not think it’s useful?

It just goes to show how uncivilized the political climate is in the United States. The number of people who believe that the President is wrong no matter what is staggering. I bet there are those who there who would link that nutjob who fired a machine gun at American solders at Fort Hood with Obama.

Anyone who wants to form an opinion on something should listen to what both sides has to offer.

Sing, Damn It!

No, really. I want you to start singing.

Right off the bat, I am going to call out all the Arts students: There are roughly 45 singers in the SFU choir this semester, the majority of whom are business, science, and math (yes, MATH!) students. Less than a handful of which study in any one of political science, history, criminology, sociology, psychology, communications, etc. I am one of them.

What’s going on? Aren’t Arts students supposed to be the ‘open’ ones? Aren’t we the ones who love to express our opinions and show our emotions? Is my class of Arts students all ‘lit-geeks’ who likes to hide behind their computers and silently yell at people?

Or does it have something to do with the music that we listen to? Are we so dominated by hip-hop, R & B, metal, and emo music that we cease to realize what actual good singing sounds like (for the few Michael Crawford and Pavarotti fans out there, cheers!)?

It has occurred to me that there is a detachment between the good singing we hear on the radio and what ‘ordinary’ people can do. Artists like Beyonce and Michael Buble didn’t become good singers without vigorous training. I happen to believe that anyone can sing, and that there is really no such thing as being ‘tone-deaf’. It is perhaps a ‘nature vs. nurture’ argument, but yes, I think we can all sing.

And plus, you don’t even have to be that good at singing to indulge in it. Bono is not a very good singer at all. But the emotions he puts into every song more than makes up for his sub-par singing skills.

So where is this ‘singing recession’ coming from? Does the bad economy have anything to do with people not opening their mouths and belt a few tunes? Are people in general just so gloomy nowadays that they feel that singing is a waste of time / energy?

Think of it this way: Singing is perhaps the cheapest way to momentarily escape whatever crap of the day you have to deal with. Just pour a glass of water, shut the door to your room (barricade it you want), put in a CD (if you’re old school), or click on whatever sing-able song you have in your downloaded library, and you’re ready to go.

It seems that at some point over the past few decades, singing has become sexualized. Very few people today would associate singing with masculinity. On the other hand, when a guy on TV belts out a beautiful Broadway melody, one might be inclined to think he’s ‘gay’ (yes, I know that Adam Lambert is actually gay, but he’s not the only person I’m referring to). How did we reach a point where people are likening homo/metro sexuality with good singing?

I’d also attribute this singing recession to the fear of embarrassment. It’s become apparent that now more than ever before people are caring more about what others think when they do anything, and the fear of ‘screwing up’ is keeping them from doing the things they want. Many students despise presentations because they are scared of public speaking. But singing is different; when you sing, you can adopt a completely different persona and become an entirely different person.

I guess one can say this is way the alcohol comes in. I’m sure many students have their unique stories of drunk karaoke. You don’t need the alcohol to let go of your shyness! Confidence gaining is a baby-step process, but I believe it is also achievable by everyone.

What happened to the days of Sinatra and Nat King Cole, where these gentlemen-like performers mouth out crooner tunes to serenade the audience? Is that not considered charming, anymore? And has people forgotten about Freddie Mercury, who possessed arguably the greatest rock voice of all time?

With that, I am going to ask everyone (especially you guys, Arts students) to start singing. There are many mediums at school for people to participate. There is the SFU choir, a singing group established in 1992 by a few undergrads and has been going strong since. There is a There is also the Vocal Jazz, which is a student run group. The choir does not require any previous singing experience and provides a relaxing environment to sing and have fun. To the best of my knowledge, the same could be said of the vocal jazz. There are also faculty-specific singing groups, such as Chemistry’s Chemsemble.

Most of these groups meet once a week for an hour or two. Don’t tell me you do not have the time indulge in brief getaway from all the painful things you have to deal with.

What is wrong with singing, anyway? Nothing. It’s fun, distressing. And if you’re good at it, people will adore you.

So, come out from behind your desks, arts students. I look forward to seeing more of you in the Spring!

God and Pets

Here is the observation that prompted this essay:
Earlier in the day, I saw a German Sheppard sticking his head out of his owner’s ride, enjoying the always-decent Vancouver breeze. This reinvigorated my sentiment about pets and their qualities of life.

The thought is essentially this: Domesticated pets that are born in Hong Kong, or other regions and cities where the temperatures and humidities are high, the populations dense, and the air polluted, live in much more dismal conditions than those that are born in, say, North America, where (for the most part) there is less pollution, but more importantly, there is usually lots of space for pets.

Note that the scope of this essay is limited only to pets; this means that I will not be discussing issues regarding species extinctions and their causes.

In this regard, I would agree with Richard Dawkins in that it is very important

The religious usually divide into two categories: Creationists and non-Creationists. But it is safe to say that the vast majority of those who believe in the existence of a God also believe that he were the source of all.

Creationists branch off into two sub-categories:
1. The Deists, who believe that the entity we know as ‘God’ is indeed the creator of the universe, but more specifically, the intricacies of physics, chemistry, and biology that allowed the world, as we know it to come about. Deists believe that God has not intervened in the universe since its creation. And;
2. The Interventionists. These are the religious folks who believe that not only did God create the world, but that God has influences on what goes on in our daily lives. Some of them, for example, believe that natural disasters are a work of God to punish human beings for their sins.

My argument here does not concern the Deists; I do not wish to dispute or debunk how the world was created. The interventionists, however, could help me answer a few questions:

If an omnipotent God is supposed to be omniscient, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, then that means that God used his power to make it so that some pets are born under rough conditions fully knowing that he was doing so. And, if one were to explain the ‘all-nice’ part, then one could say that God put pets through rough times because he wants to ‘test’ their faith

Anybody see the problem here? As far as we know, human beings are the only species on earth that are capable of complex thoughts such as faith and the concept of God. Therefore, it is no surprise that so many people are led to believe that when they hit a rough patch, it is because God was testing their faiths. On the other hand, it hardly seems to make sense that we can apply the same logic to animals such as dogs or cats, since they are incapable of thinking that their faiths were being tested. Since this logic does not apply, it would seem to conclude that God picked animals at random and decided that some ought of live miserable lives while others get to have it easy, and he does not have a reason for it.

Ultimately, what this means is that one cannot justify God’s actions of putting some pets through tough times while not so for others, because the pets cannot comprehend the reasons. Because of this lack of rationality, God is not being fair, and therefore not omnibenevolent.

Keep in mind that by ‘God’, I am principally referring to the Christian God, and notions such as karma or reincarnation do not apply. This means that the actions of the pets’ ancestors would not have factored in to God’s decision in sentencing some animals to live wretched lives.

This little observation was just one of tens of thousands of attempts to refute the logic of God. But it more specifically tackles the issue of questioning God and his supposed fairness. There is no better way to think about whether if one should believe in God than to ask questions, literally, about everything. ‘Why do innocent civilians in the Third World live in such horrendous conditions?’ ‘Why do naturally-occurring forest fires destroy God’s own creations, in this case, countless acres’ worth of trees?’ Hopefully logic would lead some people to come up with answers other than God.

But then again, has there ever been a time when logic is compatible with religion?

The HK disaster relief: Another Exercise in Hypocrisy

One thing about studying in the Arts and Social Sciences in university, or maybe just any area of post-secondary education in general, is that we develop the ability to spot hypocrisy, everywhere. It is my personal belief that one of the objectives university students should strive for is to overcome the gross cynicism that today’s society emulates, and not necessarily become an optimist, just not a ‘hater’.

Yet, here is another example of which I can’t help but to highlight because arguably, this is the kind of hypocrisy that is most detrimental towards the way we live.

In light of the tragedies brought about as a result of the natural disasters in Taiwan, the Hong Kong government, along with several other Hong Kong fundraisers (many involving celebrities), has donated HKD$50+ million to the Taiwanese in aid.

This was the disaster: Typhoon Morakot, which formed in August 2 and dissipated 9 days later, was the deadliest typhoon to hit Taiwan in recorded history. In a matter of days, several districts received more rainfall than the previous year combined. The death toll thus far stands at 153 with over 400 people still missing. Landslide flooded entire villages, and agricultural destruction amounted to billions of dollars in loses. The storm also left over 25000 homes without electricity, and hundreds of millions of dollars of tourism loss.

And amidst of all this, amidst all the atrocities mother nature has bestowed upon the Taiwanese, the biggest solution the Hong Kong people could think of is… drum roll please…

Money.

Really, that’s the best solution they came up with. In the days and weeks following the typhoon, we witness what could only be said as the typical media hype and attention to any disaster. As usual, there were big televised events, featuring all of the Hong Kong celebrities you could possibly name, and some politicians too (probably there just to take pictures with the celebs). The actors would give lengthy introductions to singers, who would sing songs as a scroll on the bottom of the screen appears showing the names of the donors and the amounts they have donated.

Before we go any further, I need to say something about that scroll. I do not know how it came about or where it was first used, but this essentially is the worst possible mentality in donating humanitarian aid. Sure, the total amount donated might be worthy of note, but why do we need to know the names of the donors, and moreover, the amounts that they have donated? Does it make a difference if Jim donates a thousand dollars more than Jane? What does it tell the audience when they see the scroll, that we ought to give more credit to Jim because he donated more than Jane? The answer to this last question should be obvious enough, but apparently, it’s not, because we live in such a materialistic world that we think more money equals better.

This is basically a snippet of the larger issue I am tackling: The Hong Kong people’s mentality seems to be ‘dump money on the problem and it will fix itself.’ As if this isn’t a bad enough mindset, it only tells half the story, the second being ‘dump money on the problem so we can feel good about ourselves’.

This isn’t just an issue of the inability of the Hong Kong people to think of ways provide aid in forms other than money, it is also speaks towards a larger issue of morality and applied ethics that is virtually non-existent in a capitalist metropolis like Hong Kong.

This discussion isn’t even philosophy 101; it’s basically talking about the most fundamental instincts of what’s right and what’s wrong. Often times, we have to worry about what the nihilists have to say about the non-existence of right and wrong, or even their meanings. But given the context of this discussion, I do not believe that anyone, not even nihilists, can abstain judgment on materialism and hypocrisy and walk out the door.

An ethical discussion on hypocrisy should inevitably lead to a supplementary discussion on the notion of gratification. During a discussion on this topic, Avital Ronell mentions that in today’s society, many of us would give five bucks to a random beggar and feel great about ourselves; we feel gratified in our however small act of helping someone. Ronnell says we shouldn’t think that; our susceptibility to be so easily gratified is one of the reasons why there is such a disgusting gap between the poor and the rich and why those living in the third world are having such limited progress in improving their standards of living.

The flip side of our easily-gratified persona is the difficulty to cause one to feel true guilt from their actions. To this, Ronell brings up the example of then-governor George W. Bush, who proudly claims that he doesn’t lose any sleep when he refuses to grant clemency to death row inmates, and as a President who has sent thousands of Americans to their deaths, for a cause that one could say is not even remotely close to being justified.

Peter Singer’s applied ethics also speaks to this issue. His argument is such that we are not only accountable for the things we do, but also for the things we don’t/omit to do. By this principle, Singer exemplifies his point by saying that if a person sees a boy drowning and requires our immediate help, his instinct would be to help the boy, even if it means ruining the 800 dollar pair of shoes he was wearing. By this logic, if it costs him 800 dollars to save a boy, we could also, instead of spending those 800 bucks on the shoes, donate it to an organization like OXFAM or UNICEF, which can probably save more than one child with this money.

This argument connects with the gratification one. The capitalist society has tuned its people to possess such mentality that we feel gratified in obtaining / achieving the wrong things (like buying a nice designer bag, or donating money to fix a humanitarian problem), rather than the right ones (provide hands-on aid, or donate on a regular basis).

Think about it this way: the poor-rich gap in Hong Kong is as bad as it gets, but most living in the upper-middle and upper class just turn a blind eye towards this fact. They justify this with this line of thinking: “we earned this; we have the right to spend lavishly and live luxurious lives, and those who are poor didn’t work hard enough.” If the Hong Kong media does a big televised event, perhaps once every few months, about poverty in Hong Kong, maybe we can highlight the poverty in Hong Kong itself, and have celebrities and politicians gather in a calling to help the poor. Note that this still does not solve the fundamental problems of easy-gratification, but it’s a start.

So am I saying the Hong Kong people shouldn’t donate money to the disaster victims of Taiwan? Of course not; I want them to understand their actions: I want them to understand that there are many people in many parts of the world who are experiencing as bad hardships as the Taiwanese but are not receiving the media attention their deserve. I want to see rigorous efforts to organize humanitarian aid groups and have volunteers sent to Taiwan to provide hands-on assistance. I want them to know that even though money helps, they shouldn’t feel better because they contributed a few dollars to the cause. I want them to know what’s right and what’s wrong.

The Limp: A Social Experiment and Philosophical Discussion

As I am writing this, I am sitting in a Starbucks, with my cane leaning against the wall for everyone to see. The experience so far has been exquisite. Being a handicapped person, albeit a temporarily handicapped one, translates to essentially being an almost totally different person.

Here is how it all started: On the night of Thursday of last week (August 13), I decided to catch the 10:45 show for “Public Enemies” at the theatre. I left my house at 10:30, and got there at 10:45. Thinking that I was late, I started running as soon as I got out of my car. That was when I slipped just a tiny bit, not enough to cause a fall, but enough to twist my ankle. As a matter of fact, the ankle felt fine that night, but had gotten worse on the next day.

The irony here is that earlier in the day, I had ran my ass off on the treadmill at the gym and was fine, but I twisted my ankle while merely jogging in the parking lot of a movie theatre.

The cane, and ‘the pack’

On Friday, the day after my injury occurred, I went to a shopping mall to look for a fashionable jacket. It’s one of the bigger shopping malls in the city, with long walking distances from one side of the mall to the other. I had my cane in the car but decided against bringing it because I was meeting up with a friend and did not want to appear overly injured (yea, I know…).

Bad decision.

First of all, I had forgotten about the size of the mall when I got there, and only remembered after leaving the parking lot that the stores that I wanted to go to were spread all over the mall.

Second and more importantly, I underestimated the severity of my injury. I was able to walk normally in the duration of the meeting with my friend, but afterwards, as I began walking from one side of the mall to the other, my foot noticeably had gotten worse. It was soon no longer an option for me whether or not to walk with a limp, and towards the end I had to take a few breaks during my walk back to the car.

What I saw during my painful journey through the mall were twofold. Firstly, I had people looking at me because of how I was walking. Now, of course, almost all of those who looked probably were not discriminatory and were probably merely curious or concerned with my injury. But the larger problem was the speed of which I was walking, and the fact that I was walking noticeably slower than ‘the pack’ that were travelling through the vast halls of the shopping center, and people had to avoid walking into me.

This idea of ‘the speed’ and ‘the pack’ goes far beyond the notion of merely a bunch of shoppers strolling through a mall. How fast someone walks when they are in a mall tells a lot about their personalities. For example, a person who walks fast and energetic might seem to be in high spirit or in a hurry, whereas a person who walks slow might be viewed as laid-back or lazy. Yet, they are more or less in ‘the pack’, like a fish swimming with a large pack of its kind in a sea of wondrous goodies.

The idea becomes a bit more complicated when the method of walking factors into the discussion. The idea of the speed of a person’s walk potentially showing his or her personalities fits into a larger societal norm–confirmation process. Everybody fits into a category. These categories evolve overtime, but they nevertheless perpetuate the function of ‘the pack’. The question of how a person walks goes beyond ‘the pack’, because it has nothing to do with the speed of the walk or the facial expressions of the person when he walks. Thus, a person who walks differently stands out from the pack. This is what I felt when I limped slowly from one end of the mall to another; not only was I slow, my limping motion prevented me from fitting in, thus inducing people to be annoyed at my slowness, looking at me and wondering what is wrong, while still others thinking why I am hurt but that I did not use a cane.

The cane also in some ways works hand in hand with ‘the pack’. It is vital to note that even if a person does not walk in the same way as a ‘normal’ person, he can nonetheless compensate by turning to various assistances to at least gain the sufficient speed to join the pack, thereby emerge himself into normalcy. And when a person does not seek this assistance, he is viewed as ‘strange’ or weird.’

This is perhaps the most important part of this section: My decision to not use a cane and limp my way around the mall directly affected the way I was being viewed while I was at the mall. People think I am strange because I was limping without a cane; with the cane itself belonging to a category of normality, my lack of using a cane did not fit, and therefore I was not ‘normal’.

The beholder is also an interesting concept. What people think when seeing a limping person walking without a cane is the result of social indoctrinations in teaching us what to think when we see a person who limps, in that we naturally associate ‘limping’ with ‘cane.’ This line of thinking is by no means original; Foucault has made similar comparisons in his studies of insanity. By labeling some of the sick as ‘the insane’, Foucault argues, we are able to identify those who are not, thus ‘the normal’ (and ‘the pack’ in my example) is put into work.

Stay tuned for additional commentary for this social experiment.

Responding to Ignorance

“Why learn?”

Because we need knowledge in order to find our purpose in life, if there is such thing.

“Okay, but why this specific set of knowledge? Why this curriculum? Why not learn stuff that’s realistic and applicable to the ‘real world’?”

Any set of knowledge ultimately goes back to a certain root, and everybody should learn those roots.

“Fine. So why is it important to ask ‘why are we here?’”

Because we can never really know the answer. That’s one of many purposes of life, one might argue, to find answers. But what answers? Isn’t the concept of ‘answers’ thought up by human beings as a solution? What is a solution? To solve problems? What are problems? Are some problems the solution for others?

Knowledge also stems happiness, but a level of happiness that is different from playing at the park or winning a ball game. What is happiness? Is happiness the ability to get what we want, or the ability to get what we think we want? Should we go with our brains, or our hearts, so to speak, or both?

Why is achieving a hedonistic nirvana important? And is there even such a thing? What about delayed gratification? Do the ends of the happiness of getting a good grade justify the means of studying hard, while one can play video games or go to clubs to instantly enjoy pleasure?

What about the notion of ‘I’? What am I? What makes me ‘me’? Am I genetically predisposed to act the way I am, or am I socialized, ever since I was born, to become a certain person?

Think of stand up comedy: why is that guy funny? Is it merely the things he says, or is it the manner in which he says it? But why is it funny? Is it the arrangement of words in a manner that arouses our comedic senses into believing that something is funny? But why don’t we think other things funny, even though they are also arranged in an odd manner? Is there a secret, like Derrida’s Double Reading, to understanding language, or is the study of language itself meaningless because everything has a different interpretation? (Listen to some Steven Wright, the most brilliant semantic deadpan comic of all time, and you’ll know what I mean.)

By this logic, is a nihilist way to look at life good? What is the point of meaning if meaning itself doesn’t mean anything? Is this overly relativistic? Are there no absolute truths?

If you’ve lasted this far and you’re still wondering ‘what the fuck is this guy talking about?’ That’s kind of my point. In this capitalist, so-called pragmatic world, we weight things according to their material value, too often are issues regarding meaning and morality placed aside. The result of such a trend is a shallow culture where money does all the talking. And if you still don’t understand why that’s a bad thing, read from the top again.

As the world economy crumbled and many are reconsidering their faith in the free-market capitalist system, the education curriculum (in high schools an universities alike) must embrace the arts and social sciences in order to explain how this society came to be and why we behave the way we do. Many would say that important figures such as politicians and company CEOs are screwing up worse and more often, and I refuse to believe that this cannot be explained.

The emergence of the civil society can ultimately be attributed towards philosophy, and I’d be hard-pressed to believe that people nowadays do not care for this field of study. A slight bit of motivation to explore the subject is all that is required for philosophy to make a massive comeback.

To anyone who might be interested in philosophy, all you really need to do is look up some famous philosophers, classical and contemporary, read a bit of what they have to say, and inevitably, you will find that the views of one thinker suits you and you will want to read more, and on to Chapters / Amazon.com you go.

Here is a one way to do this: I know that some of the classical stuff like Plato and Aristotle can be a bit dry. What you can do is read some of the contemporary philosophers first, such as Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, and Michael Ignatieff (yes, Iggy.), and think that “wow, these guys are nuts!” (‘nuts’ isn’t necessarily bad, by the way) and then look up the previous generation of philosophers whom these guys refer to, such as Hegel, Sartre, and Foucault (and Locke, Hume, and Machiavelli before them), you will find that not only are they just as crazy, but you should also notice that one generation of philosophers builds on the previous one in discussing similar topics, and expands them in mind-blowing ways.

Speaking of which, John Locke, ‘Desmond’ David Hume, Jeremy Bentham… Lost fans might already recognize these names.

You can also check out “Examined Life”, a documentary film directed by Astra Taylor, who conducts thought-provoking interviews with a number of contemporary philosophers (the tagline for the film is “Philosophy is in the streets”).

Studying philosophy can especially humble a person; it shows how little we know about things, even about ourselves. But even you’re someone who thinks he knows everything about himself, the concept of ‘knowing about yourself’ is…

Okay, I’ll shut up now.

Quick Take: North-South Korea's war of bluffs

The news headline of this Sunday evening is that North Korea claims to conduct a 2nd nuclear test, once again raising the stakes in the international efforts to prevent North Korea from attaining a nuclear weapon.

There was progress when in February 2007 North Korea agreed to shut down a nuclear power plant in exchange for oil fuel, and the easing of economic sanctions. But the process collapsed in December when they rejected the verification measures being sought by the Bush administration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/asia/25nuke.html

So, if I'm reading this right, the North Koreans are welcoming foreign aid, but they are not letting the international community confirm that they are indeed shutting down the nuclear plants. Does that sound like cheating to you?

It's a game that most understand: North Korea is a desolate country ruled by a brutal dictator who's out of touch with reality (or maybe he's smarter than we think and is actually well aware that his country is desperate, but intends to keep it that way), and wants to have a nuclear bomb to bully the entire region. The international community, led by the United States, seeks to prevent this from happening via sanctions and aid. But over the past few years, this has become a give and take scenario where the North Koreans wants to develop a nuclear weapon while getting aid at the same time, and when the negotiating countries threaten to cut aid, they threaten to enrich plutonium and test bombs.

So now it's become a waiting game: the various nations might just need to wait for North Korea to become a country so dysfunctional that it will beg for aid. Perhaps the change of leadership from Kim Jong Il to one of his sons will help ease the tensions, like Raul Castro did when Fidel retired.

That, or allow the Kim regime to attain the A-bomb, and hope that they don't start World War 3.

Memory comes and goes

It happened early afternoon today.

I had a thought, all day, about writing something on a particular political issue. This thought had occurred to me after I read / watched a news piece and formed new opinions of a famous author's works.

I thought at the time "I think I will write about this thought later, and in the meanwhile, I'll try to gather more information to substantiate this thought." So finally, earlier tonight, when I sat down at the desk and began writing out a piece on that thought, something very frustrating happened.

I forgot what it was.

I didn't forget the central theme of what I wanted to talk about, or the author whom I was referring to, but I forgot about the most important part, which is the reason that drove me to link the news piece to the author in the first place.

It has happened more than once in the past while, having an insight on a subject but not getting it down before it was too late. It angers me when I think that I might have had something potentially brilliant (oh, please) and I just blank out.

What also troubles me are the excuses that I use to opt out of writing these thoughts down the moment I have them; I'm always too 'busy', either eating or watching "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer", or something like that. And it just pains me that this kind of laziness has hindered my ability to produce more literature, however amateur this kind of literature is.

But hey, who knows? Maybe that thought will come back in a while, and a majestic piece will be posted in celebration.

Evils of the Flat World

I attend a university where the majority of the students have what people call "left-leaning" ideologies. These students often speak of the evils of capitalism, the vices of the free market that led to the world's inequalities, and in general shows a blatant disdain towards the rich.

Naturally, these views would lead them to more often be in agreement with John Maynard Keynes than with Milton Friedman, Joseph Stieglitz over Robert Nozick, and the notion that an active role by the government in most aspects of society is . This is apparent in both the course curriculum and the discussion by students in class. Many of these discussions center around the issue of equality. Note that equality, in the context of the discussion, mostly refers to equality of condition, and seldom towards equality of opportunity.

One of the writers that these courses discuss is Tom Friedman, and his famous books "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and "The World Is Flat".

Ever since its debut in 2005, Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat" has been a massive hit. The main appeal of the book was probably Friedman's ability to conceptualize the global interconnectedness in a Flat World theory, which made sense to the general public.

I have generally been a supporter of Friedman's views: contrary to his critics, Friedman not only acknowledges the notion that currently the world is not flat, but that if certain measures are not taken, some parts of the world will never have a chance of being flattened.

However, it seems that while the flat world theory can be seen as true, its consequences are not always favorable.

As a result of this flat world, millions of American jobs are being shipped overseas to manufacturing nations that can produce the same product at a much lower cost. This is economics 101, minimizing costs while maximizing profits. It's how businesses work.

Friedman claims that the launching of Netscape, and the subsequent .com boom, is #1 of the ten principle 'flatteners' of the world. The magic of the internet is that it has given the global population the ability to gain access to unprecedented amounts of information, anywhere, anytime.

But of course, as observations and predictions go, one can never be perfect. The internet soon became the white blood cells of the international economic body, and it is now evident that too much of it does not do the system any good.

My notion was greatly strengthened by the growing sentiment that the newspaper industry is beginning to crumble, the major cause of which is because rather than purchasing hard copies at the news stand, people are accessing news at the internet, and to their delight, for free.

For example, the San Francisco Chronicle continues to lay off staffers as sales of the paper version of the paper kept on decreasing. Other papers, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligentner and the Denver Rocky-Mountain News, have already lost their print versions. It is quite possible that the print versions of newspapers will completely vanish in the foreseeable future.

It's ironic that the industry that is experiencing immense hardships as a result of the flat world is the one where Friedman achieved his major success.

I personally read the big papers, such as the New York Times and the LA Times online, partly because the print versions are not available here and also because it is more convenient. It appears that the flat world can be a double edged sword: it is because of the flattening of the world that I am able to read the Times here, but it also because of the flat world that some of these papers might go out of business.

I can only hope that the newspaper media will be able to find a way to generate revenue on the internet, which is not entirely possible. For one, all the major newspapers can unite and begin charging people for viewing the newspaper online. But instead of helping their financial situations, this would probably grossly antagonize the public and everyone will stop reading these papers.

The journalist media is one of the core elements in a functional democracy. It serves as a medium between the state and its people, and it is to hold governments accountable for their actions. Let us hope that this industry will figure out a way to get out this financial crisis.

P.S. referring to the post above, I remember that it was the newspaper newspiece I saw on TV that got me thinking about this entire piece:
http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/
under "would you notice if your daily newspaper disappeared?"