Why Knowing how to Code won't Save Virtual Citizens

I bet you have read this story somewhere: a man (usually from Texas, but all Confederate states host many candidates) proclaims that the government tries to take away his guns, and that he would stand and fight for his rights and freedom, with those guns that the government is trying to take away. Reading this type of stories entertains me on so many levels. And here is the funniest aspect: those guys actually believe that their puny guns can protect them from the most powerful army in the world's history. In fact, proclaiming their stupidity and ignorance actually thwarts the otherwise noble endeavor for personal rights and freedom, since it alienates them from their fellow citizens and political process. This alienation only serves as excuse to actually take them out with bombs and tanks. Now who has the bigger weapons, mister gun nut? (Given the amount of taxes I have paid, I sincerely hope the government would field bigger guns).

By now, if you still stick around, you might wonder aloud: what do gun nuts have to do with coding? A lot! Have you heard the latest round of "we live in digital world, so everyone should learn how to code"? Yeah. Knowing how to code to protect one's privacy is equivalent to pointing some puny guns at American army. It's useless. In fact, it serves little more than making you feel so superior that you fail to do other things, things that actually protect your privacy.

First, let's make something clear: I do not oppose learning to code. Coding is really fun, exercises the mind, and opens doors to many career paths. However, if you want to, says, prevent Facebook or Google or Microsoft or American government or Chinese government from spying on your data, ability to code is completely and utterly useless. Well, even if you want to feel in charge of your digital life (rather than being helpless at what the computer/smart phone does to you), coding would probably not help. The word "probably" is in there to account for a special case: experts. Real experts who can create OS and other systems from scratch (or, at least, debug into existing ones) do control their digital environment through coding. But it takes years (10 years or 10,000 hours, some people say) to reach that point, and a class or two online about programming is nowhere near enough.

Second, why does coding not help? Similar to why your puny guns (assault guns, shotguns, rifles, etc. included) do not help: when your opponents boasts bombs and intercontinental rockets, it's best not to fight them head on. Similarly, do you know the amount of code that makes up this so-called digital world? It consists trillions lines of code! Remember, hundreds (if not thousands or more) of man-years are required to build it, from the lowly firmware of your myriad of chips up to the javascript that drives your websites. Going through all of these to search for the spy is hopeless. Plus, can you discern if the hole is there intentionally or accidentally (as in buggy software)? By the way, so far, I assume that you can even see the human readable version of the code. Much of the digital world, however, is not available in such form. Proprietary software and obfuscated websites mean that even reading a line is extremely hard, if not impossible.

Third, let's dream for a minute and say that you find out something bad with your system. What can you do about it? As I asserted earlier, only a handful of experts can re-create complex systems at wills. The rest of us are stuck. Furthermore, in the majority of the cases, the system at fault is not even accessible to us! Let's imagine an example. Let's say that the music industry signs special deals with ISP to track your online traffic (in case you are sharing something they don't want you to share). In such case, what can you do? This is especially bad if your home has 2 choices of ISP, both of which signed onto the deal. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft et al present similar paradox. Yes, Facebook may be spying on you, but since all of your friends are there, what can you do? Apple may do something you dislike, but with all of your music is in their hands, dare you buck?

What actually protects your privacy and foster your control over the digital world, then? Again, I am talking about solution for the masses, the 99.9999% of people. Let's look our gun nuts again. What can he do to protect his rights and freedom? Certainly wielding guns alone is not enough. However, a well regulated militia (to quote the Constitution) is a different matter all together. Another solution involves working the political systems to ensure all members of the government (Americans do live in rather democratic society) to support personal rights and freedom. How do those solutions translate to our digital world?

First, we should promote understanding of the system. When our representative in Congress declared that the Internet was a series of tubes, there is a lot of work to do. A user should understand what his world includes, and which parts she can affect. Furthermore, people should know the ins and outs of their systems. Let's be frank here: how many of us truly know how to use Windows/Mac/Linux/BSD? When the system panics, how many of us know the steps to investigate, understand, and fix the problem? We have weird habits regarding technologies: so few people read manuals, yet fewer invest time and effort to understand the optimal usages for their products. Before learning how to code, how to create new system, everyone should learn how to use their systems.

Second, political actions should be considered to ensure our digital rights. We already wage political war for net neutrality. I strongly believe that further political actions are required. For example, the building of municipality infrastructure, the regulation of wireless network providers, the right of users over their digital identities, etc. all require public discussions as well as determined political efforts. We should demand all of our candidates for public office to explain their stances and proposed policies on digital rights and privacy. This is just my opinion, but we spend too much of our political bandwidth on abstract and far away issues, and not enough time on matters that affect us day in and day out.

Lastly, we should educate ourselves on our psychology blind spots and weaknesses, and train ourselves to use digital products in a smarter and freer ways. For example, advertisements have know how to subconsciously message us for decades, entertainment industries have pushed for restrictions on our enjoyment and ownership of the products that we pay for. Furthermore, we should use social networks not just to court followers and compete for popularity, but also to form alliances, to teach each other, and to unite in the fight for our digital rights and freedom.

A few months back, a rancher in Nevada seemed to finally understand the game. When demanded to pay back money he stole from local government (in form of unpaid usage of publicly cared for land), he instead called in his militia buddies, and the government had no choice but to back off. As I said, it's one thing for a gun nut to scream about his beloved weapons, it's another for them to band together. Here is the question: when will we, digital citizens of the coming digitized world, come to our senses, band up, and fight for our rights? I mean, let's not steal anything, but the challenges are the same: to do anything significant, we need to understand how the game is played, and play it together. Merely learning a tiny details of a complex game can't win. Coding alone has not, will not, and cannot save us. Education, understanding, and unity are the ways forward.

Rent vs Passion

Every time coming across an article or an advertisement for exercise, I never fail to be astonished by the amount of care and attention paid to such a uninspiring, if not down right boring, activity. I mean, it's running/jogging on the treadmills, or lifting some deadweight, then shower in a communal shower! It's not world changing, dream pursuing, or self actualization. You don't need nice bag, good smelling soap, and perfume at the gym; you certainly don't need detailed note taking for what you have been doing; timing, what to eat/drink before and after, what precise routine don't deserve heated debates and arguments. Lastly, lifting some certain amount is certainly not worth bragging. By the way, exercise is not the only boring activity that people make a great deal out of. Work is another (especially when you don't like the work), where some people would work ridiculous hours, then use that as a badge to look down on others (coincidentally, those usually ain't the most effective; unhappy people rarely are).

Each activity usually has 2 dimensions: effort and reward. An activity is effortful if it demands a lot from the performer and tires him or her out. An activity is rewarding if it is enjoyable, either fun or fulfilling. As such, we can divide all activities into 4 groups:

	Low reward	High reward
High effort	Rent	Passion
Low effort	Procastination	Entertainment

A low effort, low reward activity is time filler; things that you do when you don't have resources or energy for anything else (eg. staring blankly at the TV, spacing out, etc.). A low effort, high reward is entertainment, where you just enjoy and don't exert much. Both of these ain't demanding, so they generally don't have much long term impact, and we also usually deem them less interesting and valuable.

The interesting categories are the high effort ones. Because they demand a lot, we don't do them "just because." We do them for a reason: either because we are passionate about them, or because not doing them would bring troubles. The first one is passion. They are the ones that try people, that bring people to greatness, that actualize dreams and realize happiness. They are the ones that we should spend most of hour time and effort (available) in. The latter type of high effort activities are what I call rent, since they resemble, well, rent: the payment must be made, usually regularly and costly. Normal rent (be it house rent, mortgage, utilities, or business fixed cost) is paid in money. Activity rent (exercise, cleaning, washing, laundry, and work) must be paid with time and effort.

Here is the thing: because we pay so much in rent (a normal person holding a full time job spends at least 8 hours/day for work, then an hour for cleaning and exercising on average), we may mistakenly assign a lot of meaning to them. It's like how we taste more expensive wine and cheese better, or food made by ourselves or our loved ones more delicious. However, such perception is ridiculous! Think about, do you brag on how much money you pay on rent? (except how little you pay) Or, do you grow up dreaming of, says, lifting 180lbs? In fact, you don't even dream of a thin body. You dream may be popularity and social pride, which requires a nice, thin body, which requires treadmill running. Or you may dream of some sort of success, which requires health and endurance (mentally and physically), which requires exercise. Or you may dream of being rich, which requires money, which require work. Always, the rent activities are just requirement to do something else, and that something else is usually in form of a passion activity.

Thus, when effort is required, we should determine if it is passion or rent, and treat it appropriately, like below:

	Rent	Passion
Attention	As little as possible	As much as possible
Timing	Minimized; preferably while waiting for something else;multitasking if possible	At best time possible; preferably sole attention when doing
Work load	Front loaded (starting hard, easier over time)	Back-loaded (more precisely, hardest work while "in the zone")
Investment	Bare minimum	As much as affordable

Let's take a quick example: my jiu jutsu and aerobic exercise. I love judo and jiu-jutsu. On the other hand, to do these sports effectively and to have healthy life, I need to do aerobic exercise (it has amazing effects on my belly). Thus, the former is passion, and the latter rent. How do I spend time on them?

I think about martial arts virtually most of my waking hours. I read books and watch movies about them. If you happen to see me doing weird gesture, it might be a hand escape that I am contemplating on. I sometimes arrive at practice early to quiz my instructor, and almost always leave late. I love doing them with others as these are times for observing and learning.

On the other hand, for the aerobic exercise, I have a set time and goal for it, and never spend a second more. I read somewhere that minimum exercise time is 30 minutes (provided that the heart rate target is reached), and each of my aerobic session is precisely 40 min: 5 warm up, 30 at target heart rate, 5 cool down. Plus driving and walking, it's about 50 min in total. Yes, I checked the clock. I even minimize time at the gym: no shower there (why? it's nicer at home), no socialization, not even work out with others (high risk of injury; what's with my male ego and over running when others are around?). Outside of the gym, beside minimum reading and occasional articles on the news, I never think about aerobic exercise. See, just the rent, and not a cent more.

Guys, our dreams are always big and demanding. They are sources of endless hardwork, thinking, strategizing, and pride. We don't need to waste time and effort on rent! Get over it, pay the minimum amount, and move on. Our lives are waiting!

Increase of Retirement Age as Social Regress

I remember back during the election about a year ago, retirement age increase was brought up as a possible way to reduce the size of the government, which, supposedly, puts constrains on the economic growth of our country. Now that we are in the middle of a government shutdown over the government size (and its debt), somehow that issue, the age at which a person is entitled to Social Security and Medicare, again pops in my mind, abet with a different tact. Instead of thinking of the deficit and debt and crown-out effect and personal liberty and whatnot, the age itself somehow reminds me of something more abstract, but perhaps more noble: the advancement (or retreat) of our society as a whole.

Confucius once said something along this line: an ideal state would nurture her children, care for her elders, and marry her young men. Well, back in the day, a man could only marry when he had cash for the wedding and income to sustain a family, thus the difficulty of marriage. Back then, of course, women did not have much to say on these matters. That idea can updated to our modern world like this: an ideal state would nurture her children, care for her elders, and provide all her young people with an equal chance of success. Of course, that does not mean the government has to do all the work and pay all the bills. For example, it can foster such an economy and culture such that all children are well-fed and educated, that all capable bodies can find work that allows for a good life and saving for a comfortable retirement. Such state, of course, has fulfills its ideals without spending a cent.

How do Social Security and Medicare fit into this picture? In the, you know, "good o' days," let's say 100 years ago, a man would start working at around age 6 or 7, for about 10 or more hours a day (with Sunday off if they are in Christian nations, perhaps) for about as long as he lived. Women would, of course, not worry so much about working, since she would not have that choice. She would be married off to the highest bidder (this, actually, is good for her, too), then proceed to spend most of her time with pregnancy, child births, house work, and screaming children. This, of course, assumes that she survived child births. Oh, and nations went to wars, and men are shepherd off to battles. Depends on how old you would like to go, they would be hacking boards for nobles (hey, not everyone could afford fancy armor and good weapons) or shooting targets. Universally, their wives and children would starve and, if survive, grow up to more or less the same future. It's a tradition of our species to fill our past with glories and charming princes and beautiful princesses whose jobs were to fall in love and have happy endings. The fact is that every victory cost tens of thousands heads to be chopped off or blown off, along with tens of thousands of starving family with no money, no food, no dignity. The fancy castles where beautiful princesses and charming knights fell in love? Well, those are mostly unpaid labor of countless men, most of whom were neither charming nor handsome. It's hard to be when you are poor, possibly starving, with little prospect for getting better.

How about retirement and old age? There is this romantic ideals of "families taking care of each other." You can almost imagine a person, perhaps in his or her thirties to forties, talking about how his or her culture would have the parents taken care by the grown and productive children, while the grand kids would be loved and treasured by the whole family. Beautiful, yes? If you have a good family, with perhaps lands or businesses. Otherwise, an elder would either work (if capable) or beg/starve on the street. As a side note, children have roughly the same fate, except longer. Hey, a sage like Confucius had a lot of matters to think about. If he thought something is important, well, it's usually is.

It is my opinion that the most visible evidences of the advancement of our society are the nurture of our youngsters (in form of free, public education, as well as nutrition supplement) and the dignity with which an elder citizen can retire. Maybe grown-up children don't usually provide for their parents as much. Actually, that's a good sign. That means that the elder parents can care for themselves. Pension and Social Security provide them with day to day cash, while Medicare covers them during the worst days (aka sick ones). They no longer have to stick to their children for support. Those who plan ahead can even do awesome things such as traveling and golf. In fact, just watch the language. Retirement is sometimes called "golden age" these days. Just think about it. Rewind your world 100 years, and put an elder person (50, says) with a modest earning throughout his life there. Frankly, if he saved hard enough, maybe he can afford his own funeral. Golden year? Dream on (or move 100 years ahead).

It saddens me how little people think about these matters during their debates regarding retirement and social safety nets. In an age when employers no longer provide pension and stock market threatens savings and 401K daily, it seems rather strange for me that people, especially young ones, keep on screaming about the supposed extravagant of Social Security and Medicare, and how much such programs should be cut back and/or eliminated. I mean, really? True, if you work hard, save well, you can retire on your own money. However, what if you get some bad sickness when you are, says 40? Have you seen medical bills? How about if your children are good enough to be accepted to Harvard, but not enough to have a good scholarship? Or the stock market decides to crash just when you are ready for golf, cruise, and world travel. Or you get laid off for extended period of time, and has to dip into your saving. There are countless things that can happen, each of which can wipe out your plan. Thus, the requirements for independence of good retirement include incredible good luck to avoid all of these things. Remember, the "self-reliant man" is very much a myth. In the not-so-distant past, it is usually a noble man, who, of course, are self-reliant on top of his serfs. Before that, these are the one eaten by lions; the survived either farmed (still do) or hunted in groups.

We have a modern economy, a complex and efficient financial system, a strong infrastructure, and countless sophisticated technologies. Plus, we have a (mostly) democratic and reliable government and a caring, open-minded society. What are those for if we can't provide for our vulnerable ones, namely children and elders? Why do we need all manners of technologies and productivity gain if we can't guarantee that when a person is 65 and has worked hard, that person can relax and live with dignity? Seriously, what is the use of an advanced economy if it can't do that much?

Frankly, look back at the last 20 years (roughly 1990 to presence). How have we progress as a society? Other than abilities to fatten ourselves to death and bastardize our brains with TV and internet, how have our lives improve? I mean, yes, you can order a taxi with your phone and be reminded with a random person's birthday; oh, and your phone is now super complicated with great capability to distract you. However, let's put this in perspective. Do these trivia really enrich our lives, and make us more civilized and humane? In my humble opinion, the only significant improvement to our society in the last decade is the decline of poverty, which, of course, has come back with vengeance (a side note: this sometimes made me wonder where all of the gain in productivity went).

Oh, let's talk politics. What have we been doing for the last 20 years (since the start of Bill Clinton administration, just to be fair). Before that, America fought Communism to promote freedom. Before that was fighting inflation, which was preceded by Great Society (skipping Nixon here), which was preceded by Moon Mission, which was concurrent with Civil Right movement, which was preceded by Fascism fighting, etc. During these time, rise in productivity allowed us to ban child labor, reduce work week length, reach the moon, defeat American enemies, and, of course, install Social Security and Medicare to ensure the dignity of the elders. What was the focus of politics of late 20th and early 21st century America? Well, we impeached of a president on ground of, um, extramarital affair, engaged in war a against terrorism which smells more and more racist every day, engaged in another war over women right (but this time to push them back to their places), and declared taxes and government treason. Big issues, huh?

Anyhow, let's close this long and winding post. I want to emphasize that I don't advocate for borrowing and deficit to oblivion. What I wish to remind everyone is that we get together, build a society, an economy, and a government for a reason, and I am very sure that reason is not to have a balanced budget. Frankly, I don't think the reason is a phone playing music, either, although the phone is still cool. Maybe the reason is the nurture of children, the care of elders, and success of hard-working people. Maybe the reason is an equal chance of good life and dignity. Maybe the reason is happiness for all people, be them young, old, male, female, disabled, brilliant. Either way, before simply reduce and/or destroy programs that assist the vulnerable, let's remind ourselves of why we are here, together (oh, and that we are here, together).

To Type or Not to Type

Again, the superiority of dynamically typed language is taken up by a hacker over hacker news. This time, with a different tack. Types, according to our lovely author, is not a sign of sadism and/or masochism where one derives great pleasure out of torturing oneself and everyone else with all of those stupid declaration; rather, it is a sign of n00bs, who can't comment enough in there code.

Oh, how I hate the word n00b. In thy name, how many bugs/stupid features have been created? In the olden days, the number 1 cause of bugs were efficiency, which modern programmers seem to abandon amass (for a good reason, of course). These days, n00b-proof is their war banner for creating bugs.

Back to the discussion. Are new programmers more drawn to comments and statically typed system? I doubt it. Actually, it acts the reverse: new programmers (aka n00bs) detest those things. After all, they do not learn how to program to do those dumb and boring task. Heck, in programming classes, even calculating Fibonacci numbers are too dumb, too useless for those newbies. Nay, they want "cool" new tech, like GUI, like 3D, like games, like Web, etc. Things that they can show off to their n00b-er friends; things that can earn them millions in days. Oh, and they want those things yesterday.

Generally speaking, I see the urge to organize, model, and document code as a sign of maturity, and the actual action of doing so a sign of discipline. It is easy to see why: writing those documentations require effort, great effort even since they are not particularly creative or fun. Creativity and fun sustain a programmer; activities without these hurts, sometimes physically. Extending extra effort to do those activities, thus, is hard, and great discipline is required to do so. Thus, calling those with the discipline to do things that you hate n00bs is not just insulting: it's stupid and n00bs.

However, is type necessary, even? (since sadist and masochist people like pain, too).

Types are unnecessary, if your program is hacked together within about 2 - 3 sessions, and its useful lifespan is within about a month, or less. Anything more than that, and you are begging for troubles, not even in the long run.

First and foremost, let's make this clear: you need to know meta anyway. You need to know what a function does, what it expects, and what it returns. You do. Otherwise, you will start to add "2" to 1. That's mild. How about asking a missile system to shoot at pi number? Thus, you need to know what a function expects, and what it will return.

Now, the question becomes: how do you remember this meta? First note: you will need this 2 weeks from now. Second note: your buddy writes the function for you. Third note: oh, that function is too slow, so you need to rewrite it.

There are 2 schools of thought on this matter, as far as I see: there are the n00bs, stupid, incapable people who do not believe in their miserable brains; and there are super uber programmers/hackers who can remember everything. The former ones would prefer to write down the meta information, preferably in such a manner that it will be forced to keep up with the code base (aka the type system); the latter just keep it in their minds, and re-read the code, follow the logic when they (verily occasionally) forget.

You pick: which one is more usable?

I am seriously amazed at how people talk about a program or a code base as if it is a living, breathing creature: it needs freedom. Dynamically typed system frees the code from this, from that. As if the code cares about those grand freedom. In the end of the day, no matter what language you use, no matter what feat you attempt, a computer program calculates some pieces of data, and put them in some appropriate places. End. In addition, the most important aspect of a program is to calculate the the right thing, and put the right info into the right places. All programs, thus, are inherently deterministic and static.

Now, I will admit this: static type system can be painful from time to time. Sometimes, the pain is good. For example, it requires that you know what you are trying to do. I greatly admire and am entertained by the notion of "exploration programming," in which you do a task that you have no clue what it is. It invokes the image of Columbus striving into the unknown, doing the unthinkable. And we still call Native Americans Indians. But seriously, this is programming, not exploring. We want our programs to be right, to solve our issues, not to embark in a great saga. Thus, we want to know what we are doing, so we can do the right things.

Sometimes, the pain of static type system is in deployment: for the most cases, statically typed code requires separate compilation, and modification cannot be done on-the-fly. However, this can be solved, more or less, in a good setup. These days, you can create a system such that upon commit, it can compile all of the new code, switch over to backup server, deploy new binaries to the main server, switch back to main server, deploy new binaries to the backup server. It's not exactly on-the-fly, but hourly is totally feasible. And let's be frank, if your customer service is good, how bad it is to ask the customers to wait a day? For most cases (provided it is really a day), not that big of a deal. How about this case: upon a specific input, your system will throw an exception, and will print the stack trace, which reveals your database structures, along with password and username to the table to contain all personal information, to the user?

Lastly, it can be a pain to type in the declaration. However, very frankly, except the case where you actually use Notepad (without the plus plus) to write code, this is largely a solved issues. Heck, IDEs these days will put in those code for you with rather high accuracy!

All in all, the question of typing is more of a personal matter than anything else. If you would like, I believe that it is provable how static type helps a code base reduce bugs (hell, it removes a class of bugs), improve long term (or even short term, when the dude who wrote the code takes off for a month and his code needs to be modified) productivity, and generally make life easier. It can also be proven that all of the talking about types is just waste of everyone time, and all things can be done in all languages (except explicit toy ones), and that we should get back to work instead of arguing over silly things. Your call.

Go and China

It is said that a society casts its shadow over whatever it produces. By examining the games, the food, the writings of a society, one can catch a glimpse of how it lives, grows, believes, and prospers. Go (the chess, not the programming language) is no exception. Through playing it, one can clearly see a picture of ancient Chinese society.

Let's start with trivial stuffs. Go board has 19x19 intersections, thus 361 possible moves, which is approximately the number of days in Chinese calendar year. There are stars, signifying the importance of astrology (not astronomy, mind you) in Chinese society. The pieces are black and white, similar to yin and yang; black always moves first, since yin is at disadvantage to yang. The objective of the game is to gather territories, or "lands", and pieces survive with access to land, die without land; this shows the importance of land in Chinese culture and history; early on, great countries have great land mass, weak countries are small, with small, sometimes bad, lands.

However, the description of Chinese society and history goes beyond just these little things.

First, notice the board, and how a game usually plays out. The center is wide open, but difficult to defend; the edges and corners are small, but defensible, thus usually becomes the bases for players. Look at China. The center, basically the land area between Yellow River and Yangtze River, was the fertile area, with most people and activities. However, it was difficult to defend. On the other hand, the sides, with mountains to the west, Yangtze River to the south, desserts to the north, and sea to the east, were the land where one can "advance to strike, retreat to defend" easily. Most major dynasties (Chou, Qin, Han, Shu and Wu during 3 Kingdoms period, Tang, Yuan, and Quing), most influential states (Qi to the east, Chu to the south, Qui to the west) took advantage of this strategic elements. They first occupied an easily defensible areas (usually to the West, since it is mountainous enough to defend, but near enough to advance), then gradually expand their territories until complete dominance. Such is a standard Go strategy: first occupy the corners (easy to get, easy to defend), then extend to the edges, then strive for the center.

The second importance element to Go playing is access to land. A surrounded group of pieces is a dead one. To invade, to attack, to occupy, first the access to free land, preferably 2 eyes, are vital; then, one can think about how to fuck with the opponent. This reflects faithfully to most of Chinese history (the reason I say most is because I have not read the rest). When one reads novels and treatises on Chinese military, the first, foremost, highlighted, repeated over and over part is not the valor of the soldiers, not the strengths of the generals, not the masses of the armies, but rather food supply. Most of conflicts are like this: A attacks B, B kills of A supply, A retreats. First question before a campaign? Well, do we have enough food? Second question: how do we bring our food to where we are attacking. Third one: where is enemy's storage of food? Let's burn/rob/destroy it. A hungry army is never brave, strong, or honorable. Contrast this with Western world, in which valor seems to solve everything. It was not until near modern time that serious treatises on military matter were written. What's their content? An army matches on its stomach. Of course, this reflects on its chess: the knights, for goodness' sake, jump just about anywhere, with no blockage, no exceptions.

Thirdly, but very importantly, one can see that Go pieces are identical to each other. Chess? Well, a rook is a rook, and even if it is in the corner, it's still more powerful than a pawn. All pieces are on an absolute scale of power: a Queen is more powerful than a Rook, which is more powerful than a Bishop, etc. With Go, the world is different. A piece, in and of itself, has little power. Its position, its timing, its allies, its enemies decide its power. Even "power" is relative. An extension is strong, but with little promise; an invasion is weak, dangerous, and risky, but if it succeeds, boys, you cripple your opponents (usually, this is worth like 20 to 40 points. Huge deal). This relates to how Chinese look at a person. The Western super-hero myth is that there are super-heroes, who are just better than others (the mass, the mob) in just about any respect, and they will prevail, no matter what. This heroic quality is something built-in, born-with, and no amount of education, food, training can put it there. Chinese, on the other hand, believes that all people can become sages, gentlemen, or productive. As a popular saying goes, the situation makes the man. Any person can learn and train to be great; any person can trays down to criminals. Thus, China can be said the be the first truly democratic culture which encourages all people (well, all men) to aim higher, to become the best they can be, and to contribute to their world.

Amazing, is it not? I would say that Western classical culture (Greek and Roman) is superior to Chinese in most tangible stuffs (architecture, art, maybe even math and philosophy), but governmental and structural aspects, China just rocked. Let's face it, they had fucking to many people. Thus, their board game just rocks. Well, one may say that such is why China fell behind later. Who knows?

State of Political Debate

The other day, my sister and I had small silly discussion over various stuffs, and at one point, she said something like, "I wonder why Obama does not destroy the stock market." She went on and said that the market was only "played" by rich, white men, so it was extremely racist, and it nourished the already rich population, while left many many black (colored, I guess), poor people in poverty. As such, it should be destroyed, and Obama, as a black president, was most suited to destroy it.
I was, frankly, stunned. Not that it was a bold stuffs (believe me, my sister is always a bold, smart, and passionate person, and I have heard much more interesting stuffs), nor was it that bad of an idea either, but it was just totally out of the line. To destroy the stock market (totally, and not allowing it to pop up again) means to shift away from capitalist mode of production, and requires, literally, bloody revolution to get there. Okay, don't want to get to the dirty details here, but to destroy the stock market right now is unrealistic. Plus, there was no promise either. It's kind of like moving to a different city: you may get better, but you can also get worse, but you surely will have to pay for the price to move. In short, there is no reasons (except if you are a hard core Marxist) to "destroy the stock market."
It seems to me that my sister, much like myself when I had been at her age, was utterly under-informed about what role the stock market plays in an economy, as well as why only white, rich men benefited from it (mostly because of inequality in wealth and education). The market only seemed to her bad, racist, and bad in general. Thus, she wanted to destroy it. An utterly understandable and reasonable idea, if one knows not what a stock market is.
Worse, I also see this kind of things going on in the political debate everyday. For example, "government spending is bad during recession" (WTF?), or "gold standard will solve everything." How about this: "the government oppresses us, so we should curb it down to nothing but military"? Or, "Intelligence Creation is a science, and the 'scientific community' is stupid and rejecting anything unpopular." The list keeps going on and on and on. No, these things are not even controversial, they are flat out unrealistic, contradicting within themselves, or provenly wrong multiple times. Still, people keep on arguing for these propositions, getting passionate to the point of bigotry, pissed at anyone disagreeing with them, and refusing to even consider any contradicting evidence.
To make the matter worse, there is a weird kind of philosophy in Western world that if you hold a deeply unpopular idea, you are being Copernicus or Galileo, fighting for truth against the mindless, stupid, uninformed mob, struggling for the betterment of your world. This, of course, is bullshit. Remember, popular ideas get popular for a reason. Remember, also, that Copernicus and Galileo's works were accompanied with concrete evidences, observations, and proofs, and these proofs are irrefutable. Lastly, remember that these works were not formed in days or even months: they were accumulations of worries and questions spanning centuries (Ptolemy model was formed in 2nd century, only rejected by Copernicus in 16th century, that's 15 centuries!), and took decades to finalize, prove, and perfect; they also usually require advancement in multiple other aspects of the society (steering away from the Church, invention of telescope, etc.) to appear. Thinking up an idea from nowhere, supported by a small group of people, with no concrete evidences, you are not holding truth, but just get in the way of other people.
Yet, the political sphere seems to be filled with such people: eager, passionate, intelligent, but under-informed, under-educated, and misled; sometimes, brainwashed and conditioned. They then join political parties that take advantages of their weaknesses for different, sometimes utterly contradicting, purposes. It breaks my heart every time to see how freedom lovers get fooled into shams like Tea Party (which does not resemble the original one at all), or weird churches, or paying for incompetent people who cannot even manage their own lives (yes, I am talking about Sarah Palin and the likes).

Obama the Great President of United States of America

It seems weird to me that everyone shows unsatisfactory about Obama in some degree. Everyone, from conservative to progressive. Well, it goes without saying that conservative people don't like a progressive/centrist president, but even progressive and liberal people show a lot of impatience and annoyance about Obama, too, which leaves me with so much wonder and amazement. They accuse him of not doing anything, most importantly, to which I deeply disagree. In my book, Obama is the most productive and influential president ever since FDR. Well, maybe since George Washington.

First, let's talk about laws and policies. Obama has been in office for 2 years, and he has accomplished an array of impressive tasks:

• Rescue of the economy
• Health insurance reform
• Financial reform
• Lift the requirement for vehicle efficiency
• Pull the troops from Iraq
• Two judges in Supreme Court

Pause, breath, and think. Two years, mind you, not even a term. He has done more than Clinton did in 2 terms! So much for doing nothing. However, influence of Obama does not stop at policies. Let's look at it from a wider viewpoint.

• His skin color alone, or together with his middle name, are enough to be revolutionary. A black president with a Middle Eastern (Muslim, even) middle name. This fact is enough to shape history!
• Obama brings back some authority of the US. First, we update our environmental standard, put ourselves in a better positions to negotiate with India and (especially) China over this matter. Furthermore, we have pulled out of Iraq, gained back some good will of our European allies. Oh, and did I mention Obama administration also put 2 warring Middle Eastern leaders into peace talk?
• Being a black president with Muslim middle name, Obama ushers the conflict and stereotype of American people into the surface. Before him, everyone knows that this country hates Islam, but no one knows for sure. Now, it's clear: Islamphobia is showing its worst face, and hard-core Christians unveil their ugly sides. Obama has been wise to stand aside: these social issues must be solved, and thanks to him, they are being solved
• Also under Obama, we seem to experience the most political activity for a while. Well, expectedly, since important issues, economy, health care, wars, financial systems, environment were bring into discussion. Plus, when someone throws insults around, the insulted will respond. To bring these issues into light is a great work.
• Sexual harassment in churches. Doesn't anyone every wonder this: these things have been going on for decades, but only under Obama time that they grab headlines. Why? Maybe because of some random coincidence, but maybe because of the social unrest Obama provokes. As I argued, Obama brings many hidden issues onto surface; those court cases, thus, receive their due attention.

Let us step back, and rethink Obama. Beside the first 2 presidents (who laid down the foundation of this country), who can compare with Obama in term of influence? Teddy Roosevelt only had a few puny trust cases; Reagan only had a little recession (solved by the Fed for him, but he got all the credits; funny) and a dying opponent (again, they kill themselves, but Reagan got the credits); Kennedy really only had a few good speeches, and screwed up everything else (literally, btw). Puny presidents aside, FDR had World War II and Great Depression, but that's only a part of Obama's contribution (true, his wars are smaller, but Obama has two unpopular wars, plus the current recession was potentially as bad as Great Depression); Johnson inherited most of his issues from his predecessor, whereas Obama actually calls attention into these matters; Lincoln did have a great conflict on his hand, but he handled the Civil War badly and totally screwed up the end result. Oh, remember that those presidents only solve matters. Obama shows hidden problems. Remember last time someone tried doing that? Clinton tried with homosexuality and the army, and got flamed so badly that he stopped working altogether; Carter tried with inflation, and everyone ousted him out of the office.

One more thing to consider: Obama has always remembered to represent the whole United States of America. He is a progressive, liberal person, but his policies always seek out and (try to) please conservative crowd. This gesture brings him absolutely nothing whatsoever, but he still does it. Think about his bravery! Okay, maybe because his sponsors want it that way, but if such is the case, he would not have reformed anything whatsoever. Obama reformed, and he remember to put everyone's opinions on board! True, the result is not optimal, but it's democracy. What is more important: an optimal solution or a democratic one? Remember, we don't live under a tyranny.

All in all, Obama has been a great president. Frankly, none of his critics would have the courage and skills to do all of his doings. They would be partisan, oppressing, or forget to look at all places. They would handle the social unrest over-eagerly, or ignore those problems altogether. They would forget that their country consists of not just progressive and liberal people, but also conservative ones. True, it would be nice if everyone is progressive, or everyone is conservative (depends on your view), but real world is imperfect, and trying to impose one's wish to the real world is terrible.

Now, more than ever, Obama needs our support. He needs us to push through the remaining reforms; he needs us to solve the social conflicts; he needs us revive the economy. Of course, he also needs us to remind him and Congress what need to be done (aka criticism). However, at this particular moment, when we are so near our visions, our desired change, our destination, we abandon him, amass. For what? Because of what? Because he is different from us? Because he tries to be nice and democratic to people (something that we always champion)? Because he tries to avoid all-out tyranny? Humans are funny, eh?