Turmoil on the Wall Street

You've seen it yesterday: Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection after failing to reach a deal with potential buyers (Barclay and Citi were rumored to be the interested parties) over the weekend. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch, one of the marquis investment banks on the Street, agreed to be bought by Bank of America in a deal valued at $50B. This deal was viewed as BoA bailing out Merrill. Furthermore, rumors about impending bankruptcy of AIG caused people to believe more bad news is yet to come. Stock sold off around the world, with Europe down more than 4% and Asia down close to 5% before US stock market opened. As you would expect, the Monday trading on Wall Street was bloody. Dow declined more than 500 points, or 4.4%, worst single day decline since the burst of dot com bubble seven to eight years ago. It was indeed a "black Monday".
To make things worse, pundits were all sounding doom and gloom. A NYU economist, Nouriel Roubini, even warned that American's deposits in the banks are at risk (I think he should shut up, or be locked up for inciting run on banks). Our old pal Allan Greenspan said this is the worst crisis in last hundred years. That means the 1929 depression was even better than current financial and economic crisis. I think all these pundits have their ulterior motives (not very noble often time) to try to scare people, and further weaken people's confidence.

I think the current crisis in a large part is a crisis in confidence: people don't know how to evaluate the risky assets after having burned by subprime mortgages. So they start to sell all the assets for cash. So if you take a look, ALL asset classes are under selling pressure, even the darlings just a few months ago (oil and commodities). It will take a long time to restore confidence.

I have been a critic of the Fed and US government for creating such crisis in the first place. But the action, or lack of action of the Fed and the Treasury department over the weekend, was a wise decision. I think history will prove that not bailing out Lehman was the right move. Collapse of Lehman is no big deal. The Fed should not even have bailed out Bear Stearns earlier this year. But Fannie and Freddie were entirely a different matter. Taking out Fannie and Freddie was necessary and a right move, in my opinion. Today, the Fed maintain the Fed Funds rate at 2%, which is a big sigh of relief. I was really worried about that Fed would cave in to the pressure from the Wall Street and lower the interest rate. At this point lowering interest has no positive effect at all. It in fact would be counter productive, causing further panic in the financial markets. Lowering interest rate would do nothing to reduce investors' risk premium, which is very high right now.

So what is my assessment of the situation? Should we sell stock and stay in cash, or this is a great opportunity to buy? Before I tell you my opinion, let me show you my thought process:
If one looks at the entire US economy in three segments: household sector, government sector and corporate sector, and then analyzes the health of each sector, he or she should be able to see more clearly where problems lie and what are the solutions.

1) US household is under stress, there is no doubt about that. Consumer spending has been outpacing consumption for a long time, financed by cheap credit provided by foreign investors. Since 2000, medium household income actually shrunk in real term by $1000, according to some reports. Wealth gap has widened significantly. The ultra rich have seen their wealth grow fastest in decades, while middle to lower class people are suffering. When the US consumer cannot borrow against their future income, they started to borrow against their assets, their houses. Due to the artificial low interest rate engineered by Allan Greenspan and the Fed, Americans were able to extract tremendous amount of cash from home equities, and spend the cash as on home remodeling, vacation, or buying bigger nicer cars. Then the house prices start to decline, that is when many people begin to see equities in their houses evaporated. Mortgage default rate start to rise rapidly, creating a chain reaction in the world financial institutions who willing lent to these overstretched homeowners.
Now US household is deleveraging, trying to repair the balance sheet. That is a good thing. But expect consumer spending to decline in the next few years, and financial service industry will have to de-leverage, too, to shrink their balance sheets as well. So the demise of a few financial institutions is just the normal course of the consumer adjustment we are witnessing now. That is good in long run, painful in near term.
2) The government sector is also under stress. Tax revenue has not grown, due to the big tax cut Bush enacted back in 2002. In the meanwhile spending has rocketed, largely due to twin wars we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government cannot continue to rely on printing money to finance the deficit spending. So we either have to raise the tax or cut spending, or both. You can't raise tax on middle class in this economic environment. I support Obama's tax plan to raise taxes on the wealthy, who have disproportionally benefited under the Bush tax plan. In the meanwhile, we have to cut spending. That is difficult: you cannot cut social security or medicare. Healthcare for the uninsured will be extra money the government has to spend. And the national infrastructure is also in dire need of repair (bridge collapse in Minneapolis was an indication). We also have to invest in alternative energy (wind mills) to wean our dependence on fossil fuel. So where the cut can come from? The only place is Iraq and Afghanistan war spending. The whole war on terror is a self inflicted pain. As you know, the US government had all the tools to prevent 9/11 from happening. If you don't believe they made 9/11 happen, you should at least believe they LET 9/11 happen. So the whole war-on-terror spending is just waste of money and resources. We can save that for more productive use, such as building the national energy and transportation infrastructure and investing in healthcare. That is why it is so important to elect Obama as President coming November.
3) US corporate sector, apart from the financial institutions or auto industry, is very healthy. Profit margins are at all time high. Earnings have been strong. Corporations are awash with cash, balance sheet is pristine. US companies are very competitive compared with companies of other nations. So the US corporate sector is very strong. We have to encourage corporations to invest in the US to create jobs and grow household income. I think Obama has detailed plan for that.
So what is my opinion?
If Obama wins, I will buy stocks with all the money I have. If McCain wins, and he continues the Bush policy, then I will have to cash out to invest in gold and swiss franc.
We got to elect Obama!

I am voting for Barack Obama

Wow, what a great acceptance speech by Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention (DNC)! Before the speech, I had doubt. Now I am completely on board. No more cynicism. Let's get Obama elected the President of United States of America!

It was fitting that yesterday marks the 45-year anniversary of MLK's famous "I have a dream" speech. The very fact that a black man is nominated to be the presidential candidate of a major political party is a testimony to how far this country has progressed. There is no turning back. For those who are still hanging on to the old way of politics, your days are coming to an end!

In his speech, Obama talked about his humble beginnings, and the values he was taught with by his mother and grandparents. He admitted that his father did not have much influence on him. He was more shaped by "his (father's ) absence".

He also laid out his policies, item-by-item, in a way that ordinary people can understand. For example, to counter McCain's accusation that he is going to raise taxes on the middle-class, he said he is going to cut taxes on 95% of the families.

But most importantly, at least to me, he addressed some of the issues that democrats have been commonly criticized for. The republicans have long criticized that democrats don't have a set of clear principles, and they follow the polls to please people in order to get elected. Yesterday, Barack Obama answered those criticisms very eloquently.

He contrasted the republican principles vs. his democratic principles. The republicans talk about "Ownership Society". But in reality it means "you are on your own". But democrats believe we have "mutual responsibilities" to each other. As Obama puts it: "We are our brothers' keepers, and our sisters' keepers."

I thought this is a great comparison, and is exactly what I had hoped the democrats would say for a long time. The republicans often claim moral superiority over the democrats. But where is the morality to favor big businesses and refuse to raise the minimum wage for the low-income workers? (I believe in America, if you choose to work, you ought to be able to earn a living wage! That is the moral responsibility of the entire society to the less fortunate segment of our community). Where is the morality to oppose abortion while turn a blind eye to the deaths and destruction in some inner city America? The republican principles have so many contradictions to bordering hypocrisy.

Obama also talked about his belief in what the appropriate government's roles in our lives. Here again, republican believes are full of contradictions. It has become a cliche to the republicans that government does not work, and the less government regulation the better. Yet they want you all to vote for them so they can occupy the government positions to prove that government indeed does not work. The Bush Administration really proved that its government does not work: from the mis-management of the Iraq War, to No-Child-Left-Behind, to Hurricane Katrina fiasco.

If the republicans want the government out of our lives, why do they insist on regulating people's morality? I am a Christian, and I have a set of values that I believe will benefit everyone. But I can't impose my values to others, and let alone having the government to impose my values to everyone in the country. Yes, we disagree on many issues, but we should always seek common ground, not to be bogged down by our disagreements. That was what Obama preached last night. He touched on a few very controversial issues (abortion, gay marriage, and gun control) and illustrated where we may find common grounds.

Most importantly, unlike the republicans who cynically claim that government simply does not work (so they should outsource critical government functions to the private businesses run by their cronies), we democrats believe government plays a critical role in some of the functions of the society, as clearly laid out in the US constitution, such as providing common defense (not only defending foreign threats, but also environmental threats). Obama also gave other examples of where the government can make a difference: education, promoting scientific advancements and technological innovations. Unlike the cynical republicans, we democrats believe "yes we can". Yes, we can, under the right leadership! It was not the government that failed us. It was the lack of leadership in the past eight years that has failed us!

Obama also showed that he is a new breed of democrats, not exactly in the mold of traditional so called "liberals". He talked about "personal responsibilities", in the same breath of "mutual responsibilities". He wants to "cut wasteful government spending", not exactly the kind of "big government liberal" the republicans make out of him. I call this new brand of democrats "progressive". And I am so happy to see them becoming more prominent in the democratic leadership.

Go Obama!

Have the Beijing Games changed the West's view about China?

As the Beijing Olympic Games are approaching to the end, a lot of Chinese are wondering: has hosting the Games succeeded in changing the West's stereotypes about China?

I have been wondering the same question. what I found out seems to be very disappointing: the Beijing Olympics only served to reinforce the stereotypes about China.

Leading up to the Games, all Western media focused on one talking point: how China was preparing the Games as a propaganda tool to project a better image to the world. But what we Chinese are saying? We want the world to see the REAL China first hand. There have been too much distortion in the Western media about China. We were hoping the Olympic Games can help change that.

The opening ceremony was a big bang. Everyone I met told me it was spectacular, unprecedented, incredible, (add your own adjectives here). Initially I was very happy. I was proud. But after carefully examining, I sense these praises are not exactly what we are looking for. Yes, many people were awe-stricken by the 2008 drummers counting down to the opening of the Games. But I sense that awe was a little bit condescending. It is not the kind of awe when people watch the first man landed on the Moon. Nor the kind of awe that people have when they watch Usain Bolt dashing to the finishing line, leaving others in the dust. It is rather the kind of awe when people see thousands of ants transporting food, seemingly without any supervision, or when people see the bees dancing in front the bee hive, signaling where the flowers are. It is that kind of condescending awe most of the Westerners felt when they were watching those spectacular performances of the Opening Ceremony.

In their view, the Chinese are like machines, displaying absolute conformity and non-individuality. The group synchronized performances at the Opening Ceremony only help reinforce that view. To them, we are just like the ants, or the bees.

Then you may ask, what about all those gold silver and bronze medals. As of now, China has won 89 medals, second only to the US. Fifty of those medals are gold, far surpassing the US. Shouldn't we be proud? Shouldn't that change people's view about Chinese?

To westerners, Chinese are typically nerds who are good at math and sciences. Sports are the fun thing that the Chinese does not know much about. Even though Chinese athletes have won so many medals, that fact still does not change their view. They think Chinese athletes are just manufactured goods. They are not even human. They are the products of a nationally organized sports machine or factory. They believe: we western athletes play sports for fun, and the Chinese train for sports only to get gold medals. Chinese sports programs are just like factories that churn out athletes.

Back in 1996 when the Olympics were held in Atlanta Georgia, NBC ran a program that provided stories about the real life of the athletes. When it was about the American athletes, NBC showed how these men and women loved the sports and were having fun playing in the Olympics. But when it came to the Chinese athletes, the stories were often very sad. The Chinese athletes were picked by the government to be trained in sports camps. They left their families at very young age, and spent their childhood training for sports. To them, sports were not for fun. They were for winning gold medals to glorify the Chinese nation. So all the Chinese athletes were shown to be under tremendous pressure. What NBC implied in the program was obvious, the Chinese don't like sports. They just use sports to serve propaganda purposes.

So with this view, no matter how many medals the Chinese athletes win, it does not change a bit the stereotypes about China and Chinese.

So for those Chinese who pin too much hope that Olympics would help the world see the real China, wake up. It ain't gonna happen!

So stop worrying about what other people would think about you. Don't give a damn about their opinions. Let them say whatever they want to say. Let us just have some fun!

Let the Games continue!

Was Bruce Ivins a scapegoat for the FBI

If you still recall, back in 2001, there was an anthrax in the mail incidence that killed several people and hospitalized several others. In the past SEVEN years, the FBI was trying to find out who did it. First the FBI found a wrong person, Steven Hatfill, and ended up having to pay $5.8M to Hatfill to settle a lawsuit against the FBI by Hatfill.

Last week, only after the death of Bruce Ivins, a government bioterrorist research scientist, ruled as suicide, the FBI leaked to the media that Ivins was FBI's prime suspect for the 2001 anthrax case. I stress that the FBI leaked the information, because officially, the FBI did not say anything. Under intense public pressure, FBI started to provide more information about their investigation of Ivins. They claim that Ivins was a homocide maniac, according to Ivins' "psychotherapist".

But friends of Ivins vehemently defended Ivins as a smart, outgoing, and caring person. To the friends, it is utterly unbelievable that Ivins could be the person who sent out anthrax laced letters.

Now more and more evidence has emerged that the FBI may be just looking for another scapegoat to blame on. They have deliberately put pressure on the objects of their investigation, in an attempt to destroy them psychologically. Steven Hatfill was tough enough to endure the pressure and prevailed. But Bruce Ivins was less lucky.

This makes me wonder: is the FBI interested in finding the real criminal, or just looking for a scapegoat to cover the whole thing up? My suspicion is the latter. Then that begs the question: what does the FBI want to cover up? why the FBI may not want to find out the truth about the 2001 anthrax incidence?


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Housing bill to bail out the banks

Last week, the House democrats pushed to pass the "housing bill", aimed at providing financial "help" for the "distressed homeowners". The bill also provides guarantee for Fannie and Freddie's $5 trillion mortgage debt.

As I have mentioned before, there are two major problems that the nation is confronted with: subprime mortgage crisis, and runaway inflation fueled by rising prices of commodities. You might be amazed by the fixation of the politicians on the former one, and scant attention that they pay to the latter. You should not be surprised, because the first problem is the problem of the banks, and the second one is the problem of ordinary folks. Do you really expect politicians to care much about the problem of ordinary people?

While all the media circus is focusing on mortgage crisis, the mortgage delinquency rate (defined as 30 days payment overdue) for the first quarter of the year (latest data available) was only a little bit above 6%. The actual foreclosure rate is less than 1%. Vast majority of the homeowners are paying their bills on time. What the housing bill will do is to reward a tiny minority of those who engaged in irresponsible speculation on the housing market or bought homes they cannot afford, while punishing the vast majority of us who are financially responsible. The true objective of the housing bill is to bail out those banks that have engaged in reckless, fraudulent, or even predatory lending, and the investors who were gambling on the subprime housing market.

If the politicians truly want to help people and the nation's economy, they should do something about the inflation. The bloody fact about inflation is that, it is created by the government's excessive printing of money. As Milton Friedman has pointed out, inflation problem everywhere and every time is a monetary problem. When inflation occurs in Zimbabwe, Sudan, and many African countries, we all know that was caused by the government excessive printing of paper money. But when inflation occurs in US, why all of sudden we are at a loss about what has caused it?

The housing bill essentially will put the $50 trillion mortgage debt Fannie and Freddie owes, on the books of the Treasury department, virtually tripled the amount of debt US government owes. That will put further pressure on the value of US dollar, leading to even higher rate of inflation. If you think the gas price is high now, wait until the housing bill becomes law.

Politicians, democrats or republicans, are crooks. They are fed by big business interests, and do whatever it takes to advance those interests. Sad thing is that the public is so ignorant and gullible. I tell you, I really doubt the so-called 'democratic system". What good doe it to do to ordinary people? You might as well go back to the "benevolent authoritarian" system that China has.

I admit that I am confused.

America's twin financial woes and how to solve them

The current financial crisis in the USA boils down to two problems: subprime mortgage, and inflation. I have argued in my previous post that the more devastating one of the two is inflation. Subprime problem affects largely the Wall Street financial institutions, while inflation affects every single consumer, particularly those in the lower economic ladders.

To solve the financial crisis, we have to address these two problems. My argument is that: if we address the inflation problem first and head-on, other problems will be resolved easily as a result.

So how to solve the inflation problem? First we have to look at the root cause of inflation.

1) Inflation is caused by excessive printing of the dollar
As the great economist Milton Friedman stated: "inflations are always the result of increases in the supply of credit money: it is easy to print paper, and governments that have begun issuing paper money have always eventually fallen to the temptation of just printing and spending new money."

The root cause of inflation is the excessive money creation by the Federal Reserve. As the world's reserve currency, US dollar affects inflation not only in the US, but around the world.

2) Printing money was necessitated by increased government spending

Why did the Fed print so much money to begin with? To finance the run-away US government spending. After Bush took over the White House, he immediately reduced personal and corporate taxes across the board, fulfilling his campaign promise. Then the US entered two wars, against Afghanistan and Iraq. Government entitlement was also expanded during this period (Medicare prescription drug benefits for the seniors, or the Part D Program), plus all those pork barrel spending the congress likes to lavish on their own home states.

Now the common sense dictates that if you increase spending, you have to have the income to pay for it. Not in this case, because the government tax income was greatly reduced by tax cuts. Now what do you do? You print money, that is the only way out.

That is why US dollar has been steadily declining in value since 2001, which led to accelerating pace of inflation.

To stem the inflation, I have the following remedies. But I doubt any politician would have the courage to adopt them:
1) Pull out of Iraq
We went in for the wrong reason, we have to get out, before the war bankrupts USA. I am not suggesting pull-out immediately, but a measured and definitive time table of military draw-down seems to be the only way to get us out of there.
2) Increase taxes on the wealthy
The widening wealth gap in the US is alarming. In this time of war, some personal sacrifices are needed. The poor have sent their sons and daughters to Iraq. It is only fair that the rich need to pay their duties. We have to roll back the Bush tax give-aways to the wealthiest of the wealthy.
3) Adopt a long-term strategic energy policy to reduce reliance on fossil fuel
If it was not because of the oil, we would not have gone to the war with Iraq. That is undeniable truth. Let's not fake it. Imagine how much the US has to spend each year on military to protect the oil trade. The amount is staggering. We have to produce reliable source of renewable energy domestically (such as wind, solar, and bio-fuel). And we also have to conserve energy consumption. Currently the US is consuming 25% of the world's oil production, while the US population is only 4% of the world total.
4) The Federal Reserve has the reverse the excessive money printing process.
How can it do that? By raising the interest rate. I bet if the Fed starts to raise interest rate, US dollar will rise in value and commodities prices will start to fall. That will be a huge shot in the arm for consumer confidence and business confidence. Once confidence is restored, I think subprime problem will be eased as well. Part of the subprime issue is the lack of confidence of investors in the value of those mortgages. Restoring confidence will help the market to clear out all the liquidity excesses and mislocations.

Struggles of Asian Americans

The other day, my son was mimicking the accent of a Chinese lady working in his school cafeteria: " du yu wan a peessa? give me a dolla!" (do you want a piece of pizza? give me a dollar if you do).

I was very upset that he did that. I asked him why he would do that. He said his classmate taught him this and he felt it was funny. And my son is only 11.

This is not a funny matter. Asian Americans (and many other immigrants in America) who have an accent speaking English often feel that they are treated unfairly. Speaking with an accent gives people an impression that the person is poorly educated. Sometime ago, a close friend of mine told me that he could not get promotion or work at a position he felt well qualified, purely because of his accent. Our mouths may speak with an accent, but our brains do not think with an accent, I heard someone once declared.

The trouble is that not every type of accents are treated equally. European accents (particularly of west and north Europe) are treated favorably. On the other hand, Asian accents and Spanish accents do not receive the same favor.

When I was in Cornell many years ago, I read about an undergraduate Chinese American student expressing his feelings about his heritage in a Chinese email forum. He said he was often shamed of being with his parents, because of their accents.

The struggle of our first generation Asian immigrants is enormous. We are a very family-focused culture. We work hard and sacrifice personally, hoping to bring a better life for our next generation. We save a lot, and rarely care about our own outward appearance. We would be very willing to buy a $100 shirt for our children, but for ourselves, we buy the least expensive ones. We speak in accents. We have a lot of feelings, but find it difficult to express them because of the language hindrance.

We thought if we work hard to bring good lives for our children, they would appreciate us, and be grateful to us because of our love and sacrifices. But the sad thing is, we are losing our children. Our children don't feel proud of their parents, and their heritage and cultures. And we the parents, after so much personal sacrifice, are gradually losing the hearts and minds of our children.

You cannot blame our children for that. Our children can rarely find a role model, or a hero, that has Asian background, to look up to. What they can only see in the media make them so conscious about themselves, because the media are black and white dominated (used to be only white dominated).

I have an advice for all our struggling Asian parents: every summer break, bring your children to Asia. Let them witness first hand the vibrant culture there. Bring them to places and teach them the history about those places. Let them have a chance to see the culture programs of our native lands. I am hopeful our children will soon discover the beauty in our own cultures, find heroes in our history and people, and feel proud of being themselves.

Working hard is not enough. Saving lots of money for your family is not adequate. You need to care about the spiritual needs of your children.

Sweet 3G iPhone

As expected, Steve Jobs unveiled 3G iPhone during his keynote in WWDC 08. However, the phone wont be available until July 11.

Apple has abandoned revenue sharing arrangement with the wireless carriers and allow the carriers to subsidize iPhone. That is why the new iPhone will cost as less as $199 for the 8GB version. In contrast, an 8GB iPod Touch costs $299.

IPhone software 2.0 is the central piece of Apple's strategy. The support of third-party software developers is essential to the ultimate success of the iPhone platform. The reason why Microsoft Windows OS became a dominant platform is because the enormous independent software support. Apple is determined to foster such an independent software developers community for its iPhone platform. The PC war is over and Microsoft has won. But the war on mobile platform has just begun, and iPhone is pulling way ahead of the pack, despite its relative late entry.

Mobile platform can be HUGE. Many people in the developing world may ONLY use mobile phones to access the internet. I think MID (Mobile Internet Device) will be as big as PC. On the hardware side, the battle is between Intel's Atom (x86) and ARM's ARM core. On the software side (OS side), it may be between Google's Android and Apple's iPhone. Palm foolishly gave away its software control and solely relied on Microsoft's mobile platform (Palm spun out Palm OS to PalmSource which later was acquired by and withered in a Japanese mobile software company called ACCESS). RIM's blackberry is only an email platform, at current moment, and I would not be surprised it will adopt a similar strategy of Apple's. But it may be too late for RIM to catch up. Microsoft's mobile platform is pretty much dead, I believe.

I would use any pullback in Apple stock prices to buy more its shares.

Disclaimer: I own shares in Apple common stock.

Clinton's concession speech

I watched Clinton's concession speech on youtube (you got to love the Internet). When she was talking about how much she has accomplished and thanking her supporters, her tone was full of excitement and emotion. But when she starts to talk about supporting Obama, her voice turns solemn and mechanical. I would still characterize her concession and support for Obama as lukewarm.
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She made her entire campaign look like a movement about women's rights. I am glad that Obama did not make his look like one about civil rights or minority rights. When Clinton was saying all sorts of things about Obama, none of which was true, such as Obama was less qualified then she or McCain, and Obama was sexist, Obama did not respond in kind. Looking back, I really did not recall Obama said anything bad about Clinton throughout his campaign. Even when Clinton made that outrageous RFK assassination allusion, Obama did not clamor on and attack Clinton. Imagine if Obama made similar comment regarding Clinton, what Bill would say.

I am just glad the whole thing is over. With or without the support of hillbilly, Obama will prevail in November.

Apple WWDC next week. I want my 3G iPhone

Next week, Apple will hold its annual WWDC in San Francisco. The rumor is that the 3G version of iPhone will be revealed. I think more exciting is the software 2.0 for iPhone. Third party software vendors can sell their software for iPhone directly on iPhone. Same functionality will also be available on iPod Touch. I am sure I will get an iPod touch. My son has been begging me so long. As for the iPhone, I have to wait for a few more months.

What other new products are in store for WWDC? We will find out soon.

What should Hillary do next?

Tonight, the democratic primary is finished. It is obvious Obama will get the votes needed to clinch the party nomination. Hillary Clinton held a meeting with her supporters in New York. Still not willing to concede, she asked the crowd: what should I do now?

Hillary, I got some suggestions for you:

First, you should start praying, praying really hard. The month of June is a strange month, as you have pointed out before. Lots of strange things could happen. You never know. Pray. For the desired accident to happen. Obviously, you should pray to the devil in this case.

Second, in case the devil does not listen to your prayers, you have another option. Join the Republican party and run against McCain. You still have a chance to beat McCain. You have done more damage to the Democratic party than McCain did. You have smeared Obama's reputation more than McCain did. More right-wingers support you than McCain. You got Bill O'Reiley praising you every night. Ann Coulter promised to campaign for you. What you need to do is to switch to the Republican party. You style and your character fit that party very nicely anyway.

Lastly, in case this does not work either, you can ran for McCain's Veep. McCain can really use you to woo the support of the right-wingers. You have proven to be more credible to the neo-cons than McCain. You and Macky will be a dream pair made in hell.

Economics of public transportation

A few weeks ago, the Walls Street Journal editorial ran a commentary criticizing government support of public transportation. (Given the reputation of WSJ's editorial board, I am not surprised by its view). One of the chief reasons WSJ did not like public transportation is that the business of public transportation has never been profitable on its own. Public transportation always requires government subsidies. That is true in Europe, and probably also true in Japan and China.

But is profit the only measure we should use here? From the microscopic level, considering only the economics of public transportation as a business, I agree that public transportation is not a good "business". But it does not mean it is not a good public policy to support it.

If you look from the societal level (macroscopic level), the picture is more positive. The cost of public transportation is obvious, government subsidies. But the benefits of public transportation cannot be ignored. First and foremost, it reduces the society's aggregate consumption of energy. More people uses public transportation, less money will be spent to import oil from the middle east. Yes, the government has to spend money to subsidize public transportation. But the money spent by the government remains in this country, creating jobs, and producing income multiplying effect on the economy. Otherwise, the money would have been spent to import oil/energy from foreign countries anyway. That money does not create any job in this country, and does not stimulate domestic economy.

Now is a great time to encourage public transportation and wean the nation off the dependence of foreign oil. Consumers are already cutting back personal driving, and looking for alternative transportation options. We need the government on all levels to lend its support for building a better public transportation infrastructure and implementing sound long term policy to incentivize the public to take public means of transportation. And in a long run, as ridership rises, public transportation may indeed become a profitable business on its own right, without requiring government subsidies.

Big oil companies take advantage of high gas price

I watched a video yesterday on youtube, created by American Solutions, about high gas prices. At first, I thought this was another video complaining about high gas prices. After I finished watching, I realized this is just another propaganda war the energy industry is waging, to convince people that the solution to solving high gas prices is more drilling! I have a hunch, the American Solutions organization (www.americansolutions.com), is backed by the energy industry.

Let's take a look at the root causes of the current energy crisis, if we can call it a crisis. High gas prices are caused by high crude oil prices. Why have crude oil prices gone up some much since Bush took over the White House? "Experts" would tell you that it is caused by increasing demand for oil and decreasing supply of oil. But if you take a look at the demand, demand grew less than 3% per year during this period. Yes, supply has seen some disruption, due to Iraq war. And some oil fields are seeing the production of oil declining. But the true cause of high oil prices does not lie here. We should put the blame squarely on US central bank (the Fed) monetary policy. The Fed has been engaged in currency manipulation since 2001. It was the Fed's deliberate policy to devalue US dollar, by printing excessive amount of fresh paper money, thus lowering interest rates, at one time to an absurdly low level (1%), to fund expanding government spending to support two wars. Since 2001, the Fed has stopped reporting a very important indicator of monetary supply, M3. Because they were afraid that M3 would reveal the massive increase of money supply.

But the market is efficient. You cannot cheat the market. Since 2001, the value of US dollar has been in a free fall against major foreign currencies. Crude oil is priced in US dollar, as are all other traded commodities. When the value of US dollar goes down, naturally the prices of commodities go up.

On top of that, you have gotten the parasite Wall Street bankers, who used the easy money offered by the Fed to speculate on the commodities market. Not only oil prices have gone through the roof, so have the prices for gold, silver, corn, cotton, and any commodity that you can name. The argument that the rise of oil price was only caused by demand/supply imbalance is completely false. Instead of using US dollar to price oil, if you have used gold to price the crude oil, the prices have not gone up much at all!

So what's the solution to high oil prices?
First, stop the Fed! The Fed's monetary policy destroyed the savings of US middle-class. Those who are on fixed incomes, such as retirees, are hit the hardest. Prices everywhere have gone up. Some people start to have problem to even pay for food and utilities! If the Fed is allowed to continue the devaluing of the dollar, middle-class will be destroyed. The US will descended into a third-world country in a few years!

Second, we have to have a long-term energy policy that has substance more than politics. Energy conservation should be the central piece of the new policy! Per capita energy consumption in the US is ten times higher than in India and China. We Americans cannot go on like this. I do not blame the US consumers. The Blame lies on the government, whose policy is NOT driven by public interest, BUT BY THE INTEREST of the energy companies, the automobile industry.

Public transportation is almost non-existent in the US, because the government does not support it. Highways and roads were built for individual automobiles, not for buses loading and off-loading passengers. Railways are limited. Building were built with the mandate to offer ample parking for individual cars.Every government policy here, including the highway bill, is to encourage individual driving and discourage mass transportation! Automobile industry and the energy industry were the primary beneficiaries of the policy. (Even with the support the government, the US auto industry is still failing. I predict in not so distant future, the US auto industry will be completely gone, ceding to the Asians and Europeans, just like the textile and electronic industries).

Hillary Clinton has no shame

Hillary Clinton does not have any sense of shame. It was she who made a senseless comment about RFK assassination in June of 1968. Now she is turning around and attacking the Obama campaign for hyping up the incidence. Obama did not say much about the her comments. He showed his class by accepting the silly explanation and "apology" from Clinton.

Should we make a big issue out of this incidence? I think yes, we should. This incidence, along with many others, such as her comments about dodging sniper's bullets in her 90s Bosnia trip, goes a long way to show her CHARACTER, or lack of. SHE BASICALLY HAS NO SHAME. She cares only about winning. She does not care about the party. She cares less about truth. She has no principle. She will use any means to achieve her ends, which is to win the election. She would rather destroy the democratic party than not being able to win the nomination. That is her.

To say that she did not mean anything evil in her comment about RFK assassination is simply an insult to the intelligence of the voters, particularly of the so called "low-income rural WHITE working class" she has been so carefully pandering to. Mrs. Clinton, we heard it loud and clear. You were hoping some miracle might happen that Mr Obama would all of sudden be assassinated in June as RFK was in 1968. Then you would become the Democratic nominee. Shame on you. You have got no trace of human decency left in you! If God forbidden, some crazy racist would attempt to assassinate Mr. Obama, we would hold YOU accountable for inciting that to happen. You are typical of what a dirty politician is all about!

Mrs. Clinton, why don't you just run as a Republican, so we will have some peace within the Democratic party? Go join McCain. He is looking for a VEEP. He might consider you!

Which problem is worse: housing or inflation?

The congress seems to be obsessed with subprime mortgage problems and the housing downturn. But is it really the biggest problem that ordinary people are facing?

I have done a small-sample survey among people living in my area. It is not scientific, but I think is pretty representative. People are not really worried about housing or subprime at this moment.

There are four groups of people when it comes to housing: 1) Ordinary house owners, who stay put in the current environment. They don't care how the house prices are going. They will stay in the house no matter what. 2) Stretched house owners. These people can't afford the houses they currently have. They can decide to move out, letting the house to foreclose. They may experience some short term hardship. But rentals are plenty. With the glut of unsold houses and condos, I don't think rents will go up very much. This group of people will be OK eventually once they get rid of the houses they were lured in by unscrupulous real estate agents and the greedy mortgage brokers. 3) Speculators. These people are in for making a quick profit, and now are stuck with the houses they can't sell. To this group of people, I would say: good luck. and 4) Renters. These people actually hope the house prices would drop from the insanely high levels to more reasonable and affordable price point.

So clearly, housing problem is not as bad as it is made out to be for consumers. It is certainly bad for the Wall Street financial institutions. The go-go days of mortgage speculation is gone. Their books are chalk full of subprime mortgages. They got only themselves to blame. Now they are asking the government and the Federal Reserve to bail them out. That is precisely what they have been getting. And that is also why the politicians are so eager to rescue them out of the subprime meltdown.

But for ordinary people, inflation is a much bigger problem. Just take a look at the price labels at the gas stations, and go for a grocery shopping. You will see price for almost everything has gone up, from milk to cereals, eggs to vegetables. The government tries to deceive us and themselves by focusing on the completely flawed CPI (Consumer Price Index), saying that CPI excluding food and energy is still below 3% per year. That is just plainly ridiculous.

The whole government policy is favoring the banks, and hurting ordinary people. The Fed keeps printing new dollars to give to the Wall Street banks, just to keep them afloat. That just destroys the value of dollar. That is why dollar is trading like a piece of worthless paper in the foreign exchange markets against almost every other major currency.

When dollar goes down, anything that is priced in dollar will go up in price, oil, gold, silver, platinum, diamond, metals, you name it. The cause of inflation is NOT due to the lack of supply of products, but due to the EXCESS supply of money. (No one has said about short supply of gold or silver. Why the price for gold or silver rose more than five-fold in matter of four years.) When you have more money chasing the same amount of products, prices will certainly go up. So the root cause of the widespread inflation has the Fed to blame! First Allan Greenspan, who flooded the system with money supply by lowering interest rate to absurdly low 1%, which created the housing bubble and subprime crisis. Then Mr. Bernanke did it again, just to rescue the banks and financial institutions who were gambling in the housing market with investors and depositors money (not their own money). These monetary actions, coupled with the irresponsible fiscal policy of the Bush Administration (run-away government spending for the two wars), conspired to destroy the value of dollar, hence the value of our savings and income. Middle-class America is taking the full brunt, while the super-wealthy who own real assets are actually benefiting.

It is about time. About time to have a regime change in the US.

Pull out of Iraq now, and secure our border

Yesterday, President Bush made a comment about the Iraq situation. He claimed that pulling out of Iraq now will put our children in danger.

Politicians understand how to use fear to their advantage, The war proponents have long argued that, if we do not succeed in securing Iraq, Al Qaeda and other terrorists will use Iraq as a base to launch attack on America.

This argument works really well. Because it invokes the worst fear in us. It reminds us of September 11th. But have you paused and ask yourself, is this true? If we pull out of Iraq, is it true the terrorists will follow us home?

I would submit to you that this is ABSOLUTELY false.

The same line of argument was used to justify prolonging the Vietnam war. But in the end, Vietnam was lost to the Communists. But see what is happening in Vietnam now.

Let me give you another example. In 1993, UN peace keeping force in Somalia led by US, was under attack by radical militia. 19 US soldiers died in the conflict in the Capital city Mogadishu. The whole event is depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down”. President Clinton made a decisive call to pull out of Somalia, to avoid further US military casualty. Since then, civil war broke out in Somalia. Now the country is ruled by radical The Islamic Court Union. But Somalia is never a threat to US homeland security. The terrorists in Somalia did not follow us to the home. Do they want to kill more Americans? You bet they do. But they can't do anything to us if we are not there.

If we pull out of Iraq, will terrorists attempt to take control of Iraq. You bet they will try. But why are we afraid of them. Now they are in hiding. If we leave Iraq, and they resurfaced, our cruise missiles in Saudi, and Turkey can be put in use. We don't have to physically there to fight them. Let them reappear so we can target them. Now they are hiding in the dark, and we are exposed. We cannot win this asymmetrical warfare. We did not win it in Vietnam, we did not win it in Somalia, and we won't win it in Iraq. But we can leave. The more we drag our feet there, trying to save our face, the more damage the terrorists can inflict on us.

The world is huge. There are so many places around the dark corners of the world that the terrorists can establish a base trying to launch attach on us. In fact they are everywhere, in North Africa, Afghanistan, in northeast desert of China's XinJiang Province. Why is Iraq so unique among these many hideout places for terrorists? Can we put our military in everyone of these places, like we do in Iraq? That would be insane.

The Bush administration has a completely wrong and dangerous priorities in fighting terrorists: securing our own borders should be the No. 1 priority. Gathering intelligence information about the terrorists should also be our priority. But Iraq war is draining our resources away from those true priorities. Just recently, Bush removed the border patrol agents in New Mexico and Arizona, and redeployed them to Iraq. If we cannot do our job to secure our home, why fight in Iraq?

The Pentagon created another "Zaqawi" to blame for Iraq mess

Thanks to the US military, an ordinary thug, ruthless killer of innocent people, Abu Musab al-Zaqawi, was elevated to the "hero" status in the Muslim world, particularly among the Iraqis. His death, which otherwise would be just like the death of a pig, now is viewed as martyrdom by the Iraqis. The whole thing is a colossal propaganda failure of the US towards outside world. But it did serve the domestic purpose of the Bush administration: blame Zaqawi for all the mess.

The American people are so gullible, because they watched too many Hollywood movies, in which one "hero" often single-handed beats everybody else. Zaqawi seems to be that kind of "hero", but in a bad sense.

Now Zaqawi is dead, and the mess in Iraq continues. The Pentagon has to create another "Zaqawi" to lay blame on. The Pentagon propaganda machine has started to work. Then the US media will all play a great supporting role. General William Caldwell has already decided on which of the insurgents to be chosen as "Zaqawi successor". This person appears to be Ayyub al-Masri (why their names all start with an "A" and end with an "i"). This may change as the situation changes. But one thing is for sure, that is: the Pentagon needs another Zaqawi.

Apple + Blackberry, sounds delicious

Rumor has it that Apple is working with Blackberry maker Research In Motion to put iTunes on Blackberry, or something like that.

I like the idea. But previous collaboration with Motorola wasn't a big success in any measure. How different will this one be.

Maybe this time, Jobs can pull a rabbit out of the hat. You never know.

McNuts of Sun Microsystems bailed out

Finally, the nutty McNuts of SUNW gave in to the mounting pressure. But the new guy isn't better.

If the company can lose some of the rhetoric, and focus on operation, it might have some future. I have to admit the product portfolio is stronger than ever. The question is can they execute? Hope Mike Lehman can get everybody to quit talking and focus on the basics. The stupid slogan "Sharing is good" got to go. How can they waste money on those goofy ads? SUN has already an image problem. Those goofy ads won't help.

I am still holding to my shares in the hope that it might have a good chance to succeed now they have got some real products to sell.

When will Apple bring out Intel iBook? Late June?

The long awaited Intel iBook (widely dubbed MacBook) was not announced yesterday during Apple's first quarter earnings release, after all those speculations on the Street. Coupled with Intel's pronouncement of its plan to ship Woodcrest, Conroe and Merom CPUs (based on the new Core Microarchitecture) in volume starting Q3, I think Apple will probably wait until these CPUs abundantly available before making the product announcement. I don't think Apple wants to repeat the situation it had with MacBook Pro where people waited months for the notebook to arrive. So the most optimistic estimate of Intel iBook (I still prefer iBook) shipment will be late June to early July (I suppose Apple will get its hands on the new CPUs before everybody else). The high end PowerMac line won't be "refreshed" until 4th quarter (there is no point to release it before you have the native Photoshop for Intel Mac, which may not happen until Q1 07).

It is going to be a long wait for some of us.

Do we need Window's Vista

Last week, MSFT threw a bomb to the tech market: its long awaited OS Vista will be delayed, again. While a lot of analysts lament about not being able to buy a Vista PC this Christmas season, I would like to ask: does it matter at all to average consumers?

What we average consumers want is just a stable and secure operating system. For over a decade, the PC industry has been putting us on a treadmill of constant hardware and software upgrades. Initially, the benefits of upgrading were apparent. But over time, consumers have begun to see very little value in upgrading to the next level of super-powered PC.

This also explains why Intel has been losing market shares in consumer desktop PC. People bought those AMD machines, not because it got 64 bit or dual core technology. They bought them because they are cheaper than Intel's. People have finally figured out, the average PC is good enough for the everyday computing tasks, unless you want to play serious games.

As for business customers, do they really need to have the 3D image capability and fancy multi-media functionalities promised in Vista?

So what if Vista is delayed!

Don't blame labor for the big 3 auto companies' woes

It is very conceivable that GM might have to file bankruptcy protection. I have often heard the TV talking heads promulgating the official GM executives' lame excuse: our labor cost is too high. But I have never heard anybody challenging this assumption.

True, the labor cost of US auto makers is higher than that of Asian car makers. But the financial troubles they are facing are not the result of high labor cost, but rather bad management. European car makers like BMW did not have the advantage of low labor cost. But that company is thriving.

The logic behind the labor cost excuse is that: if we have lower labor cost, we can sell cheaper cars. But the cars made by GM and Ford ARE cheaper than Toyotas and Hondas. The problem is consumers don't want cheaper cars. They want reliable and better-design cars. The problems of GM and Ford are the result of market share loss. The market share loss is due to the fact they make bad cars, not because they don't make cheap cars.

For years, the US auto makers have relied on big SUVs and trucks to generate profits to offset their loss-making passenger car business. Now with oil price record high, the demand for the gas-guzzlers will undoubtedly decline. On top of that, Asian car makers are also encroaching on the SUV market. How would GM survive without the fat profits from its SUV business?

I predict that in ten to twenty years, the US will cede auto business to Asia companies, like they did a few decades ago in the TV and consumer electronics business.

Dismal approval rating of Bush shows American people care

As violence and ethnic conflict in Iraq intensifies, the poll shows Bush's approval rating plunges to the low 30% range, barely better than that of Cheney's.

Although the deaths were the Iraqis, American people still care. We don't want to see our soldiers hurt. We do not want to see Iraqis die, either. American people are not self-centered narrowed-minded unilateralists represented by the Bush administration.

In his speech a few days ago, Bush is shifting the blame of violence in Iraq from Al Qaeda to Iran. Now Iran is public enemy No. 1, replacing Al Qaeda. It seems that Iran is behind the suicide bombing activities in Iraq. That just puzzles me. I thought the insurgents were Al Qaeda-supported Sunis, according our governments just a few weeks, with the western media agreeing in unison. Now how come Iran, supporter of Shiites, turn around to support the Sunis?

But the truth of the matter is the Bush government is trying to play the blame game to evade their own responsibilities.

The Bush government is SO incompetent that it has failed in almost every action and policy it has taken, from Katrina to Iraq, from the handling of Dubai Port deal to handling of Supreme Court nomination, from Medicare prescription drug enrollment for seniors to no-child-left-behind act, and the list goes on. This is an administration that cannot do a single thing right!

Pentagon defending guantanamo detainees right to privacy

Asked why all the secrecy behind guantanamo bay detention system, the Pentagon finally gave a good reason: "the detainees have the right to privacy". Yes, privacy is the most supreme right here. Forget about all other human rights, like right to a fair trial, right to personal freedom, etc. It is the privacy of the detainees that the Pentagon is protecting. The Pentagon has gone all the way to Afghanistan to get these detainees so that their privacy will be better protected here at guantanamo. Hey you journalists, stop nosing around.

In a separate news item, a former guantanamo bay detainee claimed that he was beaten at the detention. Shocking! Preposterous! Outlandish! How could that happen! Responding to this accusation, a Pentagon spokesperson made a funny face: "na na na na na na.... He's got no proof." Now all of you sing along: "na na na na na na, he's got no proof."

New CFO of SUN hinting major changes are coming for SUN

"Everything is on the table," said Michael Lehman, the newly appointed CFO, who has been on the board of directors of SUN, on March 1 in a Goldman Sachs-sponsored investment conference. He sort of hinted that Jonathan and Greg will stay. But he deliberately left out Scott McNutty :) Lehman sounded very frustrated with the lack of execution at Sun.

It is indeed time to get business done. The first thing they should do is to kick out the McNutty guy. Customers would not believe SUN is really changing if he is to stay. He has lost his credibility among customers and investors. I hope Lehman will bring back some veteran SUN alum to fill the rank. Talk is cheap. Forget about the slogan "Sun is about sharing". Nobody cares about the slogan any more. Customers want cheaper and better performing products. Investors want to see profit. Sun has not done either for a long time. It's about time to shake things up.

iPod Hi Fi is not the iPod boombox we were waiting for

What a disappointment! The $349 iPod Hi Fi is just a high-priced speaker, albeit a heavy and ugly one. I have tested one in the local Apple store. I cannot tell the sound quality of it being any better than the Bose and JBL speakers to justify the higher price. The "menu" button on the remote did not work. The sale rep immediately reported the malfunction to Apple hierarchy.

What I was looking for is a true boombox to replace my cassette/CD boombox. I want to be able to record and play back immediately. The digital recorders out there do not have high quality external speaker. I don't want to use the magnetic tape to record any more. It is about time we get rid of the cassette players and replace it with something that can record and play digital music. The iPod Hi Fi did not have an FM radio, nor a recorder, nor a slot for CD, all of which I think should be included. The ideal iPod boombox should have a dock for iPod, a harddisk, Airport express for syncing with iTunes of the PC, a built-in mic for recording, an iPod size screen for programming the RF radio and play back music and recordings, and an audio input to allow it to serve as a speaker for PC. A CD slot should be optional. I think this kind of product should sell somewhere around $349.

Apple is just being too greedy to set such a high price for merely a speaker that has very limited functionality. And the $99 leather case for iPod? How about a $1000-bag for MacBook Por?

Oil is still cheaper than bottled water

Is it ironic? After all these cries of high oil prices, a gallon of gasoline is still cheaper than a gallon of bottled water in many places.

Is either oil too cheap, or the bottled water too expensive? I am not defending the oil companies. But I've never heard people complaining about the price of bottled water.

I admit, this is not fair comparison. We can refuse to buy bottled water and use only tap water in stead. But can we refuse to buy gasoline?

Our highway system needs radical change. The highways were designed in disregard of the need for public transportation. And local roads rarely have pedestrian or bike lanes. We've got to change that before we can wean ourselves off the oil addiction.

Joey Cheek, a true American the world should see

Joey Cheek reminded the world that there are still many Americans that care more than just their own self interests.

After the 2004 election, the rest of world became increasingly doubtful about the Americans: are they still the kind of rooting-for-the-underdog, peace-loving, justice-loving, fair people the rest of the world have known for so long throughout the Vietnam war and Cold War struggles? Or they have become self-centered, not-give-a-damn-about-other-countries, kind of people, just like their unilateralism government?

After seeing people like Joey, we can rest assured, that America has not died. The American Ideals are still alive and well. The counter-current we are seeing in America now is just another feeble struggle of the Evil force. We will have to fight it very hard. But we will win in the end. History has repeatedly shown us that Good will eventually overcome Evil. People like Joey Cheek are the reason we will win. There are many like him in America.

The rest of the world, please don't lose your hope in America!

Internet censorship in China

I am so puzzled by the fuss about China's attempt to censor the Internet, and the criticism of the US internet companies kowtowing to the pressure from Chinese government. Hello, China has been censoring the traditional media for how many years now? Are you really expecting the Chinese government to stop doing that now to the new medium Internet?

But look at the bright side: over 90% of the Internet sites in China is NOT censored. I could access yahoo news and google news from China the last time I visited there (Nov 2004). It was just a few Internet sites that the government deems hostile towards itself that was blocked. (By the way, can we access Al Qaeda sites in the US? Even we can, I suspect no one would want to do that, because we know NSA is looking over our shoulders). Pornagraphic sites are frequently blocked, too, to the dislike of many people I believe. But majority of the internet content is not blocked, more due to practical reasons (it is technically impossible to completely control the Internet).

Imagine 90% of the free Internet ("free" as in "freedom") is now available to Chinese citizens within its boarder. Many ordinary people in China would never have a chance to access a magazine, or newspaper from the US or Europe. Now with the Internet, just a few clicks away, they can read news from the Washington Post, or BBC. Internet is unstoppable. And for most part, the Internet is NOT stopped in China.

We should applaud Google and Yahoo for their efforts in China. The alternatives for these companies are foolish, shutting themselves out from China.

In a bigger picture, neither google nor yahoo is of any real significance in what is happening in China. It is the Internet technology that is revolutionizing information media in China. The government's efforts to control the new meduim, are feeble and absurd, and doomed to fail. True freedom in information is gradually taking place in China, regardless of our fuss about what Google or Yahoo may do or may not do.

But politicians neverthless will seize this opportunity to punch China once more. China is just such a great punching bag for them. It only scores them political points, and there is no backlash whatsoever, unlike criticizing any other country.

Is Google a buy?

Google shares vaulted to over $470 in Jan with the help of news flow from Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. But the stock has dropped over 20% since then and currently trades at around $367. A few new developments rattled investors:
1) Earnings disappointment. Although the explanation about a foreign tax complication may be reasonable, one has to wonder why the CFO of Google did not see the issue coming just a few months ago? Where is the internal planning?
2) Google seems to be playing double standard in different parts of the world. While it stands up to the government privacy intrusion in the US, for which I applaud the company, it caved in to the pressure of Chinese government by providing a censored search for the China market. I perfectly understand that Google has to comply with local laws wherever it does business. But we all hold Google to a much higher standard than that. After all, it is the company itself that boasts "Do No Evil".
3) Google video turned out to be a flop. At a time, Google seemed to do nothing wrong, the video fiasco seems to shed some doubt among investors. Google is not infallible afterall.
4) Microsoft is opening a Ad research center to study how to improve online ad placement. This is in direct competition of Google's AdSense program.
5) Internet Explorer 7.0, which is to be released soon, includes a search toolbox that could direct search traffic to MSN search engine.
6) The phone companies are making noise about charging a fee for web traffic generated from internet companies like Google and Yahoo. Ed Whitacre of SBC (Now at&t) has made these assertions on several occasions.

While all above concerns are well founded, I do not believe they will materially affect Google's business. The Online ad market still has very low penetration rate (less than 5% in the US). The penetration will only go up. Google's AdSense in fact is helping expand the ad market, because it allows small companies that would otherwise not afford to advertise on traditional media to be able to advertise online. In addition, Google's online ads are more targeted and effective. I think the mass media ad business will be rapidly shifted to targeted ads that Google supports. The market is big enough to not only benefit Google, but also Yahoo and probably MSN. Google is so synonymous to search, and even my 7-year old kid knows to google. I don't think a search box in IE will change consumer behavior too much. Unless MSFT continues to play the wicked game it played against Netscape. But those days are over. MSFT has to watch what it does, or the anti trust authority will knock on the door.

I think Google can grow business in north of 50% for at least another two years. The hyper growth will be followed by steady double digit growth in years to come. I don't see the stock being over valued given its growth prospect. It is definitely a BUY here.

Disclaimer: I personally own Google shares.

My Lord Jesus does not require me to defend him

In light of the recent events and protests surrounding a Danish cartoon said to "blasphemously" depict "Prophet Mohammad", I am so glad that my faith does not compel me to protest anything or anybody that is unpleasant to my faith.

My Lord Jesus does not require me to defend him. When he was about to be arrested and put to the cross, his disciple Peter took out a sword trying to defend the Lord. My Lord told Peter to put down his sword and healed the enemy who wanted to arrest him.

My Lord Jesus was put as a laughing stock on the cross. People jeered and ridiculed him:"if you are King, where are the people who defend you? If you are Son of God, come down from the cross?" But my Lord uttered no words. He bore all the insults and pain. And he died on the cross.

My Lord is a sacrificial lamb, for my sin, for my blasphemous words and actions. He does not condemn people. He does not put people to death. But through his forgiveness, I am saved. And through His death, I am given an everlasting life. Because only through death, can evil be overcome; and through suffering, the fruit of life be obtained.

If you believe in Him, my Lord Jesus, you will not be required to defend him, either. But His suffering will become your salvation. His death will give you new life.

State of the Union address is like a "coolaid" ad

The President's State of the Union address is like an ad put out by a food company on its coolaid drink. The whole address is fraught with soothing soundbites, devoid of any substantial public policy discourse. Maybe it is intended this way. The State of the Union address may have never been a platform intended to explain, but rather to sell, to the people, the Whitehouse's policies. That is really sad. In these days, serious politics is so boring to people. Politics needs to be packaged, watered-down, and then carefully marketed. For ordinary citizen, it is impossible to tell what is the fact, and what is only marketing.

On the other hand, the Democrats rebuttal is kind of like a negative ad run by a competiting food company. That never works well.

Thinking back, Bush was elected (really?) in 2000 on the platform of compassionate conservatism. But all these years, I have seen plenty of conservatism in action, but compassion only in talks. Where is the compassion in Bush's radical unilateralistic foreign policy? Where is the compassion in cutting Medicaid, and student loan program? Where is the compassion in cutting small social programs in favor of spendings that benefit military contractors, energy companies, and pharmaceutic and insurance companies? Where is the compassion in Hurricane Katrina? Where is the compassion in locking up people without trials? Where is the compassion in Abu Graib? Where is the compassion in extraordinary renditions? Where is the compassion in secret prisons? Where is the compassion?

"Democracy" in middle east

We say we want to spread democracy in middle east. But can we really handle the kind of "democracy" in middle east. Now a test is coming. It appears that Palestinians are going to overwhelmingly choose Hamas over Abas. This is a pity. Because we really prefer the latter, and the State Department even threatened to pull away any financial aid to the Palestinians if they choose Hama. Do we need democracy there, or we need a friendly government?

If the so-called "democracy" was in Saudi, I think the Saudis might have elected Osama Ben Laden as their president. Do we want that?

Come on, let's be realistic. Quit the slogans. They do not help our credibility at all.

MacWorld: surprise surprise.

I thought the Intel Mac would be an iBook. And I also expected to see Mac mini adopt Viiv to become a media center device. But what we got instead were MacBook Pro to replace PowerBook, and iMac to replace the G5, both of which were just refreshed in Oct of 2005. Why Apple did not do anything to Mac Mini and iBook, both of which need refresh more urgently? My guess is that Apple wants to reserve the thunder for its 30-year anniversary, which is coming on April 1st.

But 14M iPod is an eye-popping number. Eight million video downloads in less than three months are also impressive.

Why HD-DVD will win and Blue-ray will lose

I think in the end, HD-DVD (a standard championed by Toshiba) will win out over Blue Ray, a standard mainly supported by Sony. The reason is simple. It is not about technology. It is in the name. Consumers can easily understand what HD means. But what the heck Blue-Ray means? I don't have a Blue-Ray TV. I have a HD-TV set. Of course, I am going to buy an HD-DVD player. This is what an average consumer may think. An average consumer may even wonder whether Blue-Ray DVD is compatible with HD-TV or not. If you have an HD-DVD player side by side with a Blue Ray DVD player, and you have got an HD-TV set at home, and you have no idea about these tech jargons, which DVD player you'd buy? I will go with the safe route, buy an HD-DVD player to go along with my HD TV set.

music download through wireless: a business doomed to fail

Yesterday Verizon announced a service to allow people to download songs over the cellualr network to cell phones, at double the price of iTunes. Several months ago, Sprint annoucement similar service.

I just don't understand what these companies are thinking. This type of service is doomed to fail from the beginning. How can they compete with iTunes, which is cheaper and much easier to use? Furthermore, why do you have to click through the tiny screen of a cell phone in order to buy a song, when you can easily do that on the comfort of a home PC. In what situation do you really need to buy a song right away on a cell phone network, and you can't wait to get home to buy it on a PC?

I think these companies don't understand the difference between content consumption and content acquisition and management. Cell phones, and other handheld devices (iPod included), are basically for content consumption only. PC is for content acquisition and management. For content consumption, you don't need many fancy features. Ease of use is the key. That is why iPod is so wildly popular. You can leave the complex functionalities to PC.

Cell phones are getting increasingly more complex. But 99% of the time, I only use it for making phone calls. I wonder how many people are using all of the features that are in the cell phones. To me, a basic voice phone, with embedded MP3 music player will be enough. I can use my PC to load the songs to the phone.

Cell phone operators want to fill up its excess bandwidth (they have got a lot of bandwidth with 3G). But without charging a high price, they won't be able to earn a sufficient return on per bandwidth. That is why they have to charge a higher price than wired song downloads.

Google PC? How do you deliver web content to TV

Rumors that Google will sell its own branded PC through WalMart are circulating in the web sphere. Many may scoff at the idea that Google making its own PC. But I would not be surprised that Google will get into the hardware side of content delivery.

So far the web content is mainly of text. But video content on the web is increasing exponentially. One drawback of video on the net is that you have to view it on a PC. But the best means of consuming video content is TV. That is why MSFT is so keen on IPTV and Media Center PC. Basically one has to figure out a way to transfer content from PC to TV, in a seamless way that should not take an engineering PhD to set it up. The web content in current form is not suitable for TV viewing from several feet away. One has to figure out a way to re-format the web content, particularly the video content, so that it can be easily viewed on TV. To accomplish this may involve tight integration of software and hardware. It looks like Apple has got both hardware and software to tackle this problem. Microsoft's Xbox may potentially be morphed into something that can deliver web content to TV. But Google, Yahoo and AOL do not have any hardware business. Yahoo seems to be partnering with TiVo and set-top-box vendors. But eventually it needs to make its own media gateway.

So Google may not be trying to make its own PC (that is easy. Google has made more complex servers for itself). But what Google is wroking on may be something that can transfer content from the web to your TV set.

Pirates of the Caribbean

We went to a cruise vacation last week during the Christmas. I will not go back again, for a long time. I just can't relax on the ship when I see the laborers recruited by the cruise company from the 3rd world countries working their butts off, scrubbing the floors, cleaning the tables around the clock. The cruise companies operate in international seas, under no jurisdiction. I am not sure whether the workers on the cruise ship are protected by labor laws of any country. The cruise companies are not paying any tax on its operating profit. They are truly "pirates of the Caribbean".

We flew independence Airline. We were fortunate to have come back last Thursday. If we'd come back this weekend, we would have been stuck in Tampa, looking for another flight to get home. I really like the Airline. It is sad that the company can't stay in business.

Neither ID nor Evolution is science

The process of science is like this: first samples of observations, or empirical evidence are collected. A hypothesis is then set in order to make sense about these observations. The next step is to design experiments are to test that hypothesis. Depending on the test results, the hypothesis will be either rejected, accepted, or modified. If a hypothesis is correct, it should have predicting power. Only after the hypothesis is tested to be correct through experiements, can it be accepted as science.

Intelligent Design (ID) is a very reasonable postulation about the origin of life. It may be true, and in fact I strongly believe it is true, but it is not science, because it can never be tested, repeated or verified through experimentation. So it does not belong to science.

Evolution is also a reasonable hypothesis about the origin of life, based on a lot of observations. However, the hypothesis of evolution has yet to be tested in experiments., or attempts to do so have so far failed. In early days, there were attempts to design experiments to repeat the "natural" process of producing organic materials from inorganic elements. But those experiments were not inconclusive about whether there were natural conditions in which inorganic elements can "evolve" into organic materials, which make up all living things.

As to the question how life was formed, proponents of evolution theory have never been able to show in experiments that certain "natural" conditions exist to produce life out of lifeless materials. These experiments were never attempted, and may never be done.

Empirical evidence does not support evolution, either. If evolution is at work, why we are not seeing any new species (new living organisms) evolving from less "advanced" species. Not only we are not seeing new species springing up, we are in fact are seeing existing species dying out!

To reconcile this, some evolutionists (smarter ones) proposed yet another hypothesis, so called "punctuated" evolution. They argue evolution happened only during certain periods of time throughout the history. It does not occur continuously or gradually. So we should not be surprised that TODAY, RIGHT NOW, we are not seeing any evidence of evolution. This argument sounds no different from the argument that God created the world in 6 days and then everything was set. Neither can be verified by experiments.

So if you honestly investigate the facts about evolution theory, not just dwelling on the superficial level (majority of the people, scientists included, are on this superficial level), you will find out evolution does not stand the rigorous test as a scientific theory. It is still a hypothesis, or speculation, which has yet to be proved or dis-proved with experimentation. Until one day scientists can create a condition in which new life can be produced, evolution remains a hypothesis, no different from ID.

Search function is central to the Internet

Search, seemingly simple, is absolutely central to all things on the Internet. Last week, Google announced music search via lyrics. Imagine you can search your favorite songs by typing part of the lyrics, and then be able to purchase it right away. That'll kill iTunes. It seems that iTunes ought to have a similar searching capability built in. Steve Jobs should take notice of what Google is doing.

There are many old recordings that have yet to be digitized. If one can use voice recognition technique to automatically transcribe those recordings and provide text searchability, that will be a killer app. I bet Google is doing just that. Here again, Audibles and iTunes should provide a more robust search function.

It is obvious, search is a launching platform for Google to get into all kinds of businesses. Search an item to buy on the web, or a place to travel to, etc. You get the picture. The value potential of search is unlimited.

Every other company should be scared of Google.

Targeted advertising

TiVo probably started the slow-death process of the advertising model as we know it today.

The current advertising model does not work any more. The kind of in-your-face advertising is not only ineffective, but also sometimes turns people off. TiVo has given us a tool to revolt against such an advertising regime.

The Ad industry should think really hard and starts to change its practice. The era of targeted advertising is coming, and the ad industry needs to adjust to it in order to survive. The media companies that rely on ad revenue also need to readjust to survive.

They should learn from the success of an old advertising model, the Yellow Pages, and the new Internet model, Google. When people open the Yellow Pages, they are searching for useful information. Advertising in that context is targeted to a real need, and provides useful information and value. When people type in "travel" in google search, they expect to see advertisements about travel services. That is the kind of advertising that people want.

The old force-feeding advertising is dying.

Three essential elements for business success

For a business to be successful, it needs three essential ingredients:
1) A right long term strategy
A business without a good long term strategy won't succeed in long term.

2) A strong product development capability
A successful business brings in products and services that create value for the consumers. Business need to know what customers want, and anticipate what customers may want in the future.

3) Operational excellence
In the end, day-to-day operation is key to success. You can have a great vision, excellent product portfolio, without a tightly controlled operation, the business may not be able to make any money. A business that cannot make money is not sustainable.

Here are a few example of businesses that possess all the above three ingredients: Apple Computer, General Electric, 3M, Starbucks, eBay, Intel, QualComm, and Corning.

Here are a few companies that do not have all the ingredients:
HP under Carly Fiorina, having only grand vision, but lacking operation control.
Motorola under Chris Galvin, lack of all three.

Complete victory in Iraq – a dialogue between Bush and reporter

Confidently, Bush: “We will not pull out of Iraq until we have a complete victory.” Wink, wink.

Reporter: “Mr. President, how do you define complete victory?”

Bush: “Complete victory means our soldiers are ready to come back home.”

Puzzled, reporter: “But excuse me Mr. President, when will our soldiers be ready to come back home?”

Disgusted, and shaking his head, Bush: “I have told you, our troops will come back only when we have a complete victory in Iraq. Get it?” Still shaking his head.

Dumbfounded, the reporter: “Gasp.”

What to expect from Macworld in Jan 06

There are a lot of speculations about which product lines Apple will announce to use Intel chips. Some say the iMac, some say the PowerBook (Rich Gardner of Citi).

I don't think it will be either. Apple just refreshed its iMac, PowerMac and PowerBook in Oct. I definitely do not expect these product lines get shelved so quickly. Besides, it will take a while to fully migrate a lot of the applications that currently run on PowerMac and PowerBook to Intel-based systems.

I think iBook and miniMac will get refreshed with Intel-based systems. These two products were last refreshed in Jan 05. It is also less risky to start from the low-end with Intel. The Intel-based miniMac will probably use some elements of the Viiv platform of Intel's media PC. It will be great if Apple can put a dock for iPod on the miniMac. MiniMac will have FrontRow and work like an entertainment PC. IBook is long due for a refresh. I bet Apple will have an ultra-slim iBook that is going to be as hot as the iPod Nano, thanks to the power-efficiency of Intel's Yonna chip (Pentium M on 65nm).

More video content deals similar to the one announced today with NBC will also be possible. ESPN was rumored to be the next one in line. I really can't wait.

Apple is indeed starting a revolution in the media industry. Apple has created the type of applications that will drive more broadband demand and penetration.

Why Bush does not want to pull out of Iraq

It is quite simple. There are many unfinished businesses in Iraq, literally. That is why President Bush does not want to pull the troops out of Iraq.

If we pull out, who will be there to protect our oil companies, our private contractors? If we pull out, our private military contractors will lose their jobs. "America's economy will suffer," Dubya might say, "We cannot make the same mistake we made in Vietnam, by pulling out pre-maturely."

SUN Microsystem's free software for all

It may be a sign of desperation. Sun today announced it is putting its JES out for free, along with free developer's tools, and N1 management software. Now the complete stack of SUN's software is free and open (sort of).

Clearly, SUN knows it can't remain proprietary and stay viable. So in it last attempt for survival, it offers everything for free, hoping it can become a Redhat for the Unix world. This may not be a bad strategy. Unix has a much larger installed base than Linux. If Sun succeeds in solidifying its position in this segment, it should be worth a lot more than Redhat, which is currently valued over $4B. Sun's market value is about $13B. Sun also has the hardware business that is getting increasingly interesting. The new Galaxy servers seem to signal that Sun is really serious about x86.

Last year, if you ask, I would say Sun was definitely going down the westhill. Now it appears that after all, it might not go down that quickly. We shall see.

Yahoo's RSS email push ushers in era of "personalized news"

Today Yahoo introduced beta trial of RSS news feeds into its popular yahoo webmail. Yahoo has made RSS available since early 2004. But making RSS available for its >250m email users will vault RSS from the techie world into mainstream. If Yahoo can popularize RSS through this endeavor, this will be a landmark event, marking beginning of death of the newspapers.

Getting news from newspaper is so inefficient. First of all, you don't get to choose what you want to read. Many parts of the newspaper you probably have never read. Yet you have to spent the time to flip through the pages. It is such a waste of time. Second, you don't get news in real time. You get stale "news" from yesterday. Third, you can't get all you want from a single newspaper, because it is so full of junk that it does not have enough space for really valuable stuff.

RSS will change all that. By subscribing to RSS feeds, you get the news that you want in REAL TIME. You don't have to wade through the junk that you are never interested in reading. You get to choose what you want to read. It is completely "Personalized News", just for you.

It baffles me that the newspaper companies don't get it. They are so wed to the newsPAPER business and forgot that they are really in NEWS business, not the paper business. Paper is just one of the media for news distribution. It happens to be the very inefficient way, being replaced by the more efficient Internet.

The newspaper companies guard their content so closely, and don't want to make it freely available on the net. That is so short-sighted. I can understand charging a fee for newspaper, because there is printing the distribution costs. But why charge for distributing news online, where there is almost no cost in distribution, and ad-based business model should suffice?

Will cable go a la carte

Today, FCC chairman Kevin Martin, appearing before Senate committee on Commerce Science and Technology, called on the cable and DBS companies to offer a la carte channel option for consumers. Basically, consumers should have the choice to choose what channels they want to subscribe to and pay for.

I have long thought a la carter is only reasonable and fair. Why do I have to pay for channels that I never watch. Besides, many channels are garbage anyway. If consumers can choose, we can let the market force weed out low-quality programming.

But the cable industry is strongly opposed to this idea. They thought this would result in less viewership, and therefore, less ad revenue. That is so short-sighted. I think offering a la carte option will increase viewership because those are the channels they want to watch anyway.

The other issue is about the programming content. I am not subscribing to cable or DBS, because there are many channels there I deem unfit for my two young children. I believe there are many out there who are like me. If a la carte option is available, I think cable companies will see increase in subscription.

If cable and DBS keep resisting to this, they will dig a grave for themselves. I believe there will be companies which will offer a la carte video service over the Internet using IPTV technology. Yahoo and Google can do that. If SBC and Verizon are smart, they should start offering a la carte, to differentiate themselves from the cable and DBS companies.

IPTV technology, in theory, can offer infinite number of video programming channels. It will be up to the consumers to choose what they want to watch. Consumers have total control and choice. Finally, we consumers are not only lectured on by the media. We can "vote" out the bad media. That is what I call "democratization of the media".

Chinese copper trader

News has surfaced about the huge short position a Chinese government commodity trader has made on the copper future's market. The vultures in London are all over this and are driving up the copper price. As reported in Financial Times today, the loss on these short positions now amounts to over $100M.

This follows a similar debacle earlier this year when a Chinese SOE oil trader incurred huge loss by shorting crude oil future.

I have checked the Chinese news websites. I saw scant report on this event. If this happens in the US, the news media will be all over it. An investigation will immediately follow, and report the results to the public. But that is not going to happen in China.

I am so disgusted by the corruption and lack of accountability and transparency in China's political system. A reform is way over-due. I am NOT advocating China to move to a western political system, as that may not be suitable for China. But a basic element of check and balance in the system is woefully needed.

President Hu, it is time for political reform.

Google's business model

The price of Google stock is now more than $400. Its market value exceeds that of Cisco. Many people are speaking the "B" word (bubble) again.

It is impossible to ascertain what is the "true" value of Google shares. But one thing is certain. Google is no dotcom bubble.

If I would describe Google's business model, I would say it is the "Yellowpage" for the web, or directory of the web. Like Yellowpage, Google is free to everyone. It is an ad-supported business model. As the web keeps expanding, a searchable directory is of the number 1 importance. Google has the best web search engine, and that is why majority of people use it for get information from the web.

Google is not just "yellowpage on the net". It is more dynamic, more flexible, and more expansive than that. It creates a self growing user community, and is gradually becoming the gateway to the internet. If you believe the Internet will become the primary medium for content delivery, then you can appreciate the enormous potential for google.

Four economic measures you can ignore

1. Unemployment rate
You should use the payroll number and Initial Jobless Claim, rather than the employment rate number.

2. Consumer Price Index
This is probably the worst among the four. CPI is really fraught with mis-information.

3. Current account
Foreign retained earnings is the biggest portion not captured.

4. Savings rate
Again, this is another misinformation. Education spendings, R&D spendings, brand investments, etc., are all by their nature savings, but not included in the saving rate calculation. Asset appreciation also effectively increases personal savings, but is not reflected in the saving rate number.

If we take out the mis-information created by the above four measures, we will see that the US economy is in great shape. Not recognizing this, I think people will miss out on the next big rally in the equity market.

Get our boys out of Iraq, John Murtha says

Yes, it is time to get our daughters and sons out of Iraq. We made a mistake going into the war. Now let's not continue the mistake by staying there too long. Our presence in Iraq has been a rallying force for the anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

My answer to the critics who are against the pull-out. People sounded the same warning/caution against pulling out of Vietnam: "leaving the whole southeast Asia to the Viet Con and red communist China." "The world will never see peace again." "US interest in southeast Asia will be greatly damaged if we pull out." Now more than thirty years later, has Vietnam become a threat to US?

We entered Vietnam war because we believed "the communists" were a great threat to the free world. We entered the Iraq war, for similar reason, that the terrorists could use Iraq as a launching pad to attach US interest. History may once again prove that we are overly paranoiac, as we were in the case of Vietnam.

(An after note: yes, I am an American citizen. "We" refers to We Americans.)

Evolution vs intelligent design (part 3)

Evolutionists claim that mutation and natural selection are the driving forces for evolution. Evolution may seem to be random, but in the vast span of time (tens and hundreds of billions of years), anything could happen, so they claim.

Let's suppose they are right, and attempt to calculate how much time it needs for mutation to produce new species.

For simplicity, let's suppose there is only 100 base pairs of differences in DNA sequence between modern human and its "ancestor" ape (the differences are in fact in tens of millions of base pairs). We know there are only four different elements (A T G and C) that make up the sequence of DNA. So the probability of a single generation of mutations to "evolve" ape DNA into human is one in every 100th power of 4. That equates to one in every 1.6X10^60.

Now let's again assume a single generation of mutation takes only one hour (but in truth, a generation equates at least tens years for the apes). So for the mutations to produce human DNA sequence from Ape DNA sequence, it will take 1.8X10^54 years. The age of the universe is about 10^10 years. So in the whole history of the universe, mutation cannot even generate 100 base pair of exact DNA, let alone change an ape into human.

Moreover, nature has a mechanism of preventing mutations from occurring. Every living organism has a proof-reading mechanism for reproduction, so that a chicken will bear a chicken, and a big will bear a pig. In fact, even a single mutation may proves to be fatal. I am wondering at what point of the evolution process did this proof-reading mechanism come to being? Why is this mechanism universally present in every organism, even those considered very primitive (such as virus and bacterium).

Evolution is simply wrong!

Prewar Intelligence

There is no question that the White House twisted the intelligence to justify its war against Iraq. Scott Ritter has been telling everyone that Saddam did not have any chemical or WMD at all. But no one listened. Who dared to risk his or her reputation to defend Saddam? No politician, no news reporter, no diplomat, would ever want to be perceived as defending Saddam by saying he did not have WMD.

Now the democrats want to investigate Bush for misleading us into the war. Come on. You knew along the intelligence was wrong. You just did not have the guts to point it out when Bush's approval rating was sky high and he had geared up the whole nation ready to go to war with Iraq. You knew that, if you did not agree with Bush, you would risk your election. So you, again, played political cowardice. No wonder many people have been disillusioned by your party.

My suggestion to the democrats: if you supported the war, shut up now! Next time, say what you believe. Have some principles.

What I like about the right-wingers is that they are not scared of the polls. They dare to abide by their principles (unfortunately a set of wrong principles). But no democrat dares to stand up to the principles. I wonder they have any. Maybe they only know the polls.

Just look at the wasteful spending the White House is lavishing on the private contractors in Iraq. Just look at the fragrant violation of justice and humanity perpetrated by CIA and the pentagon in conducting the War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq. No one, I mean NO ONE in the democratic party dare to speak out. No main stream News Medium dares to speak out, either.

Where is your conscience!!!

Where is America's conscience, the land of liberty, and justice!

Evolution vs intelligent design (part 2)

As I stated in my last post, I don't think it is advisable to include "intelligent design" in science curriculum. It still belongs to philosophy and religion.

But the debate over the theory of evolution should be encouraged. I think evolution has become a hindrance for scientific advancement. The concept of evolution has been invoked wherever a biological process cannot be easily explained. For example, to explain why dogs have such a great olfactory sense, many people would conveniently use evolution to explain that the super olfactory sense helps dogs find foods for survival. (It begs the question why pigs did not have such a sense through "evolution"). Similarly, human acquired so many new functions that are lacked in other primates because these functions are supposed to improve human's survival. "The fittest survives". But without these functions, monkeys and chimpanzee are surviving nonetheless. They may even have better survival skills than us. If you tour a wild animal park, you will find every animal has endowed skills to survive. If only the fittest survives, how do we explain bio-diversity? Natural selection would lead to few species, not the origin of many species.

Evolution was a theory that arose from a wide-spread anti-Christianity sentiment back in the 19th century. It was part of the anti-religious movement that swept through Europe and later the New World, along with Freudism and Marxism (Communism). Evolution is more of a religion than science.

Evolution vs Intelligent Design

There is absolutely no scientific basis to reject the hypothesis of Intelligent Design for the origin of life. In fact, common sense plus preponderance of circumstantial evidence would argue in favor of such a hypothesis. If we can all be objective, a debate between the two camps should be a good idea. The problem is many people out of political reasons would not even listen to what the other side has to say.

As you can see, I am firmly in the "intelligent design" camp. With a Ph D in molecular biology, I have long found the theory of evolution full of inconsistencies. But in the scientific circle, it is heretic and professionally suicidal to question this theory, because people would not take your work seriously if they find out they you don't believe in evolution. The dogmatism of the evolutionists is equivalent to that of the medieval Catholic church.

But I do not support to put "intelligent design" as part of the curriculum. Theology should be separated from science even it may be truthful. However, our education system should not promote dogma, but promote objective discussions on the theory of evolution.

I like Bush's style, not his substance

You have to love President Bush's style. He is down-to-earth everyday-kind of guy. He wore no suit and appeared to the TV camera from the heart of Hurricane Katrina-ravaged area, the French quarter in New Orleans last night, to take personal responsibility for the failure in Katrina preparation and rescue, and promise to shower money on the private contractors who will help re-build the city. He spoke no non-sense. He cares not the poll. He takes action immediately. He follows his principles, unfortunately many of which are wrong or mis-guided.

But that is it. The style, not substance. His idea about goverment is simply wrong. He has such a cynical view about the ability of government to perform any function, that he outsourced many critical federal government functions to private contractors. He downgraded FEMA(Federal Emergency Management Agency) to a sub-division of the Department of Homeland Security. He did not believe FEMA has any real role that he put a friend of his, Michael Brown, who has no experience in emergency management, as the head of FEMA.

The failure in the response to Katrina was almost inevitable, because Bush did not have a belief in government 's roles. His cynism towards government has costed lives in New Orleans. But remember, more lives are lost, and being lost in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Can anything good come out of high gas price?

The gas price in my area went from $2.82 before Hurricane Katrina to $3.34 the day after (for the 87 grade). Now it is over $3.50. As I have said before, high gas price hurt low-income people the most. It is equivalent of a regressive tax on poor people.

But can anything good come out of the bad? I think so:
1) People will walk more
I have noticed more people are walking to get their groceries. Parents are now asking their teenager kids to bike rather than drive. If the gas price remains this high, we may be on the way to solve the nation's obesity problem.

2) More people will use public transportation
There are so much impedement for people to use public transportation. The whole system is not set up in a way to encourage ridership. But now, depsite the same impedement, people are using public transportation more. I hope this trend can continue, so we can reduce green house gas and help the environment. Maybe this is the nature's way of teaching us a lesson.

3) Alternative renewable energy sources?
If the $70/barrel oil price is not an incentive for us to seek renewable energy sources, I don't know what can be.