Get your lazy butts on deck and grab those pails–NOW BAIL!!!

Yo. Just popping in here so that my online friends don’t worry about me. No, I’m not hospitalized (yet), I don’t have cancer, etc. I’m just too darn lazy to update because I have so much crap to do (Wow, isn’t that overused?).

I’m now the new treasurer of my grade level, and my first job is… SELL CLASS T-SHIRTS! Woohoo, what an intellectually stimulating activity!

(Note the heavy sarcasm, peoples. Come on, I know you can tell.)

Oh, and another reason why I didn’t update: ‘CAUSE THERE’S NOTHING TO UPDATE ABOUT. That’s right, no drama (Majorly, at least), no incentive to rant, nothing out of the ordinary.

But there is the US’s most frequent recession. I can’t believe our economy is nose-diving straight into a depression, possibly one that could rival that of the Great Depression. I mean, yesterday, within thirty minutes, the DOW (or whatever it’s called) went down from 520 to over 800 points, which is still not as big as the drop after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went out of business and the government decided to devise a $700 billion dollar bailout plan (coming out of OUR POCKETS), but who can deny that THIS IS NOT GOOD?

Oh, and from what my carpool’s head told me, the bailout plan shot up to $820 billion, and the damage done would take up to TWO TRILLION DOLLARS to repair. I think the only cost bigger than this would be our government’s national debt.

See, none of this would’ve happened if the government had more oversight over the CEOs of the mortgage banks. But noooo, the big businesses have toooo many regulations already, so why should those lying politicians interfere any further?

Uh-huh. Yeah.

 

Cheap vs. Frugal + Palin + Another Attempt at Peace

Spoke too soon. My laptop privileges were taken away not too long ago. Well, looks like the only time I’m going to have my own high-tech electronic devices is when I can afford them. I mean, the only nice electronics I own are my iPod and my cell phone, and that iPod isn’t even mine, because my dad sometimes shares it (although nowadays I think he just gave up on it), and my cell phone has a whopping five hundred prepaid minutes.

FOR THIS ENTIRE YEAR.

That’s right. For those of you who think that my parents are more frugal instead of cheap, this’ll prove you wrong. Jason gets a thousand minutes A MONTH while I get half that amount for TWELVE TIMES that cell phone plan period. I even asked Sean on his viewpoints of my mom’s fiscal habits, and he said (and I quote), “Cheap. If she was frugal, she would repair the broken handle on her car door.”

And the sad part is, he’s not even exaggerating. The left passenger (from the rear end of the car) door’s inside handle had been ripped out of the car, so now you have two choices if you’re too lazy to go out the other side: 1) Roll down the window and open the door from the outside, or 2) have someone else get their uptight tush off their seat and open the darn door for you. Like a really pissed off chauffer.

So, if you still don’t think my parents are stereotypical Asians, you have got one of the densest minds I have ever seen.

Obama is no longer the celebrity of this year’s election. The media has now moved onto Palin, McCain’s vice presidential candidate, whom has brought back support for the Republican party, whether it’s because a) she’s a woman, b) she has a pregnant teenage daughter, or c) her inexperience and therefore her stupidity.

Sean’s dad argued in favor of Palin (Partly because he himself is a very right-wing Republican), saying that her daughter is seventeen or eighteen years old, and therefore old enough to make her own decisions, so if she went and got pregnant, it isn’t Palin’s fault.

But I just think that Palin should take some responsibility, because, after all, she is the mother of the pregnant teenager, and while she may legally be an adult, she may not actually be one. It’s better than Jamie Lynn Spears, who got pregnant at 15, but to modern society’s standards, pregnant at 17 is still not a good choice, and with successful, (mostly) intellectual parents like Palin, I think that maybe her teenage daughter might’ve been raised to make better decisions.

But that’s just my opinion. Which is biased, because my mom controls every aspect of my life.

Anyway! I’ve found a few hilarious comments on Time’s Middle East Blog, which posted a summary of an ABC interview on Palin’s foreign policy views:

September 12, 2008 9:28

Palin Foreign Policy: Eyes Wide Shut?

Posted by Scott MacLeod

Other vice presidents and even presidents have been relatively inexperienced in foreign affairs, but Palin’s limitations are laughable for someone seeking the second highest office in the free world. She said that until she traveled to Kuwait and Germany to visit Alaska national guardsmen last year, her previous foreign travels were only to Canada and Mexico. Until recently, Americans were not even required to obtain a passport to visit those bordering countries… Palin had obviously never heard of the “Bush Doctrine”–the justification for launching unilateral, preemptive wars. You’d expect even an ordinary hockey mom would know about that, especially if, as Palin proudly noted in the interview, that very day she was sending “my first born, my teenage son” to the war in Iraq launched under the self-same Bush Doctrine. She committed a faux pas concerning the Cold War in claiming that America had defeated Communism “without a shot fired.” The prospective vice president seems unaware that the Cold War involved hot proxy wars throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Latin America during a span of 45 long years. The U.S. alone lost 58,000 troops in Vietnam, and the Cold War nearly led to nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What I find more worrying than Palin’s lack of experience is her lack of humility about it. “I’m ready,” she declared, after Gibson challenged her to “look the country in the eye and say ‘I have the experience and I have the ability’.”… Palin had duly rehearsed the pronunciations of difficult foreign names like Ahmadinejad and Saakashvili. Very good! Then she sounded sophomoric, as McCain has done, in straining to argue that Alaska’s close geographical proximity to Russia was tantamount to providing her with foreign policy expertise. When Gibson asked her what insights into Russia the proximity gave her, she replied, “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.” (I wonder if she can look inside Putin’s soul from that distance–Bush didn’t do so well in that regard, and he was standing right next to the Russian president.) Nearly as bad, Palin argued that her support for developing Alaska’s oil and gas reserves was another foreign policy “credential.” Maybe we should ask Bill Gates: does owning a computer, or even having seen one once, while shopping at Best Buy, qualify someone to be the next vice president of Microsoft?

This is the same type of genius present at the local Model UN convention center that I endured last year in April (I regretted it so much), where the participants were, like politicians, all talk and no substance. Did I tell you that on the issue of blood diamonds in the General Assembly, one of the representatives wanted the UN to put tracking devices in every single illegal diamond in Africa, and actually sounded serious while he was presenting his ideas?

The rest of the article is pretty interesting, too. I just don’t understand enough about the Iraqi conflict to comment about it.

(But honestly, you don’t need to know that much to understand the message of the article.)

There was a few good things that Palin did, though, that brought the election back for the elephant party. I just can’t remember what they were…

Also, in one last effort to save myself, I have decided that I will try mom’s way of doing things for awhile and see if maybe it’ll cure my depression and anger (which I have treated with gluttony for the past year, much to the displeasure of my mom). It’s hard to adjust to such an ascetic lifestyle. It’s even harder to accept that at the end of the second semester, I’m going to willingly go to that state piano competition and win something against everything a rebellious teenager stands for.

 

More on Georgia + Morning Olympics

Holy shizznit. How the heck did I get 66 pageviews yesterday?

Oh, right. One of my fellow IBers somehow found my blog. Hey, Kyle! Er, doctorfabulous! Thanks for nearly scaring me out my pale yellow skin today! (Don’t worry, though. I like the attention my blog’s getting, haha.)

And thanks to Jessie for providing me with her wonderful worldly information on the Georgian war, because I was almost clueless. I had known about the Russians rolling in tanks and other giant pieces of metal because my mom turns the radio onto NPR all day. She turns it up so loud that it appeared as if she was rearing a deaf child who’s living in her own little world.

Okay, so I am living in my own little world. Well, I’m doing my best to catch up on international current events, okay?

Anyway, as I said yesterday, Russian intervened because they thought the Georgians were trying to create a genocide. I don’t blame them for assuming this, what with the war in Sudan. Their intervention was fine, but they REALLY could’ve done without the army of war machines. After all, Georgia is a tiny country. And it’s densely populated. Not a good position to be in if you’re being attacked by a country that has nuclear warheads (Not that they’re going to use them).

But even so, Russia shouldn’t be critisized this much. Intervening is good if you’re faced with the threat of a major war that could wipe out a nation and you have the power to prevent it. I guess all the world saw were Russian tanks and it was anti-Russia from there.

I won’t ramble for Russia’s case, though. If I do, I’m pretty sure I’ll start making things up, because I don’t know a lot about this war. And if I make things up, that’ll make me a politician. *Shudders*

Poor Alicia Sacramone. Fell on the balance beam and the floor exercise. She probably feels as if she cost her team the gold medal. Well, the Chinese team were pretty hard to beat. They had all those cushions from blind moves and more difficult things, and they had killer people, like He Kexin, who’s probably the best gymnast on the uneven bars in decades.

And she could be fourteen, too.

But I already discussed that, so moving on!

Michael Phelps won his fifth gold medal. Well, that isn’t a surprise. But the 4 x 200m men’s relay was HILARIOUS. By the time Lezak jumped into the water, everyone else was almost a full lap behind. The NBC commentator was like, “Wow, we have to pan [the camera] out just to fit everybody in.”

And when Lezak made it to the end, everyone watching had to wait about five seconds for the silver and bronze medalist to touch in. There was no race. It was, “Hey, everybody! Look how big the US made the leading gap!”

They finished the relay in under seven minutes. Their gold medals for the 4 x 200 m should’ve had their names engraved on it.

 

Yay. War. And a little Olympics and some Chinese Culture.

I don’t know much about the Georgian war itself, so I won’t try to attack and ramble about how the US government and the rest of the world is taking it, but apparently the country is attacking South Ossentia separatists after they claimed Ossentians attacked their people. Russia intervenes and forces the Georgians to retreat because they support South Ossentia, and they see the Georgian invasion as a sign of hostility towards the motherland and a possibility of a genocide (since Georgians were supposed to have killed about a thousand people before the Russians came in).

And then the article goes on to describe how McCain and Obama has been at each other’s backs over the war. Obama is going for halting the violence peacefully, I guess, with peacekeeping forces and the like, while McCain thinks that’s a stupid idea and wants a more aggressive approach, like kicking Russia out of the G-8 or whatever. McCain and Obama are both going for a halt to Russian intervention, because it’s tearing up Georgian cities (Wait, wasn’t it Georgia trying to shatter South Ossentia in the first place?), although McCain’s views are putting him at an advantage against Obama:

War in Georgia, Politics in D.C.

By MASSIMO CALABRESI, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008

… Obama’s campaign made two early missteps. First, in its initial statement, it called for restraint from both Russia and Georgia. “Generally, when a country is being invaded you don’t call on it to show restraint,” a senior McCain foreign policy adviser responded. (The adviser declined to be identified, aware that the criticism could also apply to the Administration, which also called for restraint.) Then Obama’s campaign released a statement questioning McCain’s objectivity in the crisis because a top McCain aide, Randy Scheunemann, had lobbied for the Georgians. When the Kremlin’s own lobbyists made the same point, McCain’s campaign fired back. “The reaction of the Obama campaign to this crisis, so at odds with our democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow, doesn’t merely raise questions about Senator Obama’s judgment — it answers them,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement Saturday.

Article from www.time.com

Wahoo. While all of the world’s leaders are watching the Olympic opening ceremony, we’ve got a brand new war to deal with. This planet just gets better and better.

Speaking of the Olympics, did you see that 4×100m men’s swimming relay on Sunday?! Holy crap was Jason Lesak good! I can’t believe he managed to clear that gap between him and Bernard in like, the last ten meters of the race! And then Michael Phelps went Tarzan afterwards, and he was grinning like crazy all throughout the medal ceremonies. I pity the Frenchies. Ha, but it was their fault for bash-talking the Americans.

And it was even funnier in yesterday’s events. Michael swam in the 200m freestyle (I think), won gold, and was stretching during the medal ceremonies because he had a 200m fly semifinal to attend in twenty minutes. And he made it into the top spot, too! That guy is crazy.

Oh, and I love how the Japanese gymnasts, even though they were favorites, completely failed yesterday. They were tumbling and falling all morning (in China), and if you ask me, it looked like they didn’t care much whether or not they placed. Once they began to suck, they just quit altogether.

The American team, however, were awesome. Well, so were the Chinese, but none of the guys on the US gymnastic team had ever been to the Olympics before, and they ROCKED. I guess to them, the loss of the Hamm brothers meant that it was their time to shine.

I got my learner’s permit yesterday. All my friends are scared of me, because I’m not only a female, which apparently makes me driving-impaired, I’m also an Asian, and thanks to the traffic legends in China and India, I REALLY can’t drive.

In Beijing alone, it takes about an hour to drive three or four miles because the streets are so clogged up with cars and taxis. And at every intersection, there’s about a million bikers waiting to cross because not all Beijingers can afford motor vehicles. And some of the bikers may be toting a second person on the uncomfortable seats hovering directly over the back wheel. I’ve had to ride on those secondary seats before, and they hurt my tush like heck. I don’t see how other people can sit for two or more hours on them. They were intended to carry books and backpacks, not people’s butts.

In India, as my friend Apurva would say, “It’s every driver, pedestrian, cow, and animal for himself.” You can find on YouTube countless videos of cars going the wrong way on streets, and even pedestrians filming themselves crossing the roads where drivers are doing the minimal to avoid running over something.

Okay, back to summer homework. *cries*

 

Beijing 2008 + Obama + Other things

I’ve found the 2008 Beijing Olympics quite amusing. Everyone’s absolutely determined to turn it into a political arena, like former Olympian Joey Cheek who got thrown out of a Chinese visa because he wanted to rally up athletes to help the people in Darfur (See Time magazine news, Wed. Aug. 6, 2008, ‘China To Athlete Activist: Stay Out!’). And then President Bush, our nation’s beloved leader (Insert heavy sarcasm here), announced that he will not boycott the Olympic opening ceremony this year to raise awareness about China’s human rights violations.

And you know what? I think Bush has finally done something right this time. Gasp, gasp.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got very little Chinese pride left, especially since the government is so screwed up. But if people hadn’t noticed, the Olympics is a place where athletes from around the world get together to compete in sports, not where the entire western media relocates and pounces on stuff like Chinese border attacks:

“Chinese Border Attack Kills 16″ By SIMON ELEGANT / BEIJING

… Given that the entire province was under virtual lockdown, the scale and ferocity of an August 4 attack on police in the city of Kashgar that left at least 16 soldiers dead and an equal number wounded was particularly shocking. The incident will undoubtedly cast a pall over the beginning of the Games and has also underlined fears of further such events aimed at exploiting the media spotlight currently focused on China.

Or this picture of a Chinese Tibet activist:

Photo courtesy of www.time.com

or whatever. One of the people at the lab I’m volunteering at, Dr. Tsibris, also argued in favor of the Chinese. He reasoned that the government spent millions of dollars (Or billions of yuan, probably) beautifying Beijing and the one billion people that live in China want to show how proud they are of their country, yet all the media focuses on is humanitarian athletes or these stupid ‘Free Tibet’ protests.

(I’m not saying that the protests are stupid. I’m just saying that the timing and location of these protests make them unnecessary. I’m aware that China did illegally annexed Tibet back in the 1950s or the 60s, and the government does need to clean that mess up before those Dalai Lama monks tear up another city.)

Do you know what the original incentive for Olympians was? Wreaths. Yes, little twigs of leaves wrapped around their heads. I think we should go back to that time. This whole “gold medal honor” business is taking on a whole new meaning. No, I can’t just win a gold medal and be proud of it. I have to save hundreds of thousands of Darfur refugees first, then free the Chinese Falun Gong from detention/torture camps before I can show my face in the Olympics again. Forget athletic competition, which is WHAT THE OLYMPICS WERE ORGINALLY HELD FOR, I must be the perfect humanitarian and bring about awareness to all these other people who just want to escape the miseries of the world and see the freakin’ Olympics.

Which is nice, but don’t you think athletes should use their influence at another time and place?

And okay, half of Beijing’s inhabitants can’t wait until the Olympics are over, because it’s closing down their street shops and wrecking their homes, and the migrant workers that came to build the arenas have to leave even though they want to stay and see the Olympics. But the rest of China is pretty stoked. Besides those people in Sichuan that’re still feeling the effects of that earthquake.

But I must admit, these reports do entertain me while I’m at the lab doing nothing.

As for the 2008 election (Wow, what a year), I can honestly say that I’m not enthusiastic. McCain does seem like an extension of Bush’s presidency, which we DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT want. I don’t know about Obama, but there’s been some pretty interesting things going on with him, besides his European tour (Which I give a semi-thumbs up for because now we’ve got a presidential candidate that actually wants to BE FRIENDS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES! GASP GASP!).

Like McCain’s claim that Obama can be compared to Paris Hilton. That was hilarious.

“McCain’s Anti-celebrity Story Line” by MICHAEL SCHERER / WASHINGTON
Thursday, Jul. 31, 2008

The McCain campaign, under the direction of its new leader, Steve Schmidt, has settled on a story line that could last through the election. It is, at root, an experience argument, adjusted to undercut the enormous enthusiasm that Obama generates. It can be seen in the recent McCain campaign ad that compares Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, or the recent Republican Party ad that compares Obama to David Hasselhoff. It can be seen in the recent self-deprecating distribution of “junior varsity” press passes for reporters on the McCain campaign and in the daily discussion of Obama as “The One” by McCain aides.

It is an argument that amounts to this: Barack Obama is a huge phenomenon, but he does not have the experience, or the judgment, to lead the country. In fact, he is just another politician, an empty suit, who will do whatever he needs, and make as many vague but eloquent speeches as he has to, to get elected. John McCain, on the other hand, is a proven, principled leader you already know.

Which Paris countered with a commercial of her own. And contrary to her reputation, her response pointed out just how stupid that was for McCain’s campaign. Seriously, how did he suddenly make the connection between Obama and celebrities? What did he mean to accomplish? Sounds like he’s getting a little desperate.

And the tire gauge thing Obama did was genius.

“The Tire-Gauge Solution: No Joke” By MICHAEL GRUNWALD
Monday, Aug. 04, 2008

How out of touch is Barack Obama? He’s so out of touch that he suggested that if all Americans inflated their tires properly and took their cars for regular tune-ups, they could save as much oil as new offshore drilling would produce. Gleeful Republicans have made this their daily talking point; Rush Limbaugh is having a field day; and the Republican National Committee is sending tire gauges labeled “Barack Obama’s Energy Plan” to Washington reporters.

But who’s really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

I’m starting to like Obama a lot more. Muahahaha. Maybe the Democrats won’t be doomed this year (And possibly the next four years, if everything goes their way). Obama’s heading the polls right now, but only by a narrow margin. If McCain wants to win the race, then he’d better stop flubbing with celebrities and handing out Obama tire gauges.

Me? I don’t have a certain party I belong to, but I do find myself preferring Democrats over Republicans.

Olympic soccer game today. Brazil vs. Belgium. Brazil won, of course, but only with one goal. That’s kinda sad for Brazil, since they won the World Cup like, what, fifty times? Okay, they finished in the top eight last year, but still.

Haha! I can’t believe the US won against Japan. They’ve been in a bit of a soccer stupor for awhile, no? ‘Bout time they got back on track. Go Team USA!

Opening ceremony tomorrow! Too bad I’ll miss part of it because of my volunteering. But the scientist I’m volunteering for has an Olympic channel on his laptop, so I ca watch it during the hours and hours of nothingness we do in between experiments. Whee!

And the Chinese will finally have something to be satisfied with, too. It’s crazy over there, what with depriving Beijingers with more than half of their motor vehicles and ‘green’ing the entire place with energy-efficient appliances and closing down all of the construction sites to reduce air pollution. About time, too. I don’t remember ever seeing blue skies in Beijing whenever I visited the city for summer vacation. Blue skies are very cool. China should have more of them.

All articles and photos in this entry come from Time.com. Shut up, I’ll get more sources soon.