Children and our own responsiblities

I was dining with a young couple and their brother tonight. The father sat next to me, but kept a constant eye on his baby. The baby sat in a high chair, with her mother and uncle on each side. Her uncle was telling stories to her, and the mother was look after her. The baby was well cared for and safe in her chair. Then why is this man keep looking at his baby while not talking to others at the table?

I was quite puzzled. Then I realize it is much easier to get obsessed with a baby, while much more difficult to struck a conversation with a stranger. What a perfect excuse to hide in a safe place.

Raising a baby has its fun and glory. But if you get so obsessed with this baby, looking at her every move and ignoring your own adult world, it is an abjection of your responsibility. It’s an act of escape. Babies are just humans. They need care but they will grow up. Indulging a baby reflects a person’s own insecurity and unhappiness in his own life.

There is no escape in this world, not even with our own baby. We have to face our own responsibility and fulfill them. There is no way around it. I once thought by having a baby and giving him/her all my dream and wishes, I can fulfill my destiny. Now I realize this is abjection of my own duty. I have to fulfill my own destiny. It’s my responsibility.

One Person’s life and family

In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Barrack Obama talked about his youth and growing-up experience, his mother’s white family from Kansas, and his father’s Kenya family. While typical memoire can be boring to readers, this memoire weaves so many good stories together, that it is a lot of fun to read and listen to. The conversation, the depiction are so palpable.

Happiness in Different Countries

Some people claim that people living poor countries are much happier than those in rich countries. Their argument is that people in rich countries are more depressed (and have higher obesity rate) because they live far away from each other and have more stress. To test this hypothesis, we need to look at real data. One measure of unhappiness is depression rate. Unfortunately, data for depression in poor countries are very scarce, mostly because people are struggling with basic health care, little do they have access to mental health care. However, we can take a look at an extreme form of depression–suicide. World Health Organization (WHO) compiles suicide rate of different countries, and publishes it on its website.

Based on WHO data, the countries with the highest suicide rate are neither too rich or too poor. These countries are mostly in Eastern Europe: Lithuania, Belarus, Russian and Hungary. Behind them are Japan and Sri Lanka. Except Japan, those top countries’ suicide rate can be explained by one thing: economic hardship. After Soviet bloc collapsed, unemployment rate rose sharply in these countries. Living standard dropped significantly. It is therefore not surprising that there is sharp rise of suicide rate in all these 3 countries: Lithuania, Belarus and Russia after 1990 (see per country chart at
http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/).  Sri Lanka’s high suicide rate comes from poor farmers. Report on their abject poverty and lack of access to employment explains the reason. Similarly we see high suicide rate in Indian farmers recently, who cannot repay huge debt after drought. These data suggest that suicide is closely related to ability of making a living and access to social safety net.

The United States is ranked a mediocre 45^th among all 95 countries listed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_rate), while an extremely poor country Zimbabwe is ranked 55 in the list, also in the middle. This suggests that the wealth level of a country has little to do with its suicide rate. In poor countries like Zimbabwe, if people can get by with meager food, there is no reason to commit suicide.

The lowest suicide rate comes from Latin American countries (Jamaica, Honduras) and Middle East countries (Egypt, Jordan). In these countries, religion probably play a big role in preventing suicide. Catholic belief considers life sacred, thus forbids suicide. Islamic belief also forbids suicide.

Culture certainly plays a role in suicide. This can be seen in the high suicide rate in Japan (24 per 100,000 people) and South Korea (18), and the low suicide rate in Singapore (9.5) and Taiwan (7 in 1994) with similar income level. Even here, both Japan and South Korea have sharp increase of suicide rate after 2000, with the onset of their economic crisis. Japan also see significant drop of its suicide rate in 1960s after its economy took off: In 1955, the suicide rate was 25, while in 1965, it was only 15. The data for South Korea starts from 1985. But we also see a drop from 9 in 1985 to 7 (suicide per 100,000) in 1990.

By now, we can safely draw a conclusion that employment opportunity plays a big role in suicide rate of a country. The best way to combat suicide is economic relief and debt relief. When people have a way of making decent living, they will have hope and will less likely take their own life.

The positive vs. normative economics

In many economics textbook, the opening statement is: We are only concerned with things that exist (positive study), but not thing that should be (normative study). In other words, economists confine themselves in understanding the fact that people are rational when they commit a crime (Becker, 1968) but not on whether crime is right or wrong. For example, with economics you can show that a poor person robs because his opportunity cost is low (no job, and no skill). But does it mean it is right for this person to rob? Economics falls silent on such questions.

Economics can show us how the healthcare reform is a deadlock because each party has their self-interests. But how to break this dead-lock? Economists show that a government consists of politicians who seek to maximize their personal interests, but how do we have a less corrupted government?

With economic theory, we understand perfectly why a white man prefers to live next to a white neighbor, but does that imply it is ok for him to drive out a neighbor of another race? After all, social reform is about taking a stand: what is acceptable behavior and what is not. It is about setting new law and new system such that the incentives for the old parties completely change. If we think racial integration is more important, we will force the school to open up their enrollment and gradually people will accept other races. If we think universal healthcare is more humane (and cost effective), we will move forward with such a system despite the pain of HMO companies and certain parties.

Economic study gives us perspective for people’s behavior within their current social structure, but it fails to answer how we should change that social structure. It may give us answers on how to promote economic growth, but not on how to share the fruits of growth. Equality, justice and humanity come from people’s demand. It is about changing our current social framework.

The demand for civil rights, for universal healthcare, and for voting rights of women, go beyond the realm of economics. While economics builds its foundation on the fact that people pursue their self-interest rationally, social reform builds its foundation on that fact that certain things are not justifiable with self-interest. Slave owners want slavery, but it is not justifiable. Men don’t want women to have equal rights, but that has to change. The change of a law or proposing a new law is promoted by one group of people over the objection of the other. The English never wanted to give up their control of India, but they are forced to. Such social change is beyond the realm of Economics. Instead they are better understood through the lens of political philosophy or legal philosophy.

A book that is a masterpiece

If you want to write a book on the history of Chinese immigrants in the US, how will you set out the book the be? What will you include? Iris Chang’s Chinese American achieved this goal brilliantly.

It is the best book I have ever read regarding the history of Chinese in the US. It provides an epic picture of a group people surviving and struggling in a new land, facing hostile treatment and discrimination. It is about a people with great ingenuity, creativity and deep culture heritage.

Behind this book is an author of excellent scholarship, complete integrity of providing objective and deep compassion for common people. The fluent narrative makes you feel like reading a novel that is unfolding by itself.

The success of this book comes from passion, devotion, hard work and deep historical knowledge. Bringing all these together, this book is a masterpiece.

Theodore Roosevelt

Who says one man cannot do much in the river of history? As a president, T. R. created Panama canal,  set up National parks, and broke up a huge company merger. As an assistant secretary in Navy, he created a stronger Navy force and led an war against Spain in Cuba. As an assembly man in NY state, he fought and won fights against corrupt appointments. As a governor of New York, he passed many reform bills.

Roosevelt’s influence was enabled by his official position, but realized by his conviction, drive and talents. He work fast and tirelessly. He won almost all the battle he fought. He is a winner.

A daring individual, a selfless reformer and builder for the society, T.R. fully lived his life. his ascendance to prominence reflects the democratic system of the US. Every step up, he relies on his own ability to campaign to the public, to work hard and to gain influence through his work. In a non-democratic country, the story will be very different.

The spirit of marathon

Yesterday I went to see the movie The Spirit of Marathon with a couple of other running enthusiasts. Two people in this group already ran marathons, and their feat deeply fascinated me.

The movie covered 6 groups of people who are in 2005 Chicago Marathon race. Two top runners: Deena and Daniel, and 4 common people, an old man and his daughter, a woman in college, a mother of a 7-year old, and a man who has to drop out the race due to knee injury. In the end, we saw 40,000 people running in the Chicago race. It is so amazing. Could there be so many people interested in and capable of doing a marathon?

But think about it, marathon is a simple sport. All you need to do is keep running. Yes, there is endurance challenge. But you can overcome it if you are determined. Other than that, it is a low-risk sport. Comparing to many other challenge in life, marathon is a relatively easy task. It is much more difficult to challenge ourselves it search for a better career, to fight in a political movement, to step into a leader position, or to speak out the truth. Running a marathon does not necessarily make us braver in doing all these other tasks.

Let’s treat marathon as a hobby sport. That is all it is.

(P.S. It’s about one week since I wrote the above blog, and I struggled to finish a 2-mile run this morning. It took tremendous willpower and determination to continue running, despite weak legs, pounding hearts and tired body. Thus I have more respect for people who finished Marathon. All these people have tremendous willpower to get it done. – Jan 31, 2008)

Good Web Practices

A good website is measured by how much traffic it attracts. To measure the effectiveness of a website, traffic is the only and best criterion. What kind of practices bring high traffic? For this, we can simply take a look at the top 10 websites ranked by traffic ( http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 ). From these and other popular websites, we have the following conclusions:

1.      A heavy-traffic site is not necessarily a “good looking” site. Some sites can have very plain design. For example, facebook has a very plain page, but its traffic is ranked 7^th in the world, with 58 million active users.

Some sites look crowded and ugly, but still attract a lot of visitors. For example, democratic underground has a very unflattering home page, but its traffic is ranked 1,759 in the US and 12,525 in the world. (Websites within top 10,000 range is considered high-traffic site.)

2.      The key to high-traffic sites is functionality rather than “beautiful face”. The more information a user can get from a site and the more useful the site is, the more traffic it will receives. For example, Huffingtonpost.com has traffic rank 395 in the US, and 2,757 in the world. This is because its fresh political blogs written by high-profile bloggers (more than a dozen for its political columns). However, the design for this website is poor and much space is not efficiently used. Another site Wikipedia has extremely simple design, but you can find deep and useful content by search. Wikipedia has the traffic rank 9 in the world.

3.      Two important ingredients that attract eyeballs: news and video. A website that reports news will surely attract people to visit it again and again. Thus digg.com, a site that collects user-reported news, is ranked 29 in the US and 139 in the world. Blogging sites like Huffingtonpost.com also adds news to its content. Video sites like youtube is ranked 3 in the world, next only to Yahoo and Google. Video sites in other languages are also widely popular: The Chinese video sites toodou.com and 56.com is ranked 120 and 159 respectively. This is probably the reason that many websites now have video features. Between the two features, video typically outperforms news (which is mostly text) in attracting user visit.

4.      Fresh content is essential for high traffic. Be it news, video, or user posting, a site has to update its content constantly. This means updating daily, hourly or even every minute. Digg.com has it content updated almost every second. The nature of human attention demand freshness. A user will quickly be turned off by a site that stays stale. 

5.      User participation is key for the rapid growth of traffic. Giving the limited time and resources of the web creators, the content has to come from the user. (The only exception is search companies like Google or Yahoo, which has thousands of machines that grab contents from the Internet automatically.) The form of user participation can be many: uploading video (youtube), posting comments (huffingtonpost), posting in forum (democraticunderground), creating personal profile (facebook), posting news link (digg.com), posting ratings and reviews (imdb.com), and so on.

In summary, a good website is one that provides useful content to the user, is very fresh and has high user participation. Utilizing multimedia such as video also helps to boost the traffic. If we follow these principles, we will see an excellent website.

Getting to the actions

“Four times a day? It’s impossible! How can I remember it?” I complained to the eye doctor who prescribed the eye drops to me.
“do you eat meals? 3 meals plus the bedtime, that’s 4 times.” He said quickly, unmoved by my complaint.
“But I don’t normally have breakfast.” I persisted.
“When you drink coffee in the morning, that’s the time to have the drops.” He added.
“I drink milk. Well, I guess I can do it after the milk.” I suddenly see the light.
“What do you have for lunch?” The doctor asked matter-of-factly.
“I sometimes have a bagel …” My voice trailed in thought, and was interrupted by his, “Then have the eye drop after the bagel. What do you have for dinner?” “anything…” “Then have another eye drop after anything.”
In the end, I see that I have no excuse but doing it 4 times a day.

I learned the power of specifics. When you create concrete actions, you have no choice but doing it. When we are stuck with grand but complex task, we need to quickly move into specifics. What are the specific difficulties? What needs to be done for the next step? By getting to specifics, we create easy actions. We will no longer be stuck.

The second thing I learned is that there is no excuse. All excuses are just ways of not taking actions. For every excuse there is a solution. We have no choice but find such a solution and remove every excuse.

Iris Chang

Her life was like a shooting star: Shining, bright but short-lived. Yet, she left precious memories for her friends and family, and important books for all others to learn and benefit.

Iris was a beautiful woman: tall, long flowing hair and big eyes. She radiates with liveliness, happiness and confidence. She was also a top student in her class. She was ambitious and achieving. In an early age, she started to write and won admiration from her peers. For her books, she chose difficult but important subjects: The Nanjing (Nanking) massacre by Japanese, and the history of Chinese in the US. For the first subject, she became the first person who documented comprehensively and authoritatively an important part of World War II history. For the Chinese community, her work was deeply appreciated, as no Chinese has had the resource and knowledge to do so. As a historian, her book has the hallmark of thorough research and unique access to historical materials. I marvel at her courage of facing those unthinkable crimes. By documenting and presenting the worst of worst of a human can do to other humans, she chose to face the evil and give this world despite her own suffering.

Iris’ other book, The Chinese in America, is in fact more powerful than the previous one. It documents the whole immigration history of Chinese in America, starting from the first group in 1840s, all the way to current stage 1990s. It reads like a novel, vivid and intriguing. But it is in fact the history, with real data, real people and their narratives. The book is full of compassion, for people who are poor, for people who are in disadvantaged social groups. It’s not just about Chinese, but also a history book of the American justice system. How it initially openly discriminated minority people, persecuted Chinese, and then eventually embrace the idea of equal treatment for all. Reading the beautiful narratives in this book, I feel as if I am listening to Iris Chang. She is still alive, as her words, thinking and passion are all here for me to see and feel.

Is our life span measured by the years, or is it measured by how much we have given during the life? Iris lively only 36 years, yet she has created 3 excellent books that changed history, moved us and future generations. She left behind her passion and love. She still lives among us.