I assume you are referring to game 2 of the Barton basketball series. Of course, I am up for a game anytime. I have to admit, my own soccer career fizzled this year. I only managed to start one game, and spent the rest of the season nursing a plethora of ankle and achilles tendon injuries. Hopefully, I can get out for one more season next year.

Finished reading two books in the last few days. First one was Bias by Bernard Goldberg, a CBS news reporter who's reporting on the Lbieral bias in the media. He makes a few interesting observations about the bias of the media, but there really isn't enough much substance to this book to merit the 200 plus pages the book takes up. Of particular interest is his assertion that the media underemphasizes/condones working moms leaving their children at day cares, a situation which he thinks is the great untold story of modern day America. Still, an interesting read, though it might be a little conservative for the BDPs of this world.

Second book that I've been reading (stayed up until 2am the past two nights to finish it, is "It's Not About the Bike" by Tour de France champ and more importantly, cancer survivor, Lance Armstrong. I'm not usually one to flog autobiographies of this sort, especially not those by athletes, but this book is a great read. In the cynical world of professional sports that we observe on a day to day basis, where we try our hardest to make heroes out of people like Jordan or Kobe or Clyde Drexler in an attempt to give us somebody, anybody to look up to, it is inspiring to read the life story of this guy with the superhero name. His story, to put it simply, is fucking awesome.

A very warm blog welcome to George. I think we should complete the whole set, rope in Andrew, Ken and Wu.

But l think we shouldn't limit what can be discussed here, as long as it's in moderation and good taste. After all, this is technically a blog and a number of us do find politics interesting.

I propose a change of title to "The League of Philosophising Fools and One Angry Guy." No politics please, Bradley. I've already concluded that they're all idiots. Bush, Saddam, the protesters who wear the pins "no war for oil" while driving/taking the bus/subway, that North Korean "please-pay-attention-to-me" dictator. The whole lot.

Hmm...I see the banner ad saying "Japanese Language Tapes." Is it just coincidence or am I being subject to invasive and sneaky marketing?

Description of my day:

Reluctantly woke up around 7:20 am. Organize notes and transperancies. Go to the lab I am teaching. At 8 am start lecturing to 20 bleary-eyed students about DNA and microbiology lab. Walk around and help them adjust microscope magnification. After lab, office hours 10 to 11 am. Spent large part of it explaining to a student the midterm questions he got wrong. A interesting case. He was pretty cocky before the midterm. But after the exam is handed out and he scored 6 points below the mean, he came to me, a mixture of obsequiousness and defiance on his face. Then he proceeded to argue every question he got wrong. No doubt, with every slash of red ink, he saw his chance to med school drop precipitously. As we talk, he frowns, his jaws clench and unclench, as if trying mightily to bottle up some unbearable grief. I gave him 1.5 points back.

12 pm, Stat midterm. The REAL one this time. 12:55 pm, emerge from Stat midterm with lots of curse words swirling in my mind.

Lunch: extremely high cholesterol artery clogger: two fried eggs and two sausages.

Received item in mail: my Half.com purchase of the novel: Cold Mountain. Proceed to read it for two hours to unwind. Beautiful beautiful language, slow as hell.

4:30 pm, set out for Tae Kwon Do class. A whirlwind of kicking, punching, push ups and stretching.

6:45 pm, walk back to apartment. Walking past the spot where two muggings occurred in the last two weeks, at highest alert, conducting racial profiling.

7:15 pm, prepare dinner, stir fry veggies, baked chicken wings, onion rings and clams.

8 pm, try to study, keep thinking about Cold Mountain.

9:00 pm, decide to check out blog.

Sorry to hear about the rejections, Wally. I hope Hawaii works out. I don't have much in the way of solid suggestions. But if you really want to go to psych school, maybe spending some time improving your chances for next year would be fruitful, study GREs etc. And how about taking a year off and do something you always wanted to do but won't have time to when real work starts? Anyway, here is hoping you find what you need sooner than later.

Your work day sounds positively ludicrous! You call that work? You sound like you are at some sort of sports camp. Let me give you a glimpse into my day today. Got up this morning, skipped first class of the day (on account of lousy lectuerer) and studied for an hour. Then went to class for rest of morning, home for lunch, then back to problem based learning session for a few hours, then off to the eclinical skills lab to practice my physical exam skills. Got home, took a short nap, had dinner, took care of some club business, went to gym (did 40 minutes of cardio) and now back home. About to play some NBA live, shower, read, blog, sleep.

Nice dream there, Tom. I'm not sure Emelio Estevez has ever materialized in any of my dreams. This weekend should be interesting, I will be spending Sunday interviewing for next year's incoming medical student class. Ahhh, the rare chance to pass judgement on these desperate students, sitting and squirming in their chairs, to tell them if the way they have lived their lives is up to par with some artifical standard.

In other, unrelated news, cooked up a declicious red, thai curry tonight. Not often that I come up with some good new recipes these days, so cause for minor celebration.

Had a interesting dream last night. I only remembered the very end though. In the dream, two man sat in the bottom of a freshly dug pit somewhere in the jungle. One of them, oddly, I believe is the actor Emilio Estevez (remember Mighty Ducks?). They are both tied up. Then there came chopping noises from above the ground and screams of pain. Soon body parts are being tossed into the pit. This go on for a while, and the pile of legs, hands, ears and heads are getting quite high. And Emilio realizes that soon he and the other man will be buried under his friends' body parts. At this point, my awakening consciousness intervened and told me this is a dream and I should get up. I was reluctant because the proceedings are interesting. But then I remembered I didn't set the alarm clock last night and can't miss class. So I had to let the dream go. It's too bad, I haven't remembered a dream for a long time, especially one nice and bloody like this one.

My sense of direction is out of wack today. Stepped off elevator in a familiar building and for a while couldn't find my way to class. Also almost stepped into women's restroom. If I hadn't saw the girl doing makeup in front of the mirror and beat a hastily retreat who knows when I would realize something was wrong. Potentially highly embarrasing situation avoided.

I haven't seen Fast Runner yet. It seems interesting, but I think I will have to be in a particularly attentive mood to watch it. 3 hours of it I think I might get snow-blindness. So did you like it?

In response to Wally's arguments about Chris Webber deserving the MVP, I have to say that I disagree. As of right now, in my opinion, there are 3 MVP candidates. Kobe, Tim Duncan, and Jason Kidd. All three can make strong cases. Kidd is particularly intriguing as he has upped his scoring average to around 20 ppg and his shooting percentage is way up (last I checked, his 3pt % was a career best 44%) so it seems like he has really elevated his game this season. Duncan also, seems to do it all on a very good Spurs team. Why do I not include Webber in this analysis? Yes, it is true I hate Chris Webber, but objectively, he has not done THAT much really to elevate his team. I mean, he missed a long stretch of the season, yet his team was still hanging around the upper echelon of the conference. If we are to use that argument of who has improved their team's play the most as deserving the MVP, then I might suggest my man Vince Carter, who has the Raptors winning 7 of their last 10 since he's been back (there were 3-23 without him).

By the way, last time I checked, when the Bulls were winning titles, they had 3 legitimate all stars on their team at all times. Both Horace Grant and Dennis Rodman have been decorated as NBA all stars during those years. To the best of my knowledge, no Laker other than Kobe or Shaq has seen so much as a whiff of the NBA all star game in the past three years.

That's terrible Dave. I know it's difficult to rub shoulders with the unwashed masses in the public library, to be forced to type on the scuzzy keyboards where "E" doesn't work, to roll the track balls stained with sweat and grease of thousands unwashed hands before, to squint at the computer monitors that seem to require eye-glasses themselves, to listen to the labored groaning of the CPUs that had already seen one digital revolution too many, but know that it shall pass. Be strong! The storm will abate and soon you will be blogging from the comfort of your home.

I don't think N Korea will do anything drastic when Iraq war starts. What can they gain by attacking? But who am I to delve into the greasy little head of Kim Jong-IL. All the news reports coming out N Korea seem to show the people there to be very out of touch with reality, full of bravado.

I saw a movie The Princess and the Warrior. It's by the same director/writer and main actress as Run Lola Run and share some similar themes. But whereas Run Lola was a very fast-paced and kinetic, this movie is slow and meditative. As the title suggests, the movie strives for the dreamy quality of a modern fairy tale. I think it largely succeed. The main story is about how accidents and fate connect the lives of two characters, a very caring nurse from a psychiatric hospital and grief-striken ex-soldier who is planning a bank heist. In a freak accident, he saves her life, and so begin a series of adventures and struggles as they try to mend together their incomplete lives. The music is great, a subtle electronic murmurring in the background that suggest a mysterious current running beneath the everyday world. There are some implausible places (hey, it's a fairy tale), but ultimately, the characters and their stories are interesting enough for me to disregard the faults. Highly recommended.

As I post this, I am sitting in the library, huddled over an internet terminal in the computer lab. Last night, big ice/snowstorm in Kingston, has rendered my apartment dead to the world, meaning no internet connection and no television signal. As such, I am being forced into library to get my internet and blog fix.

An exerpt from an article I was reading, about the new late-night show. It has some small bearing with our discussion:

Comedian Cohen's skill at improvisation isn't just impressive, it's mind-boggling, and the best moments in the show come when he's building off some bit of information he's just stumbled on. For example, when Ali G is given a tour of the U.N., he spots a seat with the name "Jordan" on it. He quickly asks his tour guide, "Isn't it stupid letting one sportsman have his own seat no matter how powerful he is? It's ridiculous, letting one person have the same power as a whole country!"

The Tyson show sounds promising. But I can't imagine anyone wants to fight him unless it's for wads of cash. What would be more hilarious is if he is the next Bachelor. Or put him into the Survivor program. I think Survivor is really running out of gimmicks. They need to recruit more psychopaths to stir up the pot, especially someone who had cannibal-like tendencies in the past. The excitement of the show is borne of human conflict in establishing a little society. So for once I like to see the tribes utterly, spetacularly disintegrate and the tribe members truly go ape, reduced to feral skeletons who bash in other's skulls for the last morsel of rice. It makes good TV.

According to NY Times, US and Turkey finally reached an agreement about American troops bases in Turkey. It seems to me this is a big development. But it's not being reported prominently. In fact on CNN.com it's no where to be found.

Most disturbing news of the day: Heard on espn radio from farily reliable sources, that one of the TV networks is very close to finalizing a reality TV show based on the premise of fighting Mike Tyson. The way the show works is that a person will be selected from the general populace. This person will then be trained for a bout with Iron Mike, which will act as the conclusion. Actually, in a sick way, this sounds rather interesting, more interesting than Survivor, at least.

I will leave the heavy theoretical basketball analysis to Dave and Wally. Here I will only note that my statistics class TA look like a double for Sacramento Kings player Peja Stojakovic. He is from Cyprus, and have been teaching us how to correctly pronounce the Greek symbols so widely used in math. For example, chi in chi-squared test is not pronounced as "kai", rather, the correct sound is "he."

Good night.

Here is my take on Wally's issues with Kobe being MVP. First of all, just because Kobe is MVP calibre, doesn't mean his team has to be as good as Garnett's. For one thing, the Wolves as a team are playing better ball than the Lakers have most of this season, as refelcted in their records. The only man on the Lakers who has had a decent year is Bryant. Even Shaq is scoring almost 10ppg below his average. Secondly, he makes reference to Jack Haley. But in all fairness, Jack Haley is probably no worse than Mark Madsen. And Will Perdue, for what he was worth, was a seven foot journeyman backup centre. As of now, I see the Lakers trotting out Sergei Medvendenko when Shaq is not around. Finally, Luc Longley, I daresay, is probably a better basketball player than Samaki Walker, and probably better than Rick Fox is this year, as well.

Now, this leads me to my rant of the day. Today, I am targetting the population of 'casual basketball fans' and specifically within that demographic, the "Jordan lover." I consider myself a basketball purist, and it sickens me no end to see all these non serious basektball fans (people who flippantly cast votes for Yao Ming for MVP for instance) denigrating this great sport. Not coincidentally, many of these casual basketball fans are also Jordan lovers. In fact, I know many people who watch no basketball (for instance, many girls) who know nothing about the game, but are also Jordan lovers.

Now, do not get me wrong here. Michael Jordan is a great basketball player, one of the best I have ever seen. He won 6 NBA championships and was probably the best player in the game for almost a solid decade. However, his accomplishments must be taken into context.

1. For one thing, one needs to consider the quality of the NBA competition that he faced during the period from 1991-1998, when he won the 6 championships and was at the peak of his powers. The quality of the league during those years was in my opinon, very low in comapriosn both to the 1980s, and to the present day. In the 1980s, there were a good three dominant teams at least that were NBA dynasty potentail, the Lakers, the Celtics, and later the Pistons. By the time Jrodan reached his peak, all of those teams had fallen by the wayside, and Jordan was left to pick on poor Patrick Ewing and Karl Malone all those years with the Bulls. In truth, we can probably judge the quality of the NBA by the quality of its top teams, and there is no question that the top teams during Jordan's era were a lot weaker than teh teams in the 80s. As well, teams today, such as the Kings, Lakers, Mavs, Spurs, make today's NBA much more compelling and competitive then it was even five years ago. Fortuantely for Michael, his dominance in the game coincided with a brief lull in the history of the sport, right when the previous generation of stars (Magic, Bird) had retired, and the next generation (Kobe, McGrady, Kidd, Duncan) had not yet fully developed.

2. My cousin was making the ridiculous argument that Jordan's scoring average is far superior to Kobe's. This in itself is true, if you look at the raw data. In fact, Jordan averaged 37 a game in his 2nd or 3rd year. However, one forgets that the average NBA game in those days was in the 110, 120 point range, whereas today, teams struggle to pass 100 on a nightly basis (or even 90 in the last few seasons). Therefore, I challenge anyone to go and recalibrate Jrodan's stats, adjusting for the point deflation that has occured in recent years,, a trend brought on by smarter, stronger, more physical defences.

3. Finally, I believe that all of Jordan's accomplishments, while great, have been blown out of proportion by an overzealous media which has turned him into a sort of basketball demi-god. The fact is, he won six championships and while that is impressive, he is not the only player to have ever done so. Last time I checked, the Celtics under Bill Russell won 9 in a row, yet I don't hear anybody mentioning him as the greatest player ever. More recently, Magic Johnson won 5 championships, in a much more competitive era, no less, yet even he has been discounted from these discussions. The fact is, Michael Jordan was a very smart man. He latched onto Nike and NBC and these things made him into a much larger than life figure than he really is.

In summation, all I have to say is that if you account for all these things, most of which the casual Jordan lover never even thinks about, because they are too busy reliving Jordan's highlights in their minds to think rationally, then you have to consider that there is a strong possibility that Michael Jrodan is not the greatest basketball player of all time. In fact, I would hesitate to give anybody that label at this point, there just is not enough separation between the top few names that come to mind.

Since Wally is so adament that Kobe not get the MVP, I would like to hear who his MVP for this season is going to be.

My position on the Lakers is well known, no need to repeat them.

I've been grading midterm exams for the course for which I am a TA. This is a general education class, so the expectation for students' ability is low. Very low. So low that I believe a highly trained chimpanzee could probably pass the class. We make the tests open book and open notes, thinking this should be enough.

A particular student's test caught my eye. There is a question on cholesterol absorption and margarine product called Benecol. He wrote a paragraph of highly jargonized sentences that didn't have much to do with the answer. Then in the parentitheis he wrote that the information above is taken from www.benecol.com, the official site for Benecol Inc. I was very puzzled by this. Then I suddenly realized that our classroom has access to wireless network. Students are allowed to use laptops. And this guy probably had a wireless card. So he was surfing the web, searching for answers!!

Lowered expectations is a slippery slope.

In news of significantly less world wide importance, I have some sports commentary to share. It seems that the League does not often talk about sports, so it is only fair that the first mention of the dirty, meaningless world of professional sports has to be a topic of some importance. I present then, the case of Kobe Bryant, who is making a strong case to being not only the MVP of the NBA this season, but in my estimation, playing the best basketball I have witnessed in my time watching the sport. This guy has the potential, I think, to become maybe the best basektball player of all time before all is said and done. He already has a slew of championship rings, and he is now proving that he can be more dominant than Shaq. For those Jordan lovers out there, I would like to point out that the casual argument that Kobe plays with Shaq while Jordan played on his own holds no real water. The two Bulls teams that won the two sets of championships were both significantly stronger than the Lakers of the last several years from the third man through the twelth man. Also, the value of Scottie Pippen has gradually become diminished with time, but here was a player, who in his prime, was the best small forward in the NBA. He may not have dominated the game the way Shaq does now, but to disregard Scottie's importance as most non serious basketball people do, is a mortal error. As well, Pippen discussion aside, Kobe Bryant is 24 years old right now. At this age, Michael Jordan had not yet accomplsiehed anything except throw down a few dunks at the 85 slam dunk contest. If Kobe continues to improve his game into his late twenties/early thirties, he will easily surpass Jordan's accomplsihments by the time he retires. Having said this, I am officially putting in my ballot for Kobe for MVP.

As long as we are attacking media, I will add my two cents. I noticed Fox Network is airing ANOTHER Michael Jackson Interview Special. This one is subtitled as: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See. This is absolutely ridiculous. What do they have? Jackson caught picking his nose before interview? Grainy survelliance tape of him taking a dump? I wonder, though, is the public's taste really being corrupted by the celebrity culture this few decades, or is television network just fufilling the needs that has been there all along?

In other interesting news, apparently Yale grad students just voted to strike, to force the school to recognize their union, better wages, etc. It's fun to imagine what a TA strike would look like. Will the school authority bus in out of work PhDs as scabs? I wonder what kind of hell they must be living through to prompt them to vote overwhelmingly to strike, which seems so out of norms for us mild-mannered academics. Maybe New Haven crappiness is reason enough.

On the side note, I feel it's always more disturbing than usual when teachers or medical professionals strike. It's just that doing well in their jobs hinges on their affable, gentle professional persona, and it doesn't quite gel with the militancy of the picket lines. One of my high school teacher told me that in the 70's there was a teacher strike in my old high school. Everyday kids' bus have to inch into the campus surrounded by pickets. There was even a case of a striking teacher spiting at the school bus window! Anyway, my teacher didn't participate in the strike and apparently there are still teachers who won't talk to her because of her refusal.

Okay, let me reiterate something: To quote Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. By the same token, sometimes an acquaintance is just an acquaintance. The end.

A Heads up to Trineesh, welcome to the League. I'd like to apologize for insinuating that all Asians have to speak Chinese. Of course, I was making a reference to Asians speaking their resepctive native languages.

Media commentary of the day: I have been watching the NBC evening news with Tom Brokaw the last few nights (ever since I picked up the book on Liberal bias, in an attempt to see if the book is justified). While I have not gained much insight into the liberal bias, I find that I am apalled by the sheer quantity of pharmaceutical commercials that air during that half hour everyday. I do not believe that these commercials for prescription medications should be allowed to air, because they undermine the authority of the medical profession, and they present information on said drugs in a very biased, disinformative manner. For the record, pharmaceutical television commercials are banned in Canada. To conclude, like the Yankees, I also hate drug companies.

(I sense that I am turning into the League's head ranter)

Tom's description of the events of the past night are accurate, though I feel, incomplete. Not only were the blogs on Xanga.com of the decidedly teenybopper variety, but they also reflected a particular set of Asian, or should I say, aZn values that were disturbing to say the least. I feel, the only way to do this justice is to take a paragraph out of this blog we were looking at and show it in all its absurdity:

sup pplz...i've been up to nothin dese days...but umm i gottah work double time nows...gay fuqin frum 8-5 and den on tuesday-thursdays i gottah werk frum 11-3...leaves me wit no sleep....but den i get da weekends off... gayness...=T ack w.ez...


I fear for the sanity of an entire generation of Asian Americans. It is bad enough that most of them/us cannot speak Chinese or write Chinese, but to be unable to write in English as well? Having said that, long live the League! (How's that for alliteration?)

Before I leave for the night, I must relay tonight's blog-related wackiness to our logarithmically growing audience.

First we renamed the blog from Snake's World to The League of Philosophising Fools. It was our hope that such a title convey the seriousness of our intent, yet end on a self-effacing flourish. So far so good. Then we picked a new template, elegantly understated, with faded colors to reduce eye strain. Then, wishing to get a more powerful blog, Dave and I set out to look for a new blogging service to relocate our blog. After some looking, we hit upon www.xanga.com, a site that showed much promise. It offered a lot of flashy tools for the ambitious new bloggers. I was flushed with ideas for new looks for the blog. Heady dreams filled my mind about what a brilliant act of expression our blog will be.

But then, to our horror, we discovered the site is populated mainly by the daily musings of teenyboppers. In other words, people who wRiTE LIkE tHis. When such things are coupled with candy-colored splash screens, cheesy flash tricks, cutesy sound effects, the overall effect is terrifying. Like a lost Midwest family of tourists that took a wrong turn and ended up in the Red Light District, we immediately high-tailed it out of this hypercharged bubble-gum world. Back in the stodgy, but dependable www.blogger.com, we tsk tsked about the superfaciaility of all those bells and whistles and how blogs of substance were found mostly on blogger anyway. Then Dave uttered the immortal line:

"The League is about content."

I guess you had to be there. I guess you had to be us. But for me, right there, I totally lost it. I was in stitches, for the absurdity of our little endeavour was suddenly, hilariously clear. We had pumped ourselves up into Blog Napoleons, ready to cast our shadow over cyberspace. In reality, we remain two guys hunched over computers, heads filled with delusion of grandeur.

In light of of the sudden expose of our bombasity, maybe we should rename the blog to: The Little Blog That Could

If anything were to ever make me realize that the United Nations is a clueless organization, and that GW should just go and do whatever the hell he wants, this is it.

Right now, I am seething in a fit of rage. My housemate and I tonight, found out that the psycho-bitch who we lived with last year, is going to be going to the UNITED NATIONS next week to be giving a talk at a conference. Not only that, but the trip is being fully paid for by OUR school our of class funds meaning that I am indirectly paying for her trip!! This is utterly unbelievable. I've never met someone I hate so much. What next? She will go up in space as an astronaut? Or recieve a medal from the Queen of England's husband! Oh wait, she's already done that! Guys, this is confirmation that our society is royall fucked up. Truly, there is no justice in this world.

BITCH

PS: Tom's flippant use of the word 'aquaintance' has piqued my curiosity as well! Is she Asian?

The following passage appeared in this book I am reading. "I was a die-hard Yankee fan, but I swear that's the closest I've ever come to openly supporting the military-industrial complex of anything so blatantly right-wing!" A subsequent passage reveals that "rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for General Motors." In this context, I would like to point the accusatory finger at Mr. Parrish, who insists that he is interested in equality, or justice, yet maintains his pro Yankee affiliation. Either Mr. Parrish lacks a full understanding of equity and justice as it applies to the world of professional sports, or he lacks a full understanding of baseball. On that note, I would like to declare that I detest the Yankees and everything they stand for!

In other news, I feel like a idiot. I thought a Stat midterm is today, but it's actually next week. It's a tough class and I didn't have much time to review. I spent a nail-baiting ten minutes before class cramming what I can, pre-test panic a controlled hum in the back of my mind. Then the classmates filed in looking as carefree as shepards , I was intimidated by their show of aplomb with the approaching test. As I saw them laughing, talking on cellphones, appearing as nonchalant as possible, that hum in the back of my mind grew steadily louder. This must be a class of geniuses! Then, as I sat there quietly going insane, an aquaintance sat down next to me and noticed the wild disarray of papers and textbook on my desk and the caged rat look in my eyes. So she asked the obvious question.
And I said:
Don't you know there is a test? . . . . Yes I am sure . . . . positive . . . . . Are you SURE? . . . . . really . . . . . . I see . . . . . ah, it's in my notes too.
So, like I said.

Idiot.

I shall now go to the corner and lick the wall.

Once the great philosopher Zhuang Zi woke up from a dream where he was a butterfly. Profoundly moved by a existential dilemma, he wrote, "Obviously I smoked way too much weed last night. Now I am not sure whether I am a man waking from a dream of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming being a man. This is some weird shit."

Just woke up from a brief 20 minute nap. Its amazing the strange dreams you get when you dip into these brief naps. Today, I had a dream that I was working out, doing some sort of chest press when I started feeling lightheaded and began to pass out. The passing out transitioned into waking up with a start. Whowouldathunk it?

I guess you could go check out the Oscar history to see what "serious" movies occurred in the 80's. But it seems in general, while the 70's produced so many movies that's still being discussed and regarded as iconic today, 80's just doesn't have anything close to that. Maybe it's Star War's fault.

I was surprised with the Joe Millionaire's popularity too. But I think it can be explained. While sappy love songs and romantic comedies reign supreme, everybody still harbor a lot cynicism about what the opposite sex wants, and a show like Joe Millionaire exploit that petty desire to see our suspicions vindicated, cruelly, on national TV.

A hand up for Brad.

I think the unbelievable issue is not how there could be two competing Michael Jackson shows on at the same time, but rather, how could Joe Millionaire pull in 42 million viewers? And even more astounding, since when did FOX become a major televiison network? As well, I have been watching the Network newscasts the last few nights and it seems like they bounce between on the scene coverage in Kuwait City, with some benign domestic issues like blizzards and nightclub incidents. Is it just me, or has the domestic political scene completely dropped off the radar or is everyone in recess and I'm the only one who doesn't know about it.

As for 80s movies, the ones that come to mind, especially early in the decade, are raiders of the lost ark, back to the Future, ET (maybe howard the duck), blade runner. All rather pulpy, young people's movies. I have no clue what serious, adult films were made in this period.

Final question: any ideas where the mysterious Brad has disappeared to after posting his one blog message? Hands up for those who think he has run off with some beautiful up state New York, socially harmonized lass and has no time for blogs.

The Korean tragedy news was front line news for a while, but not long. CNN is just catering to the appeptite of the public. What I found astounding was that TWO channels were broadcasting competing Michael Jackson programs simultaneously for two hours. I can't believe this is what the audience want.

The movie question:
70's: some major movies: Godfather I & II, Star Wars, Deer Hunter, The Last Picture Show, Jaws, MASH, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall
80's: draw a blank. Maybe all those teen slasher movies is a typical of the era. and Top Gun, Rambo. (god, eighties sucks)

Just made it back to Kingston, 3 hours later then scheduled. Of course, felt insane urge to do some blogging. I wonder how long this interest can keep up. Any more ideas for a title for the page before I change it? Spent a great part of the day fantasizing/researching over the laptop I intend to get in the summer if my research project pulls through. Gotta keep the fingers crossed!

I am now working on a project for the next few months, so I have a poll question for you. If you were to pick five movies that are the key, defining films of the 1970s and then five more for the 1980s, what would you pick? This is a serious question, as I want to make sure I don't miss any landmark films/directors in my research.

aww, we love you too, Chris. But away with these "deserving" talk. I feel everybody deserve good friends and loving family. It should not be earned like prizes.
Just have to get the word out:
Those of you who have broadband internet and don't have 500 gigs of musics on CD like Dave here, should really check out www.listen.com Very high quality audio streaming audio, a very very large selection from all fields, free for these few days. I am considering subscribing it. For those of you who have enough music, they have CDs after CDs of speeches by Noam Chosky and Howard Zinn. And if politics get your blood pressure too high, you may cool down with Monty Python and Robin Williams.

Tom

A Very Happy Blogged Birthday to our fellow team member Chris! I believe he is now officially 24, making him the second oldest team member!

Also, just to clarify, the reason I called the blog Snake's world was a reference to the Chinese zodiac, under which I am a snake. I couldn't think of any better names at the time, so feel free to offer up some suggestions. I've mentioned to Tom, but I was thinking something like "the Philosopher Kings" but perhaps the "League of Philosophising Fools" would be better.

Boy, finally finished with the TA stuff.

Am starting another history book: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussel, which explore how the WWI was represented and mythologized in British literature. For some reason I am in a big WWI-period kick. The last three books I read have to do with the period: A People's Tragedy (about Russian Revolution), Silent Night (about the massive informal truce during Christmas 1914) and Rites of Spring (a cultural history of impact of WWI on European psyche). I even watched a pretty shitty movie called Lost Battalion last week, which is about an American battalion trapped behind enemy lines.

Speaking of war movies, saw a real good one too, curtesy of Netflix. Ballad of A Soldier, a Russian movie about a simple, naive and kind Russian soldier (Alyosha) in WWII who almost accidently became a hero, and is granted a six-days leave to go visit his mother in a village. Along the way, he meets and interact with various people, bringing them hope and joy with his simple goodness. He even fell in love with a girl who stow away on the same train, but it's definitely not Pearl Harbor kind of romance, as they never even kiss. The greatest scene has to be when the soldier only have a few minutes to drive to his village to see his mother. But the mother is out in the field working so when she hear the news of her son's coming she runs and runs and runs through the wheat field trying to reach him before it's too late. It was gloriously shot and built up to just the right emotional pitch. If you don't have tears welling up in your eyes at the end of this scene . . . . well, you should be summarily executed. From the beginning of the movie, the narrator tell us Alyosha will not survive the war, so the knowledge that this is last time he will ever be back home and see his mother make the scene even more poignant. This is a movie about the home front, where the cost of war is not merely measured in mangled bodies and lost lives, but in the lives-unfulfilled, love-unrequited and grief-unending.

Two counter-points: The way Alyosha destroyed two German tanks single-handed is simply too implausible. Two shots from a puny anti-tank rifle took the panzers out. Okay, I was not at the Russian Front, but (god this sound lame) being a veteran of numerous WWII computer games, it shouldn't happen! And after reading A People's Tragedy, which is filled with descriptions of the unspeakable habitual cruelty of Russian peasantry who mostly seemed stuck in Middle Ages barbarism, I had a hard time accepting the movie's implicit theme that Alyosha is a representative of the millions of his fellow peasant soldiers.

Whew, that's a lot. Oh yeah, Chris, what was your favorite episode of Band of Brothers? Mine is probably the one with the dead paratrooper with the Edelweiss flower.
How about changing the name to: The League of Gallant Fools.

Ahh, this blog is turning into quite the addiction, I find. Not much new to report today, except that I spent a couple hours today interviewing two prospective high school seniors for Cornell. Wow, it feels weird being on the other side of the table now, talking to these youngsters about potentially making that trek down to Ithaca. One of the students in particular, impressed me greatly with his political awareness and thoughtful discourse. I have to admit that I enjoyed our conversation much more than almost any other intellectual conversation I've had with anybody from medical school in the last year and a half. Sigh, this entry has the potential to turn into an anti-medical student rant, so I'll have to stop it before it gets out of control. Nonetheless, the point that I am slowly winding my way to, is that I genuinely miss the coffee shop/late night dorm room/lunch at Trillium conversations that seemed to fill up many of my days in undergrad. Too often now, do I spend my days just trying to stay awake, stealing precious moments to provide myself with physical sustenance, such that the idea of intellectual nourishment of any sort becomes almost as alien as a win in basketball might have been back at CU.

To me, equity has more to do with economy and justice has more to do with law and order. So I guess our society wish to ensure that there won't be theiving and murders in the market place, but whether you make money in the market place is up to you.

I took the Meier and Briggs personality test again. You can take it yourself here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
As far as personality test goes, it's all right. I am INFJ. For a description of my type go here: http://keirsey.com/personality/nfij.html

Now you know me as well as I do

So, Chris, what's the project that complete your lifelong goals? Come on, you can't hold out tantalizing information and then just snatch it away. Spill it or else!

The word "equity" comes from the Latin word aequitatem, a word that means "equal, just, even." On the other hand, the word justice seems to have a much broader origin, coming from the Latin word justitia, meaning righteousness or equity. I think the root of this semantic argument lies in the second definition and the idea of righteousness which has taken on far greater importance than the equality part of the definition. The earliest adopted English usage of the word justice referred to "the exercise of authority in vindication of right by assigning reward or punishment" and this seems to be the prevailing use of the term in today's society. Nobody would dare suggest that a just society is one that is equal throughout. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that most people in today's society would argue the opposite, namely that "you get what you deserve." It's this rather patronizing world view, in which everybody has opinions about reward and punishment for everyone else that has shaped the world we inhabit.

In other news, just finished reading Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, a book by Barbara Ehrenreich that made a big splash last year. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, Ehrenreich is a writer who decided to take several months off to work undercover as a low income worker to try and get an idea for whether it is possible to subsist on minimum wage level earnings. The book itself is revealing as it offers an all too rare glimpse into the world of poverty, a world which surrounds us all on a daily basis but is ignored by most. The writing though, does start to drag in the second half of the book, but it's still worth reading for all those Wal-Mart haters out there.

Whoa, just saw a movie tonight, Infernal Affairs starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau. The story of how I came to see this movie is somewhat amusing. Back in Kingston on Wednesday or Thursday, I was sitting around, trying to figure out what movies to rent for the weekend so of course, i started poking around on the www.yesasia.com website to see what was hot. I noticed this movie, Infernal Affairs, and made a note of it and lo and behold, today, Jerry came and offered me the VHS which he had just seen, apparently. Talk about coincidences!

My thoughts on the film: It's definitely worth seeing. A good mix of action, characters and storyline. For a Hong Kong action flick, that is saying a lot. Traditionally, my experience with Hong Kong action movies is that they tend to be big on the action, low on everything else but this movie is so well done, that it almost breaks free of the stereotype. I daresay that it will probably hold the number one action movie spot for me for the forseeable future in 2003 (We'll see if Incredible Hulk or the Matrices give it a run for its money). Excellent cinematography, dark, surreal, landscapes that turn present day Hong Kong into a seedy, futuristic, dystopia, plus a couple of great performances by some Hong Kong silver screen legends. What more could you ask for? In fact, there is even a small homage to Hard Boiled, that classic John Woo pic which in my humble opinion, this movie surpasses.

Thanks to Dave the Snake (it does have a ring to it), I make my blog debut here. And in answer to the paraphrase of Berkeley's question, I guess
when millions of voices are babbling in the middle of cyberspace, it's no longer the issue whether the "babbling" exist. By the same token, if a million tree branches falling in the forest, we no longer care whether it's really happening, but become concerned with deforestation.

So whether our puny voices are heard at all, we must be content with thought of belonging to a massive social phenomenon which as a whole can't be ignored.

Nothing special to report. Except I am terribly engrossed in a history book: A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes. It's a history of Russian Revolution. The historical figures really come alive and I was very moved by their fates. The utterly, utterly clueless Tsar Nicholas, who wrote only about dinner-parties in his diary as revolution raged around him, the ruthless and single-minded Lenin who were ready to sacrifice everything except himself to serve his vision, the patriotic yet disillusioned General Brusilov who despite being a ex-Tzsarist officer joined the Red Army only to be decieved of his good intentions, the compassionate Maxim Gorky, a writer of conscience who strived to improve the lives of common people but in the end find his efforts to be in vain. The author succeeds in illustrating how those moments in time are such volatile mixs of potentialities, and what emerge as history is the results of accidents, absurdities, and individual will, as much as economy and the movement of armies.

Dave the Snake, hmm, it makes him sound like some seedy mob lowlife. I like it.

Back in Toronto for the long weekend. Actually, a super-sized long weekend, as I like to call it, seeing as how I took Friday's classes "psycho-social aspects of Heart Disease" off and got home early. Was expecting to get some work done today, but alas, no go (surprise, surprise). Spent some time at the World's Biggest Bookstore. Find myself in the odd situation these days of wandering around bookstores without seeing anything that I particularly wanted to read. Finally settled on an Italian cookbook to use my credit note on. Still, I wonder why I can't find anything to read. Possibly, it could be due to the fact that I just don't read enough magazines/newspapers or spend enough time browsing in the bookstores lately. I will do my best to remedy that situation in the coming months.

As of now, some books that I might want to read: Michael Chabon's Summerland, Noam Chomsky's Indispensable Reader and maybe Manufacturing Consent. Michael Moore's Stupid White Man possibly, and can't be pressed to name anymore at this particulary moment.

Well, fiddling around on the internet and decided to start up this little board. Hopefully, it'll give me a chance to blow off some steam. We'll see how it goes, don't know how many people actually read such things, but alas it begs the following question: if a guy is babbling out in the middle of cyberspace but nobody is there to read his posts, then is he still babbling?