Filed under: Random
Lately, I saw two youtube clips that absolutely led me to laugh out loud — LOUD!
1. American Idol Makes Baby Cry (You know that I am a big fan of American Idol)
2. Sleep walking dog (This proves that dogs DO dream. If they can dream, what does this say about their intelligence? Since we are on the note of talking about dog intelligence, I have to say that my big dog in Hong Kong is rather intelligent — he stealthily sleeps on my bed whenever the whole family is out. What he didn’t know is that he left behind a trail of evidence — his hair loss fell on my down blanket, creating a dog-shape silohuette)
Yesterday night I discovered another of my hidden talents: opening doors.
And I do mean, literally, opening doors.
And this is not the first time that I evinced a talent for opening problematic doors.
Back in 2003-2004, when I lived in a 60-girl coop house in Berkeley, I was known in my house as the GO-TO person for problems related to being locked out of rooms. It was typical that sometimes people left their rooms without bring their keys and then locked themselves out. When the person in charge of the master key wasn’t present, I would be called upon to open the doors for them. How? Well, back then I discovered a way to open locked doors with cards. So I would swipe the card in a specific way to open the lock. It always worked. And I did it many times for my housemates.
But back to the present day.
Yesterday night when I came back home, my friend I discovered that the front door locked had been destroyed (meaning that some component inside got jammed). As my friend decided to use the backdoor, I said, “Stop. I think I know of a way.” Then in one swift movement, I placed my foot on one side of the door, and using my opposite arm, yanked the door out. Viola! It opened.
Today, as I came back home again, another girl was locked out at the front door due to this jammed key lock. I demonstrated my prowess again:
Girl: “The key is locked. I got my friend to come down to open for us.”
Me: “Wait… I got a trick.” Then I looked back behind us to see if anybody is watching (for security purpose). Then with another one swift movement, I yanked open the door, to the surprise of the girl (funny thing was, she had the same surprise look as my friend who looked on yesterday).
Viola!
Call the Anna-hotline whenever you are locked out of your house and I’ll come to your rescue.
P.S. Perhaps this door-opening ability of mine signify something else about me — I don’t let things get in my way! If you get in my way, I’ll find ways to crawl through!
Motown is a GIGANTIC part of the history of American music. So, so, sooooo many great songs (i.e. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch, You Can’t Hurry Love, For Once in my Life, Tracks of my Tears), and so many great performers (i.e. Temptations, the Miracles, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, just to name a few) — came from motown. It’s my favorite period of music, next to 1920s-1950s big band. Not only did motown make big contributions to music, it also was one of the few things that transcended racial barriers during a period in America when black and white didn’t dine in the same restaurant.
American Idol tonight mentioned a little bit of how motown came to be — the name motown (which is a reference to a certain era of music, as well as the record label) is named after Detroit, motown’s birth place. In the 1960s, Detroit was the place for auto manufacture, and hence its nickname “Motor City.” So how come this auto town became the birth place of one of the biggest brand of music (and never moved to LA Hollywood)?
Smokey Robinson said, “All cities have the same amount of talent. But in motor town, we have Berry Gordy.”
Berry Gordy is the founder of the motown label. It all started in a garage. And from then on, the talent started coming, and the motown label just grew and grew. Gordy was the “organizer”, the inducer, of the massive talent. Perhaps it was he who paved the logistics that allowed the talent to be realized.
Is it really purely by chance that Berry Gordy happened to be in Detroit?
On a somewhat related note, is it really purely by chance that a great leader such as Lee Kuan Yew became the president in Singapore, and who became the key instrument to Singapore’s subsequent growth?
Anyway, here is a tribute to Diana Ross, queen of motown:
I have not read “The World is Flat” despite the hype around it. It has become something of a must-read for MBA-type class, or for someone picking up a book in the airport bookstore right before a flight. However, I did skim through the book in the airport. I read the content page: flattener #1, flattener #2…okay, that’s it, book closed.
So I did not read the book. Big deal. (I believe my skim gave me enough of an idea about the book) But I read the amazing 58 pages review of the book by Professor Edward Leamer. Three words to describe the review: witty, piercing, and insightful. His review managed to be very critical without sounding arrogant (most economists can do the first part, but not the second) (By the way, this reminds me again how difficult it is to write a good critique….that’s why there exists high paying and respected job with the NY Times Book Review, with the job title “critic”) Let me just say that Leamer is one of a kind of economist. A little detour here: First, he HAS to be great teacher. How do I know? From his former student. Second, from the clarity of his writing. Our profession needs someone who can write as well as him, and who can write clearly (as clear as a journalist, the scarcity of economist like Leamer is the reason why people like Friedman can get away writing books like this).
So the idea of The World is Flat is to push to the extreme the message that locations don’t matter anymore (that’s why the world is flat). Of course Friedman’s message is exaggerated, and the world is still spiky.
My favorite passage from the review:
There are countless real “globalization” questions for economic geography to answer. For example: What if Europe were to form an economic union that allowed the four freedoms among countries: free movement of goods, people, services and capital, all supported by a common currency? Which kinds of activities would concentrate and which would disperse? Do the peripheral countries, like Sweden, benefit or lose out? What happens to a central country, like Switzerland, that doesn’t join? On another continent: Can the economic liberalizations in Sout h America create an export-led prosperity, or are Argentina and Chile and other Latin American countries too far from the large and wealthy European and North American marketplaces for that strategy to work? If closeness matters, how can one account for the historically high per capita GDPs of New Zealand and Australia, and what accounts for the economic successes of far-way countries like Taiwan and Singapore, and now China?
Leamer gave a wonderful exposition of economic geography and how to relate Friedman’s idea to Von Thunen and Krugman. But the thing is, Krugman’s basic model on geography would tell you that the opening to international trade would lead to a dispersion of economic activities inside a nation (and also across countries) — lessening of the core-periphery pattern within a country; in other words, Friedman’s The World is Flat should be on the boat with Krugman’s basic model. In fact, cities in Europe had been moving according to this trend (in Friedman’s liguo — “flattening”) in 1970s and 1980s, and somehow in the 1990s, the core becoming bigger again at the expense of the peripheries. And this increase in the “spikes” of the world have not gone un-noticed. Why? One of the IMF annual report suggested that international trade actually reduces international inequality — but it is the financial globalization that is sharpening international and intra-national inequality. That actually makes sense, since finance and service as an industry operate on a much more scale economy that the good old manufacture industry.
But this is all very unsettling, when we cannot even make unanimous statement on how international trade affect inequality.
Filed under: Other
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