Remember this?

I know this is super late. It's yesterday's news. But I just want to say one thing before I let Michael Jackson's death dissipate like a mist:

There's no way those are his biological kids.


Half-black half-white kids look way more black. Look at Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, Halle Berry and Alisha Keyes. These kids are not half black. They don't even look a quarter black.

Which brings me to another point. How sad is it that MJ is not only the national symbol for the pinnacle of 80's pop, but also the poster-child for hating the aesthetics of his own race.


It is a tragic and broken world we live in when an adorable young man feels the need to mutilate his likeness, eradicating any residual black-features (the flatter nose, the darker skin, the curly hair), to end up looking like a wierd white lady.


That's the REAL tragedy.

Officially Hitched Party

The first in-law:


The second in-law:


The growing clan:


BFFs for life:


Can't we still pass for Lynbrook seniors?


Mr. and Mrs. Joy Chang, ha ha.



Open bar = really happy groom.




L'chayim and Mazel Tov! (I watched Fiddler on the Roof last week).

Civil ceremonies...

at SF City Hall aren't just for the gays!

The bride and groom before the ceremony:



Just two married siblings (but not to each other! Just realized that caption is ambiguous, ugh.):


I wonder what my grandpa is thinking. Probaby, "Gee I'm old."

Congratulations Brother and Connie!

Muck

Where there is no vision,
the people perish.*

I know that a parent's hopes and dreams for her child is the abundant fodder of therapy sessions, but I can't help having hopes and dreams for my future child.

One of my greatest hopes is that he/she will be a muckraker. Remember that term from your 5th grade US history book?

A muckraker is a special kind of journalist. One that reports on muck (yes, that's a technical term :-P). Future child will write about government corruption, kickbacks, and legitimated criminal rings. Future child will do 3 part segments on pedophilia, sex trafficking and modern day slavery. Future child will produce documentaries on the broken public education system, healthcare, and the oppression of the working poor. Whether in DC, Darfur or Dubai, future child will explore, expose, and bring to light the underbelly of the human condition.

Because where there is no vision, the people perish. We cannot be outraged by what we cannot see. We cannot be moved to action by what we do not acknowledge. And we cannot acknowledge what we do not know.

Future child will be like an anti-evangelist. Blessed are the feet of him who brings bad news, news of utter degeneration and depravity, who shines a light on injustice.

Injustice such as that of the approximately 200,000 political prisoners languishing away in North Korea's Labor Camps. Blaine Harden wrote a heartbreaking and soul-searing article on the miserable creatures who work 12-15 hour days, gums blackened from malnutrition and hunchbacked from weak bones.

Their crimes are purely political, which can be as petty as old wives talk, literally. One person was a former friend of Kim Jong Il’s wife and was imprisoned because she allegedly gossiped about the Dear Leader with the wife.

But not only was she imprisoned, her children and parents were too. North Korea has a strict policy of guilt by association whereby many generations are condemned together.

Rape, beatings, starvation--these are regular occurrences that not even suicide can assuage. The punishment for unilaterally ending your torture is the execution of the rest of your family.


So far, no high-profile person has taken up the plight of the prisoners. As Harden writes (quoting an activist), “Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney. North Koreans have no one like that.”

I think there is no champion because there is very little awareness that this is happening. North Korea denies that these camps exist and all we have is the bitter testimony of survivors and former guards who are desperate to make a living--cash for testimony.

But the more this issue is brought to light, perhaps the more will be done.

By the way, Oprah (or Gayle!), if you’re reading this…
__________________________________________
*Yes, I know I'm totally abusing this verse. Poetic license!

The Unrepresentative

Meet America's first Chinese-American Congresswoman (finally! I can't believe it took this long!), Judy Chu:

First impressions--looks like your friendly local real estate agent! You can read all about it in this article.

Chu, a San Gabriel Valley Democrat, just won representation of the 32nd District where she first began her political activism as a college freshman in the 70's.

Far from elation as my primary reaction to this news, as a Chinese-American woman myself, I feel upset that Chu is more like the exception to the norm than the vanguard of a breaking wave.

To me, Chu represents (no pun intended) the utter lack of encouragement that Chinese-American families give their kids to pursue careers outside of the fields of medicine, business, science and technology.

Chu herself admits that she entered college intent on a computer science career before she felt the irresistable pull of politics. The article does not mention how her parents reacted to her detour, but I'm pretty sure they weren't too happy. A sure way to trigger disappointment and even disownment is to tell your Chinese parents that you want to have a career in the humanities, creative arts or social activism. "But why don't you want to be a doctor?!"

Call it financial risk aversion, call it mousiness, call it cowardice and conformist. Whatever it is in the psyche of the Chinese-American community it has long stifled and restricted the flow of Chinese-American participation in the avenues of cultural influence that matter most: the arts, media, social commentary and politics.

Chu is not representative of the average Chinese-American experience. Good for her, not so good for the average Chinese-American experience.

Random thought of the day: Consider Copper

Why don't we use copper for door handles, fixtures, and general surfaces that lots of strange people touch all the time?

Copper has long been known to have anti-microbial properties and it's not that expensive.

If any of you gentle readers have connections to the construction design and materials industry...think about it!

**Dispatch from the frontlines of the corporate firm world

1800 hours

Death by a thousand papercuts ensues.

I have become a drafting machine.

I eat, drink, pee and draft. That is all I do for 14 hours a day.

Provisions in the barracks (read: office) have been replenished with almonds and chocolate.

When will this barrage of work cease? It has lasted for a record 3 months now and no real end in sight.

Must take vacation before more work gets piled on.

Alice out.

Eureka!--The Obvious

When I read this article in the NYT I could not stop snickering in my head.

Not laughing, mind you, but snickering.

It's the classic example of academics being so caught up in their own little world that they don't realize they've spent their entire lives studying what everyone already KNOWS to be COMMON SENSE. It's the ultimate DUH.

I mean, seriously, academics are sometimes so proud of discovering the obvious. I don't need "experts" to tell me men prefer to marry younger, hotter women and that women prefer rich guys. Whatever evolutionary psychologists--that's not even a real science!

But I digress.

In this instance, what may seem obvious to you and me was apparently quite eye-opening to David Kessler, Harvard-educated pediatrician and head of the FDA under two presidents.

As the article explains, "In an experiment of one, Dr. Kessler tested his willpower by buying two gooey chocolate chip cookies that he didn’t plan to eat. At home, he found himself staring at the cookies, and even distracted by memories of the chocolate chunks and doughy peaks as he left the room. He left the house, and the cookies remained uneaten. Feeling triumphant, he stopped for coffee, saw cookies on the counter and gobbled one down.

'Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?' Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. 'Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer.'"

So, let me get this straight buddy. You spent 7 years wondering why a cookie is delicious?! Because it's full of sugar and butter, Idiot!

Kessler has jotted down his oh-so-obvious thoughts and musings in a book called The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.

The article gives us a hint into why Kessler is not aware that his oh-so-obvious thoughts are oh-so-obvious. Kessler was deeply involved in fighting big tobacco and saw all the sneaky, tricky, deceptive things big tobacco did to make their products addictive and delicious. So then he decided to turn that eagle-eye of his to another great American public health enemy: FOOD!

As the article explains "In The End of Overeating Dr. Kessler finds some similarities in the food industry, which has combined and created foods in a way that taps into our brain circuitry and stimulates our desire for more."

Uh, you mean how the food industry tries to make food delicious? Okay, whatever. That's not exactly earth-shattering news. If Kessler had uncovered that the food industry laced its products with crack, that would be exciting. But unfortunately his thoughts are much more banal. To wit:

"When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren’t particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full."

Uh, food makers are doing what?! You don't say! They are combining fats, sugar and salt?!!! Sacred bleu! Stop the presses! And they're doing it in a way that makes us want more? You mean they're making the food yummy? Oh. My. Gosh! But it gets better:

"Dr. Kessler isn’t convinced that food makers fully understand the neuroscience of the forces they have unleashed, but food companies certainly understand human behavior, taste preferences and desire. In fact, he offers descriptions of how restaurants and food makers manipulate ingredients to reach the aptly named 'bliss point.' Foods that contain too little or too much sugar, fat or salt are either bland or overwhelming. But food scientists work hard to reach the precise point at which we derive the greatest pleasure from fat, sugar and salt."

Yes, let's give your stupid research a fancy-pants, legit-sounding term like "bliss point"! Did you spend a long time thinking up that word Kessler? Did you go through a list, like Yummy Point? (No...too unsophisticated sounding) Delicious Point? (No, doesn't make my research sound legit) Wow-Can-I-Have-Another-One Point? (No, too Oliver Twist).

"The result is that chain restaurants like Chili’s cook up “hyper-palatable food that requires little chewing and goes down easily,” he notes. And Dr. Kessler reports that the Snickers bar, for instance, is “extraordinarily well engineered.” As we chew it, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts and the caramel traps the peanuts so the entire combination of flavors is blissfully experienced in the mouth at the same time."

Gasp! The food industry is so big and powerful--it's all a huge conspiracy. Bad chain restaurants! They're no better than big tobacco! How dare they try to make our food "hyper-palatable"! We demand moderately palatable food. That's what I want when I go out on the town.

And on and on the article goes about how fascinating Kessler's discoveries are.

What. Ever.

Look, I'm sure Kessler's book and research has something interesting to contribute to society. But this article sure ain't highlighting it. If I wasn't sure I was reading NYT, I'd a thought I was reading The Onion.

RESEARCHER DISCOVERS RESTAURANTS TRY TO MAKE FOOD DELICIOUS (by combining salt, sugar and fat in just the right amounts)!

And in other news of the hour, DOG BITES MAN!