Drew Barrymore was on Colbert Report to promote her new movie “Big Miracle,” and I cried watching the trailer. I don’t know whether this movie is going to bad or good, I just hope people would do something for the wildlife out there, rather than go to the theater to watch this.  

美國人常拐彎抹角地批評，我太需要了！

摘自TBBT

1

Amy: For someone who has a machine that can travel anywhere in time and space, Doctor Who sure does have a thing for modern day London.

2

“What are you reading?” – Leonard

“Two Weeks to Rock Hard Abs.” – Penny

“They kind of spoil the ending right in the name of that, don’t they?” – Leonard

I haven’t used English for quite a while. Not only does biology diminish my English proficiency, it also deprives my time of improving it. (Waving a fist in a the air.)

Looking for Midwage Jobs in the US

re How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work (紐約時報 2012年1月)

• Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
• It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
• Jared Bernstein: it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now
• Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.
• They say curing unemployment is not their job.
• For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said. (聽話的人多)
• The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. 
• Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. 
• The challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,” said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. 
• However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense.
• But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. 
• Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task.
• But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.

如果中國年輕人都不想從事製造業，更別說美國年輕人。郭台銘「動物園管理學」，抓得住九○後的心？。等到沒人要做生產的工作，就不會有consumerism的問題，哇哈哈。

• re In Fight Over Piracy Bills, New Economy Rises Against Old (紐約時報 2012年1月)

• SOPA: Stop Online Piracy Act 
• PIPA: Protect I.P. Act

• Phone calls and e-mail messages poured in to Congressional offices. One by one, prominent backers of the bills dropped off: Marco Rubio, John Cornyn, Jim DeMint, Mark Kirk ,Roy Blunt, Lee Terry,  Ben Quayle, Jeff Merkley, Charles E. Grassley (從沒看過議員們反應民情那麼快)
• Walt Disney Company secured the support of senators and representatives before the Web companies were even aware the legislation existed.
• The Motion Picture Association of America says its industry brings back more export income than aerospace, automobiles or agriculture, and that piracy costs the country as many as 100,000 jobs.
• Activists said the legislation would censor the Web, force search engines to play policemen for a law they hate and cripple innovation in one of the most vibrant sectors of the American economy. 
• Google, Facebook and Twitter have political muscle of their own, with in-house lobbying shops and trade associations just like traditional media’s: Joe Lockhart, Pablo Chavez.   

Northern Uganda’s displaced people are left to fend for themselves

What are we doing? Really.

“Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it…. So nothing will ever make you as happy as you think it will.” — Daniel Kahneman (in an interview with Gallup, Feb. 2005)

最近覺得碰到很多barrier，大部分都是自己設限的

Taking Imaginary Vacation at Home

長灘島 下午四點多

Rebel!

references: Slutwalk, Just Like Lizzie

挑戰周遭的人的觀感及我年輕

Implications of Mass Consumption

“You’re defined by what you have and buy” is the message derived from Lizzie McGuire, which is what Taiwan is like and I of course think it’s pathetic. 

I am no longer a materialist but I can’t help contemplate the consequences of a society devoting itself to consumerism. The first thing I thought of, besides environmental implications and population concerns, was the changing dynamic between parents and their children.

My parents don’t buy that much physical objects but they like food, whereas I am a book lover, thinker, and a eating disorder patient.

(未完) 

morality?

阿我懶的計算今天有沒讀生物了。我只知道1讀完一章後要倒著讀回去，會有不一樣的收穫 2每天都要讀  3從做筆記當中獲得樂趣! (Visual Culture is a Bitch!) 4讀生物這件事越快結束越好，沒有必要拖那麼久，我還有其他學問要經營耶。

via

跟Why Men Love Bitches的招數有像

到處碰壁的社交人生之”這就是我如何變的自我中心”

只會問”你現在讀幾年級?” “什麼時候要畢業?”的大人似乎不受歡迎。

有時候我在他們身上看到自己，我會問同學”你畢業之後要幹麼?”

okok 有些人覺得談私人的事情很鳥，那不然要談政治嗎？社會議題嗎？通常這種話題也是dead end。

我也嘗試問過輕鬆的私人問題，但我都要忍著不翻白眼。

問＂喜歡什麼？和為什麼喜歡？＂

相信我，大部分人的人都沒有想過＂為什麼＂，然後話題就爛掉了

問＂最近你在幹麼？＂大部分人的反應是：喔沒有什麼耶，有時候好運一點，有人知道自己在幹麼，但問＂你覺得怎樣？＂答案不會太多字。

如果你們那麼沒料，那我就只好自己講自己的囉

給自己的advice: 不要太technical

Give Me a Better Indian Man

看了Media Literacy的Just Like Lizzie。裡面寫到少數族群男生角色和正常系統脫軌:有智慧的老師是代課的，Lanny不會講話。再去看TBBT的時候，我猛然想起Raj在女人面前講不出話。

可是印度男人明明很強阿。

• Raj Patel
• Muhammad Yunus
• 剛在Yale Environmental 360看到的Pavan Sukhdev