Achievement... for what?

I read this article in the New York Times the other day titled For girls, it's be yourself, and be perfect, too, about a group of overachieving girls in the US. These girls were successful in everything -- in academics, in community service, in creativity -- literally everything. They got perfect scores in their SATs, and perfect GPAs.

And yet, a bunch of them did not make it into their first-choice colleges.

Reading this, I wonder what the world is going to be like for the next generation. Remembering my own portfolio when I went to college, I would seriously doubt if I could get into the same schools today, with the same achievements. I hear stories from friends with young children -- toddlers, even -- who are already going to after-school tutoring classes five, seven times a week. I see my friends and colleagues, who are already stressed out beyond belief from work. And then I see some of those people who are less successful and achieved, and are having difficulty making ends meet.

Is this what the coming world is going to be like? That if you aren't in first place, a superachiever, you can't survive? And if that's the case... many of my friends keep themselves going with a cocktail of vitamins and supplements. That's keeping them going now, but how much abuse can the body take before it collapses? And what does that mean for our children and their generation?

It's a sobering thought.

Sometimes I really hate computers

I am usually not one who's down on IT and computers as a rule (maybe I'm still young and naive, but I'm usually left being the one who defends IT and engineering when my older, more experienced peers start talking about how unattractive the field is), but sometimes, I really, really, really hate this day and age when everything is automatic and relies on computers.

I was trying to submit my journal paper this afternoon. Like most of the CS journals out there nowadays, the entire process is automatic -- you fill in forms with the title, abstract, contact author etc, then upload your cover letter and paper in Word format (why in the world would ANYBODY use Word -- but that's for another post, another day), and then it coverts it to HTML and pdf formats automatically.

And that's when the problem started. My document has both English and Chinese in it, and apparently there are some conversion problems with the Chinese characters. They kept on coming out as weird symbols, no matter what font I changed them to. More frustratingly, only some of those characters would get changed, but those that "didn't work" varied from trial to trial, and I couldn't not find any consistency between trials. And on occasion, I would get this "Conversion failed" message from the server, for no reason at all that I could discern.

I ended up fighting with that silly site for 3 hours, after which I just gave up and emailed the editors with a message telling them not to look at the PDF document. Sigh. You'd think that a COMPUTER SCIENCE journal could somehow get this correct, but alas, no.

This looks like fun

Some guy went into the London tube with skis and a camera strapped to his head, and skied down the escalator. Pretty insane stuff.

Alright, so I know that it gave the police and subway staff fits, but still I'd like to see somebody try this on the HK Ocean park escalator. Maybe they could consider it as a publicity stunt?

Inhumanity?

This NYTimes.com article sent shivers up my spine today. In case you don't have time to read it, here's the gist: a car with two children in the back seat, drove up to an American checkpoint in Iraq. The Americans let it through without a thorough check, I suppose because children don't quite fit the profile of insurgents or suicide bombers. The car went through the checkpoint, parked outside a school, and then the adults got out of the car and ran off, then detonated the bomb with the children still inside the car. The bomb killed the children and some other civilians and wounded a bunch of others.

Since part of my background can be described as hyper-liberal and anti-establishment, let me state here that I am aware that the US superbombs have killed tons more kids and maimed thousands others, so in the big picture, the insurgents are actually more merciful. I do understand and sympathize with that point of view. However, I can't help wondering: I assume that since the children were inside the car, the insurgents either knew them personally, or somehow tricked them into taking a ride. In any case, they must have had some interaction with the kids.

What drives people to the point where they could interact with another human being -- at close range, too! -- only to dehumanize them mentally to the point where they could simply be used as pawns to be killed?

No wonder why David said, "Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man." (2 Samuel 24:14, ESV)

Amen!

Do unto others...

There was an article in NYTimes.com today about refugees from the Sudan who have found refuge in Israel. Apparently, Israel, born out of the ashes of war and genocide, feels an obligation to take in refugees, for example the Vietnamese boat people; and also, I suppose that they would feel an affinity with the victims of genocide from Darfur.

What touched me the most was that many of the Sudanese refugees that have been taken in by Israel are Muslim. Given the historic animosity between Israel and its neighbors -- now that truly is commendable.

The article included a couple of stories from refugees that left me moist-eyed (okay, I am in an emotional mood today). Check it out, it's worth a read.

Hard Drive Freak-out

Okay, this isn't going to be one of those thought-provoking posts, but my hands are still shaking from this scare and maybe posting it will help calm me down...

I was working on my Mac tonight and the TV was off, so it was very quiet all around. All of a sudden, I noticed this clicking that sounded like it was coming from my hard drive. Having suffered through 3 (yes, read that, three) catastrophic hard drive crashes since returning to HK, the first thing I thought was that my HD was about to crash.

Major panic. Check everything. Looks like it's working fine. Drive back to school, pick up backup drive, back up immediately. Do SMART disk check. Everything fine.

Puzzlement. Thought it was coming from the new DVR. Check that. Seems okay, hard drive's not really churning, therefore clicks shouldn't be coming from there. Starting to get really confused.

Turn off everything. Still hear clicks. Finally track down clicks to... my alarm clock.

I felt pretty stupid after that. Oh well, doesn't hurt to be careful, I suppose. But maybe I should have a backup drive at home as well, to save me the drive to the office next time...

P1000708.JPG

Okay, so now that I've bored you stiff with my escapade, here's a pretty picture of the Church of the Good Shepherd in New Zealand. When I went in there, I immediately wanted to start singing the worship song "I lift my eyes up to the mountains -- where does my help come from? My help comes from You, Maker of Heaven, Creator of the Earth..."

No need for a stained-glass window for this church, not when they have such a wonderful reminder of scripture right there in front of them!

Married, Divorced, Single

At lunch today, one of my colleagues brought up this story about a female convict, who fell in love with a male convict, and after she was released, applied and was granted permission to go and marry him in prison. The male convict is serving a long-term sentence, and it will be years before he's even eligible for parole. So for a number of years, the woman will be married to somebody whom she can't see or touch, except on supervised prison visitations.

My colleagues were quite puzzled as to why any woman would choose to put herself into this situation. A few years ago, I would have felt the same way. However, surprisingly, I felt that I understood how the woman must have felt. Having a criminal record, she must have been thinking that her chances at marriage were slim. Faced with the possible alternative of a life as a single woman, she chose to at least be married, even if she had to be telling people that her husband was a criminal serving a prison sentence.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend some time ago. This friend, who is by *any* standards a well-educated, logical person, told me that he/she "would rather have been married and divorced, rather than still a single". The reason being that divorced meant that one had made a mistake, while being single implied that one was weird.

The sad thing is that, even though I have very strong views against divorce and, compared with many of my peers, I feel less pressure to get married, I actually can empathize with that view!. How terrible it must be for some other people, I can only imagine.