September 04, 2009
Change Nobody Particularly Has Any Faith In
Electing a black man to the presidency might be a new thing to some, but it's not as if it's never happened anywhere before. On the other hand, Japan voting out the Liberal Democratic Party en masse is truly...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 04:08 PM
July 06, 2009
East Coast Bias
The New York Times Sunday Magazine played up the matriarchal Gray Lady to the hilt this week. The cover boy was Gavin Newsom, the dyslexic wunderkind. He's the kooky-mayor of kooky-town San Francisco, symbolic of the kooky cast of...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 03:51 PM
March 16, 2009
Denouncing Western Capitalist Propaganda
After seeing folks from our Chinese factory huddle around the stock chart terminals at the bank after work, I was surprised that there isn't more big-time financial coverage in the news. Well, it looks like 芮成钢 is the man for...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:47 PM
December 05, 2008
We Come In Peace (Shoot to Kill)
Taiwan politics is a cesspool of festering corruption at the best of times, no matter which side you're on. But then politicians everywhere are pretty much the same way, so the most one might hope for is at least...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:53 AM
November 24, 2008
A Great Man In The White House
Thank goodness the elections are finally over (give and take a runoff or a recount here and there), and the country has been made safe for me to return to the States some day. I couldn't be bothered to cast...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:18 PM
August 29, 2008
國殤
Taiwan's certainly no sports powerhouse, but we've had our share of success in the last few Olympics, mostly in the more obscure sports like taekwando or archery. But thanks to the Japanese colonial period, Taiwan's real national pastime is...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:14 PM
August 11, 2008
Sorting Out Coffee's Contradictions
Ever since I started hitting The Coffee Bean after college all-nighters I've felt vaguely guilty about chugging down all those lattes, mochas, and straight-up coffees. Aside from the ridiculous mark-up, now somewhat assuaged by brewing my own, there was...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:48 PM
July 31, 2008
Rumor Monger
Apple's penchant for secrecy combined with its legions of fans have created a proudly geeky tradition of rumor and speculation on Apple's next move. In the olden days, Apple was more prone to internal leakage, and there were a...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:45 AM
July 03, 2008
Broken Cup, Cracked Nut
Baseball catcher is a tough job, probably the toughest on the diamond. Even with all the protective gear, they still get taken out by the occasional jarring home-plate collision or the stray swinging bat, not to mention all that...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:43 PM
June 23, 2008
The Latest Lingo
Newsweek joins the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy in decrying the slumping US economy. Of course, in order to be fair-and-balanced, they offered up some alternative viewpoints. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, tells NEWSWEEK that "home...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:43 PM
June 07, 2008
The Stakeout
Way back when, investigators followed suspects to uncover crimes and infidelities. Nowadays, such efforts are reserved for the choicest of gadgets, namely the next version of the iPhone. All around the trucks, workers wheeled around pallets of the plain...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 05:02 PM
April 12, 2008
I Knew It!
That morning cup of coffee is good for something after all. Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests. That's definitely happy news to hear, especially considering my...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:09 PM
January 03, 2008
A Fine Gedankenexperiment
What would the Germans do when there are no rules? Each day, thousands of cars and big trucks barreled along the two-lane main street, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to scamper for their lives. The usual remedies - from safety...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:36 PM
August 01, 2007
Bill Walsh, RIP
Sad to see the great coach passed away after a long illness with leukemia. He and his 49ers teams made me an American sports fan. As the Niners juggernaut rolled through the '84 season on the way to crushing...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:42 PM
June 10, 2007
Recyclables
I consider myself fairly frugal when it comes to hardware acquisitions, for a tech-whore, anyway. However, you can't really get out of the way of the planned obsolescence, and the old gear do start to pile up. It's even...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:23 PM
January 23, 2007
I've Got A Fever
...and the only thing that can cure it is more Beaver. In light of the exciting breakthrough for Caltech Men's Basketball team, it would be uncouth of me to neglect the even greater accomplishments of the Lady Beavers. History...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:26 AM
April 13, 2006
Cannonball Run
Personally I figured they should've just left it where it was, but as usual the Flems had to get all pissy and run out to get their precious cannon back. Of course, they had to figure out that the...
Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 03:52 AM
February 28, 2006
Trafficking Excess
I guess it was just my imagination when I thought the commute was getting worse when I was home for CNY. Turns out that the Bay Area commute has actually improved when compared to year 2000 levels, even in...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:00 PM
December 31, 2005
Dog Bites Man
And in other news, Pack of Chihuahuas attack Fremont cop. The officer suffered bite wounds to his ankles, was treated at Washington Hospital and returned to work within two hours, Fremont police Detective Bill Veteran said. Well, so long...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:10 AM
December 13, 2005
Lion in Winter
Interview with Lee Kuan Yew in Time Asia. Nice for once to see a world leader with a clue. The enlightened dictator can be surprisingly effective, and it's been the ideal governing philosophy in the Confucian tradition. Human rights...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:17 PM
June 26, 2005
How The Sausage Is Made
The Wall Street Journal and Salon are pretty much on opposite ends of the journo-political spectrum, but they both had pieces about the Asian electronics supply chain recently. Salon followed the birth of the PortalPlayer chip that's at the...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:19 PM
June 04, 2005
The Godfather... On Crack
“蚊哥“, who's apparently a major figure in the Taiwan underworld, died recently, and everyone got together to throw him a big funeral. All the different gangs showed up with all their members to pay respect and to show off....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:39 PM
March 13, 2005
Off The Rack
Now that WTO quotas on clothing and textiles have been eliminated, how's this free-trade thing working out for everybody? No surprise that China is off and running with the gun. In the first month after the end of all...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:45 PM
February 19, 2005
Ballsy
I can't decide if these guys are brilliant or insane. They're getting away with it so far, though, so why not. "Take the time to reassess your security right now. Do everything you can do to keep those firearms...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:42 AM
January 18, 2005
Wait, Are You Telling Me That This Sucker's Nuclear?
No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. So we're having a hard enough time getting these folks to make one (give or take 300 million)...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:11 PM
December 25, 2004
Sock City!
On those rare occasions when I browse the clothing racks, I've always wondered why the clothes came from so many different Third World countries: India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, etc. Turns out that there were trade quotas in place to give...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:20 AM
November 19, 2004
What If They Held A Sale...
...and nobody came? That was the nightmare scenario faced by Treasury officials recently. Billions and billions (™ Carl Sagan) of dollars of US Treasury debt, and nobody showed up for the auction. Specifically, the nobodies running the Asian national...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:45 AM
November 15, 2004
Italian Master
And I thought I was a bigshot for plunking down a hundred bucks for some RAM and a USB flash drive the other day. The New York Metropolitan Museum just made their most expensive purchase ever, at least $45...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:42 AM
October 04, 2004
Not Just In The Back Seat
Sounded like a prime candidate for the Darwin Award. If you were dumb enough to be having sex while driving, aren't you just asking for a head-on collision with oncoming traffic? Another car veered into the couple's path in...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:47 AM
September 28, 2004
The Spy Who Came In From The Mall
The local media was abuzz with the news of a former senior US State Department guy who may have passed on classified documents to a Taiwanese agent. That wasn't the only thing the dude gave on to the female...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:46 AM
September 08, 2004
It's Like a War Zone
As the American toll in Iraq continues to rise, the troops are struggling to cope with an amorphous and determined enemy. You know it's bad when they start comparing the situation to... "They were doing battlefield urban operations in...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:24 AM
August 29, 2004
Turning the Corner
Here are the news, just in time to support the President's favorite campaign catchphrase. Older Investors Jittery as Markets Dissappoint But even with her long-term outlook, she has found the market's recent performance unsettling. And so this month, Ms....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:36 PM
August 23, 2004
Incoming!
Sure it's only a medium typhoon, but it can't be good when the eye is going to pass almost directly overhead....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:52 PM
June 02, 2004
Arriving Las Vegas
Despite all its faults, I still consider the New York Times a fine newspaper. From the way they still refer to everyone as "Mr." or "Mrs.", to the fact that they still actually gather their own news, they provide...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:02 PM
Can't Go Home Again
With the troop rotation under way, many soldiers are finally returning home after a year (or more) of serving in Iraq. But after a number of returning soldiers killed their wives at Fort Bragg, the army is now enforcing...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:33 AM
May 07, 2004
News from the Southland
With mom and I going away, dad almost cancelled the newspaper subscriptioni but changed his mind at the last minute. I didn't care either way since I could always look it up online, and I mainly read it for...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:03 PM
May 01, 2004
Census Tidbit
Wasn't what I expected, considering the distance involved, both physical and cultural, but Asians are expected to be the fastest-growing minority group in the US, growing by one-third by 2014, and possibly tripling by 2050. That's still only 33...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:42 PM
April 17, 2004
Blowing Up
With fears of deflation dissipating, Mr. Roach at Morgan Stanley has taken to a more upbeat view of China's influence on the world: "We ought to be thanking the Chinese," he wrote last month.
But Americans probably won't
Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:56 PM
April 01, 2004
Funhouse Statistics
For amusement value, you can't beat the recent factoid that the number of unemployed college graduates has exceeded the number of unemployed high-school dropouts. Of course, that's mostly due to there being a lot more college graduates than high...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:30 AM
March 21, 2004
Electoral Strife
If you thought the American presidential election is getting ugly, you should get a load of the brouhaha that is the Taiwan presidential election. The day before the election, the hotly contested campaign hit an explosive climax when the...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:50 PM
March 15, 2004
Chinese Junk
In the face of ever-increasing trade deficits, it's up to the creative American exporter to make up the difference. So what does America have that China wants? Junk, of course. Raw materials such as scrap metal and recycled cardboard...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:34 PM
March 10, 2004
Brilliant!
Another Slashbot thinks he's soooo much smarter than everybody else. I'm constantly told that I have an extremely high intelligence. I always feel like I should know so much more, though. Do you, the Slashdot readers, know of any...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:22 AM
March 05, 2004
The Death of Supersize?
It must've killed the bean-counters to get rid of super-sized fries and drinks. The marginal profit on the extra bit of potato and sugar water is awfully sweet. On the other hand, the bad publicity was starting to sting....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:18 AM
February 17, 2004
American Dreams
Yes, even illegal Mexican immigrants have figured it out: California's cost of living is insane, especially if you want to buy a house, or four, for that matter. I've been warped by California's costs so much that I just...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:10 PM
January 28, 2004
Good and Bad
A great set of articles in this week's New York Times Magazine. The story about the sexual slavery of young (as in 10-13 years young!) women is the kind of thing that makes me want to crawl into bed...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 07:35 PM
January 26, 2004
Fucking Hilarious
Damn it, I usually expect the Obscure Store to be more cynical. They decided to call this story "tragic." I disagree. Alex Plucknett would have turned 15 next week, an athletic Jacksonville eighth-grader with all the hopes and dreams...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:35 AM
January 21, 2004
The New (Year) Economy
The Contrary Investor has a nice roundup of the pitfalls in the US economy for this coming year. There are the obvious caveats about one-shot tax rebates, record low interest rates which can only go up, and the craziness...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:09 PM
December 08, 2003
It Was An Idea
Thought about a trip to Italy sometime, but not if the dollar is stuck at record lows against the Euro. This in the face of rocketing U.S. growth in factory output, productivity, and hiring in the service sector, thanks...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:53 AM
November 17, 2003
Nobody More Deserving
Righteous indignation aside, how hot is it to have a Chinese woman who knows the waiver rules cold? Too bad she's a Yankees fan working for the Dodgers. It would never work.Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:10 AM
November 12, 2003
Random Sports Roundup
Just from weekends spent in front of the tube, it seems to me that kicking is becoming a bit of a lost art in football. Heck, missed field goals are pratically a tradition in some parts of the country....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:10 AM
November 10, 2003
Yeah, That'll Work
Ripped from the (RSS) headlines:
Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:23 AM
October 29, 2003
All Kinds of Wrong
Random news courtesy of The Obscure Store: 20-year-old man burglarizing an apartment pried open a tackle box and found nude photos of young girls, including his little sister. At least the burglar had the balls to turn himself into...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 04:12 PM
October 26, 2003
More Fire
I-805 is now shut down from I-8 to the I-5 merge, which means that I-5 is the only north-south artery still open in San Diego. They're recommending that people stay home unless ordered to evacuate. No imminent danger here,...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 04:30 PM
Ominous
Basically, if the fire hops west past the 805, I am outta here.Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:55 PM
October 22, 2003
Laboring
Southern California supermarket workers are on strike, primarily for their health care benefits. As a former member of the United Auto Workers, I'm happy to support my union brothers by staying away from Ralphs and Vons. Still gotta eat, though, so there's 99 Ranch Market with their non-union ethnic employees, Whole Earth Foods with their non-union, non-ethnic employees (with the prices to compensate for the cute white checkout girls), and the farmers' market with no employees at all.
Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 04:09 PM
October 18, 2003
It's... Tall
Point of national pride, or disaster waiting to happen? You decide.
Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:13 AM
October 17, 2003
A Good Question
The Obscure Store asks: Is there anybody out there who isn't addicted to Internet porn?Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:23 PM
October 16, 2003
Space Oddities
Didn't want to jinx things by talking about it early, just in case 楊利偉 turned into a charcoal briquette on entry or something, because the success of a space mission totally depends on my superstitions. Anyway, China's first manned space mission was a success.Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:52 PM
October 15, 2003
An American Hero
Jared's 15 minutes are still ticking away. Helps that big-city newspapers have lots of pages to fill on Sundays and need some human interest stories. Something sunnier than stories about maimed Marines back from Iraq.
Jared Fogle is our attainable dream.
Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:28 AM
October 07, 2003
Loose
Gray Davis loses, within 30 seconds after the polls closed the news outlets were already calling the election based on the overwhelming tracking polls Bustamante loses, even though he could've been the first Hispanic governor in heavily Hispanic state...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:54 PM
October 05, 2003
Total Recall
In California, when the Field Poll says you're cooked, you're cooked. Various loonies still think that some chickenshit "scandals" are going to drag down Arnold's support rates. Hell, they probably help his numbers more than they hurt. Brings in...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:48 AM
October 02, 2003
Don't Bother
$70,000 a year equals subsistance for a family of four in the Bay Area. Not good news for the average American, considering that poverty rates rose last year, and median househould income fell to $42,409. I guess you can...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 04:03 PM
September 30, 2003
Not Surprising
Because the Dennis Miller experiment went so well on Monday Night Football, the ESPN/ABC brass decided that what the ESPN Sunday-morning football show needed was a right-wing talk-show host to discuss the finer points of the (turn on deep...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:34 PM
September 29, 2003
This is fucked up
Alright, I'm sure the Taiwanese businessmen are whoring it up pretty good in Guangdong, too, but at least they're doing it for a good cause, as opposed to these Japanese tourists. The Chinese media and Internet chatrooms have been...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:09 PM
September 26, 2003
Big Step
The iTunes Music Store added a ton of albums this week, including music from Rounder Records, the first independent label on iTMS, far as I can tell. No Alison Krauss yet, but iTMS isn't designed for music you care...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:22 PM
September 25, 2003
In the No Shit department...
Caltrans tallied up the worst commutes in the Bay Area, and the winner is: The morning slog along westbound Interstate 80 — from Hercules to the Bay Bridge toll plaza — remains the Bay Area's worst commute It wouldn't...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:31 AM
September 17, 2003
World's Worst Ideas, #21895701
Sat around home watching TV with dad for a month and realized that my Chinese listening skills are getting pretty poor. Couldn't quite resolve speech into words fast enough without reading the subtitles. So I started Tivo-ing the Chinese...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:17 AM
August 03, 2003
Model Minority
I can't decide what's the worst, Asian who wanna be white, Asian who wanna be black, or Asians who wanna be Asian. Hey, I could be this guy if we'd moved to, say, Texas, instead of the greater-Berkeley metropolitan...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:57 PM
August 01, 2003
Most Misleading News Story of the Day
Hooray! Unemployment is down, and factory production is up. The economy has gotta be improving now, right? Um, not so fast. Checking the small print: The jobless rate slid to 6.2 percent last month from 6.4 percent, the Labor...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:16 AM
May 13, 2003
Diseased Humor
Yeah, this is a great way to draw in customers —Courtesty of Penny Arcade Taiwan media blow everything out of proportion (that's what happens when you have 189310 different news outlets covering a small island), so I tended to...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 03:04 PM
May 02, 2003
Hideki Matsui: Asian Hero
I knew there was a good reason we drafted him for the fantasy baseball team. Indeed, his only eccentricity, if it can be called that, is his extensive private library of adult videos. His refreshing ability to laugh self-deprecatingly...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:22 PM
April 27, 2003
Bubbl-icious
If you find the stock market isn't nearly as much fun to watch these days, here's a dose of methadone for ticker addiction: Bay Area Housing Sales for the week. It's a nice-and-relaxed weekly update, and it's one investment...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:09 PM
April 09, 2003
Wars and SARS
Most antiwar blogs are nothing more than self-righteous masturbation from screechy liberals. As if anyone cares about dead or maimed Iraqis (or journalists, for that matter). On the other hand, the mainstream public is also painfully bad at order...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:16 AM
April 01, 2003
Hey, now we have
Hey, now we have a reason to go to Celine Dion's new show at Caesar's Palace the next time we're in Vegas. The high-tech centerpiece of the new Colosseum is the $6 million curved Mitsubishi LED screen, which the...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:37 PM
March 31, 2003
This is not good
Yeah, Rumsfeld is an idiot, no real revelations there. But the New Yorker article had some other ugly news as well: "...the religious government in Tehran is now backing Iraq in the war. There isn't any Arab fighting group...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:40 AM
March 06, 2003
Priorities
Is President Bush trying to make himself less popular? Even if he had Osama on a leash (which he didn't), why is he preempting Survivor and Friends? Thank God I'm on the west coast, and Tivo could do its...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:24 PM
March 05, 2003
Cool Prof
I might have learned something in my stat classes if the professor taught via limericks. O, sing to the glory of stat! Of sigma, x-bar and y-hat The joy and elation Of squared correlation — Does anyone here believe...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:51 PM
February 27, 2003
Omron of Japan announced
Omron of Japan announced a cool new package for LEDs that's very thin and has a large illumination area. Looks like they slapped a Fresnel lens in front of the LED chip to spread out the light. The reflector...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:20 AM
February 18, 2003
Moment of Silence
No, not for the dead Orioles pitcher. The guy had a 13.50 ERA for God's sake. The sad event is that Rich Garces is retiring. El Guapo will be missed....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:45 PM
February 10, 2003
So much for Smart Growth
Of course, we shouldn't be complaining about this since this is exactly what our house is like, except our garage is more like 1.5 cars, or one car plus space for lots of junk. Although their new abodes are...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:32 PM
February 09, 2003
What's Up, Doc?
No big surprise that the doctors are sick of dealing with HMOs (42% of doctors aren't taking new HMO patients at all), but now they're dissing the PPOs, too, and God help people on Medicare, since no doctor is...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:02 PM
February 05, 2003
Modest Proposals
And I thought it was nice to be able to put $3000 into the IRA for 2002. The latest Bush plan would allow one to put $7500 annually into an Retirement Savings Account, similar to a Roth IRA, plus...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:00 PM
January 26, 2003
Nobody Gives a Shit
The Untold Agony of Black-on-Black Murder LA Times The problem "is sad, and frustrating, and infuriating," he concluded. "Sad, because black men like me are dying. Frustrating, because all day, I'm just patching holes here. Infuriating, because they are...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:23 PM
November 20, 2002
Dangerous Trend
Courtesy of the Open Season column in the SF Chronicle. Bob Cullinan of San Rafael asks: What do these NFL players have in common? Kurt Warner, Jerome Bettis, Terrell Davis, Donovan McNabb. All have sustained serious injuries in the past...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:28 AM
November 15, 2002
Looks like Apple is
Looks like Apple is trying to cover all the demographics with their Switch commercials. Yo Yo Ma De La Soul Best line ever: "I'm Yo Yo Ma. I play the cello."...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:51 PM
November 02, 2002
Misleading Ad of the Day
"No burger from McDonalds has won it." ... "No burger from In-n-Out has won it." ... "The Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger, winner of the 2002 Restaurant Business Association's Best New Burger Award." For one thing, the burger doesn't even...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:52 PM
October 29, 2002
I don't know if it's
I don't know if it's a cosmic coincidence or a media conspiracy, but there's been a bunch of articles about China lately. Nothing you don't know already, but it's interesting to see how China is portrayed by American media. I...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:03 PM
October 18, 2002
Love the New York Times
Love the New York Times Magazine this week. There's (heterosexual) male-on-male sexual harassment, the myth of the 18-to-39 demographic, a sad tale of a Chinese girl trapped by an earthquake, and a suitably ambiguous story about The Strokes (are they...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 06:09 PM
September 24, 2002
Insert Your Own Joke Here
Winner of the Miss America (Lifestyle and Fitness in) Swimsuit Competition: Jennifer Adcock (Miss Mississippi)...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:56 AM
August 15, 2002
LA Times
Not that you can read any of these articles, since the site require registration. At least the registration is free, if you don't mind selling your soul. One of my regrets in life is missing out on Kip Thorne's General...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:40 PM
August 06, 2002
Can you feel the dripping sarcasm?
Mix with your favorite Wall Street or Middle East diaster-du-jour and you've got a nice front page layout for the morning paper. On his final day before a monthlong respite from Washington at his Texas ranch, the 56-year-old fitness fanatic...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 12:02 AM
June 10, 2002
Good to see that it's
Good to see that it's possible for parents to help send their kids to MIT without turning them into self-immolating psychopaths....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 05:28 PM
May 23, 2002
True Love
"David M. Frey, 22, of Gainesville, Fla., and E. Jennie McNelis, 23, of Bensalem, play the characters - he's the poultry and she's the blue fuzz." Courtesy of The Obscure Store, which is a bastion of cynicism, so it's nice...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:36 PM
Why I Hate Weblogs
I agree 100%. Weblogs are trite, meandering, junk-writing dashed off by lazy writers. Good thing I don't give a shit....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 05:28 PM
May 12, 2002
Civil Obedience
Most people don't seem to consider this to be an artistic act. After all, he just made a highway sign to published specs, but this struck a chord with me in a number of ways, so I'll give him the...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:09 PM
April 28, 2002
Who Was Responsible for Elisabeth Shin?
Why Caltech is better than MIT: We don't light ourselves on fire. Who can know whether she anticipated that there would one day be an audience for her reflections? They certainly do not have a ring of finality. But now...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:46 PM
April 26, 2002
The median home price in
The median home price in California exceeded $300,000 last month. This includes chateaus in Tahoe, McMansions in the inland suburbs, a shack in the redwoods, and whatever habitable space one can scratch out in the Bay Area. Scary stuff. Not...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 03:06 AM
April 21, 2002
Boo Hoo
Who the hell gives a crap about the problems of overachieving white kids from a rich school district? Of course, all the featured kids got into their first choices (Harvard, Dartmouth, U.C. Berkley, respectively), thanks to supportive parents, private tutors,...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:57 PM
April 13, 2002
Save the Mammoth Orange!
Even a roadside shack in the middle of BFE isn't safe from the ravages of freeway expansion. Maybe they're even more vulnerable to the sprawl, since there's still space to pave out there. Compared to a place like South Pasadena,...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 02:15 PM
March 13, 2002
Saw a Frontline documentary about
Saw a Frontline documentary about the American pornography husiness. Most of the material was surprisingly pedestrian. Porn is a big business, big corps make lots of money carrying porn, yada yada yada. They even dragged Larry Flint out for the...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 08:35 AM
February 28, 2002
Isn't it ironic that the
Isn't it ironic that the leading lady in The Queen of the Damned is dead? Yeah, so I'm only the 29,198,191,382th person to notice that....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 04:15 PM
February 22, 2002
Okay, you know NBC is
Okay, you know NBC is hard up for material when they're running infomercials for the Mormon church and showing figure skating exhibitions. I'd rather see heartwarming stories of atheletes' struggles. Or more runs of the women's giant slalom....Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 10:05 PM
February 11, 2002
Hard to believe that we
Hard to believe that we exist in the same plane of reality. "The trio of salespeople that day was wearing the latest look--plumber-butt bluejeans and spiked heels." -- LA Times column...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:13 PM
January 29, 2002
"Men can be so easily entertained."
The link stolen shamelessly from The Obscure Store. All wackiness ("A man in a chicken suit dropped an egg, signaling the start of competition.") aside, it's a story about a man trying to save his business by doing what he...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 11:16 PM
January 13, 2002
Boy, this doesn't make him sound any smarter
(Reuters) President Bush fainted and fell off a couch on Sunday evening after choking on a pretzel while watching a televised football game......Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 09:12 PM
January 12, 2002
Cree got hammered on missing
Cree got hammered on missing the earnings estimate and a lousy top line. The prediction of zero growth for the next quarter or two didn't go over well, either. That's not a good sign for the LED business in general,...Read the full entry...
Posted by mikewang at 01:08 PM