Reading Friedman’s book The World Is Flat more than a decade ago inspired my interest in the global community. I’ll have to read his newish book, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations! He talks about it in this clip, and then comments on Trump…

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This week I’ve have done much less studying for the GRE than I hoped given I am taking the test in four days. Tuesday I thought I would tune out the election coverage till later in the night when I hoped to see confirmed all the media’s predictions Hillary Clinton would be elected. But none of that went according to plan.

Within just two days, the petition to the Electoral College was signed more times than any petition in the site's history.

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Today I reported for jury duty for my first time, but was not chosen to serve. Maybe I’ll have better luck next year, and at least it got me out of the house!

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My dad shares a lot of posts on Facebook, on a variety of topics. Many are political or gun related, and sometimes the comments are interesting. This was a recent one posted by Tess Taylor on April 23 at 12:26pm PT:

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This is just a quick note for future reference. A few friends shared the Medium piece “On Becoming Anti-Bernie” (PDF) by Robin Alperstein. I only read the first few pages, but that much of it basically reflects my sentiment: I love that Bernie is proving many Americans have a strong …

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I’ve only ready a few stories on the Apple controversy, but I’m increasingly anxious, hoping civil liberties prevail. This is a bit of a journal entry combined with some comments I want to remember, so I’ll give a bit of background in case I read this in …

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Last month, before I realized there was going to be a thousand GOP and Democratic debates, I was still tuning in to each one, though often late, as they caught me off guard. During the Feb. 6 GOP debate, I actually empathized with Marco Rubio, as several times he seemed to nearly shed tears.

Today, Rubio dropped out of GOP nomination race, finally. Not that Trump or Cruz are any better ideologically, but they at least seem more likely to be able to handle the pressure of the job.

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“Government Surveillance” is scary, and a great episode of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”. The show, from last March, features man on the street evidence Americans are poorly informed about surveillance, as well as an interview with Snowden in which Oliver portrays the government programs in the context of dick pics. This perspective seems to turn the issue from something Americans care little about to something deeply personal and repulsive. (And it isn’t the sending of the dick pics that is repulsive.)

Oliver may have helped build momentum behind this issue by making it personal, but it was still somewhat removed since we don’t know of many specific cases. Now that Apple is very publicly fighting the government on a specific case, I hope more people see the light and unite for civil liberties.

Airport full body scanners see all, but the government says it doesn't keep a copy, just in case.

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Yesterday I watched the last Democratic and GOP debates, the first such viewing on my part this cycle. It was quite interesting, but I’m not going to go into all that now. This post is just to say, after watching the final GOP debate today, I remembered The Political Compass, a cool website with a tool that graphs you not just on an economic left-right scale, but a social authoritarian-libertarian scale.

Yesterday I watched the last Democratic and GOP debates, the first such viewing on my part this cycle. It was quite interesting, but I'm not going to go into all that now. This post is just to say, after watching the final GOP debate today, I remembered The Political Compass, a cool website with a tool that graphs you not just on an economic left-right scale, but a social authoritarian-libertarian scale.

My political orientation as of January 2016

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After an hourlong run and finishing my leftover tostada salad from The Little Chihuahua this afternoon, I noticed out the kitchen window a helicopter flying fairly low over the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco. I didn’t think much of it till I heard it again, and again.

A twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, operated by the Remote Sensing Laboratory Aerial Measuring System from Nellis Air Force Base, heads west over San Francisco Monday, February 1, at 3:37 p.m.

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Deciding how to fix health care is hard enough. But when huge problems I didn’t even know were problems come to light, it makes me wonder how we can ever hope to change. Then again, every problem is a solution waiting for someone to take charge.

In this case, drug shortages could be studied and solved through smart tracking software run by a national health organization or on a smaller scale within a hospital system.

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Instead of catching up on my photos today, I’ll start gathering some research here regarding ADHD and medications. This isn’t intended to be a cohesive narrative, but a brainstorming work space. It’s public in case it might be of use to someone.

Literature notes

Stimulant medications for …

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Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I found a link to (a blog post linking to) the below video of some boys known as the Rhodes twins, coming out to their father. I wasn’t going to click, as I’ve been experiencing strong overhyped-sentimental-click-baiting fatigue, but then I caved, maybe because they appeared to be cute. What the hell kind of person am I?

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Tim shared with me a post from the blog Nao, which comments on the conflict between China’s working class and the state. The post offers English translations of some of Foxconn laborer Xu Lizhi’s poetry and of his obituary in Shenzhen Evening News. That’s right, Xu is dead, having survived 24 years before taking his life. He followed in the steps of many others, and certainly won’t be the last to do so.

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I just read (via Eric) the Salon article “GOP voter ID law gets crushed: Why Judge Richard Posner’s new opinion is so amazing,” which beckoned me to go on and read the dissent in full. I did, and it was indeed entertaining.

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I finally started listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” and toward the beginning he talked about the 250 New York phone book names experiment.

I went through the list (Are You a Connector?) of names and found I knew roughly 72 people with the given surnames.

With the …

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As part of my daily struggle to get to work, I watched the new TED talk by Simon Anholt, a policy adviser who “helps national, regional and city governments earn better reputations—not by launching advertising or PR campaigns, but by changing the way they behave.” I thought it was a good way of thinking, and so I can better remember, here are some of my notes, but do watch the video!

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I’ve lived in three cities with a large homeless population: Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and especially San Francisco. But somehow I’ve never mustered the courage to strike up a conversation with any people living on the streets. Really, I rarely muster the courage to strike up a conversation with anyone on the street at all. I need to defeat my shyness.

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This got me researching later about the party scene in Tokyo. I found many forums with accounts of people doing drugs – specifically, ecstasy or (the better) pure MDMA, which is called "Molly" in the states and "Mandy" in the UK. The general situation in Japan seems to be:

* Japan is one of the strictest countries regarding drug laws, and quantity or intent matter not
* Drugs that do exist here are therefore much more expensive than elsewhere (“The street price of a gram of cannabis weed was $58.30 in 2005, over twice as much as in the next most expensive nation, Australia.”)
* People don't talk about drugs even if they do them. Similar to elsewhere, but more severe. Apparently many of the population are extremely sensitive about this, due to what I can only imagine is an ingrained sense that breaking rules is wrong (“unconscionable”) and you cannot question the rule's basis. If you even mention drugs, people will stop talking to you and you'll have no friends.

AgeHa

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I’ve watched this video twice now, and for some reason it made me decide to write little blogs about videos I watch that make me think. This is mostly so I can review the thoughts I took from the video, hopefully helping me internalize them.

I stumbled on this one while watching a TED series called “Lifehacks” on Netflix with Travis, and it turned out more interesting than I thought it would be at first.

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I didn’t finish this book, but I started these notes:

Book notes:

ijtihad, Islam’s tradition of independent reasoning, requires being familiar with Islam’s latest thinkers

The Prophet Mohammad reportedly said religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others. There’s a distinction between Islam as an …

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I just sent this e-mail to my dad, but decided to add it here:

I am not one of the people who think Obama was born in Kenya (and not sure if I care), but this Reuters article is interesting, detailing basically the same controversy in the past and on …

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This was written by Cassie W of Hartford Union High School

Hello Fellow Myspacers,

What will you be doing in 60 days? You probably dont know. You probably dont really care. November 7th, 2006 is just another day that you have to go through. But its not. Its so much …

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Message to Joey on MySpace:

well, my view is that i’m all for anything that increases awareness - especially when it’s positive. i even like when religious protesters hold a rally - but this is even better, because many people admire him. this is an issue that I think will …

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