GOT predictions

Midway through the past season and I think I can predict the ending and hopefully get it right.

- Jamie Lannisters would kill Celsie to save Brienne, and say what a man would do for love.

- Dynarey's dragon would try to burn Jon and Jon survive to prove he is a true Targyren.

- Tyrine would renew marriage with Sensa.

- Arya would become lady of Brathean.

- No more night watch

- The Golden Company would switch side

- There would be more to explain about the night King in the coming books, if they were ever to be finished.

- Or in a really wild twist that someone, maybe Celsie, used dragon glass to create the night King again. 

Let's see how many out of the night I get right and if there were any huge surprises.

New Zealand attack

The attack was gruesomely captured on video by the attacker. I want to put down a few points, relate this to other attacks.

1. The attacker is someone has no real ability to achieve something in life. Maybe he felt some immigrants did some wrong, therefore he has to take some actions. But why attack innocent people? Join the army and fight for the democratically elected Afghan and Iraq governments. Or be a mercenary and do some good. The answer is that he was not that good at attacking armed enemies. So he had to pick easy targets, like old people, women and children in a mosque. Tillman gave up a football career to fight he evil, this guy don't have he guts or ability to even that. One word, a looser.

2. The immediate reaction on gun control is stupid. I think we should arm the minorities under attack. Help them learn how to use firearm and protect themselves rather just police patrol the mosques for a few days. Can the police always be there? Even if there weren't any guns, how can people stop a knife attackers, or someone steal guns, or a bad cop? Ultimately, only people in the community has to act.

3. Immigration in these countries have problems. Liberals don't want to think about it, they only want to feel good by doing the "right" thing. But people from another culture will cause problems to local community. Pilgrims lived peacefuly with native Americans at first, until frictions escalated to violence. Native Americans attacks on early settlers are like this crazy nut, think immigrants should just be killed than trying to understand and solve the problems. Of course, pilgrims were technological more advance than the native Americans, therefore even with a much smaller number they could still keep the foot hold and expand. Today western history books tends to put westerns in North America as invaders, but they were refugees from the old world. 

I think rather than assuming multi culture is good, we should have a common understanding of what is good. When we respect religious freedom, we need to determine where an extreme religious believe crosses the line. I think we all know the type of cult that ask or deceive followers to perform mass suicide is wrong and should not be protected by religious freedom.  But what about fanning hatred to the country or to the Constitution of the country?

The British emman that served as the spiritual guide of some the terrorists in the 90s was finally arrested. But what about people that prompt Sharia laws in the UK or US? Should freedom of speech protect them when such idea directly against the basic rights of the US citizens? Even if we allow such speech inside of the country, why should we allow such people to come into the country?

I think there is a fundamental paradox we face, should a system protect someone try to destroy it? If we don't, it could cage the system from changing for the good. If we do, who do we avoid another Hitler from taking power?

I of the opinion that such protection is only given to native born citizens, who have never openly or secretly align with a foreign government or organization. We cannot allow immigrants to come in and change the country's system, because enemies can pretend to love the country and secretly lead the country into a disaster. Although some native born citizens can still betray their country, at least all if them did it because their idea will eventually lead to a better system or solution of their country, however misled they may be.

For immigrants, you have to accept the current system, or you do not belong here. No country in the world would allow people hate them to get in. 

Ungraceful mind and hateful people

Shooting

Today's shooting had an impact much larger than many previous shootings to me. Three days ago three people died in another shooting in an Oregon mall, which I have been to many times. That was scary, however, I did not feel much, which I should. I think we had so many shooting before, that one more shooting with three death did not seem "bad." It was just another nut case. However, today's shooting in Sandy Hook Connecticut is different. These are kids.

In the past we try to reason the killing, the killers were bullied, the killer was fired at work, the killer acted out some movie fantasy. Whatever the reason was, there seemed some connection to the killers. We at least could understand that a crazy person would think other people were responsible their bad luck, bad live. But how could kindergartners be responsible to anything?

When Columbine shooting happened, I was still young and the event seemed remote. Partially it was because I only stayed in high school for two years in the US, so I do not feel very attached to the school life there. But today I have a 5 year old and 8 year old, I know happens and we talked to the teachers, went to the conferences, such an event seemed unimaginable in such a place. I also think if I were in the situation, I could have done this or that. I could try to protect myself or try to fight back. However, when my innocent kids were being killed, it felt to me that I could not do anything if that happens. These kids are just so innocent. The first thought in my mind when I heard this on the radio is to skin the bastard.

Another reason is that Sandy Hook and the school is very similar to our town. Both are small towns, with a school of about 600 students, very low crime rate.

Now let's talk about what to do. From what is reported by the new media, the school recently installed security systems and require visitors to go through the office. That could be by the school principle and psychologist were killed. The killer must have shoot through some windows. So the obvious thing the schools can do is to use bullet proof glasses. However, this does not protect some parents or people can go through the security to get in a do something like this. Maybe a divorced parent want to take revenge on kids, whatever.

The next thing of course is gun control. I have been against banning of guns and more gun control. I all for the right to bare arm and defend ourselves. After the Virginia Tech and Aurora movie theater shootings, I argued that if more people have guns, the shooter could not have killed so many people. However, I start to change my mind. How could kindergartners protect themselves. And do we need armed teachers and principles in school, elementary school? And do we want the schools to look like jails?

To prevent this, I think only a total ban of guns could helped, but I don't see that happening. The reason is that there are so many other legitimate use of guns, hunting, self-defense, etc.. Ban assault rifles would not here, because most of the killings were done by hand guns. Ban handguns prevents reasonable self-defense use. Track and ban mentally unstable persons from buying guns would not help either in this case, because the guns in this case were registered in the killer's mother's name and her record was clean. Really, most of the half way solution do not work.

Related, today we also learned 22 school kids were injured in China by a person wielding a big knife. China bans any guns (with some very limited exceptions) and even require ID to buy big knifes. The difference here is that the Chinese kids are not dead. They were hurt but still live.

I am not willing to suggest a total ban on guns, because I think the other danger was citizen's right to defend even against police and the government.

I got the Lin-fever in the last few days, yes, Jeremy Lin. I searched a lot about him and watch and re-watched his games. There are still a lot more to be seen from him, whether he can keep up and continue his amazing rise. But based on what I see, here is my opinion and prediction of Lin.

The strongest quality of Lin is his confidence and focus on the game. Maybe being a devoted Christian helped, maybe it is just his personality and genes. After all, his dad has a PhD in engineering, which takes a lot of focus and hard work to get. This is not just from the game winning shot he made against the Raptors, but also evident from how he competed against stereotypes all his basketball life. No Division I scholarship out of high school, not drafted, waived twice, but keep on playing. If he wanted a mellow and ok life, he could get it from his Harvard economic degree. No need to play at the bottom of the NBA. He overcame all these because his confidence in himself and certain passion of the game. There is a Youtube Video of his high school coach saw him as the leader on the floor. That was after he joined Golden State. I don't think even him saw Lin becoming a starter for a NBA team in two years. But the fact in high school Lin was already the leader of the team, shows that this is not a fluke, not something he pretend to be. He really like to take charge, which is hard to find in today's NBA. The only other player had the confidence was Michael Jordan. I still remember how MJ was disappointed by the young players at Wizards. MJ said something like those 20 year old's showed less desire to win than this 40 year old. Sure, no one can be the same as MJ, but the lack of energy is evident in many NBA teams. There are many great players, just not a lot of people really want to win and want to lead the team to win. Koby wants to win, but just for himself. I watched a few games of LaBron James, he is good, probably equal to MJ in skills, but I did not see the spark that can ignite a whole team. This is where Lin is good at.

He is a smart player. He learns and understands what's going on. He does not let his emotion take over his brain. That's something rare. And this also helps with his confidence. With his intelligence and confidence, he make the team feel they can always find a way out no matter how back a game started.

I have to say, physical skill wise Lin is not close to the top players in NBA. He is ok and good. If he continue to play like this, he will be great. But he has his shortcomings and if cannot over come them, his skill probably put him around the middle range of players. May have a few good seasons but hard to see him lead the team into the final based on his skills. But he could overcome this by maximize his strong traits above, and lucky enough to stay in a good team.

What I see is that Lin is in a good team that fits him. From the few Nicks games I watched, I can see Amare and Melo are very strong players. They both want to win, but they lack what Lin had. Certainly, Lin plays a different position, but Lin can help the coach best use Amare and Melo. I think Amare and Melo are still going to be bigger stars, no matter how hot Lin is now, at the end of the day, he is not a flashy player. He is not going do things just to look good, but to win.

If Lin can be trusted by both the coach and players on the floor, he would be key to Nicks winning games. I don't know where Lin is going, but like someone on the NBA Tuesday show said, let's just enjoy what Lin's doing one game at a time. So far, he has been great.

Peter Diepenbrock, Jeremy's high school coach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOdINo9PmOs

SOPA and PIPA

SOPA and PIPA has created a pretty big reaction from the tech world.

I can see the media industry's frustration with people watching pirated movies and listening to pirated music. However, what make their position less admirable is the pile of money they sit on and the tactic they used. They basically took on the position that as long as they can best protect their wallet, they don't really care about anyone else. And they are slow to adapt new technologies.

The story just repeats itself, first when cassette tapes came out, music industry had a big problem, then VCR caused movie and TV industries to scream. Now they are at the internet. It bothers me that they never try to look at creating better product for their customer first, but always try to stop new technologies.

This reminded me of a movie I saw on how Chinese lost the advantage of movable type print to Korean after it was invented. Chinese official and business wanted to keep using the old way, even when the new method is much more efficient.

The biggest problem of the law is to give a government agency the power to block foreign sites. I think that is like the way how Chinese government would do it. Suprisingly some of the big mouth liberals supports SOPA, Al Franken, for example. I am glad Nanncy Palosie opposes it. It is actually evenly splited between on both sides, so this is not a partisan issue, rather this is about which representative gets support from the media industry.

Sent from my phone

Wukan protest

The small fishing village in Guangdong has been protesting some government officials' illegal land sale and failure to compensate the villagers. It started as many other similar protests, where people organized on their own to get their rights. What's surprising is that people in Wukan is close to victory. Government has relented and released three organizers that were arrested. This is the most significant developement.

The protest and some of the government reactions were kind of expected. The government started blaming "outside" forces of trying to inflame the situation. At the same time they admitted that the requests from the villagers are reasonable.

I think there are two very positive things that came of this and definitely shows some progress of China's progress of self governing.

The first is the fact that protecters show great self control. There were some violence, but majority of the villager used peaceful protest to put pressure on the government. And they did not give up after government try to force them down. They expelled the government officials and setup road block. It is clearly the right way to fight for rights. It has the small similarity to what Dr. King's civil rights movement, although lacks a larger goal and leader.

The second is the government's relealization that simply using force is not going to resolve reasonable demands. They cannot just arrest a few people and try to scare the rest into submission.

Unfortunately, this story is unlikely to be reported by the Chinese media, which is really doing a disservice to the Chinese government, because this can help teach people not go to extremes and go violent. This shows people how to get justice in a more peaceful way. It also shows to local officials what they should not do, which is link a local event to "outside" force and try to fool people.

BTW, the city's Chinese is 乌坎.

Sent from my phone