Taiwanese People Dissatisfied with Colleges

An excerpt from the Taipei Times article:

Mou Tsung-tsan (牟宗燦), director of the university, said that the public feels that colleges nowadays are low quality, due to the surging number of schools established in recent years.

"With so many colleges around, the quality of education plummets and there is a lack of competition among schools," Mou said. "This is bad for our country's future, because with globalization we need positive competition among schools."

The poll indicated that 42.34 percent of the public would like their children to remain in Taiwan for college, while 36.31 percent wanted to send their children to US or European colleges, Mou said.

Survey results also showed that most think the biggest problems college students face are their own laziness and lack of motivation, Mou added.

Mou said that the university has been carrying out new education plans with the Ministry of Education budget and hopes to address the problem from the beginning.

Social Psychology of 2004 U.S. Election

I got the newest issue of the Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (Vol 5, Issue 1) in the mail today. There is a special feature section called the "Social Psychology of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election." Two articles from that section look particularly interesting, based on the abstracts. If you're affiliated with a college or university, you can get the online version through your school's subscription.

American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of a subtle reminder of death on voting intentions for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. On the basis of terror management theory and previous research, we hypothesized that a mortality salience induction would increase support for President George W. Bush and decrease support for Senator John Kerry. In late September 2004, following a mortality salience or control induction, registered voters were asked which candidate they intended to vote for. In accord with predictions, Senator John Kerry received substantially more votes than George Bush in the control condition, but Bush was favored over Kerry following a reminder of death, suggesting that President Bush’s re-election may have been facilitated by nonconscious concerns about mortality in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.

Lies in a Time of Threat: Betrayal Blindness and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

Exit polls from the 2004 U.S. presidential election indicated overwhelming support for President Bush among voters who said they valued honesty, even though the Bush administration had been sharply criticized for deceiving the public, especially concerning the reasons for invading Iraq. A psychological theory recently developed to help explain memory loss in trauma survivors sheds light on this paradox. Betrayal Trauma Theory (Freyd, 1996) states that memory impairment is greatest when a victim is dependent on the perpetrator. The theory also predicts who will be “blind” to signs of deception—those who are emotionally or financially dependent on the person who is lying. Although every American is dependent on the U.S. President to some extent, religious conservatives may be more psychologically dependent than others. Because they believe their core values are under attack, they depend on powerful leaders such as President Bush to defend these values. This psychological dependence may make it difficult for them to notice the administration’s deceptions.

Taipei 101 Causing Earthquakes?

An article in The Guardian from a couple of weeks ago reported that Taipei 101, completed in 2004 and currently the tallest building in the world, may have opened up an old fault line, resulting in the increase of micro-earthquakes.

Scary.

(Found this out from One whole jujuflop situation).

What Happened To Me At Property Exam Today

Warning: This is pretty gory...

Racist E-Card. Argh!

From angry asian man:

Oh hell no. What would be the point of sending someone this e-card? Why would this be a good idea? Oh yeah, I guess it would be a good idea... if you're racist.

What the fuck?

SFO Installing Message Screens for the Deaf

From today's SF Chronicle:

Passengers with hearing disabilities will be able to read public-address announcements on dozens of large video screens at San Francisco International Airport in the coming months under terms of a lawsuit settlement announced Wednesday.

"We're hoping SFO is going to be a model for other airports to follow,'' said Kevin Knestrick, an attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, an Oakland nonprofit that claimed in a lawsuit filed in 2002 that the airport was not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The key part of the settlement requires SFO to install 80 visual paging monitors in the airport. Large plasma screens will display text messages duplicating announcements made over the airport's public-address system. The text announcements will scroll on the screen so that travelers can view recent messages, including pages and emergency messages.

Read the full article.

Pandora - Very Cool Music Site

Mike told me about this site a few days ago - Pandora. It asks you to type in musicians or songs you like, and it will play other songs it thinks you may enjoy using whatever algorithm they use, for free!

Enjoy!

UC Berkeley Enrollment Numbers

The final student enrollment numbers at UC Berkeley for Fall 2005 were officially released today. Nothing particularly surprising, I don't think.

Read the press release and the data.

Straight Asian Man Magazine?

A new Asian American men's magazine, SAM, is having their launch party this Saturday, in case anyone is interested in going.

I am intrigued by what SAM stands for. I couldn't find anything about this on their website, but the first thing that crossed my mind was Straight Asian Man. The website seems to only show half-naked women, so that might make sense.

Or it can just be named after the publisher/editor, Samuel Choae (an AsianWeek article on Choae).

I emailed them with this question...hopefully I'll get a response. If anybody knows the answer, please let me know.

Edit: So it stands for Successful Alpha Male, according to the AsianWeek article. Maybe I should start reading the things I link to...thanks Anonymous!

University Law Amended in Taiwan

The Taiwanese Legislature amended the University Act to allow universities to choose their own presidents, abolish the Taiwan citizens only requirement for presidents, require some kind of a faculty review process, and allow for greater student involvement in university governance.

It is now awaiting President Chen Shui-bian's signature to be official.

I think this is great. Greater autonomy, accountability, and access is always good. I don't necessarily think a non-Taiwanese president would be better for Taiwanese universities, but presumptuous and discriminatory requirements like this must be abolished.

Read the full article.

High School Fines Students for Cursing

$103 fines. This principle seems to be clueless about (and proud of) the classism of this policy. From the article:

The tickets accuse students of creating a public disturbance and require them to appear in Superior Court. No one has yet paid the fine, which some students and parents say is excessive, especially for students from low-income families. Hartford educators said the fine was intended to be a financial burden. "If it was $25, maybe they would pay and curse just the same," Ms. Gordon said.

Modern Day M. Butterfly?

A former US official said he made false official statements when trying to hide a trip to Taipei and his romance with a Taiwanese spy, Isabelle Cheng. Read the full article.

Is Cheng, in fact, a man?

Asian American Justice Center Opposes Alito

Asian American Justice Center, formerly known as National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, issued a press release today opposing the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

My Strategy for Property Exam

University of Oregon Refuses to Defend Academic Freedom

Found this mentioned on Leiter's Law School Reports. The first few paragraphs of the article:

When Merle H. Weiner was hired as a law professor at the University of Oregon, she was told that one of her duties was to write articles and books — and she did just that, publishing extensively on her areas of expertise, one of which is domestic violence.

But Weiner found out this year that even if the university expects her to publish, she was on her own when she faced a threatened suit over one of her articles, even though the university never contested the quality of the article and even though she had obtained legal opinions that she would prevail in court — if only someone had agreed to pay the bills necessary to fight.

When no one would commit to paying the anticipated legal bills, the journal that published Weiner — also unable to pay for a defense — removed from its electronic archive the reference that led to the threatened lawsuit. While the University of Oregon’s lawyer had urged her to have the journal do just that as a way of avoiding a suit, Weiner opposed this action as giving in to a threat and denying her the right to publish her work in full.

She said that the incident has hurt her ability to do her work on domestic violence and raises issues for any scholar who may publish on works that might lead someone to want to sue them.

“Any time any alleged batterer wants to threaten suit, I’m going to have to defend myself, no matter how unmeritorious the suit is,” Weiner said. “If my institution wants me to be doing my job, they need to be standing behind me.”

The American Association of University Professors agrees that in cases like this, colleges should provide a defense for their professors. And Oregon’s Faculty Senate is now considering whether to ask the university to change its policy of not providing such defense. But university officials defend their approach — and one prominent academic who was herself sued for her writings, and who won in court, warns that there may be a down side to having colleges defend their professors’ writings.

Racial Violence Continues in Australia

I think this is a good example of when police is needed, given the kind of world we live in. This is some screwed up racist shit.

(I'm blogging 20 minutes before my exam, what the hell?!)

My Law School Exam Strategy

Birthright Citizenship (and Right to Bear Arms)

So it looks like the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus wants to revoke the principle of granting U.S. citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S., according to a L.A. Times article:

The principle at issue rests on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to guarantee the rights of emancipated slaves: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

Some lawmakers advocating tougher immigration laws contend that the amendment has been misinterpreted for decades. Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors — and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection.

Using this interpretation, we might as well ban guns, too, right? The right to bear arms, stipulated in the 2nd Amendment, has long been a Republican mantra. The 2nd Amendment states: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Applying the line of reasoning these GOP lawmakers (a couple members of the caucus are Democrats) are using, we can say that the right to bear arms has also been misinterpreted because the militia today is not "in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors" either.

In the end, this is probably a non-issue though, as there is no Senate support for this measure:

"There is no support for the concept in the Senate," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). "There are certain things that we have done as a nation for a long time that I don't think we're going to change. Rolling back the clock is not going to solve the problem of immigration."

This is just some opportunistic crap that will get nowhere. I'm sure this is the insightful analysis you were looking for.

Passenger Never Said "Bomb"

An article from MSNBC updated last night quotes passengers as saying Rigoberto Alpizar, the passenger shot dead by air marshals, never uttered the word bomb. So what really happened?

The air marshals' story seems fairly convenient...who's going to doubt them?:

Federal officials say Rigoberto Alpizar made the threat in the jetway, after running up the plane’s aisle from his seat at the back of the jetliner. They opened fire because the 44-year-old Home Depot employee ignored their orders to stop, reached into his backpack and said he had a bomb, according to authorities.

Alpizar's brother, speaking from Costa Rica, said he would never believe the shooting was necessary.

“I can't conceive that the marshals wouldn't be able to overpower an unarmed, single man, especially knowing he had already cleared every security check,” Carlos Alpizar told The Orlando Sentinel.

It probably never crossed their minds to tackle him instead of shooting? Why? Because they were afraid for their own safety. If Alpizar was in the jetway and no one else was there, the detonation of the bomb would have probably be contained in the jetway. The possibility of the bomb injuring anyone on the plane was surely much higher had Aplizar still been on the plane. So the only people in danger, if there was any, were the air marshals and Alpizar. Tackling the guy would've been too hard. Relying on their guns was the easiest way to ensure their own safety.

What kind of training do these air marshals get anyway? Is it adequate? Apparently they don't even need to pass a marksmanship exam.

Read more about what happened with Alpizar.

Why Should We Trust Cops?

The latest incident with the SF police videos is infuriating. But given what we (should) know about police culture, police brutality, driving while black, code of silence, and so on and so forth, this isn't that surprising. I hate the fools who make excuses for them though.

Why do we as a society place so much trust in the police? Obviously people of different class, gender, and racial backgrounds have different views toward cops, with the extremes being poor people of color who distrust them and rich white people who look to them as saviors. I don't have data to back this up now, but I know there are studies out there dealing with this.

The question I have is, should we, as individuals, trust cops? To answer this question I started looking at the requirements to become a cop in San Francisco, where entry-level "peace officers" make $64,347 to $89,601. The basic requirements are a GED and passing an simplistic exam. Assuming you have not committed any felonies and you can demonstrate your physical prowess and hide your mental defects, you're on your way to ruling the streets, and get paid mad money for it.

Why do we have such a low threshold for people who can carry guns around and kill people whenever they feel threatened? Do cops have the critical skills to deduce when to kill? Or are they relying on their biases to judge situations? Are they self-reflexive enough to see their own biases?

Now, I don't know what kind of training they go through, but when your pool of potential trainees are of such "low" quality, it is unlikely that all of them will come out as qualified as they should be. Just as there are bad doctors and bad professors, there will be bad cops no matter how stringent the training is.

Are there good people who become cops because they think they can help people? Of course. But once they place themselves in that position, individual intent matters not and the power and authority rules them. See the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Is my viewpoint classist? Probably. Maybe someone couldn't afford to go to college and wanted a stable job to feed their families. Fine. Though not malicious, the result and consequences are the same. See above paragraph.

Obviously I'm coming from an anti-police perspective, but I find it hard that anyone can disagree with the fact that we should raise the requirements for becoming a cop. If we can't get rid of them, we at least deserve cops who are intelligent enough to understand that using morale boosting as a defense for making videos that denigrate people based on their class, race, sexuality, and gender is just really really really dumb.

I'm spending way too much time on this. Back to studying.

Student Suspended for Speaking Spanish

A high school student in Kansas City was suspended for 1.5 days for speaking Spanish in the hall. The principal was unable to produce any written policy restricting language use when asked by the boy's father, and the suspension was subsequently rescinded by the school district. Apparently this happened more than a week ago, but it hasn't made the national news until recently. Read the article here.

This article mentions English-only laws that forbid bilingual education, but it is unclear whether or not this applied to this school or school district. Regardless, such laws would restrict the language of instruction and mostly likely not be able to cover students' private conversations.

This principal sounds like a idiot, and the boy should have a strong civil rights case. I can't believe we have people like this running schools. How do we raise self-reflexive and progressive kids when we got utterly unqualified people teaching them. Freakin' annoying.

S.F. Police Video

Fucking pigs. A few articles from Thursday's and yesterday's SF Chronicle on the police videos:

1. Video scandal rocks S.F. police: 20 police officers ordered suspended
2. Residents say videos reflect all-too-familiar attitude
   
3. Videos violate most companies' harassment rules, experts say
   

reappropriate has a good commentary: racism is art?

Discrimination at Best Buy

So it looks like Best Buy, the giant retailer that sells everything from computers to refrigerators, is being sued for employment discrimination, according to this L.A. Times article.

The plaintiffs allege that people of color and women were routinely passed over for sales and management positions while less experienced white men were promoted. In addition, the article says:

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, including Bill Lann Lee, former U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, also portrayed the alleged discrimination as part of a company ethic that focuses on serving white customers. They cited a company policy requiring salespeople to target buyers matching four hypothetical models - all white.

It doesn't seem surprising that management would think that men would be better at selling televisions and all the "manly" stuff than women. Understanding where they're coming from doesn't excuse this racist and sexist stunt though.

Bill Lann Lee, the plaintiffs' lawyer, was the assistant attorney general for civil rights under President Clinton, and the first person of Asian descent to hold that position. The Republican-controlled Senate refused to confirm him because of his support for affirmative action, so he held the position as an acting assistant AG before getting a recess appointment.

Since leaving that post, he has become a partner at Lieff Cabraser, an awesome plaintiffs firm based in San Francisco. He has done a lot of cool work, including the Abercrombie & Fitch employment discrimination case.

I wanna be like Bill.

DPP Leadership

As a result of the disastrous (from the DPP's point of view) local elections in Taiwan, DPP Chairperson Su Tseng-chang resigned, and Vice President Annette Lu is taking over his position. This whole resignation thing that is so prevalent among Taiwanese leadership is silly. At times like this, where the person is not directly at fault, it makes more sense to stay on and make the necessary changes and improve the situation. This constant leadership change doesn't do anyone any good.

I don't like Lu that much anyway. Though she played an important role in the democratic movements and women's movements in Taiwan, she has done nothing since becoming VP in 2000. She says stupid things on the spot and never apologizes for them. The one that angers me the most is saying that Taiwanese Aboriginals should move to Central America. Huh?

I really hope she doesn't run for the presidency in 2008. I don't think anyone in Taiwan is qualified to be president anyway. How sad. Taiwan should just get Koizumi and Bush to be co-presidents and have a big love fest. Psh.

Chez Panisse

I live pretty close to Chez Panisse, the most famous "upscale" restaurant in Berkeley, and one of the most famous in the U.S. The restaurant uses the freshest local ingredients and is credited as the site of the California cuisine revolution that started in the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity has certainly declined, which makes getting a reservation pretty easy as long as you call a month ahead. Michael Bauer of the SF Chronicle still gave it four stars though in a review of four-star restaurants in the Bay Area back in September. Though I think the food is still pretty good and reliable, the restaurant just doesn't generate much excitement anymore, for those under 30 anyway.

This week's menu looks pretty nice though. I'm hungry.

People of Color and Women in Law School

Data on the gender and racial breakdown of students at all four University of California law schools (Boalt, UCLA, UC Davis, Hastings) from 1993 to 2005. Note that Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action based on gender and race, was passed in 1996.

For Da~

Jay Chou's Simple Love

Fighting Legislators

This is a Numa Numa video using footage of fighting Taiwanese legislators. It's pretty sad how Taiwanese politicians resort to physical violence. Historically, however, the fighting played a part in the democratizing of Taiwan.

Back in the 1980s when opposition parties were illegal, many Democratic Progressive Party legislators started fights because they were literally not being heard. Creating commotions got them on TV, which helped publicize their democratic causes.

To still pull this stunt now (it seems like it's mostly the KMT, the party that fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949, who are inciting violence nowadays though) in such a different societal and political context is just so immature.

Procrastinating Panda

Oh my god. I got home around 9pm and I haven't done a thing for the last 4 hours. I've just been watching TV this whole time...Will & Grace, Law & Order, Simpsons, West Wing...god. I'm so screwed. I should be studying, but I have absolutely no motivation.

I made coffee ice cream for a potluck today and everyone liked it. Wohoo! I should really just drop out of school and be a filmmaker and open a restaurant.

Working on some movie ideas but unfortunately can't post them here for obvious reasons. Sigh.

John Cho Was Here

At Berkeley, that is. Read the article. How come I didn't know about this beforehand? I can't believe this guy is 33 and can still pass as a teenager.

Panda...?

A dog dyed to look like a panda. Argh. So cruel. See more here.

Center for the Study of Sexualities

The Center for the Study of Sexualities at Taiwan's National Central University seems like an awesome place. Its coordinator, Josephine Ho, is widely known in Taiwan, and I guess internationally. I presume her publicity in Taiwan is most negative. I wonder how much support the Center and its affiliated faculty have from the University and from the Ministry of Education. Who knows? The mere existence of the Center is amazing, given how screwed up and conservative Taiwanese society and Taiwanese education are.

I wanted to visit when I was in Taiwan last time, but I couldn't find a convenient way to get to Taoyuan. Oh well. Next time perhaps. From the face of it this Center seems like a great site for fostering activism in Taiwan on issues of sexuality and its intersectionalities...if the affiliated faculty and students subscribe to the theory of praxis and not hide in their ivory towers. I simply don't know enough to say whether or not the latter is true.

I think I should start studying.

Taiwanese Higher Education

Found this interesting post on Why is Taiwanese Higher Education so Bad?

I think I agree with the general gist of his arguments, especially the one about amateur overseas Chinese.