Taxing Soda in NYC

Dr. Richard Daines explains why taxing soda is actually beneficial for Americans, helps our children, and makes America healthier.

I was skeptical until he explained that it’s actually cheaper for everyone because health care would be cheaper if there was a tax on soda.

Sex Education: The Netherlands vs. The British

An article in the British Times showed the differences between the two.  You can see the similarities between the British and American views about sex and sex education.

Check it out here.

My Meaning of Life

This comes from a previous post but I didn’t want to go too far off on that post, so I decided to write a completely different post for this one.  For me, the meaning of life comes down to doing something where you consider that activity greater than your own life. To put it another way, it’s where you use yourself as a means to further some other end. Socrates died for Philosophy, Bill Gates is dedicating his life to computers (and now to charities), and terrorists are killing themselves for some cause that they consider greater than themselves.

For example, my friend does computer programming and programs video games.  I’m sure he considers that as a full meaning of life and he’s happy about his prospect where he says to himself, “this is the goal that I want to do with my life.”  He uses himself If I was able to do that, it would be cool to know the talent, but I don’t think I could be happy doing it for my whole life.  For me, playing games is what I do to pass the time, something to do while hanging out with friends, or simply to have little pleasures in life.  I can’t see myself doing that as the end result of my whole life.

Now with me, I dedicate my life to philosophy and wisdom.  I love learning about new ideas and what the world looks like with these ideas, or perhaps what the world should look like.  I use myself (I’m a means) to reach out some goal (toward an ends).  I can say to myself, “I am happy by doing this for the rest of my life.”  With other people that I meet, these are the responses that I usually get:

• “That seems hard.”  They see philosophy as something that is too challenging for their life and so they don’t want to think about.  I call these the philosophical lazy people.
• “I’m afraid I might lose my faith in. . .”  They see philosophy as challenging common held beliefs like religion or the external world.  I call these people the philosophical cowards.
• And perhaps the common answer: “It’s fun, but I don’t think I could do this for the rest of my life.”  They see philosophy as something to pass the time, something to do while you’re socializing with friends over coffee or alcohol, and not something that you do academically.  I call these people pleasure philosophers.

Now they all don’t see philosophy as the meaning of their lives.  In the same way, I can’t see myself making video games as the meaning to my life.  (I’d probably be in the third category when it comes to video games.)  But that’s ok.  I would rather have people do something for the rest of their life being fulfilled at whatever they do; it’s something where they can say to themselves, “Yes, I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life.”  But more than that, it’s where you dedicate your whole life towards it.  In a way, it’s a form of immortality.  We all know Plato, regardless if you’ve studied philosophy or not because he dedicated his whole life to philosophy.  If I write a book, then I will be immortal, in a sense, because my “footprint” or “stamp” is left on the world.  With my video game friend, his “footprint” or “stamp” is left on the world when he dies, and thus he’s leaving a part of him behind as well.

So to sum up, if someone asks me what I consider the meaning of life, my answer would be something like “it’s where you do some sort of activity where you consider that activity greater than your own life.”

Or perhaps as an alternative: if you’re doing some activity and you say to yourself, “is this all that life has to offer?” then you are not fulfilling your meaning of life.  It’s where you can be proud of leaving your “footprint” or “stamp” behind when you die.

I realize there can be many replies to this, but I wanted to see what everyone else thought and perhaps give some responses to this.  Any thoughts?

The Strange Case of the Rejuvinated Artist and Art

Everyone recognizes this portrait.  It is over 500 years old!  Leonardo Da Vinci painted it and it now hangs at the Louvre in Paris.  One of the unfortunate aspects of its age is that it’s slowly deteriorating.  The humidity, age, and the simple wear and tear, and storage are making this painting slowly disappearing. You can see in the image below that it’s in a special containment spot so that the painting can be preserved even more so that it doesn’t warp.  This painting is so famous and so well-known throughout the world, that if this painting were to ever disappear, the artworld would certainly consider this as a travesty and the world would consider this as though it lost something valuable.  To make this analogy closer, imagine your favorite song or movie, and for some reason, some company got rid of it.  All notions of sounds, images, and words from that favorite movie/song is completely gone.  You’d be devastated.  Well, that’s what would happen if we got rid of the Mona Lisa.  With this in mind, imagine this:

Suppose that we could bring Da Vinci back from the dead.  Suppose next that we take him to the Louvre and show him his own painting.  Now what if he looks at the painting and he says that he doesn’t like it anymore, and he wants to change it.  Or even more so, he wants to destroy it.

Now on the one hand, as I mentioned before, if we got rid of the Mona Lisa, it seems that the world would lose something.  On the other hand, when you create something, that thing is yours.  If I write a book, then that book is mine.  I can do with what I will with the book.  If I decide to publish, alter, or even destroy my writings, I have the right to do so.

So with all this, da Vinci wants to go to his painting and alter or even destroy it.  Here’s the question: Should we let him?

Study: Romantic Comedies can Spoil Your Love Life

A university in Edinburgh has claimed that romantic comedies may give out the message of a perfect relationship, thus setting your expectations too high.  You can read the article here.  At the same time, this reminds me of other people saying that pornography is bad for relationships because the people see this as the “perfect” sexual encounter, thus setting the expectations too high as well.  Take it for what you will.

How do you Make fun of Obama?

Answer: The same way you make fun of Bush.  At NPR, they interviewed executive producer Ben Karlin from The Daily Show.  If anyone knows The Daily Show always makes fun of President Bush.  However, the show says that it isn’t making fun of Bush just because they have a certain political agenda that goes against Bush.  They say that they make fun of anyone in charge and it just happens to be Bush for the past eight years.  However, if you set up a certain agenda for a while, you’ll get a certain crowd.  And lately, the crowd seems to be very supportive of Obama and hateful of Bush.  So there’s a worry that if Jon Stewart starts making fun of Obama, it will alienate his crowd.  I can remember a segment where The Daily Show did make fun of Obama and the crowd just barely chuckeled, to which Stewart said, “You know, it’s ok to laugh at him.”

Although I do support Obama, I hope that they do make fun of him on the show.  It seems like a double standard to only make fun of one side of the political spectrum.  Besides, the show isn’t meant to hold on to some political agenda, but rather to give satire to whatever the situation is at hand.

At the same time, I think that a true democracy is where you can make fun of all sides.  It seems presumptuous to say that, “My side’s right; you’re wrong.”  In order to grow, you must look at the flaws of your side.  It’s always easy to make fun of the things you disagree with.  And it makes people uncomfortable to find flaws in their own views.  But that is how you develop your own ideas: by finding flaws in it.  Satire is a way to keep you modest, and I hope that regardless of anyone’s loyalty to the show, the show does make fun of whoever is in charge.

Book Review: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

This book is considered a classic nowadays.  It’s virtually assigned to most high schools and college English classes so I thought I’d give this a whirl.  Almost everyone I hear recommends it, so I had this expectation to be this amazing book.  After reading it, I can understand why it has such cultural importance and it is original, but overall, I think the book is overrated.

To start, the book is considered original because the author was doing a human interest story on the murderers.  The people who were murdered was a tragedy, but the author only spends about the first 70 pages talking about them, their upbringing, and their lifestyle to give you a sense of who they are.  It’s an interesting thing that Capote does because throughout the story, he presents the murderers in much more detail, but only giving you the facts.  I’ll explain this later.

It’s based on a true story of a murder that happened in a rural town in Kansas in the late 1950s.  It was a brutal murder.  The murderers came across the Clutter family and killed them point blank with a shot gun blast.  It’s set up in such a way that the murder just came out of nowhere and that was brilliant on Capote’s part.  Usually there’s some foreshadowing or at least some sort of tension.  But no, it’s just an ordinary day followed by conventional events that gives no hint of any ominous events about to occur.  Right after the murder, of course everyone is shocked, but none more so than the reader.  It brings the reader into the story because the reader now feels that s/he knew who the Clutter’s were and that you’re just as shocked as the rest of the townspeople that they were murdered.

Usually with murder stories, there’s a sequence that must follow:

1. The setup.
2. Something went wrong.
3. From there, there’s a motive.
4. A murder happens (but usually, you don’t know who).
5. You fit the pieces together to find out the crime.
6. Chasing after the murderers.
7. You find out who the murderers are.

However, In Cold Blood breaks a lot of rules.  From the very beginning, you already know who the murderers are.  The sequences goes like this:

1. The setup.
2. You find out who the murderers are.
3. The murder happens.
4. Chasing after the murderers.
5. There’s a motive.
6. Something went wrong.
7. You fit the pieces together to figure out the crime.

In an interesting way, it works.  In the first five pages, you already know who the murderers are.  But to make it interesting, you don’t understand why they did it until the end of the book.

As I’ve said before, Capote just tells you the facts.  This was one of the disadvantages of the book.  I felt like I was reading a newspaper article that lasted over 300 pages.  So just constant reading of facts can get tiresome.  However, this is something that works to Capote’s advantage.  By just giving the facts, Capote isn’t making any judgments on the murderers; he only tells you about their upbringing and their situation.  It’s perfect because you feel some sort of sympathy for one of the murderers because of exactly his upbringing.  You felt that he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.  And you get this from facts!  These facts play into your sentiments and you produce some emotional bond with at least one of them and that’s what makes this story captivating.

So on a scale of one to four, I’d give it a two.  It’s worth reading, but don’t think it stands as the best book there is.  Why such the low review?  Besides the style of the story, which is original, the plot and the story itself isn’t.  It’s a murder story and that’s how it stands.  However, I do think it is worth reading once.

iTunesU, free Educational Stuff

iTunes U is a section of the iTunes store that houses educational audio and video files for free use by anyone.

iTunes U is a part of the iTunes Store featuring free lectures, language lessons, audiobooks, and more, that you can enjoy on your iPod, iPhone, Mac or PC. Explore over 75,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, museums and public media organizations from around the world. With iTunes U, there’s no end to what or where you can learn.

Check it out in the iTunes Store.  I have found many lectures from universities all for free.  Take advantage of this.

Paying Students to get Good Grades

On the Colbert Report, the guest was Roland Fryer.  Fryer is an economics professor.  He has noticed that black students are the lowest minority gaining an education.  So he has applied his economics into society.  Basically, use the free market to encourage kids to study as an incentive.  In other words, if the students get good grades, pay them money.  This is for everyone, and so far it’s been implemented in Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York.  Fryer’s website is here.  In fact, you can see the whole Colbert interview here for the whole context.

It’s a radical concept, but it may work.  I have my views on it, although it’s still developing.  But I wanted to see what everyone else thought before I express my views.