Loud Thoughts

Four recent news articles string into a follow-up story.

• New York Times reported that Marion Jones will be sentenced for 6 months for lying. She took performance enhancement drugs at 2000 Olympic competition.



• International Herald Tributes reported that IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations, the top organization to govern track and field competitions) ruled Oscar Pistorius ineligible for Olympics. Mr. Pistorius is a double amputee. When he competes in 100 meter sprint, he attaches two Cheetah blades. IAAF clearly believes those blades gave him unfair and artificial advantages over other athelets.
  
  Personally, I think Mr. Pistorius is pretty inspiring.
• ABC reported a new protocol to treat dogs with damaged joints. The vet extracts the stem cells from the same dog, cultivates them into larger quantities, then injects the concentrated cells into the damaged joint. Few weeks later, the previously limping and inactive dog will be bouncing around like puppies.
• Lastly, New York Times reported that a research lab has grown a rat heart from adult stem cells. The lab first washed out every muscle tissues from the damaged heart, leaving only the blood vessels, nerves, etc. Then they use the stem cells to grow them back. The result is a pumping, healthy rat heart ready to be implanted.

Do performance enhancement drugs relevant when genetic engineering is thriving? If Mr. Pistorius’s legs gave him unfair advantages, what about his new heart or increased muscle, not from steroid, but from his own stem cells?

Some years from now, when I am old and frail, should I find a doctor to give me a new lease of life or wither away like all my ancestors did? The most scary part of this question is its possibility. I can feel these technologies coming and these questions will become real.

You get the story? Are we ready?

Next Michael Crichton ISBN: 978-0060872984 Pub. Date: November 28, 2006 Publisher: HarperCollins

I don’t know if I read Michael Crichton for education or entertainment.

As I scanned the paperback section of the airport bookstore, “Clever,” I thought. Michael Crichton’s book occupied not one, but three, shelf spaces. The book has three different covers: same design of a monkey and bar code, different background colors of red, green, or white. It worked. I bought a copy.

And this is a usual page turner. Gerald the parrot is the most alive and memorable character. Other are all superficially developed and stereotyped. Then again, you read a Michael Crichton for education and entertainment, not for literature.

He strongly criticized the genetic industry as greedy, anarchical, predatory, and confused. The main point is ownership of genes can people own genes like intellectual properties?

But I own my body and therefore all my genes, if genes can be owned. I then own half of my biological children’s genes too. Unless there was a mutation, they are simply copies of my genes. In fact, biological parents together own all of children’s genes.

Hold on. Grand-parents own parents’ genes, by the same logic. When they die, their properties, including the genes, are inherited by their offspring. Uncles and aunts therefore own all cousins’ genes together. If we pushed upward in the ancestry line, eventually, in legal sense, there is only one possible conclusion: the whole human population together owns the human genome.

This is fun then. If genes can be owned like properties, then genes must be owned by the entire human population, therefore genes cannot be owned by anyone. Without too much effort, one will reach the same conclusion for genes of any species.

No one owns life. How simple and blatantly obvious can that be?

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我也不知道我读 Michael Crichton 的著作是为了学习还是为了娱乐。我在机场书店浏览平装书时，看到 Michael Crichton 的同一本书占据了三个书架的位置，就因为它有三种不同的封面：设计是相同的，都是一只猴子上覆盖着条形码，只是背景色分别为红色、绿色和白色。我不禁感叹道：此举真是聪明啊！还真有点儿作用。我就买了一本。这本书真无法释手。鹦鹉 Gerald 是其中最生动最令人印象深刻的角色。其他角色都不够深入所以难免落于俗套。再次重申，读 Michael Crichton 的书是为了学习和娱乐，不是文学鉴赏。他尖锐地批判了基因工业的几大问题：贪婪、无法、掠夺和混乱。最主要的是基因的所有权问题——人们能像拥有知识产权一样拥有基因吗？

但我的身体是我的，如果基因能被拥有的话，我身体理的基因也当然是我的了。既然如此，我亲生子女们的一半基因也是我的。因为除非发生突变，那一半是我的基因。实际上生父母共同拥有他们子女所有的基因。

等一下。依此类推，祖父母拥有父母的基因。他们去世后，他们的遗产，包括基因所有权，都会被他们的子孙继承。叔父和姨妈会因此拥有堂兄弟姐妹们的基因。如果我们通过家族血统向上追溯，最终，从法律的角度，我们只有一个结论：整个人类拥有整个人类的基因。

有趣吧。如果基因能像物品一样被拥有，那么基因的主人一定是全人类，而不是个人。不用多想，任何物种都是如此。

没有人能拥有生命。这难道不是不言自明的吗？

Walk into a park anytime on a good day, you find many active Beijingers. Starting at daybreak, exercising crowd group themselves by activities: folk dancers, martial arts, muscle trainers, Badmington, etc. Afternoon will have duelers attempt their kills on one of those cement ping-pong tables. Of course you will also find dog walkers, baby strollers, or simply people chit-chatting their hearts out loudly enough for you to join in. Evenings are for people dancing waltz, tango, swing, and cha-cha too.

That sunny day I walked into the famous BeiHai park. Live singing distracted my examination on historical relics. I searched the source and found a crowd gathered around this lady, in her early 60s. She had this portable amp on the ground and clicked on a microphone Modonna-style. She sang, danced, acted, and worked her audience. They rewarded her with applauses song after song. Wow, live street performance by true amateurs. What a sight.

Then I realized what I just stepped on.

Several elderlies have been writing on the ground. Their grand-kids will take the long brush, run to a bucket nearby, soak it up with water, and run back to them. They will then write on the ground until the brush is dry. At that moment, a nod will send the grandkid happily for another dipping trip.

What a sight. These are just like side-walk chalk arts but will disappear in minutes. The artists enjoy doing a lot more than being appreciated by speculators. I walked up to the elderly artist, “Sir, these are very good works. You have been practicing long?” “No, just for about 15 years or so after I retired.” “I think they are very good. Why don’t you do it with ink and paper?” “No, no. These are not good enough to waste paper and ink yet. Beside, this is good exercise for me. Good for my Qi.”

He went on writing. I watched and felt his Qi.

I have been fond of gambling through-out my life, intrigued by the odds, pay-out, and strategy. Mathematics dominates this industry and plays key roles in every nuances of every game. Of course, making money with skills, strategy, and luck is addictive too.

I have seen gambling ruin people’s lives and break up families. My heart bled when a little girl waits for her mother at the slot machine 10 feet away. She cannot go near since it is against the laws. I stood by someone blaming his crying girl bad luck and asked her to leave the table. I knew mothers that spend all her time on the Mahjongg tables and leave their children unattended.

Gambling exercises self-control. I searched for instincts and toyed those tugs of tension inside of me: mathematics v. intuition, emotion v. judgment, greed v. fear, relax or focus. I often observed people around me during the game: dealers, pit boss, high roller, recreational, drunk, or even apparent gangsters. They are all fascinating, better at a distance too.

Of course, winning money is always fun.

New players fear casinos and hide in the slot machine jungle. I don’t blame them. The table games are complicated and intimidating. What is the fun of embarrassing yourself in front of strangers and lost money at the same time? But actually, they are fun (and occasional profitable) once the you’ve got the basics.

BlackJack

BlackJack is easy, fast paced, and quite fair — if you play correctly. The trick is to learn the so-called basic strategy: when to hit, stand, split, or double. Edward Thorp, an UCLA mathematics professor in the 60s, developed this strategy originally. His famous book hooked me on this game several years ago. Online resources can teach you this strategy. After mastering it, proceed to learn card-counting.

If casino catches you counting cards, you will be escorted out. The simplest card-counting, however, is effective and almost not detectable. Cards of 2, 3, 4, 5 are worth 1 point each and 10, Jack, Queen, and King are negative 1 point. Notice the cards on the table and keep track of cards that show on the table.

Use this only in single-deck games. Bet 1 unit of money when the count is zero or less. Double the bet size if the count is more than 2, quadruple if 4 or higher. For double-deck games, increase the bet only when the count reaches 4 or 8.

Craps

Craps intimidate beginners. The tables are always rowdy. Money flies across the table with incomprehensible instructions. They seem so much fun yet so mysterious.

Lewis taught me a bit and I am still experimenting, at the pace of one visit to the table a year. I now play the “pass line” and its odds, plus the place bets on 6 and 8. Let me explain:

Pay attention to a big button on the table. Enter the game when it is “Off” and put your money on the area said “Pass line.” Someone (maybe yourself) will toss two dice across the table. If the dice show 7 or 11, you win. If they are 2, 3, or 12 (called craps), you lose. For everything else, a point is established and the fun begins.

The table staff will turn the button over (On) and put it on the number. This is the time you put additional money behind the pass line next to your original bet. This is so-called “the pass line odds” bet.

Now the game has turned into a race between the established number and 7. If the dice show the number first, you win; 7 you lose. When you win, the part of the money on the pass line pays even. The money behind the pass line pays more than even, depending on which number it was. Don’t worry and just take the money.

Round up your bet to even number, give the chips to the table staff and said “place on 6.” Do the same for 8. You therefore have 2 units of money on 6 and 8. Now, whenever the dice show 6 or 8, you get 7 to 6 pay-out for the money you bet on those numbers.

This strategy works quite well for me so far. If I found a new and better one, I will share it here.

I am a big fan of The Economist. Read it religeously every week. But this recent article got me scratching my head. Who was the editor of that issue? This article argues that it is economically a bad decision for British businessmen to learn Chinese.

Three main points are in the article: China will dominate world market soon, Chinese are too hard to learn, and, lastly, elite Chinese professionals already speak English fluently. The return, therefore, does not justify the investment of time and energy.

Let’s say all three points are valid, would they draw the conclusion that learning Chinese is not fruitful? In a global market place, speed and information win. Isn’t it fearful that the other side know you better than you them? And, how come Brits found Chinese too hard and those elite Chinese are fluent in English? Are Chinese smarter? Work harder? Or they don’t look for excuses to do it?

I was in a meeting with an important partner in north-eastern China. The meeting went the normal way, all in English. Presentations, discussions, etc. At the end, action items taken, meeting wrapped up, and everyone shook hands. Just as the chairman of the company is walking out of the door, the CEO, who was just a step ahead of me, whispered something to the chairman. Instinctively, I said, in Chinese, “We can help. No problem. Give me about 2 weeks.” Without even pausing a step, the chairman patted my shoulder and told the CEO, “That’s it then.”

I cannot testify that Chinese fluency is required for a foreigner to function, or even succeed, in doing business in China. Can one win a foot-race with an extra 20-pound bag on the back? Sure! But not in Olympics.

I rarely have writer’s blocks on concepts; it is the mincing of words that stumped me. I envy those who have proses flowing out of the keyboard effortlessly. To me, chiseling on granite.

It seems fitting to commemorate the passing of 2007 with a blog. What exactly to write stomped me for days. The year was a big motion blur. I never had time to reflect and digest what happened.

My travel spreadsheet shows that I made 13 international trips in 2007 (and several China domestic ones). It is really profoundly pathetic that one has a travel spreadsheet. Thirteen trips translate to an average of alternating 18 days at home and 10 on the road. I am always away from my family. I became chemically dependent on sleeping while traveling. I ate unhealthy foods (weakened will power) and exercised much less when traveling. On the bright side, I blogged regularly and read much more too.

This is the milestone 1st empty nester year. The younger daughter cut her hair short and spread her wings to a US college. She left behind much to tidy up and an eerie empty echo in her room. The well-made bed and uncluttered carpet startled me at first. It took a while to remember there is no longer a teenager living there. I will call her to dinner only to swallow the sound half-way. This is fine. We did this once with the older one. It will pass, in few decades.

Several vacational trips with friends and family are so precious. All of us are coming of ages now. Weakened muscles, slack skins, and senility are common to us. Few drinks at the dinner will find us all snoozed at the sofa. The two most talked about topics are investment and chronic diseases. Hey, lives are good. Let’s play “When I’m 64” instead of “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.”

China quickened her already break-neck speed growth; work intensified few notches up. My flight schedule is a clear indicator. As I rooted deeper in China, every trip back to US felt less like going home. I may be approaching that invisible point of no return. This is a bit scary.

2008 scares me. I can feel its enormity and speed. I am not prepared for 2008. Then again, nor was I 12 months ago.

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我少有灵感枯竭时，倒是常半天捻不出个好词。 最羡慕下笔成章的人。 对我而言， 是一字一字刻竹简。

年底总该写个回顾吧。但几天下不了笔。一年晃过眼前，没回顾消化的工夫。

我出差的spreadsheet算出来今年出国13趟(还有几趟国内的)。 有个出差的spreadsheet就已经是悲惨世界了。 13趟，平均是家里18天，在外10天。 总见不到家人。 睡觉要靠化学。吃得不健康（没毅力了），也不锻炼。 从好处看吧， 网格写的勤，书也读多了点。

今年是有史第一个空巢年。 小女儿剪短了头发，伸伸翅，飞去美国念大学。 她留下一屋给我们收拾， 是间怪怪空荡的房间。 看到铺好的床，干净的地毯，会觉得奇奇怪怪的。 恍然， 没人住当然不乱了。 叫她吃饭， 赶把声咽下。 没事。 大的几年前也离家了， 几十年就会习惯的。

难得几次朋友一起休假。 大家都老了。 肌肉衰退，皮肤松弛，糊途恍惚。 晚饭来几杯， 过会纷纷睡倒在沙发上了。 谈来谈去，不是投资，就是长期病痛。好嘞！ 听歌要放 “When I’m 64” 而不是 “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.”

中国的经济成长得比提速车更快了。工作上比去年更紧张些，出差的频率就是最好的指标。 我在中国的根，一天天的扎深，回美也一次次不像回家了。那不归点一天天逼近。心里真有点却意。

对2008，来的又快又猛，我还没准备好，还真有点怕怕。 可是想想去年此时，不也一样。