I dozed off in the recliner. Monty jumped up and stood on me with his nose touching mine. His tail was wagging in anticipation of what I was to do immediately.

I showed him who’s the boss by filling his bowl obediently.

In a simplistic way, the Net can be divided into three parts: the contents or services owners, these are the brands you know Google, Facebook, WoW, CNN, etc. They are the reasons you are on the net to begin with; next is the mystic cloud that magically connect those contents to you; last is the device you use to access those contents — that’s your smart phone, laptop, or set-top boxes.

Pundits proclaimed that the Net will have much higher bandwidth in the future. Google and Cisco both added fuel to that roaring fire of enthusiasm. It shall outpace Moore’s law, they said. Whatever speed you are connecting at today, you shall have 10 times, or even 100, more in 3 years.

Really? Who pays for the higher bandwidth?

Google does. As they are rolling out bright cables across the country, all they asked is a nominal fee not higher than your current bill. The new and fatter pipes are part of Google’s promotional budget.

Or Cisco will? They just announce the product that will change the world. (Juniper, of course, thought little of it.) It is a next generation router that handles 3 times the traffic than the previous one. As backbone operators upgrade their equipment, the pipe just got fatter. Isn’t it wonderful that technologies give us better life without us having to pay for it?

The paper-based industry pays for it. As online media replaces traditional ones, the revenue shifts. When New York Times becomes newyorktimes.com, its massive print press, truck fleet, and ad sales force disappear. The new company (probably under the old management) retains its old readership, or even larger, but with a much leaner and smaller operation. That pays for the new fat pipe.

You pay for it. Have you looked at your bills? How much you paid for your fixed-line phone, cell phone, data plan, cable TV, broad-band connection, iPhone apps, Netflix subscription, iTunes music, SecondLife spending, WoW weapons, etc.? Did you also upgrade to a faster connection? Did you even blink for the $15 Internet fee at the hotel you last checked-in? Internet is far from free to us surfers. The debate on how to monetize Internet has long ended. Consumers pay billions of dollars (and so did corporations) for their rich Net-based experiences. Oh, did you buy that digital camera by clicking through some links?

Yes, Internet will continue to expand and the bandwidth will continue to increase, like Google and Cisco have led you to believe. As for me, I am just trying to make a buck.

Lehman Brothers’ executives had the incentive and were creative. To receive big bonuses, they needed to reduce debts. It was not easy, since the fundamental was bad. The right thing to do — like eat healthy and exercise — was hard and, more importantly, would not keep them up with the Joneses. So they cooked up a scheme that turned debts into transactions: same business, different label. The firm appeared healthier. This practice, now infamously called Repo 105, continued until the hidden debts reached over 50 billion dollars. Stopping would feel like an addict deprived of drugs; no one has enough will power to do so voluntarily.

Those executives were smarter than law makers and judges. It is unlikely that any of them will go to jail. Given their business savvy, I doubt any government can touch their vacation homes on Mediterranean coast stocked with extensive wine collection. When smart people lost their morality, there is only one thing left to do.

Corporal punishment! Public caning comes to mind. Of course, the same smart people would have lawyers arguing those being cruel practices. Did I mention that they were rich too?

Guess there is nothing left to do.

Warm Strangers Vienna Teng

I like to be pleasantly surprised. After two CDs, I thought that would be the end of my Vienna Teng collection. I liked her music, at the same level of Charlotte Church’s first two CDs. Two are enough for my library. After all, I have more music than the time of the day.

Then, through Kid’s connection, I got her Warm Strangers album. In this CD, she moved up from a niche voice singer to a big league star. Her other two CDs were good, but couldn’t hold my attention long enough. After several songs, I would start to press the skip button, hoping to find something that was not a re-mix of the same ingredients. This one, however, every songs was distinctively her and has lasting power. I could savor each of them and would try to play them again.

ITunes starred six out of the entire 12 songs. That’s impressive. The bonus track, a Taiwan folk song, was a treat. Her Mandarin voice was sweet and authentic. I can imagine a tour in Taiwan and China entirely in Chinese songs. Imagine her parents’ proud expressions.

Yes, I knew this is her second CD and I actually had her third, Dreaming Through Noise before this one.

In the haunting song, Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Peter, Paul, and Mary. One of the verses wonder where have all the young girls gone. Of course, the song is about anti-war and the girls were mourning their dead boy friends. It appears that many Chinese young men, and their Indian counter-parts will soon wonder where to find eligible brides in the world.

The Economist reported that China will have a surplus of eligible bachelors as many as the entire Germany’s population! India, South Korea, Taiwan, and several mid-eastern countries are heading the same imbalance. This article reminded me the short-fiction Goddess, by Linda Nagata, in which future Indian elders routinely implant a gender selector in young woman’s wombs — have a boy or have no child what-so-ever. Modern Chinese and Indians would depend on the skills of the ultrasonic technicians for such decisions.

A surprise consequence is the size of the dowry. As eligible maids become less available, they command higher dowry or whatever forms of payment from the groom’s side. Parents of young boys need to save more, since wealth is part of the bidding to win a bride.

The society will fix this problem by itself. The surplus men will be denied opportunity to have a traditional family. They will share a wife with someone else, import a bride from outside, or stay single. The society will gain its gender balance in one or two generations no matter what. The question is really how violent the process will be — unwed young male is the source of most mayhem in the world.

Maybe the song is hinting a solution after all? Where have all the young men gone? Gone to graveyard everyone. Oh when will they ever learn?

I am a runner and an inapt pupil of poetry. The runner, not this mid-aged over-weight one, is so vivid that I can almost hear his pant and feel his body heat.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner 978-0060889579

Do Indian men really have smaller penises? Can you imagine the tease toward our brown friends?

They over-hyped the book dead. All interesting concepts were ruined by all those blogs, media coverage, and party talks. It read like a long re-run. Many meant-to-be startling or new concepts have become old and stale by the time I read them.

Other than that, the chapters were unorganized. Steven and Stephen jumped from one concept to another with very weak linkages. By the time I reached the end of the chapter, I needed to think back the original concept and frequently found the trace-back too winding. The biggest let-down was their approach. Behavior economists should examine data and found insights that explain the world. Instead, the book read like a 300-page news magazine. The articles were interesting, just not very social economical.

The chapter on geoengineering was simply ideas, with good scientific theories behind them. That is disappointing, since I expected experiments or prototypes. Nathan Myhrvold is a billionair and his venture is well-funded. Why are those ideas not backed by solid proofs?

The chapter on “cheap and simple” fixes felt just naive. There are almost insurmountable problems. Historical examples of simple solutions do not guarantee, what-so-ever, that the next one will just emerge miraculously. Most of those solutions took Herculean efforts, rare ingenuity and talents, and solid funding. If we all just sit and wait, the miracle will never come.

They went to length to refute the existence of altruism. Every good Samaritan did good for some incentives, they claimed. No one is completely altruistic, everyone does it for themselves, at least partially. Altruism is an intention and can never be proven one way or the other, with or without the existence of any incentive. Philosophically, however, what good is for humanity to prove that altruism does not exist?

The epilogue, on monkeys, was extremely entertaining. I was laughing out loud. Good closing.