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?

Recently, Kevin Smith, a well known Hollywood director, was kicked off a flight for being too fat. He was furious and started a twitter storm. His flamebuoyant communiques aroused media coverage and strong opinions everywhere. Fat people have rights too! They proclaimed. Besides, the number is on their side. The US shall have more and more fat people. Airline had better cater to their needs, lest losing their patronage.

Airline coach seats are about 18 inches wide with 32 inches “pitch” (the distance between two rows of seats). They are good for skinny and short people. (An average American woman has a hip width of 19.7 inches, and man 17.2.) Strapped in one of them is a discomfort that most people wish to get over as quickly as possible. It’s torturous if your seat-mate is nosy, noisy, smelly, messy, or, the worst, fat. Few things can bring up more terror than being squeezed against a stranger’s skin in a tight space.

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A group of Californian students are seeking reversal of proposition 209, passed in 1996 to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity. Under this law, the UC system would consider only academic merits — GPA, SAT scores, etc. — to admit students.

In 2007, Latino, black, and Native American students comprised 45.1 percent of California’s high school graduates but those groups comprised only 16.9 percent and 19.9 percent of new freshman admits at UC Berkeley and UCLA, respectively. This is an outrage and a social explosion waiting to happen.

Prior to Prop 209, UC has the infamous affirmative action system that give each ethnic group a quota in the new admission pool. The graduation rate of those disadvantaged ethnic groups were miserable. UC system wasted precious resources, and admission slots, for those academically ill-prepared students that essentially robbed the education opportunities from those who were otherwise qualified.

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In the study of ethics, there are the concepts of just, utilitarian, fairness, and equality. It is not just to violate any individual’s rights. But utilitarian will strive for the most good for the most people, usually sacrificing the minority. Kevin Smith may have his right as a passenger, but many more passengers suffer if airlines accommodate too much for fat people, directly with discomfort or indirectly through delay, lost of available seats, or increased price from reduced capacity.

The group that sued UC called themselves “Equality by Any Means Necessary.” Equality is an economic concept of the allocation of resources. (Five dollars for you and five for me will be equal.) Fairness means all considerations be merit-based. (We each get paid by how much we contributed will be fair.) It is obvious that UC admission system has not been equal. But is it fair? To answer, ask if the admission is merit-based.

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Ethics is a complicated subject. Topics are controversial because different approaches do not arrive at the same result. We would like things to be just and good for the most, fair and equal too. Choose your stance based on an ethic yardstick, not whether you are fat or slim, Asian or Latino.

As a luddite, I did not pay much attention to those 2G, 3G mumble jumble. I turn on my cell phone when I wake up. I would make several phone calls in a day and send/receive some text messages. That’s about it. For richer networking experiences and services, I fire up my trusted laptop, connect with a broadband services, and surf the net the old fashion way. I ignored all MMS (text messages with a video or picture) and never surfed the net with my cell phone. I shook my head, inside, on those iPhone junkies who are hopelessly addicted.

This nice shell shattered when a friend showed me her dongle a couple of years ago in Asia. With her 3G services (based on HSPA, offered universally to all subscribers in that small country she lives), she would remove the SIM card from her cell phone, insert it into this dongle, insert the dongle into her laptop USB port, and surf the net at the speed comparable to a typical WiFi (slightly better than 5Mbs).

There used to be three ways to connect to the Net: fixed line, WiFi, and dial-up. Now we have the fourth: 3G wireless. Operators around world have pretty much all converted to 3G and are now gearing up on 4G deployment with a technology called LTE. Simply put, 4G network allow one to surf the net at two to ten times faster than a typical WiFi hotspot today.

This means, with that magic dongle, I would no long need to hunt for hotspots. I would have broadband wherever, via a fundamental telephony technology. What does that mean if I would skype through this service? Do I pay skype rate (that is usually free) or a voice rate (that is, currently, expensive for international calls). My guess is that operators would simply offer flat rate for global voice services, since distance or geo-political boundaries are no longer a factor in costs.

Why would I need that home wireless router if everyone in the family can simply connect whenever and wherever? To avoid everyone suffling their SIM cards between their cell phone and computer, I would like a box that accept a single SIM card and essentially NAT (Network Address Translation, a way to allow multiple computers to connect to outside via a single point) between those computers at home. This box is like a FemtoCell, with a small twist in access control.

This luddite still insists using his phone only for voice and text. I would still carry a laptop that would blue-tooth to my cell phone when I an on the road. Otherwise, I would connect via either a company connection or my home box. Since my laptop connection would be ubiquiteous, I would store my data on the Internet (in one of those clouds) so that it would be light and cheap. The laptop and the cell phone are essentially the same, only the former has a better keyboard, mouse, and screen.

After so many decades, 4G wireless finally would solve the “last mile” problem. Funny, it is not Fibre to the Home (FTTH) as so many pundits predicted. It would be LTE. I bet whoever coined that name is regreting greatly. Long Term Evolution? Come on!

How do you set a price of something that has zero variable cost (it costs nothing to make copies and distribute them to the customers) and a limited set of customers? Well, that’s online media: newspapers, magazines, music, video, and books that are distributed over the Internet. Once made, each copy costs the company practically zero.

Classic marketing taught four P’s: product, places, promotion, and prices. First have the right things to sell, then choose where to sell them (or the channels to distribute them), then seduce customers for wanting, last extract money from those customers. Companies used to control all four. In modern societies, no longer. Now, for online media, the distributors and and product makers are in battle over the prices.

With the arrival of iPad, book publishers are now revolving against Amazon that insisted on selling eBooks at $10, whatever the price of the paper equivalent. Since Kindle has dominated the eReader market, publishers did not have any bargaining power. Apple’s iPad changed that balance and Amazon reluctantly yielded some power to the publishers. In this case, the arrival of stiff competition actually result in the increase of prices.

For anything, there is an “impulse buy” price. I am willing to pay “retail” for newspapers and magazines online. I routinely pay $10 for a paperback and will so for a copy on my iPod. For movies, I can accept $2 for titles that I will “give it a try” and $5 for a “must see.” For music, $1 is too much for me to “throw away” if I don’t like the song. As such, I buy only when I have heard it from somewhere else, for free. That can be radio, TV, or friends.

Beyond the impulse price range, I go through a relatively simple process:

• How much they want for it?
• Can I negotiate for a better price? If no or not worth the effort, skip the next step.
• Negotiate. This may be a jousting with the vendor or a search on the net.
• Am I OK with the price? Is it worth the money or can I afford it? If no. I am not buying. If yes, money exchanges hands and I have the thing.

Apple and Amazon took the simplistic approach. Every songs or books will be the same price and it will be at the impulse level. I am on the publishers’ side that pricing should be more sophisticated and they should have more say in this matter.

That said, the publishers are moving toward the wrong direction to raise prices. They knew, like music and movies, that each title has a limited set of customers and wanted to optimize their profit by charging more. Book readers are furious about this. I expect electronic books to cost at 25% to 50% of their paper equivalent. I believe both the authors and the publishers will still have the same profit at that level. Until that day, I am not spending $500 for an eBook reader and another $15 for each book.

At the center of 4 Ps is a C, the customer. Many compete for our money and attention. Publishers, heed our preferences or perish.

A top Senate Democrat is asking 30 leading technology, Internet and communications companies to provide detailed descriptions of their operations and human rights practices in China.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois sent letters to the companies on Tuesday seeking information about their business in China and their plans for protecting human rights, free speech and privacy there.

Durbin’s letter comes nearly three weeks after Google said it would stop censoring search results in China and threatened to pull out of the country altogether after uncovering a hacking attack emanating from China and attempts to snoop on dissidents.

When I was living in Beijing, I got requests like this about once a year. Some US governmental figures would come to this capital of China, gather a roomful of representatives from US companies, and seek information from us. About half of the room would be bi-lingual (I was one) and others will be Mandarin-challenged. We would have lived in Beijing for one to 15 years. Every time, we would leave the room shaking our heads.

There would be two primary purposes for such information gathering: they had a foregone conclusion and needed data to back them up; they were seeking re-election and needed a check mark next to China on their resumes. Of course, like all good politicians, they all sounded sincere when they listened.

Are human rights, freedom of speech, and privacy bad in China? Yes, they are. Do they affect business operations there? No, they don’t. Do most Chinese care as much as the US? No, they don’t. Do we assist the China government in those practices? Well, we obey laws of both countries.

Sen. Durbin no doubt is proud of these tenets of the USA values. I have certainly enjoyed and appreciated the freedom and justice here and wouldn’t dream of raising a family anywhere else. Like myself, many people came to the US because of these values and will stay for the same.

Our politicians and media, however, treat these values religiously — whoever disagree or practice differently are evil or wrong. They must be converted! This habitual imperialism came from the absolute superiority that we once were. It is now hurting the US, particularly economically.

I do not agree with China in many ways. I do not agree with the US in probably no less. I am comfortable, in fact enjoy, being a resident of both countries. I have friends in pretty much all major religions in this world, I enjoy talking to them on various religious matters. Those who tried to convert me would quickly lose my friendship and I certainly reciprocate the respect to those who do not.

We were all curious on the new tenant. Only the affluent can afford this prime real estate. Yet this new company was clearly beyond the most affluent of us. They leased the whole building, gutted the entire interior, brought in office furniture from the US (this is China, they make stuff here), and devoted an entire floor to a gym and a cafeteria (there is a gym not 100 meters away and the area is teeming with great cheap restaurants). In addition, they installed a neon sign on the top, something we all wanted but couldn’t for years. Flaunting their wealth and influence, who were they?

The sign eventually came up, bright and colorful. It said, “Google.” That was 2006.

Soon, we met them in social settings. Over a dinner, one casually mentioned that he risked being arrested coming to work everyday. “Why would you want to do it here then?” we wondered. Most MNC (Multi-National Corporation) had the policy of obeying all local laws. “Well, we don’t feel their laws are right.” His answer stunned the whole table. We changed the topic and moved on, wondering how long would they last in this jungle. Whatever Google’s objections are today, they knew all about them in 2006. Dr. Li KaiFu’s entrance was spectacular then. Their flamboyant protest is an admission of an equally spetacular business failure.

There have been many books, blogs, war stories, and urban legends on how western companies flamed up in China. They came with superiority, righteousness, and money; they expected to conquer quickly, like how they did in the Opium War. Anything different will be ridiculous, stupid, wrong, and must be changed. In a couple of years, they would have closed down shops, fired everyone, desert their fixed assets, and went back home like the VietNam War. It is impossible, they said, to work with those abstruse Chinese. Why can’t they enforce good laws, abolish censorship, respect human rights, drive nicely, pollute less, float exchange rate, and speak English better? We cannot win because they did not play by the rules.

China, the largest Internet and mobile computing market in the world, is unlikely to hurt from Google’s exit from the country. Many will devour Google’s market share quickly, in search, email, or cell phone handset. This dominant giant in the rest of the world is a small player in China. They couldn’t comprehend or accept their inability to gain market share here. They had the superiority, talents, and money. They also have founders and senior management who insisted on playing by their rules, instead of adopting to China’s.

“One may or may not agree with the laws in China, but nearly all countries have some controversial laws or policies, including the United States,” Bill Gates said. “Now, if Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I’d give them credit.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton stood by Google on its case against China. “Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said. “American companies need to take a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand.”

She did not mention that the US government routinely monitor the Web and bring the force of the laws and the ire of the government upon those whom they deemed illegal or threatening to the national security. USA is not alone. All countries disallow certain communications, Internet or not, with legal, political, or administrative means. The citizens usually has three choices: obey the laws by not communcating those topics, do so anyway and risk getting prosecuted, or move to another country that permits them.

Countries mostly agreed that IP theft, child pornography, and terrorism should be banned. Other topics, such as file sharing, privacy, and political viewpoints are of much debate. The general protocol frowns upon imposing one’s values on others. Without this respect for basic sovereignty, countries could only resort to force, usually not pleasant.

Sen. Clinton also said, “Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation.” We now have sufficient evidence that the attacks on Google, Apple, Yahoo, and other US companies were well organized, well funded, and sophisticated. They were the act of professionals (the best of them are NSA and CIA, two US government agencies). It is quite rare that those professional leave traces, let alone get caught. Clinton implied that China government initiated those attacks. Did she mean to unleash NSA or CIA upon China as part of those “consequences and condemnation?” Meet evil with evil, an eye for an eye?

Becoming Human http://www.becominghuman.org/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/

PBS recently aired this 3-part series of human evolution. The style and structure are like other PBS documentary/educational programs: a narrator with impeccable voice, interviews with impressive experts, and revelations of break-through knowledge. This subject, human evolution, is of interest, so I watched, yes, all three episodes.

We knew that apes became bipeds (primates that walk with two hind legs), then became human. My surprise was that there were many kinds of bipeds that had the advantage of walking more efficiently and seeing farther away. Bipeds, therefore, can hunt in the prairie; unlike their 4-legged cousins that can only gather in the forests. If there were many bipeds, how come there is only one human being now?

Then Africa went through a period of drastic weather changes: drought, flood, and back to drought, repeated many times over several thousand years. Those weather cycles eliminated those bipeds that cannot adopt and only Homo Erectus survived. They have larger brains and adapt better. Homo Erectus migrated from Africa to Europe and pretty much the whole world. They had less hair for more efficient heat disipation over the long distance. They could chase fury animals until the prey became too hot to move. After the kill, their two-legged efficiency enabled them to carry the carcasses back home. The hairlessness and walking capacity were unique advantage for day time huntng. When the sun sets, they built fire to fend off predators. That created communication and social skills. But we are not Homo Erectus, we are Homo Sapiens. Home Erectus went extinct too.

When Africa became desert, Homo Erectus couldn’t survive. Only less than few hundreds went to the coast side and learned to fish. They became smaller (more energy efficient) and even smarter. Several thousand years later, they became Homo Sapiens. In the mean time, those Homo Eractus dominated the rest of the world: Europe, Asia, etc.

Gradually, Homo Sapiens wandered off Africa in search for better food sources. Somehow, when they encountered Homo Erectus, their genetic cousin vanished. They consumed the same foods and therefore are natural rivalries. Homo Sapiens became the dominant resident of this planet some 200,000 years ago.

The most interesting fact is that others have dominated the world for far, far longer time: bipeds and Homo Erectus all survived over 500,000 years. History predicts that Homo Sapiens’ domination will be of limited time. One day, Homo Sapiens will exist only in fossil form.

I will, of course, be long dead. I wonder what would they think when they found the fossil that was me.

Many economists believe that the US will have a short-lived recovery and head right back to recession once the stimulus money runs out. They think the “multiplier” effect of the stimulus is about one, or even a bit less. This means the stimulus wouldn’t have lasting effects on the economy. When the spigot turns off, the economy will snap back to where it was, or even overshoots to a worse state. The US needs a longer-term and sustainable solution.

The attention turns outward to China. They don’t play fair. They dumped goods on us. They subsidized with artificial exchange rate. They are stealing our jobs. Even prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman, are considering protectionism. All these are still short-term thinking.

This matter is classically about basic productivity (value of output divided by costs). If Chinese productivity is higher than Americans – by producing more with the same or the same with less – then they will continue to win. The productivities can equalize by increasing the costs on the Chinese side or the productivity on the American side. (It is not interesting to entertain the concepts of decreasing the Chinese output, per capita, or American’s costs.) I am quite certain that costs on the Chinese side will steadily rise, since all of them want richer lifestyle for themselves and their offspring. But how do you increase the productivity for Americans, or any society?

There are really only three ways to do it: introduce new technologies, build infrastructure, and educate the people. (There used to be the fourth way: exploit natural resources by extracting what’s in the dirt below you or having interesting geographic control points. Most of them have been fully exploited by now.) We observed China spending almost its entire stimulus package on those areas. As far as I can tell, the US spent practically none (half went to banks, the other half ? I have no clue.)

Protectionism will not increase American’s productivity. It adds costs to Chinese side artificially. It works only for the short-term, since refusing lower-costs goods is an invisible tax to the whole society. I do believe America need some short-term relieves, but doing nothing for the long-term is, well, short-sighted.

Copenhagen Climate Summit was really the show for two countries: the USA and China, the biggest two polluters in this world. It came down to a simple struggle: each wanted the other to emit less CO₂ than they would like.

The math is quite simple. Chinese outnumber Americans four to one. If Chinese would enjoy the carbon-heavy American lifestyle, China would emit a lot more CO₂ than today. If that happens, that would force American to change their current lifestyle, something Americans would kill to avoid. Can he is with sin cast a stone?

But, argued Americans, all we want is to maintain status quo. Everyone freezes at their current carbon emission level until we, advanced technological countries, figure out how to solve this problem.

Did anyone buy that? Did any American buy that?