Loud Thoughts

By now, you know the story. IOC threw eight players, in Badminton, out for “not using one’s best efforts to win.”

In the book Freakonomics, the authors discovered that Sumo wrestlers who already qualified for next year’s promotion are likely to lose to an otherwise weaker competitor. In NFL, teams that have already missed the play-off have the incentive to lose to get a better drafting order, as well as a more favorable schedule for the next season.

For Badminton in this Olympics, the teams that have already qualified for the medal round would play for only one thing: the draw order. Since the championship round is a knock-out format, one loss and you are out. Everyone would like to avoid the strong teams until the last possible moment, preferably only during the medal round. Since the draw order is based on the win-lose record of the qualifying round, there is no incentive to win more after you have already qualified.

For any competition, or war, it is common to lose a battle to win the war. For Badminton, the strategy is simple: first try your best to qualify, then try not to win anymore. Those players were using their best efforts to win, just not necessarily for that specific match. IOC should throw out the Badminton World Federation, or at least their rule book.

HBR blog recently has this one from a Kyle Wiens, “CEO of iFixit, the largest online repair community, as well as founder of Dozuki, a software company dedicated to helping manufacturers publish amazing documentation.”

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write. Programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code. You see, at its core, code is prose. Great programmers are more than just code monkeys; according to Stanford programming legend Donald Knuth they are “essayists who work with traditional aesthetic and literary forms.”

Grammar is my litmus test. All applicants say they’re detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.

Mr. Wien, the boss, wants only those people with certain traits and skills. For that, he uses grammatical proficiency as the screen. This approach is based on several critical assumptions: grammatical proficiency is strongly correlated to those traits; the strengths of both are linearly proportional, that if one is very strong grammatically, he or she is similarly strong in those traits; he can have an effective test to screen people’s grammatical proficiency; lastly, the reverse is true, that if someone is not good at grammar, the person also must lack those traits he desires.

Except for the tests, these are not rational. And the test is true only for English. If we chart one of those traits: detail attentiveness, diligence at work, software programming skills, etc., against grammatical proficiency. What correlation coefficient would we expect?

Many of the best software engineers, that I know of, are grammatically terrible. Mr. Wiens will never get to know any of them. Come to think of it, Mr. Wiens won’t hire myself either. Oh, well.

pa·tri·ot·ism

devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country

pro·tec·tion·ism

practice or system of fostering or developing domestic industries by protecting them from foreign competition through duties or quotas imposed on importations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

I think they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over again

Politicians and leaders of large organizations knew that there are two level of communications: one at symbolic level and other on the specifics. There are many advantages of staying at symbolic level. The audience are easier motivated by a belief, a value, or a vision. Once motivated, they move at the right direction without much need for herding; they are self-managed; the interpretations are left to the listeners and the speaker, therefore, avoided direct responsibility for the actions taken; lastly, it is much easier to adjust or change later, since nothing specific was said.

Staying at pure symbolic level, however, disconnects with the reality. Therefore, a skilled politician will try to appear concrete to galvanize the support.

Bashing China is popular, yet it does not get trite. Chinese should feel good. The USA is clearly treating China as her major, and probably only, rival and equal — not much different from other rivalries such as USC-UCLA, TsingHua-Peking U., or Cambridge-Oxford. When the said rival comes up in any conversation, trash talk excessively, drink up, and let out a few grunts for good measure. Only petty actions, if that, will take place. Real games will be played in a different arena with a completely different set of rules.

Yes, symbolically, it looks so bad for the US Olympic team to wear uniforms made in China (designed by Ralph Lauren). If we inspect the equipment the aesthetes use for compete: shoes, balls, rackets, lenses, etc., I doubt many of them were made in USA. If anyone bring their tablet, MP3 player, digital camera, or cell phone with them. The chances are pretty slim that they were made in the USA. In terms of monetary value, the uniforms are really quite trivial compared to those. But they are big symbolically. Wearing what made by the rival is just not patriotic.

Note that none of the politicians turned this into a protectionism conversation. Everyone knew that Chinese only got a petty sum of the value from the whole uniform deal. Ralph Lauren is is pleased to be labelled an “Iconic American Company,” publicized by the US Olympic Committee.

So the proper play is to follow the tradition: trash talk as much as you please, drink up, grunt for good measure, and do nothing.

Few months ago, I went to a restaurant called Playground in Santa Ana, California. It is a place customers pay to consume what chefs having fun making. Everything was artisan: beers, breads, desserts, and, of course, all the dishes. Waiting staff will tell you a little story on each dish when it was served, “My grandfather had this bread recipe…” When the foie gras dish came up, the waitress said, “Enjoy while you can, this will be banned in a couple of months.” It was delicious, sheared to the perfection, melt in your month with a hint of meaty foul flavor, and sinfully creamy.

Yes, starting July 1st, California banned the selling and production of Foie Gras, the fatty goose liver loved by many. Although the most sweeping, California is pretty late in joining the anti-foie movement. Countries, states, and cities around the world has been banning the production or force-feeding of geese and ducks for decades. It is cruel, said the activists, to force-feed the fouls to enlarge their livers over 10 times the healthy size.

Do ducks prefer eating too much corn and died of liver disease over being slaughtered for their meats? Which one is more painful? Which is more cruel?

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On the same day, Seattle banned plastic bags in all super-markets. Technically, they only banned the flimsy kind. A more sturdy kind will cost 10 cents each, paper bags 5 cents. China and many more places have done this years ago.

Americans prefer to use the invisible hand, or the market force, to control social behavior. People consume more if prices are low, less if high. To change behavior, simply change the price. But why would 5 and 10 cents make any difference? The idea seems to utilize other changers of behaviors: the quest for convenience and social acceptance. Paying for those bags is such a bother and using them is wrong: it hurts the earth.

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Foie Gras exists because enough people like the taste of them. Bag exists because people need to take grocery home. They are hard to eradicate and therefore market will find ways. Restaurants are talking about giving away Foie Gras free, or offer to cook for the customers who brought the meat in themselves, similar to charging corkage fees when customers bring their own wines. As for bags, people will bring their own. But when they did not, they really have no choices but just pay for the bags. After all, 10 cents are not really beyond affordability. How many you can carry anyway?

President Obama decided to let some illegal aliens to work legally for two-years at a time. Once this door is cracked, these people can extend their work visa and eventually become US citizens. The Supreme Court just ruled most of Arizona’s tough anti-immigration laws unconstitutional, but left the “racial profiling” part intact. Some applauded these and others were infuriated. And everyone is debating the wrong thing.

The critically important immigration policy to debate is not about Mexicans dropping their kids, or pregnant wives, inside of the US borders. It is not whether “show me your paper” is the same as “racial profiling.” It is how to attract elite and wealth — those who try harder, are younger, and bring resources — into this country. Immigrants usually intensify competition for opportunities and therefore push the whole society to be more efficient. There are people who can make this country better, stronger, and wealthier. Inviting them into the citizenship is good for the country.

Even when the US produces a tenth of science and engineering majored college graduates than the industries need, we cap H1B visa to a ridiculous small number. Even when there is a severe shortage of service sector labor, we don’t grant temporary visa for qualified workers. Even when the economy is in desperate need for boosting, we don’t allow foreign investors to come. Even when National Parks are falling apart, we still make tourist visa difficult to get. Why? Because many of us fear competitions, we might lose.

The thing is, competitions are there anyway, next door or abroad. If Mexicans, Filipino, Indians, and Chinese work harder than Americans, why does it matter if they are in the country or not? Besides, don’t we want hard-working and well educated people working for us, instead of them?

“We will fight until the last breath,” the fighters swore! So battles after battles, they fought on. The spirits were high, the bodies were tired, the coffers emptied, lives ruined, but the glory of the fight will be remembered by the history. What causes are worth such price?

Well being of our descendants forever? The land our ancestors were buried? The name of the family? The destruction of our belief? The union with our love?

No. Americans fight for whether a union of two loved ones can be called marriage, growers of marijuana be treated like murderers, non-Anglo Saxon descents or less fluent English speakers prove their right to live here, or every sick person receive health care.

Republicans lost the first battle, Obamacare passed as laws. The lost the second battle, it was upheld by the Supreme Court. “We shall repeal!” claims the party.

Yes, it is a divided issue. No, Obamacare is not perfect, far from it. But honestly, we are tired and our coffers are far from full. Can we try to make it work instead of fighting to the last breath?

I don’t understand the arguments against individual mandate. If hospital cannot turn away patients and there is no individual mandate, then no one will buy insurance and just get free treatments. The result is all tax payers will pay for the hospitals and we will have nationalized health-care. So you will either pay for it as taxes or as mandate.