A Lot of Money

Can anybody get their brains around the kind of numbers in President Obama's budget?

an astonishing $1.75 trillion federal deficit that would be nearly four times the highest in history. [and about 12% of GDP, highest since 1945]

the plan would close the deficit to a a more reasonable — but still eye-popping — $533 billion after five years. That would still be higher than last year's record $455 billion deficit. [3/4 of the reduction will come from reduced spending in Afghanistan and Iraq]

And the national debt would more than double by the end of the upcoming decade, raising worries that so much federal borrowing could drive up interest rates and erode the value of the dollar.

Also, to narrow the budget gap, Obama relies on rosier predictions of economic growth — including a 3.2 percent boost in the economy next year — than most private sector economists foresee.

Large Swings in a Small Economy

Singapore's economy is subject to much more volatility than a big economy like the US, where 1% change is huge...

2007 +7.8%
2008 +1.1%
2009 -4.8% (projected)

official data showed the economy grew 1.1 per cent for the whole of last year, significantly lower than the 7.8 per cent recorded in 2007.

OCBC Bank, for one, now believes the Singapore economy will contract 4.8 per cent this year, instead of its previous prediction of a 2.8 per cent decline.

Which Diet to Choose?

The low-calorie one you can stick with...

Two decades after the debate began on which diet is best for weight loss, a conclusion is starting to come into focus. And the winner is . . . not low-carb, not low-fat, not high protein but . . . any diet.

That is, any diet that is low in calories and saturated fats and high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables -- and that an individual can stick with for a lifetime -- is a reasonable choice for people who need to lose weight. That's the conclusion of a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, representing the longest, largest and most rigorous test of several popular diet strategies.

In light of another highly regarded study published last year that reached a similar conclusion, medical experts are embracing the back-to-basics idea that the simple act of cutting calories is most important when it comes to losing weight. The conclusions could finally end the often-contentious debate over the comparative effectiveness of diets that are predominantly low in fat, high in protein, low in carbohydrates or marked by other specific configurations of nutrients.

"This study is saying it doesn't make any difference what diet you choose. Calories have always been the bottom line,"

Magic Water

This story sounds too good to be true. But I think we will see more and more of these kind of inventions displacing traditional chemicals and probably all kinds of products that we now manufacture. The age of molecular engineering is dawning...

It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it.

Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job.

The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water -- hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso -- the miracle liquid.

That's as good a name as any for a substance that scientists say is powerful enough to kill anthrax spores without harming people or the environment.

Classic critique

Here is a hilarious article by the LA Times sarcastic sports columnist TJ Simers. Poking fun at himself through evaluating the Times' coverage of the Academy Awards show.

I don't get it. Why do writers always have to be so negative? Why are they so intent on just tearing things down?

Has Mary McNamara ever worn a top hat, sang and danced in front of millions? Who made her an expert on such things?

Here's Hugh giving it his all, while we have another Times columnist, Patrick Goldstein -- and catch the smirk on this guy's mug in the paper -- beginning his know-it-all column this way: "I guess reinventing the Oscars is harder than it looks."

What kind of cheap shot is that? Let's see him do better.

A slow-growth recession

This is the kind of statement that makes normal people scratch their heads and figure nobody can understand an economist:

In 2008, the economy grew 1.3 percent despite being in recession the full year, according to government data.

I have a degree in economics, and I don't understand what they mean. Didn't a recession used to be defined by contraction instead of expansion?

On the other hand, they expect things to get better pretty soon, which is a lot different than the previous doom and gloom scenarios I have read:

The central bank said it saw the economy recovering in 2010 better than previously expected, at growth between 2.5 percent and 3.3 percent, up from a 2.3-3.2 percent forecast in October.

Growth in 2011 would accelerate to between 3.8 percent and 5.0 percent, significantly higher than 2.8-3.6 percent increase seen in the last forecast.

What the world needs now...

Seth Godin says that people are looking for authenticity. He defines it as doing what you say you will do, not in terms of "being yourself."

I think of that as integrity. But I still think he is absolutely right.

In the end, what you act like is who you really are. All our actions add up to our identity.

You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That's good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later.

How Do You Spell Bi-Partisanship?

Apparently, the Obama Administration has not found out yet. Up until now, their efforts seem targeted at getting Republicans to vote for Democratic plans.

Will that failure to woo Republicans to their side lead them to start compromising with the opposition, so that agendas are pushed that satisfy the interest of both parties? Or will they give up and say that they tried being bi-partisan, but the Republicans were not interested?

Not one Republican voted for Mr. Obama’s plan in the House and just three voted for it in the Senate as it headed to final passage on Friday night. The party-line schism, coupled with the withdrawal on Thursday of a Republican senator, Judd Gregg, as a nominee to Mr. Obama’s cabinet, made clear the futility so far of the president’s effort to move Washington toward post-partisanship.

Their unrequited overtures to Republicans over the past several weeks taught Mr. Obama and his aides some hard lessons.

Unfortunately, the reality is...

that as valuable as the symbolism of an economic stimulus package is, someday it will have to be paid for. And we might not actually get much for the money that is spent.

This from a couple of the world's leading economists:

Our own view is that the short-term stimulus from the legislation before Congress will be smaller per dollar spent than is expected by many others because the package tries to combine short-term stimulus with long-term benefits to the economy. Unfortunately, short-term and long-term gains are in considerable conflict with each other. Moreover, it is very hard to spend wisely large sums in short periods of time. Nor can one ever forget that spending is not free, and ultimately it has to be financed by higher taxes.

Signing Day

I am a UCLA Bruins football junkie. Though I live in Singapore, I avidly follow my beloved Bruins (both football and basketball) on internet sites.

This past Wednesday was one of the biggest days of the year for college football fans - National Letter of Intent signing day. My team had their best recruiting results of the past ten years, and I am happy, along with the whole Bruin Nation, who feel we are headed back to where we belong as one the the top programs in the country. Just as Ben Howland has turned around the basketball program to bring in elite talent and challenge for the national championship every year, we feel that Rick Neuheisel will have the football team among the top tier of programs in another year or two.

This article on ESPN gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the coaches' office on signing day.

Before the defensive end makes his announcement Neuheisel will have another UCLA recruit on the phone, congratulating him for faxing in his paperwork to the Bruins' office: "Way to go, 'A-bomb'! Can't wait to get you here. You and I are gonna have some fun!"

The day is off to a good start. Upstairs the Bruins' fax machine is humming. But the real dicey stuff doesn't begin for another 90 minutes or so, when the first of their announcements is scheduled.

American Idol auditions

We love watching the American Idol auditions in my family! GREAT entertainment! After the auditions, I frankly lose interest. I love the human interest stories, the emotion, the delusion, the quirkiness, the emergence of talent. It is fascinating!

Here is an early handicap from the LA Times on who is likely to make the final 12. Sorry, you have to go to the article in order for the links to work.

So the auditions are behind us. We haven't seen everyone yet, but we've seen a lot of them. And on the basis of that half-information, we are prepared to make some predictions.

Tens of thousands were summoned by the "Idol" trumpets. We predict that when the dust settles and the curtain rises over the Idoldome in five weeks, it will be these 12 warriors of song onstage prepared to seize the mantle of history. (Actually we couldn't narrow it down to 12, so we threw in one extra.)

In no particular order. Listed by name, (audition city), age, hometown. Audition song. Interesting fact. Link to check them out (while they last).

1. Lil Rounds: (Kansas City) 23, Memphis TN. Sang "All I Do." Family made homeless by a tornado. Audition video here.

2. Adam Lambert (San Francisco) 26, Hollywood, CA. Sang “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Was in the cast of "Wicked"; looks like Ewan McGregor. Remnants of MySpace page here. Audition video here.

3. Rose Flack (Salt Lake City) 17, Rathdrum, ID. Sang Carole King's “I Feel the Earth Move." Recently orphaned, barefoot hippie girl. MySpace page here. Audition video here.

4. Jackie Tohn (New York) 27, Silver Lake, CA. Sang Jason Mraz's "I’m Yours." Rocker since childhood. Audition video here. Personal site here.

5. Scott MacIntyre: (Phoenix) 22, Scottsdale, AZ. Sang Billy Joel's "And So It Goes." Legally blind. Audition video here. Personal site here.

6. Joanna Pacitti. (Louisville) 23, Philadelphia, PA. Sang Pat Benatar's "We Belong." Had earlier recording career on A&M Records. Audition video here. MySpace page here.

7. Jorge Nunez. (San Juan) 20, Carolina, Puerto Rico. Sang "My Way” and "What a Wonderful World." Charmed the judges when he sang in Spanish. Audition video here.

8. Meghan Corkrey. (Salt Lake) 23, Sandy, UT. Sang “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” Heavily tattooed single mother. Audition video here.

9. Kai Kalama: (San Francisco) 26, San Clemente, CA. Sang "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Cares for ailing mother. Audition video here. MySpace page for former band here.

10. Leneshe Young: (Louisville) 18, Cincinnati, OH. Sang original song. Raised in homeless shelters. Audition video here.

11. Von Smith: (Kansas City) 22, Greenwood, MO. Sang "Over the Rainbow." Wore goofy hat; "attempts things most guys don't attempt to sing." Audition video here. MySpace page here.

12. Danny Gokey (Kansas City) 28. Milwaukee, WI. Sang "Heard It Through the Grapevine." Grieving recently deceased wife. Audition video here. MySpace page here.

13. Michael Castro (Kansas City) 20. Rockwall, TX. Sang "In Love With a Girl." Brother of Season 7 giant Jason Castro. Audition video here.

Redefining Middle Class

Haha! In our euphemistic and self-esteem dominated world, we don't want to hurt people's feelings by leaving them out of the middle class if they want to be in the middle class. So middle class is really an idea and a perception more than an objective category or description based on any set of facts.

Labor union members will also be thrilled to hear that though their numbers shrink year after year and they become increasingly irrelevant, going from 20% of workers in 1983 to 12% of workers in 2008, we now know from the president that the key to a strong middle class is strong labor unions!

Quoted in the LA Times on 30 January 9:17am PST "Obama launches task force on middle class:"

"When I talk about the middle class, I am talking about folks who are currently in the middle class, but also folks who are aspiring to be in the middle class," the president said. "You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor union."

Maybe he feels the labor unions are so important because he is a government worker, where a whopping 42% of employees are unionized, versus the private sector where only 7% belong to unions.

Beyond Campaign Rhetoric

Democrats who are now responsible for the safety of the US (and much of the world!) are finding new virtue in the Bush administration doctrines they have villified.

Charles Krauthammer takes a longer term, strategic perspective at the Iraq War and Bush presidency and finds that the incoming administration has greatly benefitted from its predecessor and is showing respect in practice, even if that respect was lacking in debate.

paraphrased by Obama as "we shouldn't be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric" -- is a startlingly early sign of a newly respectful consideration of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

Not from any change of heart. But from simple reality. The beauty of democratic rotations of power is that when the opposition takes office, cheap criticism and calumny will no longer do. The Democrats now own Iraq. They own the war on al-Qaeda. And they own the panoply of anti-terror measures with which the Bush administration kept us safe these past seven years.

Which is why Obama is consciously creating a gulf between what he now dismissively calls "campaign rhetoric" and the policy choices he must make as president. Accordingly, Newsweek -- Obama acolyte and scourge of everything Bush/Cheney -- has on the eve of the Democratic restoration miraculously discovered the arguments for warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation and detention without trial. Indeed, Newsweek's neck-snapping cover declares, "Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney's Vision of Power."

Obama will be loath to throw away the tools that have kept the homeland safe. Just as he will be loath to jeopardize the remarkable turnaround in American fortunes in Iraq.

Obama opposed the war. But the war is all but over. What remains is an Iraq turned from aggressive, hostile power in the heart of the Middle East to an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States. No president would want to be responsible for undoing that success.

In Iraq, Bush rightly took criticism for all that went wrong -- the WMD fiasco, Abu Ghraib, the descent into bloody chaos in 2005-06. Then Bush goes to Baghdad to ratify the ultimate post-surge success of that troubled campaign -- the signing of a strategic partnership between the United States and Iraq -- and ends up dodging two size 10 shoes for his pains.

Absorbing that insult was Bush's final service on Iraq. Whatever venom the war generated is concentrated on Bush himself. By having personalized the responsibility for the awfulness of the war, Bush has done his successor a favor. Obama enters office with a strategic success on his hands -- while Bush leaves the scene taking a shoe for his country.

Catholic theology on justification changing

Charles Colson says in Christianity Today, that the Pope has signaled he believes in justification by faith, as Martin Luther advocated in launching the Reformation. In coming years, this should lead to teaching the doctrine throughout the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict on November 19 in what was otherwise a routine audience in St. Peter's square, gave a homily on justification and fully embraced the position that Evangelicals and Catholics Together had taken [in the 1997 document, "Gift of Salvation"]. He didn't identify it as such, but that's what he did.
Eleven years after that document was written, the Pope, the head of the church, concluded his homily by saying Luther was right, so long as you don't exclude charity, that is love, and the works that flow from love. Which of course none of us does.

Praise the Lord for this impact of the group "Evangelicals and Catholics Together." It was out of their dialogue that the teaching began spreading among Catholic leaders, including being adopted and passed on by the Pope, who was then an Augustinian Cardinal. Good things often happen when we join others in partnership.

1 billion and counting...

Internet users worldwide have crossed the 1 billion mark, with more in Asia than anywhere else. China has the largest number of users, and elsewhere I read they have the largest number of bloggers!

While the numbers are staggering, it is still a reminder to media-savvy urban dwellers like me and the three other internet users in my household, who take the web for granted and use it for most of our news and increasingly for shopping and entertainment, that 4 out of 5 people in the world still do their communicating the old-fashioned way, like face to face.

Global Internet usage reached over 1 billion unique visitors in the month of December, with 41.3 percent coming from the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report released Friday by comScore.
The study looked at Internet users over the age of 15, who accessed the net from their home or work computers in the month of December.
Europe grabbed the next largest slice, with 28 percent of the global Internet audience, followed by the U.S. with an 18.4 percent slice.
But Latin America, while holding a much smaller piece of 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, is the one to watch, noted Jamie Gavin, a comScore senior analyst.

Health Care Reform

I am all for making the health care system more efficient. However, there is so much spin in the discussion that it is hard to understand what is being discussed. Now that makes me nervous. Using euphemisms usually means trying to make something unpleasant sound pleasant.

This, for instance, in USA Today, reporting on President Obama making health care reform one of his first early priorities:

"However, the survey also revealed wide divisions in public opinion, with roughly half (49 percent) saying they are not willing to pay more to expand access to health insurance and 47% saying they are."

What does "expand access to health insurance" mean? It sounds like a good idea. Shouldn't people without access to health insurance have access to it?

What I suspect that means is subsidizing health insurance, so that people with money pay for health insurance for people without money. Now that may be a good idea, but why can't we discuss providing health insurance for poor people, or something like that?

My guess is that more people would be in favor of "expanding access" than for paying for health insurance for others, and that the media want to promote the policy, so they come up with more appealing ways to describe it...

Gay Hyperbole

When you equate a vote against legalizing homosexual marrige with the Holocaust, you demonstrate moral blindness.

To use such hyperbole is morally evil, because it reduces real evil in the world (like the brutal extermination of millions of people) to the status of a political position.

What is with these people? And who listens to them?

I see hatred and bigotry demonstrated here, but it is by gay activists toward those who disagree with them. This report in the Orange County Register covers protesters at Rick Warren's church.

Another man was irate at some of the messages on the protesters' signs – specifically a sign held by Mona Gable of Mission Viejo that read "Purpose Driven Bigots" and carried a swastika on the reverse. Paul Huckabone of Mission Viejo was shaking with anger as wary Orange County Sheriff's deputies watched.
"I voted 'no' on Prop 8, but the fact that you all are out here with a swastika – that guy (Warren) has gone to Africa and cured so many people, and you're comparing him to Adolf Hitler," Huckabone shouted.
Gable and her wife, Linda Kish, continued to voice their own outrage, however.
"People outside Orange County don't realize how hateful some members of this church are," Gable said.

Travel Lust

There's hardly anything I love as much as traveling, but I will probably not see any new destinations in 2009.

If I did have the money and time, here are some of the spots I might like to visit...

LA Times Top 29 Destinations for 2009

Apple's Product Cycle

Apple is famously secretive about the development of new products. At this week's Macworld Expo, their Vice President commented on their cycle:

He noted that Apple marches to certain annual product cycles: the holiday season (Novemberish), the educational buying season (late summer), the iPod product cycle (October), the iLife development cycle (usually March), the iPhone cycle (June).

He said that January's Macworld doesn't fit any of their product cycles, so they will be dropping out of the event...

The less religious a person is...

...the more he looks for a political savior.

I certainly have hopes for governments and leaders, but they are mixed with scepticism.

I put my secure hope in God and his kingdom, and his power to transform peoples' lives. And in his promise of a future perfect kingdom, in heaven!

On earth I see myself more as an agent of his kingdom than as a subject of any human government, and that gives me confidence even when the world seems to be falling apart. I am part of changing the world for good, and it is not a political process, it is a character process.

I certainly hope President Obama and other world leaders can solve our problems and make the world a better place, but I am not counting on it nor am I dependent on it. This world is just a temporary residing place, and I am a foreigner here no matter what country I live in.

Charles Colson has some helpful reflections in this article to start off the New Year:

But if we look honestly at what started the credit crisis—moral failures and following false worldviews—we recognize that the solution demands more than any political savior can possibly deliver.