By Tommy Leung on 10/01/2011 in Life
Things are clearly escalating and getting out of hand with this protest. I support everyone’s right to a peaceful assembly and I am strongly against police abuse of power. The police are not above the law even if they think they are. I read an article about Marines and other members of the United States armed forces joining the protestors to protect them from police brutality. I support all of that.
But, it appears this is all getting out of hand.
I’m not entirely sure what is being protested. Bailouts? Unemployment? Jobs? What exactly is being protested?
From what I’ve seen on YouTube and read on OccupyWallSt.org, it appears people are angry that Wall Street is making a lot of money while everyone else is unemployed or underemployed. If that is what this protest is about then I really can’t support the reasoning for the protest.
Wall Street is making a lot of money while the rest of us aren’t. I don’t work on Wall Street. I have nothing to do with Wall Street. But, Wall Street weren’t the ones who forcibly took money from me and gave it to themselves in the form of huge bonuses while their companies were financially unsound. They are still financially unsound. Nothing has been fixed. The big banks will be asking for more bailouts again.
I know that Wall Street took dirty money. They took money stolen from you and me. They took it to continue living their lifestyle of plenty while the rest of us are barely getting by. I get it. It’s happening. I see it.
However, it wasn’t Wall Street that did this to us. Even if we were to blame the economic downturn entirely on the housing bubble, Wall Street didn’t create the bubble. Wall Street merely profited from the bubble and the subsequent bursting of the bubble. Those aren’t commendable actions and if Wall Street had more moral fiber, they wouldn’t have done what they did. Clearly, they don’t but, having poor character isn’t a crime.
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By Tommy Leung on 09/29/2011 in Fitness, Life
One of the reasons people try vegetarianism is to boycott the inhumane treatment of animals. Namely cows, chickens, and pigs. Spectacular documentaries like Food, Inc have shed light on the horrible living conditions of these animals in factory farms. There is no reasonable person who would question how cruel and disgusting our conventional livestock farming system is.
But, the moral question isn’t and shouldn’t be the only unacceptable reason. Animals raised in these filthy and cramped conditions are substantially poorer in nutrition and kept alive by drugs to combat the illnesses they develop because of the unsanitary living conditions. It is no coincidence that a population eating these nutritiously inferior and sick animals are also themselves nutrient deficient and sick.
The old saying is right: you are what you eat.
The fight to raise livestock humanely is not solely a vegetarian cause. In fact, vegetarians have little affect on the food producers compared to those of us who consume meat. Which is why choosing to become a vegetarian for moral reasons is misguided and unhelpful to the cause of improving the living conditions of livestock.
Imagine you wanted to change the way farmers–all farmers–grow their vegetables. You want pesticide free, organically grown, and non-GMO produce because it doesn’t have harmful pesticides, is more nutritious, and isn’t genetically modified. Would you stop eating vegetables? Of course not! That wouldn’t do anything to change their practices. If we opt out of doing business with them, we have no pull with them. We are no longer in the market.
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By Tommy Leung on 09/25/2011 in Fitness
Do you want a bigger back? That highly coveted V-shaped torso? The even more coveted six pack abs? Or any abs at all really. How about forearms with the strength to crush rocks? Or at least other people’s hands? There might be some women on the planet who aren’t interested in such things at all but, I can’t think of many men who wouldn’t. In fact, we–as men–are willing resort to almost every form of exercise and nutrition trickery to get there.
Well, I am going to give you the secret to the V shaped torso, bone crushing grip strength, and ab definition that you’ve only dreamed of. Are you ready? The secret to all those things is the pull-up.
How could it be that simple? Why should it be difficult? There is a caveat, of course. You’d have to be in fairly good shape to begin with for this to work. If you can’t do a single pull-up, this isn’t for you. Part of the secret is doing an insane volume of pull-ups. If you can’t do 1, it’ll be very hard to do 100.
Come back to this after you’ve improved your base strength. For the rest of you, here’s what over 3000 pull-ups did to me–and can do for you–in 30 days. I wish I was selling you something but, I’m not. The idea couldn’t be simpler. It is up to you to do it.
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By Tommy Leung on 08/28/2011 in Marketing, Tech
Before we begin, I am going to tell you that I am here to show how Foxconn is not evil. If you would rather keep your head in the sand and continue to feel ashamed for your using your iPad, Macbook, iPhone, Android phone, HP computer, or a lot of other electronics, you are free to do so. But, I am sick of hearing people repeat economic idiocies they hear from the media so I am going to debunk this myth of slave labor and slave wages in Foxconn factories that produce the very electronics these people condemning Foxconn love to use.
Most of the outrage over Foxconn came about as reports of their employees committing suicide piled up. Why these folks are committing suicide is anyone’s guess. However, this big bad slave driving company gives the families of deceased employees 8.5 – 10 years worth of wages. How evil! The reason people are committing suicide at Foxconn plants is something a psychologist can look into. I am not a psychologist and I’ve never had suicidal tendencies so I don’t have first hand experience to draw from. But, I think it’s pretty safe to say that an evil corporation is under no obligation to pay families of deceased employees ten years worth of wages. A dead employee is not making Foxconn any money. Foxconn sounds like an altruist more than anything else!
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By Tommy Leung on 08/25/2011 in Marketing, Tech
I had an urge to flex my study-demolishing muscles and this study about social networking increasing the risk for teen drug and alcohol abuse found it’s way to my attention–it has also made its rounds all over the internet. Here’s the study in it’s entirety. It was produced by Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse or CASA. As in: mi casa es su casa–I’ve also been working on a Spanish translation project at work. There were a whole bunch of findings but, let’s look at these three first as they were the most talked about:
- Five times likelier to have used tobacco (10 percent vs. two percent)
- Three times likelier to have used alcohol (26 percent vs. nine percent)
- Twice as likely to have used marijuana (13 percent vs. seven percent)
Parents would hard pressed not to put the kibosh on their child’s social networking use right now. Computers are only for homework! 5x more likely smoke cigarettes, 3x more likely to drink, and 2x more likely to smoke weed! My god, hide your kids, hide your wives, hide your husbands, social networks are destroying the world!
Now this is compared to kids who apparently don’t spend any time on social networking sites. I’m not really sure where you find these kids. Do they not have computers? No Internet maybe? Are there really kids between 12 and 17 who aren’t on any social network? I find it hard to believe but, let’s say there are.
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