Albert T. Wong - 黃頌言

Wired News: Battle of the New Atheism
This autumn, Harris has a new book out, Letter to a Christian Nation. In it, he demonstrates the behavior he believes atheists should adopt when talking with Christians. “Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you,” he writes, addressing his imaginary opponent, “dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well — by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.”

Wow… I didn’t know there was such a condition… a condition where people can’t recognize their faces or other people’s faces.

Wired 14.11: Face Blind
BILL CHOISSER WAS 48 when he first recognized himself. He was standing in his bathroom, looking in the mirror when it happened. A strand of hair fell down – he had been growing it out for the first time. The strand draped toward a nose. He understood that it was a nose, but then it hit him forcefully that it was his nose. He looked a little higher, stared into his own eyes, and saw … himself.

For most of his childhood, Choisser thought he was normal. He just assumed that nobody saw faces. But slowly, it dawned on him that he was different. Other people recognized their mothers on the street. He did not. During the 1970s, as a small-town lawyer in the Illinois Ozarks, he struggled to convince clients that he was competent even though he couldn’t find them in court. He never greeted the judges when he passed them on the street – everyone looked similarly blank to him – and he developed a reputation for arrogance. His father, also a lawyer, told him to pay more attention. His mother grew distant from him. He felt like he lived in a ghost world. Not being able to see his own face left him feeling hollow.

I finally got a “IBM business” blog off of IBM DeveloperWorks. I’ll put my thought on IBM, Open Source and Open Computing on my new “official” company blog.

IBM developerWorks : Blogs : Pragmatic viewpoints of Open Computing
Mr. Wong is an IT Architect with IBM Retail On Demand Emerging Business Opportunities (EBO), the internal venture capitalist organization missioned to increase IBM business and technical solutions within the Retail industry. He was formerly with the IBM Global Services Linux and Grid EBO building IBM’s initial entry into the Linux and Grid Computing market, IBM Global Services Application Services and IBM Sales and Distribution Technical Sales Support.

Due to the dynamic nature of the EBO, his skills span the whole spectrum of I/T business and technical development from technical pre-sales, solution design and implementation, offering development to ecosystem enablement.

As a result of his thought leadership and business and technical knowledge in the Open Source and Linux space, he was the Co-Leader of the IGS Open Source Community of Practice, an IBM internal grassroots knowledge network, where he co-leads community, communication and knowledge sharing activities for 7,100 IBMers.

Not at work, Mr. Wong is very active in Asian American Civil Rights and is an officer for the Organization of Chinese Americans and was a past president of the UC Irvine Alumni Association Information and Computer Science Chapter. He enjoys traveling all over the world, eating at local mom and pop restaurants, shopping, learning about anything and everything, donating time to worthy causes and helping his family’s business.

H-Net Review: Trudy Eden on Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America
Food history, like all historical fields, has had its active and dormant periods. Historians in the first part of the twentieth century explored it avidly. Many of them sought to give an expansive view of the cultivation, distribution, preparation, and/or consumption of a particular product. Examples of this type of macro-view history include Edward R. Everson, Beverages, Past and Present 1908, William J. Ashley, The Bread of Our Forefathers 1928, and William G. Panscher, Baking in America 1956. While providing an understanding of food supplies, practices, and habits over long chronological periods and broad geographical spaces, these texts come up against a major impediment to in-depth analysis. For much of human history, food has been a local thing. People have grown and distributed much of their food supply locally and have prepared and consumed it according to local custom. This tendency does not mean that local customs cannot be compared and classified in a larger context–there are such things as “French cuisine” and “British food” to use the problem addressed by Stephen Mennell in All Manners of Food [1985], but within each of those categories there exists a universe of variety and meaning. While it is important to understand the larger picture, the drawback of many such studies is that they miss the sociological, chronological and geographical variety in the enterprise of eating.

http://today.uci.edu/news/media_advisory_detail.asp?key=311

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

Oct. 16, 2006

MEDIA ADVISORY/CALENDAR LISTING

CANDIDATES FROM 68TH, 69TH, 70TH ASSEMBLY AND 34TH SENATE DISTRICTS INVITED TO FORUM

WHAT:
Three weeks prior to this year’s election, eight candidates vying for the 68th, 69th, 70th Assembly and 34th Senate district seats have been invited to a forum tomorrow co-sponsored by the University of California, Irvine, the Irvine Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters and the Associated Students at UC Irvine. Open to the public, the event will be moderated by Rick Reiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Golden Mike-winning commentator, executive editor of the Orange County Business Journal and host of KOCE’s “Inside OC.” Format:
The moderator will pose questions on pre-selected topics ranging from infrastructure to education. Candidates will not be told questions in advance but will be advised of discussion topics. Questions also will be submitted by the audience.

WHEN:
6:30-8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17

WHERE:
University of California, Irvine — University Club, 801 East Peltason Dr.
Map: http://www.uclub.uci.edu/directions.htm

INFORMATION:
The event will be webcast live at www.advocacy.uci.edu and www.asuci.uci.edu. A live audio broadcast will be provided by KUCI, 88.9 FM. A press table will be set up at the University Club for check-in.

BACKGROUND:
On Tuesday, Nov. 7, California residents will be voting in a statewide election for candidates and ballot measures.

CANDIDATES EXPECTED TO ATTEND:
68th Assembly:
Paul Lucas — Democrat
Van Tran — Republican

69th Assembly:
Jose Solorio — Democrat
Ryan Gene Williams — Republican

70th Assembly:
Chuck DeVore — Republican
Michael G. Glover — Democrat

34th Senate:
Lou Correa — Democrat
Lynn Daucher — Republican

###
Media/Event Contact:
Kathy Eiler
949-824-5227
keiler@uci.edu

UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit: www.today.uci.edu/experts.

free wi-fi airport high speed internet access list
Free Wi-Fi in Airports

Many Airport authorities are adding Free Wi-Fi high speed internet access as an amenity for travelers. Some offer access in the entire airport while others may limit access to specified terminal or waiting areas. In addition, many airline club lounges may have their own free access available.

Wired 14.10: START
Martha Stewart might be able to show you how to make the perfect centerpiece, but let’s see her school you in using a rubber band to run faster. For that, try Ito-ke no shokutaku (The Ito Family Dinner Table), Japan’s weekly how-to TV show that combines the spirit of productivity blog Lifehacker with the manic energy of Deal or No Deal. Cohosted by P-ko, an anime PC, the show challenges contestants to top one another with urawaza, or “secret tricks,” a concept that became popular in the ’80s with gamers swapping tips for beating Super Mario Brothers. One minute, someone is demonstrating a way to improve your bowling score; the next, a guest is showing a technique for keeping Band-Aids on your finger. Ito-ke is in its ninth season on Nippon Television – having spawned an entire industry of recipe books and practical guides – and is gaining a US following thanks to YouTube. The urawaza may seem unbelievable, but all have been proven effective in front of a live audience. Here are a few of our favorite tricks.

The New York Review of Books: Aid: Can It Work?
The conundrum facing the rich countries is that everywhere in the developing world, and particularly in Africa, you see children dying for want of pennies, while it’s equally obvious that aid often doesn’t work very well.

Travel through the third world, and you may see clinics with signs proudly proclaiming that they were built by such-and-such an agency—but no other sign of life. It’s easy to build a clinic, but harder to ensure that doctors and nurses actually report for work in the days that follow—and when the doctor stops showing up, so do patients. Go on to the market, and there you may see the clinic’s stock of medicines for sale (marked “donated by” so-and-so, “not for sale”).

Continue on your way, and you may encounter bridges built with foreign aid over streams—but the construction led to erosion on both banks. So the ends of the bridge are a couple of feet higher than the ground, and vehicles can’t use it. Travelers continue to ford the stream in the dry season, and nobody goes across in the rainy season.

In rural Indonesia, you see a cultural problem that aid can’t easily address: pregnant women and babies going hungry, even having to eat bark from trees, while their husbands are doing fine. It turns out that the custom is for the men and boys to eat their fill first. In Ethiopia, you greet parents cradling hungry babies and explaining that they have no food because their land is parched and their crops are dying. And two hundred feet away is a lake, but there is no tradition of irrigating land with the lake water, and no bucket; and anyway the men explain that carrying water is women’s work. In both cases you can see why many who know about aid say that changing the status and power of women is of prime importance if aid and development are to be effective. But it is far from clear how this can be done.

Discouraged, you move on to southern Africa. You see the very sensible efforts of aid groups to get people to grow sorghum rather than corn, because it is hardier and more nutritious. But local people aren’t used to eating sorghum. So aid workers introduce sorghum by giving it out as a relief food to the poor—and then sorghum becomes stigmatized as the poor man’s food, and no one wants to have anything to do with it.

You visit an AIDS clinic there, and see the efforts to save babies by using cheap medicines like Nevirapine to block mother-to-child transmission of HIV during pregnancy. Then the clinic gives the women infant formula to take home, so that they don’t infect the babies with HIV during breastfeeding. A hundred yards down the road, you see piles of abandoned formula, where the women have dumped it. Any woman feeding her baby formula, rather than nursing directly, is presumed to have tested positive for HIV, and no woman wants that stigma.

Organization of Chinese Americans - Orange County Chapter » About OCA / Officers
About Organization of Chinese Americans

Founded in 1973, Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) is a national organization dedicated to advancing the social, political, and economic well-being of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States. OCA aims to embrace the hopes and aspirations of nearly 12 million Asian Pacific Americans in the United States.

OCA’s goals are:
• to advocate for social justice, equal opportunity and fair treatment;
• to promote civic participation, education, and leadership;
• to advance coalitions and community building; and
• to foster cultural heritage.

To achieve these goals, OCA is engaged in organizing its 80 chapters and affiliates across the nation to develop both leadership and community involvement. OCA chapters and our organizational and college affiliates are establishing strong local programs in all parts of the country.

OCA’s based in Washington, D.C. gives the national office an effective vantage point for monitoring legislation and policy issues affecting Asian Pacific Americans. In addition, OCA is able to build national support and to work in coalition with other national groups around issues affecting Asian Pacific Americans. Visit the national OCA website for more information.

OCA takes no collective position on the politics of any foreign country, but instead focuses on the welfare and civil rights of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States.
Our chapter is here to address your needs, through education, activism and community service. Get involved in Asian American issues, locally and nationally!

OCA Facts

* Founded: 1973
* Legal Status: Non-profit, Non-partisan
* National Office: Washington, DC
* Number of Chapters: 50
* Representing: Over 10,000 people (Affiliate, College Affiliates, Young OCA, OCA Young Professionals, General membership)
* First and only national Chinese American civil rights organization headquartered in D.C.

OCA History

* Oct. 14, 1976 - OCA National President K.L. Wang meets with President Ford.
* Fall 1977 - OCA National Headquarters sets up in Washington, D.C. with the first Executive Director Hayden Lee.
* 1977 - OCA begins publishing quarterly issues of IMAGE.
* June 29, 1984 -Vincent Chin assailant convicted of civil rights violation.
* January 10, 1986 - OCA President Andrew Chen meets with President Ronald Reagan for greater opportunities and recognition for Chinese Americans and AAPIs.
* July 19, 1989 - OCA President Frank Liu meets with President George Bush to discuss APA issues.
* May 15, 1990 - OCA President S.B. Woo meets with President George Bush on the Civil Rights Act of 1990.
* November 29, 1990 - OCA Executive Director Daphne Kwok witnesses the signing of the Immigration Act of 1990.
* January 1992 - OCA President Claudine Cheng is instrumental in the issuance of the first Chinese American commemorative stamp - Year of the Rooster. The idea was initiated by OCA-Georgia Chapter member Jean Chen.
* June 27, 1993 - OCA meets with Attorney General Janet Reno on AAPI and Hispanic issues.
* August 15, 1995 - OCA National President Michael Lin meets with President Clinton and Secretary of Defense Perry on affirmative action.
* June 28, 1996 - OCA presents the first Pioneer Awards in San Francisco.
* Fall 1996 - OCA coordinates historic first national AAPI voter registration campaign.

More highlights and history can be found on the OCA National History, OCA Year in Review and OCA Facts.

Welcome to vNES
The Virtual Nintendo Entertainment System with 395 Games!
Here, you can play NES Games in your browser, using Java Applet Technology. All you need is Java 1.5.0 or higher. If you need to upgrade, click here. Before you begin, please make sure you understand the controls. The controller at top will always remain there, for reference. We are not affiliated with Nintendo in any way. This is an emulator. It was built so we would have something to do.

vNES