General news

Natural disasters

Hong Kong has no death for the biggest typhoon. Philippines has far more deaths. Indonesia has more than one thousand (could be far higher) deaths. It explains some 'facts':

·         The richer the city, the better the preparation.

·         Natural disasters are getting more fatal and frequent. Global warming?

·         My Coconut Theory. That's why some countries are always poor due to the poor locations that allow disasters to destroy their coconuts.

More on natural disasters

We have less fatalities due to better preparation such as better house construction to withstand typhoons and earthquakes and better predictions. But only in richer cities.

For example, there are few if any wooden houses with no foundations compared to the 50s and 60s in Hong Kong. It would cause many deaths in the last typhoon if they still exit.

For the last two years the world has record-high natural disasters - a statistics that cannot be fake news. Some policy is terrible. Why the government continues to give money to the same destroyed house in the beach front that happens once every 3 years?

The impacts of constant flooding and constant droughts cannot be avoided but can be reduced if we devote more of our resources here than fighting endless wars.

The story behind the story

British colonization tries to squeeze everything from the colony. My British friend told me Brits should invest in Britain, not in Hong Kong. The story behind the story is the Brits tried to make money for the British firms with the finance that Honk Kong folks have to pay for for years to come.

Venezuela, a man-made disaster

Venezuela used to be one of the richest countries in S. America. The oil is too heavy and makes US the only country in the close area that can refine the oil. Why argue with your master?

Everyone for himself

The public and the politicians are not stupid. Everyone wants to have the maximum benefits and least taxes without thinking about the future of the country. Politicians want to buy votes from them. The easiest way to satisfy both is borrowing more money.

Refusing sex

Another female celebrity announced she was a victim of being raped.

Is refusing sex a human right? You will only be safe if you are fat and ugly.

Educating Chinese

Educating foreigners (Chinese or not) is a two-blade sword. Many graduated Chinese settle down and contribute a lot to high techs. Many US universities' survival depend on tuition incomes from foreign students. It (and tourism) is the service surplus that have not included in the trade deficit.

Carrier killer

The China's carrier killer missiles are many times faster than sound and so far US is still finding a solution. Carriers become sitting ducks. Besides the missiles described, submarine can be undetected. A China submarine surfaced without detection and the distance was within torpedo range.

This is what we call asymmetric weapons: a missile costing a few millions can destroy a carrier costing billions.

China’s weapon advances

China may buy one and then reverse engineers.

US is #1 in weapon sale, Russia #2 but declining in both foreign and internal sales and China a distant #3 but increasing. US loses the military drones to China due to the restrictions to sell and the price tags.

The coming years will be in favor to China from the following link.
www.historyinorbit.com/...

My response to a nasty comment on China’s recent past

Talk about today and tomorrow. The past is history and sometimes has nothing to do with the future. We cannot live in the past and in denial too long. Wake up please!

Taiwan

Taiwan is a little behind from Japan and S. Korea. One reason is spending too much on defense. In general, folks in Taiwan and the surrounding towns are from mainland China original while more of the folks in the south are natives.

Except Taipei, Taiwan is way behind Hong Kong in the number of high rises, subway system, airport...

B-52

B-52 was a work horse for Vietnam War, but no longer. It will not last long in the sky by today's land-to-air missiles.

Most likely the Chinese air defense system is reverse engineered of Soviet newest S-400 system: nationalinterest.org/...

China's weapons.
tonyp4idea.blogspot.com/2018/09/chinas-weapon-advances-update.html

Chinese defenationalinterest.org/...

Miss Fan

The most popular movie actress in China was caught for tax evasion. They have two contracts: one real and one for the tax reporting. It is a common practice for all actors/actresses in China. She is a warning to all and it is “kill one and warn millions”. Popularity has its price.

Most if not all Chinese restaurants in America do the same. The one for tax reporting is the one with all the credit cards. Corporations do the same especially the multi-national companies. It is called creative accounting. The rich folks including Trump must have teams of creative folks.

I am glad that I am not rich enough to cause this temptation.

Wrong Performance / Price?

 

My friend spent $5,000 extra for the car stereo system but updated to a 4K TV recently for less than $1,000. Both may last for 10 years. However, the TV is watched at least 3 hours every day while he spends about 15 minutes in driving.

Another friend bought the most expensive foreign car he could afford. He drove about 3 hours to work. It makes sense for him. If he cut his commute time to 1 hour a day, his life should be improved a lot unless he does not get along with his spouse.

Do what the Roman does in Rome

A lady was confronted for speaking Spanish. We should not speak Chinese too loud in public.

A couple refused to doggy bag the huge left over in a restaurant in Australia. The owner called the police. We should not waste food and it does not gain you any respect. There are similar bad public behaviors from the Chinese tourists.

It is the result of loss of education for a generation during the Cultural Revolution. How did the uneducated parents educate this generation? The result is obvious. Please do not show it again and again outside China. You represent a nation including me! My yellow face betrays me.

Our moral obligation to the world

We have to enforce our ideology such as democratic principles, human rights (according to our definitions), freedom, free trade and free market. We need to enforce our ideology via our military force.

We have our problems and our violations of human rights. Should other countries invade us due to our enslaving black, failure to protect the right of refusing sex, etc.?

Confirmation of another supreme-court judge

If we have to ensure no sexual wrong doing of an appointee, we will never find a capable male in the US. Sigh!