"Nation of no losers" is my first book. The section "On Religion" will be deleted and retired here.

Section VII On religion

The next two chapters are on religion which affects our daily life. It is from my point of view. I hope it would not offend anyone. Some are comments and some are my questions. Hope they will be answered.

1. The world would be more peaceful if we respect others’ religious beliefs. The religious wars have been prolonged for centuries. Is it about time to stop?

2. As predicted by the Bible (I heard), Israel will be surrounded by its unfriendly neighbors. Without its advanced weapons, Israel would be crushed. Our Congress is controlled by Israel and we’ve been dragged to wars.

3. Besides the harmful wars, all religions bring harmony to the world and help the poor and the suffered. Judging from the church-goers, they are better citizens than the rest.

4. I believe there is a God judging from the New Testaments. No one can make them up. It is based on historical and geographic facts. However, I have some unanswered questions.

a. Jesus was a public figure, so why we need Judas playing the role of traitor? If Judas had a testament, we could have known more.

b. The robbers can repent and go to heaven. Debatable?

c. Some donate to church to buy a seat in heaven. Money talks?

d. Which one goes to heaven: a rich man paying his taxes without a lot of donations to the poor or the welfare recipient?

e. After feeling or seeing all the miseries in life, do we have a choice not to have after life?

f. Why there is no major miracle after Christ?

g. When Moses parted the Red Sea, was that enough to believe in God?

5. The Old Testaments are fascinating. However, since writing was not invented for a long while, how did they pass the Eva and Adams’ story to the generations after?

6. The church should adapt to today’s society. The old preaching should be updated as the Pope said “who is going to judge?” Accept others’ ideas. We cannot have only one making all the decisions and all are followers similar to George Bush’s cabinet.

7. The current Pope is more qualified to be a saint compared to all his recent predecessors. ‘Lead by example’ is simple and powerful.

8. Religions have done a lot of good deeds. However, there are some bad ones such as the endless religious wars. Due to control, they’ve destroyed the major libraries in ancient time. It is similar to the First Emperor of China destroying books and killing all scholars in about 200 BC. Similar to the Tibetan monks in the 50s and before. Only they could learn.

9. I also wonder why Jesus did not come at that time to China and why some races look worse and suffer more than others.

Three questions to Pope.

Today Vatican blames the Wall Street.

First, thanks for all the good deeds.

I have three simple questions:

Q1.

I pay all my taxes, more than double than the average of my fellow citizens.
I do no harm to the society and create jobs by investing.

However, some poor (some are lazy and/or some do not take risk) do not pay taxes but receive the benefits (from my money) go to heaven easier than I.

I'm the camel going thru the needle's eye.

Pope, What is the lesson?

Q2.

In Boston area, many churches are being closed or closed down to settle the lawsuits from the damaged altar boys (some are now in top 1% like the gym. athletes).

Pope, Would you fix your house first before the world's problems?

Q3.

Are we interpreting the preaching wrongly from the Crusade to today's wars in Middle East?

74 Politics and the stock market

Republicans are usually pro-business, but the democratic presidency has better track record for better market performance.

The Dow index was up 56% (from 7,949 to 12,418) in the less than 3 years since the day when Obama took office. As of 8/2012, it is 13,100, so the market has been fully recovered from 2007-2008, but not the economy. If you still collect unemployment or your house has been foreclosed, you're still in deep trouble.

The S&P500 performance under Republicans vs. Democrats since 1926:

Annualized return under Democratic presidencies: 13.74%
Annualized return under Republican presidencies: 6.25%

The President's appointees for the economy are the ones to watch as they set up the policies. As of 2012, the interest rate is not a factor as it cannot go much lower. The cut in military expenses and the ending of the two wars will be good for the economy.

The problem of the two major political parties is that they do not agree with each other, so they have to make too many compromises and waste a lot of time and effort.

Afterthoughts

· Since we have more people depend on the welfare / entitlements and the government jobs, they will vote accordingly and that will not cut down deficits in the foreseeable future especially the baby boomers are starting to collect the entitlements.

· Do not blame the news media. They broadcast what you want to hear.
Do not blame the politicians. They do what you want them to do.

Do not blame me. I deliver what you want to get.

So blame you yourself.

· However, 40% (45% soon in our deteriorating economy) do not pay Federal income taxes and they take back more via welfare benefits and entitlements from the society.

The rich (1%) can blame the poor (40%), and the poor can blame the rich for the ‘welfare’ for the rich. They are both right and both wrong.
If we divide the society into 3 groups: the rich, the middle class and the poor, the middle class (I and most of you belong to this 59%) is really squeezed by both sides

· Capitalism encourages folks to work hard, communism encourages folks to be lazy, and socialism encourages folks to steal.

· It is obvious that the 2012 was partly won by the Hispanic votes with the promise of legalizing the illegal aliens. We’re the only country on earth that welcomes illegals. Have our politicians calculated the costs for welfare benefits and the impact on jobs if we legalize the illegals?

· A good president does not have to be an expert in every field except being a good communicator. He should delegate his power and know whom he hires for a specific job. Unfortunately his personal objective is to get re-elected during his first term. In the second term if reelected, build his legacy to sell his books/speeches and reserve a space in history. Actually he has about 18 months to do so in the second term.

From my definition, Obama is not a great president. Reagan had good acting skills. Bush was not. Carter was too gentlemanly and not firm. Nixon was tougher but his hand was caught in the cookie jar. Clinton invented or gave new meanings to some terms in our dictionary (such as interns, inhale, sex…) and got away. Basically I cannot find too many great presidents in recent history. We may have to blame our election system. If I want to be one of them, I would choose Clinton for all the funs he is having. J

· Whenever I make any political remark or any remark against the government, I have a chance of offending half of the population if we are evenly distributed into the two political parties. A good discussion even against any politician is better than no discussion. We are not a member in Bush’s cabinet who has to agree everything with the chief in order to survive.

75 God of Gods

My mother was baptized. According to the preaching in Bible, her family including me can go to heaven, even if I were a robber.

Repent and you go to heaven even if you're a bad criminal all your life. It does not make a lot of sense to me: It teaches us to be bad all your life, but repent in the last days of your life.

Why the rich folks are harder to go to heaven than a camel going thru a needle's eye? Besides inheritance, most rich folks work hard and/or lead a frugal life while most poor folks are lazy and/or spend all his recklessly money for fun. Is it fair?

性本善 translates as 'babies are kind and innocent' vs. 'Bible says man has sin when he was born'. Culture crashes?

Christianity also conflicts with evolution which is based on the theory that mankind evolved from apes. Who is right?

Religions preach us to be good. Being good seems to be our bargain to go to heaven. The only purpose of doing good deeds on earth is the reward of an eternal life. It does not seem right to me and I know many believe treat donations as an investment to go to heaven.

Why I cannot argue with Christian friends on ideas if they're different from their Sunday's preachers?

Gospels are being misinterpreted. Is that why people kill in the name of religion throughout history and in modern time? How about all the wars in the Middle East today and the Crusade? No gay right? Why we preach hatred instead of love?

Did those preachers motivate some excessively vigilant followers to bomb abortion clinics?

If there is no heaven, all the suicidal bombers wasted their lives for nothing. Supposedly they have 72 virgins waiting to make love with them. How about quality? What happens if the bomber is a female? Will they be exhausted in making love with so many and for so long? There must be some misinterpretations here. I do not condone what they do. However, it is their only way to fight against the modern weapons from the West.

Is Michael Jackson as a child molester worse than those Catholic priests committing the same crime? Should the Pope go to jail on covering up the sexual abuses of the altar boys? He knew the problem and covered it up instead of preventing the next victim.

Since every religion has its own God, do they have a God of Gods?

I have so many questions on religion unanswered. My knowledge in religion is limited. Please enlighten me.

76 A preacher’s view on God of Gods

Sam is a preacher and my old, elementary classmate. He opened up my eyes and answered most of my questions. Here are his answers to my questions.

Question.

My mother was baptized. According to the preaching in Bible, her family including me can go to heaven, even if I were a robber.

Answer.

This belief must have come from Acts 16:31 when the prison guard became a believer based on Paul and Silas did not escape when an earthquake erupted and torn down the prison. The Bible stated that Paul and Silas said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved-you and your household.”

Many well-wishing Christians take this as a promise from God because this is a Bible verse. The actual application should be - when one becomes a Christian, there is a good chance that he will repent from those bad habits and influence his family to personal salvation.

We have witnessed this happening in a lot of families. It is not my belief that a believer goes to heaven after he died. Nowhere in the Bible says that. Again, most Christians (well-wishing ones) think and preach like that; even some pastors do so without explaining the differences between Kingdom of Heaven and Heaven. Kingdom of Heaven is equivalent to Kingdom of God which represents the authority, rulings, thoughts, common people to people protocol (倫常關係）, which is based on “Love”. Heaven in the Bible actually means sky which is an imagery of God’s home.

Question.

Why the rich folks are harder to go to heaven than a camel going thru a needle's eye? The rich man most likely works hard and/or leads a frugal life while a poor man is likely lazy and/or spends all his recklessly money for fun. Is it fair?

Answer.

If you really understand what I meant by Kingdom of Heaven （天國）or Kingdom of God (神的國）, it is not difficult to understand this verse.

Tell a rich man to give up the holding power, the security and the satisfaction of being in command but to share his wealth with those in need? Are you kidding? Difficult or not. The camel thing is just a hyperbole to illustrate the point. In Cantonese, when we say “飽到死！” doesn’t mean one is dying.

Question.

性本善 translates as 'babies are kind and innocent' vs. 'Bible says man has sin when he was born'. Culture crashes?

Answer.

Bible says that human began to sin after Adam and Eve ate the fruit. This is important, and sin is not equivalent to crime. Sin is violating laws of God and all these laws are summed up as Love. Therefore, love can cover a lot of sin. Crime is acting against the earthly laws enacted by human society.

Some of these laws are derived from the Bible or other religious doctrines but not all. For example, OJ Simpson is innocent under the law; if you are caught driving 125 MPH in NY, you violated the traffic law, but driving the same speed on the autobahn in Germany does not.

Question.

Christianity also conflicts with evolution that argues we should be evolved from apes.

Answer.

When people bring up this subject to speak for or against Christian teaching, you simply look at them and smile politely. The final question to ask is, who created science?

Question.

Religions preach us to be good. Being good seems to be our bargain to go to heaven. The only purpose of doing good deeds on earth is the reward of an eternal life. It does not seem right to me.

Answer.

This is another totally myth. Christ Jesus told us to follow him in action (deeds) and love one another. If more and more people do that, the world would become heaven on earth. This is taught in the Lord’s Prayer, “....your (God’s) kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven...” When people’s hearts are governed by the teaching of Jesus (again, based on Love), every decisions made would take into consideration of the other without selfishness, are we not living in Heaven?

Question.

Gospels are being misinterpreted. This is why folks kill in the name of religion throughout history and in modern time. How about all the wars in the Middle East today and the Crusade? No gay rights? Why do we preach hatred instead of love?

Answer.

This is violation of the third commandment “You should not misuse the name of God...” and not misinterpretation.

Question.

Did those preachers motivate the excessively vigilant followers to bomb abortion clinics?

If there is no heaven, all the suicidal bombers wasted their lives for nothing. Supposedly they have 72 virgins waiting to make love with them. How about quality? What happens if the bomber is a female? Will they be exhausted in making love with so many and for so long? There must be some misinterpretations here. I do not condone what they do.

However, it is their only way to fight against the modern weapons from the west. Is Michael Jackson as a child molester worse than those Catholic priests committing same crime? If Vatican were a country, the Pope could be impeached or even go to prison for covering up the incidents. Since every religion has its own God, do they have a God of Gods?

Answer.

Never mind religion, especially institutionalized ones. The word religion means re-connect with God originally. Human can never re-connect with God through knowledge - the god you totally understand is not a god. That is where faith comes in. It takes both faith and knowledge of the Bible to understand the God who reveals himself through the historical Jesus and the Bible. What goes beyond that is not for us to know because God did not reveal them to us (at least not yet). Real evolution is the revelation of God’s will through scientific and historic discoveries.

77 Martin Luther King Memorial

It always has controversy in Washington D.C.’s memorial monuments. The last one is Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. Now, even the critics at the time admit it is one of the greatest memorial monuments ever if not the greatest. Every day, it has touched many and moved them to tears.

Most likely, the concept of touching the sky and the land is a Chinese concept and it could be an idea from her parents. The simple concept of including the names of the fallen heroes is so simple but so genius that their relatives can show off the graver marker in their living room. The granite also cleverly reflects ourselves literally and all the soldiers' names are recorded forever.

There should be no border in honoring a world-class hero. Is it racist that we did not complain on the Statue of Liberty which was built by French?

To the Chinese bashers: There are no radioactive elements implanted in the rocks that could kill everyone in Washington, D.C. and it is not a modern-day Trojan Horse.

78 One blog could change your health and life

This blog does not guarantee you will be able to extend your life to 100 (actually not even living another minute), but it will improve your health. These topics on health have been discussed in countless articles but we do not follow them in practice. I list them in one page, so we can come back to review it from time to time.

We know some smokers and liquor addicts live over 100 years and some healthy souls live a short life. However, they are the exceptions and they are not true statistically.

Good

One cup of coffee a day is good for you from what I read. Decaf has no effect except mentally. One glass of wine a day and plenty of water. 15 minutes of sunshine every day. Fruits and veggies are good. So are soy bean and the products derived from it. Avoid seafood from unpolluted water and chicken with skin.

Curry, ginger, garlic, cinnamon, banana, tomato, kiwi, honey are all good. Take the prescription drugs. Take life easy. Money cannot buy health and happiness. Simplify your life (by giving all of your money to me). J

Multi vitamin pills. It would gain 5 more years to our lives again statistically. I need to save for living expenses for those extra years and Social Security would have to pay me 5 more years. Poor Uncle Sam!

Bad

Soda including diet drinks and smoking is always bad. Avoid food with nitrates such as hot dog. Limit on red meat. Avoid fried food.

Not excessive

Consistent and appropriate (according to your age and physical conditions) exercise is good. Brain exercise. Eat out. Excessive cleanliness (relaxing our immune system too much).

Anything excessive is no good.

Do you want to live longer or happier?

Afterthoughts

· Live to 100. http://www.tonyp4joke.blogspot.com/2009/02/live-to-100.html

· Here is a related blog I wrote.

Doctor knows best?

I’ve a lot of doubts about my doctors and dentists. Many dentists try to squeeze every dollar out of me. They care more about their bottom line than my health. When we have health problem, the best way is to diagnose ourselves via the internet (from some good sites) and books before we visit our doctors.

You can suggest to your doctor of what to do. They are not saints. I should have told my doctor that my prostate problem was most likely due to the enlargement, not cancer. I had several biopsies and they’re all clean except I may not have a full prostate after the numerous biopsies. I also should have told another doctor to take out the water from my knee after a fall. The old doctor did not want to do anything as he will retire soon. I suffered the pain for a long time. Should the doctor know best? I do not think so at least from my own experiences. I hope some doctors would respond to this blog.

· Norman’s experience:

For many over 40, sugar in any form causes diabetes. Alcohol is a form of sugar and gives the same results. Even diet drinks have elements that simulate sugar and your body reacts to it as if it is sugar. If you want extended life, cut out sugar, even in fruits.

I took Centrum for years. It does not have the proper dosage for those over 50. Recently both my wife and I started taking Centrum Silver for those over 50. We both have improved health and skin. It definitely makes a difference.

· Play Mah Jongg. It exercises your brain on every move. Chess does the same. However, few play chess every day. When there is no money involved, it would not be addictive. Most Orientals and some Jewish women play MJ. Hong Kong women have the highest longevity and almost everyone plays MJ.

· A good friend passed away due to playing racket ball. He was a high achiever always giving 10% more effort. A doctor himself, another player being a doctor too and the hospital was minutes away could not save him.

· Many folks I know who have more health problems do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. My theory is we have cancer cells and our immune system fights them off with the help of nutrients. One’s theory.

· The root cause of all diseases?

http://worldtruth.tv/inflammation-the-root-cause-of-all-disease/

Another article on heart attack due to inflammation and harm on processed food.

http://www.sott.net/article/242516-Heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease

· The primary cause of death changes according to our age in ascending order: accidents including cars, then drugs and alcohols, then cancers, then heart disease, and lastly Alzheimer’s. To increase our chance of survival, do not drink and drive recklessly during our youths, eat fruits and vegetables to protect our immune systems, and exercise appropriately for the heart and our brains in our old age.

· Ginger, garlic, honey, apple… are all good.

http://tonyp4idea.blogspot.com/2013/06/believe-it-or-not-from-my-friend-sam-in.html

79 The human spirits of the Olympics

It shows the best and the worst of our human race during the Olympics.

First, start with the controversy that the U.S. Olympic attires are made in China. What attires are still made in USA? Very few if you can find any. Then, what is the big deal?

Despite the non-positive testing from the Olympic committee, John Leonard accused the 'suspicious' Chinese 16-year-old swimmer. Another U.S. swimmer from nowhere did the same and no one accused her of doping. Guess which country has the most athletes tested positive recently? Not China. He represents the silly swimming coaches, but not most Americans.

Then the media got into the wagon as controversy sells. The ‘prestigious’ Nature magazine did apologize on the web; there must be too much pressures from their sponsors and many of them have businesses in China. Some media pointed out the human sufferings of the athletes in China. They forgot the same sufferings of the U.S. athletes and their parents. Some families were bankrupt and many do not get good jobs after the game despite a fistful of former medalists making good money. At least there is no sexual abuse reported on Chinese coaches so far. If they had sex with a 14 year old or younger, it is automatic, death penalty in China. If we have the same rule, many coaches in the U.S. would be dead already.

Some argued that China ought to win more medals as their population is four times ours. From this logic, India should be #2. It is not the population, but the resources per capita or GDP per capita that matters. Chinese athletes are supported by the government and the U.S. counterparts are supported by their families and later by the sponsors.

I’m glad China is behind in the medal counts by now to avoid another controversy by the US media. In fact, gaining the most medals should not be an Olympic spirit. The disqualification in the badminton game is good. The timing is bad as it happened before. It is the rules of the game to be blamed. Next are the coaches who plan for this strategy according to the game rules, and lastly the athletes. I would be angry to watch this ugly game that I pay good money to attend.

The Olympics does not solve our global problems such as debts, poverty and even obesity that the Olympics should promote as opposing to be #1, jealousy, bias and other bad human natures. The USA is a nation of fatsos but score the most Olympic medals for centuries. How ironic!

The better human spirits are shown by the Muslim girl. I wonder what they wear in beach volleyball game if they have a team in the Olympics. Religion needs to adapt to the global culture to some extent and the Olympics is a vehicle. The amputated athlete won our hearts. [He also broke our heart with his legal problem.] He could be the only one who participates in two Olympics in the same year. The Malaysian diver just lifted the spirit of a nation, and it is the same for the first Tibetan who also won an Olympic medal. These are the treasures and why we enjoy the Olympics.

80 The Republican Convention

Why do we need to know Mitt (or any candidate from any political party) is officially nominated or he will accept the nomination? Who has turned it down in our history? If this is the main purpose of the convention, it is a TOTAL waste of money and time that can be used to deal with our real problems such as how to cut down spending. Isn’t it ironic or demonstrating how the big government wastes our money or how big business buys influence?

If you really do not know whom will be nominated (I'm shamelessly insulting your intelligence and assuming you have been living in a cave for the last year), just watch the news on TV and save millions.

The convention must be sponsored by airlines, hotels, restaurants and Florida or big businesses / special groups wanting influences. The hidden sponsors are the prostitutes and the drug companies who provide Viagra and condones. They are the winners of this convention, not the handsome Mitt and his lovely wife. All the conventioneers using other folks’ money to wine and dine are the free loaders and parasites. Sorry to offend all the politicians and their running dogs.

I like to attend any convention if someone is stupid or rich enough to pay for this unearned but lavish vacation – I’ll vote whatever you want me to. Sign me up for any convention, Republican or Democratic, now or future. I hope it will be in Hawaii or somewhere without any hurricane and with great and expensive food. You will pay for it eventually one way or another.

I must have some mental problems if I talk to an empty chair with a ghost rocking on it. When you guys laugh at the chair, you might have a more serious mental problem than I. Even with no one sitting on it, the chair still rocks. It symbolizes the do-nothing government could be the best government as it rocks! My point is we need a small, frugal and effective government. The best government is invisible but it provides all the basic services at the least cost!

Afterthoughts: More

http://ebmyth.blogspot.com/2013/11/more-on-republican-convention.html

81 The stormy China Sea

If there were a war between China and Japan (the #2 and #3 economy), the US (#1 economy) will most likely support Japan and all the forecasts in this book will be off and we will return to a global recession.

There have been disputes on the ownership of some islets between China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam for the presumed oil or gas in the near-by seas. The disputes have been mild for over 40 years (I remember the protest when I was a college student) and no side wants to do anything until recently. All these countries would not want to agitate China and China would not want to harm the trading relationships. Now, the U.S. wants to side with countries against China. With the backing of the U.S.'s Seventh Fleet and the U.S.'s promises, all these countries suddenly cry out loudly for the last few years.

If China starts the dispute initially, China grossly miscalculates and grossly underestimates the military might of the U.S. navy. If Japan resumes the dispute, they are risking losing trade (#1 export to China) and the tourists from China.

It is the U.S.'s intention to remain as #1 and the big brother in this part of the globe. It is not a wise decision unless we still live in the past glory when you're either my puppet or my enemy. Most likely, it is decided by the politicians who want to divert our attentions as they cannot resolve our problems such as employment. The government still wants to be the global leader (to another recession?) by giving and spending billions here and there.

If the U.S. wants to promote selling weapons to Asian countries (the U.S. is #1 in exporting weapons), we are playing a risky game and the potential profit most likely will not justify the consequences.

China might withdraw the loans and we would be back to the worst depression in our history. It is quite dumb for China to loan us money to build the Asian missile wall against N. Korea and most probably against China. When Japan and Korea fight against each other over the disputed islet, which position would we want to side with? If your answer is both, should we send missiles from one of our battleships to another one of our own?

We cannot afford another war. We've spent more than $1.4 trillion in the two current wars so far and it is still counting. We cannot visualize how much is one billion, not to mention one trillion. The current tallest building in the world (in Dubai) costs about $1.5 billion. We can build about nine hundred (900, not a typo) tallest buildings in the world and not even fathom of how many jobs would be created.

Wars cause human suffering. China is not a tiger now, but it is far from a paper tiger. Japan's navy is stronger than most folks in the U.S. can ever imagine. Japan has been the aggressor to China for centuries and she has been war criminals against Korea, China and most other Asian countries in WW2. They have not compensated all the damages to Asian countries that they destroyed during WW2. Their leaders still pay respect to the war criminals in their ‘shrines’ and rewrite history books not admitting Nanjing Massacre had happened.

As usual, we always pick up the brick, aim and hit our own big toe. It was Vietnam, then the two wars in Middle East and now potential wars in China Sea. We have not yet learned lessons from the French, the Brits and the Russians who had been to Vietnam, Afghan and they all lost big.

No politicians would tell us that all our troubles are due to the high expense of the wars we participated in. We have had about 20 years of secular bear market due to the Vietnam War, followed by about 20 years of secular bull market due to the lack of war. Our stock market has been rescued by excessive money printing but not the economy. At the meantime, many of us do not have jobs or are under employed.

The disputes will not be good for all countries involved. The U.S. does not have sufficient resources to start another war. Hope it will not happen. Let the sleeping dogs lie and silence is golden. Hope the disputed countries will share the resources instead of fighting for it.

82 Cheating in Harvard

Many cheated on an “individually-taken” test, yet very few got caught. Since Harvard produces most of our leaders, how many of them are cheaters? The late-President Kennedy cheated in college exam to name one from thousands. It was OK to me as his busy life did not allow him to study. His connection and good looks got him good jobs and a beautiful and elegant mate, so he did not need to get good grades, which would have nothing to do with his accomplishments later in life. Bush got an average C for his college grade, and Kerry got D. I need to get good grades to prove myself in order to get a job.

My personal experience

A Vietnamese student and I was either #1 or #2 in all Thermo Dynamics tests in an easy state university. The professor distributed tests in that order in front of the class. Good or bad? I ended up with a B for the final grade. Later I found half of the class knew the answers to the final as the professor had the identical final test every semester.

It is injustice but we have to accept it. Who told you life is fair? Why does some have the fortune by being born in the U.S.A. while many another are really screwed by being born in Haiti? God is not fair. The Buddhists may have an answer: The more you suffer in this life, the more you will get in your afterlife.

Why was one born as a Kennedy with all the good future ahead? However, they may die early and most divorce by statistics. When you use Kennedy as a verb, it means 'die early' in my dictionary.

I just let some steam out and I just blamed that professor for being lazy and stupid and half of the class for cheating me. It has been over 40 years ago! Forgive, forget and I did move on...

83 Is Volt a devil or an angel?

Financially Volt is a disaster but it serves as a compliance car. It drove GM to the brink of bankruptcy – thanks to Chinese for saving GM. Without Volt, the investors of the new GM could make more money. The current owners of Volt do not have good resale values.

Estimate how many miles you drive in a year to calculate how much money you save in gasoline. Most likely it will not pay back the extra investment / maintenance (two drive trains until we have a pure electric car) / reliability, the extra electricity bills, the inconvenience of charging (your time as a Volt owner must be more expensive than the time of a Corolla driver), finding a qualified mechanic (except from the dealer who will charge you a bundle), the tickets for driving too slowly, the increased chance of hitting something due to no warning sound...

Why folks buy it besides the rebates from the government (at least at one time)? It is the same folks camping in line to buy the new iPhone to replace the ones they bought several months ago except of the age difference of iPhone owners and Volt owners. Don't tell me the iPhone would improve the productivity after they have wasted one night camping in the cold.

They want to be the first one in their town to own a Volt and show the world they're green conscious (that is debatable). The obsolete battery is not bio degradable and will harm the environment. I also wonder how often you need to replace the battery. It boosts their social standing and 'prestige' for some. It is not for me even if I had the money. Well, it could save them money by visiting a psychiatrist to boost their ego and most likely a prostitute could do a better job for less. J

There are a very small number of folks buying the car for the good of the environment. It is debatable as I said before. There is no convincing figure that it will reduce carbon dioxide emission significantly even when 80% of all cars are electric. However, I have to thank the first wave of electric car owners and the government rebates. Without them, we will never have a truly usable and affordable electric car in the future.

The battery technology is evolving and M.I.T. has a very promising technology. It may take at least 10 years for M.I.T. folks to deliver the next breakthrough from a research project to a commercial product. Until they prove the battery is 100% safe, you’re advised to take the extra insurance among a list of options. J

I’m very absent minded. Many days I may have to call my boss that I cannot come to work as I forget to charge or I may drive the car with the charger on that could do some harm to the car, the charger or the house (hopefully it would not burn it down).

I also wonder how long it takes to drive an electric or a hybrid car from Boston to Washington, D.C. (including the time to recharge) for my family vacation. It could be a nightmare just planning where and when to find a charger.

84 My selection in Chinese music

America has about 500 years of civilization vs. 5000 for Chinese. The Chinese music lacks behind in quantity and quality. Is it due to our lacking of the 2 extra half step tones (5 vs. 7) and/or we do not have a language to record music like the West does?

The following is a collection of the music in my playlist from YouTube. They are under my very rough classification. Some videos may be deleted as most videos in YouTube do. A similar list will be included in the website that supports this book for the printed book. If you do not know Chinese, just enjoy the melodies.

Hong Kong:
陳松伶
一簾幽夢
張偉文 - 不了情
Beyond_真的爱你

Taiwan:
蔡幸娟千言萬語月亮代表我的心夏之旅
月兒彎彎照九州

China:
童麗 - 紅塵
望春风
萬芳 - 教我如何不想她

Others:
Teresa Teng

HD:

Selected HD (some may be duplicates from above): 1 (classic, Mandarin), 2, 2A, 2B (Asian festival), 3 (Theresa Cheung, personal favorite), 4 (Kwan, Cantonese), 5 (Sally Yip), 6 (Andy Lau), 7 (Cantonese, Adam & Lisa & Japanese), 8 (Hong Kong 15^th Anniversary), 9 (Joseph Koo), 10 (Tam & Lee)

Click here for an updated list.

85 The best in life

I know two billionaires: my high school classmate and one I met in my friend’s party. Both participated in small Chinese companies before their IPOs. Even though I do not want to invest in these companies due to the misleading financial statements of some, some really make a bundle.

One died very early. It could be due to the pressure, too much ‘good’ food and enjoyment. It could be similar to why most Chinese emperors did not live long. When one died with all the toys, one won. There is a Chinese saying: When you’re mediocre, you will be happy. Culture crashes?

With no doubts, the best in life are free or almost free: fresh air and clean water (we do not appreciate them until we visit China), healthy food, a walk around the lake or in the park... While living in Mass., we do not have to worry about contaminated food, Japan's nuclear / earthquake problems, Missouri’s flood, tornado attacks... Keep our fingers crossed and thank God every day.

We cannot buy our grandchildren’s beautiful laughter that makes our life so meaningful and enjoying.

Why should I worry about the current events like national debts, stock market...? It is my passion to learn about them and debate them among friends, otherwise life is very boring. However, try to accept others' opinions as we’re all different. Debates bring the best of us and the worst of us. It is better to make friends than enemies.

We do not need expensive toys to make us happy, so money is not a big deal to us at least when we retire. However, making money is fun, losing money is a nightmare, and loving money is the root of all evils. We should not let money to control our life. We should spend our time in improving our health that is more important than wealth. However, most of us always misplace our priorities in life.

Filler:

On travel. http://tonyp4idea.blogspot.com/2016/04/on-travel.html

On Chinese music. http://tonyp4idea.blogspot.com/2016/07/chinese-music.html

86 Doctor knows best?

87 Are you biased?

We all are. I was born as a Chinese in Hong Kong. I'm biased naturally on certain topics on China and Hong Kong.

When you belong to a political party or a religion, you're biased automatically. You do not want to speak against the viewpoints of your party or religion, such as birth control. Both political parties really do not know how to fix our health care system. They still want to spend like no tomorrow to buy votes by moving money from other budgets to health care (Chapter 2). They also want to increase taxes to pay for it, and consequently we further increase the unemployment problem. They do not want to fix the root problem which is how to lower the health care expenses first.

I'm sure our Tea Party history is written differently in Britain. Examples abound: WW2, the Boxer Rebellion (I shamelessly call it Patriotic Acts Against Foreign Devils), the Opium Wars... However, we have to stick with the facts. Rewriting history on Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese is bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion

We have different perspectives and it is OK. We need to live with others, so are countries and religions. The U.S.'s Secretary of State just announced US wants influence in the Pacific Rim (see Chapter 81) while China claims to live peacefully with its neighbors. I do not know how sincere China is, but it is a good gesture. Judging from their participations in foreign wars, China has been more peaceful than the USA.

Every time the U.S. 'influences' a certain region, they spend a lot of cash and many more under the table. Do we have money to waste in our bankrupting state? Should we ask China to loan us more money to control China? A late sexy bomb star from Hong Kong kept some money for a political figure in a SE Asia country. It does not take a genius to trace back to corruption or money buying access. We blamed China for buying 'access' while we're doing the same.

From the recent NAS leak, China and the USA are reversing their roles in spying and free speech. How ironic?

88 Ugly Americans

I expected Canadians would like us more as we are very similar in many aspects. I was in Toronto last week and they do not love us as I expected. I can guess easily how citizens of other countries more different from Canadians would view us. The following views on us are from the majority of Canadians.

The good

We're generous. We welcome immigrants. We're innovative. We have a constitution and we advocate freedom.

We cannot stop the jealousy due to our success. To illustrate this, in Easton Center I counted so many retail chains that are US companies. The Canadians cannot love us for dominating their retail business.

The bad and the ugly

We act as if we're the leader and the policeman of the world (or bully). We're arrogant. Basically we keep on opening our mouth continuously and do not care about others' feelings according to the Canadians.

Our continuous involvement on foreign wars kills our economy and our leader does not want to admit and fix the problem. He can't unless he does not want to be re-elected. It is our political system.

89 Surface by Microsoft

The Good

Microsoft should capture a sizable market for business users if they market the products right. They provide Office, a browser compatible with Internet Explorer (IE) and storage via Cloud. Built-in disk storage may not require Cloud for storage, but it would drain the battery and take longer time to boot if it is from disk (the new version of Windows greatly reduces the boot time).

Most of my investment software requires IE and I use Office’s Excel exclusively. It will be a good tablet for business folks especially for travelling.

I do not believe I'll use it during my vacation but it will be a handy tool to many. We will see how Office is implemented in the tablet, the energy consumption using the Intel chips and the prices. It will be appealing if you can run the business software in your tablet and your office PC.

Migrating current business applications to the tablet should be easy such as the laptop applications the doctors are carrying.

As long as it is not losing money, it would be a win especially for the lazy Microsoft’s management with no innovation for a long while. You cannot sit on the cash influx from Windows and Office forever. Wake up from your afternoon sleep and dream how to spend your bonuses in your fancy offices and do something even it will not always be safe.

The Bad

It will not be replaced iPad as iPad is years away with growing apps. The new version of Windows has a lot of nice features but it is very buggy as of 3-2013. I hope they have a specific version for tablet.

My thoughts

When Surface was announced, it was a non-event. The first article on Surface at Seeking Alpha, a website for investors, appeared very late. There was not much publicity as opposed to folks lining up for Apple's products. As a stock owner, I hope it will change.

Microsoft should not compete with iPad directly with the RT. The Pro is ideal for business folks with Office and Internet Explorer installed with full functions. I predict the Surface Pro will be the winner and RT will fad. Personally I plug in my electric outlet automatically on my laptop so I will not be disturbed while working. The battery life will not be a concern to me and I expect the newer chips from Intel will resolve this problem.

90 Did Microsoft play fairly?

If you go back a little to history, you may see Microsoft was not a nice guy or even a fair player. Success is not solely due to building a better or a new mouse trap, but marketing and management that Microsoft once was a tiger and now a Micky mouse (and hopefully it will change back to a tiger).

The owners of the software company that produced CP/M were rumored to ignore IBM folks' visit and played golf instead. At that time CP/M was the only commercial operating system using disk on PCs. These unemployed, former executives must only afford to play miniature golf now, but they have good stories to tell to their grandchildren that they could almost as rich as Gates. Gates licensed one DOS from another company in Seattle and re-licensed it to IBM for the then new PC. The rest is history.

Microsoft and Apple copied the Window ideas from Xerox's PARC. Did they pay loyalties to Xerox? I guess not. Why does Microsoft ask developing countries to pay loyalties for their own software? Be your own judge. The moral of the story: The innovators may not make money as the marketers.

There were better and matured software on word processing, spreadsheet, and mail program from other vendors then. As a new comer, Microsoft could not compete with them, the marketing geniuses gave their own versions free (or almost free) to corporations. When they got rid of the competitors, they raised prices and used their corporate legal department to crush down any future competitors. They're the poster boy of product dumping - China is a long, long way to learn from the master.

The multi-tasking of Windows was a joint development with IBM with the product called NT. Microsoft was the wolf that wore the sheep's skin. The honest IBMers wearing business suites, white shirts and white underwear were destined to be manipulated like a puppet by the villains.

However, Microsoft has been in a coma for the last decade or more. Hopefully Surface is the first wake-up product. XBox almost did not accomplish the mission when the management almost stopped the enhancement.

Now I have some shares of Microsoft. I hope they start a new era and will make some money for me. You invest in stocks not because the company is Mr. Nice Guy (with the exception of sin stocks like tobacco and offense companies), but the potential appreciation at acceptable risk.

91 Too delicious to fall

Unions are supposed to protect the working class from being exploited. Today unions reduce our competitive edge by setting up higher compensation. Globalization weakens the power of the union by moving some of our jobs to other countries such as China and Mexico. We have to define two classes of jobs: jobs that can be outsourced and jobs that cannot be. Some unions are more effective in the latter category such as riding up telephone poles. Few mayors in big cities are elected without the approval of the local police union, and hence some are politically powerful.

Hostess's fall is a bad day for capitalism, at least our style of capitalism. There is too much blame to go around:

· First, the management (and the hedge fund managers) did not update their products to meet the trend of the market.

· Unions are out-of-touch. If your patient is dying, you do not want to shake him hard. You need to have plan B when you're bluffing. All in with bad cards is just dumb.

They're the parasites and they will die too when their host (hostess in our case) is dead. The dream of owning the company will remain to be a dream that they never want to wake up from. They tried to violate the basic business rule of supply and demand but failed miserably.

· The workers are really dumb to let their master manipulate them until they lose out big time. Do you think you can protest and win in this kind of economy and the shaky state of the company? Another common sense.

· The politicians will not bail them out especially it is long past the election. This time they cannot buy votes by blaming China, as these jobs can't be outsourced (unless you want to buy your Wonder bread shipped from China). Hence, even if it were before the election, the government will not bail you out on the ground of ‘too delicious to fall’.

It is a lose-lose-lose (management-unions-workers) situation and only stupid folks will get into this situation.

92 Conflicts between the poor and the rich

The rich, the middle class and the poor

If I were making more than a million dollars a year, I would consider giving up my US citizenship and moving to some Caribbean island where I do not have to pay much for taxes. I can live like a king just with the taxes saved. Besides patriotism (paying back to the adopted country for me), we should make this decision similar to evaluating the potential appreciation and the risk in buying any investment.

The middle class like me who cannot migrate with the entitlements that I already have paid for are suffering most and we will suffer more with more and higher taxes coming.

The poor are taking advantage of the middle class. Since there are more poor folks than the rich, the politicians have to satisfy the poor before the middle class. However, the poor will suffer too when more from the middle class will become the poor after the heavy taxes that will affect us and the economy.

How the classes are formed.

Here is my theory on how we become rich or poor.

Becoming rich by:

1. Via inheritance or marriage.

We have to ask God why we do not belong to a rich family in a rich country. When we were born in the USA instead of in Haiti, we already hit the jackpot.

2. Taking chances.

We all take chances in life on some opportunities, which could turn out to be traps and make us poorer instead.

3. Hard work.

Our family should teach us to work hard at an early age.

4. Save hard.

We should not be punished for saving money.

5. Being smart.

It could be part of the inheritance. Personally I do not think being smart is the most important. We can learn from life to be smarter even if we were not born smart.

6. Luck.

Even we take chances with educated guesses, work hard and being smart, a lot of time luck plays an important role for our success.

7. Cheat.

There are many shades. Some sold arms during war time and some are drug pushers.

Becoming poor by:

1. Being lazy.

2. Spoiled by our generous welfare.

3. Big spenders.

4. Unfortunate.

It includes being born poor, loss due to bad luck in taking chances, unfortunate events in life such as losing jobs and getting sick…

Our system should help the folks in category #4 only.

The ultimate democracy?

It is controversial but it could be logical at the same time on how we allocate our taxes.

We should tell the government how to spend our taxes by establishing the percentage of the collected taxes on what category such as war, welfare, social security, education, research.... via ballots. We need to have a law to balance the budget. Raising the debt ceiling is the same as giving drugs to an addict.

If you do not pay tax last year, you cannot decide on this. This is called ‘representation with taxation’.

93 The current states of the United States

Contrary to popular belief, we DO make or build something especially per capita wise. We're still the largest economy on earth and are number one in most disciplines in science and technology. We have a stable government with an enviable constitution, workable regulations, highly-educated citizens and the strongest defense (or offense to me).

Our government and the private citizens (Gates and Buffett for example) donate funds and assistance to poor countries more than the other five richest countries combined. We provide food to the world. We export our culture via movies and music. We accept foreign students to enrich our culture, fund our colleges, and provide us with skilled workers when they graduate.

We have a lot of innovations such as Facebook. Most of our products have high profit margins such as airplanes, heavy equipment, high tech products including Apple's consumer products and medical equipment. Nobody can deny that.

Our success leads to higher living standard. Naturally the higher labor cost and more regulations to protect us and our environment follow. Too many regulations would restrict businesses in taking risks (such as developing new drugs and nuclear reactor technologies) and add costs to product developments.

We have to leave the low-end products to low-wage countries such as China. It is called free trade and globalization, which would benefit all participants if they play the game fairly. China's 1.3 billion citizens would not be able to buy our expensive products if they do not have the cash from selling their products to the world.

We have to protect those products that we have an edge. It is not an easy job just by comparing the quality of our high school education to the rest of the world. Japan and S. Korea have passed us in auto and consumer electronic industries. China is at the gate with bigger impact in the future. China is catching up with us. In addition, it has a large internal market, plenty of qualified engineers / scientists, low-wage workers and incentives / guidance from the government. The most important is their spirit to succeed after three centuries of humiliation.

God still blesses us with the new discoveries of shale energy that could extend our prosperity to another 50 years. It gives us more time to fix our problems, but time is running out. The benefits of the shale energy will be clearer by 2015. It could turn out to be a pure fantasy or even a sham. We are still a net natural gas importer (most from Canada) and our gas industry is currently sitting on heavy losses.

Compared to China, we have far, far more farm land and natural resources especially per capita wise.

Our welfare system is too generous due to our previous economic booms. If able the welfare recipients lose the free medical care for taking a job, do they work? They're lazy but not stupid. With the long dependence on this welfare system, they cannot break the viscous cycle of poverty. Multi generation of teenage mothers is one among many examples.

The new immigration bill could be a disaster. If it is passed, how many new legal residents will collect welfare (they can't today as they're illegal) and how many illegals are encouraged to cross the defenseless border. I hope the new immigrants will contribute more than burden our society. Only time can tell. However, protecting the border is easy by severely punishing the employers. When there are no jobs, they will not come.

There are many frauds and fats that the government can trim. The government employees are assigned to tiny work load and they are overly compensated. Should we assign them to chase after the frauds in Medicare, food stamp and cheatings in disability entitlements that are so common?

The two wars are bankrupting this country and we need to prevent starting future wars and end the current wars. As of 2013, our military budget is larger than the total of the next top five countries combined.

From this article, you know the government can fix a lot of our problems. Printing money is not the solution, but the problem by itself.

Afterthoughts

· Will the new immigrants strengthen our society?

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2012/12/10/47406/progressive-immigration-policies-will-strengthen-the-american-economy/

· Immigration reform will likely depress average wages over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office and also will likely increase our burden in our welfare and entitlement systems.

· Paul said:

This WAS a country where government did not buy votes. When my grandparents came to the U.S., there were no Federal social programs, no Social Security, no Medicare, no welfare and no income taxes. Millions poured into this country looking for opportunity -- not a safety net…

Oh, we might not be a third world country -- yet -- but our elections are about vote buying. No doubt about it!

· From ZeroHedge:

http://www.zerohedge.com/ The only recovery you'll see this summer is after a night of heavy drinking...

Nothing has changed since 2008, nobody was arrested, no laws put in place, nobody held accountable. We all know that companies like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs bundled toxic sub-prime mortgages into securities and paid off the ratings agencies to rate them AAA then bet against them using CDS with companies like AIG. So what does the government do? Reward their criminal and fraudulent behavior by completely bailing them out and then giving them oodles of cheap credit.

Have to hand it to them...credit.....credit does not exist. There is only debt, masquerading as credit, which we have been taught because it sounds better. It is a debt crisis and the other side of debt is not credit, but a counter-party/underlying asset. The whole world awash in debt with no solutions offered, most money is created through debt but what they don't tell you is that the interest is never created.

The economy is stuck on the tracks and the train is coming! [Tony: Well said. Lehman Brothers was out of business and many Wall Street folks were laid off. The stock prices of many banks plunged. They were punished but no one so far went to jail].

Links:

Military budgets:

http://247wallst.com/2013/06/27/countries-spending-the-most-on-the-military/?link=mktw

94 Modify our election system

Our voting system works but it has problems that need to be addressed as follows:

1. Reduce campaign money.

When politicians spend a substantial amount of time in fundraising, they have not concentrated their efforts on the important issues such as the economy. Gun control was not even mentioned in the last election despite we have constant shootouts. We need to set a limit in the amount of the campaign money they can raise and they can spend. Hence, the presidency is not won by how rich you are and / or your party is, but how you can resolve our problems.

2. Over-promising for votes.

The last election was so close and the outcome could have been altered by the inclusion of Hispanic votes. The changing of the legal residency status could create many legal welfare recipients to further burden our bankrupting country. If the welfare is so generous, why should they work when they are legalized?

3. Special interest groups.

The politicians optimize their policy to favor the special interest groups who finance the campaigns. Entitlement recipients belong to another group. They ought to be paid according to how much they have contributed. The social security system was designed for life expectancy less than 70.

I would include the big businesses in the special interest groups. Via their connections, they had been bailed out many times. In short, it is a conflict of interest.

4. We need to set up a ballot to indicate what percentage of our tax money will go to a specific budget, such as offense, education, etc. Spending too much on one budget would hurt other budgets. I would like to spend less than 2% on offense. Why we need a carrier driven by dual nuclear reactors and still ask for more defense expenditures?

5. Representation without taxation is worse than taxation without representation.

The votes of those who do not pay any Federal taxes, the mentally challenged or those with low IQs, the uneducated, and the criminals should be counted as at most half votes. The votes of all veterans should be counted at least one and a half as they sacrifice their lives for the country. A kind of controversial at first glance!

We have about 50% illiterates in Detroit. The politicians have to satisfy these voters in order to get their votes. It is not hard to predict the collapse of the city. Taxing the rich and giving more to the poor seems to be good deeds similar to Robin Hood. However, businesses cannot function over there and they have options to leave. It is another example that uncontrolled socialism could lead to self-destruction.

6. I suggest the second term of the presidency should be 6 years instead of 4. This is the term that the presidents usually do well for the country to build up his or her legacy without caring about votes for him or her. Today, most second-term presidents have only 1 ½ years to do so.

The following are related to governance but should be discussed during the election.

7. Need to balance the budget. It should be a constitutional law. We cannot pass our debts to the next generation forever. Most states require balancing their budget, why not the Federal government?

8. Need a long debate in the Congress before we can start another war. Most major wars from Vietnam War to the current two Middle East wars cause most of our financial problems. We are not wealthy enough to be the world’s policeman, and fighting for ideology and freedom for other countries. Being #1 or a big brother is not important when our economy is bankrupting and most our graduates cannot find jobs.

9. Need to encourage the able poor to work and be educated to break the cycle of poverty. There are too many holes and misinterpretations in Clinton’s law to force welfare recipients to work.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act)

10. Need to control government expenses by a smaller and more efficient government and cut frauds such as Medicaid and disability entitlements SSDL. Increasing government employees and assigning them small workloads is reckless consumption.

To illustrate this, building a road to improve transportation is productive, but defending other countries is consumption (unless the benefits justify).

Afterthoughts

· Why we shut down the government due to the debt ceiling? Run the government like what businesses do. Calculate the rate of return in the following two options.

1. Benefit in shutting down the government.

or
2. Benefit in not shutting down the government.

Select the option that gives us better benefit.

The majority of government employees have tiny workloads (most got their jobs in DC due to what party they belong to). Furlough (layoff could be better just like most businesses do) half of them and it would maintain the same service if they work in the private sector. A win-win decision.

Closing all the free museums (say in DC) will cost a lot of pains to tourists and future tourism. Actually it costs more than 10 times of the saved wages in shutting down. Only the stupidest managers make this kind of easy decision.

However, our government makes decisions based on politics: Want to show who is the boss and put the blame on the other party. They are all wasting our time, money and energy. We need to have smaller and efficient government.

When the problem is resolved (by approving funding or moving the debt ceiling even higher), both sides will declare victory shamelessly on how smart they ‘fixed’ the problem to insult your intelligence.

· Usually we vote for the candidates we associate with without considering the ideas and the qualifications of the candidates. That is evidenced from the reactions of the O.J. Simpson’s verdict from the students of a black college and the students of a white college. This is bad for the country.

95 A taste of Dublin

If Ireland contributed to culinary the same as their folk songs and dances to the world, we would have a great treat. Unfortunately it is not. We went to Crack Bird. The atmosphere was romantic (i.e. dark). It is fitting in Cantonese, as it is roughly translated as “calling prostitutes”. “Crack” is fitting in English if you refer to the special spices in the chicken. In Irish, it means “well done” that I do not agree. When I see the Chinese cold noodle and Chinese sources options in the menu, I should have run away as fast as I can. The best of ‘$’ restaurants is not good enough for me. I may have to move to ‘$$’ restaurants here or I should have eaten in KFC in the next block.

The reputation was saved by Fitzpatrick’s in our day trip to Moher’s Cliff. The salmon was the best I ever had. It is tasty with the sauce, generous in portion and very tender. It is cafeteria food at its best.

For a small dinner after this day trip, we went to Mr. Stir Crazy. An old but young-looking man cooked in front of the store window like some ladies selling their stuffs in Europe. It is the simplest way to order: Choose the noodle, the sauce and the meat (or no meat) and pay $6 Euro. I asked him whether he was Chinese. He told me he was but did not look like one now after many facial operations. It is satisfying as I had more Euro left after the hot meal, but it could be I had been too long without Chinese food. Here is my theory why Irish food is just so-so. I believe Irish did not have good supply of food except the potato which the best chef cannot do much. For many centuries, food here served as a need for survival and not for enjoyment. Irish may have spent too much time in their wonderful folk songs and dances. After the strenuous dances and the wonderful beer, all foods are good I guess. I hope this post will not offend my friends with the last names starting with “Mc” or “O’”.

96 My Baltic cruise

It has been fun in cruising in this area after my Med. cruise two years ago, which should be the first one for European cruises. The next one could be the fjord cruise starting from Norway if I have the time, energy and the money. The cruise ship is Visions of the Seas.

Brief random remarks.

* Baltic cruise is only good for about 2 months in the summer as it is too cold in the rest of the year. So, no bargain airline and hard to avoid the crowd.

* We stopped in Munich for about 9 hours. Visited the palace and garden. Magnificent! Really tired due to not much rest, jet lap, time gained, old age... After we bought a ticket, we could take all the sub way rides. No check. A world of no thieves?

* Copenhagen, Denmark is an interesting city and port (similar to Barcelona in my Med. cruise). It has a lot to offer and living standard is quite high. Prepare for a small $50 meal per person that you need to have another meal at KFC for $15. Compared to Norway's $25 for a burger, it is a bargain!

* Bikes and wind turbines are common and they will save the world.

* You do not need to build the tallest building in the world to impress us and a little mermaid will do.

* Instead of building a pyramid or digging the entire hill to bury a king (with treasures and live folks), all the coffins are saved in a church. Great ideas, dignified and memorial.

Common tips on cruising

Personal Impression:

· This is my third cruise in Europe. This time we completed several Greek islands and one Turkish island.

· You can find reviews by entering the name of the cruise ship and the starting port. Some cruise ships have different trips. Some may want to skip the reviews as the host director would use the same jokes.

· You may want to consider another city to visit if you have time. It would extend your vacation. If you add another leg after the ticket has been purchased, they will charge you a lot. We spent a few days in Rome, 10 days in the cruise and Dublin for another 3 days.

· Just as a precaution, ask your doctor for any shots to visit a foreign country. Italy and most western European countries should not be a problem. Ensure the tap water is fine for drinking. Most US citizens do not need a visa to travel to most countries in Western Europe; just ensure it via simple checking.

· You can reduce the cost of excursions by

o Book ahead of the cruise. Some popular excursions could be sold out. They may raise prices on some as you do not have a choice now.

o Book from outside vendors. I stick with the larger vendors, the ones I used and/or the ones via the top popular sites such as Expedia and Orbitz.

o For the adventurous folks, try the offerings when the ship arrives. Ensure they take you back on time.

· We boarded in Rome.

· It is quite convenient to take the sub way from the airport to the city and from the city to the sea port. Someone helped us to buy the ticket from the ticket machine and she asked us for tips. You do not need their help as it is quite simple. Check out the current information from the internet.

The trains are either express or local. Select the express one if possible. For the express train, the first stop is the sea port. The train is identified with the final station. The platform number only displays when it is closer to the time of departure. Your ticket shows you the train, seat number… I doubt anyone understand the information as they’re written in Italian.

You can check out from the internet for transportation. We started with the popular travel sites in the states as we worry smaller companies could be out of business. Usually they would pack up the entire bus or van so you have to wait for the group to arrive. The ride to town took an hour giving us a free tour.

· We went in off season and quite nice weather in early October with cheap hotel in a good location near the train terminal and no line.

· If you go in the tourist season, ensure you want to buy the ticket to Vatican on-line and you can skip the line. Even in off season, we still had to wait for an hour in the morning. However, in the afternoon, there is no line. We should have gone to the museum first and then to the church.

· After the Vatican, there is a castle close by. This is where the Pope would escape during wars. We had lunch after the castle tour. It will be good for rest and using the rest room. Try to find some restaurants not in the main street as they are geared for tourists.

· Your hotel should provide you a detailed city map if you want to stay in the boarding city. Ours was Rome.

· After the lunch (if you follow our plan), there are several attractions and you need a good map. We skip the Colosseum as we had been there. It would be a busy day and two days should be better to visit most of the attractions.

· If you have time, do some research in finding out good eating places skipping those for tourists.

· Watch out the tasty but unhealthy foods (due to the quality and quantity).

· Watch out for pick pockets.

· I put an aluminum foil around my credit card and I use Euro instead of the card wherever possible.

97 Pillars of Success

They are hard work, persistency, innovation and honesty (including social responsibility). Why luck is not one? Most successful folks do not attribute the success or lack of it to luck.

Successful folks also are humble and they learn continuously how and why others are successful.

Successful folks make mistakes but they try hard not to repeat mistakes.

Successful folks do not care about the initial return and initial risk. They just do it!

From my book How to be a Billionaire:

Instructions to make a billion?

Most likely not. I’m not a billionaire. If I were one, do you think I have the time to write a book? It is used to catch your attention. The title “How to be a 10 millionaire” does not sound too appealing. When a child wants to be a president, most likely he will end up at least a good citizen. Aim high.

However, if you’re young, 10 million (in 2015’s money) is very doable. I separated this book into 4 stages. If I had this book or a similar book when I started out, I could have made over 10 million by now.

When you are a recent college graduate, buy this book and start with Stage 1. It makes the ideal gift to a recent college graduate and s/he will thank you forever. It is truly a gift keeping on gifting. If you have the basic knowledge in investing, glance through Stage 1 and 2.

Billionaires among us

Every generation has its opportunities to be a billionaire. In our generation, we have Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and many others. I prefer to set a ‘modest’ target of 10 million (in 2015’s money) and be a turtle investor. Here is why:

Jesse Livermore, considered to be the greatest trader, made millions and bankrupted several times. Finally he committed suicide. It is better to be a turtle, boring investor. It is easy for the mind to make millions, but tough to lose millions.

I know two or three (one not too sure) billionaires personally: my high school classmate, another schoolmate I never met and one I met in my friend’s party several times. They all have something in common: Participate in IPOs in Chinese companies. It is once-in-a-life-time opportunity to build bridges between the US and the Chinese businesses. It is similar to Walton family making billions by importing Chinese products. What a simple idea and why I missed it?

The objective in life

We come to this earth with nothing and leave with nothing. Why do we fight for wealth, prestige and power? However, if we do not have the objective for wealth, prestige and power, it is a life without meaning. In addition, money should not be our primary objective in life and happiness/health have to be earned and cannot be bought with money. When you’ve accumulated enough wealth to have a comfortable financial life such as myself, you may want to pursue other objectives in life besides wealth.

Most likely when you’ve accumulated enough wealth for a financially secured life, there are many objectives in life more important than wealth such as happiness and health. I am the living proof. Still not convinced? Check out the wealthy singers, movie stars and athletes. Are most of them really happy with all the broken marriages, drug and alcohol abuse…? I rest my case.

98 Bad business practices

I have so many bad experiences recently. I bet their competitors do the same, so I do not want to show the names of the offending companies if I have an option.

· My car problem.

I could not take the key from my ignition switch all the time. It is a new car from one of the two major Japanese car manufacturers. They honestly acknowledged it was a common problem for my model. After several unsuccessful fixes and giving me goodies such as free oil change, I called the service manager and yelled at him it was THEIR problem not mine.

Finally, it was fixed with a solenoid costing about $5. What a waste of time, theirs and mine. This customer will not be happy and they still have to spend the $5 plus the oil change and all the free apples I can pocket. I still have not received my customer satisfaction survey.

· I received a letter from my one of my funds asking me to respond so it will not be treated as an abandoned property. The checks of the dividends and the capital gains must have been cashed by a ghost. I responded by closing the account.

· I was lured to another cable company for their generous offer. I asked my current cable company to match the same deal and they refused. I switched. Since then and 5 years later, I still received their junk mails offering better offers I cannot ‘refuse’. Cut down many trees in the process.

· My Sunday paper raised the price to $5. It is a dying industry as I got all my news from TV and the web. I quickly cancelled my subscription. Since then, they have left many messages and sent me junk mails almost once a week. If they did not raise the price, I would have stayed with them. Try to squeeze the last milk from a dying cow.

· I had a reader telling me to improve my writing style. I asked him whether he followed the book’s technique to accumulate cash before the correction in August, 2015. He did not and he is supposed to be a keen business man. Wrong objective for buying a book on investing!

· My ‘favorite’ charity called me 8 times for donations. I will not donate via them again. I hate to be disturbed during dinner. So are all the phone calls from politician calling for votes and I do not vote for any of them.

· My printer needs replacement of inks at least once every 3 months even I seldom use it. Never buy anything from that company.

· The ‘new and improved’ upright washers are problem-prone. My old ones never need repair for over 10 years. So are Yahoo!’s new ‘improved’ systems. So is Microsoft’s Solitaire – why the ‘improved’ system takes many, many, many times longer to load as they expect players also own Xbox. They all lose contact with their own products/customers or their stupid management tells them to do so.

· I want to know how all the three market indexes, oil and gold are doing at least once a day. One major financial web site now ‘hides’ this information in order to show their programmer can do a fancy job without caring what the customer wants. For me, just switch to another web site.

· I almost missed my connecting flight to Boston in Toronto. First, why I have to clear custom in a foreign country? Second, why the old process took minutes and this one takes almost an hour. The designer must have to change the system so s/he can hire more employees or just had too many drinks during lunch.

· One luxury hand bag company takes out the logo on their bags which is why their customers pay premium.

· Volkswagan, Wells-Fargo and Samsung are recent examples. They all want to be number 1 and end up last. The first two can fool us sometimes, but eventually their misbehaviors will come back to harm them.

Samsung should have tested their phone longer. Most companies want to rush their products to the market in order to compete without all the testing; what happens to beta test and alpha test that are taught in colleges.

Filler:

### Kings of California

Due to its huge size, California should be broken up into two countries. The South and the North are quite different - some laws worked in the South do not work in the North. I will assign Trump to the South to fight the nasty Mexicans and myself to the North to enjoy all the wine and fresh air/water LOL.

99 My new TV

Bought this 55" 4K Samsung TV during the tax holiday. Use it for over 3 months. Here is a brief evaluation. To summarize, it is a great buy.

* Best Buy includes haul away. My old 57" TV is huge and heavy. It could cost me a fortune to get rid of it. The bargain is no cost to haul away, free delivery and no sales tax.

* My old TV came out not too long when they introduced HD. Comcast even gave me $200 credit to promote HD. The old tube technology makes it so heavy - it has wheels. I enjoyed about 2 years earlier than most waiting for a 40" TV for a similar price.

The old TV does do everything well as the new one. It is hard to watch when I cut down some trees to let the sunshine in. Thanks to the LED technology. I do not notice a huge jump in the picture/sound quality.

* My new TV was advertised $100 less the following week I bought it and I got the credit. It is similar to the $20 credit for my son's antenna. Thanks to the decelerating price. With this speed, I should get it free in 10 years!

* Curve TV and 3D TV are fads that will not last for long. Watch out for some latest models. They're like new model of cars that may have bugs to fix. Do not depend solely on reviews as most reviews are done within the first month of ownership. When it does not break in a year, most likely it will not break before its time to retire.

* I'm returning my cable box in my bed room as my son's cheaper 55" Vizio TV is connected to an indoor antenna (costing $99 from Best Buy) without any problem in getting most channels. He needs Vizio's sound bar ($99 on sales) that has Blue Tooth capability.

May have spent too much time in evaluating TVs but it is fun. We should have spent more time in evaluating stocks. Check out my book The Art of Investing. Its Kindle version is only $10 with 700 pages (about the size of 3 books). It should be a best seller (but not) considering how much money you will save in investing. It covers most topics in investing.

Cutting the cable

Bought two TVs in a month in addition to the one I bought during the tax holiday.

One is for my son 2 weeks ago. Today I bought one for the bedroom. Today's purchase actually saves us money by cutting the cost of the cable box for old TV. It saves us about $16 a month for two rentals.

Target and Best Buy advertised the same TV. Target would save me extra 5% with the credit card. However, it was sold out. We went to Best Buy and it was $320, about $50 cheaper than the on-line discounted price. In addition they gave me a $20 gift card. The Smart, 40" HD costs less than $300! I do not know how they can make money. Of course, we drove to New Hampshire, 20 minutes away from my house to save sales tax.

I bought the best in-door antennas from Best Buy for $80 ($20 less than the list prices). If you want to save money, try the $15 one and upgrade to more expensive one if it does not work. I do not have time to go this route. They're not for my family room which I still have cable.

100 Amazing show

I showed the Hong Kong 15^th Anniversary Show to my family and everyone likes it even accepted by the assimilated and the banana (white inside and yellow outside or the American-born Chinese). If you do not know Chinese, skip to the aerobatic and the Chinese dance. Some comments:

· The dancers’ shoes are typical for the period where Chinese rich ladies do not have to leave the house. Even if they do, they will be escorted without too much walking.

· The aerobatic is amazing.

· Compared to China’s ‘Anti Cultural Revolution’, Hong Kong old music is so fantastic.

Check out this link for more shows and some photos in my travel.

101 Trading Apple

Contrarian

I have been contrarian several times and most times I made good money. We need to have good arguments to be contrary. Otherwise, we’re committing financial suicide.

Many investors commit the same error: Invest in a company because they love the company’s products. We need to check in the fundamentals of the company and its prospect. I have nothing against Apple. Actually I recommended Apple before based on its great fundamentals while everyone was dumping it. Where were today’s enthusiastic analysts?

Scoring Apple

When I was writing the book Scoring Stocks, first I used IBM but its low score would not be a good example. Then I switched to Apple (AAPL). It scored almost the highest. I recommended AAPL at $55.72 (split adjusted) on April 19, 2013, the date the book was published. It is another example that fundamentals work. However, when we’re swimming against the tide, we need to be patient. At that time, the media and institutional investors ignored fundamentals. The best argument of not buying Apple was “Apple has turned from a growth stock to a value stock”. They think they cannot get fired by thinking the same as the herd. Just garbage talk from the smartest folks!

Fundamental analysis as of 02/23/2015

	Passing grade	AAPL	Industry
Score System #1	>=15	16
Score System #2	>=2	2
Pow EY	>=5	6%

Expected Earning Yield	>5 & <35 span="">	7%	5%
Debt / Equity	<.5	.30	.29
Analyst Rating	>7	9

EB/EBIT	>5	13
F-Score	>7	6
ROE	>=15%	37%	27%

SMA-200%	>0%	29%
RSI(14)	<60 span="">	78

Price		$132.06

Explanation

Ø The first scoring system incorporates many vendors’ grades. The second scoring system is from my book Scoring Stocks using metrics available free from many web sites.

Ø Pow EY – Earning Yield (E/P) takes cash and debt into consideration.

Ø Expected EY, Debt/Equity, ROE, SMA-200% and RSI(14) are obtained from Finviz.com.

Ø Analyst Rating is from Fidelity. If Fidelity is not your broker, use Recommendation from Finviz.com.

Ø EB/EBIT and F-Score are from GuruFocus.com.

How Apple scores

It scores fine but not spectacular. The score from my book in April, 2013 is 5 and now it is 2. Fundamentally it is not as good as before.

P/B and P/S are usually not useful for high tech companies. However, Apple’s P/B at 6 is exceedingly expensive as compared to Google’s 3. When most analysts like the stock, usually it will rise in the short-term. RSI(14) shows it is overbought. To conclude, its fundamental score passes but not in flying colors.

The brief Fundamental Analysis should be followed by the following:

Intangible Analysis (described next).

Qualitative Analysis includes articles for Apple. First, start looking for articles in Seeking Alpha. Large companies like Apple are hard to manipulate, so most articles are not ‘pump and dump’.

Technical Analysis detects the trend and overbought condition. Many investors do not buy a stock that is in its downward trend. SMA-200 is a good trend indicator. Its price should be above the SMA-200 (same as SMA-200% is positive).

Intangible Analysis (described next).

Qualitative Analysis includes articles for Apple. First, start looking for articles in Seeking Alpha. Large companies like Apple are hard to manipulate, so most articles are not ‘pump and dump’.

Intangible Analysis

Apple has lost a visionary leader Steve Jobs. I hope he was not replaced by similar managers at Microsoft, who are responsible for Microsoft's lost decade with few innovative products. Apple has a lot of cash to finance new projects. High tech business is tough as they need to build a better mouse trap continuously. When the mouse trap becomes a commodity, it will not have a good profit margin. That’s one reason that Buffett does not invest in Apple. If he read my book, he would buy Apple instead of IBM. If he read my book in May, 2013, he would buy Apple instead of IBM saving his company millions minus $10 for my book.

There are bright and bad spots for Apple:

1. Apple Text Book. Imagine all students carry iPads instead of text books. Several educational apps have been created for iPads.

2. Apple TV.

It is a loser so far with a lot of risk and potential competitors. However, the potential is great. It could give all cable companies a run for the money. Wider internet channels would make it more feasible. Will the cable companies provide these speeds to allow Apple TV and similar products to step into their turfs? Does Apple or Google have secret projects to by-pass cables’ internet?

3. While the iPad and iPhone are peaking in the hardware, iTune, software and contents for these devices to access have no limit. We have witnessed how iPad helps the folks with autism and iPhones for the blind. I can envision many other similar applications.

4. Apple moves to Kindle's market. iPad is too big to be used to read books during commute. You need to hold an iPad with both hands. The mini iPad, even making fewer profit margins, will be Apple’s answer to Kindle and a good addition to cover the lower end of its product lines.

5. All the mobile phone technology is originated by the first generation (if not counting Motorola) that Apple has a lot of patents. Its lawyers will milk money from Samsung and prevent cheap mobile phones from coming to the USA.

6. Apple Pay.

I saw a similar ad from a credit card company a while ago and not recently. Apple has a proven history of picking up some failed products and turning them into gold. It is a big test for Tim Cook who is no Steve Jobs. Hong Kong had a similar application many years ago. The advantage of that application is you do not have to carry changes. To me, this product could be the next innovative and most profitable for Apple. Apple Pay will not make a splash in the bottom line initially, but it is an important product.

7. Apple iWear/Apple Watch.

There will be cheap Chinese products flooded in our market. However, the selling point is the prestige of Apple and its integration to other Apple products. For a similar reason, my $50 Casio has no respect even it is more accurate and more functional than an Omega costing many times more. It will be successful, but will not make a big dent on Apple’s total revenue / profit. The major problem of Apple Watch is the short battery life. If you have to charge it one or even two times a day, it will not be too useful. Only social climbers would buy the $4,000 that does not function as a $10 watch. The other problem is how secured the data is.

8. The major worry is whether they can maintain the urge of upgrade. If the new enhancements would not give me reason to upgrade, I would not be the one waiting in long line in bitter cold weather to upgrade my iPhone just to satisfy my dumb ego. It accounts the majority of Apple’s profit.

9. Apple has a lot of cash. Dividends usually boost the stock price and the option values granted to the management. However, it is important to plow back to development and acquiring technologies. They may have paid too much for Beats.

2016 and beyond

Xiaomi, a Chinese phone maker, will most likely come to the USA in 2016 after conquering several emerging markets including India. Its phone is almost as good as the latest model of iPhone at about half the price. It also has a low-end version priced at about $100 that would set up a standard for entry smart phones.

Xiaomi prices the latest phone model barely above the manufacturing price and makes money in the decreasing component prices. It gains more profit by stretching the model to a longer life.

Apple’s lawyer will prevent its entry that Samsung found out the hard way. For starters, Xiaomi needs to modify the user interface to avoid some of the obvious lawsuits in the USA.

Even if Xiaomi will not enter the US market, it will steal more sales from Apple. Apple has to learn from Cisco. You do not want to make China angry. If they do, they may stop Apple from selling their phones in China. Hence, you may win the battle, but lose the war. Xiaomi could be one of the companies that would force the mobile phone to become a commodity product.

When the phone becomes a commodity, both companies have to make money in the content. Today Apple depends on iPhone for over 50% of its sales. In 2016, Apple stock may face some challenges even without Xiaomi entering the US market. Eventually the smart phones will become a commodity product and they may have to face Xiaomi or other similar companies.

It is one’s opinion and I would face a lot of opposition from the current Apple lovers; it is the same when I recommended Apple in May, 2013 when no one wanted to buy Apple’s stock. Buy any stock depending on the potential appreciation (via individual analysis), not on the love of its products, the company or the management.

102 Nightmare or reality

I got a call from Buffett asking me to lead their stock research. I asked him why for a nobody; you may be asking the same question. No kidding.

He told me that he should have read my book Scoring Stocks to buy Apple instead of IBM in May, 2013. It would save his company millions of dollars minus $10 for my book. Not to mention the market timing technique that had worked in the last two major market plunges.

I told him, "OK, I'll beat your mediocre returns of the last 5 years."

He said, "You can do better than that and at least beat SPY. If you do so, no one will be that stupid to leave my fund and pay the hefty capital gain taxes."

I told him, "I cannot beat the market as you are the market especially after your expensive fees. In addition, I do not know how to avoid day traders from riding my wagon in trading. Also most of my big profits were made in small stocks that your fund cannot trade besides owning the company." I woke up trembling. I'm glad it is only a nightmare.

103 The most powerful word

I was deeply moved by the family members of the church victims forgiving the shooter. At SeekingAlpha, I wrote a brief post: "Forgive" is the most powerful word in every language and in every culture. I forgot it until I received a response today from Jim.

"Tony,

Without even knowing it, you made the greatest comment I have seen on Seeking Alpha--and it had nothing to do with investing. You mentioned somewhere that "Forgive" is the most powerful word in every language. Wow.

I shared that with my children. Financial commentary is easily forgotten, but that will stay with me forever. Thank you for that.

Jim"

Jim, forgive me to publicize your email as I hope to spread the word to others.

I cannot take any credit as it is just common sense except for those who do not go to church. The credit should be given to the forgiving family members and to the preaching of the church. With the power of forgiveness, we should not have the wars in the Middle East, past, present and future.

104 The first sip of coffee

Our politicians are 100 times smarter than I, 100,000 times richer than I, handsomer than I (debatable for most esp. Trump)..., why they always made the wrong decisions? Simple answer. Their agenda is buying votes and mine is for the good of our country. Here are the easy fixes.

* Corporate headquarter exodus. Lower their taxes first.

* Health care problem. Lower the medical expenses first.

* Building border walls like the Great Wall of China. Punish the employers who hire the illegals first.

* Social welfare. Do not punish folks for working and give more welfare to workers than those able welfare recipients. It is similar on how to dissolve multi generation of teen-age mothers.

* Fight terrorism. Understand why they want to be one (patriot for them). Think like one on how to give us maximum pain with the least resources.

* Improve the economy so everyone has a job. Our 'offense' budget is more than the next four countries combined. Unless for our own benefits, do not send soldiers overseas. Today's weapons are missiles and cyber security, so how many soldiers we need?

* If we learn the prediction from the Bible or the endless religious wars, we would not be involved in the Middle East conflict.

* Learn from history. Are we threatened by the communist Vietnam today? We should have learned it from the French.
Just write down this list at the first sip of coffee. It could be an endless list.

Filler:

Why I do not run for the presidency you may ask? Nobody would understand my English (not my native language). However, it could be strongest point as I dislike most politicians after I find out their real motives.

Debunk Myths in Investing

Friday, April 10, 2020

Nation: On Religion

Section VII On religion

74 Politics and the stock market

75 God of Gods

76 A preacher’s view on God of Gods

77 Martin Luther King Memorial

78 One blog could change your health and life

Doctor knows best?

79 The human spirits of the Olympics

80 The Republican Convention

81 The stormy China Sea

82 Cheating in Harvard

83 Is Volt a devil or an angel?

84 My selection in Chinese music

85 The best in life

86 Doctor knows best?

87 Are you biased?

88 Ugly Americans

89 Surface by Microsoft

90 Did Microsoft play fairly?

91 Too delicious to fall

92 Conflicts between the poor and the rich

93 The current states of the United States

94 Modify our election system

97 Pillars of Success

Instructions to make a billion?

98 Bad business practices

99 My new TV

Cutting the cable

100 Amazing show

101 Trading Apple

102 Nightmare or reality

103 The most powerful word

104 The first sip of coffee

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