Harold Taw Response

Some of the traditions I follow are the usual Taiwanese "bai-bai" traditions. Some of my own personal "traditions" that I would follow are that I would count the number of times I brush each side of my mouth, and the number of times I brush either top or bottom. I would also count the number of steps I'm taking (spontaneously) until this inner force feels satisfied to stop counting. I would also count the number of steps there are to a staircase sometimes too. I believe these are just OCD tendencies but I suppose they are "traditions" for me. 

Another tradition (family tradition) that I follow is the way I tell my grandparents I'm home. My grandpa grew up in the Japanese colonial era and he speaks fluent Japanese. Anytime a family member enters the house (mostly applies to kids only) we would yell out "Tatayima!" and then my grandpa would respond with "Okaerinasai!" I think the former announces arrival and the latter is a welcome home greeting.

Malcom Gladwell Response

Malcom Gladwell makes plenty of sense. His TED talks are pretty interesting too. Although I can't say that I've seen any other ones, the way he talks is really interesting to listen to. About the Ivy League thing, I suppose it does have a lot of truth. They really are a selection-effect institution. You don't become successful by going to an Ivy League school, you already have the propensity to be a successful person. Going to an Ivy League won't grant you success. They are highly selective. If they were a treatment-effect institution why would they need to be so selective? I strongly agree with Gladwell's points on these things, however, I would like to bring to light one of the things overlooked when he wrote his article (deliberately? I don't know) but it's that an Ivy League school does receive more endowment, therefore offering more premium programs compared to state schools.

Values

What values are important to people? I believe it has to lie within the nurture sector. First of all, our ways of thinking are mostly determined by nurture. Why do I say that? Because nurture is the final stage in which our minds pass through - nature has already been set. Nature only sets the mold, but nurture fills it up with material. Some parts are left blank, to be potentially filled up by nurture. Some parts are filled completely, taking full advantage of our natural potential. The way a child is raised - as I explained above, nature simply sets the potentials - is penultimate to a way the writer writes. The last step, of course, is the writing itself. This includes education, cultural values, etc - anything that could have influenced the kid one bit. Anything that could have triggered neurons to fire. Once when the child reaches adulthood, these memories and such create a malleable machine that pumps out things in the way the writer thinks. The brain.

Education System

The current education system pressuring kids with high stakes testing is really wringing dry the spirit and creativity we have been innately gifted with. It really does crush our spirits and hopes and forces us to funnel all our concentration onto the tests we have been pressured with. I think it really does molest kids of their freedom to express. It turns us into perfunctory writing machines. I suppose that's what the society needs - less Bohemian artists and more Wall street accountants. Maybe that's a little bit of an over-exaggeration but if school is a way of molding kids into useful functional (a subjective term) adult in today's society then I guess it's needed. The relentless way it crushes our naivety especially in east Asian culture is just so dauntingly effective that it reflects in their nations (east Asian countries.) School is masked as a place for learning, perhaps it really is, but in rawer terms it is simply a machine to pump out malleable human beings to fit into the order of society and somehow contribute to it.

Disability

Disability is something people in this world are afflicted with everyday. There are a wide range of disabilities of course, but MS is just something that this woman had the unfortunate luck of being diagnosed with. People who suffer from disabilities usually complain about being mistreated: perhaps being the victim of discrimination because you're disabled is worse off than being the victim of discrimination because of race because they're seen as being less "abled" than normal humans. They're truly and actually dehumanized rather than victims of racism because those people are just blocked out as a race. It's a shame that people living in the 21st century still discriminate against disabled people. Not even that, because when people make fun of disabled people they don't even realize it's on the same level as being racist.

Freedom

My definition of freedom is simple: exercise of free will. Of course, there are varying degrees of freedom for this definition (of mine.) It can come in all different flavors - as people living in oppressive authoritarian states still have a great degree of freedom. These "oppressed" peoples simply lack one small part of the equation to what society today has labeled as the "right" freedom: the right to vote. Unless each and every one of the citizens living in said oppressive state are tied to a ball and chain - and in this situation, I can finally concur that it is a lack of freedom - they can still exercise free will. Perhaps the way they are treated are unjust, but I have seen and heard many people brand the citizens who simply lack the right to vote as "needing freedom." They have a smaller degree of freedom compared to someone inhabiting a place such as Taiwan, simply because they lack that one ballot every X years. Freedom in its most intense state would return to primality - perhaps what Thomas Hobbs had described many years ago, with everyone living in a state of fear but free to do whatever they want because the world lacks a set of laws. Freedom needs to be regulated, and these regulations make sense - laws, they are called. Most people in this world live in proximity of each other in terms of the levels of freedom. For the point of this journal entry I suppose, these "levels" would be things like very restricted freedom or something of the sort.

Blog Post 1

Why are Chinese women as mothers more superior? Well, my reaction to this is simple: the discipline that women who are raised within the culture, and once exported in the form of individual families, is almost unperturbed, and perhaps even amplified due to the fact that immigrants from other countries in America struggle to achieve success compared to white Americans. The Chinese have a lot of pride, and to fuel this pride they seek to turn their children into perfunctory learning machines: by pencil pushing and haranguing them. They achieve this by forcing the children through a rigorous but robust system that is pretty much universal in all societies which had stemmed from the Confucian society of China; this includes Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and various other countries the Han Chinese had influenced. I thought this excerpt from the book was quite entertaining and should be taken in a light-hearted manner. First of all, it's HER kids. She can do whatever she wants with them - she is her own children's mother and can decide what parenting style to adopt, and if the way she was raised had worked, why not repeat it? I believe some of the ways she addresses the specifics of her style was done in a comedic manner and I had gotten a few inside chuckles from it. I would love to read this book.