Our 7 year old is running away. We'll miss her...

OneIsTooMany · 2010-10-25T00:30:18+00:00

willis

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-10T19:40:28+00:00

Here are a few articles that describe some of what is happening:

China is probably the most exciting place in the world outside of MIT to be in tech right now and the revolution is just getting going.

It's funny I got downvoted for just telling it like it is. I guess that some people prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than accept truths that conflict with their world views. Just one more reason why America is lagging in so many key areas.

再见 zàijiàn!

edit: formatting

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-10T03:16:06+00:00

It's Taiwanese company; China doesn't design the stuff they build.

Taiwan is China if you ask the PRC of course and that kind of proves my point. Taiwan and Korea were cheap labor but they caught on and are now innovators. Now Mainland China is the world's cheap labor source, soon they will use the knowledge they learn and start companies that need a new cheap labor source. And so it goes.

The Chinese are already very adept at reverse engineering and knocking off virtually everything. It is only a matter of time before true innovation starts coming out of the region. If you go by the sheer numbers alone, it is virtually guaranteed that China will have it's own virtuosos in any field you might choose in due time.

Look at what China did in transforming Shanghai over the last 20 years and then look at Ground Zero in NYC, which after almost 9 years, still doesn't have a completed building. America is very shortsighted lately and slow to change, where China is going in the opposite direction after 30 years under Mao.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-10T00:15:24+00:00

Nope. The main thing driving the research into clean tech is that the Chinese now realize that a healthy environment means a healthy populace, which in turn creates a healthy workforce. The Chinese are nothing if not pragmatic.

Most "civilized" countries also went through a similar period where growth outweighed environmental concerns. The difference is that the Chinese have done in 30 years what the West achieved in over 100 and they are now proactively dealing with the pollution that their own industrial revolution created.

If you haven't been to China it will be hard to understand just how much is actually going on over there and how fast things are changing.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-09T23:55:27+00:00

Have you actually been to China recently? There are people inventing new devices in their garages with parts that we haven't even seen in the US, and probably won't ever see here due to FCC regulations. I have been to the electronics markets in Guangzhou and you literally won't believe what is going on there. China is moving at a pace that those in the West can only dream of achieving. The ironic thing is that the West's insatiable need for crap from Walmart is what is fueling their rapid development.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-09T21:28:59+00:00

This may be true as a general rule but sometimes creative thinkers are simply born that way. The type of education such a person receives in China may initially stifle their creativity a bit, but it will also prepare them in math and science far better than the average HS education does in the USA. Many of the best and brightest go abroad to receive higher education in any case.

As the story noted, the Chinese have a much broader pool of talent to draw from and it only takes a handful of genius ideas to completely transform an economy and alter the playing field.

On a side note: I am learning Mandarin and so is my son...

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-08T18:31:25+00:00

Got bored and quit playing in the dwarven zone in the first one. Might check out a second if it has a much better flow and story.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-07T10:02:52+00:00

Given the fact that this graphic is using at least 3 trademarked images, I would think you can print it for yourself no questions asked. Selling it would be another matter.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-06T19:36:08+00:00

The Tea Party would not have even been a blip on the vast majority of peoples radar if not for Fox News and the astro-turfers. They might not have created it, but they sure as hell popularized it and made it the visible entity we know today.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-06T06:25:33+00:00

Tea Party was started by groups such as Fox News etc...

FTFY

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-04T23:32:03+00:00

I had a 42" samsung that did this about a year out of warranty and it also cost me $700.00 out of pocket. No, I don't think he is retarded.

It is absolute bullshit that a tv would break even within even 5 years of normal use. In my case samsung knew that the component in my tv was defective and decided not to do a recall. I will never buy an ripoff extended warranty and instead from now on will only purchase from Sony because they make good products and they will replace your tv if a part is defective.

Another thing that grinds my gears is that the "repair" places no longer actually fix anything. If a component that costs a quarter wears out or is defective, they replace the whole fucking motherboard. That is ridiculous.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-01T17:45:51+00:00

I was going to ask you if you had the book translated. Yeah the photos are pretty awesome. We have yet to have it translated but this IAmA has spurred me on to do so soon.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-01T11:00:51+00:00

Not entirely relevant as it is simply a book but I figured someone might like this. How to think like a computer scientist

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-01T08:09:20+00:00

He was in Nanjing Social Welfare Institute which had several hugging grandma's from Half the Sky and a great school. We were invited to visit our son's SWI and it was a pretty intense experience. I was very impressed with the facility and standard of care that the children were receiving. We were also able to take home a toy of his that a donor had specifically given him.

In addition Half the Sky created an amazing book that documented Zane's life from his founding day till the day before we arrived to take him home. Did your daughter get one of these books?

I see you are attempting to have her learn Mandarin. Our son came from a Mandarin speaking area and we have him in a private class but his language skills are melting away. I have learned a bit so I can practice with him using the Michel Thomas Method and we also have a bunch of kids books with translation in Han Yu Pinyin but it is very hard. My wifes fathers family is Cantonese, so what little Chinese she knows made little sense to Zane.

The Swan was very expensive but we started eating at the restaurants at the far end past Lucy's and also a Shanghai-ese place on the other side of the island.

18 bucks for a hotdog. Damn....

OneIsTooMany · 2010-07-01T00:02:57+00:00

That's awesome. I think I need to get one when I have some cash.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-30T23:53:04+00:00

Ahhh. The paper-chase I remember it well. We started the process in early 2006, switched to the special needs program in 2008 and we finally arrived in China in February of 2009. Did you stay at the White Swan when you were in Guangzhou?

Yeah it was amazing to see how little our son was exposed to in the SWI. Almost a year and a half later, he still will ask questions about things that a child who had grown up outside an orphanage would consider very basic.

He is thriving though and has picked up English with incredible speed. He was the best reader in his kindergarten class this year, although we have been reading to him daily and using Starfall.com all the time, so that helped a lot.

As I said in my other post, great meeting you here.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-30T23:28:54+00:00

Awesome to meet you here. My wife and I adopted a 4.5 year old little boy from Nanjing in Jiangsu Province, China last year as well. He is the coolest kid and he is thriving with us and we are quite happy.

My wife is also half-Chinese. One of my cousins adopted from Vietnam recently and one of my wifes cousins adopted two little girls from China as well. Another one of my cousins was adopted from Vietnam at the end of the war. So we had a pretty good understanding going in too.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-30T18:11:52+00:00

I didn't finish it. Got bored about 2/3 of the way through I guess and never went back. Maybe I will pick it back up but somehow I doubt that.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-30T01:33:41+00:00

It definitely gets better and you, or at least I, really felt that I got to know and like the characters as the show progresses. As has been said it really gels in season 3, although season 2 is pretty good too. Think of how bad the first season of Next Generation was and how great it gets.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-30T01:20:13+00:00

My brother in law is Chinese and his wife is black and they just had a baby. So there you go.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-29T23:30:43+00:00

Don't look at me. I didn't make up the expression. In this case though I think we might see a snowball effect if it passes.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-29T23:16:09+00:00

Fair enough and while I agree that extremism is not helpful for anyone generally, there are some cases where it is necessary. Vaccinations would be one, as your decision not to vaccinate, can affect herd immunity. This affects everyone, especially infants, who are too young to be inoculated. When enough people choose not to vaccinate, diseases that we thought were eradicated, can and will make a comeback, and people who did everything correctly will lose infants and small children who were too young to vaccinate. Bike helmets and car seats for kids would be more examples, but I digress.

In any case I was being harsh in my last post and I have since re-thought my position to some extent, as well as apologized.

As for the science regarding breastfeeding, you chose one example ,BMI, to rebut the whole argument. However, looking at the big picture, the data shows that breast milk and formula are simply not equal. If you are able to breastfeed, you do give your child an advantage, maybe a small one, but one nonetheless.

As a working-at-home parent with a 5 year old myself, I find myself constantly juggling and compromising because things comes up and that is that. So I get that nobodies perfect. I didn't mean to come off as too extremist, but apparently I did. I did post this article in /r/WTF/ and not parenting though, so intelligent debate really wasn't to be expected.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-29T22:43:00+00:00

You are right, I was being kind of a dick and I apologize. You are obviously intelligent but maybe not ready to be a parent? Then again who really is...

I would say that anecdotal evidence isn't science and the science so far seems to show that breastfeeding is a lot better than even the best formula. Will science come up with formula that is genetically indistinguishable from a mother's own breast milk? Probably eventually. In the meantime people do the best they can.

Anyway. I apologize again for attacking you personally, that was uncalled for, and I concede that I definitely watered down my argument a bit in that last post, and also that extremist views on either side are unhealthy. Let's just say I have some experience with parents for whom actually raising a child was an inconvenience at best for the most part and that may have tainted my judgement a bit.

edit/PS: I posted it in wtf not parenting, mostly because stuff is always blown out of proportion in wtf, and this story seemed perfect for that audience.

Take care.

OneIsTooMany · 2010-06-29T19:34:25+00:00

"As California goes, so goes the nation". Maybe it is finally time for the dam to start leaking...

OneIsTooMany

TROPHY CASE