Book Excerpt 3

Thoughts from visit to Sarajevo

"We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere." Primo Levi, survivor of Holocaust

In a war -
1. The international community / United Nations will not help to stop inhumane / torture / massacre of civilians
2. Your friends and neighbours will gladly torture / kill you
3. At the start of the war, people in it do not believe a war can happen. Only 8 years ago Sarajevo hosted a successful Winter Olympics
4. People try their best to live a normal life e.g. make horrible jokes, host beauty pageant

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

The Gap Instinct - There is really no gap

• Comparison of averages - Average number hides the overlap between the two populations
• Comparison of extremes - The majority is usually found in the middle
• The view from up there - When you live on Level 4, everyone on level 3, 2, and 1 can look equally poor.

The Negativity Instinct - Statistics as therapy

• Selective reporting by journalists

The Straight Line Instinct

The Fear Instinct - Attention filter or selected by media

• Physical harm, captivity and contamination
• Risk = danger x exposure

The Size Instinct

• Compare the numbers
• The 80/20 rule
• Divide the numbers - Use rates instead of amounts e.g. per capita

The Generalization Instinct

• Look for differences within groups and similarities across groups - Families living on level 2 in China are more similar to those living on level 2 in Nigeria than level 4 in China
• Beware of generalizing from one group to another - e.g. recovery position of unconscious soldiers to sleeping babies

The Destiny Instinct

• Cultures & values change over time
• "Well, the graphics were nice, and you are good at talking, but you don't have any vision... You talked about eradicating extreme poverty, which is a beginning, but you stopped there. Do you think Africans will settle with getting rid of extreme poverty and be happy living in only ordinary poverty? As a finishing remark you said that you hoped your grandchildren would come as tourists to Africa and travel on the new high-speed trains we plan to build. What kind of a vision is that? Is it the same old European vision. It is my grandchildren who are going to visit your continent and travel on your high-speed trains and visit that exotic ice hotel I've heard you have up in northern Sweden. It is going to take a long time, we know that. It is going to take lots  of wise decisions and large investments. But my 50-year vision is that Africans will be welcome tourists in Europe and not unwanted refugees."

The Single Perspective Instinct - Give a child a hammer and everything looks like a nail / Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions

• The most valuable intervention for saving the lives of the poorest mothers is not training more local nurses to perform C-sections, or better treatment of severe bleeding or infections, but the availability of transport to the local hospital.
• Educators know that it is often the availability of electricity rather than more textbooks or even more teachers in the classroom that has the most impact on learning, as students can do their homework after sunset.
• I can understand why people looking at Cuba and its efficiencies, poverty, and lack of freedom would decide that governments should never be allowed to plan societies... I can understand why people looking at the United States and its inequalities and health-care outcomes would decide that private markets and competition should never be allowed anywhere near the delivery of public goods. As with most discussions about private versus the public sector, the answer is not either/or. It is case-by-case, and it is both. The challenge is to find the right balance between regulation and freedom.

The Blame Instinct

• Syphilis is called the Polish disease in Russia. In Poland it was the German disease; in Germany, the French disease; and in France, the Italian disease. The Italians blamed back, calling it the French disease.
• More likely suspects are the system, institutions and technology.

The Urgency Instinct

The 5 global risks we should worry about: global pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change, and extreme poverty.

****

The objectives and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbours, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and state it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practised it on such occasions; and from my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it. The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid. If it remains a while uncertain to whom the merit belongs, someone more vain than yourself will be encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will be disposed to do you justice by plucking those assumed feathers, and restoring them to their right owner.

***

We have an English proverb that says, 'He that would thrive, must ask his wife.'

-- Benjamin Franklin - Some view on god & religion & virtue

This gave me occasion to observe, that, when men are employ'd they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their pork, the bread etc...

*****

The Song of Ice and Fire

"As I was saying... why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?" - Tyrion Lannister

"Let them see that their words can cut you, and you'll never be of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can't hurt you with it anymore." - Tyrion Lannister

"A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose." - Master Aemon of the Night Watch

Qhorin's shrewd grey eyes seemed to see right through him. "So you let her go?" He did not sound the least surprised.

"You know?"

"Now. Tell me why you spared her."

It was hard to put into words. "My father never used a headsman. He said he owed it to men he killed to look into their eyes and hear their last words. And when I looked into Ygritte's eyes, I..." Jon stared down at his hands helplessly. "I know she was an enemy, but there was no evil in her."

"No more than the other two."

"It was their lives or ours," Jon said. "If they had seen us, if they had sounded the horn..."

"The wildling would hunt us down and slay us, true enough."

"Stone snake has the horn now, though, and we took Ygritte's knife and axe. She's behind us, afoot, unarmed..."

"And not like to be a threat," Qhorin agreed. "If I had needed her dead, I would have left her with Ebben, or done the thing myself."

"Then why did you command it of me?"

"I did not comment it. I told you to do what needed to be done and left you to decide what that would be." Qhorin stood and slid his longsword back into its scabbard. "When I want a mountain scaled, I call on Stonesnake. Should I need to put an arrow through the eye of some foe across a windy battle field, I summon Squire Dalbridge. Ebben can make any man give up his secrets. To lead men you must know them, Jon Snow. I know more of you now than I did this morning."

"And if I had slain her?" asked Jon.

"She would be dead, and I would know you better than I had before."

Joffrey,

When your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no men will ever bend the knee to you. And any man who must say, "I am the king" is no true king at all. Aerys never understood that, but you will. When I've won your war for you, we will restore the king's peace and the king's justice. The only head that need concern you is Margery Tyrell's maidenhead." Lord Tywin Lannister

The world was simpler in those days, Jaime thought, and men was well as sword were made of finer steel. Or was it only that he had been fifteen?

"Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging." Rodrik Harlaw

"I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood."

"We had one king, then five. Now all I see are crows, squabbling over the corpse of Westeros."

"In this world only winter is certain." Eddard Stark

"Sorcery was a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it." - Dalla

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." - Jojen Reed

*********

Nudge

There are many parallels between choice architecture and more traditional forms of architecture. It crucial parallel is that there is no such thing as a 'neutral' design.

'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change." - Charles Darwin

*********

21 lessons for the 21st century

Most people who go on identity quest are like children going treasure hunting. They find only what their parents have hidden for for them in advance.

The Buddha taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying... Suffering emerges because people fail to appreciate this.

*********

When breathe becomes air

I began to realise that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I know that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn't really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes. After so many years of living with death, I'd come to understand that the easiest death wasn't necessary the best.

*********

Glucose Revolution

Glucose spikes relationship with heart disease:

1. Glucose and fructose spikes lead to oxdative stress of mitochondria in the cells lining the blood vessels. These cells are particularly vulnerable to mitchondria stress. The cells lose their smooth shape and fat particles stuck more easily to the uneven surface.

2. High level of insulin (to reduce glucose level) -> liver starts producing cholesterol LDL pattern B

3. When more glucose, fructose and insulin are present-> more inflammation -> the cholesterol is more easily oxidized and lodges under the blood vessel lining.

4. Flatten your breakfast curve

5. Have any type of sugar you want

6. Pick dessert over a sweet snack -> stick the sweet food to the end of a meal

7. Reach for vinegar before a meal (apple cider vinegar; 1 tablespoon in a tall glass of water)

8. After you eat, move

9. If you have to snack, go savory

10. Put some clothes on your carbs

Right order of meals:

Fiber -> protein / fat -> starch / sugar

Food labelling:

Select items whose ingredients get the closest to 1 gram of dietary fiber for each gram of total carbohydrate

Bad fat:

found in hydrogenated and refined cooking oils such as canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, safflower, sunflower, grapeseed, and rice bran oil.

Combing carbs:

Bread, corn, couscous, pasta, polenta, rice, tortillas, cake, candy bars, cereal, cookies, crackers, fruit, granola, hot chocolate, ice cream, or anything sweet

with fiber / fat / protein:

Any vegetable, avocado, beans, butter, cheese, cream, eggs, fish, Greek yogurt, meat, nuts, seeds

Sugar by different names:

Agave nectar, agave syrup, barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, brown sugar, cane juice crystals, cane sugar, caramel, coconut sugar, confectioner's sugar, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, date sugar, crushed fruit, dextrin, dextrose, evaporated cane juice, fructose, fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate, fruit puree concentrate, galactose, glucose, glucose syrup solids, golden sugar, golden syrup, grape sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, icing sugar, malt syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, maple syrup, muscovado sugar, panela sugar, pressed fruit, raw sugar, rice syrup, sucanat, sucrose, sugar, turbinado sugar.

只能相愛 不能相處 - 奶酪陷阱電視劇觀後感受

終於看完了奶酪陷阱電視劇。我想我是少數看完結局還能說自己很愛這齣電視劇的人。我看到網民對結局都極之反感，所以希望在這裏記錄一下自己還是非常非常喜愛這齣電視劇的原因。

我有朋友是韓劇專家，他只看了頭兩集，因為故事對他來說不吸引，所以中途放棄。我後來告訴他這齣劇的結局是open ending,他非常驚訝，說這種類型的韓劇如果不是happy ending
的話，必會畀人鬧死。我說，你實在太了解韓劇了，它真的俾人鬧死。所以說這個故事違反了韓劇一貫的模式也是不誇張。

怎麼說呢？這齣韓劇令我有心跳的感覺。除了男主角顏值極高、演技精湛，透過極微小的表情變化去演繹內心激動的情感之外，我想是因為這齣劇比其他韓劇更有真實感。

這是少數韓劇會去刻劃為何男主角會愛上女主角，為何女主角會愛上男主角，亦充分交代最後他們不能一起的理由。不像來自星星的你，男主角毫無原因四百年來只愛一個女子；也不像鬼怪中，相愛只是因為所有鬼都叫他做鬼怪新娘。就像童話故事一般，公主和王子本該相愛，沒有解釋。

首先講為何劉正會喜歡洪雪。劉正講了幾次他喜歡洪雪是因為他覺得他們很像。這是因為他們都是很努力在生活，盡自己所能做好每一件事，可是卻不斷被其他人佔便宜，努力也得不到父母的讚賞。劉正被人佔便宜也不能出聲是因為父親派人在身邊監察他；洪雪不出聲是性格善良所致。劉正覺得無論做得多好，也得不到父親歡心；洪雪也是無論學業有多好、兼職有多辛苦，還不及一個有錢到美國讀書卻不好好把握，回家撒兩個嬌便有零用錢的弟弟。在這幾方面來說，他們的處境其實很相近，所以劉正想保護她，想為她出頭教訓佔她便宜的人。

至於為何洪雪會喜歡劉正。先不說劉正是高富帥，聰明、神秘、用心計和耍手段的男人是有他致命的魅力的。我有遇過類似的人，他們大多交際手段很高，非常charming。如果一個這樣的男人對任何女人作出追求的話，我想女人都是沒有抵抗力的。這個我完全明白。後來洪雪說，他和劉正一起的原因是表面冷酷的學長只對自己表現出溫暖童真的一面，這理由夠充分了吧。

到比較有爭議性的分手原因：其實我看到一半，了解洪雪和劉正的性格之後，我也預見到他們必定要分手收場。洪雪流鼻血的時候，我還以為既然要分手，編劇不如寫女主角有絕症，來得更加轟烈。

為什麼我說分手是必然的結果呢？洪雪每一次發現劉正耍的手段後，因為性格善良，均感到十分心寒，基本上是逼迫自己去接受面前這一個怪物。到最後她也跟劉正說，我希望你不要再去傷害別人，這基本上是在講她不能接受原本的劉正，並希望他改變。洪雪不像白仁荷般，可以坦然接受學長腹黑的事實，在一個對方令自己感到心寒，不斷容忍的關係裏，根本沒有可能維持下去。劉正分手時也有對洪雪講，你還能容忍我到什麼時候。

至於劉正方面，他是真心喜歡洪雪的。從洪雪嘗試介紹師妹給他的時候，他有多生氣可知一二。當洪雪想他改變，不再傷害別人時，其實他有嘗試過給尚哲學長彌補，希望透過改變自己去和洪雪過平淡的生活。如果不是白仁荷事件的話，或許他們會幸福快樂在一起。不過白仁荷實在觸碰了劉正的底線，令劉正放棄了不再害人的決心，也要弄垮白仁荷，才引致洪雪的交通意外。所以劉正覺得自己不能擔保以後還不會傷害人，或者再傷害到洪雪，而且和自己一起的女人，根本無法完全接受自己原本的性格，看着自己便好像看着一個怪人一樣，他自己也會覺得很累。你可以說，這都是廢話，如果劉正夠愛洪雪的話，他可以留在她身邊慢慢改變。我完全同意這一點，劉正不夠愛洪雪其實也是有跡可尋。洪雪自己也說，劉正的未來裏沒有自己。洪雪身邊的朋友也說，當吳英坤騷擾洪雪時，劉正一直知情卻沒有行動，扮不知情，正常男人也做不到。

劉正父親說劉正不要覺得世界圍着自己轉，這是很正確的，也很像劉正父親自己。劉正父親曾和劉正母親通電話，說拋下兒子的人沒有資格說什麼，證明劉正母親可能是不能接受不顧人感受的丈夫所以離開，所以劉正父親是自己一人，劉正亦是孤單的。除了劉正耍手段去傷害人外，他向洪雪表白時，洪雪明明婉拒了，他還是說，我覺得沒有問題，基本上洪雪是在驚訝和害怕中接受和他交往的。這也表現出劉正習慣了自己想要的都會順他的意思而行。這樣有點自我中心的性格令他在關鍵時刻還是離開了洪雪。

整齣電視劇其實都在很用心用很多細節刻劃男女主角的性格和內心掙扎和感情。所以我說了解了兩人的性格後，根本沒有一個劇情轉折可以合理地令兩人以後快樂地相處，所以分手是個雖然可惜但卻必然的結局。可能是因為這一點真實感，令我對這齣劇久久不能釋懷。

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現在在看第二次這齣電視劇。這是頭一回同一齣電視劇看兩次的，因為演員演技值得一看再看，還有劇本的細節寫得很好。

今次留意到白仁浩和白仁荷兩姊弟其實很像。都是有點不務正業，喜歡佔人便宜和有暴力傾向，不能好好控制自己的情緒。白仁浩剛開場時撿到洪雪的手機，就要本來也很拮据的洪雪請他吃三餐飯。一方面他是想多接近和劉正關係密切的洪雪，另一方面其實他也愛佔便宜，其實有點令人討厭的。他們倆的喜怒形於色是要和劉正的poker face形成強烈對比。