It is the first official holiday for the 70th Anniversary for the Defeat of the Japanese.  While I think that the military parade and the weapons are interesting, apparently some people disagree.  Anyhow, I also really liked President Xi’s wife’s clothing – she generally dresses in Chinese name brands and I love her style.  Frankly, all first ladies and heads of states should represent their own country and support their own name brands.

Other than watching lots of military weaponry and wishing I was born a guy so I could qualify to actually fly an F-15 or any one of those other awesome military jets, I figured out the following:

1) How to pay for electricity.  Now you all at home may think that this is really easy as we all get the bill in the mail and pay it monthly.  Not so easy in China because it differs depending on where you live.  In Shanghai, I just needed to go downstairs to the front desk, they would add money to the swipe card, and I would go upstairs to then stick the card on top of the meter and – “Let there be light.”

So in the apartment building here, I need to go to the apartment building administrative offices, find the nice lady who accesses a computer program to add money to my account, swipes the card, then I have to come back to the apartment building I live in and swipe the card next to the meter located in the lower level of the building. Think of it like  a crawl space area.

2) How to Figure Out Produce Pricing.  We are really lucky that in most places, someone comes in between the hours of 2-6AM and weighs the food and puts the price on the produce and vegetables for us.  In Shanghai for the most part, if you go to a grocery store, they already have things pre-labelled.

I went to the grocery store across the street and for a second could not figure out why there were no prices on the pre-packaged produce.  Afterwards, saw the hoard of people surrounding this lady who was trying to organize the masses.  Anyhow, it turns out that she is the scale lady and she weighs everything for you and then you go pay at the cashier 😀

Sorry everyone – forgot my camera and the phone does not work so I need a new one.  Otherwise there would just be lots of pictures.  I might go back and take the photos if people don’t get too freaked out by my baby.  I seriously just need to bite the bullet and on pay day go off and buy a lovely new iphone 😀

3) Why the Guys Think I am like Bernadette from the Big Bang Theory.  I have not really watched the Big Bang Theory until recently due to the time issues and just not really being into TV but I have now seen enough of the Big Bang Theory to know why this guy started calling me Bernadette.  Apparently, I have a similarly child like voice and tend to yell at people for things that I think are inefficient, stupid, or just plain wrong.  Bernadette’s character does the same.

I watched the episode where she yells at someone, “I AM NICE TO EVERYONE!”  Even I had to laugh and say that really is me sometimes.

4) Find a Way Around the Great Firewall of China.  So for those of you who have realized that there seem to be a lack of pictures in the presentations and papers I have been emailing you all, it is because for some reason, Baidu has censored them and I needed one of you to get the photos for me and email them to my Chinese email account.  I bought lifetime subscriptions to these VPNs which don’t work.  Sigh 🙁  No google and access to my favorite news and scholarly journals.  I need to find a student who knows what a VPN is and to figure out which one to buy.

I can’t even research legal cases properly.  So for those of you who remember the case where the two students had a fight over some other stupid law student (boyfriend), let me know.  This case was special because one of the idiots involved decided to create a hate site dedicated to this other girl to prevent her from making friends and prevent her from getting a job.  It took the victim 5 years to get it sorted out in court and unfortunately, some parts of the website and bulletin board the vicious idiot set up is still floating around the internet.  Long story short, the one who started the blog/website/bulletin thing has no job and has to pay damages to the other girl who was, last I heard a privacy expert.

So if you find the case can you send it to me?  I can’t remember the law school this happened at but the law suit made the papers and the law blog rounds my 1L year so that would be 2011-2012.

I was trying to use the case in my Con Law lecture about Freedom of Speech and how it does not protect against slander, defamation, and crimes associated with that.

5) Literature Review = Happy.  So some of you may know that I am trying to finish out the PhD – the one I consider the real thing and not the JD because I already have that one…  For those of you who don’t know, I am trying to finish off the PhD on subaqueous soils which is still a relatively small field and therefore, thankfully, not as well developed, and therefore, my old ideas and research are still considered cutting edge even though I started this project at my job in 2001 and for my PhD in 2004 😀

So you now know why I was so happy to have finished the literature review and realize that my theories and data sets are still valid and not scooped 😀

Sent off some concept papers and they got relatively good feedback and now off to more Big Bang Theory and Let Review reading.

If any of you have suggestions on putting together a Con Law class let me know.  The Environmental Law class should be much easier and even through some of the cases overlap most will not.

Current Mood = Mrtyle the Sea Turtle at the Boston Aquarium after a meal and her favorite trest, Brussel Sprouts.  Yep, these photos are mine and please credit me if you choose to use them 🙂  I need to figure out how to get a watermark into them.

So we all complain about climate change and all the negative aspects about it.  As a practical environmentalist, I in particular see lots of negatives to environmental degradation but sometimes there is good even to drought…

At least the families of these WWII soldiers get to properly bury the remains of their loved ones.  They probably would have not been found had it not been for the drought as the plane is estimated to have crashed into the river in January of 1945.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-34050693

So what do you do when the tourists from other countries are complaining about a specific tourist group – in this case the Chinese?  Well in Switzerland apparently you do something rather unorthodox and slightly insulting and create a special train just for them…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-34085270

I rather find this whole scenario economically impractical and morally insulting.  So you are a tourist spot which is trying to attract more Chinese people through advertisement campaigns and decide because other tourists have complained about some Chinese tourists being loud, rude, obnoxious, and spitting on the trains, you are going to isolate them…  The separate train must cost you more money than you currently are spending to run the transportation system, you must employ more people to “keep the train cleaner,” and how are you going to be able to tell who is a Chinese tourist from China versus the Chinese looking tourists from Canada, the U.S., etc.?

Frankly it looks like you are in for one hell of a discrimination law suit.  As an ABC I sure as hell do not want to end up on a train with people who are apparently spitting and being rude to others.  As a human being, I think it is morally wrong to single out an entire group for something that a handful of people are doing.  Wouldn’t it be more educational and preventative for all involved to have a Chinese speaking translator instruct the Chinese tour groups to not participate in bad behavior?

While I understand according to the article that there are “netzins” complaining about the unfairness and how the Swiss should be excited for Chinese tourists dollars, I am also in agreement with the other unfortunate tourists who are stuck with bad behavior.  Seriously, if you are not a rude, obnoxious, and spitting tourist then for Christ sake go and educate those who are.  Nobody should be discriminated against and nobody should exhibit poor manners either.

I find it interesting  that some people band together in mass unthink when supposedly a “foreigner” attacks someone recognized as “a Chinese national.”  It happened to me in Shanghai this past trip where some rude guy who decided to sit down in a spot I saved for a friend.

When I told the guy that he could sit there until my friend came, he started yelling at me and raised his arm.  I thought he was going to slap me so after he finished his tirade – well maybe he didn’t finish and I just cut him off.  Anyhow, he made the following points:

1) China does not have a reservation policy,

2) I was in China and should act more “Chinese,”

3) I was being rude because I would not let him sit,

4) My friend can just sit somewhere else,

5) Look the foreigner is attacking me – “look this foreigner is trying to tell me what to do on Chinese soil,” rough translation.

My counter to the ass who sat down in my saved seat – while his wife(?) and child (?) were standing around eating – not sure if they were his family but they all left together at the end when I refused to back down; it was weird, he ordered them to leave – was the following:

1) Many people in China reserve and wait on line for hours for a table,

2) Most Chinese people I know and associate with are well mannered unlike him,

3) I was being reasonable because I already told him that he could stay until my friend showed up,

4) You are rude in any culture and country no matter in America or China, and

5) If you dare hit me, I will hit you back.

Basically after this conversation, I realized that I have way too much personality for a native Chinese person and that if nothing else, that should distinguish me from a local – whether good or bad that remains to be seen.  However, I refuse to be smacked, slapped, or hit in any way from any guy, so there certainly was no way it was going to happen in China from a rude seat stealing guy while I was conscious.

What can I say – seem to have this conversation every time someone falls in love and/or insists on romance and looks over substance.  Frankenstein versus Brains and Plastic Surgery.

I am always willing to date someone who is intelligent versus someone who is just pretty because I cannot grow a brain and implant that into someone who is physically attractive.  Frankly, only those who are not intelligent need to be physically amazing as they usually have nothing else to offer.

Would someone who is physically active and intelligent would be lovely as to decrease the number of health issues?  Yes, but not a requirement because I can hire a physical trainer and plastic surgeon to “fix” physical appearances but I cannot grow a new brain with all the characteristics that I wanted.

Am I skeptical about love? Yes.  Do I think that most people have some sort of parasitic relationship with each other? Yes.  Do I think that there are some people who have amazing symbiotic relationships? Yes, but they are few and far between.

It does not help that I need to read about legal cases at the Supreme Court level in multiple countries which refer to bridal prices and marriage cruelty divorces.

In Uganda, the Supreme Court has ruled that forcing women to return the “bride price” in divorce circumstances are unconstitutional.  Therefore, women can divorce without having to skimp and save in advance.  My questions is that if the bridal price is generally given to the wife’s family, why are the women responsible for returning it and not the family?

Uganda bride price refund outlawed by top judges

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33800840

In India, there are Supreme Court cases where Indian Men have sought Divorce Through Marriage Cruelty Laws.  Some of the Indian men have gone to the Indian Supreme Court with the following reasons: 1) Party Pooper, 2) Too Much Sex, 3) Refusal to Serve his Friends Chai, 4) Wife has an Acne Problem, and 5) the Husband disapproves of his wife wearing pants…

Party girls and too much sex: Why some Indian men seek divorce

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33772137

So why should I have faith in romance and marriages?

While I applaud the idea that the photography festival tried to make people realize that they may treat other human beings like trash, I do not like the method which is another internet hoax.

Do you really need to lie to someone to make them understand that treating someone like crap is bad? Did those people happen to miss the first year of kindergarten or first grade? If you want to claim that they were raised poorly, then maybe but for the most part the site garnered many followers, press, and did not really accomplish much.

Unless a majority of those 8000 followers turn up at the photography festival or somehow contribute to the migrant movement, the project turns into a total fail…

Certainly the following quote on the instagram account associated with this hoax instgram account missed its mark, “”FED UP WITH ALL YOU MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TRYING TO GET HERE, THERE IS NO PLACE FOR YOU HERE AND NO WORK, NO DREAM.”

Another comment on the instagram account while not as negative also missed its mark if nothing is done to improve the migrant situation – “Good luck bro, I wish u the best” and “may God make it easy for you.”

Seriously? The whole point is that the migrants are leaving because their quality of life and economic situation is so terrible that they are willing to run away from everything they know for a better life.  People are so miserable they are willing to die a horrible death of suffocation, while stuffed in a suitcase like a pack of sardines, and the sweltering heat at border checkpoints…  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33760967

Your comment of well wishes does not help them or you for that matter as your taxes go to social services for everyone – including migrants who are caught and detained or hurt and need to visit an emergency room…  http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33764636

So a friend of mine a long time ago was making fun of me for liking Dance Moms, So You Think You Can Dance, and the MTV Dance Crew shows.  Basically he told me that I might as well have watched The Next Step which I had no idea what he was talking about.  Lo and behold on hulu one random night, I found the show he was talking about.

So you might think that the show would have been a reality tv fail as the dancers do not seem real.  If you have ever seen a dance competition or a dance production of any sort, you would realize that some of the people on the show may dance for the episodes but they are not really trained dancers – no muscles and tone.

Now I get to tell him, “I told you so,” the next time I see him because I was right.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2374744/  My favorite part of the description of the show is that it was produced in a “reality tv style.”

Law school taught me lots of things unrelated to the law, but one of the best lessons was that just because you are educated does not mean you actually know what you are doing.

I always knew in the back of my mind this was true but as I am not a psychologist nor am I involved in the social sciences, I had no idea how to prove this other than through my anecdotal experiences, but apparently, these people were smart enough to figure out some method and publish in the Journal of Experimental Psychology – “Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates of Internal Knowledge,” Matthew Fisher, Mariel K. Goddu, and Frank C. Keil from Yale University.  http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000070.pdf

Now for those of you who prefer the layman’s version of the article I submit the following for your consideration…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/01/how-the-internet-makes-you-think-youre-smarter-than-you-really-are/

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/04/02/396810355/searching-online-may-make-you-think-youre-smarter-than-you-are

I know that you are all tired of hearing from me that the internet is full of lots of ideas and crap because people often do not have the capacity to figure out fact from fiction.  Most people think because they can google things that they are smart believe all social media is real – which includes the videos, recordings, and pictures.  The problem with the assumption that social media is real relatively stupid as interviews of politicians are generally 45 minutes long but only 3 minutes makes the news and thanks to the applications available today, everyone is now a mix master, editor of the truth, etc.

I think that most people do not comprehend what they are reading or looking at because the internet has made things too easy for people to turn into the girl in the State Farm Commercial 😀 https://youtu.be/v_CgPsGY5Mw.

The other problem I have with lots of internet articles is that they mix fact with horse manure but people buy the crap because it “seems true” or it “seems reasonable.”  The problem is that the truth and facts do not have to be reasonable or seem like anything – sometimes the most screwed up and convoluted scenarios are the facts.  Unfortunately, for me and some of my friends – the legal standard is based on the ordinary or reasonable person.  Seriously, sometimes I do better polling random people on the streets about how I should resolve the situation because most people are impractical, illogical, and/or don’t know what the hell they are doing but because the average person thinks and behaves that way, I am screwed 🙁

What I do know is that educated people do not always equal the most rational or most intelligent or practical as depicted by the administrators from the University of South Wales who decided to build a campus in London to the tune of £319,000 and then have no students on campus to support it.  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-33680352

So the water mafia in India is actually an old story but the interesting idea is if we charged as much as the water mafia in India does per household income then maybe people would conserve.  According to the BBC News Article, “Water Mafia: Why Delhi is buying water on the black market,” a family making $80 a month pays $10 for water from the black market.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33671836.  Imagine if we did that in the US, gone would be the manicured lawns in California but maybe there would be more money for crops and people to drink – what a concept…

While I approve of switching to crops which rely on less water, I am sure going to start missing the almonds and citrus because the price point will continue to rise and I am not going to be willing to pay for them after awhile… But I do hope that the weather improves and the aquifers replenish soon so people can have plenty to drink and lots to eat.  http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/28/426886645/squeezed-by-drought-california-farmers-switch-to-less-thirsty-crops.  Seriously, do you really want to see the water mafia out in San Diego County?  I imagine them to be more vicious out there with the free flowing availability of guns in the US versus the kicking and scrambling in Delhi…

Despite the residential 35% cut backs in water usage and the 25% cut backs which the farmers agreed to earlier in the summer, we might have to all start investing in water resources elsewhere, and truck them into CA.  Having one of the wettest July’s on record does not help alleviate 4 years of drought…  Love the ReLEAF program name 😀

http://ca.gov/drought/

http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/californias-drought/

http://www.latimes.com/local/drought/

So a friend and I were catching up and sharing many incidents of people being idiots – basically anyone in the assumption, judgmental, or racist categories needs to have their human cards revoked from the lack of using their noggin.  Seriously, we share 97% of our DNA with Chimps and I am convinced that the 3% which makes us different is the way we use our brains to think things logically through.  It is unfortunate that most people do not bother to use the 3%.  Frankly, those who do not use the remaining 3% are no better than those Chimps we visit at the zoos and maybe they belong in an exhibit right next to those Chimps.

Most of you know how I feel about the racists, judgmental, and asses who assume.  Most of you also realize that these days, I have joined the bandwagon of fining or penalizing in some way those who exhibit horrible behaviors as a result of law school.  While I was already a fully thinking and analyzing being before law school, the legal education system did teach me that my beliefs that people are inherently good, empathetic, and well-meaning were false.

My brother and dad experienced racism at Denny’s as well but of course they never did anything about it because they don’t believe that expressing their complaints to the people who are actually irritating them matter.  They would rather come home and tell all their family and friends about the racist incident at Denny’s.  Logically this makes no sense and frustrates me as why should my ears bleed because of someone else’s bad behavior?

Frankly, they should have complained to someone as their incident in Baltimore happened after the initial slew of law suits against Denny’s in the mid-90s through early 2000s.  Sorry no access to Westlaw or Lexis Nexis right now but I can find and upload the actual complaints and cases later…

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/25/us/denny-s-restaurants-to-pay-54-million-in-race-bias-suits.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dennys-hit-with-new-lawsuit/

http://lubbockonline.com/stories/040602/nat_0406020065.shtml

Many of you also know that I am a Macy’s shopaholic.  Thankfully, I have never experienced any of these horrible incidents at Macy’s.  However, my friend was telling me about his friend’s detention, false accusation, consequential arrest, and pleading of guilt to the false accusation to be finished with this situation.  The problem with not fighting for your rights is that you lose them and are saddled with the consequences of other people’s idiocy.  Why should I accept someone else’s screw up and the resulting consequences while they walk away scott free and without a care in the world?  In the old days, I would not fight for something unless it was more than $1 because the lost change is not worth the time and effort.  Thanks to law school, I now fight over a penny and would be willing to go broke to prove a point.

So next time, if someone falsely accuses you, turn around and fight.  You might be in good company…

http://www.ibtimes.com/macys-agrees-pay-650000-settle-cases-racial-discrimination-against-it-1663640

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/black-shopper-files-lawsuit-macy-article-1.1554702

http://nypost.com/2013/11/19/cop-sues-macys-claiming-bogus-racist-theft-charge-got-her-fired/

http://www.wlwt.com/news/macys-pays-650k-to-settle-racial-discrimination-probe/27637928

I think it is wonderful and ironic that my Chinese relatives know more about actual American news than some of my American counterparts. I also think it is stupid that many of us Americans know nothing about China since they only own most of our debts, produce most of the products that we use on a daily basis, and are a significant chunk of many people’s retirement funds.

So decided to just highlight the amount of times China was in the news on a single day. So here is my NYTimes subscription going to work for you all from July 12, 2015.

On the negative end of the spectrum which many of my Chinese friends see as China bashing from western news media. Seriously the title does have significant negative connotations, “China Fences in Its Nomads, and Ancient Life Withers,” I wonder why some people think that way… Essentially the Three Gorges resettlement plan revisited.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/world/asia/china-fences-in-its-nomads-and-an-ancient-life-withers.html?_r=0

If you are blase about international news, at least care about the Chinese stock market because your mutual funds, retirement plans, and/or the companies you work for are invested in the Chinese market.  Really scary these days that the Shanghai Composite has lost 1/3 of its value in the last few months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/business/international/cooling-of-chinas-stock-market-dents-major-driver-of-economic-growth.html

The one thing that Americans “generally know” is that China has human rights violations.  Normally, American news articles are filled with human rights violations.  While I do not agree with the arrest of public interest lawyers in China, I hope people realize that not everyone has the same definition of human rights.   Even all those countries at the UN who have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights periodically violate “human rights” just because they do not agree with the definition.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/world/asia/china-arrests-human-rights-lawyers-zhou-shifeng.html

Human Rights as most of the world knows it is actually an American construction thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt – one of my personal heroes, drafter of the Universal Human Rights Convention, and first American Ambassador to the UN.  History of the document and actual document can be found here – http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/history.shtml. 

If anything, thanks to all the free speech on the internet of late, you should all realize that expressing your opinion may be fine but you also cause incidents like an idiot teenager shooting people in a church because he was too stupid to know right/wrong and fact/fiction from white supremacist websites or the ISIS recruitment videos which are trying to convince women to join their cause as suicide bombers and sex slaves.  Oh, for those of you who think that education matters, it does not – educated people can be brain washed too, if nothing else think WWII or you can just watch real news, not internet commentaries…

ISIS Luring Americans – http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/22/politics/isis-recruits-american-arrests/.

ISIS $2B Budget to Recruit Americans – http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/27/opinions/aamer-isis-recruiting-western-teenagers/

For those of you who think that only British School Girls are the only ones who are susceptible – US boys are especially so… Our Detroit case happened way before those girls in London disappeared and the 3 wives took all their children with them to Syria.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/world/isis-western-draw/