still counting...

The major news outlets were reporting a death toll of 68,000 as of three hours ago.

Honestly, the numbers were counting up so fast they were starting to become meaningless. Then, I got an email this morning from a friend who had flown home to Sri Lanka for the holidays. He was on an east coast beach with some friends, and had to run inland, climb trees to escape the waves, sleep on a "big rock", and get airlifted via helicopter, but he's now safe at home in Colombo. One of his friends is still missing.

It's a bit sad that it takes a personal connection to truly drive home the enormity and horror of such an event, but I guess that's human nature.

Here's a tidbit for the scientifically-minded:

The tremor, the biggest in 40 years, may have caused the Earth to wobble on its axis, permanently accelerating its rotation and shortening days by a fraction of a second, U.S. scientists said.

Really makes you feel small and insignificant and ephemeral, doesn't it?

tsunami animation

Yesterday I was morbidly fascinated with checking the news every hour or so; the experts finally decided the earthquake magnitude was 9.0, and the death toll just kept on growing. I believe it's at at 24,000 now; a not-at-all-subtle reminder that nature is still one of the scariest forces on the planet.

Here's an animated GIF tracing the path of the post-earthquake tsunamis, with an elapsed time counter. It took about 100 minutes for Sri Lanka and India to be hit. I guess early warning systems (like they have in the Pacific) might get more attention after this.

earth shudders

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake centered near Indonesia was reported earlier today. Wow. I didn't know they came that big. It sounds like over 6,000 people have been reported killed so far, either by the earthquake or its resulting tsunamis. Most of the casualties were in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India.

Thoughts:
- The largest earthquake I remember hearing about (ever) was the 8.3 magnitude event centered in Hokkaido last year. Then again, I don't have a great memory for these things; it's not really the kind of event you like to remember.
- The last earthquake of personal significance to me was the "9-21" Taiwan quake; magnitude 7.6. I remember cursing the jammed phone lines.
- The largest earthquake I personally experienced was the 7.0 Loma Prieta quake. I was 80 miles away from the epicenter, and it was quite enough excitement already.
- I was curious, so I looked up the devastating 1906 San Francisco quake. Its magnitude was estimated at 7.8. However, much of the damage was caused by fire.

A couple of months ago we had a 5.0 (or so) tremor in the Bay Area. I made fun of a friend who was excited about his "first earthquake", and told him that if he had to ask other people if they felt it, it wasn't a real earthquake. In retrospect, given my affinity for earthquake-prone regions, I should shut my mouth, not to mention knocking on wood, throwing some salt over my left shoulder, and crossing all my fingers and toes...

small island

There are about 22 million people in Taiwan, which is about two-thirds as many people as there are in California.

Why, then, is it that every person that I meet that is from Taiwan (or whose parents are from Taiwan) is somehow related to me, or knows someone who is related to me? And, everywhere I go, I run into Taiwanese people that are somehow connected to me. I'm tempted to blame my grandmother and her nine brothers and sisters, but that doesn't always work either.

I met a friend in summer school at Berkeley, in a Latin class. It turned out that she was the second cousin of a guy whose father plays golf with my dad. That same guy later went to MIT and lived in a frat next to my dorm.

My second cousin is now the president of the Association of Taiwanese Students at MIT. Her brother goes to Columbia with my sister, where he hangs out with a guy who I first met over ten years ago, at a dinner party with our parents. My sister also became good friends with another girl at Columbia, who we later discovered was a third or fourth cousin a couple of times removed.

My sister now has a new FFXI buddy whose family runs a pharmaceutical company in Taichung. Based on that information and their last name, my mother was able to figure out exactly who this friend was, and how we knew him (and his family).

And on it goes...every classmate or colleague who I meet, who is from Taiwan, is somehow traceable to a distant (or sometimes not-so-distant) relative or family friend. I thought about it for awhile, and decided the community of Taiwanese-Americans is much smaller and is likely to be more closely networked, and that's why everyone knows everyone.

But, that doesn't explain this: Yesterday, for my birthday dinner, we went to Alice's, which is one of my favorite Taipei restaurants; a steakhouse with super-yummy black pepper steak sauce. We ran into a guy who turned out to be my uncle's wife's cousin on my dad's side, and my great-uncle's wife's nephew on my mom's side. Scary.

GQ Taiwan

My sister, my brother, my cousin and I stopped by the new Mitsukoshi department store in Tien Mu today, and my sister bought a copy of GQ Taiwan.



Our aunt (more specifically, our uncle's wife) has a friend named Lin Chi-ling, who is a model here in Taiwan. Apparently, her career has really taken off recently, and my sister spotted her on the GQ cover in a really nice dress.

the big three, dismantled

Wow. Billy Beane better know what he's doing.

Three days ago, he traded Tim Hudson to the Braves. Just today, he traded Mark Mulder to the Cardinals. That leaves the A's with Zito, Harden, and...umm...Redman? Is he still around?

If this works out, I'll gladly admit that Beane's a genius, but I can't stop thinking about three other guys from Oakland...Mullin, Hardaway, and Richmond. Let's think for a second; how've the Warriors done in the 15+ years since Run TMC?

commercials as cultural barometers?

I arrived in Taipei yesterday, only to discover that it's over 20 degrees Celsius here, and humid. At least I was somewhat intelligent and brought layers, so only half of my clothes are useless.

Anyway, I was watching TV this afternoon and made a couple of observations about the commercials. First, more than half of them are in Taiwanese (as opposed to Mandarin Chinese). I don't remember exactly, but I'm fairly certain that this was not the case, five or ten years ago.

Also, the commercials here seem to rely a lot less on putting young, good-looking people on the air. For example, I saw several ads for cold medicines, featuring very average-looking, middle-aged women, telling some (only moderately attractive) young adults that a particular product would cure their colds. To me, it was quite a contrast, compared with American cold commercials, which typically feature impossibly young and attractive mothers ministering to their cute-as-a-button kids.

choices, choices

A tidbit I found on an internal Sales blog:

In 2003, there were more households with internet access than households with children. By the end of 2004, there will be almost as many households with broadband access as with children under 18.

Statistics courtesy of eMarketer and the US Census Bureau.

United Premier

I'm flying to Taipei on Friday, via Tokyo.

When I was buying my airlines tickets, I had the option of flying direct, for about $200 less, on a different airline (EVA). Unfortunately, EVA is not a United partner, so I wouldn't have received United miles.

I really enjoy my Premier benefits, especially the Economy Plus seats and early boarding, since I hate checking in baggage. The priority standby list also came in handy a couple of times this year, and there's the Premier reservations line, if I want to get a real person on the phone ASAP.

Anyway, I calculated and figured out that this trip would put me over and give me Premier for next year, so I caved and bought the more expensive, one-stop tickets. Yes, United, you win.

prenuptial agreements

At lunch today, we got onto the subject of prenuptial agreements. The group consensus seemed to be that they were strongly recommended, almost a necessity.

For me, the best argument is that a prenuptial agreement dictates what happens in case one party dies. While wills and trusts can be modified, prenups are binding agreements. Existing assets can be allocated to children from a previous marriage, aging parents, siblings, and/or other relatives. Besides, if a couple can't get through negotiating a prenuptial agreement, what does that say about their relationship?

But I digress. The whole discussion made me wonder about the current percentages (the number of couples who sign prenups, out of the number of total marriages), so I went back to my desk and tried to find out.

According to several sites, it is very difficult to track numbers on prenups, because they can be written at home and do not need to be filed until they are about to be enforced. However, according to anecdotal and indirect evidence (lawyers drawing up prenups, number of divorces which are settled using prenups, etc.) the numbers have been on the rise since the 1970s, and prenups are widely used in the United States.

There is more resistance abroad; for example, the Chinese are about evenly divided on whether prenups are a good thing. One reason is that according to Chinese superstition, it's unlucky to mention divorce, when a couple is about to be married. Honestly, I think it would be more unlucky not to mention it.

Tora!

I just realized it's Pearl Harbor day.

I'll have to see if I can Tivo a showing of Tora! Tora! Tora!; it's a very good Pearl Harbor movie told from both the American and Japanese viewpoints, and I haven't watched it since I was about ten.

rose bowl blues

Even more perplexing than the NFL's quarterback rating formula (max 158.3) is the BCS college football ranking system: Cal has been denied a Rose Bowl berth.

I'm not a big college football fan, but even I can see how frustrating it must be to have rules like this:

The champions of the six major conferences automatically receive six of the eight berths in the four big-money BCS games, and Cal was hoping to land one of the two BCS at-large berths, which would have put the Bears into the Rose Bowl.

Utah took one of those at-large spots because of a BCS rule instituted in 2001 that guaranteed a team -- such as Utah -- from a non-BCS conference an at-large BCS berth if it finishes in the top six of the final BCS standings. Utah (11-0) finished No. 6 and will become the first team from a non-BCS conference to play in a BCS game when it plays in the Fiesta Bowl against Big East champion Pittsburgh, which is 8-3 and ranked No. 19 in the AP poll.

Another rule added in 2001 provides that a team from one of the major conferences, such as the Big 12 or Pac-10, is guaranteed an at-large BCS berth if it finishes in the top four of the BCS standings. If either of those two selection rules had not been added, the Rose Bowl would have been free to take Cal, and Rose Bowl officials made no secret of the fact that they preferred the Bears.

So, the 10-1 Bears, whose only loss was to #1 USC on the road, by six points, will play #23 Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl.

UTC

From the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

Why is UTC used as the acronym for Coordinated Universal Time instead of CUT?

In 1970 the Coordinated Universal Time system was devised by an international advisory group of technical experts within the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU felt it was best to designate a single abbreviation for use in all languages in order to minimize confusion. Since unanimous agreement could not be achieved on using either the English word order, CUT, or the French word order, TUC, the acronym UTC was chosen as a compromise.

where is Macedonia?

I found this tidbit in an article about Oliver Stone's new Alexander:

With the world waiting and wondering where the president will start the next war, Bush chose as his first major foreign-policy decision of his second term to recognise Fyrom by its "proper" name as the Republic of Macedonia, prompting paroxysms of Greeks anger across the globe and Athens to vow to block Macedonia's entry into the EU and Nato.

In other quasi-political news, last night's West Wing focused on Taiwanese independence, and did a not-awful job of addressing the current tensions, if not the historical motivations. I'm still trying to figure out what it meant when Josh got overruled by CJ, after he was convinced by the older Congressman (Hurtt?) to give the Taiwanese some leeway.

free credit reports

How did I not hear about this earlier?

Starting today, residents of California (and 12 other states) can get a free copy of their credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus, once a year. Better yet, there's a centralized website for requests: www.annualcreditreport.com (for some reason the site requires that the URL be pasted into the browser).

I'm thinking I'll request one now, and save the other two for later.