Future as it's unfolding

It's the end of the year so I could dare myself to do a little prediction for the next year.
As Charles Dickens used to say about London at the dusk of the Industrial Revolution, "it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us ...". Even the most epic economists don't know where things are going to be between Jan 2009 and Dec 2009.

That being said, I am actually more optimistic now than 6 month ago (before Dow lost 40% of its value). Why? because people in US are waking up and started reflecting on what damage consumerism has done to the nation. This leads to my 1st prediction:

Consumer index will drop while personal savings rate will go above 5% for the first time since 1995. This is considered disaster for the companies, because they can no longer generate revenue by selling things people don't really need. Advertisers would have a hard time persuading people that their life quality is measured by how much they spend and how many material goods they own. This leads to my 2nd prediction:
 
As the people depends less on large corporations and more on their own community, two-party politics will evolve into a balance of multiple forces (liberal, green parties taking more food hold) Republicans moving towards more progressive side and their right-wing conservative force becomes marginalized. This leads to my 3rd prediction:

US troops will withdraw from Iraq. No sensible government will put military adventures ahead of its own solvency. US will instead strengthen its bases in South Korean and Japan to fend off threats from North Korean and China. This leads to my 4th prediction:
 
China will use its economic muscle to form geo-political allies with Russia and South-east Asian countries and Pakistan. It will advance its nature resource claim in the South China sea, which might result in direct conflict with Japan. This leads to my 5th prediction:

China will have a direct trade war with US. EU will benefit by grabbing more market share in China. This will result in re-structuring of the WTO terms. This will turn the tide of globalization backwards. USD will lose its dominating power in world trade. This leads to my 6th prediction:

Major US companies will pull out its China operation due to government regulations and expiration of federal tax credits. This will boost employment in US and hurt profits of the big US corporations. The lower unemployment, shrinking demand for USD overseas and tightened supply from China will compound each other into a storm of inflation in the US. It will further surpress the real consumption in US. That is when I dump my shares of DBA.

So you might wonder what does technology plays there? Shouldn't the great innovation engine create more high margin "service" jobs and "green" jobs?
I don't know. It's really a wild card. I agree US has been the most efficient country when it comes to implementing and capitalizing innovations. But its creative sectors has long been dominated by people specialized in creating "financial product" (like CDO and CDS backed by subprime morgage ) rather than real product. Major pharmaceutical companies haven't deliver any successful new drugs for the last decade. Major IT companies haven't find any new killer applications that create real values for the last decade. With its economic strength weaks, the immigrates that helped them finding the "next big thing" will leave for their own home countries. 

over-dramatization

In general, I agree with many of the premises (like materialism, phony Corporations, brainwashing success coaching, homosexual rights, gun control, real estate bubble) that the movie American Beauty is projecting. However, I have two complaints.
1) The movie touches so many issues without really explore the real reason behind any one of the them.
At the end of the movie, everything falls back to this zen like phony happiness state. So we should just all quit our job and trade weed? A 40 min NHK documentary would have been more informative.
2) The movie betrayed itself (or sold itself for box office success) by adding to much coincidences and dramatization. Maybe that's the only way it could survive Hollywood. Just like Revolutionary Road has to feature two stars from Titanic to draw enough attention.
 

Revolutionary Road

It's a new movie adapted from Ricard Yates 1950's novel.

Here is a wonderful review of the original novel. I am most touched by it because I share the same feeling watching the movie, finding myself mediocre and lacking: no better than anyone I used to look down at.

"

But Revolutionary Road was not what I expected from the reviews.
Yates knows all of the pitfalls of the standard send-up of the middle
class: the main characters in his story are not the usual suburban
types, but people who consider themselves better than the dull people
in their neighborhood; they mock the people that we, as readers, are so
used to mocking, and become our surrogates.

The real theme of
this book is much deeper, and it transcends the era and even the plot
of the book: what do people do when they are intelligent and spirited
enough not to be satisfied with the conformity and blandness of their
surroundings, but lack the drive to ever escape mediocrity, because
they are, fundamentally, much more a part of their environment than
they imagine?

The tragedy of this book is the discovery that you
are, after all, perhaps not as extraordinary as you thought - and that
has sting, because all of us, at some time, have thought that we were a
bit better than the people around us, and most of us have realized with
horror (although the realization doesn't always stick around) that we
aren't as different, as far above them, as we thought. Many of the
moments in this book stick with you because they remind you of those
moments when you came face to face with your own mediocrity, and
challenges you to either be honest with yourself about what you are, or
try sincerely to fulfill the ambitions that you have pursued so
halfheartedly until now.

It's a hard lesson to deal with: I can
tell why this book didn't sell. The writing, by the way, is beautiful;
scene after scene springs effortlessly to life, and you can't tell how
much skill is involved until you go back and read it again.

I
remember reading once that Yates - against the advice of his publishers
- called this book Revolutionary Road because it seemed to him that the
promise of the nation was petering out in the 50s, that the ambition
and hope that had marked its founding had slowly led to a dead-end of
uninspired and uninspiring prosperity (for some people, at least) -
that the end of the revolutionary road had been reached.

This is
overstated, and Yates's vision often seems to me unaccountably dark, as
if he was blind to everything but his thesis. Something about his
outlook is right, though; the problem with the society isn't
necessarily that it's hypocritical or conformist or mediocre, but that
it produces people with such a horrible gap between aspiration and
capacity - it gives them the leisure and intelligence to want a fuller
life while robbing them of the backbone to get it.
 "

The American Dream, May 24, 2000

By	Robert Derenthal "bucherwurm" (California United States) - See all my reviews

A good job, a pretty wife, nice kids, and a home in the suburbs. This
novel, written in 1961, is about a couple that lives this American
Dream. But this pre-yuppie pair leads a life of exquisite monotony. He
hates his white-collar job; she stays home with the kids. One of their
most frequent recreational activities is to visit with another similar
couple, and spend a few hours shaking their heads and complaining about
how unevolved everyone else is. We smile ruefully as we read about
them, thinking how common these folks are. Or have we fallen into a
trap by putting ourselves in the same place by looking down on Frank
and April as they look down on others.

Frank
and April Wheeler look forward to things: a part in a little theater
play, a move to Paris, an affair, a promotion. It would seem, though,
that for them happiness is only in the anticipation of events. The
story's participants also are deeply into playing roles with their
spouses, their co-workers, their friends, and above all with
themselves. There is no one in this book that you want to identify
with. Why? Is it because they are poor, hopelessly lost dullards, or is
it because they represent us in too many unpleasant ways? It's a sad
story, but one that makes you think about your own life, and the
ultimate value of what you have accomplished. While some of our culture
has changed since this book was written (we no longer sit in hospital
waiting rooms smoking cigarettes), its theme is as modern as can be.

art history of photography

This youtube playlist is BBC's 6 episode series "The Genius of Photography"
It rekindled my passion to imagery. The vast possibility of creating images that has a direct impact on the viewer.
I think Photosynth would someday be marked as an art form in the evolution of photography.

photosynth: Seattle spring, summer and autumn

Please follow this link to view it.

MSN space can't embed the iframe link generated by photosynth (kind of an irony).

关于习惯

以前一直骑车上班，经过无数次轻重跌打损伤之后，我一个月没骑车了．这时候，我发现自己已经不是害怕跌倒，而是害怕骑车本身了．
今天给别人做code review, 我开始怀疑自己能否写出满足我所说的要求的code。我可以列一张长长的单子，写满我曾经视为习惯，但现在已经生疏的事（写blog就是其中之一）。
在过去的六个月中，我到底学会了哪些？放弃了哪些？荒废了哪些？
什么是我最需要坚持的习惯？