Jason is not always right

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

-Dale Carnegie

Last night America witnessed a truly great moment as we watched the men’s 400-meter relay team fight against all of the odds and mount one of the greatest comebacks in Olympic history. After screaming at the TV and calming down after the emotional rush of watching my fellow countrymen beat the French, who had already proclaimed sure victory, I had a chance to reflect on what I had just seen.

It would have been so easy for Jason Lezak, the last U.S. swimmer in the relay, to give up when he realized that he was half a body length behind the leader with only 50 meters left in the race. It would have been so easy for him to ride the wave of the leader and concede to the silver medal. No one would have been surprised; no one would have blamed him for coming in second. Yet with the seemingly insurmountable distance between his last 50 meters and the Gold medal Jason Lezak reached into the depths of his strength and will power to surge past the opposition and claim his place in Olympic history.

This remarkable display of human will power and determination is an excellent example for all of us. How many times have you given up or been ok with coming in second place? How many times have you thought that your goal was too far out of reach? How many times has a situation seemed hopeless? Never give up. Never stop trying. The odds are never too great, there is always hope, there is always a way.

I am really, really excited about the Olympics right now.  And I am always really, really excited about basketball, and quoting Chris Sheridan in the article linked to below, “it’ll be the best Olympic basketball competition ever.” I totally agree.

Read the article linked to here at espn.com to hear the reasoning behind the above statement from someone who knows what they are talking about, but I will tell you why Sheridan is right.

Part of me (the ethnocentric American part) wants to see team USA win every game by 30.  No, most games by 30, some by 40 and I would love to see one 60+ point win.  The other part of me (globalist, underdog sympathizer) wants to see some good, close games.  We will see what version of me steps up in the next two weeks.  (I think I already know.)  Go USA:

Three reasons team USA will return with gold:

1) They have to.  They have to.  They have to.  No really, they have to win the gold medal.  Team USA has been nothing short of a national disgrace for the last 4 years.  On top of that, our apparent “problems” have been diagnosed and treated.  If we don’t win now there is no room for excuses like, “NBA ball is different than FIBA,” or “USA players don’t have the opportunity to play together as often as other national teams.  These problems have supposedly been remedied.  So if USA does not achieve gold, they achieve shame.  (At least from me.)

2)  This time around team USA is one thing that it was not last time around; Prepared.  Team USA is also cocky, brash and confident, (all-three perfected and proudly made in the USA,) but those are not new.  Preparation is a new.  This years team USA has been in it for three years.  Not as long as some other national teams, but 2 years and 9 months longer than previous teams.

3)  Uber embarrassment.  Team USA has been mired in embarrassment for the past four years, but this year it feels even heavier.  No excuses.  The best America has.  But no matter what anyone says, and no matter how cocky team USA is, they are reigning losers.  No one can argue that, because it is a fact.  That is embarrassing.  The entire world expects team USA to win, because they should, but that was the case four years ago, and we all know how that turned out.  Embarrassing.  Like I heard Kobe jokingly say, “if we don’t bring home the gold, I will have to become an Italian citizen and all the other guys will have to pick another country.”

GO USA!!! (Please, please, please don’t bring home bronze!)

Source: ESPN.com, Chris Sheridan

I have been told that a few of my recent posts have been more on the negative side of life, so here is a more light-hearted one.  Today’s post is about dreams…

A few years back, I was sitting with some of my roommates talking about the future and we starting talking about money.  I made the comment that I wanted to be so rich that I could eat beef jerky everyday.  What does this tell you about me?  1) I have simple dreams 2)  I love beef jerky and 3)  I don’t ever need to make THAT much money.

Sometimes when I am buying a high-priced item like a $1100 airline ticket to Taiwan, a new laptop computer, or even something smaller like new brakes for my motorcycle I think about the cost in terms of beef jerky.  A plane ticket, or 523 2oz individually packed Jack Links beef steak jerky, or 137 packages of Tillamook beef steak nuggets, teriyaki or original.  Mmmmm…  I wish I had some right now.

I figure I need about $1000 dollars a year for my jerky budget, to be content.  (Although I think I may die from heart failure first.)  That would make me happy.  (Jerky, not heart failure.)

Now you know what I want for my birthday

Two things will drive me crazy watching the Olympics this year:

1) The worldwide Media is going to paint a picture of an ugly China.  Every injustice and social issue that china has will be spotlighted one by one as if each one was the beginning of the end of the world.  (I am not saying that the problems are real.)  Sensationalistic news reporting will be at it’s best.  I am going to kick the next person I hear call China, “Red” China in the shins, hard.

2) Domestic media will paint a picture of China that is perfect.  Every single injustice and social issue that does exist and plague the Chinese people will be swept under a humongous Olympic-sized rug.  Thousands of Chinese with smiling faces and full stomachs will sing a thousand praises to communism, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and the great Motherland.

I don’t blame China for their biased media and I don’t blame the national media (NBC) for wanting to give their audience a good show.  I just know I am going to wrythe and squirm every time I see a blatently exaggerated or half-truth reported to the world as reality.  The world is ignorant and will eat it up.

So I have no problem with being green.  Okay, that is a lie.  I have a lot of problems with how people “attempt” to be green, but overall I think I side with Captain Planet.  But there is a huge lingering problem with the whole thing, and it all boils down to this question:  What does green mean?

I am in the office chair manufacturing and design business, and in our industry “green” is in.  But it is new.  No one really knows what they are talking about when they say they attain this mystic goal.  If they do know what they are talking about, you can assume the person or people they are talking to really don’t know what they are talking about, or the definition of “green” is different for the both of them.  In our industry you are green if you are certified green.  But which certification?  There are a half dozen already floating around out there.  They all show that you are trying to be green, but do they really prove that you are green?  And what does that even mean?

To illustrate the point, I introduce the following excerpt from an article in the Taiwan Review on solar energy:

In February this year, Taiwanese company E-TON Solar completed installation of solar panels that provide power for London’s City Hall. The total installed capacity of E-TON’s panels now equals some 50,000 kilowatt hours each year–or 1.5 percent–of the building’s electrical needs. That may not sound like much, but it will prevent more than 28,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants from entering the atmosphere each year. Moreover, the project demonstrated the feasibility of retrofitting uniquely designed buildings with solar cells, a task that was not easy given the structure’s domed roof and “eyelash” shading system.

50,000 kilowatt hours each year equals 1.5% of the building out-put, correct?  So that means that 3,333,333 kilowatt hours of energy are consumed by that building every year.  And using solar panels is saving 50,000.  Great, I think…  Who in the world even knows what that means!  I am not stupid, but I guarantee the average American (British, Taiwanese etc…) does not have a clear grasp on what that number means.  Now to my favorite example.  The article goes on to explain that by saving 50,000 kilowatts of energy every year, although a mere 1.5% of the buildings consumption, 28,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are spared from being spewed out into the atmosphere.  Now who, without lying can really say they have any idea what that means?!  28,000 kilograms eh?  I think I ate that much gummy candy back in high school, but I can’t remember.  I don’t think the labels were in kilograms back then.

My point (if there is one mixed in all the sarcasm of the above paragraph) is that if we are really going to make a difference (regular people that is) we need to be a) speaking the same language, and b) using metrics that make sense to the lay-person.

BEIJING (AP) - In a matter of days, hundreds of thousands of visitors from more than 100 countries will flood into China’s capital, where non-Chinese faces are still a rarity in some neighborhoods.

The Beijing Olympics will be the largest gathering of foreigners in China in recent history - the biggest foreign influx since the Mongol invasion - and a social experiment of sorts for a country that is overwhelmingly monochromatic.

Having been to China a few times and living in Taiwan for a couple years, I can relate to the “white foreigner in China” reaction from many Chinese who have not had the opportunity to get up close-and-personal with foreigners.  Although in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai where there are literally millions of foreigners, there will not be much “surprise” for most Chinese.  Plus, most tourists, even the most daring don’t linger far from the “tourist friendly” areas of any part of China.

This will however be a very interesting social experiment, as the AP aticle linked to below states.  Foreigners, especially Europeans and Americans are used to being able to do whatever they want when they want, and you can’t so that in China.  Traffic is a good example.  In the U.S., when an idiot, or an airhead wanders into the street into oncoming traffic, cars stop.  Red lights, stop signs, these things are followed for the most part.  They hardly mean anything in China.  Stepping out into traffic in China WILL get you to a hospital quickly.  Traffic is only a part of it, an example of the differences between East and West.  There are much more important and serious things that can get an ignorant Westerner in trouble.

Not to be a downer, most of the interaction should be nothing more than a lot of fun.  I wish I could be there to take it all in.

Source: Beijing Readies for Influx of Foreign Visitors, AP

Please give me one good reason why Utah and many other states do not have mandatory motorcycle helmet laws!  I have heard all of stupid reasons.  They usually have something to do with “freedom” and “individual rights.”  But those reasons are only introduced by idiots, friends of idiots and hippies.

It makes me so angry to hear about people wrecking their bikes and not wearing helmets.  If one person dies a summer, that should be enough to jump to action and do something to rectify the situation.  But it happens every single day, and that is just in Utah!  Riding a motorcycle is dangerous enough, please wear a helmet.

People will always seek after their own best interest.  I love to see developing countries succeed and grow.  As I see China grow economically at a frenetic pace, I cheer them on from the side-lines.  In my own experiences, the act of being a cheerleader sometimes blurs my vision.  I am usually quick to jump to the defense of the Chinese government and their un-American way of doing some things.  I usually prescribe to the two steps forward, one step back philosophy of progress.  When people ask me what I think about all of the injustices of China’s social restrictions and lack of personal freedom, I sometimes turn a blind-eye to individual rights and focus only on the good of the country as a whole.  I believe in a balance between the two.  (With a little more weight leaning towards individual freedoms.)  This brings-up the main question from the article I found in the Jakarta Post today.

“Independence is a psychological issue. Liberty is a spiritual issue. It is the freedom to evolve without any intervention from anybody.”

“The urban Chinese in the mainland of China today are more prosperous than ever before. But are they free to evolve psychologically and spiritually? They are confronted with the state ideology of communism as the sole yardstick.”

Yes, the people of China are far better-off than they were 20 years ago.  However, I would also say the people of China could be much better-off if their government worried about them, and not JUST their GDP.

How free does wearing Nike, driving Mercedes and playing golf make you if you have to trade religion, freedom of expression and a say in governement to get it?  Governement wants you to think that psychological independance can be had without “actual” independance, but I am not so sure.  I know a lot of educated people in China that, at least on the outside, seem to be okay with giving-up certain freedoms for economic growth and prosperity.  But the more we talk about the loss of those freedoms, the more they seem to talk themselves out of the propaganda ingrained responses and share their real feelings.  I can only imagine what the Chinese people who are currently along for the ride (as long as the economy is scorching, you can have our freedoms!) will say and do when China runs into it’s next inevitable mini-slump or mini recession.

Indonesia’s independence: An unfinished business

I just saw a commercial on the Discovery Channel sponsored by Saturn and planetgreen.com that was kind of cool, but more weird than anything.  The commercial basically was trying to convince commercial viewing men to shave less often because 1) shaving less saves water (enough to make a commercial about it?) and 2) Guys look “cooler” when they go a few days without shaving.  The commercial also tried to convince commercial viewing women to wash their hair less often and wear a “cute hat” or something to cover-up their greasy disgustingness.  I am all for conservation (kinda) but this was a strange attempt.  I am pretty sure me leaving the front yard sprinkler on a couple hours too long by accident one time wipes-out my entire neighborhoods good intentioned, shaving-less, scraggy water saving beards.

Once, back in 2001, at the peak of my golfing ability I quit the game of golf. Today I am ashamed to say that I was reminded as to why. I was playing 18 at Cedar Hills Golf Course with Derek and Ted Ashton.  I think I was even after the front 9 and even through 14. 14 is a hole I will not soon remember. I hit a great drive (distance,) but not quite in the right direction. My second shot was from 85 yds (center pin left of the fairway on a side hill.) I hit a perfect shot, well almost, only to see it drop 20 yard short of the green into the hillside underbrush. Drop, chip on two-put double bogey. The problem was that I was NOT 85 yds from the pin. I glanced at a yardage marker and saw 67, counted 20 additional and hit an 85 yd shot. After coming up a confusing 20+ short, I walked past the 100 yd marker on the way to the green. Ahha. I saw 67, but what I really saw was 97. One of the biggest mental mistakes I have made in a round in a long time. What made it even worse was an eagle on 18 that would have had me finish -1. I finished +1. So why would this make me want to quit you may ask? +1 is the best round I have had in years. I shot one over par and was stil literally overcome with anger (fury Derek would have said) over the double. I let one bad hole not just ruin a hole, but ruin an entire round, and most of the day. Back when I quit in highschool it was for the same reason. How could a game I loved so much make me so angry? And even more important, how could a round of +1, +2, +3 make me misserable? I was playing for the wrong reasons. My round today should have been all about enjoyng a few hours with two good friends.  Embarrassing, and sad. Something I need to work on becase I am not quitting golf again!