Trick or Treat? Deluge!

Today is Halloween. I came home from class tonight to find neither a trick nor a treat. I found water pouring out of the ceiling in the hallway.



That's not good, because I live in the basement! Fortunately, my apartment was not that wet -- only the first foot inside the apartment by the door and the kitchen area. My napkins, paper plates, oatmeal, and towels were drenched in water. I called the landlord's maintenance guy and he came over right away. After searching for about 15 minutes and making several phone calls, he was able to get the water cut off. We also discovered the problem -- an upstairs toilet inside the Phobia Life Line had a leak:



My apartment does not really have any damage, but it is inconvenient to have the floor wet but no water in the pipes!

Halloween!

This afternoon, Washington Square Park on NYU's campus had games and candy for small children.



There was a big parade tonight on 6th Avenue and so the subway stop where I usually catch a B train home was completely packed with people:



Craziness! As I pushed towards the subway, it got more and more crowded! So frustrating - especially when I found that subway stop was shut down due to Halloween! So I slowly made my way over to Union Square to catch a Q train home.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, my cousins children got all dressed up. Here's Luke (age 2.5) on his horse:



Here's Luke's younger brother John (about 5 months):



Here's Catherine (about 5 months):



Aren't they cute!

Return of the Hillbillies

Well, my grandparents and parents flew back home this afternoon. I took them out to JFK and waved goodbye as they went through security at about 2:30 pm. We've been busy up here! After church on Sunday, we ate lunch at the Peanut Butter Company where we had an Elvis.



Then we saw the campus of my university, New York University, where Will Smith is currently filming the movie "I am Legend."



Following that, we went out to look at Shea Stadium (where the Mets play) and Arthur Ashe Stadium (where the US Open is held). For dinner, we ate at a Pete's Italian restaurant underneath the Brooklyn Bridge with a nice view of the Manhattan skyline. On Monday (yesterday), we saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in the morning.



Then we took a bus from lower Manhattan past the World Trade Center site, Chinatown, Little Italy, Union Square and midtown. Along the way, Grandma made a friend on the bus. After taking lots of photos from the top of the Empire State Building...



...we swung by Macy's and then headed back to Brooklyn. We ate supper at a nice restaurant near my apartment which brought each of us a ton of food - unlimited bread and appetizer, soup, salad, main course (meats and vegetables), and desert.



None of us made it through the main course -- some not even through the salad. This morning we took the Staten Island Ferry from the tip of lower Manhattan past the Statue of Liberty over to St. George on Staten Island. We then took some buses to reach Coney Island,



a beautiful sandy beach in southern Brooklyn which is about 3 miles from my apartment. While there, we stopped by Nathan's, famous for its hot dog eating contest each July 4. We did see a lot in four days! Just hope we didn't tire my grandparents out too much!


It does look like they were enjoying themselves on this subway, but I do realize climbing all those stairs are hard on the old folks! Aren't they cute? OK, now I have to study for my Game Theory midterm....

At the Tabernacle

Yesterday, my grandparents, parents, and I attended church at the Brooklyn Tabernacle.



We were able to worship God with about 2,000 others. The church was a blend of many races -- A black family sat to our right, a Korean family sat in front of us, and an Hispanic man sat behind us. During the service, a missionary from Haiti spoke as well as a group from Western Michigan's Teen Challenge. One of the speakers was from western Kentucky. Here is one of the songs they sang.



Here is the chorus: Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty! Worthy is the Lamb who was slain! Highest praises, honor and glory... be unto your name! Be unto your name!

Democrats love the Lord!

Democrat Congressman & Senate hopeful Harold Ford speaks about religion. Watch the following clip where he implies that Democrats "love the Lord" while Republicans do not...



What role should religion play in politics? What role should politics play in religion? At the end of the clip, Mr. Ford says, "you're supposed to act it out" -- meaning that you should act on your faith and love for God. I think he is referring to the general perception of the public that Democratic leaning charities focus more on helping the homeless and ending poverty, while Republican leaning ones typically focus more on abortion. Republicans and Christian conservatives should, I think, be more observant of the need and compassionate toward the poor, especially those belonging to minority groups. Poverty is an issue, and if we as conservatives really care and love our neighbors, we should be trying to devise solutions to help rather than ignoring the problem. However, Mr. Ford crossed the line with his speech. There are many Republicans who have a genuine love for God, and most evangelical Christians have voted for the Republican candidate in the past few presidential elections. Mr. Ford was wrong to compare -- only God knows what is in our hearts. Despite my disagreement with Ford, I do realize that all of us, including myself, sometimes do stick our feet in our mouths.

To be fair, I should also mention the consistency of Mr. Corker's Iraq policy. Prior to the Republican primary, he said the US should "stay the course" in Iraq. Now in the general election, he is backing off that position -- even claiming he has never used that phrase. In my opinion, Corker did not intend to lie but probably forgot saying the phrase previously. I think his position on Iraq is not one of deep interest to him and he does not have a clear policy in his mind. Thus, I believe, it is easy for him, now that it is October, to forget what he said in July. Regardless, he did use the phrase which President Bush has now stopped using in reference to Iraq policy.

Brooklyn Hillbillies!

On Friday morning, my grandparents and parents flew up to the Big Apple to visit me. This was the first time that my grandparents, who have visited all 50 US states, had ever been to NY City. I picked them up at JFK and brought them over to a hotel near my apartment. Actually, the hotel is really just a house in a residential area which has converted its rooms into hotel rooms. On Friday, we visited Castle Clinton National Monument, Battery Park, the American Stock Exchange, the site of the World Trade Center 9/11 attack...



...Trinity Church and its cemetery with the graves of Robert Fulton & Alexander Hamilton (of VP Aaron Burr duel fame), Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and Federal Hall, the first US capitol where Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789. Federal Hall contains the stone Washington stood and the Bible he put his hand on during the ceremony. On Saturday, we saw St. Patrick's Cathedral, 5th Avenue shopping district, Rockefeller Plaza, the NBC tour with a view of the studios where Dateline NBC, Nightly News with Brian Williams, and Saturday Night Live are filmed. For a few minutes, we actually got to see the SNL crew rehearse the show that aired tonight.



After leaving NBC, we ate Thai food at Bangkok House on Restaurant Row (46th St), and then visited Yankee Stadium and Times Square. I don't have a car here, so we've ridden a bus and lots of subways - the 3, B, D, E, M, Q, R - and done lots of walking! I've been working them pretty hard. My grandparents, are after all 82 and 79 years old! But they are holding up pretty well, depsite all the stairs in the subways that they aren't used to climbing. They'll be here until Tuesday -- so we'll have more to see!

The Wilder Effect

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about minority candidates in close races. Some call it the 15% lie. Others call it the Wilder Effect. The idea is basically that when a pollster calls people on the phone to ask whom they will support in the election, some people will tell the pollster that they will support the minority candidate (even though they will really support the white candidate) just because they do not want the pollster to believe they are racist. For example, consider the Tennessee Senate race where democrat Harold Ford, an African American, is running against republican Bob Corker, who is white. If a democrat who is white receives a phone call from a pollster, he may feel the pollster is judging him as racist if he claims to be a democrat who is also supporting Corker. As a result, minority candidates typically underperform their poll numbers in the general election. In a famous race in November 1989, democrat Douglas Wilder, an African American then serving as Virginia lieutenant governor, ran for governor against Republican attorney general Marshall Coleman. Exit polls (face to face interviews after voters leave the voting area) during the day of the election showed Wilder ahead by 10%. In the end, Wilder won the race by only 0.38%. Why were the exit polls so wrong? Most assume it was the "Wilder Effect" at work -- which may be even stronger in face to face interviews (versus telephone surveys). This year, the "Wilder Effect" may be witnessed by democrat Harold Ford in the Tennessee's senate race, republican Michael Steele in the Maryland senate race, and Kenneth Blackwell in the Ohio governor's race.

Just to be clear - the "Wilder Effect" does not occur because voters are racist. It occurs simply because they do not want to appear as racists to the interviewer. I'm guessing this effect may not be a factor in uncompetitive races - such as Alan Keyes disastrous Illinois senate campaign in 2004.

Cards make history

The St. Louis Cardinals jut won the World Series, an amazing feat considering they only won 4 of their final 14 games of the regular season to end the season with an unimpressive 83-79 record. Just about a month ago, I wrote saying they might choke in the central division race with Houston. Perhaps it helped that they were playing the Detroit Tigers, who, in the regular season, had won just 19 of their last 50 including their final 5.

Muslims not responsible for 9/11 attacks?

Over the past month, I've been very busy with doing homework and studying for midterms. But I have found time to attend a few events on campus - the College Republicans, the Diwali dinner put on by the Hindu Student Council, etc. Tonight I dropped in on a meeting after my class finished. A female student was reading poetry and sharing her opinions about her faith as a Muslim in a large room full of students, most of whom were also Muslim. During her speech, she mentioned, "I do not believe that Muslims were responsible for the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade Center." Wait, what? My first reaction was to look around the room to measure the response and outrage at her comments. There was none. I was a little outraged. I consider it a well proven fact that the hijackers on the planes were Muslims. I stayed for a few more minutes to listen as she read a poem about her emotions and feelings about September 11th.

I needed to catch one of the last B trains so I left after her poem. To be fair, I have no idea how her speech concluded. Anyway, as I was riding home, I reflected on what she had said. I think many non-Muslim Americans might have been offended by the student's claim. However, I tried to put myself into her shoes. What if Christians had been blamed for the terrorist attacks? Or what about abortion clinic bombers who have all claimed to be Christian. What about the Holocaust? Hitler claimed to be a Christian. But many Christians today would claim that Hitler was not really a Christian - that he just claimed to be for political purposes and the version he practiced was really a Nazi-manipulation. And I'm sure that is how this girl at NYU feels. She takes great pride in her faith because, according to her, of its love and peace, and perhaps she feels that the 9/11 hijackers were not true Muslims in their faith and actions -- only using the affiliation for al quaeda's own purposes. I had never considered this possibility before. Perhaps this is the truth, or perhaps this girl is completely wrong. Regardless, I now have a deeper understanding of how American Muslims might feel about 9/11. This is one good reason to try to walk a mile in someone else's shoes before criticizing them. It helps you better understand where they are coming from. (The other reason is that if they are angry after you criticize them, at least they will be 1 mile away and barefoot!)

Chinese Automotive Industry

Many US companies are earning profit in China. US corporate profits in China passed $2 billion in the first 2 quarters of the year. In 1999, only 57% of US firms were profitable in China. In 1999, only 0.1% of Chinese owned automobiles. In 2004, it was 2.2%. GM is leading in the auto market, as its sales climbed 36.7% from January to September to 645,000 vehicles. The top 4 car companies in China based on units sold are GM, followed by Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Toyota. Prior to 2005, Volkswagen was the leader in China. GM was able to reach the number one position by forming joint ventures with domestic firms that make minivehicles. Despite getting a late start in the Chinese market, Toyota, now #4 in units sold, is expected to overtake GM between 2008 and 2010.