Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Evaluating is learning

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I have been quite passive in Toastmaster for the past while. I did not show up to the meeting unless I have a speech or there is a special event. Last week, the chairman of today’s meeting ask me whether I help out as an evaluator. Since I have no reason to decline, I show up in the meeting to evaluate a speech. It was a CC#4 speech and the goal is to make good use of words. Although I have done this speech project before, it was almost 3 years ago, the speech project seems a like a stranger to me. Before the speech, I quickly went over the manual, check out the speech objectives.

Those objectives should be common sense to me. Namely, use short words and short sentence; be specify; use vivid language to draw a mental picture for the audience; use rhetorical device to spicy up the speech, avoid jargon, filter words and filter phrases. Yet I found myself do not pay enough attention to those basic objectives when I am working on my speech nowadays. I know how to write a good speech in theory, but I fail to deliver the end product most of time. Evaluating beginner’s speech helps me review some basic speech skills that I mostly forgotten or carelessly ignored. When I am giving the evaluation, I not only point problems in speech, I also have to give examples on how to improve it. It is just like teaching a student force you to know the material thoroughly, giving an evaluation force you to make a good example yourself. I an suppose an advance speaker in the club, but I still have lots to learn from the beginners.

Daily Scribble

Confusion state of toothpaste

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I ran out of toothpaste, so I have went to super market to buy a new one. Standing in front of the oral care aisle and I am confused. I don’t know which toothpaste should I buy. There are over thirty different kinds of toothpaste. I usually use Colgate, but even I ignore all other brands, there are still ten different kinds of Colgate toothpaste for me to choose. The product packaging is not very helpful. Other than I can tell the color and the taste of the toothpaste, I have no idea what those marketing jargon means or do they even have any meaning.

I try to read the fine prints on the toothpaste box and compare the difference in each of them. It turns out all toothpaste print the same boilerplate instruction on the box, it does not give me any useful information on the product itself. I can’t make up my mind when I don’t have any information to justify my decision. In the end, I resort to just looking at the price and buy the one that is on sale. If an average consumer like me can’t tell the difference among the products, what is the point for the toothpaste company making ten different kinds of toothpaste?

Daily Scribble

We are what we eat

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I thought vegetarians who don’t eat meat are quite out of their mind. Then I met believers of Jainism who not only don’t eat meat, but also don’t eat any animal product like milk, honey or egg. Then I met the some weirdo who don’t eat any cooked or processed food. They only eat raw vegetables, fruits or nuts without any salad dressing. They claim all food has some sort of life energy which will disappear after cooking. Obviously no one with a right mind would believe in that superstitious non-sense﹐ yet I learn this stupid diet from a colleague who seems reasonable and intelligent. Maybe we can’t judge whether a person is a faddist or not from his appearance alone. You never know what ridiculous beliefs someone may hold inside his messed up brain.

According to anthropologist, eating meat and cooking food is what make us human as human. Human evolve to the top of the food chain and set us apart from other animals all thanks to meat and cooked food. Herbivores diet cannot supply the extra calories required to develop the brain of our prehistoric ancestors. Eating meat allow human to have huge brain with small guts that jump start human intelligence. Cooking breaks down starch molecules into more digestible fragment, break down amino-acid chain in protein molecules for the digestive enzymes and physically soften the food. Eating cooked food is more calories efficient, so human can further divert more energy for brain development. If human intelligence originates from eating meat and cooked food, then not eating meat or cooked food must be the lack of intelligence. Vegetarian, Jainism and raw foodist defy our human identify and evolutionary advantage. Their beliefs is on the verge of a dangerous path that lead us devolve back to animals.

Daily Scribble

Greedy Vet

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Today I just pay $400 to have my dog cut open for no reason. My dog, Charlie, has a big lump around his neck. The vet said it could be parathyroid cancer and suggest us to have the lump removed. We made appointment with the Vet for the dog have the surgery today. After the vet cut open Charlie, he found out it is not a parathyroid cancer. The high calcium in Charlie’s body maybe cause by some other cancer. Since the vet already open Charlie, I would expect him remove the lump even it is not a cancer tumor. It turns out the doctor just stitch up the opening without doing any operation. I am $400 short, Charlie has a wound around his neck and suffer from the pain of the surgery, but his condition has no change. I should ask for a refund from the vet for doing nothing useful.

When we picked up the dog, the vet suggest the dog take more test to diagnose the problem. He suggested us to do X-Ray, CAT scan or even MRI and those tests are expensive. More diagnosis means more money for the Vet, I can see why he suggest further treatment. But to us, what is the point of knowing what kind of cancer he has. My dog is 13 years old, it is almost at the end of its life. Even we know where the cancer is, we won’t let the dog to go through the painful and expensive cancer therapy. A dog won’t last forever. If Charlie die naturally in a painless way, it would be already be a blessing for him and for us.

I have been suggesting taking Charlie to SPCA to put him to sleep. Pat strongly disagree my idea. She said she would send me to SPCA before sending Charlie. I don’t quite understand why people are so attached to their pets. It is just an animal. Wouldn’t it less trouble or sometimes even cheaper to simply get a new one. It is kinda like buying a new computer to replace your old computer. All pets have to go at the end, so you can’t avoid feeling sad when losing your pet, it is just the matter of sooner or later. What is the point of extending the ownership when it brings you more trouble than joy? The owner should just bite the tongue, put it to sleep and suffer a brief moment of feeling bad instead of a prolong period of feeling bad.

Daily Scribble

Gangster war

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In the past few months, Vancouver is not longer a safe city. It has shooting after dark and in broad day light almost every day. It has become a war zone in the Gangster’s turf war. It is getting pretty bad when shootings happen on the street where you usually go to lunch or 2 blocks away from your friend’s house.

The Gangster turf war begins with US cracked down of Columbia drug lords last year. After the drug lords are gone, there is a sharply reduce in cocaine supply, so the price of drug on street goes sky high. Every gangster want to get a cut in the lucrative drug dealing business. Their strategy to gain more market share and secure drug supply is taking out the competitors, literally.

I have no objection the gangster killing each other, they are the scum of the society wants to get rid of anyways. However the gangster behave more like a gentleman when taking each other out. They should not go around shooting each other in the neighborhood when the victim is sleeping, eating or driving. Bullet has no eye. They may hurt innocent by-standers. They should they fight like a man in a duel, just like the old western movies. Maybe we can even host the gangster duel in a stadium and sell tickets of the event. I am sure this modern gladiator fight would be quite popular. We can get some good entertainment and get rid of half of the gangsters. Killing two birds with one stone.