I don’t know much about this esoteric disease, so I did a web search to read more about MS. According to the United States’s Center for Biotechnology Information, multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. An autoimmune disease is one in which “the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissue.”

The good news is there’s not a high mortality rate with MS, but the bad news is one must worry about MS increasing the risk of other diseases such as heart disease, cancer and stroke. As of right now, there is no known cure for MS, but there is therapy to help mitigate the symptoms.

My thoughts go out to my friend’s wife and her family. There is not much I can do other than offer my support, both financially and with my blog. If you would like to donate to my friend’s worthy run, please click here. Whether it’s one dollar or five dollars, every bit of money raised will go to help find a cure to this disease.

This year, I am hosting a meetup at the  San Diego Tết festival Friday night, which happens to be tonight. On Saturday, I have plans to trek back down there with some other friends but the forecast shows there are chances of showers Saturday afternoon, so if mother nature doesn’t cooperate, I suppose we’ll have to postpone going until next time.

I am looking forward to soaking up everything in the atmosphere such as  seeing all the women wearing their áo dài, watching adults give li xi to children, watching the stage performances and mostly importantly–I cannot stress this last point enough–the food!

So, dear friends, please have yourself a great weekend and a happy new year. Chúc mừng năm mới!

Meanwhile, during his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama pledged to shut down Guantánamo, which had been the subject of criticism due to its human rights abuses towards prisoners, should he be elected president of the United States. It has been nearly four years since Mr. Obama became the 44th president of the United States, yet Guantánamo continues its operations.

Lakhdar’s Nightmare

There’s an article, which you can read here, written by Lakhdar Boumediene, a former detainee, who describes his “nightmare” inside Guantánamo. Bosnia’s highest court ordered Mr. Boumediene’s release after it ruled that the evidence and claims against him by the US government were incorrect. But that didn’t stop the US from detaining Mr. Boumediene illegally, as he and several others were ”tied up like animals” and shipped off to Guantánamo.

For the next seven years, Mr. Boumediene was subjected to cruel and harsh conditions such as being “kept awake for many days straight” or being “forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time.” He finally had a hearing in 2008 and was subsequently released; however, the damage had been done as Mr. Boumediene wanted to forget about his entire ordeal in Guantánamo.

2012 NDAA

Recently, President Obama signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). There appear to be a couple of provisions in it that  some legal experts argue will “authorize the military to indefinitely jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect–without charge or trial.”

It’s not difficult to see how these provisions are an assault on our civil liberties–Chris Hedges provides a more sobering and more eloquent account here. It is now easy for the US to detain any person–and not to mention send that person to Guantánamo–it wants for as long as it wants simply by qualifying that person as a suspected terrorist, evidence or not. Don’t think so? Ask Lakhdar Boumediene.

MLK

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a well known activist and orator of civil rights, as he opined for equality for everyone regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender and so forth. Little did Dr. King know that one day we would be witnessing a steady erosion of our civil liberties as we are seeing with the Patriot Act, and now with the provisions in the 2012 NDAA.

If we are not careful, we may all soon be writing about our own Guantánamo nightmare as we are being stripped of all our civil liberties in the name of national security.

The resulting melee for the “bling” found on the dresses and lengths at which retailers will go to preserve the scarcity of the label designer’s name shows the amount of value placed on high-end products in our consumer-based society.

I have discussed conspicuous consumption in prior blog posts and have actually written a research paper about the topic. Keeping up with the Jonses is a never ending battle as people try to one up each other in this superficial game of flaunting wealth via products such as clothes worn, clothing accessories, cars driven and so forth.

So why do people engage in this type of behavior? It’s a subtle way to show off one’s wealth, i.e. it’s a signal to others, who also participate in conspicuous consumption and are familiar with brand names, that you have a lot of money. The ability to purchase and wear items that only a few can truly afford gives one the feeling of superiority because one belongs to an exclusive group. It also gives one the feeling of power and importance in our capitalistic economy where consumption is ubiquitous.

It takes more than just the name to keep things high end. During my research, I learned that when it comes to luxury brands, most consumers are unable to recognize between counterfeited products and authentic products. However, the story is much different for the rich. They are trained to recognize the small nuances of high-end products, thus, they can determine what is genuine and what is fake by scrutinizing certain details.

A Wasteful World

The article also brings up the issue of waste in our world. By far, we human beings are a wasteful society. Sure we have recycling programs, but it doesn’t change the fact that we have agreements to destroy wedding dresses instead of selling or donating them to those who may have a use for them. Instead, we destroy the dresses, make more of them, then destroy those ones when a retailer goes out of business; it’s a vicious cycle that leaves a destructive carbon footprint.

I employ wedding dresses as an example, of course, of our wastefulness, but there are other products that could be substituted in place of the dresses. The act of maintaing social status is harmful to the environment, not just from the created waste but also from the demand on the Earth for the needed resources in the production process. Sadly, those resources are discarded and more resources are demanded for future waste, also a vicious cycle that leaves a destructive carbon footprint.

On this fortuitous day of warmth and sunshine, I traveled to the beach right along the Oceanside pier where I recorded a video using my iPod Touch as I sat on the sand, soaked up all the sunshine and listened to the waves. Even though the iPod may not have the greatest of cameras installed on it, the camera was able to capture a nice moment to start 2012.

I wanted to share the video on YouTube, but I thought to myself, “Why would anyone be interested in watching a video where all I’m doing is panning across the beach and nothing of interest is happening?” I decided the best thing to do would be to add a special effect to the video, which would give it some pizzazz, so I turned to the iMovie program installed on my computer.

I have used used iMovie in the past to add an introduction to my previous videos, but I have never used it to add any type of special effect. As with many of Apple’s programs, iMovie was simple enough to use, even for a novice filmmaker such as myself–I kid about being a novice filmmaker.

I scrolled through the numerous pre-installed special effects so I could experiment with them and preview how the video would look once the effect was applied. I narrowed my choices down to two special effects: fog and letterbox. Using the fog effect added a hazy element to the video, giving the sensation of a sandstorm, while the letterbox clipped off snippets from the top and bottom that gave it the letterbox feel with which many of us are familiar.

The video took me a roughly five minutes to create, but the total time spent in iMovie hovered somewhere in the twenty minute range since I did try all the effects on the video. Enjoy!

However, many resolutions fizzle quickly as the excitement of doing them wanes just a few weeks into the new year–it’s not uncommon for a lot of people to cancel their gym memberships after a month or so. Still, there are people who succeed at accomplishing what they set out to do from the first day of the new year. But the reality is life happens for many or the resolution is more than the person bargained for, and it’s difficult for many people to accomodate their new year’s goals into their already busy lives.

My Resolution for 2012

Last year, I vowed I would write a blog entry for each day of the year. Unfortunately, I didn’t come close to reaching my goal, so I have set a more realistic resolution this year.

Towards the end of 2011, I wanted to see if I could write an entry for each day in December. I came very close to the goal I had set, but I did miss one day during the middle of the month. I wasn’t discouraged for the missed entry, so I kept on writing and was proud of myself for sticking to it.

The process of writing can be time consuming because it requires sitting down to decide what I want to write about before actually jotting down the words and formulating sentences. There are times I have an idea or I have read a news article that catches my attention, while on the other days I have writer’s block and find it a struggle to write about anything interesting–or not so interesting.

In addition to writer’s block or general lack of ideas, I struggle to set aside time to write or I have no motivation at all. I spend close to two hours a day stuck in traffic for my commute during the work week, while I spend close to nine hours at work. The battle with traffic is definitely energy draining, so writing an entry can transform itself into a chore after I come home from work, eat dinner and take a quick nap. As a result, the writing suffers when I put less of a priority on it, or I rush to publish something before the day is over.

Quality over Quantity

I don’t plan on writing as many entries as I attempted last year because I do not want this blog to become a chore or an obligation. It is my hobby, and one in which I want to enjoy and to have fun working on.

When I started Trung Chatter, my intention was to use it as a tool to improve my writing skills. So keeping that goal in mind, I will sacrifice quantity for quality. I want to write well thought out entries, even if it takes me several days to complete each one.  This way I can look back and be proud that I did my best and put all my efforts into producing the best writing of which I am capabable. Here’s to a great 2012 and a great year of blogging!

It was hard for me to remember everything, so I began trolling through the archive which was daunting to say the least. I had some good entries; I had some bad entries; but nonetheless, I wrote!

Of all the events that took place in 2011, here are some of the ones I do remember. Although not necessarily more significant than others, they somehow managed to remain somewhat fresh in my mind.

• 2011 brought to us concerns of nuclear safety as Japan experienced one of its worst earthquakes ever.
• The technology world bade farewell to Steve Jobs, while activists fought tooth and nail until the very end before reluctantly saying goodbye to Troy Davis.
• Bradley Manning finally received his trial but after being tortured and treated inhumanely without being charged for anything.
• The labor program at my alma mater came under attack when lies about it spread like wildfire on the interwebs.
• America’s kill team came into the spotlight, not for killing Osama bin Laden but for killing innocence abroad.
• Finally, a revolutionary event took place in Africa, inspired others and quickly spread to the rest of the world, which included occupations across many US cities.

So now, dear friends, I am here to say “au revoir” to 2011 and bellow out from the pits of my stomach “bonjour!” to 2012.

Happy New Year!

One must wonder by how much those numbers will rise in the new year if  the economy does not improve for those who most need it.

While their journeys don’t involve high tech gadgets or doodads, both countries will deprive their citizens of casual Friday, meeting for drinks after work at T.G.I. Friday’s and listening to Rebecca Black’s “Friday” song–at least for this week–as they will skip Friday by jumping from Thursday to Saturday when the clock hits midnight on Thursday.

The move has been planned for quite some time and is being done for economic reasons, much like when Samoa shifted “from the western side to the eastern side of the international date line” in 1892 after the U.S. persuaded it to do so in order “to facilitate business with the West Coast and the United States.” But now that most trade is being done with countries who deal with China, Samoa and Tokelau find it makes more sense to return to western side of the international date line in order to be on the same date as the rest of their Pacific trading partners.

These moves sound eerily familiar to something I wrote about another island nation quite some time ago.

The victory has put me in a dancing mood, thus, I want to share this salsa song that has been stuck in my head for the past week. I wish the place where I go dancing would play it. Btw, I apologize for posting a video that has a static image of the singer. I know it’s a bit creepy, but it’s the best version of the song I could find on the interwebs.

Go, Kings, go!