canpus politics and economics

ADVERSE SELECTION!!!!

I have been wondering about this for a long time until Prof. Gentry spelled the magic process of adverse selection in full. Economists indeed have a formal name and analysis of this phenomonen. When one thing involves many qualities, some observable and some not. The ultimate result is that different entities compete upon what is observable and what is unobservable is left to its worst quality so long as it does not affect the observable quality in a negative way.

That works in politics too. And unfortunately, it works so obviously on campus. With students caring so much and competing so much on resumes, different activities seems to be flourishing. And indeed nothing is really happening. It is almost a proud thing to participate in so many clubs and get a title like treasurer or co-president (sounds nice), without actually knowing what to expect from the experience. People rush to easy classes to boost their GPA. Students no longer strive to understand the material as long as they can get an A. After all, no one knows how much you understand besides looking at the grade. And when the grade inflation is so blatantly rampant, why bother?

When my Professor told me sarcastically that I can observe the days before the finals, when everyone will be dilligent, I ask myself, is this the best result we can get?

response to Obama's speech in my hometown

When Obama visited my hometown Shanghai, he was saying that we all share some basic values, and of course he was alluding to human rights including freedom of speech. That sound ridiculous to me. I remember my Math professor complain often that these days students of mathematics often neglect to check the conditions before they apply a theorem, and the result--mistakes! I found it surprising how pertinent this phenomenon is when it comes to social science. If one reads the literature on human rights when it was developed,like the Second Treatise on Civil Government by John Locke there is almost no exception that every single philosopher justified human rights on the grounds of religion--A god created the mankind and in creating them, he gave them rights! If one is to argue that people evolve from apes, how do u expect he/she to come to the same conclusion as those christians? We the people in China are no Christians, and mostly buddhists, and we do not buy that story! Mr. Obama, how do you expect us, the people who employs reasons instead of believing in oratory, share with you the definition of what is human rights, when we do not even share in our philosophy the origin of human rights? For students of mathematics, can you accept the conclusions from Euclidean geometry, when you are working on manifolds?