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Hey, do not tell any one, but I did something bad yesterday. When I had the meeting with my advisor, we began to go beyond the usual business and had this casual conversation. Somehow I began to show him how facebook worked. Then I logged in with my account so that my advisor checked out his son who is in college now. My advisor was quite blown away by the share power of facebook. Some "incriminating" photos indeed (taa-daa, underage drinking).

This made me wonder whether my advisor was a good dad. It is totally speculative, but he was a stereotypical "distant dad". Always deep in his own thoughts, too smart to show emotions, I wonder how much his son felt his dad was "unavailable". (I had this stereotype because of my experience with my own dad). I met his son twice I think, seemingly cool and distant to his parents. Overwhelmed by both of his parents' intellectual power, he rebelled in the opposite way. I have no idea what's their relationship is, but telling from my advisor's intrigue in the facebook, I guess that he probably did not know too much about his son.

Anyway, today when I checked on the facebook again, his son had changed the privacy setting so I could no longer access his profile. I think my advisor must had teased his son last night's dinner. The tease was of course conducted with his usual charms, but his son definitely took it more seriously.

Shit, Hussein was hanged. I had this mixed feeling. Of course he deserved it, but I was afraid that it was propelled more by US's desperation to find some victory in Iraq. Come on, crime against humanity? Humanity my ass. People argue that there are natural moral laws that everyone agree upon. It is hard to argue against it, but look at the history: 200 hundred years ago, people thought slavery was the nature's rule. 50 years ago, blacks and whites could not marry. 20 years ago, AIDS was an evil disease. Even today, people treated illegal immigrants below the level of treating their pets. So what make people so sure that their current moral codes on gay marriage, abortion, religion, democracy, human nature could withstand the time test? Hussein is a criminal for sure, but there are more criminals unpunished because they were still on the winner side, unlike Hussein.

For some reason, I cannot stop writing blogs when I am writing this dissertation. My brain hasn't been so active for a while. As I thought through tens of regression tables and tried to come up with cohesive stories, my brain also fired up and had reactions to all the news and collected all my scattered thoughts into cohesive pieces. I think writing this dissertation really made me being more reflective and angry and radical. I know I am right, but I do not like the fact that I have to worry about these big problems. Fortunately, the dissertation will be soon over. I am on Chapter 5 now, and 4 days later I will be on the final chapter. And after a final sweep, I will be done in 10 days. After that, I will just think about oil, salt, soy, and vinegar, not worry too much about world peace and social inequality.