The 75th anniversary of Sydney Harbour Bridge…”Our Bridge”

Sydney just celebrated the anniversary of one of its famous icons, Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sydney-siders (the inhabitants of Sydney), if not most, maybe have little idea about when Sydney Harbour Bridge was built and who the man behind was. Knowledge over Australia’s history or even historical dates has been hot-debated issues.

I recall a shameful accident when New South Wales Education Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, once was interviewed by a radio about why Australians should celebrate Australia Day and she accidentally, mixed up between Australia day and Federation day. Australia day is the day when the first Europeans arrived in Australia (some call it as imperialism day) while Federation day is the day when the states joined together to the Commonwealth of Australia.

What happened to Mrs Carmel Tebbutt, perhaps, looks so common for some but for others, it means a degraded spirit of Australian identities and values. Despite rarely do people really know for sure what Australian values are.

Opinions may stand in the opposite way, but Australians seem to know how to break fun and view up. That is when these two groups may stand side-by-side. Finally celebrating the 75th of the Sydney Harbour Bridge is not only about remembering the day when such a mega-structure for the first time was built in Australia but also about making attractions during autumn for Sydney-siders and international tourists. Surely, there were senses of being proud and of belonging as people wore hats dan T-shirt labeled “the 75th of Sydney Harbour Bridge…“Our Bridge”…” and paraded crossing over the bridge.

For people like me who are not part of Australia’s history, at least, enjoyed the latter part. Sitting at a café in the side of the Opera House, drinking a cup of hot coffee and taking pictures of the bridge were really a lot of fun

Colbert on Bill Gates' Altruism and US Foreign Policy

Stephen Colbert told it like it is on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and US foreign policy, i.e. altruism, policies towards developing countries, international politics. Oh, and it's funny too.



I especially like the part where Colbert showed the guy wearing the "Buchanan for President 1992" t-shirt. Here's why the guy wearing the Buchanan t-shirts is so funny.

Banana anyone?

A while back ago our friend at café salemba wrote about Indonesia's new tariff law on bananas coming from the Philippines here. Now, there's a new development in the WTO regarding the EU tariffs for bananas here, which relates to my comment here.

Everyone has gone "bananas" over bananas, don't you think?

Love is such a game to play

What religions tell us is that love, marriage and relationships are written in heaven. However economics may argue in a different way. When God leaves rooms for man to play his own game, fates can possibly be written by Greek letters.

At one night my friend told me about his gloomy story. He just broke up with his girlfriend. After has been together for almost 5 years, his-ex loves someone whom she just met for the last three months. It is pretty unreasonable but all that love is. I told him, there are many reasons which may end your relationship. First, your-ex perceives that this guy is far better than you (well..this is one of the hard facts). Second, since both of you live a part, it seems that there is no incentive to keep the relationship yet strong incentive to deviate, namely, cheats. Lower the trust, stronger the incentive for cheating. This is such a game which reminds me to prisoner’s dilemma.

This semester, I take a course called “Strategic decision making”. It is all about game-theory and a classic example of the theory is prisoner’s dilemma. The story is about two suspects that are separated and interrogated in different cells. Police found strong evidence to condemn each of them with minor crime. But there is no enough evidence to convict them for a major crime unless one of them whistles against the other. If both of them do not confess about their crimes, both will be charged of the minor offense. If one and only one of them confess, he will be released and used as witness against the other, who will spend five years in jail. If they both confess, each will spend 3 years in jail. Interestingly, this game results them to confess against each other and spend 3 years in jail.

Why do they not cooperate by both do not confess? As a matter of fact, the answer relies on basic human instinct; each suspect thinks that the other will confess against him.

Ignoring the possibility that this guy is better than him (I guess my friend is at least as good as this guy), we may find similarity between prisoner’s dilemma and his story. In his case, his-ex was likely to think that he would cheat, so she decided to cheat (or broke the relationship). Surely it’s really hard to find that your partner cheat while you still keep the relationship. Unfortunately, he did not cheat although he knew that it was better for him (but not for his relationship) also to cheat. Perhaps, this situation does not truly model prisoner’s dilemma as my friend does not deviate by cheating. Nevertheless it explains why long-distance relationship is hardly stable. Worse, a fact which barely be accepted is that the equilibrium of long-distance relationship usually exists when both of them cheat. That is what the theory tells us.

At that night, I recalled a song of Beatles, Yesterday-"Yesterday,..love was such an easy game to play”. It is still true. Love is finally such a game to play.