Justice - 20120612

Normally, I would avoid hot picks. For example, I have never watched Titanic, even the new version has been launched after that many years. I am ashamed of following the tide. However, I recently read Justice, which is a popular little book on political science. I would say that, it was quite enjoyable.

The book was written by Michael Sandel, a professor of Harvard University. The book gives an introduction on different theories of how justice could be obtained. Bentham promoted the Utilitarianism, Hayek advocated the free market, Aristotle pursued teleo, Rawls was eager for distributive justice and Kant looked into the essence of goodness rather than ways and methods. Obviously, no one theory is perfect and everyone is subject to criticism.

It is good to go through those concepts via daily examples. Sometimes these examples challenge one's view. Say, if you embrace free market, is it justifiable for anything to has a price tag? It may be acceptable for rich gay to jump queue by bribing waiters. Yet it may not be the same case if someone is bidding for other's kidney. Later example may not be a teleo.

So, Justice is a lovely book and may rectify our distorted value and belief, in some sense for some time.

King's Park - 20120607

After a decade, I touched football again last night, in a pitch which sounds so politically incorrect. King's Park.

Being a New Territories resident, I should be pardoned for haven't been there before. King's Park is an oasis (or mirage?) in the busy Kowloon. The ambience is so serene, and doing exercise there should be particularly relaxing. Obviously, being such a prime cite, surrounding apartments must be of outrageous price. Yet there is a cheap alternative. Oi Man Estate. So, either substantially rich guys or nominally poor families could be the lucky ones.

In King's Park, paradoxically, I did not meet any monarch. Instead, quite a number of senior executives were encountered. We chased the ball, possessed it and gave it away, on and off. Among the players, the most interesting one was a black guy, coming from Cameroon.

Let's call him O. O was my teammate, but I knew nothing about him until yesterday. While travelling to the pitch, O shown me some photos of Cameroon. It surprised me that vegetation flourished over there. O kept on testing my limit. He said the temperature of Cameroon right now is 25 degree Celsius. Hong Kong is hotter. Then, O flipped some of his secondary school's photos. It was like Eton. I asked whether it was established by missionary and O nodded. Well, my greatest concern was, why did O come to Hong Kong, when Cameroon was like a paradise. I swallowed up my question.

One final remark, with my feet dumped for that long, I played lousily.