A Full Days Work

My-Yo took me out today again. She's been such a great help to my travels. The day started off pretty awesome. Breakfast for two cost less than a cup of latte in America. God Bless Taiwan.

So after breakfast, My-Yo and I took the subway station all the way to the Taipei Zoo. The ride took approximately 20 mins. From there, instead of going to the Zoo, we decided to go on the gondola to take us high up into the mountains where they specialize in cultivating tea. It's pretty awesome checking out the tea farms and such. They have a museum there and everything. I'll post more of that later. The following however is a clip of what I learned in regards to the preparation of tea so far. Check it out!

Day with My-Yo

My-Yo's actually her Japanese name. She's my cousin's wife and in Chinese customs, I have to call her "Biao Shao". She's probably one of the coolest girls I've ever met. When you're around her, her aura gives off a really relaxing/feel good sense. The first time I saw her playing Gears of War 2, I knew that our relationship was going to be a good one.

She made it seem like we've been family for years. Taking me in right after I met her, and then showing me around town today, it's really awesome having an older sister like her.

Korean Air

Definitely a favorite part of flying so far. Korean Air!. With excellent service and beautiful Korean women to carry them out, my 12 hour flight was rather comfortable and enjoyable. However, I've been mistaken for being Korean 3 times during that flight. Twice by the same person, but it's kind of fun hearing them speak English. (Them* as in the flight stewardess's)

I didn't get a window seat. I was stuck between two very old people who didn't smell very good. During the hours where the lights were off, most of tried to sleep. I can tell that the man to my right slept very well due to his continuous snore. None the less, I was super tired myself so I slept through it. What woke me up an hour later though was an out of the blue, bright light beaming in my face. The old man next to me had apparently accidentally turned on his lights. He slept right through it though! I didn't want to wake him up and tell him to turn off the lights so I decided to watch a movie instead. Anyways, overall, it was pretty nice. The chairs were really comfortable and the entertainment monitor in front of me was of good quality.

I'm updating this post at Sicheon airport in Korea which is about a couple miles west of Seoul, waiting for my next flight to Taiwan. Maybe Sicheon IS part of Seoul. Anyways, I hope the next flight to Taipei is just as nice. This time, I get a window seat.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

A wise man once told a wise man, who told another wise man, who told me what I have just stated in the title. There is a choice that I've made recently to go fast, which means that I'm going alone. At my stage in life, I think it's actually quite beneficial for me to do so. I've always been somewhat of an introvert, and I think that my 3 months of traveling Asia would be best if I went alone.


I haven't really come up with a reason for this trip. There's the usual, "I'm going to open my eyes and see what the world outside of my own has to offer", but I'm not quite sure if that's my reason. It certainly wasn't it when I bought my tickets. I'm coming up with different things to do as I prepare for my trip, including trying to be productive and asking economically related questions. I want to visit different government central banks and see what they're up to. I've even come up with an idea of trying to measure the overall utility of the different countries I'd be visiting. Although the procedure and materials to get that going is unknown to me, I think that might be a good idea. It'd certainly be interesting to find out the results.

On Religion and Ethics

The Christian view is that ethics and morality flow from the person of God himself. His perfect nature is one of perfect love and perfect justice. As humans made in his image, we have a similar capacity for these things, but in our fallen state and choice to be separated from God we are destined to fail. You can have ethics without acknowledging God, but only because God gave us a conscience to have an inherent sense of right and wrong. But if you try to construct an ethical system without God, you will fail since there is no sound philosophical basis for it. Even the founding fathers, many of whom where not Christians, but Deists, recognized that our human rights are only inherent because they were endowed to us by our creator, because (not stated, but implied from John Locke) we were created in his image.

If you deny God's existence, you can't justify morality or human rights. The God-denier is destined, as Nietsche indicated, to make his own morality. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history because dictators who denied God's existence made their own morality: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot for example. By the way, they all thought what they were doing was for the benefit of humanity and their culture by eliminating the weak and inferior, i.e. other races and anyone who disagreed with them. This was the argument that the Nazi's used to defend themselves at Nuremberg. The atheist who is intellectually honest will admit this, like "ethicist" Peter Singer of Princeton, who devalues human life below animal life in some instances.

If you have a deep sense of morality and ethics, I urge you to search for why you have it and don't accept the pat answer that "it evolved" without really testing that idea. If you say, that you believe it because scientists tell you so, you are assuming what you are trying to prove, because their is no scientific proof that morality evolved, its just a hypothesis. For a good exploration of the questions which challenge God's existence, I recommend Tim Keller's book "The Reason for God" or Norman Geisler's "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist". Both are written by outstanding intellects and are very readable. God bless you all.

-Daniel Murphy (Some dude who commented on the WSJ)