Do you covet Professor Xavier's power to tap into other people's minds? It may not be as physically damaging or visually impressive as an energy blast, but having exclusive private information can be extremely powerful too, just like the movie shows us. Breaking into the enemy's mind to see his next move, you can preempt a lethal blow. For more leisure use, you can better assess your mating opportunities in the nightclub. To be more specific, you probably want to zero in on the girl who also likes to watch "Glee", loves reading "Techcrunch" and lists Korea as their favorite country.

It doesn't sound too futuristic? That's what I thought too when I was using the iPhone app "Sonar". As soon as you connect with Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, it tells you what other Foursquare users are around you. And if they have Facebook and/or Twitter already hooked up with their Foursquare accounts, the app will analyze how well you match with that nearby person, or at minimum shows you who your common friends are. Oh, you can also send that person a tweet saying "Hey pretty, I'm a total stranger, guess where I am, I'm watching you mu-ah".

Using an "Sonar"-equipped iPhone is still not very "Professor X-like". Luckily, as Ray Kurzweil the "Transcendent Man" predicts, we will soon have tiny but super powerful computers embedded into human bodies. Imagine an iPhone with a size of red blood cell inside your body, allowing you to make phone calls (I believe there will be a cooler word for "calls"), search nearby people, And, look up their social profiles, connections, and every information that they happily share with the world. Oh, you can probably leave a message inside their brains, I mean inboxes. Sounds fun…

Like a lot of loving mothers who never treat their kids as grown-ups, the level of care and attention my mom gives his son can be overwhelming (and funny) sometimes...

As for his son, me, my humble origin taught me not to waste anything. What could possibly happen when the love of a mother meets her son's frugal nature? An Economic Bubble Inside our Refrigerator! Let's go back a few months when the fringe started to foam.

Couple months ago, my mom moved to live with me. I love eating fruits, but the single guy hardly refilled his empty fringe until things ran out for excessively long. Fearing that my health could be potentially harmed by the lack of nutritious fruits, my mom started to stock up all kinds of delicious fruits. Amount was still reasonable at the beginning, about a week's supply.

So the fruit lover gobbled them all up before the week's over. My mom reacted very quickly during her grocery shopping, replenishing the fruit drawer with more than a week's supply. Initially, since fruits are perishable, the frugal son ate them all up so that they wouldn't turn bad and get wasted. But the loving mother took it as a sign of insufficient supply... Buying more and more, the bubble must get bursted!

Luckily, all it took to fix it was one proper communication. And unlike other serious economic bubbles, a week was enough for the market (the fruit drawer) to recover (a week's lunches with only fruits helped...). Still, I'm very cautious about showing my preference or telling my mom what I like. I guess it's a natural tendency for parents to spoil their children which prevent them from learning from mistakes. Another bubble may be forming when I am seen drinking too much Red Bull (mom, startup is hard work)...

It's almost trivial compared to what happened 22 years ago, but does epitomize the kind of society it's progressing to become. About a week ago, my colleague told me a shocking story about her sister who worked in China (Shenzhen).

One day when she came home after work, her house was ransacked and turned upside down by burglars. As any normal person would do, she went to the police. Instead of starting an investigation like a responsible law enforcer should, she was immediately reprimanded by the police officer for reporting the crime and was imposed a fine.

Ridiculous? You think I must be joking? It turned out there would be some major events being held in the city (Summer Universiade I suspect), and the local authority is working hard fighting crimes, I mean crime number. Anything that disturbs social harmony and disgraces the city, including the report of crime, in front of our international friends shall be suppressed.

In a nation where its outward appearance and state-prescribed "Harmony" are valued over the most basic right of its people, citizens are encouraged to follow the moral code of Renminbi only, unless you want to land yourself in jail like this poor folk.