相信我的朋友都看過 Lessig 的「We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim」。這篇演說的震撼程度不亞於地圖會說話的「走在鋼索上的民主」。Lessig 試圖將一切的治理問題歸因到政治與金錢的關係：當選舉的影響力以及話語權已經被財團控制，理應是全民所有的民主共和國，以及運作它的政府，基本上已經，被買走了。只是 Lessig 的演講是基於美國聯邦政府的選舉與政治運作；這些檯面下的事情在台北的博愛特區如何發生，台灣的選民只能從一些醜聞與八卦當中看到冰山一角。他在演講裡面說人們關心的社會改革都是重要議題，但是他的議題（選舉經費制度改革）是「第一議題」：如果這個議題沒有被解決，所有的重要改革都不太可能會發生。
由這篇演講所衍生出來的書，《Republic, Lost》最近也全文 CC 授權了。台灣今年也要選舉，或許從這個議題上，候選人能有不同的操作方式。
I don’t remember I have ever go to the cinema for a Bollywood movie, but I am glad I enjoyed it very much when I did this for the first time.
The movie remind me of the ESL classes I took. The frustration of not being able to express thoughts in English efficiently echoes the wider range of non-English speaking audiences, evidently by the success of the movie in these traditionally non-Bollywood markets, including Taiwan.
Compare to India, the English-speaking culture is different in Taiwan. English is not the working language of the mess, except for some white-collar works in forgiven companies or tech sectors (e.g., Mozilla in Taiwan). There is indeed a tread (or, “debate”) on wider-adoption of English usage in colleges. And of course, English dominance and culture invasion, and so on and so on.
That said, the English-learning students depicted in the movies are very true. If you only speak English and had (or, having) the experience working with people from other cultures, I wholeheartedly recommend you to see the movie. Pay attention to the thoughts and the minds of these the characters. In retrospect, think about the inherent behavior of these people as they went through their life-long journey of working with you in English.
This is the only reason I wrote this post, in English.
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曼德拉令我尊敬的，並不只是帶領南非結束種族隔離，而是之後更重要的，推動轉型正義及真相與和解（Truth and reconciliation）。
一個國家社會在超越獨裁集權與少數統治之後，若沒有和解的方向，是無法形成共識以及讓民主深化、運作完善的。南非共和國何等幸運的能在關鍵的時代得到這樣的領袖。雖說我對該國的了解還不足以知道實際的執行效果，但我知道台灣的真相與和解還有很長一段路要走。
推薦大家閱讀 BBC 新聞中文網的訃告。