isn't it?

Time is limited, isn't it?

Work is rotated, isn't it?

Future is dynamic, isn't it?

Life is fantastic, isn't it?

Choice

Oracle: I told you before. No one can see beyond a choice they don't understand, and I mean no one.
--Matrix, Revolution

Though the choice seems obvious for me, I experienced a certain extent of confusion when facing big decision in life: to work or to pursue a higher degree. The underlying question of this choice seems to be what I am going to do in the future, what my life goal is, because this decision will undoubtedly affect my life in future. However, I found that my decision is based mostly, not on the vision of the future, which is inherently vague and indefinite for me, but on what I have done in the past. Since every graduate or professional program asks the candidates what preparation of knowledge and skill they have in that specific area, it also seems to be practical and reasonable to do things as if we are laying the bricks, one based another, never awry. But isn't it a bit monotonous?

Where is the change? Where is the turn? Where is the jump? But before answering those questions, answer these questions first: what to change? Where to turn? Where to jump? Ironically, I am back on the original point of the old-friend-like question, which is asked again and again since primary school: what do I want to do? What I have done and what I will do seem to like the questions of which is the first: egg or chicken? The truth, I think, may be that one will never make a decision with absolutely full confidence of its consequences.

Everyone travels with a certain degree of confusion of the destiny. And so do I.

one friend's signature

One should never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

It's an interesting sentence provoking philosophical thought. Before analyzing this claim, I would like to limit "anything" to "things met in ordinary daily life", which exludes any scientific, political or social issues. Things like that will spoil the pure philosophical query here

Understandably, everyone need "some entities" to explain the world and himself or herself if one remain conscious. It's also a great thing that everything is able to be explained by a handful of "entities", and guide the action accordingly when one faces complicated siuations. Imagine that there are principles of life that guide the life just as there are three Newton's laws of mechanism that predict the motion an object. Isn't it a great triumph of human intellect?

It might grow to be an infinite list, but several most important entities that used to explain the motivation of human action includes: (from How to Win Friends and Influence People)

1. Health and preservation of life.
2. Food
3. Sleep
4. Money and the things money will buy
5. Life in the hereafter
6. Sexual gratification
7. The well-being of our children
8. The feeling of importance

If one does not want to be exhaustive about his/her list, the above mentioned entities are well-enough in explaining every day's action. One can experience limited situation compared with the sum of all human beings'. Therefore, one does not necessarily to be exhaustive in making his/her own list. Perhaps that's why the author put a constraint: "beyond what is necessary".

the use of paranormal pursuits

Admittedly, these non-mainstream areas of inquiry address certain human needs, which mainstream science and other areas of intellectural inquiry inherently cannot. One such needs involves our common experience as human that we freely make our own choices and decisions in life and therefore carry some responsibilities for their consquences. Faced with infinite choices, we experience uncertainty, insecurity, and confusion; and we feel remorse, regret, and guilt when in retrospect our choices turn out to be poor ones. Understandably, to prevent these bad feelings many people try to shift the burden of making difficult choices and decisions to some nebulous authority outside themselves--by relying on the stars or on a stack of tarot cards for guidance.

Above is a paragraph in the GRE analytical writing preparation book. I like this paragraph particularly because of its keen perception and revelation of human trait in the course of argument, which reminds me of the following paragraph:

We continue to share with our remotest ancestors the most tangled and evasive attitudes about death, despite the great distance we have come in understanding some of the profound aspects of biology. We have as much distaste for talking about personal death as for thinking about it; it is an indelicacy, like talking in mixed company about venereal disease or abortion in the old days. Death on a grand scale does not bother us in the same special way: we can sit around a dinner table and discuss war, involving 60 billion volatilized human deaths, as though we were talking about bad weather; we can watch abrupt bloody death every day, in color, on films and television, without blinking back a tear. It is when the numbers of dead are very small, and very close, that we begin to think in scurrying circles. At the very center of the problem is the naked cold deadness of one’s own self, the only reality in nature of which we can have absolute certainty, and it is unmentionable, unthinkable. We may be even less willing to face the issue at first hand than our predecessors because of a secret new hope that maybe it will go away. We like to think, hiding the thought, that with all the marvelous ways in which we seem now to lead nature around by the nose, perhaps we can avoid the central problem if we just become, next year, say, a bit smarter.

the beginning of a new season

The top five football leagues in Europe has been opening their new season one by one. For me, today marks the beginning of a new season, a season that is full with exams and tests. I had the GRE writing test this morning.

I had so many tests before, but this one is of particular importance, because I believed in this exam I reached such a stage of mindset that enables me to "journey through" tests.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

I don't know who wrote these words, but I'd like to keep them as a reminder that the process is all the important, and that being defeated does not necessarily mean imperfection.

In fact, everything can be perfect. The trick is how you define "perfect".

Communication

"You can speak the same language, but still fail to communicate."

In a Personal Statement workshop in Nanjing University last Thursday, MCK, an American and my group member of When Pigs Fly, translate "stereotype" to "成见" and "偏见", and then talks in Chinese about the stereoypes of Chinese students in US graduate schools. The audience get confused when he refer both strength and weakness of Chinese students to US gradute school's "成见". The difference between stereotype and 成见 is subtle; the later has negative connotations while the former does not.

Not only would misuse of specific word cause failure of communication, but also the unawared disagreement of the definition of word. In a E-mail to MCK, I talk about the "design" of When Pigs Fly website, which in my mind means the CSS design, a computer programming language. But I fails to mention it explicitly. MCK get confused, because what he perceive design is the layout of contents displayed in the browser.

Enlightened by my first expeirence, I try a different strategy when explaining the structure of the website to Matt, another group member who does not know anything about the web technology. "The webiste is like a building. The domain of the website is like the name of the building. The domain are listed on the signposts of internet, the DNS, which guides the browser requesting specific pages to the website server. The website server is like the land the building stands. The webpages are the actual building, which you can modify, decorate and reconstruct by rewriting the page codes." I feel satisfied when he understands what I mean after my explanation.

Knowledge and Wisdom by Bertrand Russell

Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But agreement ceases as soon as we attempt to define 'wisdom' and consider means of promoting it.

...
There are, I think, several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion: the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach to each its due weight.

...
There must be, also, a certain awereness of the ends of human life...Perhaps one could stretch the comprehensiveness that constitute wisdom to include not only intellect but also feeling. It is by no means uncommon to find men whose knowledge is wide but whose feelings are narrow...

It is not only in public life ways, but in private life equally, that wisdom is needed. It is needed in the choice of ends to be persued and in emancipation from personal prejudice.

....
I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as far as possible, from the tyranny of the here and now.

...
...Hatred of evil is itself a kind of bondage to evil...

A sense of proportion, a certain awareness of the ends of human life and emancipation. Intellect and feeling.

We need a scale to determine the weight of each factor in a problem--the sense of proportion. This scale varies from person to person and from culture to culture. Consider physical beauty: some like big eyes, some like high nose and some like oval face. And the aesthetic standard differs greatly between cultures and even between ages.

The phrase 'ends of life' is confusing; does it mean the purpose of life or the termination of life? The context does not provide a clue, and it seems the two meanings both make sense in the context. Or maybe Russell use the word 'end' to express the both. Everyone exists for a purpose. If he does not have one or does not find one, he does not live. "Everyone dies, but not everyone lives."

Emancipation is desperately needed in China. Most people judge propriety of their deeds according to solely what others think, especially what their master think.

the power of belief

Seraph: "Did you always know?"
Oracle: "Oh, no... No, I didn't. But I believed...I believed."

This is the last scence in Matrix Revolution: the Oracle sits on a bench besides a lake in the dawn, and Seraph comes towards her. The oracle does not know that Zion is going to be saved and the war between machine and the human is going to end before Neo achieves it. As she reiterates at last, she "believed". That belief not only gives power and strength to herself but also Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and on and on and on. In a sense, it is this belief that makes the peace happen.

I talked with one friend a few days ago about goals of life. One of her goal is to have a daughter in the year of rabbit. I am curious about it and ask why. She said old men believe persons born in pig year and rabbit year will have particularly good relationship and she is in the year of pig.

I would have regarded it as superstition and haven't bothered to give a slightest thought to it, if I heard such a claim one year before. But now, I not only find it interesting, but also "reasonable". If the mother and the daughter both believe that persons in pig year and rebbit year will have good relationship, they will feel closer to each other not only because they are mum and daughter, but also because they born in the years of special connection. And if this belief goes into the unconscious level, the influence may be greater.

Free the mind

"oki, oki, free my mind, free my mind" Neo mumbles repeatedly before he makes his first jump between buildings in the film Matrix, my favorite.

I had a free conversation yesterday with an eighty-two-year-old man, who is the husband of my grandfather's sister and an old expert on education. I asked him the question of efficient schedule, or more precisely, how to manage time. "Free your mind!", he urges. Do not be confined by any form, such as a timetable or a pre-designed schedule, he adds. When I speak confidently about my arrangement that I swim once a week and play football once week, he said "open your mind. Play football whenever you want and swim as many times as you want."

Though his view may be a little like self-indulgence, the most important point he made and the most enlightening point to me is that do not set boundary to oneself, especially in the form of a strict time schedule. Doing what one really wants to do is the key to efficiency.

The decision to postpone the GRE test

One the one side, if I take the GRE test this June, there will be less than one month preparation time, which is the worst thing because I am not even familiar with those GRE words. So I will have to spend nearly all the time from now to do the memory work and honing the specific test taking skills. And consequently I will drop a handful of other stuffs including my school work which is now approaching the finals, my laboratory work, which just runs on the right track, and the When Pigs Fly website construction that I am in charge of.

On the other side, if I take the GRE test in October, I will get quite busy this fall: I have six compulsory modules; I have GRE subject test in November; I have laboratory work; I have graduate school application to ponder about; and I have the FACES meeting to attend and FACES collaborative project to participate.

I step back, looking for a decisive weight to be added on one side of the miserable balance. And I finally found it; it's hope. There is a chance that by arranging my schedule properly, I will get so many things done in time.

....

...

It was one o'clock in the morning. Lying on bed and listening every sound night has produce, I couldn't sleep. I ought to feel comfortable; the decision I just make release me temporarily from a huge burden. In retrospect, I found that the feeling of depression is a result of reluctance to give up. In a sense, my decision to postpone the GRE test is to give up the test. I had same kind of feeling in high school when I gave up the physics Olympiad and biology Olympiad in order to focus on the chemistry one. That was also a hard decision, which later proved to be very successful.

what my life is now

One of my new friend met on FACES emailed me, ask me what kind of life I had in China. I think about what my life is like, but never write them down. She gives me a chance to take a careful look at my current life. Two words to describe it are busy and enjoyable.

It's a busy one: I have school work, lab work, and I also participate in FACES collaborative project and prepare for GRE on June.

It's also an enjoyable one. I like science and I like my current major, chemistry. The lab work is fascinating because I feel more like a scientist even though I have just started reading papers. Collaborative project is exciting; every member talks a lot in the online discussion board and I feel that I am now really going to do some work good to my local community and society. The GRE requires memory work which seems boring, but I have discovered a method to make it more interesting--to look up the unfamiliar word in American Heritage Dictionary to find some interesting sentences. I quote my favorite two sentences here: "The weapon which most readily conquers reason: terror and violence." And "Obedience, /bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, / Makes slaves of men."

long time no post

Nearly one month I have not written anything for my beloved blog! I spend most of this month preparing and enjoying FACES.

What I enjoy most is talking with the delegates and organizers. They are the most passionate, most thoughtful young people I have ever seen.

Lots of funny things happens too. I played Taiji in the rock music party, and I have to move three times faster than usual. To fufill the requirements of a game, Scavenger Hunt, I entered the lady's restroom with other four group members --three of us will definitely not be able enter again--to get a photo of ourselves in mirror. And An old-book store owner roared at me because I am going to take photos in her store. And on the farewell dinner, I gave the worst speech I can ever give, but still someone says he enjoys it and he is not kidding.

Stanford students seems to be busy with their extracurriculum activities all the time. They will be regarded as "Bu Wu Zheng Ye" if they ever do this in Nanda. Two education systems and the corresponding evaluation system are different. Perhaps it is hard to make a fair judgement on them if I am still inside the system.

When an american delegates talks about the ordinary postal mail, he says:"it is so 20th century". I enjoy this accurate judgement particularly for its odd wording. I copy it and say "it's so FACES that people are nice, that organizers keep warning us to be hurry because we are behind the schedule, that there are so few people majoring science and engineering, and that it is not so sad to say goodbye because the planned re-union on November in Beijing."

3.26 march

CNN depicts the march as a public protest for peace, for freedom, for democracy, and against potential war. Sina tells us that the march is a completely political show, and any sensible people are not in it.

兼听则明，偏信则暗。

mad thought

I often heard that we live in a four dimension world: three dimension of space and one dimension of time. In space dimension, we can travel up and down, forward and backward, left and right. But in time dimension, we have only one direction.

Of course, everyone knows that.

Since space and time are linked, and everybody think about if we can travel to the past, what will happen... I am sometimes in that kind of dreams, but recently I find that I forget one thing.

If we can travel to the past, we change one property of the dimension of time, i.e., from one direction to two directions. So, we have to pay for what we get. What is the price? We have to sacrifice a direction from a space dimension. In other words, if we can travel to the past, we will sacrifice our ability to go right(left), or up(down), or forward(backward).

maths and language are abstracted symbols

--for memory of theoretical physics

The above formula means that internal energy of ideal gas is not a funtion of the volume of the ideal gas, in other words, the internal energy of ideal gas will not change if only the volume of the ideal gas changes. It is a direct application of the first law thermodynamics in ideal gas.

In the above paragraph, I use one sentence, 42 words, to explain briefly what the equation means. But from another point of view, I used 42 words to explain the result of direct application of the first law of thermodynamics to ideal gas. And the same application (or fact) can be described by only one equation.

Of course, the letters U, V and T need definitions before the equation, or any combination of them, has any meaning. But is the 42-word sentence self-contained or self-sufficient? No, what is ideal gas, what is internal energy, what is volume, what is temperature and what is function. Even what is "change"?

In maths, definitions are like building blocks, one upon another, which form the mansion of maths. I try to find out what is at the bottom of this mansion. I look at numbers: 1 to 9 and the 0. They are abstracted symbols of the things in real world. 1 apple, 2 apples...From the real things, we get the idea of 1 and 2 and so on.

Language more or less serves the same function: to describe the real things. But a big difference between maths and language is that too many words in a language do not have clear definition. And it seems that people do not care about whether they have clear definitions or not.

a handful of photons

Guess what will you get more if you make a hollow fist, photon or air molecules? I guess it is photons. But the calculation prove that I was wrong.

Under room temperature, a hollow fist will have about one billion photons while the number of air molecules is 25 billion billion, two billion times than photons.

The meaning of life

My high school classmate, a young life, came to an end not long ago. Death comes to me so near again and deliberately to show me the fragile nature of life. It once again lets me to ponder about the meaning of life.

Everybody knows that "we're all going to die, and it's just a matter of time", but few keep it in mind. Perhaps that's why Russell once wrote that "a certain awareness of the ends of human life" is an indispensable portion of wisdom. When fear and despair take the full control over reason, to die seems to be a good option. So reason alone cannot prevent one to choose that option. "On the one hand, by knowing things somewhat remote in time or space, and, on the other hand, by giving to such things their due weight in our feelings" we might broaden our mind and our feelings, and ergo prevent letting fear and despair take the control.

Most of the world is in peace now, and the country is growing. And there is no tyranny to fight against. It's suitable to take a lighthearted attitude towards life. Forget the burden, forget the stress. "人生就像是在旅行,在乎的不是目的地,而是沿途的风景和看风景的心情." So, one part of meaning of life, it seems to me, is to experience and feel everything--the human, the world and the universe.

Small thoughts

Standing upside-down bring more blood to the head, a good practice during reading breaks.

I help my young cousin with her middle school math every Sunday. She is learning elementary algebra now. All her homework is about how to substitute the variables in formula with other monomial or polynomial. The basic thinking pattern--substitution--is one work we now still practise in college.

子贡问曰:"有一言而可以终身行之者乎?"子曰:"其恕乎! 己所不欲, 勿施于人。"I read similar thoughts in Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People: "If out of reading this book you get just one thing--an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people's point of view, and see things from their angle--if you get that one thing out of this book..." Humans are similar in nature whether we are yellow, white or black.

chemistry joke

When my instructor describe how class for graduate student in Harvard Chemistry department is. He quipped: "After the four courses, the thermodynamics problem is solved (the students get fully prepared of knowledge in a particular research area), and what is left is kinetics problem (how to apply those knowledge in actual research work).

new semester and boring lecture

The new semester began officially on Monday. But for me, it just begins today, because I have no classes on Monday and Tuesday. I feel a little excited of having classes again after a terribly long three-month holiday. But after listening to two lectures, I was bored.

The first lecturer has a little enthusiam but cannot articulate his speech clearly. Further, by constantly mentioning his position as a teacher and our positions as students, who should work hard on his subject as he also nags , he seems to prevent a intellectual intercourse on a mutual equal ground.

The second lecturer has no enthusiasm at all. He delivers his lecture in a monotonous voice, which easily send people to sleep.

Lectures do not always like that. I still remember the well-organized and well-articulate mathematics lecture from Prof. Su, and humourous and enlightening philosophy letures from Prof. Holbo. Those lecturers not only transmit knowledge but also enthusism of their own subjects as well.