tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67971942024-03-07T13:57:42.615-05:00Chinese bladeThink like Confucius, cut like a blade.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-51510802594129475612017-06-12T02:07:00.003-04:002017-06-12T02:07:58.355-04:00Beyond the fort on the frontier
Please sing me the song of the voyager,
Who journeys beyond the fort on the frontier.
Sing those forgotten, ancient words.
Please call lightly with beautiful tremolo,
The wondrous rivers and mountains in my heart,
The gentle scent only found north of the Great Wall.
Do not say that you hear chilling sorrow in the song.
If you are displeased, it is because
You do not yearn for what is Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-67715088357921532062012-08-13T19:05:00.004-04:002012-08-13T19:05:39.726-04:00What can Brown do for you?
What can brown do for you? So goes UPS's slogan. The answer is, as the color suggests, shit. Take my case today: the estimated delivery time was before 10:30am and the actual time the guy showed up was 5:17pm! Of course no one was home by then. So I submitted a request to hold the package at the facility for pick-up. Then I thought maybe it would be better to have the package delivered to my Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-68169270709659796782011-10-28T23:04:00.000-04:002011-10-28T23:04:48.240-04:00Resolve
A hope begotten at your sight, a resolve made in my mind,
A moth is destined for the flame, for the light.
Aware of the devastation ahead, yet
We no longer act in perfect logic.
Best not to have met, best not to have wished,
Only had we never loved one another.
Take not another step closer,
With every step we sink deeper.
'Tis time's mischief,
That separates our lives.
Longing for you, long isUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-17344855179224704022011-10-24T13:56:00.000-04:002011-10-25T10:37:38.095-04:00Why you should not bother to switch the envelope
You are presented with two envelopes, and are told that one contains twice as much money as the other. You are to choose one envelope and earn the money in it. You pick one envelope, and upon opening it, find that it contains y dollars. You have the option to keep that envelope, or to switch to the other envelope. Should you switch?
Here is the paradox: there is a 1/2 chance that the other Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-40238985932666111042011-10-16T22:11:00.000-04:002011-10-17T00:57:40.676-04:00Three Inches of Heaven
Stopping here, dare not to go on,
Stop the sorrows behind the curtains.
The farewell that you've handwritten on the next page,
Is beyond my power to refuse.
We've taken this road in much haste,
Holding onto false desires.
'Tis too late, 'tis beyond our patience,
To appreciate all that we've left behind,
Magnolia's scent cannot seal our wounds.
Look no more, the sun shine through the clouds in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-60002912303878056522011-01-07T21:42:00.002-05:002011-01-07T22:43:22.270-05:00The Modern ExperienceThe most joyful thing in life is to deal with people who know what they are doing. Take, for example, the dinner tonight at The Modern restaurant. The chef clearly knew what he was doing, for the food was impeccable. But the girl at the coat-check left the deepest impression. She was cuter than the average coat-check girl, with an engaging smile, and she definitely knew what she was doing. The Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-86653106048515246212010-12-28T20:11:00.002-05:002010-12-30T00:18:12.702-05:00Making sphinx work with postgresqlOn my MacPro, PostgreSQL is installed in /Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/. To install sphinx and have it work with PostgreSQL, I need to configure it in the following way:./configure --with-mysql --with-prefix=/usr/local/sphinx --with-pgsql --with-pgsql-includes=/Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/include/ --with-pgsql-libs=/Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/lib/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-16584251099620337842010-12-24T12:21:00.006-05:002011-02-24T09:13:26.781-05:00Getting postgis to work with django (and sphinx)The django-sphinx package does not recognize the postgis backend; one needs to modify the /path/to/djangosphinx/utils/config.py and reinstall it to make the two work together. Add the following to _get_database_engine() in the config.py file:def _get_database_engine(): ... elif 'postgis' in settings.DATABASES['default']['ENGINE']: return 'pgsql'If you are creating a database as the default Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-5056526352846018312010-07-25T22:31:00.003-04:002010-07-25T22:40:37.651-04:00Death of a dreamerWhat happens when a man dies in his own dream? Does he wake up or does he start another dream? It is one of the intriguing questions posed by the movie Inception. I have come close to dying in my own dreams, but I have always managed a narrow escape. This makes me think that death to oneself in a dream is something that simply does not happen. Our survival instinct may have diffused into our Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-64066024739865863342010-03-22T23:33:00.007-04:002010-03-26T13:37:02.524-04:00Obama Care, Not Even WrongThe health care bill passed on Sunday, March 21st, 2010. A historic moment. It will be interesting to observe its consequences in the next decade, a potential gold mine for economists.On the following Monday I had a lunch conversation with a colleague, and the issue of health care was briefly brought up. My colleague said that he just could not understand why anybody could have opposed the bill, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-31660027837950753972010-03-05T23:00:00.008-05:002010-03-06T11:15:20.132-05:00Cheaper expensiveAs I strolled down the Madison Avenue, a sense of indignation assailed me on full scale. The display of excesses in the row of boutiques like La Perla, Oliver Peoples, and Breguet struck me as a manifestation of social inequality. Is there any justice that a bra, a pair of sunglasses, or a watch should cost so much that they are beyond the reach of ordinary hardworking Americans? Why is there notUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-36682943112000366192010-02-21T19:03:00.005-05:002010-02-23T09:50:57.786-05:00Dogs as pet and meatFrom Roger Cohen's Op-Ed in New York Times, Dog Days in China:Another noted a local saying: "when the dog meat is being simmered, even the gods become dizzy with hunger."Growing up in China, I ate a lot of dog meat. It is more flavorful than lamb, a bit chewier, and quite delicious. In New York, my wife and I had a Cocker Spaniel, Tom. When it passed away several years ago, we buried it in our Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-61707607118906310032010-02-21T18:31:00.005-05:002010-02-21T20:55:23.119-05:00The Pursuit of HappinessThe following immortal words of The Declaration of Independence are in peril of misinterpretation:... that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.Note that it is the pursuit of Happiness - not Happiness itself - that is among the unalienable Rights. The Obama administration and the current Democratic Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-41598556836375481872010-02-21T17:49:00.011-05:002010-02-22T08:26:05.616-05:00Math in TaxI just had my taxes done. As I reviewed my tax returns, I noticed the following description on how to figure the limit on itemized deductions (http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch29.html):If your itemized deductions are subject to the limit, the total of all your itemized deductions is reduced by the smaller of the following reduced by two-thirds:Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-48125793367518539492009-11-01T18:26:00.002-05:002009-11-01T18:52:29.842-05:00TurandotUnknowingly we are all in pursuit of Turandot, the cold, vengeful princess of Peking who confronts her suitors with her three riddles. Answer the riddles correctly, you will enjoy the conquest of the heavenly beauty of Turandot, and become the king of the vast land in the East; fail them, you will forfeit your life and have your head chopped off.Is it worth it, to have that singular obsession, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-91963078152088513442009-10-25T01:07:00.005-04:002009-10-25T12:54:26.801-04:00Destiny on the tableMy friend's son turned one today. There was a big party. After the cakes were cut and served to the guests, a few objects were placed on a low coffee table: a pen, symbolizing scholarship; a drumstick, foretelling the life of a musician; two crayons, pointing to artistic creativity; a pink plastic ribbon, embodying longevity; a $20 bill, foreshadowing a career in finance; and a calculator, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-84691510230287363022009-10-15T17:15:00.003-04:002009-10-15T17:35:17.518-04:00Reenact a novel on FacebookHere is a silly but potentially fun game to play on Facebook. Take your favorite novel, say, War and Peace, and for each character, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasia Rostova, etc., register a Facebook page. Next, connect the characters in friendship as they do so in the novel. As you read the novel, each day you will update each character's page with things that happen to the character. Write statements Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-7417117982635486312009-10-14T09:41:00.011-04:002009-10-14T20:21:42.048-04:00Friendship, one bite at a timeIn the movie Fightclub, Norton's nameless character coined the phrase single-serving friends - strangers who share a few hours of flight time, chat, and then part their ways. On Facebook, friends are like bite-sized snacks - their frequent posts and comments alleviate the sense of separation but never satiate the craving for real connection. Just like too much snack can ruin the appetite for a Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-42804915267225812032009-10-09T13:36:00.003-04:002009-10-09T15:34:24.616-04:00A Nobel SurPrizeIn debating whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize after only 9 months as the president of United States, it behooves a re-reading of Alfred Nobel's original will:one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-2897597110565609992009-10-04T20:48:00.000-04:002009-10-04T20:48:21.394-04:00The Making of a Great ScientistWhen I first got into science, I thought that it was about coming up with brilliant and evolutionary ideas and the rest would come together by itself. After ten years in research, however, while being by no means a great scientist, I did learn a few things about the making of one, which I would like to share with you. It's an immodest thing to do. But anonymous modesty never serves anyone. So Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-79620184395520328632009-09-22T11:13:00.005-04:002009-09-22T11:33:25.790-04:00Facebook prizeNetflix just awarded a cool million to a 7-member team who managed to devise algorithms that improved the prediction of user's ratings of movies by 10% compared to Netflix's own Cinematch algorithm, the endgame of a 4-year long contest (see NYTimes).Isn't it time that Facebook sets up a contest of its own? With its database of human connections, Facebook can challenge the machine learning Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-29327850552837604592009-09-20T15:52:00.003-04:002009-09-20T16:28:37.742-04:00Mobile human computingI am a big fan of Luis von Ahn's work on human computing. The idea of human computing is to harness the idle human brain power to perform computational tasks that so far have eluded the computers, such as image labeling (see google's image labeler) and recognition of old text (check out reCaptcha). The clever part of von Ahn's approach is to engage the human brain through an entertaining game or Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-44881145812702234052009-09-08T18:37:00.009-04:002009-09-27T17:42:21.195-04:00First time pheasantryThe first bird got away. It flew away so fast that before either Yang or I opened the safety on our guns, it had crossed the grassfield and safely alighted in the woods far beyond the reach of any 12-gauge shotgun. We followed its flight path with our eyes. It was a beautiful male bird with a long tail and a dash of red on its head. We were relieved that we did not have to kill so early in the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-39313161785056185282009-08-26T14:21:00.004-04:002009-08-26T18:20:19.424-04:00On the phone with VerizonI do not own any land-based phone line, but my parents-in-law still use Verizon. Recently their phone stopped working, and Verizon sent a technician to fix the problem. Having revived the phone service from outside the house, the technician suggested that he could also change a wall jack in the bathroom. Why not, my father-in-law thought. So he got a new water-proof jack in the bathroom.To their Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797194.post-49784005489635274282009-08-24T13:51:00.006-04:002010-02-21T23:42:02.329-05:00When God retires from heavenMen used to believe that distinct laws governed the heavenly bodies and the earthly objects .The motion of the planets followed different rules than the motion of a catapulted stone. The genius of Issac Newton changed this view forever. Gravity, the first universal force discovered, follows the same inverse square law in heaven as on earth. Much of modern theoretical physics strive to unify all Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1