Man, Help Thyself!

Yes, how can Beethoven not be an atheist! Listen, Man, Help Thyself! and listen to the 5th. not one boring moment, it's overflowing with human vitality, a celebration of human power! just like strauss' tharathustra, his inspiring music opens the new age for human endeavour!

question

just what the world needs. another 3 baroque church pieces in major keys. how am i going to survive this quarter of symphonic chorus! the level of enthusiasm caused by these pieces i see in the fellow chorus members is unbelievable. just unbelievable. considering the 92-93 theist proportion in the american population, this is probably not surprising. which makes me wonder, when strauss' tharathustra was first composed, how did he manage to find an orchestra that was willing to premier this atheist work? (oh by the way, why is this work so often linked to football games???)

went for voice lesson audition. there were 3 guys and 2 dozens girls, all soprani. well, nothing unusual. so i don't get priority cos i'm neither a major nor a minor. let's wait and see. :)

at the price of 1 chipped nail, 1 cut on the thumb, 3 scratches, 1 sore back and 4 paralysed limbs, or maybe it's all of the above times 2, our new apartment currently looks like this:

you see prints of monet's paintings everywhere. you see them on the wall of a home, almost any home; you see them on sale in a school poster fair, or any fair; you see them in people's packed luggage; you see them in dumpsters just as often.

yeah indeed, jade, sch is like the best thing that can happen in the near future. but actually, the rental was not that bad on the hind sight. if not for the flood, i would never have seen a roach, who was taking a leisure walk on my cupboard in the kitchen, suddenly having suicidal intention after taken a glance at the waste water, subsenquently jump into the water and die after a 2 second attempt to swim. he floated the whole night in the oil layer until the plumbers came in the morning. when told of the story, the uncle living downstairs, whose pipe was choked causing this whole incident, told me that roaches don't swim very well so they're bound to die if they ever jump into water. so that was fun.

and i moved to a new place, almost died assembling all that cheapo furniture from ikea...

Bad Day

so there is actually such a thing as bad luck. the lift in the apartment building isn't working. my supervisor thinks i'm ignoring him too much. expt fails. kitchen flooded with water leaking out of the waste pipe. i don't even know why these things happen to me. what the f-.

well. at least i met up with 3 dear friends. and what a lovely evening catching up with them, and laugh at stupid jokes. as usual. and laughed. and laughed. wonder why we don't laugh like that any more..

you never know how much a dinner with an old friend can cheer you up. even if all expts fail. or anything. really. like going back to those days with hesteric laughters at idiotic jokes. ah. so fun man. you think you've been out of touch for a long while, but not really. happie!

the internationale

we learnt that, as part of our communist education. but it's really a worthy goal. how well written, and ahead of its time!
this is a revised english translation by billy bragg. french version


Billy Bragg's Revision(listen)
First stanza

Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.
  So come brothers and sisters,
  For the struggle carries on.
  The Internationale,
  Unites the world in song.
  So comrades, come rally,
  For this is the time and place!
  The international ideal,
  Unites the human race.


Second stanza
Let no one build walls to divide us,
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone.
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us,
We'll live together or we'll die alone.
In our world poisoned by exploitation,
Those who have taken, now they must give!
And end the vanity of nations,
We've but one Earth on which to live.
  So come brothers and sisters,
  For the struggle carries on.
  The Internationale,
  Unites the world in song.
  So comrades, come rally,
  For this is the time and place!
  The international ideal,
  Unites the human race.


Third stanza
And so begins the final drama,
In the streets and in the fields.
We stand unbowed before their armour,
We defy their guns and shields!
When we fight, provoked by their aggression,
Let us be inspired by like and love.
For though they offer us concessions,
Change will not come from above!
  So come brothers and sisters,
  For the struggle carries on.
  The Internationale,
  Unites the world in song.
  So comrades, come rally,
  For this is the time and place!
  The international ideal,
  Unites the human race.

schopenhauer on women

read the most ridiculously chauvinistic essay i've ever encountered.
schopenhauer's opinion on everything else is so brilliant and beautiful. but this one. man. although i understand the era he was in when he wrote it. still...

silent syllables

many languages have syllables that are not pronounced. the most obvious one being french (?). what's the significance/uses of a silent syllable? as i understand it, the more combinations there are of a particular set of alphabets, the more meaning the language can express. silent syllables--redundancy--regeneration of language?
pls enlighten me.

what could be more fantastic than a chinese wikipedia?

info organisation

consolidation of information is obviously a new trend of the cyber-space. after all that rise and fall of dot com economy, and the boom of information in the last one or two decade, data is flooding the space uncontrolled. however, the potentially chaotic prospect is actually being cleared up by various effort to consolidate and organising the free data out there. it's same as editing a cannon or an encyclopedia. such efforts include imdb for movie a database, wikipedia for explanation of terms and objects, major ebook sites for ecopies of literature, various biology databases for the organisation and extraction of relevant information such as proteomic and genomic sequences, and faculty of 1000 for the systematic recommendation of biology papers published in the year. with the explosive manner in which information is generated everyday, these consolidations hold much promise for the prospect of a neater and much more user-friendly cyber space for us.

the approach that wikipedia has taken is especially effective. it allows the user to edit and supply information to the pool, making it especially complete and comprehensive. interactive building of sites looks like the way to go!