Thursday, December 27, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
How did zebras get their stripes?
anyways, it's genetic.
"Bard's hypothesis that all the stripes originally are the same width and are generated at different times in the three species also explains the numbers of stripes in each species. The common zebra has 26 stripes per side, and the 3-week Equus embryo is generally 11 mm long. This gives a spacing of about 0.42 mm per stripe. If the 43 stripes of the mountain zebra were generated in the 17 mm embryo of the 3.75 week zebra, the spacing is also 0.40 mm per stripe. At week 5, the embryo is 32 mm long, and the 80 stripes would yield the spacing of 0.40 mm per stripe. Therefore, the striping patterns of the common zebra, mountain zebra, and imperial zebra can be explained if the stripes are generated 0.4 mm apart in the 3-, 4-, and 5-week embryos, respectively."
read MORE.
and, when i was looking for patterning in zebras, i found this:
killing a victim by imprisoning him for homosexuality and causing him great psychological distress seems to be a thing that the british court was very good at doing: Looks like they killed turing pretty much the same way they did it to wilde.
the law: Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885
"Bard's hypothesis that all the stripes originally are the same width and are generated at different times in the three species also explains the numbers of stripes in each species. The common zebra has 26 stripes per side, and the 3-week Equus embryo is generally 11 mm long. This gives a spacing of about 0.42 mm per stripe. If the 43 stripes of the mountain zebra were generated in the 17 mm embryo of the 3.75 week zebra, the spacing is also 0.40 mm per stripe. At week 5, the embryo is 32 mm long, and the 80 stripes would yield the spacing of 0.40 mm per stripe. Therefore, the striping patterns of the common zebra, mountain zebra, and imperial zebra can be explained if the stripes are generated 0.4 mm apart in the 3-, 4-, and 5-week embryos, respectively."
read MORE.
and, when i was looking for patterning in zebras, i found this:
killing a victim by imprisoning him for homosexuality and causing him great psychological distress seems to be a thing that the british court was very good at doing: Looks like they killed turing pretty much the same way they did it to wilde.
the law: Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885
Monday, December 24, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Lust Caution [色·戒]
it's been a while since the movie Lust Caution has been in theatre everywhere, and everybody has been talking about it quite a bit. the focus of the discussion was always around the cut piece of sex scene, or the confusing love story between the girl wang jiazhi and her colleague, or that between her and Mr. Yee. I feel that this is not being just to the story or the movie. i haven't seen the movie, and i'm not sure if i ever will. but i think lee ang being the purist he is, tends to stick to the more beautiful and tragic side of the original creation, so probably won't deviate from the author's intention too much. i feel that the intention of the short story, written by my favorite popular writer zhang ailing, was not so much as to describe a love story, even less so to talk about lust. zhang ailing's works usually explore people's, especially women's emotions, introspections, ambiguous and subtle interactions and a lot of times love between men and women. but they were all bitter, lonely, tragic, and the "love stories" told were very often unpredictable, undescribable or unsure. very few occasions would we find her telling a story about a love that she or the heroine/hero was certain to exist. so zhang ailing's stories, while thought to be always about love, may as well be taken as always about the absence of love.
i feel that Lust Caution is such a story. the lack of compassion and personal relations between the revolutionary youths planning on the assassination was just as plain as that between the wives of the rich officers/businessmen. the lack of genuinity amongst the rich is not surprising, or maybe is even expected. but many in the audience were shocked by the same dynamics in the group on the "good side". the rightfully idealistic young men who sent Jiazhi on the dangerous mission couldn't care less about what she was about to go through. we have seen this and we have taken this for granted for as long as we remember. the poem goes:"生命诚可贵,爱情价更高.若为自由故,两者皆可抛," (indeed life is very precious, but love weighs so much more. however, if it was for the sake of freedom, both life and love could be abandoned. ) in the struggle against invaders it was no doubt that love had no place. and it was not like the students all had to suppress love, as we can see, love simply didn't occur in some - their little minds were too busy with lofty ideals and grand plots to realize them. and they would do what it wook and they were cold hearted. in contrast, wang jiazhi was a young woman who had hoped for love, but ended up getting confused and lonely and damaged in the bigger plot in which love was not set aside for her. the pain that was inflicted upon her would not be obvious unless looked at especially from her point of view, i.e. from the point of view of the female story writer zhang ailing. because, no, history books don't tell you all these personal struggles.
it was in the general lack of love that mr. yee's small little expression of emotion feels huge. and it was the fact that yee's small gesture feels huge that emphasizes the general atmosphere that lacked love. the diamond ring was an excellent use of symbolism. in modern day society, very few girls will be even assured of the opposite party's love by the gesture of giving a diamond ring, not to mention risking their lives to save the them. a diamond ring, albeit expensive, is a materialistic expression of emotions. but because it is seemingly such an un-special gift, we see how low Jiazhi's threshold for care and concern is. and it is therefore meaningless to discuss how much yee loves her. or how much she loves yee. because, there is no love story to talk about, at least not in the conventional sense. the ring was merely a thread of warmth that both of them desperately cling onto, in that indifferent time and place. it's difficult to call that love. and sex between them, well they were only human. in Lust Caution, instead of looking relentlessly for a love story, i'd rather see it as it is and savor the tragic beauty.
zhang ailing lived in a particular time, and she is of a particular personality. these are the reason for the particular charm in her stories, and therefore they should be treated quite differently.
read the original story in chinese here
i feel that Lust Caution is such a story. the lack of compassion and personal relations between the revolutionary youths planning on the assassination was just as plain as that between the wives of the rich officers/businessmen. the lack of genuinity amongst the rich is not surprising, or maybe is even expected. but many in the audience were shocked by the same dynamics in the group on the "good side". the rightfully idealistic young men who sent Jiazhi on the dangerous mission couldn't care less about what she was about to go through. we have seen this and we have taken this for granted for as long as we remember. the poem goes:"生命诚可贵,爱情价更高.若为自由故,两者皆可抛," (indeed life is very precious, but love weighs so much more. however, if it was for the sake of freedom, both life and love could be abandoned. ) in the struggle against invaders it was no doubt that love had no place. and it was not like the students all had to suppress love, as we can see, love simply didn't occur in some - their little minds were too busy with lofty ideals and grand plots to realize them. and they would do what it wook and they were cold hearted. in contrast, wang jiazhi was a young woman who had hoped for love, but ended up getting confused and lonely and damaged in the bigger plot in which love was not set aside for her. the pain that was inflicted upon her would not be obvious unless looked at especially from her point of view, i.e. from the point of view of the female story writer zhang ailing. because, no, history books don't tell you all these personal struggles.
it was in the general lack of love that mr. yee's small little expression of emotion feels huge. and it was the fact that yee's small gesture feels huge that emphasizes the general atmosphere that lacked love. the diamond ring was an excellent use of symbolism. in modern day society, very few girls will be even assured of the opposite party's love by the gesture of giving a diamond ring, not to mention risking their lives to save the them. a diamond ring, albeit expensive, is a materialistic expression of emotions. but because it is seemingly such an un-special gift, we see how low Jiazhi's threshold for care and concern is. and it is therefore meaningless to discuss how much yee loves her. or how much she loves yee. because, there is no love story to talk about, at least not in the conventional sense. the ring was merely a thread of warmth that both of them desperately cling onto, in that indifferent time and place. it's difficult to call that love. and sex between them, well they were only human. in Lust Caution, instead of looking relentlessly for a love story, i'd rather see it as it is and savor the tragic beauty.
zhang ailing lived in a particular time, and she is of a particular personality. these are the reason for the particular charm in her stories, and therefore they should be treated quite differently.
read the original story in chinese here
Thursday, December 20, 2007
publich research, who has a say?
ok, this is so funny i want to put it here. it's from the same page talked about in the last post:
Public control could be a nightmare for researchers
Dan Graur
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204-5001, USA
Nature 450, 1156 (20 December 2007) | doi:10.1038/4501156b; Published online 19 December 2007
Sir
Last night I had a nightmare. In my dream, all the recommendations made by Pierre-Benoit Joly and Arie Rip in their Essay 'A timely harvest' (Nature 450, 174; doi:10.1038/450174a 2007) became a reality here in the United States. The public were consulted and actively engaged in practical scientific matters.
I dreamed that the dos and don'ts of science and research were dictated democratically by the American public, of whom 73% believe in miracles, 68% in angels, 61% in the devil and 70% in the survival of the soul after death (see http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=618). In my dream, this majority dictated through vigorous 'public engagement' that science should deal with virgin birth, the thermodynamics of hell, the aerodynamics of angel wings, and the physiology and haematology of resurrection.
Suddenly, I found myself in my old lab. There my students were not dealing with the prevalence of gene duplication in bacterial evolution, but were engaged in a heated argument on the virtues of old-Earth versus new-Earth creationism. I woke up in a cold sweat, thinking of what Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's wife reputedly said when confronted with Darwin's theory: "Let us hope it is not true. But if it is, let us hope it does not become widely known."
If Jolie and Rip's proposal for public engagement is workable, let's hope no one ever finds this out.
(and it's wrong of me to put the whole of this article in my blog. but most of people do not have nature subscription :( and i hope dr. graur and npg forgive me. )
it's a very relevant issue. yesterday, i was having a discussion with two of my friends about the singapore's biomedical policies, and the mission of Singapore's research funding agencies. we didn't reach any conclusions about how just it was for anybody other than scientists to dictate the directions of publicly funded research. whose opinions matter in research, as yf pointed out, depends on the mission of the particular institutions, and it not only concerns the direction of the research done per se, but also consequentially determines the executive leadership in the research institutions, and directly affects the way an institution is organized and run. if the mission of a funding agency is to do science, clearly the scientists, who know the science the best, should be the ones determining where the research should go, and should play central role in the leadership of the institutions. whereas in the dreadful situation described by the article, if you subscribe to the logic that because America is a democratic society, science should represent the knowledge the people want to acquire, then it is arguable that science is justly used to study the aerodynamics of angels' wings. and it wouldn't be inappropriate for the leadership of NIH to be fundamentalist christians. in the case of Singapore, because of the pragmatic nature of the society, the mission for the research institutions are stated as promoting economic growth. hence, the direction of the research will be determined by the economic planning section of the government, and the leadership will be a group of management-trained executives.
how beneficial is any one arrangement is debatable though. as long as the scientists insist that they know the science best and the people paying for the research or governing the state claim that they know how to best spend the money, the discussion will not conclude. most people will tend to take a middle ground i imagine, to say (like yc did say) that there should be space for both parties to have a say in the research. However, I still stand by the opinion that the open-endedness nature of scientific discoveries requires that scientists be allowed maximal autonomy. stale and still true is that no one knows what will come out of any studies. and it's not like none of the scientists cares about the survival of the species, or the country's economy, for that matter. some scientists are interested in basic research, some in applied research. therefore, it's a fair mixture of people and interests. I don't see an urgent need for smearing public opinion in their faces, let alone dictating the research. However, a quality control system that puts scientists' progress under public scrutiny is quite just, although it'll involve the high complexity of panel organization and selection.
Public control could be a nightmare for researchers
Dan Graur
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204-5001, USA
Nature 450, 1156 (20 December 2007) | doi:10.1038/4501156b; Published online 19 December 2007
Sir
Last night I had a nightmare. In my dream, all the recommendations made by Pierre-Benoit Joly and Arie Rip in their Essay 'A timely harvest' (Nature 450, 174; doi:10.1038/450174a 2007) became a reality here in the United States. The public were consulted and actively engaged in practical scientific matters.
I dreamed that the dos and don'ts of science and research were dictated democratically by the American public, of whom 73% believe in miracles, 68% in angels, 61% in the devil and 70% in the survival of the soul after death (see http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=618). In my dream, this majority dictated through vigorous 'public engagement' that science should deal with virgin birth, the thermodynamics of hell, the aerodynamics of angel wings, and the physiology and haematology of resurrection.
Suddenly, I found myself in my old lab. There my students were not dealing with the prevalence of gene duplication in bacterial evolution, but were engaged in a heated argument on the virtues of old-Earth versus new-Earth creationism. I woke up in a cold sweat, thinking of what Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's wife reputedly said when confronted with Darwin's theory: "Let us hope it is not true. But if it is, let us hope it does not become widely known."
If Jolie and Rip's proposal for public engagement is workable, let's hope no one ever finds this out.
(and it's wrong of me to put the whole of this article in my blog. but most of people do not have nature subscription :( and i hope dr. graur and npg forgive me. )
it's a very relevant issue. yesterday, i was having a discussion with two of my friends about the singapore's biomedical policies, and the mission of Singapore's research funding agencies. we didn't reach any conclusions about how just it was for anybody other than scientists to dictate the directions of publicly funded research. whose opinions matter in research, as yf pointed out, depends on the mission of the particular institutions, and it not only concerns the direction of the research done per se, but also consequentially determines the executive leadership in the research institutions, and directly affects the way an institution is organized and run. if the mission of a funding agency is to do science, clearly the scientists, who know the science the best, should be the ones determining where the research should go, and should play central role in the leadership of the institutions. whereas in the dreadful situation described by the article, if you subscribe to the logic that because America is a democratic society, science should represent the knowledge the people want to acquire, then it is arguable that science is justly used to study the aerodynamics of angels' wings. and it wouldn't be inappropriate for the leadership of NIH to be fundamentalist christians. in the case of Singapore, because of the pragmatic nature of the society, the mission for the research institutions are stated as promoting economic growth. hence, the direction of the research will be determined by the economic planning section of the government, and the leadership will be a group of management-trained executives.
how beneficial is any one arrangement is debatable though. as long as the scientists insist that they know the science best and the people paying for the research or governing the state claim that they know how to best spend the money, the discussion will not conclude. most people will tend to take a middle ground i imagine, to say (like yc did say) that there should be space for both parties to have a say in the research. However, I still stand by the opinion that the open-endedness nature of scientific discoveries requires that scientists be allowed maximal autonomy. stale and still true is that no one knows what will come out of any studies. and it's not like none of the scientists cares about the survival of the species, or the country's economy, for that matter. some scientists are interested in basic research, some in applied research. therefore, it's a fair mixture of people and interests. I don't see an urgent need for smearing public opinion in their faces, let alone dictating the research. However, a quality control system that puts scientists' progress under public scrutiny is quite just, although it'll involve the high complexity of panel organization and selection.
Come all ye scientists, busy and exhausted. O come ye, O come ye, out of the lab
nature just published a short study on how hard pple work around christmas... lol..
Read more here if you have access to nature.com. such a pain in the ass... shouldn't they make these short articles free?
** on a hind sight, because the rest of the plate looks interesting too, i decided to do this:
Read more here if you have access to nature.com. such a pain in the ass... shouldn't they make these short articles free?
** on a hind sight, because the rest of the plate looks interesting too, i decided to do this:
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
well i have 12 min while waiting to go home, so i thought i'd blog.
so many things happened recently that i think i've stopped being bored by my life. suddenly it's a mixture of delight, sadness, surprises, puzzles, discomfort at once, like a melodrama.
the day we went to hear our juniors carol at esplanade, the old farts got so nostalgic that we couldn't help but burst into songs in the city link mall, attracting much attention from strangers. and when we sang les fleurs, mohan mentioned that he liked calme des nuits better and joce said that we screwed it up. it's like a title from my deepest dreams :p... i honestly couldn't remember any line from that song, even after he sang a couple verses from both bass and sop parts. and when i came back, i searched in itunes store for that song, and found the cd that i listened to again and again in the whole of j2 and j3, that faure's requiem by monteverdi choir, with a load of other french choral work. calme des nuits, les fleurs, des pas dans l'allee, dieu! qu'il a fait bon regarder!, trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis... and it felt as if they had disappeared. complete erasure (thanks man, i learnt this word.) i wonder what happened between now and then. of all the times i missed jc times, this time was the most surprising. how is it possible that i totally forgot about half a dozen songs that used to be my favourites! i even translated the lyrics of trois beaux oiseaux into chinese... it's such a mystery....sigh
anyway,
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder
la gracieuse bonne et belle;
pour les grans biens que sont en elle
chascun est prest de la loüer.
Qui se pourrait d'elle lasser?
Toujours sa beauté renouvelle.
Par de ça, ne de là, la mer
nescay dame ne damoiselle
qui soit en tous bien parfais telle.
C'est une songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder.
so many things happened recently that i think i've stopped being bored by my life. suddenly it's a mixture of delight, sadness, surprises, puzzles, discomfort at once, like a melodrama.
the day we went to hear our juniors carol at esplanade, the old farts got so nostalgic that we couldn't help but burst into songs in the city link mall, attracting much attention from strangers. and when we sang les fleurs, mohan mentioned that he liked calme des nuits better and joce said that we screwed it up. it's like a title from my deepest dreams :p... i honestly couldn't remember any line from that song, even after he sang a couple verses from both bass and sop parts. and when i came back, i searched in itunes store for that song, and found the cd that i listened to again and again in the whole of j2 and j3, that faure's requiem by monteverdi choir, with a load of other french choral work. calme des nuits, les fleurs, des pas dans l'allee, dieu! qu'il a fait bon regarder!, trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis... and it felt as if they had disappeared. complete erasure (thanks man, i learnt this word.) i wonder what happened between now and then. of all the times i missed jc times, this time was the most surprising. how is it possible that i totally forgot about half a dozen songs that used to be my favourites! i even translated the lyrics of trois beaux oiseaux into chinese... it's such a mystery....sigh
anyway,
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder
la gracieuse bonne et belle;
pour les grans biens que sont en elle
chascun est prest de la loüer.
Qui se pourrait d'elle lasser?
Toujours sa beauté renouvelle.
Par de ça, ne de là, la mer
nescay dame ne damoiselle
qui soit en tous bien parfais telle.
C'est une songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Just one of those things
because of the puppies' request for me to play choral songs in a certain hotel room in vienna, i dug out our syf finals recordings from eons ago. i haven't listened to these in years literally, and this following song in particular brought me to a smile (yeah, like this :) )
It was just
one of those things
It was just
one of those crazy flings
one of those bells
that now and then rings
just one of those things
it was just one of those nights
just one of those fabulous flights
a trip to the moon
on gossamer wings
just one of those things
if we thought a bit
of the end of it
when we started painting the town
we'd have been aware
that our love affair
was too hot to cool down
so goodbye and amen
here's hoping we meet now and then
it was great fun
but it was just one of those things
our performance wasn't great haha, rhythm was all over the place and some notes were obviously out. but it was so delightful and there was so much life in it. so much so that i can't help singing along whenever i played it again. (and each time i have a mental movie clip of toh trying to demo to us the sound and look of particular words. "jaaaahst" "rinnnnnggg" "baell" "ok!" "tres bien!") and the tone was totally different from the previous songs, probably just cos we were finishing up the competition performance with that song. hahaha.. but yeah, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things... ironically now that i'm reading the lyrics again, i realise that when we were singing it i didn't even think about the meaning of the words at all. and now it strikes me how interesting and true the words are. lol... and i probably don't have the energy and time to sing it anymore.
anyways, so the choral part of me hasn't actually died. and it's nice to know that :)
It was just
one of those things
It was just
one of those crazy flings
one of those bells
that now and then rings
just one of those things
it was just one of those nights
just one of those fabulous flights
a trip to the moon
on gossamer wings
just one of those things
if we thought a bit
of the end of it
when we started painting the town
we'd have been aware
that our love affair
was too hot to cool down
so goodbye and amen
here's hoping we meet now and then
it was great fun
but it was just one of those things
our performance wasn't great haha, rhythm was all over the place and some notes were obviously out. but it was so delightful and there was so much life in it. so much so that i can't help singing along whenever i played it again. (and each time i have a mental movie clip of toh trying to demo to us the sound and look of particular words. "jaaaahst" "rinnnnnggg" "baell" "ok!" "tres bien!") and the tone was totally different from the previous songs, probably just cos we were finishing up the competition performance with that song. hahaha.. but yeah, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things... ironically now that i'm reading the lyrics again, i realise that when we were singing it i didn't even think about the meaning of the words at all. and now it strikes me how interesting and true the words are. lol... and i probably don't have the energy and time to sing it anymore.
anyways, so the choral part of me hasn't actually died. and it's nice to know that :)
Saturday, December 08, 2007
I haven't blogged about my trip.. :P
I am sitting in a room at Hotel Savoy, Vienna now. Through the window, I can see windows of perhaps other hotel rooms, or some random apartment rooms. They are very ugly. I wish I had the view of Mozart's apartment. I walked by this particular window when I was on the tour there, through which I could see a curved alley, with white apartment buildings that had pretty window sils on both sides. that itself looked like a sketch of some sort.
(i wonder what mozart would've written if he had lived to old age.)
(hmm, i need to go for breakfast. i think i should blog about the trip later)
the company i have on this trip is fabulous. even though things changed quite a bit, getting together to sing is still a joy. and it's a wonder how the people clicked despite the age gaps. (there's a reason why these people chose to stick with toh...) this is perhaps the happiest part of the trip.
anyways. breakfast time!
I am sitting in a room at Hotel Savoy, Vienna now. Through the window, I can see windows of perhaps other hotel rooms, or some random apartment rooms. They are very ugly. I wish I had the view of Mozart's apartment. I walked by this particular window when I was on the tour there, through which I could see a curved alley, with white apartment buildings that had pretty window sils on both sides. that itself looked like a sketch of some sort.
(i wonder what mozart would've written if he had lived to old age.)
(hmm, i need to go for breakfast. i think i should blog about the trip later)
the company i have on this trip is fabulous. even though things changed quite a bit, getting together to sing is still a joy. and it's a wonder how the people clicked despite the age gaps. (there's a reason why these people chose to stick with toh...) this is perhaps the happiest part of the trip.
anyways. breakfast time!
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
update: a purposeful life
I'm trying to gather thoughts for my statement. it's kind of in a reverse order. i should prob write the actual thing the other way...
What do I want to do?
1. The science part: Learn about neural substrates of basic behaviors in simple organisms
b. Of course I am fascinated by the complexity of my own mental life, but it is way to difficult to study thoroughly. so take back a step, studying simpler organisms are good enough. chances are the principles involved in making me walk towards and eat a red apple when i'm hungry is conserved with those that make a fly fly towards and suck on a red apple. (it could of course be convergent evolution and mechanisms might not be totally the same, but the principles are worth chasing after)Plus I don’t want to spend 2 years making a mouse. (:( i'm sorry AH.) therefore I only want to look at basic organisms:
2. The engineering part: Developing new molecular tools to push the boundary of questions I can ask
3. The career path part: I want to eventually teach (everybody will be making this point)
What have I done?
My life stories
(ha. and i learnt how to use blockquote typing this entry)
What do I want to do?
1. The science part: Learn about neural substrates of basic behaviors in simple organisms
a. basic reward/punishment driven behaviors. i think these behaviors are evolutionarily fundamental, being the minimal and crucial requirement for survival machines(dawkins). and simple enough to understand in our life time. they are probably hugely conserved, so the comparison between species could reveal quite a bit of insights into the principles of protein functions, cellular behaviors and network organization and properties. before comparison comes the need to understand.i. to understand how a machine survives by responding differently towards the two types of external signals such as:Me sees manuka Honey and tells myself: This is good stuff. Go for it,
or
Me sees an unripen orange and tells myself: This is bad bad for you. Avoid it.
ii. So what Charles does is interesting in this aspect. Sensory system. The first relay in the whole “I want to eat THIS” activity. So goes for Richard Axel. And the pheromone people. the chemistry is fascinating. think rhodopsin. and the coding is cool. think olfactory system. implications of the sensory system other than for the pure sake of understanding it: prosthetics. eletronic retina. new cochlea. blah blah.
iii. But motor is also fun, just difficult to do I think. Cos it comes out of the black box, which is the brain. you can't quite see the input.. so i dont' think you can control the variables as well as in sensory system. but the coding is way cool(think how flies fly and how fish swim and how easily we walk around, while our technologies are barely good enough to make a robot who stands on two legs), although the chemistry at the end of motoneurons isn't. implications: again, prosthetics. new legs. new arm. new vocal chord.
iv. Central… em… I don’t know. both input and output seem difficult to control for. but this steps on what people most fascinatedly relate to neuroscience: things like emotions and consciousness. i don't think we are ready to do it yet. (of course according to the churchlands, maybe these things don't even exist.) but more basic than emotions, integration of information, such as sensory-motor integration at the CNS level is an very important and interesting thing, but still a bit too difficult for a phd project. implications: things that meddle with your perceptions and intentions. matrix at last...muahahahah.
vi. both the biochemistry and the computation involved in the functionality of the brain are intriguing. so i want to do both. which means, in terms of methodology i'm open to both molecular biology/biochemical studies AND electrophysiology. of course, both would be combined to new imaging techniques...
v. I'm not too thrilled about the metabolism and upkeep of the nervous system. such as neural stem cells, cancer and its immune system. they aren't what's so special about the brain and its pods, but some housekeeping phenomena that happen all over the body. so i don't quite care about alzheimer's for example. when you get old, nature tells you to die by giving your dominant mutations that kill your cells. and your proteins don't fold properly. and your cells degenerate. and you go senile. and that's that.
b. Of course I am fascinated by the complexity of my own mental life, but it is way to difficult to study thoroughly. so take back a step, studying simpler organisms are good enough. chances are the principles involved in making me walk towards and eat a red apple when i'm hungry is conserved with those that make a fly fly towards and suck on a red apple. (it could of course be convergent evolution and mechanisms might not be totally the same, but the principles are worth chasing after)Plus I don’t want to spend 2 years making a mouse. (:( i'm sorry AH.) therefore I only want to look at basic organisms:
i. Flies good. and we live in the same environment.
ii. Fishies good. and they have notochords. but the genetics sucks.
iii. But not as basic as chemotaxis in bacteria, cos I think those are sad. Even nanorods have chemotaxis
iv. even worms seem too simple. at least flies look like aircrafts, not just some tubes that lie around and have sex only
2. The engineering part: Developing new molecular tools to push the boundary of questions I can ask
a. Pretty things! (seeing is believing. - teacher)i. Chemical biology. What Roger Tsien does is tremendously inspiring. I want to do what he does but I probably won't be able to do the chemistry (the prospect of learning some chemistry during my phd is rather dim..)
ii. New mol bio strategies. Lichtman’s brainbow mouse is quite cool. The molecular biology is rather complex, but the idea is simple. And original. I think this bit I can do. Without having to do chemistry part time.
iii. Which leads the discussion into huge data sets and computers
b. Infomatics…i. We need more pple in imagics. Data processing should be automated. So that I can use it. I don’t have to learn programming to make use of the brilliance of computer pple but picking up a language doesn’t hurt (and I have been saying this for ages.) and being in a lab that has computer pple sure is good. (ok I see this point is lost)
3. The career path part: I want to eventually teach (everybody will be making this point)
a. I want to inspire just like how my various teachers and mentors inspired me.
b. I want to stay in academia cos I like ivory tower. It keeps the noise away.
c. I think I will like young pple. they are fun and random.
What have I done?
In secondary school, i studied the sciences. but it was not until university that i started to really appreciate the intricate beauty of biology. the most fundamental things i learnt from bio classes was the central dogma. gene functions and regulations. protein structures and functions. cell components and their behaviour. and then, because i was also particularly intrigued by the nervous system, i took neuro classes. In those classes i learnt what's inside the brain and some equations trying to model what happens in the brain. and then, genetic tools people use. ways people study genes, proteins, cells, systems and the whole animal. also learnt how to do recording (and that was very fun) of the action potentials.
then of course, while transmitting knowledge to the students, the professors can't really avoid imparting their philosophical stands on the kids too. after all i think my undergraduate education strengthened my physicalist materialist world view. main lessons i got from school:1. Matters are made of atoms.
2. DNA is life.
3. Our mental life is brain chemistry and nothing more.
chemistry and physics kind of made my life more interesting. but not the most useful in my current endeavour. maybe one day i will be able to use principles from other fields to solve problems in biology. the lessons at least made it possible to understand sparingly what my friends from other subjects are talking about. in fact discussing stuff with peers from other fields with completely different perspectives and experiences prove to the most inspiring and enriching activity for me nowadays.
(sociology/philosphy/history/arts helped me understand day to day life and human species as a whole and made me a lot more open minded. hugely enjoyable things... but except churchland's class, they aren't particularly useful to work..the music minor helped me understand that it was after all very right of me not to choose music as a career haha. so i don't think the admission pple are gonna care about this.)
and then there was the lab experiences... i did a bunch of failed or near-failed experiments. and through all those, i learnt generally how to keep flies and fish alive. i learnt some rudimentary genetics in flies and fish.i kind of made a trangenic fly, and am now learning how to make transgenic fish. i did some molecular cloning and am still doing it. i have put DNA constructs into flies, cells, an fish. i have tried procedures such as immunostaining, in situ, real time pcr, transient expression experiments in fish, with varying degrees of success. and i took some pictures on confocal microscopes. that's hell of a microcope.. haha..
in the labs, in one of them in particular, i got quite 'wowed' by the scientists i met. these people hang around the lab most of the time, like it was a second home or something... i had the pleasure of witnessing how they plan clever experiments and do them with great enthusiam and great caution and tremendous ambition. and how they got excited by a huge range of things from principles of multiphoton excitation, to why tannin tastes astringent (of course, strictly astringency should be defined as a tactile sensation as opposed a taste), to why there are maps of representations in the brain, to watching live cam streaming a water hole somewhere in africa all day. it was a bloody cool community. a lot of work, a lot of fun.
seminars that i went to in undergraduate years were quite a highlight of my life then. apart from the cheese and punch, a great proportion of the talks are actually very exciting. some tell funny stories (esp the behaviour ones), some talk about new and never heard of techniques being developed. some raise controversial objections to existing theories. such as greenspan's micro evolution talk...most speakers try to pack way too much stuff into the short short 1 hour talk, so sometimes my brain was struggling to catch on most of the time. (on a side point, i always thought it was my problem, cos i didn't know enough.. but my PI now also complained about how american scientists like to pack overflowing amount of materials into talks and pple can't follow.) and then the debate between the challenging audience and the speaker was very exciting to watch.. it was almost like a sport lol...
through my various attachments (seriously, bless the labs and my incredible mentors who took me and endured my stupidity and clumsiness and inefficiency) i learnt more about biology, cool techniques, problem solving approaches and the working of the scientific enterprise.
My life stories
i could write about my travelling and studying. i guess. but the specific things i did don't matter. what's the most important thing about all these diverse experiences and exposure is that they make me open minded. and being open minded, i came to believe, is an quality indispensible to creative thinking and a rich life. as the chinese proverb says, read 10000 books, and travel 10000 miles. for the betterment of me as a person.
(ha. and i learnt how to use blockquote typing this entry)
Monday, November 12, 2007
Chicks That Look Like Dudes That Look Like Chicks
dude.. this is very interesting.. kind of like victor/victoria, the girl pretending to be a drag queen...
AND, even wikipeida is moving to san francisco... it is the place to be, man...
AND, even wikipeida is moving to san francisco... it is the place to be, man...
Monday, November 05, 2007
Paul Krugman looking back from 2096
this is an assignment NYT had in 1996 for economists to predict future development of world economy pretending that they were looking back in the year 2096. krugman gave some very interesting insights, some of which quite surprising, such as "the celebrity economy".
Read the article.
Read the article.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
this is a picture done by my very talented friend Hydie in 2006. i forgot to blog about this after she gave me the permission to do it on facebook. there's such concise poetry in this little picture that i get the goose pimples whenever i look at it..
we don't think in sentences...
In Nature, not long ago.
"And getting us around is the basic evolutionary rationale of nervous systems. Unlike plants that must take what comes, animals are movers. More sophisticated behaviour emerged with improved capacities to plan, predict and draw on past experience, which improved chances of surviving and reproducing.
This observation motivated neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, in his 2002 book I of the Vortex, to propose that, at bottom, thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement. He meant that thinking is the generation in the brain of images of a future action, and its consequences. And generating these images depends on flexibility in categorizing the current problem as an instance of one kind of event rather than another, which, in turn, depends on memory for past experience. Fundamentally, thinking is neural activity in the service of behaviour (for example, should I flee or fight? Is this attacker weak or strong?). This almost certainly shapes thinking that seems detached from motor preparation (such as, where did Earth come from?).
... If thinking is rooted in internalized movement, it may be more akin to a skill than to a syllogism. Language may not be the "stuff of thought" after all."
- Patricia Churchland Poetry in motion(1 November 2007)
And:
according to this study, the future of irregular verbs in english will be regular.
"And getting us around is the basic evolutionary rationale of nervous systems. Unlike plants that must take what comes, animals are movers. More sophisticated behaviour emerged with improved capacities to plan, predict and draw on past experience, which improved chances of surviving and reproducing.
This observation motivated neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, in his 2002 book I of the Vortex, to propose that, at bottom, thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement. He meant that thinking is the generation in the brain of images of a future action, and its consequences. And generating these images depends on flexibility in categorizing the current problem as an instance of one kind of event rather than another, which, in turn, depends on memory for past experience. Fundamentally, thinking is neural activity in the service of behaviour (for example, should I flee or fight? Is this attacker weak or strong?). This almost certainly shapes thinking that seems detached from motor preparation (such as, where did Earth come from?).
... If thinking is rooted in internalized movement, it may be more akin to a skill than to a syllogism. Language may not be the "stuff of thought" after all."
- Patricia Churchland Poetry in motion(1 November 2007)
And:
according to this study, the future of irregular verbs in english will be regular.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
interesting links
a freakonomic look at the recent james watson issue: here
and harry potter fans out there, me not included, dumbledore is gay
and a potentially interesting thing: nature's postdocs' and students' group
and harry potter fans out there, me not included, dumbledore is gay
and a potentially interesting thing: nature's postdocs' and students' group
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Just got this in the email box
there's a downloadable repeal at http://repeal377a.com/ that you can sign and will be delivered to the parliment.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Look at What I Found!!!!
the International Music Score Library Projectit's not really international. but yah..
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Dove Self-Esteem - Another campaign?
I didn't realise that this "Dove" was the "Dove" that's standing on the shelf in my bathroom until a couple of videos later. and then somehow half of my exceitement was gone. Is this call for attention to real beauty just another acmpaign to attract real consumer interest or am that cynical i can't stand a cosmetic company truely having any public conscience?
A couple of parodies:
A couple of parodies:
Friday, September 28, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
what do you think of accent snobbery? this highly exaggerated meaningless but flowery blabbering ties ups nicely with stephen fry's remark "I shouldn’t be saying this, high treason really, but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there."
Monday, September 24, 2007
the microcentrifuge that i usually use was occupied, so i walked over 2 bays to use another one. and as i was pressing the open button i realised that it looked exactly the same as the one Wei had. the one that was broken. my heart literally missed a beat (:p). i know before i left san diego i said i wasn't sure if i was going to missed anyone or anything there, but sometimes nostalgia creeps in without me even noticing it.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
So earlier this week it occurred to me that the word "aggregation" and "gregarious" should've come from the same root "-greg-". since aggregation means to form a clump/group, and to be gregarious means to be sociable, then the root should mean something to do with "coming together" or "socialising". which means it might have been intentional that the lead role gregory house from the show house m.d. be named "gregory", for the purpose of irony.
second that occurred to me this week. the chinese call hospitals 医院，meaning institutions where medics/cures are found. the japanese call hospitals 病院, meaning institutions where patients/diseases are found. the difference between the two cultures in composing phrases perhaps shows something quite fundamental about each culture's attitude towards the normal/abnormal/norms. could it mean that the chinese are more interested in corrections of the sick/deviants while the japanese are more interested in concentrating the sick/deviants. either way sounds less comforting than the english word "hospital".
and it looks like i'm unable to write long posts anymore...and milo with coffee is great.
second that occurred to me this week. the chinese call hospitals 医院，meaning institutions where medics/cures are found. the japanese call hospitals 病院, meaning institutions where patients/diseases are found. the difference between the two cultures in composing phrases perhaps shows something quite fundamental about each culture's attitude towards the normal/abnormal/norms. could it mean that the chinese are more interested in corrections of the sick/deviants while the japanese are more interested in concentrating the sick/deviants. either way sounds less comforting than the english word "hospital".
and it looks like i'm unable to write long posts anymore...and milo with coffee is great.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
since i'm still stuck on the topic of monogamy, here's 5 alternative hypotheses that James Wittenberger and Ronald Tilson summarised in the article The Evolution of Monogamy: Hypotheses and Evidence. (JSTOR Link)
1. Monogamy should evolve when male parental care is both nonshareable and indispensable to female reproductive success. A female may be unable to rear offspring without nonshareable male parental assistance, either because she cannot provide them with enough food alone or because continuous attendance of offspring is essential to their survival. Hypothesis 1 applies only if females cannot rear anyoffspring within the species-typical social system without male assistance. Males may still copulate with other females (68), but they maintain a prolonged pair bond with only one mate. Hypothesis 1 implies that monogamy is advantageous for both sexes. It resembles Lack's (1 11) hypothesis for monogamy in altricial birds.
2. Monogamy should evolve in territorial species ifpairing with an unavailable unmated male is always better than pairing with an already mated male. Any benefits females might gain by breeding in a superior habitat, mating with a superior male, or cooperating with other females on a shared territory may be too small to compensate for the costs of polygyny. Since a major cost of polygyny is often lost male parental care, Hypothesis 2 covers cases where parental assistance is important but not indispensable to female success. Hypothesis 1 could be treated as a subset of Hypothesis 2, but the distinction is useful for pointing out cases where monogamy is clearly advantageous for both sexes as opposed to those where it may be advantageous only for females. Hypothesis 2 is derived from the polygyny-threshold model of Verner (227) and Orians (145).
3. Monogamy should evolve in nonterritorial species when the majority of males can reproduce most successfully by defending exclusive access to a single female. Sequestering individual females should be especially advantageous for males when sex ratios are male-biased, because the majority of males would then achieve higher success by claiming sole possession of one female rather than taking their chances in a promiscuous "lottery" system. Females may or may not benefit from being sequestered, but the costs of resisting the male's continual presence must exceed the costs of accepting his presence.
4. Monogamy should evolve even though the polygyny threshold is exceeded if aggression by mated females prevents males from acquiring additional mates. The criterion for distinguishing between Hypotheses 2 and 4 in territorial species is the magnitude of the polygyny threshold. If the polygyny threshold is exceeded, Hypothesis 4 applies. If not, Hypothesis 2 applies. In social animals Hypothesis 4 applies when aggression by a dominant female can prevent breeding by sexually mature subordinate females. The occurrence of female aggression is not sufficient evidence for accepting Hypothesis 4, because females may be aggressive for reasons other than maintenance of a monogamous pair bond.
5. Monogamy should evolve when males are less successful with two mates than with one. The presence of a second female may substantially reduce the success of a male's first mate by increasing competition for resources or increasing her conspicuousness to predators. If the combined success of both females is less than that possible for a single female, the male should enforce monogamy by excluding additional females. This hypothesis was first proposed by Trivers (224).
i don't think that hypotheses 1, 2 and 5 really apply to humans, and no. 4 is really funny. 河东狮吼。。。
1. Monogamy should evolve when male parental care is both nonshareable and indispensable to female reproductive success. A female may be unable to rear offspring without nonshareable male parental assistance, either because she cannot provide them with enough food alone or because continuous attendance of offspring is essential to their survival. Hypothesis 1 applies only if females cannot rear anyoffspring within the species-typical social system without male assistance. Males may still copulate with other females (68), but they maintain a prolonged pair bond with only one mate. Hypothesis 1 implies that monogamy is advantageous for both sexes. It resembles Lack's (1 11) hypothesis for monogamy in altricial birds.
2. Monogamy should evolve in territorial species ifpairing with an unavailable unmated male is always better than pairing with an already mated male. Any benefits females might gain by breeding in a superior habitat, mating with a superior male, or cooperating with other females on a shared territory may be too small to compensate for the costs of polygyny. Since a major cost of polygyny is often lost male parental care, Hypothesis 2 covers cases where parental assistance is important but not indispensable to female success. Hypothesis 1 could be treated as a subset of Hypothesis 2, but the distinction is useful for pointing out cases where monogamy is clearly advantageous for both sexes as opposed to those where it may be advantageous only for females. Hypothesis 2 is derived from the polygyny-threshold model of Verner (227) and Orians (145).
3. Monogamy should evolve in nonterritorial species when the majority of males can reproduce most successfully by defending exclusive access to a single female. Sequestering individual females should be especially advantageous for males when sex ratios are male-biased, because the majority of males would then achieve higher success by claiming sole possession of one female rather than taking their chances in a promiscuous "lottery" system. Females may or may not benefit from being sequestered, but the costs of resisting the male's continual presence must exceed the costs of accepting his presence.
4. Monogamy should evolve even though the polygyny threshold is exceeded if aggression by mated females prevents males from acquiring additional mates. The criterion for distinguishing between Hypotheses 2 and 4 in territorial species is the magnitude of the polygyny threshold. If the polygyny threshold is exceeded, Hypothesis 4 applies. If not, Hypothesis 2 applies. In social animals Hypothesis 4 applies when aggression by a dominant female can prevent breeding by sexually mature subordinate females. The occurrence of female aggression is not sufficient evidence for accepting Hypothesis 4, because females may be aggressive for reasons other than maintenance of a monogamous pair bond.
5. Monogamy should evolve when males are less successful with two mates than with one. The presence of a second female may substantially reduce the success of a male's first mate by increasing competition for resources or increasing her conspicuousness to predators. If the combined success of both females is less than that possible for a single female, the male should enforce monogamy by excluding additional females. This hypothesis was first proposed by Trivers (224).
i don't think that hypotheses 1, 2 and 5 really apply to humans, and no. 4 is really funny. 河东狮吼。。。
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 06, 2007
had dinner at gluttons' bay with a friend, who left me for a show after dinner. so i was wandering around citylink and later raffles city. maybe i was too tired (from what? the paperwork i did today?), i found wandering and windowshopping very relaxing. being in this city is so easy. i don't have to think too much before getting onto a train, which will take me to shops and eating places in no time. and then i could choose from stall to stall what to eat, and roam from shop to shop aimlessly. the variety that singapore offers is quite unique really.
and i know that i know the city much better than any other. just a week ago, i was in shanghai, trying to get a visa for entry into sg. i felt so stranded. the subway was almost the same, and so were the shopping centers. but i didn't know how to go to places, i didn't know how to speak the tongue(even though our dialects came from the same linguistic branch), and i had to use single journey tickets for train rides. it was horrible. a few days later, the moment i got to the arrival hall of changi airport, i drew cash with my atm card, bought a prepaid sim card, took a cab to my friends' place. the second day i found out that my ez link card was still functioning and i was immediately walking all over this island, resuming my old activities, catching up with old friends. (and after all these years away, it was surprisingly comforting to find that some things never change. such as the fabulous smelling $10.90 rose scent foam bath at marks and spencer.) that was when i totally felt at home. i really appreciate the independence, which i had in san diego but not in suzhou, as well as the convenicence, which i might have had in suzhou, but definitely not in san diego. and when i smsed a friend about being relieved to be in sg, he told me "welcome home". and i was happy to read that.
i think i really do like sg very much. and i'm glad i do.
and i know that i know the city much better than any other. just a week ago, i was in shanghai, trying to get a visa for entry into sg. i felt so stranded. the subway was almost the same, and so were the shopping centers. but i didn't know how to go to places, i didn't know how to speak the tongue(even though our dialects came from the same linguistic branch), and i had to use single journey tickets for train rides. it was horrible. a few days later, the moment i got to the arrival hall of changi airport, i drew cash with my atm card, bought a prepaid sim card, took a cab to my friends' place. the second day i found out that my ez link card was still functioning and i was immediately walking all over this island, resuming my old activities, catching up with old friends. (and after all these years away, it was surprisingly comforting to find that some things never change. such as the fabulous smelling $10.90 rose scent foam bath at marks and spencer.) that was when i totally felt at home. i really appreciate the independence, which i had in san diego but not in suzhou, as well as the convenicence, which i might have had in suzhou, but definitely not in san diego. and when i smsed a friend about being relieved to be in sg, he told me "welcome home". and i was happy to read that.
i think i really do like sg very much. and i'm glad i do.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Gen Me in China: A Nintendo Wii comes way ahead of democracy
from the new article on Time:
The rise of China's Me generation has implications for the foreign policies of other nations. Sinologists in the West have long predicted that economic growth would eventually bring democracy to China. As James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.'s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China's Me generation could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China's economic success, young professionals have more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country's hundreds of millions of have-nots on a rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda.
read more on china's Me gen
The rise of China's Me generation has implications for the foreign policies of other nations. Sinologists in the West have long predicted that economic growth would eventually bring democracy to China. As James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.'s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China's Me generation could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China's economic success, young professionals have more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country's hundreds of millions of have-nots on a rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda.
read more on china's Me gen
Thursday, July 26, 2007
today AH sent me an article on how to choose good phd advisors from sciencemag. i think we know more or less the things it's talking about, but it is nicely organized and systematic. makes a good read.
To Choose an Adviser, Be an "Armchair Anthropologist"
To Choose an Adviser, Be an "Armchair Anthropologist"
Monday, July 23, 2007
impressions: guilin
i'm just back from the tour to guilin with my mom... a few take home points:
1. tour groups are terrible terrible things. they rush the tourists through places of interests like cattle.
2. traveling with mom is a bad bad idea. somehow the trip can get too depressing at times.
3. guilin is an extremely pretty place, but something needs to be done to this place to improve its economy. there's only this much it can earn by conning tourists, and the money is not going to its people.
4. zhang yimou is a fucking genius. we need more people like him to transform concepts and ideas, and create values.
more to come.
1. tour groups are terrible terrible things. they rush the tourists through places of interests like cattle.
2. traveling with mom is a bad bad idea. somehow the trip can get too depressing at times.
3. guilin is an extremely pretty place, but something needs to be done to this place to improve its economy. there's only this much it can earn by conning tourists, and the money is not going to its people.
4. zhang yimou is a fucking genius. we need more people like him to transform concepts and ideas, and create values.
more to come.
Monday, July 09, 2007
chinese tv stations are just getting worse and worse. i couldn't seem to find anything worth watching all day long. so today i was flipping channels forever as usual, until i stop at this weird taiwanese tv series called the eighth pawn shop.
it is about an imaginary pawn shop to which customers could pawn any possession including tangible things such as a leg and intangible things such as talent, soul, love. for an example, in the show, a mother pawned her love for the child for the success in fashion. the grown up child, agonizing over the lack of maternal care, in turn pawned her talent in fashion design for her mother's love. then, the guilty mother pawned her eyes to take back the child's talent. things like that. you get the point.
it is a very strange concept. almost shocking at first. can we really rank the things in our lives and decide which we could lose indefinitely in order to gain the other? can we really say, i don't want the love, i just want my career, and here, you can have my love, please give me a high flying career? how could we make any of these choices when we don't really know what is to come, and from which we are to gain more? it's tempting to think, if i were to go to such a pawn shop, what would i pawn for what? and i shudder as if it was such a terrible thing.
but a little more thought reveals that it is nothing new. we are defining priorities all the time. we are disgarding some things over others every time we make a choice. ordinary choices such as spending the night at the laboratory or a nightclub and whether or not to take our eyes off the computer monitor to pay more attention to our naggy moms. the pawn shop owner just lets his customers do it a more calculative, explicit and irreversible way. we in reality, might not even weigh things as carefully. we just go ahead and decide. on what basis are we making these decisions?
what would you pawn, and for what, my friend, if the 8th pawn shop really existed?
it is about an imaginary pawn shop to which customers could pawn any possession including tangible things such as a leg and intangible things such as talent, soul, love. for an example, in the show, a mother pawned her love for the child for the success in fashion. the grown up child, agonizing over the lack of maternal care, in turn pawned her talent in fashion design for her mother's love. then, the guilty mother pawned her eyes to take back the child's talent. things like that. you get the point.
it is a very strange concept. almost shocking at first. can we really rank the things in our lives and decide which we could lose indefinitely in order to gain the other? can we really say, i don't want the love, i just want my career, and here, you can have my love, please give me a high flying career? how could we make any of these choices when we don't really know what is to come, and from which we are to gain more? it's tempting to think, if i were to go to such a pawn shop, what would i pawn for what? and i shudder as if it was such a terrible thing.
but a little more thought reveals that it is nothing new. we are defining priorities all the time. we are disgarding some things over others every time we make a choice. ordinary choices such as spending the night at the laboratory or a nightclub and whether or not to take our eyes off the computer monitor to pay more attention to our naggy moms. the pawn shop owner just lets his customers do it a more calculative, explicit and irreversible way. we in reality, might not even weigh things as carefully. we just go ahead and decide. on what basis are we making these decisions?
what would you pawn, and for what, my friend, if the 8th pawn shop really existed?
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
back to square one
home, parents, reality check. i have probably mentioned this a thousand times but here it is again: moving always feels unreal. areoplanes make time space change happen too quickly, i can't adjust to it. one moment i was in a carpeted apartment in la jolla, the other i'm at home, taking care not to scratch the newly polished wooden floor(mainly so that mom doesn't scream at me). i was abruptly disconnected from the previous life, but am nowhere near being connected to the next. i feel like i'm still living in the void, just like when i was in the dark aeroplane cabin traveling in between countries but not really in any, my mind phasing in and out of state of wakefulness and sleep but dreaming of nothing.
but things need to be ended and things need to begin. for a start, i should probably stop drinking. alcohol merely leaves me with dulled and mistaken sensory system, uncoordinated motor sysem and utterly chaotic central nervous system. on the other hand, like marco said, i should probably start looking at groups now. and i need to get reading for the project with ingham started. and gre is around the corner. seems like a lot of things to do.
but things need to be ended and things need to begin. for a start, i should probably stop drinking. alcohol merely leaves me with dulled and mistaken sensory system, uncoordinated motor sysem and utterly chaotic central nervous system. on the other hand, like marco said, i should probably start looking at groups now. and i need to get reading for the project with ingham started. and gre is around the corner. seems like a lot of things to do.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
packing always leads to surprises. found a message zhu wrote me on a purple piece of paper when we left singapore in 04. the flip side has ai yazawa's manga drawings. zhu put a quote in the message:
all existing things are born without a reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies out of chance.
-jean-paul sartre
and zhu said, we are prlonging ourselves out of weakness right now aren't we. i probably didn't give much thought to the quote at the time i received it. i was as ambitious as any student preparing to start a scientific career at a university. my life was full of purpose then, and i had nothing but confidence in me. 3 years later, i'm sure that confidence has withered a little. while i still don't think we are prolonging ourselves out of weakness, a sense of losing control of my own life did sort of creep in. maybe that's what happens when you grow old, when more and more things start to set and fewer and fewer possibilities are left for you to contemplate. maybe when i am at the age when sartre wrote the quote, i would think exactly the same things.
all existing things are born without a reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies out of chance.
-jean-paul sartre
and zhu said, we are prlonging ourselves out of weakness right now aren't we. i probably didn't give much thought to the quote at the time i received it. i was as ambitious as any student preparing to start a scientific career at a university. my life was full of purpose then, and i had nothing but confidence in me. 3 years later, i'm sure that confidence has withered a little. while i still don't think we are prolonging ourselves out of weakness, a sense of losing control of my own life did sort of creep in. maybe that's what happens when you grow old, when more and more things start to set and fewer and fewer possibilities are left for you to contemplate. maybe when i am at the age when sartre wrote the quote, i would think exactly the same things.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
a couple of things i have been thinking about these days because i loaded my shuffle with all the music tagged "contemporary" from my library:
1. kieslowski should make movies out of kudera's books, and get arvo part to write the soundtrack.
2. the last 2 minutes of giger's tropus is haunting. the little violin voices layered at the back of the chorus sound like dead white winged creatures weeping. i want to say layered on top, but it really does sound like it occurs somewhere at the back of my mind. and the visual images i can't rid of are surprisingly the vampire maids from van helsin. that wasn't even that good a movie.
3. steve reich's after the war is brilliantly written. go listen for yourself. and his marimba pieces are just adorable.
4. i still think the poem i hide myself within my flower is very nice... (which eric whitacre set to music)
Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.
Part Three: Love
VII
I HIDE myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.
fantacy of a pale sickly child. so lonely, yearning, with almost an erotic touch. and so clever. and reminds me of another one she wrote, from the same series.
XLVII
HEART, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me, 5
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging,
I may remember him!
1. kieslowski should make movies out of kudera's books, and get arvo part to write the soundtrack.
2. the last 2 minutes of giger's tropus is haunting. the little violin voices layered at the back of the chorus sound like dead white winged creatures weeping. i want to say layered on top, but it really does sound like it occurs somewhere at the back of my mind. and the visual images i can't rid of are surprisingly the vampire maids from van helsin. that wasn't even that good a movie.
3. steve reich's after the war is brilliantly written. go listen for yourself. and his marimba pieces are just adorable.
4. i still think the poem i hide myself within my flower is very nice... (which eric whitacre set to music)
Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.
Part Three: Love
VII
I HIDE myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.
fantacy of a pale sickly child. so lonely, yearning, with almost an erotic touch. and so clever. and reminds me of another one she wrote, from the same series.
XLVII
HEART, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me, 5
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging,
I may remember him!
Thursday, June 21, 2007
first born smarter?
sciencemag seems to like this type of things, such as the index finger: ring finger ratio indicating maths ability and stuff that they posted some time back.
sciencemag seems to like this type of things, such as the index finger: ring finger ratio indicating maths ability and stuff that they posted some time back.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
from the urban dictionary
Internet
A vast tundra of knowledge, now corrupted and slowly imploding on itself. Those caught on the outskirts enter a void of stupidity and insecurity. Eventually, it will completely cave in on itself, and then explode with such force, we will all be sent to an information oblivion. Random bits of intelligence will float amongst vast oceans of idiocy, and all of man kind will commit suicide in a futile effort to repent for creating such a weapon of mass destruction. God will not accept their sacrifice, and everyone will go to hell, where Satan will get pissed off at the extreme overpopulation of his facilities, and send everyone to someplace copletely unihabitable, like Utah.
digital immigrant
Someone who grew up before the digital age and is fairly new to the internet. Basically anyone over the age of 28.
YouTube is foreign to the digital immigrant.
BCG
Birth Control Glasses. Generally a military term which refers to the large, blocky glasses issued to military personnel who require the use of corrective lenses.
Man, these BCGs make me look like a complete idiot.
programmer's tan
The pasty white tan of a person who works over eighty hours a week and never gets any sun.
Bill's been doing a lot of hours lately -- he's really working on his programmer's tan.
Computer
a machine for downloading porn
"oh no, the computer broke, i ejaculated all over the keyboard"
generation y
children of boomers born from about generation from about 1977 to age old enough to remember 9/11.
gen y began with corporate watered down versions of gen x music (hip-hop and heavy metal,) after the shit load of that swedish music and boy band phase of the early gen y kids. For this many gen y kids have turned to their parents old albums from the 60's and 70's.
pampered by our boomer parents to do good and go far in life sociologists predict a backlash.
gen y has been said to be a clone of gen x, but there are notable differences.
gen y rewrites the rules and works around authority rather than go against it like gen x. This will lead us to get higher in corporations and better paying jobs that gen x was forced to do. Also gen y knows the impact of money.
early failures are that of SUV's fuck those gas guzzlers that kill the air. Hummers and are for ass holes.
blah blah blah we grow up and die
then fertilize the world
we were raised by grand theft auto!
Internet
A vast tundra of knowledge, now corrupted and slowly imploding on itself. Those caught on the outskirts enter a void of stupidity and insecurity. Eventually, it will completely cave in on itself, and then explode with such force, we will all be sent to an information oblivion. Random bits of intelligence will float amongst vast oceans of idiocy, and all of man kind will commit suicide in a futile effort to repent for creating such a weapon of mass destruction. God will not accept their sacrifice, and everyone will go to hell, where Satan will get pissed off at the extreme overpopulation of his facilities, and send everyone to someplace copletely unihabitable, like Utah.
digital immigrant
Someone who grew up before the digital age and is fairly new to the internet. Basically anyone over the age of 28.
YouTube is foreign to the digital immigrant.
BCG
Birth Control Glasses. Generally a military term which refers to the large, blocky glasses issued to military personnel who require the use of corrective lenses.
Man, these BCGs make me look like a complete idiot.
programmer's tan
The pasty white tan of a person who works over eighty hours a week and never gets any sun.
Bill's been doing a lot of hours lately -- he's really working on his programmer's tan.
Computer
a machine for downloading porn
"oh no, the computer broke, i ejaculated all over the keyboard"
generation y
children of boomers born from about generation from about 1977 to age old enough to remember 9/11.
gen y began with corporate watered down versions of gen x music (hip-hop and heavy metal,) after the shit load of that swedish music and boy band phase of the early gen y kids. For this many gen y kids have turned to their parents old albums from the 60's and 70's.
pampered by our boomer parents to do good and go far in life sociologists predict a backlash.
gen y has been said to be a clone of gen x, but there are notable differences.
gen y rewrites the rules and works around authority rather than go against it like gen x. This will lead us to get higher in corporations and better paying jobs that gen x was forced to do. Also gen y knows the impact of money.
early failures are that of SUV's fuck those gas guzzlers that kill the air. Hummers and are for ass holes.
blah blah blah we grow up and die
then fertilize the world
we were raised by grand theft auto!
Friday, June 15, 2007
i was hungry after setting up a couple of reactions this morning, so i went to the price center for a cup of cheap cocoa and a piece of marble cake. the cocoa was a little too hot for the season, so i dont think i will get it any more this year. therefore i was sitting in the open, sipping my cocoa on a sunny and breezy la jolla morning for the last time, listening to arvo part's lamentate. i'm sure part didn't intend his music this way, but whenever i am not feeling much or don't know what to feel, the music feels emotionless. the sparse piano sounds just fills the blank spaces between my equally sparse thoughts. but it's quiet, like a whisper. and i like that. so for a moment, everything was perfect, the breeze, the sun, the sweet cocoa, lubimov's fingers on the keys, the ambient noises making its way through the earphones, and those that were coming from my roaming brain. everything coming through different channels, nothing is blocking anything else. and all was harmonious.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Gisele Bundchen
i was flipping through the latest vs catalogue (not sent to me) and i saw this woman:
she is HOT! there's something about her looks, which makes everyone else look like either bithes or country pumpkins. or little girls. goodness. i would rather quit my job if i had to compete with this woman..
(ok. i just googled. she is the highest-paid model alive. oh well... looks like my taste is quite mainstream :) )
she is HOT! there's something about her looks, which makes everyone else look like either bithes or country pumpkins. or little girls. goodness. i would rather quit my job if i had to compete with this woman..
(ok. i just googled. she is the highest-paid model alive. oh well... looks like my taste is quite mainstream :) )
boredom III
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine. | |
| The West | |
| The Midland | |
| North Central | |
| The Northeast | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Inland North | |
| The South | |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
boredom II
Your results:
You are Spider-Man
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
You are Spider-Man
| You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.  |
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
final week boredom
| Your dating personality profile: Funny - You laugh often. People never accuse you of lacking a sense of humor. You don't take yourself too seriously. Liberal - Politics matters to you, and you aren't afraid to share your left-leaning views. You would never be caught voting for a conservative candidate. Wealthy/Ambitious - You know what your goals are and you pursue them vigourously. Achieving success is important to you. | Your date match profile: Funny - You consider a good sense of humor a major necessity in a date. If his jokes make you laugh, he has won your heart. Adventurous - You are looking for someone who is willing to try new things and experience life to its fullest. You need a companion who encourages you to take risks and do exciting things. Conservative - Forget liberals, you need a conservative match. Political discussions interest you, and a conservative will offer the viewpoint you need. |
Your Top Ten Traits 1. Funny 2. Liberal 3. Wealthy/Ambitious 4. Big-Hearted 5. Adventurous 6. Intellectual 7. Outgoing 8. Practical 9. Romantic 10. Sensual | Your Top Ten Match Traits 1. Funny 2. Adventurous 3. Conservative 4. Big-Hearted 5. Wealthy/Ambitious 6. Outgoing 7. Practical 8. Sensual 9. Intellectual 10. Romantic |
Take the Online Dating Profile Quiz at Dating Diversions
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
i have probably seen ig nobel prize before, or even blogged about it... but today my mentor was telling me about the mini-humans thing and it was damn funny.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
JOVE-journal of visualized experiments
finally the scientific community decided not to waste their humangous servers and internet2 connection, but to catch up with youtubers. here's an exciting new journal that presents video demonstrations of visualized experiments... i would've been able to do IVF on zebrafish if this was in place 1 1/2 years ago...
Monday, June 04, 2007
poster
the nightmarish poster session is finally over. as usual, i feel no relief after it, but a sense of emptiness, just like how i feel after all the exams i took. but this time, it's particularly depressing.
many months of work looks tiny on a poster. when people come along i say, "eh.. i made that fly.. yeah.. it didn't work" and i shrug like i just spent a fortnight doing it and it was nothing much. or, i point at some data and say "this looks like it could be working, potentially", and when my listener doesn't show much expression on his face i shrug again to show that i wasn't convinced either. or when i say "if it worked, it could be revolutionary!" and i witness that statement drop down dead on the cold hard floor in front of me...
i'm beyond the age when i could still say at the end of the day "but it was fun", or "it was the experience that counts". i'm at a place where i need to see something happen, or i'd start to doubt if i was cut for science at all. i only care about the results. yeah. i'm that pathetic.
many months of work looks tiny on a poster. when people come along i say, "eh.. i made that fly.. yeah.. it didn't work" and i shrug like i just spent a fortnight doing it and it was nothing much. or, i point at some data and say "this looks like it could be working, potentially", and when my listener doesn't show much expression on his face i shrug again to show that i wasn't convinced either. or when i say "if it worked, it could be revolutionary!" and i witness that statement drop down dead on the cold hard floor in front of me...
i'm beyond the age when i could still say at the end of the day "but it was fun", or "it was the experience that counts". i'm at a place where i need to see something happen, or i'd start to doubt if i was cut for science at all. i only care about the results. yeah. i'm that pathetic.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
from time magazine:
The State of Divorce: You May Be Surprised
The annual national divorce rate has dropped to 3.6 per 1000 people, the lowest since 1970 and well off its peak of 5.7 in 1981. But marriage is down 30% since 1970, with the number of unnmarried couples living together up 10-fold since 1960.
The State of Divorce: You May Be Surprised
The annual national divorce rate has dropped to 3.6 per 1000 people, the lowest since 1970 and well off its peak of 5.7 in 1981. But marriage is down 30% since 1970, with the number of unnmarried couples living together up 10-fold since 1960.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
黄豆豆
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hRRS-rMvR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cayXgQFlAZs&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cayXgQFlAZs&mode=related&search=
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Dark Matter The Movie
"But the movie isn’t really about science.
As Mr. Chen, the director, said, “It’s about power, in a way.” That would be the nearly feudalistic power that a graduate adviser has over his student, who after 16 or more years sitting in a classroom listening and regurgitating information must now change gears and learn how to produce original research. That grueling process has been the crucible in which new scientists are made ever since Plato mentored Aristotle, and although it rarely leads to murder [adjoining article], it can often lead to disaffection, strife and lifelong feuds. "
Read the NYT article
and i can't help wondering why the university has refused to reveal the letters that Lu Gang wrote before action. maybe he should've sent it to NBC instead...
As Mr. Chen, the director, said, “It’s about power, in a way.” That would be the nearly feudalistic power that a graduate adviser has over his student, who after 16 or more years sitting in a classroom listening and regurgitating information must now change gears and learn how to produce original research. That grueling process has been the crucible in which new scientists are made ever since Plato mentored Aristotle, and although it rarely leads to murder [adjoining article], it can often lead to disaffection, strife and lifelong feuds. "
Read the NYT article
and i can't help wondering why the university has refused to reveal the letters that Lu Gang wrote before action. maybe he should've sent it to NBC instead...
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
everyone is blogging about the fun we had.. haha.. i only remember one thing :)
kayaking in the middle of the ocean!!! the best is to just lie there... the sky looks incredibly large and empty when its blue fills every pixel on your retina.. imagine.. nothing but the sky is in sight, nothing but the bobbing of water is in your ear, nothing is in your mind but the tiny hope that it lasts longer... while you're gently rocked by the water up and down. i haven't felt so much at ease for years...if i owned a kayak, i would go out there in the ocean every morning and just lie there for a whole day... :p
(yah but of course good things never last and i had to be pulled back to reality by some idiot who splashed cold seawater on my face.)
kayaking in the middle of the ocean!!! the best is to just lie there... the sky looks incredibly large and empty when its blue fills every pixel on your retina.. imagine.. nothing but the sky is in sight, nothing but the bobbing of water is in your ear, nothing is in your mind but the tiny hope that it lasts longer... while you're gently rocked by the water up and down. i haven't felt so much at ease for years...if i owned a kayak, i would go out there in the ocean every morning and just lie there for a whole day... :p
(yah but of course good things never last and i had to be pulled back to reality by some idiot who splashed cold seawater on my face.)
Sunday, May 13, 2007
i was shopping for mother's day cards yesterday.. and came across this card that says "coporate top, perfect homemaker, best mom!" and got a little scared by the enthusiasm people have over the newly emancipated female sex of the species... how is one supposed to do that?
another observation. as i was discussing this over dessert with a friend, i think witticism is highly related to the power relation in a conversation. i believe that 5 minutes into a conversation, even between strangers, the power relation is established. and from then on only the domineering party can afford to be witty all the time. probably just cos it takes a great deal of confidence to be witty. wonder if there is any, how the neural circuit for humour is like... definitely has a positive input from the "confidence center".
another observation. as i was discussing this over dessert with a friend, i think witticism is highly related to the power relation in a conversation. i believe that 5 minutes into a conversation, even between strangers, the power relation is established. and from then on only the domineering party can afford to be witty all the time. probably just cos it takes a great deal of confidence to be witty. wonder if there is any, how the neural circuit for humour is like... definitely has a positive input from the "confidence center".
Monday, May 07, 2007
recently me and my friends been talking a lot about relationships and stuff.. there's one thing i've been thinking about, which is the difference between the singaporean kids and american kids in the terminology for being "in a relationship". the singaporean kids say "so and so are attached", whereas the american kids say "so and so are going out", or "so and so are dating". the latter is clearly a verb reflecting the activity of the two people, while the former is a adjective, mainly reflecting the status of the two people. difference in mindset no?
Startle response
at a popping balloon (click image to learn more). from the current issue of journal of neuroscience.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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.
CHORUS:
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
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 one but one Earth on which to live
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 life and love
For though they offer us concessions
Change will not come from above.
(c) Billy Bragg, circa 1990
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
honors
after going to the lab to check on my experiments, went to a friend's honor's recital. when i came back, i saw photos of another friend's BA exhibit on facebook. recital.. exhibition.. thesis.. we are all wrapping up our honors, our bits of adult life, a taste of the professions that we are going to spend the rest of our lives in. undergraduate life is so finished and on ahead we move. someone told me that in college i would be half an adult.. it's quite true. we do all the things that adults do, only in the safe boundaries of the college, and with the certainty that only a student can afford to have. we sing, we paint, we do experiments, and we know that no matter what we do, we will have our recitals in the school concert hall, our exhibit in the school gallery and our posters at the undergrad research poster session. and now we move on to become full adults, hurling ourselves into the full struggles of life, to have a real recital, a real exhibit or a real scientific conference. it won't be easy. but here we come.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
i've no idea why the name jorge cham never rang a bell that he was asian. and of course the last thing to come to mind when i think about the guy who created the phd comic - a big geek with an extraordinary sense of humor- would be good looks. but seriously, i would say he's really good looking..
Thursday, April 19, 2007
UCSD Virginia Tech Vigil
Photos that a friend of mine took at the VT vigil yesterday... they are quite extraordinary.. tragic beauty..
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
There is no means of testing which decision is better, because
there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without
warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the
first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a
sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline
of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our
life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.
kundera, the unbearable lightness of being
there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without
warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the
first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a
sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline
of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our
life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.
kundera, the unbearable lightness of being
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
genetics of romance?
from today's nyt
"It so happens that an unusually large number of brain-related genes are situated on the X chromosome. The sudden emergence of the X and Y chromosomes in brain function has caught the attention of evolutionary biologists. Since men have only one X chromosome, natural selection can speedily promote any advantageous mutation that arises in one of the X’s genes. So if those picky women should be looking for smartness in prospective male partners, that might explain why so many brain-related genes ended up on the X.
“It’s popular among male academics to say that females preferred smarter guys,” Dr. Arnold said. “Such genes will be quickly selected in males because new beneficial mutations will be quickly apparent.”
Several profound consequences follow from the fact that men have only one copy of the many X-related brain genes and women two. One is that many neurological diseases are more common in men because women are unlikely to suffer mutations in both copies of a gene.
Another is that men, as a group, “will have more variable brain phenotypes,” Dr. Arnold writes, because women’s second copy of every gene dampens the effects of mutations that arise in the other."
"It so happens that an unusually large number of brain-related genes are situated on the X chromosome. The sudden emergence of the X and Y chromosomes in brain function has caught the attention of evolutionary biologists. Since men have only one X chromosome, natural selection can speedily promote any advantageous mutation that arises in one of the X’s genes. So if those picky women should be looking for smartness in prospective male partners, that might explain why so many brain-related genes ended up on the X.
“It’s popular among male academics to say that females preferred smarter guys,” Dr. Arnold said. “Such genes will be quickly selected in males because new beneficial mutations will be quickly apparent.”
Several profound consequences follow from the fact that men have only one copy of the many X-related brain genes and women two. One is that many neurological diseases are more common in men because women are unlikely to suffer mutations in both copies of a gene.
Another is that men, as a group, “will have more variable brain phenotypes,” Dr. Arnold writes, because women’s second copy of every gene dampens the effects of mutations that arise in the other."
Monday, April 09, 2007
i just read on an old friend's blog that she got an offer from microsoft... it seems that it wan't even that long ago when i first heard her talk about that wish.(actually, that was probably 6 years ago or so.) so dreams DO come true... how exciting. and just the right motivation for me, especially for this week..
life feels great :)
life feels great :)
Friday, April 06, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Escape!
the number "Escape!" from the soundtrack of "The Hours" is exactly Glass' "Metamorphosis Two"! ok, with some orchestration, minimal....
how lazy of Philip Glass.
how lazy of Philip Glass.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Major Book Review: Blood Road
ok here's my term paper for the history class chinese revolution 1911-1949. it came back today so i know there are no major mistakes or misunderstanding. but this is a really good book. chinese, you should read it.
Schoppa’s Blood Road
What a Communist official told the author on the Phoenix Mountain pretty much sums up what most in China or other Chinese communities think of Shen Dingyi. “We don’t know whether he is a good man or a bad man”(Schoppa, 252). One of the most prominent and controversial revolutionaries of the 1920’s, Shen Dingyi was a landlord-turned Communist, who later joined the Guomingdang (GMD). For the decades to follow his assassination in 1928, various names were added to him. Both parties find it difficult in positioning Shen, a man with multiple identities, in the revolution.
In his book Blood Road, The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China, Schoppa investigates a wide array of materials surrounding Shen Dingyi’s life from late 1910’s to his death in 1928, ranging from historical records, his own writings and narratives from his family and associates. Upon Schoppa’s careful analysis of these materials, Shen’s exceedingly complicated social networks, political positions, ideological influences and actions emerged. In this book, as a result, a humanistic and biographical account of Shen as of 1920’s is presented, and the author’s thesis becomes clear: Because of the causality between a society’s development and an individual’s activities, changes in the society directly influences the individual’s identity, and vice versa, development of individuals determines the course of events in his social context. This is especially true during eras of drastic social and political changes, such as the revolutionary 1920’s in China, and that extremely dynamic and complex society results in an ever-changing face of the individual involved in the process.
With this overarching theme, Shen’s situation seems a little clearer to Schoppa. Since his identities and political positions and actions were an consequence of his social networks, Schoppa puts an emphasis on Shen’s social contacts in his three primary locales of actions, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Yaqian, and effectively reveals the changing sources of his ideologies, identities and his movements in the respective places. Like Shen, Schoppa realized that Chinese tendency of valuing a man’s names more than his deeds often results in oversimplifications and hinders just assessment of historical figures(Schoppa 253). “[I]n the great complexity of revolutionary change, the human mind brings order by naming and holding to that name as the key to the identity of the other”(Schoppa 253). Therefore in his analysis of Shen Dingyi, Schoppa aims to focus on what he actually did in the context of his social networks, such as his leadership in student and worker movement in Shanghai in 1919, his promotion of peasant protests in Yaqian in 1921 and 1928 and his political life in either the Provincial Assembly government of Zhejiang in late 1910’s or the GMD in Hangzhou in mid-1920’s, in order to elucidate the complex dynamics involved.
Shen’s thinking and action in solving China’s social crisis was deeply shaped by his social contacts. The change of social network in 1916 when Shen exiled to Shanghai catalyzed his acceptance of progressive ideologies. Unlike the Zhejiang Provincial Assembly where local elite of the province concentrated on the fate of the province struggling against the aggressive expansion of the Beiyang government, the young revolutionaries whom Shen met in Shanghai were concerned with a wider range of problems. In addition to Shen’s existing anit-feudalism and anti-militarism, he became more conscious of class struggles, women’s emancipation and education, and on a national level (Schoppa 86). The strong influence of Sun Yat-sen’s democratic ideologies and the youths who took part in May Fourth Movements all played a role in his intellectual growth. Identified as a journalist and writer, Shen was proactively working to find a solution to China’s problem, as his writings would indicate. With such inputs, Shen’s output back to the society was much liberated. He wrote for the press extensively about class struggles first and then, at the end of 1919, about a need for reformed social relationships in order (Schoppa 80). In practice, he organized discussion of Marxism where Communism was studied and women had short hair(Schoppa 82). Such actions in turn strengthened the Communists’ progressive presence in Shanghai and altered the intellectual climate there.
Returning to Yaqian in 1920 and coming into contact with the peasants, Shen Dingyi’s social reform thinking was mainly reflected in promoting the peasants’ protests. Applying Marxism, he tried to define the peasants as the proletarians of the countryside and advocated the union between peasants and urban workers to rise against landlords and capitalists. And in his writings, he advocates the ownership of land by the peasants. A network was soon built up, in which he acted as the protector of the peasant class. He encouraged the peasants to organize farmers’ associations and protest against rent collectors and landlords. In the practical endeavor of social reform, strengthened was his relationship with the network of students such as Xuan Zhonghua and Yang Zhihua, with whom Shen built village schools and educated peasant children. However, the protests failed in violent oppression in 1921 and 1922, which Schoppa reasoned to be caused by the influence by the extreme idealism of the May Fourth youths on Shen.
Consistent with Schoppa’s theory, we can also see with a new company and new theory, Shen turned from a local elite member and constitutionalist into a protector of the peasants with a touch of revolutionary thinking. His gentry background might have held him back a little - after all it was a revolution against his own class - but his thinking was very Communist then. After the peasant protests in 1921, although Shen’s political life was little affected by the movement, the failure shocked him strongly, emphasizes Schoppa, as Shen’s writings “betray[ed] considerable guilt, anger, and sadness”(Schoppa 119). In this light, Shen’s ideology in this period was consistently growing more progressive. His complete disregard to landlords’ interest made him target for attack by the rural elite.
With Com-intern's decision for Communists to join GMD in 1922, Shen became a Nationalist, entering a relatively new network in Hangzhou. Under Borodin’s direction in 1923, Shen raised the exclusivity of GMD membership in the way the Communists built their disciplined army, showing his commitment to the new Russianized party organization theories. Naturally Shen in turn made use of the power that he obtained and influenced his social environment by filling the provisional Provincial Party with people from his social network, hence shaping the policy making process. This tightening process of GMD registration and the concentration of power in the province to himself threatened to cause hatred and anxiety, sharpening potential partisan conflicts.
Shen’s switch to the GMD’s side as opposed to the CCP’s side where he came from was not surprising at all to Schoppa. This had much to do with the influence Shen received earlier in his life. Always a fervent follower of Sun Yat-sen’s, Shen Dingyi was genuinely interested in “Three People’s Principle”, even more so than in Communism. His slight reluctance towards class struggle, holding that members from the elite class can be benevolent to the peasants (Schoppa 157), indicated his parting from CCP. This is especially illustrated by his low-key leadership of the peasant protests in Yaqian in 1921. The established exclusivity of GMD and Shen’s complaints about Communist insistence on class struggle and refusal to migrate to Manchuria led naturally to his opinion of abolishing the first United Front. Now, although to Shen himself he was just a Nationalist seeking the best outcome for his party and country, in others’ eyes he was an inconsistent politician fiddling with power. His multiple identities had finally formed in its full complexity. He had enemies in a number of classes and circles, even in his own social networks such as the First Normal circle. The purge was just a trigger, which cut lose any remaining attachment that his old social networks still had with him.
From Schoppa’s narrative, judging from these historical facts combined with the various societal contexts that Shen sequentially put himself in, the course of development of Shen’s ideology and identity was quite consistent and nothing too surprising. Why then, was the assessment of Shen Dingyi all but impossible to do? Schoppa believes that it is because of the Chinese tendency to judge a historical figure by what “names” he is perceived to have, instead of what actual deeds he does. In addition, 10’s to 20’s in China was an era of ideology-mixing and partisan chaos. No viewpoint could be free of self-interest and class influence, resulting in a plethora of inconsistent descriptions of Shen Dingyi, concentrating seemingly disparate names - landlord, Communist, Nationalist, Leftist, Right-wing, revolutionary - onto the one person. This is precisely what makes the interpretation of his identity and the period of history extremely difficult. When comparing materials from a few sources, Schoppa at least solved a number of the inconsistencies.
Firstly, was Shen a local elite, landlord, or a revolutionary devoted to the emancipation of lower classes? Shen has been called all these names, and from his family background, his early political experiences and some aspects of his lifestyle, such as keeping servants, he was indeed a typical local elite in a dying feudal society. However, Schoppa points out that he was an active constitutionalist and reformist, fiercely protecting local government from militarism. Then he felt for the peasants, tried his best to be a protector. He was one of the first people to notice the potential of great power of the rural population in Chinese revolution. With Communist theories, he tried to lead the peasants into class struggle in 1921, and greatly promoted local self-governing experiments and drew up rent reducing documents in 1927. His cold attitude towards his fellow landlords was in stark contrast to that towards the farmers. His writings in this period were mainly singing high praises for the peasant class. In light of such evidence, Li Da’s categorization of Shen into simply “large landlord”(with some enmity) was quite ignorant and unfair. Shen’s hold-back in developing full scale and thorough class struggle came from his position as a member of the elite. To abolish the landlord class is to abolish his own class, his family and his primary social network. This he could not bring himself to do. The conflict within himself is reasonable and is not up to his choice, but a result of social context.
Secondly, his attitude towards militarism also seemed inconsistent, from his boyish love for the martial arts, to his anti-militarism struggle in 1916, to his embracing armed struggle again in early 1920’s. Schoppo shows that in the big picture of intellectual-oriented society in China, Shen’s love for the martial arts indicates something exceptional and revolutionary about him (Schoppa 31). Later during the expansion of the warlord Duan Qirui’s military expansion into the already independent provincially self-governing Zhejiang, the Zhejiang governors sat helpless, therefore Shen’s hatred for militarism seems natural. However, the practical need for military forces when revolution went into full development forced Shen to rethink the value of militarism. Therefore, there was nothing surprising about the his acceptance and even enthusiasm in using and advocating militarism. Again, such choices were a result of events in his social contexts and not so much of a subjective change of mind.
The third problem was his attitude towards Communism, and perhaps is the most puzzling of all. As one of the members of the first Marxism discussion group, he not only became a conservative Nationalist, but also was in charge of the purge of Communists from GMD, turning against all of his friends and associates within the First Normal School network. In 1919, Shen was in desperate pursuit of any strategy that would save the country from the chaos caused by an absence of government. Interaction with the May Fourth worriers naturally led him to both Sun Yat-sen’s theories and Communism. At the earlier stage, both theories were advocating anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, and the general atmosphere was rather all-encompassing and tolerant. Partly the tolerance rose from incomplete formation of the theories and their lack of thorough understanding by the revolutionaries themselves. In this environment that did not have sharp conflicts between ideologies, Shen was on one hand trying to find a theory that suited him and on the other hand honestly was not bothered by the slight differences between theories. Here the common enemy was external of China, hence what was developed was Nationalism.
Only when political theories matured into full-fledged ideologies and practical power interests were involved between partisans did conflicts starte to appear. Early 1920’s, from the single-minded revolutionary China, partisan power struggles arose. Communists were backed by the Comintern in Russia, and Nationalists had the political and militant power. When the attention turned from foreigners or Manchu rulers started to point against each other, the two parties found fundamental ideological differences. Tolerance disappeared and party members, especially the double party members like Shen Dingyi, were forced to choose a side. And it so happened that his conviction to “Three People’s Principles” and reluctance towards class struggle turned him towards the GMD, and came to regard Communism as rigid. From a “revolutionary”, people’s perception of Shen rapidly turned into “politician” and rumors about him accepting bribes and criticism about him being “opportunistic” (Schoppa 162) rose from the blue. There are also records of him being arrogant, unfair, and unjust, but Schoppa cautions the readers that such documents might very well be forged due to the bitter political competition then. There were also inconsistent with Shen’s history (Schoppa 162). Due to this period in Shen’s life, some people, such as Shaozili, even recalled Shen Dingyi as a Nationalist in his Shanghai period (Schoppa 88), which was factually wrong.
From Shen’s attitude towards Communism we clearly see the powerful tides of a time capable of directing an individual’s life and identity. Not only did changes in the Chinese political society cause changes in Shen’s identity, from Shen’s life in early 1920’s alone, we see the mirrored reflection of the society itself. The loss of tolerance in Shen’s policy in GMD directly reflects the loss of tolerance in the society; and that Shen started to put more emphasis in controlling the party than nationalistic concerns directly reflects a similar trend in the society too. Just like the metaphor used in the poem cited at the beginning of the book, the society was like a mirror where Shen saw himself in. When the society gets fragmented like a mirror gets broken, his identity, which was the reflection in the mirror, gets torn into pieces too. This powerful metaphor demonstrates the nature of identity being a social construct, which cannot exist without society, and instead of being constant, will change violently when the society does so.
Fourthly, whether Shen Dingyi was a Left-Wing or Right-Wing in GMD was even more confusing. Because Shen used to be an early organizer of CCP some conservative Nationalists fixed his identity as a Left-Wing, however, due to his effort in the Purge and differences of opinion, the Communists held that he was a Right-Wing. In fact, it is hard to say whether he was either. His ambiguous attitude towards class struggle and his seemingly active advocacy of revolution(Schoppa 181) both blur the line, and rendered Shen “moderate”(Schoppa 167). Furthermore, the general chaotic and inconsistent situation within the two parties makes even the definition of right and left ambivalent.
There are a few lessons we can learn from this book regarding methodology of historiography. First is causality. Based on all of his analysis, Schoppa makes a number of guesses as to who murdered Shen, and suggested that the most convincing option was the GMD, judging from the tension within the party around 1928. With these guesses and the entire course of analysis in the book, Schoppa demonstrates the reasoning power of historical causality, which remotely reminds us of the philosophical concept of determinism. To show that everything resulted from a trackable cause can result in greater accuracy and eliminate hand-waving arguments.
Secondly, on a related note, Schoppa tones down the importance of individuals’ subjective choices in the course of a revolutionary history, but emphasizes the irresistible power of societal change itself. Similar theme occurs in Schwarez’s article “The Crucible of Political Violence: 1925-1927”. It May be a shift away from Heroism and Great Man History and turn the attention to irreversible societal trends. In any case, such studies provides a more convincing picture to the period studied because it is definitely more conceivable that collective actions of large number of people propel the progress of a society. Even when a particular figure makes an immensely important decision that changed the society by a huge amount, such as the purge described in the book, the decision maker’s motivation was still the result of a battery of influences and events. Therefore, there could not be individual decision that came from nowhere, which changed the course of the history.
Thirdly, Schoppa proposes the importance of spatial venues in the investigation of a historical figure’s identities and actions. Due to the distinctive characteristics and the existing social networks of a specific location, historical figures often assume very distinct ideologies and actions in each location. Analysis of the subject by locations proves to be useful at least in the case of Shen Dingyi, and helps to reveal the reasons for some of the events that occurred.
Lastly but importantly, Schoppa warns us against the danger of “structured present”(Schoppa 260) in historical analysis. Historians knowing the present find it hard to avoid making judgments on the subject of analysis with information that is gained later, and result in skewed account of the events of the past. Some historians bear an intended structure that they try to fit the subjects in. This strategies are against the spirit of historical objectivity and should be avoided. In this book, Schoppa attempts to stand from the perspective of Shen Dingyi, analyzes his action on the ground of what he was exposed to at the time of the events, and makes guesses and weighs options for Shen Dingyi with the limited amount of information available then. As such Schoppa tries to prevent the retrospective account of what happened and fall into gross simplification or erred perceptions of some writers mentioned in the book.
In this book, Schoppa not only reveals the important historical development of the revolution, but also told the story from a refreshing new angle. Shen Dingyi’s assassination might have been a singularity in the 1920’s, but his story reflects valuable generalities about the time and space he was placed in. From his life and death, we see the course of Chinese revolution in the 1920’s, developing from its infancy with little theoretical support to maturity burdened with partisan power struggle, all reflected in Shen’s ideologies, actions and social relationships. Studies of this style should be carried out on more historical figures, especially those whose name are nearly erased or complicated by the studies that focus on “names” and “-isms”. The potential of revealing valuable new information is tremendous.
Reference
Schoppa, Keith. Blood Road, The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China. University of California Press. 1995.
Schwarez. The Crucible of Political Violence: 1925-1927.
Schoppa’s Blood Road
What a Communist official told the author on the Phoenix Mountain pretty much sums up what most in China or other Chinese communities think of Shen Dingyi. “We don’t know whether he is a good man or a bad man”(Schoppa, 252). One of the most prominent and controversial revolutionaries of the 1920’s, Shen Dingyi was a landlord-turned Communist, who later joined the Guomingdang (GMD). For the decades to follow his assassination in 1928, various names were added to him. Both parties find it difficult in positioning Shen, a man with multiple identities, in the revolution.
In his book Blood Road, The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China, Schoppa investigates a wide array of materials surrounding Shen Dingyi’s life from late 1910’s to his death in 1928, ranging from historical records, his own writings and narratives from his family and associates. Upon Schoppa’s careful analysis of these materials, Shen’s exceedingly complicated social networks, political positions, ideological influences and actions emerged. In this book, as a result, a humanistic and biographical account of Shen as of 1920’s is presented, and the author’s thesis becomes clear: Because of the causality between a society’s development and an individual’s activities, changes in the society directly influences the individual’s identity, and vice versa, development of individuals determines the course of events in his social context. This is especially true during eras of drastic social and political changes, such as the revolutionary 1920’s in China, and that extremely dynamic and complex society results in an ever-changing face of the individual involved in the process.
With this overarching theme, Shen’s situation seems a little clearer to Schoppa. Since his identities and political positions and actions were an consequence of his social networks, Schoppa puts an emphasis on Shen’s social contacts in his three primary locales of actions, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Yaqian, and effectively reveals the changing sources of his ideologies, identities and his movements in the respective places. Like Shen, Schoppa realized that Chinese tendency of valuing a man’s names more than his deeds often results in oversimplifications and hinders just assessment of historical figures(Schoppa 253). “[I]n the great complexity of revolutionary change, the human mind brings order by naming and holding to that name as the key to the identity of the other”(Schoppa 253). Therefore in his analysis of Shen Dingyi, Schoppa aims to focus on what he actually did in the context of his social networks, such as his leadership in student and worker movement in Shanghai in 1919, his promotion of peasant protests in Yaqian in 1921 and 1928 and his political life in either the Provincial Assembly government of Zhejiang in late 1910’s or the GMD in Hangzhou in mid-1920’s, in order to elucidate the complex dynamics involved.
Shen’s thinking and action in solving China’s social crisis was deeply shaped by his social contacts. The change of social network in 1916 when Shen exiled to Shanghai catalyzed his acceptance of progressive ideologies. Unlike the Zhejiang Provincial Assembly where local elite of the province concentrated on the fate of the province struggling against the aggressive expansion of the Beiyang government, the young revolutionaries whom Shen met in Shanghai were concerned with a wider range of problems. In addition to Shen’s existing anit-feudalism and anti-militarism, he became more conscious of class struggles, women’s emancipation and education, and on a national level (Schoppa 86). The strong influence of Sun Yat-sen’s democratic ideologies and the youths who took part in May Fourth Movements all played a role in his intellectual growth. Identified as a journalist and writer, Shen was proactively working to find a solution to China’s problem, as his writings would indicate. With such inputs, Shen’s output back to the society was much liberated. He wrote for the press extensively about class struggles first and then, at the end of 1919, about a need for reformed social relationships in order (Schoppa 80). In practice, he organized discussion of Marxism where Communism was studied and women had short hair(Schoppa 82). Such actions in turn strengthened the Communists’ progressive presence in Shanghai and altered the intellectual climate there.
Returning to Yaqian in 1920 and coming into contact with the peasants, Shen Dingyi’s social reform thinking was mainly reflected in promoting the peasants’ protests. Applying Marxism, he tried to define the peasants as the proletarians of the countryside and advocated the union between peasants and urban workers to rise against landlords and capitalists. And in his writings, he advocates the ownership of land by the peasants. A network was soon built up, in which he acted as the protector of the peasant class. He encouraged the peasants to organize farmers’ associations and protest against rent collectors and landlords. In the practical endeavor of social reform, strengthened was his relationship with the network of students such as Xuan Zhonghua and Yang Zhihua, with whom Shen built village schools and educated peasant children. However, the protests failed in violent oppression in 1921 and 1922, which Schoppa reasoned to be caused by the influence by the extreme idealism of the May Fourth youths on Shen.
Consistent with Schoppa’s theory, we can also see with a new company and new theory, Shen turned from a local elite member and constitutionalist into a protector of the peasants with a touch of revolutionary thinking. His gentry background might have held him back a little - after all it was a revolution against his own class - but his thinking was very Communist then. After the peasant protests in 1921, although Shen’s political life was little affected by the movement, the failure shocked him strongly, emphasizes Schoppa, as Shen’s writings “betray[ed] considerable guilt, anger, and sadness”(Schoppa 119). In this light, Shen’s ideology in this period was consistently growing more progressive. His complete disregard to landlords’ interest made him target for attack by the rural elite.
With Com-intern's decision for Communists to join GMD in 1922, Shen became a Nationalist, entering a relatively new network in Hangzhou. Under Borodin’s direction in 1923, Shen raised the exclusivity of GMD membership in the way the Communists built their disciplined army, showing his commitment to the new Russianized party organization theories. Naturally Shen in turn made use of the power that he obtained and influenced his social environment by filling the provisional Provincial Party with people from his social network, hence shaping the policy making process. This tightening process of GMD registration and the concentration of power in the province to himself threatened to cause hatred and anxiety, sharpening potential partisan conflicts.
Shen’s switch to the GMD’s side as opposed to the CCP’s side where he came from was not surprising at all to Schoppa. This had much to do with the influence Shen received earlier in his life. Always a fervent follower of Sun Yat-sen’s, Shen Dingyi was genuinely interested in “Three People’s Principle”, even more so than in Communism. His slight reluctance towards class struggle, holding that members from the elite class can be benevolent to the peasants (Schoppa 157), indicated his parting from CCP. This is especially illustrated by his low-key leadership of the peasant protests in Yaqian in 1921. The established exclusivity of GMD and Shen’s complaints about Communist insistence on class struggle and refusal to migrate to Manchuria led naturally to his opinion of abolishing the first United Front. Now, although to Shen himself he was just a Nationalist seeking the best outcome for his party and country, in others’ eyes he was an inconsistent politician fiddling with power. His multiple identities had finally formed in its full complexity. He had enemies in a number of classes and circles, even in his own social networks such as the First Normal circle. The purge was just a trigger, which cut lose any remaining attachment that his old social networks still had with him.
From Schoppa’s narrative, judging from these historical facts combined with the various societal contexts that Shen sequentially put himself in, the course of development of Shen’s ideology and identity was quite consistent and nothing too surprising. Why then, was the assessment of Shen Dingyi all but impossible to do? Schoppa believes that it is because of the Chinese tendency to judge a historical figure by what “names” he is perceived to have, instead of what actual deeds he does. In addition, 10’s to 20’s in China was an era of ideology-mixing and partisan chaos. No viewpoint could be free of self-interest and class influence, resulting in a plethora of inconsistent descriptions of Shen Dingyi, concentrating seemingly disparate names - landlord, Communist, Nationalist, Leftist, Right-wing, revolutionary - onto the one person. This is precisely what makes the interpretation of his identity and the period of history extremely difficult. When comparing materials from a few sources, Schoppa at least solved a number of the inconsistencies.
Firstly, was Shen a local elite, landlord, or a revolutionary devoted to the emancipation of lower classes? Shen has been called all these names, and from his family background, his early political experiences and some aspects of his lifestyle, such as keeping servants, he was indeed a typical local elite in a dying feudal society. However, Schoppa points out that he was an active constitutionalist and reformist, fiercely protecting local government from militarism. Then he felt for the peasants, tried his best to be a protector. He was one of the first people to notice the potential of great power of the rural population in Chinese revolution. With Communist theories, he tried to lead the peasants into class struggle in 1921, and greatly promoted local self-governing experiments and drew up rent reducing documents in 1927. His cold attitude towards his fellow landlords was in stark contrast to that towards the farmers. His writings in this period were mainly singing high praises for the peasant class. In light of such evidence, Li Da’s categorization of Shen into simply “large landlord”(with some enmity) was quite ignorant and unfair. Shen’s hold-back in developing full scale and thorough class struggle came from his position as a member of the elite. To abolish the landlord class is to abolish his own class, his family and his primary social network. This he could not bring himself to do. The conflict within himself is reasonable and is not up to his choice, but a result of social context.
Secondly, his attitude towards militarism also seemed inconsistent, from his boyish love for the martial arts, to his anti-militarism struggle in 1916, to his embracing armed struggle again in early 1920’s. Schoppo shows that in the big picture of intellectual-oriented society in China, Shen’s love for the martial arts indicates something exceptional and revolutionary about him (Schoppa 31). Later during the expansion of the warlord Duan Qirui’s military expansion into the already independent provincially self-governing Zhejiang, the Zhejiang governors sat helpless, therefore Shen’s hatred for militarism seems natural. However, the practical need for military forces when revolution went into full development forced Shen to rethink the value of militarism. Therefore, there was nothing surprising about the his acceptance and even enthusiasm in using and advocating militarism. Again, such choices were a result of events in his social contexts and not so much of a subjective change of mind.
The third problem was his attitude towards Communism, and perhaps is the most puzzling of all. As one of the members of the first Marxism discussion group, he not only became a conservative Nationalist, but also was in charge of the purge of Communists from GMD, turning against all of his friends and associates within the First Normal School network. In 1919, Shen was in desperate pursuit of any strategy that would save the country from the chaos caused by an absence of government. Interaction with the May Fourth worriers naturally led him to both Sun Yat-sen’s theories and Communism. At the earlier stage, both theories were advocating anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, and the general atmosphere was rather all-encompassing and tolerant. Partly the tolerance rose from incomplete formation of the theories and their lack of thorough understanding by the revolutionaries themselves. In this environment that did not have sharp conflicts between ideologies, Shen was on one hand trying to find a theory that suited him and on the other hand honestly was not bothered by the slight differences between theories. Here the common enemy was external of China, hence what was developed was Nationalism.
Only when political theories matured into full-fledged ideologies and practical power interests were involved between partisans did conflicts starte to appear. Early 1920’s, from the single-minded revolutionary China, partisan power struggles arose. Communists were backed by the Comintern in Russia, and Nationalists had the political and militant power. When the attention turned from foreigners or Manchu rulers started to point against each other, the two parties found fundamental ideological differences. Tolerance disappeared and party members, especially the double party members like Shen Dingyi, were forced to choose a side. And it so happened that his conviction to “Three People’s Principles” and reluctance towards class struggle turned him towards the GMD, and came to regard Communism as rigid. From a “revolutionary”, people’s perception of Shen rapidly turned into “politician” and rumors about him accepting bribes and criticism about him being “opportunistic” (Schoppa 162) rose from the blue. There are also records of him being arrogant, unfair, and unjust, but Schoppa cautions the readers that such documents might very well be forged due to the bitter political competition then. There were also inconsistent with Shen’s history (Schoppa 162). Due to this period in Shen’s life, some people, such as Shaozili, even recalled Shen Dingyi as a Nationalist in his Shanghai period (Schoppa 88), which was factually wrong.
From Shen’s attitude towards Communism we clearly see the powerful tides of a time capable of directing an individual’s life and identity. Not only did changes in the Chinese political society cause changes in Shen’s identity, from Shen’s life in early 1920’s alone, we see the mirrored reflection of the society itself. The loss of tolerance in Shen’s policy in GMD directly reflects the loss of tolerance in the society; and that Shen started to put more emphasis in controlling the party than nationalistic concerns directly reflects a similar trend in the society too. Just like the metaphor used in the poem cited at the beginning of the book, the society was like a mirror where Shen saw himself in. When the society gets fragmented like a mirror gets broken, his identity, which was the reflection in the mirror, gets torn into pieces too. This powerful metaphor demonstrates the nature of identity being a social construct, which cannot exist without society, and instead of being constant, will change violently when the society does so.
Fourthly, whether Shen Dingyi was a Left-Wing or Right-Wing in GMD was even more confusing. Because Shen used to be an early organizer of CCP some conservative Nationalists fixed his identity as a Left-Wing, however, due to his effort in the Purge and differences of opinion, the Communists held that he was a Right-Wing. In fact, it is hard to say whether he was either. His ambiguous attitude towards class struggle and his seemingly active advocacy of revolution(Schoppa 181) both blur the line, and rendered Shen “moderate”(Schoppa 167). Furthermore, the general chaotic and inconsistent situation within the two parties makes even the definition of right and left ambivalent.
There are a few lessons we can learn from this book regarding methodology of historiography. First is causality. Based on all of his analysis, Schoppa makes a number of guesses as to who murdered Shen, and suggested that the most convincing option was the GMD, judging from the tension within the party around 1928. With these guesses and the entire course of analysis in the book, Schoppa demonstrates the reasoning power of historical causality, which remotely reminds us of the philosophical concept of determinism. To show that everything resulted from a trackable cause can result in greater accuracy and eliminate hand-waving arguments.
Secondly, on a related note, Schoppa tones down the importance of individuals’ subjective choices in the course of a revolutionary history, but emphasizes the irresistible power of societal change itself. Similar theme occurs in Schwarez’s article “The Crucible of Political Violence: 1925-1927”. It May be a shift away from Heroism and Great Man History and turn the attention to irreversible societal trends. In any case, such studies provides a more convincing picture to the period studied because it is definitely more conceivable that collective actions of large number of people propel the progress of a society. Even when a particular figure makes an immensely important decision that changed the society by a huge amount, such as the purge described in the book, the decision maker’s motivation was still the result of a battery of influences and events. Therefore, there could not be individual decision that came from nowhere, which changed the course of the history.
Thirdly, Schoppa proposes the importance of spatial venues in the investigation of a historical figure’s identities and actions. Due to the distinctive characteristics and the existing social networks of a specific location, historical figures often assume very distinct ideologies and actions in each location. Analysis of the subject by locations proves to be useful at least in the case of Shen Dingyi, and helps to reveal the reasons for some of the events that occurred.
Lastly but importantly, Schoppa warns us against the danger of “structured present”(Schoppa 260) in historical analysis. Historians knowing the present find it hard to avoid making judgments on the subject of analysis with information that is gained later, and result in skewed account of the events of the past. Some historians bear an intended structure that they try to fit the subjects in. This strategies are against the spirit of historical objectivity and should be avoided. In this book, Schoppa attempts to stand from the perspective of Shen Dingyi, analyzes his action on the ground of what he was exposed to at the time of the events, and makes guesses and weighs options for Shen Dingyi with the limited amount of information available then. As such Schoppa tries to prevent the retrospective account of what happened and fall into gross simplification or erred perceptions of some writers mentioned in the book.
In this book, Schoppa not only reveals the important historical development of the revolution, but also told the story from a refreshing new angle. Shen Dingyi’s assassination might have been a singularity in the 1920’s, but his story reflects valuable generalities about the time and space he was placed in. From his life and death, we see the course of Chinese revolution in the 1920’s, developing from its infancy with little theoretical support to maturity burdened with partisan power struggle, all reflected in Shen’s ideologies, actions and social relationships. Studies of this style should be carried out on more historical figures, especially those whose name are nearly erased or complicated by the studies that focus on “names” and “-isms”. The potential of revealing valuable new information is tremendous.
Reference
Schoppa, Keith. Blood Road, The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China. University of California Press. 1995.
Schwarez. The Crucible of Political Violence: 1925-1927.
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