"I always thought that would be sort of exciting." I didn't really, I was trying to be responsive, but I was conscious as soon as I'd closed my mouth of the schoolgirl gushiness of the remark.

"Exciting." He snickered briefly. "I used to think that. It looks exciting when you're an eager brilliant undergraduate. They all say, Go on to graduate studies, and they give you a bit of money; and so you do, and you think, Now I'm doing to fid out the real truth. But you don't find out, exactly, and things get pickier and pickier and more and more stale, and it all collapses in a welter of commas and shredded footnotes, and after a while it's like anything else: you've got stuck in it and you can't get out, and you wonder how you got there in the first place..."

Magaret Atwood The Edible Woman

proxy string bookmark

A* people who use firefox, and are sick of typing .ejproxy.a-star.edu.sg into your address bar, or worse, going through brenner library everytime you come across a paper online, which you have found through pubmed or whatever science literature search engine, here's a solution. Drag this link A* Proxy to the bookmark bar of your firefox browser. and name it as you like. whenever you're at a paper with limited access, click the book mark. and then you log in if you haven't yet, or just wait for the paper to load if you've logged in once already.


I of course know zero java script codes. it's modified from MIT's reload via MIT libs.

(And btw, you can install firefox on your computer. just save and open the whole installation package on your desktop.)

Dafen Painters

Here's a post my friend shared on google reader. Pretty interesting story about these replica painters in Dafen, Shenzhen, China. I used know a replica painter myself. When i was taking night classes at the academy, he used to hang around the classrooms painting replicas. he was probably a friend of the teachers, who never charged him for anything. I remember him having an extra little finger, and that he was painting this portrait of a southern woman sitting beside a stream. i remember him telling us about being paid 50 yuan a painting. not a big sum considering the amount of time he spent doing them. looking back now, i think he was probably a student trying to make some extra bucks to pay for the tuition.

google in bio

back to the days i just started my infatuation with google, i was convinced nonetheless that they were going to stick a foot into human genetics and prayed for the day to come so that i might remotely have a chance to work for them.

that day's nearer now though. google is finally expressing interest in supporting genetics companies, for example, 23andMe, a company that sergey's wife anne co-opened. hah. I KNEW IT. it won't be long before they go into neurons. we'll just wait and see.

and to all the communism-basher mocking the central political bureau with lousy jokes, shut your big mouth. i don't see you coming up with any workable socio-political theories or managing a whole bloody country...

Wanna Download An Entire Website?

I asked a friend for good C++ primers, so she directed me to the website of one of the classes she took and TA'ed at UBC. In addition to the fact that i know nothing about c++, i.e. i need everything on the website unselectively, I have another problem. I don't have internet at home. The website has about a million pages and files. So I needed a quick way to grab the entire site onto my thumb drive, and bring it home with me, as opposed to clicking my fingers off saving the files one by one.

so i googled "download entire website" and found numerous applications that do that. however, my office computer is well guarded against users who want to install stuff. so i had to add "firefox" to the string of search queries. turned out that firefox does have an extension that does the job. so now the little application is mirroring the whole website while i type away here....yet another triumph of firefox over the centralized control of my office computer admins!

oh it's done.

i love google. i love firefox.

on tibet riots in the eyes of the western media

i wrote this for a mailing list but i thought i might as well put it here for the record. i'm too lazy to translate it as of now. maybe later

the original discussions stemmed from this post

1. 英美曾分别试图在西藏插一脚，所以他们于西藏问题的立场并不中立。而他们的报道偏激有欠真实，也并不奇怪。别的西方国家的立场被这两个国家影响得很厉害，所以也有点跟腔的意思。虽然说美国以自己媒体独立为傲，但是美国的媒体毕竟是美国人开的，国家的立场还是会不知不觉地渗透进去的。立场一偏，证据就有可能有偏颇。完全准确的媒体好像也是没有的， 总免不了一点编造，或者三人成虎的成分。好的媒体不好的媒体，只是编造多少而已。再说，英美媒体连切身的家事都报道不清(譬如大选)，不要说跟他关系不大的西藏问题。我觉得这次他们拼命报道这个事情，主要是乘着奥运搅和搅和，并不见得想负多少责任。看来，以后我对英美于中国的报道更要批判地看。

这次资讯混乱，和国内把外国媒体都赶出西藏也有关系。我们确实要改改习惯，一出事情就关门总不是个办法。

令我愤怒的是这些外国人利用我们国内的不和来达到自己的目的。台湾大选，西藏动乱也被国民党和民进党纷纷搬到台上来讲。唯恐天下不乱。我新近学了个说法，这个叫做消费别人的悲剧。真讨厌。

2. 国内的互联网实在是令人心寒。不知道大家有没有同感。一是中文互联网上传的东西准确性极有问题，大家喜欢转贴，传说，不太喜欢（像褚辞杨波同学一般）考据。二是帖子里普遍感情因素比较重，不太客观。 有点事情就惊叹号泛滥，骂人的话四处乱流（举不胜举，），而且说来说去几句民族主义的话。这种发泄风格也已经蔓延到了facebook上。西藏，新疆，台海这些问题都历史老长了，各方都犯过错，积怨多，各种因素复杂，以致现时的对错其实并不明显。因此解决办法也不是一句两句统一的口号或一行两行惊叹号说得清的。我觉得要理性，从长计议。越骂人越显得我们没理。

3. 西藏这个问题，或是疆独，或是台海，只要我们维持现状，纠纷总是会有的。再这样，每次一出事就追究谁对谁错，吵得不可开交，没什么建设性。我们真正需要的是从大局考虑有建设性的分析。 以后怎么办？政治上压制可行吗?经济策略有效吗?如果政治上的压制受国外人权主义舆论牵制，而经济上支援也不见效，那怎么办？能不能从文化上统一？

满人与藏蒙和平相处的政策是值得借鉴的。我在课上学的，清政府的基本政策是，承认喇嘛佛教，于是西藏以为自己在精神上指引清政府，而清政府认为自己在政治上统治西藏。这样一来双方各居其所，并不起冲突。 现在我们当然不可能回过去信佛教，可是我确实觉得文化上的理解与和解是关键。其中，与达赖谈话是关键。达赖说，"I am a simple Buddhist monk -- no more, no less"这是扯淡，扯给以前不明真相的西方人听的。在西藏宗教领袖从来也就是本地的政治领导。现在大家当然不会这么天真了。我们要和达赖谈。我们也要想怎么处理藏佛教的问题。我们的政府不信教，但在藏民心中，宗教还是占有相当高的地位。这一点短期内是不会改变的。所以也许我们需要折衷的办法。北京在解决西藏的问题上动了很多脑子，现在看来要动更多的脑子才行。

4. 不管统一与否，我觉得民生最重要。衡量西藏政策成功与否应该有一个客观的标准。首要标准应当是当地藏民和汉人的物质生活和精神生活质量。大家生活稳定，自然这个区域就稳定了。这其实比打还是不打，或者统还是不统的问题都重要。我的想法比较天真，当然中共和达赖都不会完全这么想。但北京花了这么多心思与达赖谈判，又实行了这么多年的软政策，而不是像美国人杀绝印第安人一样打进去，说明还是有戏的。所以我觉得西藏问题难解决，却并不无望。

我买了前一期的亚洲周刊，里面很多分析都很中肯。 所以我扫描了一些文章，大家有兴趣的话可以看看。亚洲周刊西藏动乱报道

the economist也作了一个特别报道，有些照片。The Economist's Report on The Tibet Riot
According to The Economist, their correspondent "by chance" "arrived just before the eruption of anti-Chinese rioting by Tibetan monks and others. He was the only western journalist in tibet as the violence continued for several days, leaving many dead"

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early


Nation Of Andorra Not In Africa, Shocked U.S. State Dept. Reports


In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?


Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters


In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly?

TalkingCock presents

Facebook v.s. MySpace

"The "conclusion" of my article should not have been a big deal, but I had to put it out there because so many folks weren't acknowledging it and the press kept perpetuating the view that MySpace was dead because Facebook was taking over. We used to have this utopian view that the Internet would solve all of our societal divisions. On the Internet, no one would know you're a dog, right? The reality is that all of society's issues are simply perpetuated online. And that's frustrating. I liked the utopian dream better, even if it's not real. But if we accept the reality - that the Internet mirrors and magnifies offline values and views - we must start to think of what the implications of this are. Society is in a dangerous position when people who are different do not interact. This is how intolerance breeds and we definitely have enough of that in this country."

by danah boyd
From the response to the critique of the essay on class division between facebook and myspace users

Falling Goats

许臭美姗

大脑的厌食症
灵魂的肥胖
精神的便秘

世界是思维的食物
从早吃到晚
当然消化不良

城市轰隆轰隆
那是无数坨聪明绝顶的脑袋
一起打饱嗝的声音
遁世的冲动

清静的小镇
音乐和诗
哲学与酒
是一坨良方

专治
间歇性精神消化不良

NIH-3T3

anyone in Singapore has NIH 3T3 cells? gimme an aliquot?

Creationist Journal Launched

The new, free and peer-reviewed Answers Research Journal is fresh online. According to the website's about section, this journal is "a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework."

an example of the articles published there will be: Microbes and the Days of Creation

Mom's Snowman

looks like it is snowing quite a bit..

dude this name has only the vowel "a" in it:
Rajan Sankaranarayanan

and i think i'm going to marry someone with the surname sankaranaarayanan and name my son dasaavathaarangal. then he'll have 16 "a"'s in his name, beats uncle rajan, who has 9. muahahhahahaahahahahahahah(or i can just name my kid that).

and i think this is a great picture

from my dear friend hoiyee

stick to your plans, make a commitment

StickK.com shows you how you can make a plan and get it going. be it weight losing, or gaining, or exercising regularly.

it originated from a simple idea some grad students had. you draw up a plan, and swear to pay your roommate a sum of money if you don't meet your goal. this is surprisingly useful, as you can tell from the result of this weight loss contract.


on the website though, charity gets the money instead of your roommate.

maybe i should start doing it with my roommates. :)

Jeff Dunham again