Le Blogger

I went hiking at the Eno River State Park again this morning. This time we went through a different entrance, so I got to see a part of the park I've never seen before. It's so refreshing. Early morn the air is so clean and invigorating. Below is a photo I took (one of many, the rest I'll be putting up soon) that reminded me of an art piece I saw at the Nasher Museum. The work in the Nasher is a photo of a huge tree, with many branches that fork into more branches that go on---"fractal"-ing out. But the stunning part of the work is the photo is hung on the wall upside down! I was really captivated by that piece, since it motivated a new perception of the tree, a point of view one normally would not see, and thus, also made me try to look at life from different viewpoints. Here, I am looking at roots from a tree, but with the leaves scattered about it's almost an image of a tree! Nature IS beautiful. The invention of photography was brilliant. To find out more

I really like Coco's cartoons. I think he/she hits the spot precisely with these images. Below is something that I have contemplated and perhaps feared for some time. But I had faith that at least during John Paul II's papacy this would not come to pass. For though I am not a Catholic, nor a Christian, I do believe John Paul was a godly man, and he did intend to do good for the world. I do not know enough of Benedict to say anything. The Vatican is one of the few sovereign states that have full diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Obviously, since their existence could be considered more religious and faith based than political (though it is also true from years of history how politically influential the Vatican is) or economical, one would think that the Vatican should maintain ties with all nations. If their "greed" to Christianize China allows them to sacrifice their friendship with Taiwan, I think it will be quite clear that the Vatican no longer has a direct line to God.

It takes courage to speak the heart. So for example, the student who failed the following test should not feel too disheartened, for there is a chance to make up for it! Nothing particularly insightful today..I'm majorly sleep deprived. Did get a chance to watch a nice Batman cartoon movie today. I think he's one of my all time favourite "superheros," precisely because there is absolutely nothing super about Batman. He's all human, well of course not the typical average Joe. Nonetheless, his brains and some family ties made him what he is...though he is definitely good at heart, he can be dark. I like that. The dark brooding type. Sometimes though, just stop thinking and follow instinct, follow the heart.

I have thought of getting one of these before, but I suppose my instinct in the end led to a better judgment. After all, it's not a particularly good sight if someone walks into your room or office and you have one of these on the desk. The first reaction would be, wow that's uhh unique. Play around, press it a bit, then eventually, start wondering about the owner with thoughts like, "What a loser!" or "Nice!" depending on perhaps your gender. Seriously though, some statistics need to be done to see whether a product as this sells well. I know the adage "sex sells" but this is more of a "catchy ah hah that's cool but I probably won't buy it though I'll take a picture of it" product than an actual, well, uh hem kind of product. I mean, if I wanted to get anywhere with girls I probably wouldn't want them to see a mouse pad like this; instead a cute dog pic or fancy Van Gogh would do much better. Not that a mouse pad will dec

From the NPR website "Legend has it that the mathematician Archimedes invented a giant mirror that used the sun to set Roman warships afire during battle in 212 B.C. But many have wondered whether the story is a myth. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor David Wallace decided to test it out with a team of students." The website for the MIT team is here . Definitely check this page out. The photo below is actually from the Mythbusters TV show, I think. It's just neat isn't it? Even though the ship didn't actually burn, and thus, brings into doubt whether Archimedes really succeeded...but this is what I like so much about Western education and science. People can get creative and try to prove things, and often it's not only important ideas, but fun along the way too. We've really got to bring this aspect into the typical Asian education; replace rote memorization of useless, banal facts with creative endeavors. I've also learned today that mi

The world's largest natural pearl. This picture would be slightly more perfect if it wasn't for that zit! Imagine a pimple the size of that pearl. Nastiness! This pearl was once owned by Napolean or Napolean II's wife. So I did a little searching to find out how pearls are formed. Let's say there's an oyster. The oyster consists of a shell and then inside is the meat. The shell is created by an organ called the mantle that uses nacre, which is basically from the nutrients the oyster intakes, to produce the shell. Let's say while the oyster is open some dirty stuff gets inside between mantle and shell. This irritates the oyster and causes the mantle to form nacre around the stuff. This then becomes a pearl. It's kind of funny that an object deemed to be a sign of purity and beauty actually forms from essentially junk that is not wanted, like the leftover greens stuck between your teeth, that left unpicked will end up rotting the cavity. Perhaps aliens who com

This is outrageous ! What kind of peacekeeping troops are these? Instead of keeping the peace I bet they are causing more trouble! How can one keep the peace and get away with crimes like rape? I don't know why the big countries turn a blind eye to this. It's just plain wrong. This just proves further to me how useless the UN has become. It can't get the Taiwan issue straight, and it can't even keep itself clean. One would think that at the least if the organization didn't have much power, they'd at least stick to honor and higher ideals. This just shows that underneath all the brouhaha, it's really crap. Here's a great site . I love this guy's work. He just chooses some great colours to mix together, and the subject matter is often quite entertaining...sometimes it can be downright morbid though.

Interesting read in Taipei Times on women's enhanced spatial abilities during menstruation. Hopefully women's ability to say yes instead of always no when guys ask them out are also enhanced during this time, perhaps? It's clear that there are some fundamental differences between man and woman. There are just some things that the male brain is more suited to do, and same with the female brain; certainly our physical bodies differ. But the important thing to stress is that despite these innate, biological differences, society should not structure things so as to make differences a hinderence. Of course this is being idealistic because it is also precisely the differences in ability that makes one either outstanding or just regular, regardless of race or gender. So I just sort of went in a circle there. I guess I want to say I am for equality and fairness without comprimising excellence. In some sense we need to say its ok to have an elitist system, because only when there i

I found this to be very interesting (read it in Nature): ...the fact that negatively charged sperm have the most intact DNA(C. Ainsworth et al. Hum. Reprod. 20, 2261–2270; 2005)...It is not known why negatively charged sperm have the most intact DNA. Researchers think that negatively charged sialic acid, added during the final stages of sperm production, is an indicator that the sperm has successfully assembled and matured. "It's like the cherry on the cake," says John Aitken, one of the researchers who developed the technique. "Everything else has to have gone absolutely normally for the sperm to get to that point." So Negative is good! At lab right now, trying to get that darned sample to work properly.

The best thing to sooth the soul is to look up into the dark vast beyond of space with stars shining brightly, the infinite and finite all in one beautiful cosmic picture. Tonight, though the moon was near full and bright, I got a treat when I reached home and looked up to see a clear cloudless sky with stars everywhere. It's so beautiful and soothing to look up into the dark starry night and the only thing that eventually moved me in was the cold wet breeze as I had forgotten to bring a sweater with me. When one looks up into the night sky, the feeling of the individual is lost and one almost merges with the whole universe, becoming just a speckle amongst all the particles quarks and leptons randomly scattering and colliding to create new planets, star systems and galaxies. The silent, dark, motionless sky actually belies the truth of what's going on: fiery collisions and bursts of energy that destroy worlds while creating new ones. But looking at such a scene, one no longer f

Life must be lived with passion! Recently I have taken up salsa and tango. Classes meet once a week on Sunday evenings, and it's lots of fun. But at this point, even kids dance better than me (see below!). One of the Schapiro Seven, and my roommate at that, came to visit over the weekend. It was good seeing Jason again. Columbia provides housing for all four years, and most of the rooms are singles. But due to a terrible lottery pick, we ended up picking doubles for sophomore year. Jason and I got along very well so we decided to room together. It was a great year, though the room was the smallest on the floor! Jason, Ed and I still regularly get together online for some Starcraft, the best game possibly ever made. They've actually moved on to other games such as World of Warcraft, but several factors have prevented me from trying it out. Maybe some day...I know they are itching for me to join hah. You know we are crazy about gaming when even though I have experiments to run, w

I've been up since 6 am today. Had a long, relatively productive, busy and tiring day. Now I'm all alone at home since my roommates are out of town on vacation, and it's nice and quiet. Actually it's a little too quiet. I wish I had a dog, a huskie to be exact. Slightly grayish white/black fur with those sharp intelligent blue wolf eyes... What a long day it's been. Have I mentioned that already? I've probably overexerted myself today as my back started to spasm...it's been tense all week long from basketball on Tuesday. Better get it checked. I think this was made worse as I was stuck in traffic at 1230 am!! WTF! The culprit---the Rolling Stones. They gave a concert at Duke's Wallace Wade Football Stadium. Supposedly 35,000+ people showed up, and each paid on average 100 bucks to listen to them. That's more than 35 million in a day!! And they caused a terribly traffic jam when I wanted to get home to sleep. Fucking bastards! Sorry to the fans out th

So the Yankees are facing an uphill battle against the Angels. Hope they pull out of this one. The game today was pretty intense. Down 5-0 then went up 6-5 only to be beaten 11-7. Ugh! I don't know, they just lacked the stamina to pull things through today. Then again, I don't fault them. NY has a pretty tense weekend with the bomb alert, and I pray that all will be well. After all, in my heart NYC is still my home. This weekend is Fall Break. Unfortunately for me, the weather is bad so I probably can't go hiking, and then my boss told me Thursday that we have work to do over the weekend. Right now I am busy testing the microwave/rf generators for our quantum dot gate pulsing. We need to make sure that we can maintain the pulse form sent down to the sample with minimal distortion, reflection, attenuation and loss. This is made particularly difficult due to the size of our metal gates (which I made), on the order of 100 nm or less in width and less than 20 nm in thickness. S

Haven't posted in a while...lots going on lately at work and in life. Lots on my mind. Sometimes you wish there was someone with all the answers. But then, this is what life is all about. Learning as you go, not being afraid to do what your heart tells you while keeping your optimism...and remember to always have a good time. I think this also applies to work, except there, one probably needs to use a little more brain and a little less heart. Still, intuition is a powerful guide at times. Below is a nice photo taken before the "Longwang" typhoon hit Taiwan last week. The clouds do indeed look like a Dragon King, don't they? Here's a funny video with similar topic to the last post. Got this from my daily read JustJared who has all sorts of gossip and fun stuff.