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“We are so important to some, but we are just passing through”
“Like life, we appear, we disappear. We are so important to some, but we are just passing through.” – Before Midnight No epic battles, no grand scheme, no spectacular actions or visual effects. Before Midnight has its own charm in so many different ways, from the picturesque scenery of a small Greek town, to the…
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Discipline curiosity
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself. — Leonardo da Vinci I am interested in a lot of things, but the problem is that in order to make a meaningful contribution in any particular field, one has to focus. Each person can only make one small step…
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Thoughts on Education
School Kills Creativity (2006) and its transcript. Bring on the learning revolution (2010) Change education paradigm (2010), which an animation based on a talk at Royal Society of Arts How to escape education death valley (2013) After spending hours of watching and re-watching these videos, I started to wonder whether or not I am addicted. Aside…
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Miss those last-minute goals
A legend of our time departs. Out of all the great things people say about Fergie, I like two the most. Reporter: “what do you think you will miss the most? ” Sir Alex Ferguson: “Those last minute goals.” Video. ” ‘Ferguson is furious’ is the most typed phrase in premier league history. ” — Guardian.
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Current Reading: On China By Henry Kissinger
The dilemma for someone who strives to become a global citizen while at the same time taking pride in his/her own unique cultural heritage is that one often faces choices of competing values. It is true that there are certain universal values we all share as humans, but there is no denying that values differ…
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Notes on Lecture Notes: Maths Part 2
The previous post dealt with the question of what maths to learn. This post will deal with how to learn efficiently. In a casual discussion, Steven Gortler mentioned that books on modern mathematics are so abstract that one may not grasp clearly what the initial questions are. And these books tend to focus on proving…
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Notes on Lecture Notes: Maths
I audit three classes with heavy maths this year: one is L. Mahadevan’s ES220 Fluid Mechanics; another is Jocob Barandes’s PHY232 Advanced Classical Electromagnetism; the last one is Steven Gortler’s CS277 Geometric Modelling in Computer Graphics. I found myself cramming for necessary maths all the time. It was an interesting experience, but not the most…
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Book summary: Ignorance: How It Drives Science
I first read about the titular idea in an essay in Scientific American last year: What Science Wants to Know. I was attracted to what seems to me then an unconventional idea. It was a hilarious read. Early this year, I read about the idea again in C&EN: The importance of Being Ignorant. And that was where I…
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“In youth we learn; in age we understand”
Curious thing is a person’s memory. Stuff that one never paid any attention to in childhood just keeps coming back when one gets older. 人之初，性本善，性相近，习相远。 Men at their birth are naturally good. Their natures are much the same; their habits become widely different. Translation shamelessly copied from here. 子曰：学而时习之，不亦说乎？有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎？ Confucius said, “To learn and to…
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Washington DC and “The Need to Create”
“We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” – Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit The flight to DC was late. Even worse, I got to the airport an hour earlier than usual, so I ended up reading the first two chapters of the…