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New Year Greeting Letter – nerd version
It occurs to me today that if time travel is possible, not only will the chain of causes and effects be disrupted, but also the law of mass conservation will be broken. Science fictions seem to like exploring the consequences of the former, a few of which I happened to watch this week, such as…
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Science Pitch Talk in CHM 139, 2009F
Last Tuesday, it was the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, and this year is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. This event has inspired many discussions in the scientific community about Darwin and the theory of evolution. I intend to give you one of the…
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Cambridge – Why So Serious?
Associated with names such as Francis Bacon, Sir Issac Newton, James Maxwell, Charles Darwin, Watson and Crick, in Cambridge one has every reason to be serious, yet Cambridge students decidedly do not take themselves too seriously. The photo is the front page of Cambridge student newspaper May 2009 issue, which I took from the tourist…
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New York City
Started as a trading post for the Dutch West India Company in 1624, New York City (Manhattan more precisely since the rest four boroughs didn’t join officially until 1898) gradually became the major port of trade between North America and Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. And as the business in the then “new”…
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WD Sailing Log
People always like to see themselves as being at the center of the world and proudly enjoy doing so. A map sold in China will put China at the center, one sold in Europe will put Europe at the center, one sold in Australia, as I was told, will put the south hemisphere on the…
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Migrants to China’s West Bask in Prosperity – NYTimes.com
Demographics have always been a tactical element of the campaign to pacify the region. In 1949, when the Communists declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, there were just 300,000 Han Chinese in Xinjiang. Today, the number of Han has grown to 7.5 million, just over 40 percent of the region’s population. The…
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The reciprocal space of 2D hexagonal pores v0.1
With this post comes the new category RhinoDesign. Rhino is a 3d modeling tool. I have been using it for almost 2 years, and find it very very powerful and yet at the same time easy to use. With its Grasshopper plugging, which is officially called Explicit History, it can even handle vector operations like…
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Lines inspired by Pirates of Caribbean
Not all treasures are silver and gold, mate. – Not all evils are filthy and ugly, mate. Wherever we want to go, we’ll go. That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails that’s what a ship needs but what a ship is…what the…
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Take it slow, make it happen.
I always wanted to create a website of some sort. I started my first trail in 2005 for When Pigs Fly, and it was a disaster. At that time, I was overconfident about my ability, overestimated my free time, and had very little idea of how complicated it is to build a website completely from…
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A Sense of Purpose
I am reconsidering joining the battle of alternative energy. The reason why I had recently abandoned it is that too many people are doing it. And this reason is not a good one. What I am avoiding actually is competition. Though joining a mature field will not provide me with large room for growth and…