避风塘里抽风: 十二月 2008

2008年12月31日星期三

写在2008的最后一天

早上从暖暖的被窝里爬出来，极其辛苦的找到鞋和衣服裤子，刷完牙洗完脸，到食堂给别人带饭，然后被刺骨的早晨的风弄醒，最后终于到了教室的时候，看着黑板上的昨天没有舍得撤下的板报的时候，终于意识到，昨天的一切不是梦，而今天还将是平凡的一天。其时每天都是平凡的，只是我们赋予它或被赋予了不同的，或重要或不值得一提的含义罢了。

第一次在一年的最后一天打算写点什么，也许是因为这一年过得太快而又太慢了。太快是因为到处换地方住，到处作不同的事情，没有多长时间能几个月单单的过一种生活，就像高一的时候那样。。。不过这也许就是我想要的生活，虽然我喜欢静，喜欢看着阳光洒在绿绿的草坪上，喜欢在新札幌站附近的一家从来释放着诱人香味却从未进去过的一家面包店门口的屋檐底下看着飘落的雪花。但是这些只能是在短暂而美好的瞬间里去体会，然后慢慢回味。life is going on，so everything is changing. 对于从来就是喜欢新鲜事物的我，今年的确是一个exciting的年份。而太慢是因为全世界，全中国发生了太多太多的事，真的担心中国能不能挺过来，不过看起来还是不错，god bless China.

ms在5月份的时候写了一个简短的summary，6月之后更是发生了不少的事情。

7月回家，8月olympics, 9月到北京学SAT, 遇到了Yunming兄，算是一件幸事。 9月15日雷曼兄弟宣布破产，全球金融危机加剧，各国股市纷纷暴跌，石油价格节节下跌，从140多刀降到了40刀每桶, 对了，还有强子对撞机的开始与停滞。10月，11月SAT1&2, TOEFL, essay, charts...

新年到了，Happy New Year!!!

本来想在昨天写完的，但是还是过了午夜。。。anyway, go on...

18岁，过的很有意义，因为everyday counts. Everyday is another day. Everyday might be somewhere in my mind, or in my heart. I grew up a lot this year. From 2008, I am an adult, and I know about many various things of the world. And in 2009, I must be stronger, smarter, and maybe thinner...

2008，我做了好多决定，懂得了好多事情，同时也放弃了很多，很多。包括今天，我似乎又做了个决定。。。although it might be a little bit sad now, still, I have to face to tomorrow, right? Everything is moving on, so I can just make a choice, and...go ahead, man!

Now, I start to know what I should do now. It is said that when a man is concentrating upon his things, he is cool. So...I just want to be cool. I have to concentrate.

本来要盘点和写点感想来的，因为拖的时间比较长，开始时候的心情荡然无存，就开始瞎写了，管他呢，有几个人会看这些crap呢。。。

2008年12月27日星期六

List Of Very Weird Ways To Die

It is so weird...actually, I have seen a book related to this kind of things before...

Antiquity
Note: Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal (uncertain authenticity)

* 456 BC: Aeschylus, a Greek playwright, was killed when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone. The tortoise survived.

* 430 BC: Empedocles, Pre-Socratic philosopher, secretly jumped into an active volcano (Mt. Etna). According to Diogenes Laërtius, this was to convince the people of his time that he had been taken up by the gods on Olympus.
* 272 BC: Pyrrhus of Epirus, the famous conquerer and source of the term pyrrhic victory, according to Plutarch died while fighting an urban battle in Argos on the back of an elephant when an old woman threw a roof tile at him, stunning him and allowing an Argive soldier to kill him.

* 270 BC: Philitas of Cos, Greek intellectual, is said by Athenaeus of Naucratis to have studied false arguments and erroneous word-usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death. Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.

* 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunk donkey attempt to eat figs.

* 162 BC: Eleazar Maccabeus was crushed to death at the Battle of Beth-zechariah by a War elephant that he believed to be carrying Seleucid King Antiochus V; charging in to battle, Eleazar rushed underneath the elephant and thrust a spear into its belly, whereupon it fell dead on top of him

* 4 BC: Herod the Great suffered from fever, intense rashes, colon pains, foot drop, inflammation of the abdomen, a putrefaction of his genitals that produced worms, convulsions, and difficulty breathing before he finally gave up.Similar symptoms– abdominal pains and worms– accompanied the death of his grandson Herod Agrippa in 44 AD, after he had imprisoned St Peter. At various times, each of these deaths has been considered divine retribution.

* 64 - 67: St Peter was executed by the Romans. According to legend, he asked not to be crucified in the normal way, but was instead executed on an inverted cross. He said he was not worthy to be crucified in the same way as was Jesus.
* c. 98: Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum, was roasted to death in a brazen bull during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian. Saint Eustace, as well as his wife and children supposedly suffered a similar fate under Hadrian. According to legend, the creator of the brazen bull, Perillos of Athens, was the first to be put into the brazen bull when he presented his invention to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum, but he was taken out before he died.

* 260: Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by the King Shapur I. After a long period of punishment and humiliation, Shapur had the emperor skinned alive and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy.

* 415: Hypatia of Alexandria, Greek mathematician and philosopher, was murdered by a mob by having her skin ripped off with sharp sea-shells and what remained of her burned. (Various types of shells have been named: clams, oysters, abalones. Other sources claim tiles or pottery-shards were used.)

Middle Ages

* 892: Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney strapped the head of a defeated foe to his leg, the tooth of which grazed against him as he rode his horse, causing the infection which killed him.
* 1063: Béla I of Hungary died when his throne’s canopy collapsed.
* 1135: Henry I of England is said to have died after gorging on lampreys, his favorite food.

* 1219: According to legend, Inalchuk, the Muslim governor of the Central Asian town of Otrar, was captured and killed by the invading Mongols, who poured molten silver in his eyes, ears, and throat.

* 1258: Al-Musta’sim was killed during the Mongol invasion of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulagu Khan, not wanting to spill royal blood, wrapped him in a rug and had him trampled to death by his horses.

* 1308: John Duns Scotus, O.F.M. according to an old tradition was buried alive following his lapse into a coma.
* 1322: Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford was fatally speared through the anus by a pikeman hiding under the bridge during the Battle of Boroughbridge.

* 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.

* 1410: Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.

* 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine at his own request.

Renaissance

* 1514: György Dózsa, székely man-at-arms and peasants’ revolt leader in Hungary, was condemned to sit on a red-hot iron throne with a red-hot iron crown on his head and a red-hot sceptre in his hand (mocking at his ambition to be king), by Hungarian oppressors in Transylvania. While Dózsa was still alive, he was set upon and his partially roasted body was eaten by six of his fellow rebels, who had been starved for a week beforehand.

* 1556: Humayun, a Mughal emperor, was descending from the roof of his library after observing Venus, when he heard the mu’azaan, or call to prayer. Humayun’s practice was to bow his knee when he heard the azaan, and when he did his foot caught the folds of his garment, causing him to fall down several flights. He died 3 days later of the injuries at the age of 47.

* 1599: Nanda Bayin, a Burman king, reportedly laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that “Venice was a free state without a king.”

* 1601: Tycho Brahe, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. It would have been extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, so he stayed until he became fatally ill. This version of events has since been brought into question as other causes of death (murder by Johannes Kepler, suicide, and mercury poisoning among others) have come to the fore.

* 1649: Sir Arthur Aston, Royalist commander of the garrison during the Siege of Drogheda, was beaten to death with his own wooden leg, which the Parliamentarian soldiers thought concealed golden coins.

* 1660: Thomas Urquhart, Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

* 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV, committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn’t stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish. The authenticity of this story is questionable.

* 1673: Molière, the French actor and playwright, died after being seized by a violent coughing fit, whilst playing the title role in his play Le Malade imaginaire (The Hypochondriac or The Imaginary Invalid).

* 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum, as it was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor. The performance was to celebrate the king’s recovery from an illness.

18th century

* 1751: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the author of L’Homme machine, a major materialist and sensualist philosopher died of overeating at a feast given in his honor. His philosophical adversaries suggested that by doing so, he had contradicted his theoretical doctrine with the effect of his practical actions.

* 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning.

* 1771: Adolf Frederick, king of Sweden, died of digestion problems on 12 February 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk. He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as “the king who ate himself to death.”

* 1794: John Kendrick, an American sea captain and explorer, was killed in the Hawaiian Islands when a British ship mistakenly used a loaded cannon to fire a salute to Kendrick’s vessel.

Modern Age

19th century

* 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by the world’s first mechanically powered passenger train (Stephenson’s Rocket), at its public opening.

* 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was gored and possibly crushed

* 1862: Jim Creighton, baseball player, died when he swung a bat too hard and ruptured his bladder.
* 1868: Matthew Vassar, brewer and founder of Vassar College, died in mid-speech while delivering his farewell address to the College Board of Trustees.

* 1897: Salomon August Andrée, Knut Fraenkel and Nils Strindberg died in October 1897 at Kvitöya (White Island) (located to the northeast of Svalbard) where they had arrived after a failed attempt to reach the North Pole in a balloon. Their deaths might have been due to exhaustion but also could have been due to eating insufficiently cooked polar bear meat causing trichinosis, or carbon monoxide poisoning from the miniature kerosene stove when snow made it difficult to air out the fumes.

* 1899: Félix Faure, French president, died of a stroke while in his office. It is popularly believed that he was “in the arms of his mistress” at the time, though this may have been a misunderstanding whether of words used when the maid that found him dead had yelled in French that either his consciousness or companion had just left him.

20th century

* 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination.

* 1912: Franz Reichelt, tailor, fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he had told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.

* 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was reportedly poisoned while dining with a political enemy, shot in the head, shot three more times, bludgeoned, and then thrown into a frozen river. When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of death to be hypothermia. However, there is now some doubt about the credibility of this account.

* 1918: Gustav Kobbé, writer and musicologist, was killed when the sailboat he was on was struck by a landing seaplane off Long Island, N.Y.

* 1923: Martha Mansfield, an American film actress, died after sustaining severe burns on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia after a smoker’s match, tossed by a cast member, ignited her Civil War costume of hoopskirts and ruffles.

* 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, became the first to die from the alleged King Tut’s Curse after a mosquito bite on his face became seriously infected with erysipelas, which he cut while shaving, leading to blood poisoning and eventually pneumonia.

* 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero, died as a result of a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands. He accidentally pierced his knee. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, Invincible.

* 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a Welsh racing driver, was decapitated by his car’s drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.

* 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when one of the long scarves she was known for caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.

* 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.

* 1932: Eben Byers died of radiation poisoning after having consumed large quantities of a popular patent medicine containing radium.

* 1932: Peg Entwistle, actress, leapt to her death from the “H” of the Hollywood Sign, following her perceived rejection from the industry for which the sign stood. The day after her death, a letter arrived from the Beverly Hills Playhouse, in which she was offered the lead role in a play about a woman driven to suicide.

* 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure, and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased.

* 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.

* 1939: Finnish actress Sirkka Sari died when she fell down a chimney. She was at a cast party celebrating the completion of a movie, her third and last. She mistook a chimney for a balcony and fell into a heating boiler, dying instantly.

* 1940: Marcus Garvey died after suffering either a cerebral hemorrhage or heart attack while reading his own obituary, which stated in part that he died “broke, alone and unpopular”.

* 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.

* 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.

* 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr. accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.

* 1945: Scientist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. accidentally dropped a brick of tungsten carbide onto a sphere of plutonium while working on the Manhattan Project. This caused the plutonium to come to criticality; Daghlian died of radiation poisoning, becoming the first person to die in a criticality accident.

* 1946: Louis Slotin, chemist and physicist, died of radiation poisoning after being exposed to lethal amounts of ionizing radiation. He died in a very similar way as Harry K. Daghlian, Jr., from dropping a block of material on the same sphere of plutonium by accident. The sphere of plutonium was nicknamed the Demon core

* 1947: The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders, were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.

* 1955: Margo Jones, theater director, was killed by exposure to carbon tetrachloride fumes from her newly cleaned carpet.

* 1956: Nina Hamnett, artist, died from complications after falling out her apartment window and being impaled on the fence forty feet below

* 1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died while in make-up between scenes of a live television play, Underground, at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones’s absence.

* 1959: In the Dyatlov Pass incident, Nine ski hikers in the Ural Mountains abandoned their camp in the middle of the night in apparent terror, some clad only in their underwear despite sub-zero weather. Six of the hikers died of hypothermia and three by unexplained fatal injuries. Though the corpses showed no signs of struggle, one victim had a fatal skull fracture, two had major chest fractures (comparable in force to a car accident), and one was missing her tongue. The victims’ clothing also contained high levels of radiation. Soviet investigators determined only that “a compelling unknown force” had caused the deaths, barring entry to the area for years thereafter.

* 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet missile technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket, including Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations. The events were filmed by automatic cameras.

* 1960: Inejiro Asanuma, 61, the head of the Japanese Socialist Party, was stabbed to death with a wakizashi sword by extreme rightist Otoya Yamaguchi during a televised parliamentary debate. Yamaguchi was immediately arrested and later committed suicide.

* 1961: Valentin Bondarenko, a Soviet cosmonaut trainee, died from shock after suffering third-degree burns over much of his body due to a flash fire in the pure oxygen environment of a training simulator. This incident was not revealed outside of the Soviet Union until the 1980s.

* 1963: Thích Qu?ng ??c, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, sat down in the middle of a busy intersection in Saigon, covered himself in gasoline, and lit himself on fire, burning himself to death. ??c was protesting President Ngô ?ình Di?m’s administration for oppressing the Buddhist religion.

* 1966: Worth Bingham, son of Barry Bingham, Sr., died when the surfboard lying atop the back of his convertible hit a parked car, swung around, and broke his neck.

* 1967: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee, NASA astronauts, died when a flash fire began in their pure oxygen environment during a training exercise inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft. The door to the capsule could not be opened during the fire because of its particular design.

* 1967: Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy following re-entry.

* 1970: Yukio Mishima, award-winning Japanese playwright and novelist, committed seppuku after failing to inspire a coup d’état at the headquarters of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces in Tokyo.

* 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. According to urban legend, when he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped “Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?”. Cavett says this is incorrect; the initial response was fellow guest Pete Hamill saying in a low voice to Cavett, “This looks bad.”The show was never broadcast.
* 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows, was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.

* 1973: Bruce Lee, a martial arts actor, is thought to have died by a severe allergic reaction to Equagesic. His brain had swollen about 13%. His autopsy was written as “death by misadventure.”

* 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live broadcast on 15 July. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.

* 1974: Deborah Gail Stone, 18, an employee at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, was crushed to death between a moving wall and a stationary wall inside of the revolving America Sings attraction.

* 1975: Physicist and businessman Kip Siegel died of a stroke while testifying before a US Congressional subcommittee.

* 1975: Band? Mitsugor? VIII, a Japanese kabuki actor, died of severe poisoning when he ate four fugu livers (also known as pufferfish). The liver is considered one of the most poisonous parts of the fish, but Mitsugor? claimed to be immune to the poison. The fugu chef felt he could not refuse Mitsugor? and lost his license as a result.

* 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar. He was electrocuted because the amplifier was not properly grounded.

* 1977: Tom Pryce (Formula One driver) and Jansen Van Vuuren (a track marshal) both died at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce’s car at approximately 170mph. Pryce was struck in the face by the marshal’s fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.

* 1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated in London with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin into his calf.
* 1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.

* 1978: Claude François, a French pop singer, was electrocuted when he tried to change a light bulb while standing in his bathtub which was full of water at the time.

* 1978: Kurt Gödel, the Austrian/American mathematician, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Gödel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else. He was 65 pounds when he died. His death certificate reported that he died of “malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance” in Princeton Hospital on 14 January 1978.

* 1979: Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, was the first known man to be killed by a robot.

* 1981: Carl McCunn paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska in March 1981 to photograph wildlife, but failed to confirm arrangements for the pilot to pick him up again in August. Rather than starve, McCunn shot himself in the head. His body was found in February 1982.

* 1981: Boris Sagal, a film director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.

* 1981: Jeff Dailey, a 19-year-old gamer, became the first known person to die while playing video games. After achieving a score of 16,660 in the arcade game Berzerk, he succumbed to a massive heart attack. A year later, an 18-year-old gamer died after achieving high scores in the same game.

* 1981: Kenji Urada - Was killed by a malfunctioning robot he was working on at a Kawasaki plant in Japan. The robot’s arm pushed him into a grinding machine, killing him.

* 1982: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Two child actors, Myca Dinh Le (who was decapitated) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (who was crushed), also died.

* 1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent’s foil snapped during a match, penetrated his mask, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.

* 1983: Richard Wertheim, a linesman at the boys’ singles finals in the US open, was struck by a ball hit by a young Stefan Edberg. He toppled backwards off his chair fracturing his skull as he hit the ground.

* 1983: Four divers and a tender were killed on the Byford Dolphin semi-submersible, when a decompression chamber explosively decompressed from 9 atm to 1 atm in a fraction of a second. The diver nearest the chamber opening literally exploded just before his remains were ejected through a 24in (60cm) opening. The other divers’ remains showed signs of boiled blood, unusually strong rigor mortis, large amounts of gas in the blood vessels, and scattered hemorrhages in the soft tissues.

* 1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died after a diving accident during the 1983 Summer Universiade in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position from the ten meter platform, he smashed his head on the platform and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.

* 1983: Author Tennessee Williams died when he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye. Williams’ lack of gag response may have been due to the effects of drugs and alcohol abuse.

* 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming, playing Russian Roulette using a revolver loaded with a single blank cartridge . Hexum apparently did not realize that blanks too have gun powder that explodes into gas with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired as contact shot. This is the principle which gives a powerhead its lethality.

* 1987: Budd Dwyer, the State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, committed suicide during a televised press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.

* 1992: Christopher McCandless died of starvation near Denali National Park after a few months trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. His life and death were researched by Jon Krakauer, who then wrote the novel Into the Wild which was later turned into a movie.

* 1993: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by Michael Massee using a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie The Crow. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the fatal scene; this caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene. His death was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was still acting.

* 1993: Garry Hoy, a Toronto lawyer, fell to his death after he threw himself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in order to prove the glass was “unbreakable.”

* 1993: Michael A. Shingledecker Jr. was killed almost instantly when he and a friend were struck by a pickup truck while lying flat on the yellow dividing line of a two-lane highway in Polk, Pennsylvania. They were copying a daredevil stunt from the movie The Program. Marco Birkhimer died of a similar accident while performing the same stunt in Route 206 of Bordentown, New Jersey.

* 1994: Gloria Ramirez was admitted to Riverside General Hospital for complications of advanced cervical cancer. Before she died, her body mysteriously emitted toxic fumes that made several emergency room workers very ill. She has been dubbed as the “toxic lady” by the media.

* 1996: Sharon Lopatka, an Internet entrepreneur from Maryland, allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.

* 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The group’s boat accidentally abandoned them due to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident inspired the film Open Water and an episode of 20/20.

* 1998: Daniel V. Jones committed suicide on a freeway carpool lane near Los Angeles, California by shooting himself through the chin with a shotgun, which was accidentally televised by journalists monitoring the incident on helicopters. Jones, a former hotel maintenance worker, had killed himself partly due to his frustration over treatment by his HMO.

* 1998: Every player on the visiting soccer team at a game in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was struck by a fork bolt of lightning, killing them all instantly.

* 1999: Owen Hart, a professional wrestler for WWF, died during a pay-per-view event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet, bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood.

* 2000: Jonathan Burton stormed the cockpit door of a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. The 19-year-old was subdued by eight other passengers with such force that he died of asphyxiation.

21st century

* 2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes from Germany was stabbed repeatedly and then partly eaten by Armin Meiwes (who was later called the Cannibal of Rothenburg). Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten.

* 2001: Gregory Biggs, a homeless man in Fort Worth, Texas, was struck by the car of Chante Jawan Mallard, who had been drinking and taking drugs that night. Biggs’ torso became lodged in Mallard’s windshield with severe but not immediately fatal injuries. Mallard drove home and left the car in the garage with Biggs still in the windshield. She repeatedly visited the man and even apologized. Biggs died of his injuries several hours later. The 2007 movie Stuck was loosely based on this unusual death. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758786/

* 2002: Brittanie Cecil, an American 13-year-old hockey fan, died two days after being struck in the head by a hockey puck at a game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Calgary Flames at Nationwide Arena.

* 2003: Doug McKay was killed at the Island county fair amusement park when his arm was caught as he sprayed lubricant on a Super Loop 2 circular roller coaster. The ride was in operation at the time and he was pulled 40 feet in the air before falling and landing on a fence.

* 2003: Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man in Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed by a time bomb that was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb later exploded, killing him. In 2007, police alleged Wells was involved in the robbery plot along with two other conspirators.

* 2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.

* 2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and partially consumed by a bear. An audio recording of their deaths was captured on a video camera which had been turned on at the beginning of the incident. Werner Herzog’s documentary film, Grizzly Man, discusses Treadwell and his death, including the audio clip.

* 2005: Kenneth Pinyan (’Mr. Hands’) of Gig Harbor, Washington died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion. Pinyan had had sex with a horse before. Pinyan delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance to admit what happened. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington. His story was recounted in the 2007 documentary film Zoo.

* 2005: Lee Seung Seop, a 28-year-old South Korean, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing StarCraft for almost 50 consecutive hours in an Internet cafe.

* 2006: Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary entitled “Ocean’s Deadliest” in Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.

* 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian State security service, and later a Russian dissident and writer, suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome.
* 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 “The End” radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.

* 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man, committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an internet chat session

* 2007: Surinder Singh Bajwa, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi, India, was kicked by a Rhesus Macaque monkey at his home and fell from a first floor balcony, suffering serious head injuries. He later died from his injuries.

* 2008: Gerald Mellin, a U.K. businessman, committed suicide by tying one end of a rope around his neck and the other to a tree. He then hopped into his Aston Martin DB7 and drove down a main road in Swansea until the rope decapitated him. He supposedly did this as an act of revenge against his ex-wife for leaving him.

* 2008: David Phyall, 50, the last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished in Bishopstoke, near Southampton, Hampshire, UK, cut his own head off with a chainsaw to highlight the ‘injustice’ of being asked to move out.

* 2008: Marciana Silva, 67, died after her dead husband’s coffin slammed into the back of her neck during a traffic accident en route to his funeral in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

beautiful snow

虽然一天之内扫了两遍雪，但是真的希望能多下几场今天这样的雪。

空气不冷，雪花轻轻地飘落，整个校园被白色所覆盖，仿佛一切回到了去年的北海道。。。

2008年12月22日星期一

暂时告一段落

终于。。。application完成了，还剩下一点点的FA就全完事儿了。我容易么我。

4个月，真的过了很不像人的日子。学SAT, TOEFL, 写essay，填表，讨论怎么填，闹心。。。美国真是折腾人啊。

不过完事儿了就好，终于可以踏踏实实地回到原来的生活了，不过，真的是原来的生活么？毕竟自己在变，别人也在变，很多时候发现彼此变得不熟悉了，真的，就像陌生人一样。。。

这4个月教给了我很多东西，这也算是最大的收获吧。不管最后能不能弄上，能不能得奖，反正自己真的是努力了很多很多。当然我也失去了很多，所以在接下来的两周就得恶补学校课程阿，我亲爱的数学~~

Andy, you are the best and the luckiest!!!

2008年12月20日星期六

10 Feel-Good Movies for the Holidays

For some reason, the studios like to push out some major bummers this time of year. Don’t they know how stressful the holidays are? Check out these movies and give your tear ducts a break

1. Laugh: Young Frankenstein

This Mel Brooks classic isn’t quite as naughty as some of his other comedies (Blazing Saddles isn’t quite Christmas Eve fare), but it’s just as funny. From Gene Wilder’s wild-eyed Frankenstein, to Marty Feldman’s pop-eyed Igor, a tap-dance routine with the homemade monster - pop it into the DVD player and giggle.

2. Renew Your Faith in Humanity: To Kill a Mockingbird
Gregory Peck’s role as Atticus Finch solidified his status as one of the greats. As a small-town Southern lawyer who represents a man accused of rape because of his race, Peck’s Finch teaches his fellow townspeople, his daughter Scout, and plenty of movie-watchers all about the basic goodness of humanity.

Babe

Babe Courtesy of Universal Home Entertainment

3. Get the Warm Fuzzies: Babe
This little piggy avoids going to market by learning how to herd sheep with help from a canine pal and a gentle farmer. The animals are cute without being cloying - the sheep explain they’ll be herded if the dogs are nice - and James Cromwell is perfect as the thoughtful and king Farmer Arthur Hoggett. Make it a double-feature with Babe: Pig in the City, too.

4. Feel Good About Folks: The Visitor
The always-charming Richard Jenkins plays Walter Vale, a lonely, widowed professor who visits NYC for work, only to discover a couple living in his apartment, much to everyone’s surprise. After things are cleared up - Tarek and Zainab were the victims of real-estate fraud - Walter lets them stay. In return, Tarek teaches Walter to drum and takes him to drum circles in the park. Walter’s life is changed by their connection, and is moved to take action when Tarek gets in hot water with the Immigration Department.

Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually

Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually Courtesy of Universal Home Entertainment

5. Snuggle Up: Love Actually
This rom-com features a galaxy of stars like Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, and more couples whose stories overlap in this Christmas tale. Spanning ages, races, and occupations, Love Actually is a funny film about love of all kinds - between married people, single people, school kids, and even parents and children.

6. Sing and Dance: Hairspray
Pick up the original Hairspray for a bouffant-filled good time. Ricki Lake’s Tracy Turnblad is a “pleasantly plump” gal who tries to fit in… and then decides to scrap it and do what she wants instead. She ends up involved in the fight for racial equality when she is befriended by some of the black kids at school, who also help her learn the dance moves she needs to realize her dream of getting on the local teen dance show. Plus, the soundtrack rocks and pine plays her mom!

7. Escape: Roman Holiday
You can’t go wrong with Audrey Hepburn or Gregory Peck, so when they get together in this rom-com as Princess Ann and Joe Bradley, they’re unstoppable. Her sparkling eyes and warm humor easily wins over Joe as they go on adventures around Rome on his Vespa and smooch it up around the city.

Po and Master Shifu in Kung Fu Panda

Po and Master Shifu in Kung Fu Panda Courtesy of DreamWorks

8. Hiya!: Kung Fu Panda
As Jack Black has proclaimed over and again, he is Po, the chubby clumsy panda who dreams of being a kung fu master instead of working in his dad’s noodle shop. When he gets his chance, he gets his fuzzy butt kicked on the regs by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and the rest of his kung fu heroes, the Furious Five. By the time he gets the hang of this kung fu business, his “bodacity” is in full effect. Get it on Blu-ray if you have the means so you can enjoy the close-ups of Po’s cute button nose.

9. Travel Through Time: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
This cult favorite has it all - interstellar travel, mad scientists, aliens, pretty ladies, rock music, crazy gadgets, a guy named New Jersey, and so much more. Goofy fun led by the most multitalented guy in the cosmos, Buckaroo Banzai!

10. Revel in the Absurd: Anchorman
Will Ferrell’s pompous, mustached Ron Burgundy is a putz and a misogynist who tries to match wits with his beautiful new co-anchor, Veronica Corningstone, but fails miserably (while falling in love). Anchorman is worth it for the one-liners alone - you can buy t-shirts that say “I Love Lamp,” for the love of all that’s holy. And there are unicorns.

当得知袭击布什的皮鞋是中国制造后(转载）

这必须转啊，太叮了~~

美国总统布什12月14日突访伊拉克，并与伊拉克总理马利基签署了美国驻军协议和两国间战略框架协议。在布什同马利基联合举行的新闻发布会上，两位领导人刚握完手，坐在台下第三排的巴格达迪亚电视台记者扎伊迪突然跳起，将自己脚上的两只鞋子脱下，连续向布什砸去，同时用阿拉伯语大喊，“这是临别之吻，你这禽兽。这是孤儿寡妇以及在伊拉克丧生的人送给你的！”

扎伊迪用皮鞋袭击布什后，来自东方的中国人民对扎伊迪并不感冒，而是特别关注扎伊迪扔出去的那双皮鞋。中国网友们和各皮鞋研制专家根据扎伊迪袭击布什的现场视频，对扎伊迪那双皮鞋进行仔细分析验证，最后得出一致结论：袭击布什的皮鞋是由中国南方某皮鞋厂最新研制的萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋。该结论经糊弄网记者伊妹儿女士率先披露后，全球媒体一片哗然。

——没脸社评论：布什总统在即将卸任之际，终于在伊拉克发现了大规模杀伤性武器，不过令布什总统万万没有想到的，伊拉克如此高科技的生化武器，居然是在中国南方的一个小胡同里研制出来的。不知道是否是聪明的伊拉克人早在美国发动攻击之前，就把武器研制中心转移到了中国，还是中国自行研发的先进武器，在伊拉克进行实验？

——露透射消息：恐怖主义已经渗透到了伊拉克的每一个角落，伊拉克人最有力的恐怖武器就是穿在脚上的萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋。为了防止驻伊美英联军的遭到来自伊拉克人的袭击，美英联军要求伊拉克政府从即日起禁止伊拉克公民穿来自中国的萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋，加强对伊拉克各个关口的检查，凡是穿萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋的伊拉克人一律视为恐怖分子。

——俄榻社电讯：中国生产的高端武器萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋在伊拉克一亮相就表现出了武器的高性能。这是人类高端武器迄今为止最近距离袭击美国总统，在这之前，没有哪一个国家曾做到，中国在武器研制上又迈出了一大步。国防部拟近日派出武器采购团赴中国洽谈采购萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋和技术转让事宜。

——恒河浪潮社：孟买遭到恐怖袭击，军方截取可靠消息，北方的巴基扯蛋有直接卷入。军方近日大规模调集空军，部署战备，布什总统在伊拉克遭袭击后，军方立即放弃实施军事打击决定，因为担心北方的巴基扯蛋已经拥有来自中国的萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋，如果巴基扯蛋使用萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋，对于整个印度来说是毁灭性的。

——金太阳社：我们坚定的社会主义盟友，伟大的中国人民，拥有无穷无尽的智慧，萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”牌皮鞋让罪恶的美国人再一次领略社会主义的强大和威力！有了中国盟友的强大支持和社会主义阵营的一贯团结，我们永远是朝鲜半岛上不落的金太阳。为了表达对伟大的中国人民的祝贺，我国将举行为期十天的阿里郎大型歌舞表演。

——日人民报：我国成功研制出直接由人工发射的萨姆Ⅷ“金弹”导弹，并且在伊拉克实验取得成功，这是全球第一个掌握该项技术的国家，中国的军事工业取得里程碑式的进步。这是我国最具代表性、最具影响力的国家级重大科研实践活动，是中国人民攀登世界科技高峰的又一伟大壮举，全国人民应当以此激发爱国主义精神，积极投身到各项社会主义事业中去，为把祖国建设成为超一流的国家而努力奋斗！

2008年12月16日星期二

My essay (1)

The temperature was neither too high nor too low, but what I breathed in was still the stuffy air. In a carriage of the power car, I kept sweeping every building outside through windows and concentrating on every word the conductor was announcing. When I got off the power car, however, I found that what I had done was futile. Standing on the wrong platform in the twilight, I felt the city huge but chilly, for I could not even feel my existence. After waiting for another 20 minutes, I got on the right power car. But when I passed through the gate of the wicket, and left the Shiroishi station, I got confused about which was the way to my dormitory. The sky turned somber; the cloud misted the vague moon, and the entire Sapporo city was gloomy. I was limp and weary, befogged in mind and fatigued in body. In the end, when I found the dormitory and entered my room, I burst to tears. Loneliness, unfamiliarity, fatigue and difficulty of integrating myself into the class, all of these just brought me back to the real world from the firstly excitement and freshness toward everything in a new country. It seemed that the whole world just came to the end. And what was worse was that, other exchange students like me were seemingly spending wonderful and full-of-new-friends time.

This is the first time I would live without almost all of the familiar people in another strange country. In fact, I had considered before that life in the first month might not be favorable, but I could not imagine how big the changes were. Everything was irregular and out of my control. Even if I told myself that all of these would be OK, I could not comfort my heart at all, for I did not know where my future was. But, the only thing I knew was that I had to change myself, for I had no capability to change the environment.

The first thing I did was writing emails to my cousin who had a job and one of my seniors who studied and lived in the same place as I. They told me this sentence, “you are feeling a tough life, but this is because you are progressing.”

Then I kept these words engraved in my mind, and I began to face everything de novo. For example, I started to compel myself to smile to classmates and insert words in their conversation. And I tried to do my best in basketball club and not skip training even if I got extremely exhausted in the evenings. In the dormitory, I visited the others to have fun. And I even chatted and played with them to 5 a.m. at weekend. Friends came to my room, too. At the same time, I attended every activity that I could participate in, such as speech contests, teaching classes to secondary school students about China and so on.

Simultaneously, I had never forgotten the importance of academics. Thanks to the customs of the dormitory, I could study till 11 p.m. in the cafeteria with others. And then, I came back to my room, continuing doing my assignments and materials till midnight.

Of course, there were a number of troubles and problems when I started to do all of these, such as unwilling to get up early in the morning or strong craving to lie down on the bed after a tough day. But I always recalled those words and then I got pleasure to compel my tired body to move.

So at last, I made it. I became an important part of the class, accomplished most of the activities, and I even changed to another more challenging club. But most important of all, although I do much more than I could in the first couples of days, I don’t feel the toughness of life any more. Instead, I can see my happiness and success after it. Then I feel great passion to achieve the end. And this is the most significant thing I learned from the dark days.

Thanks to my cousin and senior. Otherwise, I can never adhere to my plans. Thanks to those desperate days, or else I would not be who I am now.

Solitude in Walden

Quite a few people consider solitude as a negative state, for example, lack of contact with people or love. However, different from loneliness, which is marked by a sense of isolation, solitude is the state of being alone without being lonely. And that means you may choose to be solitudinous, like H.D. Thoreau, for better self-awareness or other purpose.

The author loved solitude and he was never lonely as long as he is close to nature. He used solitude to refresh and replenish himself. Quiet environment brought peacefulness to his souls or spirits.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

He thought solitude makes people concentrate more upon what they are doing. So those who are in solitude do not feel lonely at all. When people concentrate on the field of work, they always feel companions with them. Attractive contents of books, impressive sceneries of nature, and anything else are companions of people in solitude. And this is because these people are "employed",

The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed;
......
and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Although a number of people pay too much attention to learn how to deal with people and how to enlarge the social networks. He believed there was no great value to work on social networks. Instead, working on themselves was a much more effective and substantial method,

Society is commonly too cheap...We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war...Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications...It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

Solitude also has limitation, which means it may turn to loneliness if he spent time with no single company. Even Robinson Crusoe had to consider Friday as a friend, although, obviously, he did not intend to be in solitude. Since Thoreau had "heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions," he prevented loneliness when he was in the long-time solitude ("a two-year and two-month stay at a crude cabin in the woods near Walden Pond").

I have a great deal of company in my house;...I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

Solitude is a period of time of reflection and self-consciousness. He needed this unusual experience and long-time solitude to get rid of the cheap society and reflect his destinations of gaining a more objective understanding of it. However, he did not feel lonely, for he had creatures from nature, and simplicity and self-reliance as his goals.

Puzzle from Terrence Tao

I was recently at an international airport, trying to get from one end of a very long terminal to another. It inspired in me the following simple maths puzzle, which I thought I would share here:

Suppose you are trying to get from one end A of a terminal to the other end B. (For simplicity, assume the terminal is a one-dimensional line segment.) Some portions of the terminal have moving walkways (in both directions); other portions do not. Your walking speed is a constant $v$ , but while on a walkway, it is boosted by the speed $u$ of the walkway for a net speed of $v+u$ . (Obviously, given a choice, one would only take those walkways that are going in the direction one wishes to travel in.) Your objective is to get from A to B in the shortest time possible.

Suppose you need to pause for some period of time, say to tie your shoe. Is it more efficient to do so while on a walkway, or off the walkway? Assume the period of time required is the same in both cases.
Suppose you have a limited amount of energy available to run and increase your speed to a higher quantity $v'$ (or $v'+u$ , if you are on a walkway). Is it more efficient to run while on a walkway, or off the walkway? Assume that the energy expenditure is the same in both cases.
Do the answers to the above questions change if one takes into account the various effects of special relativity? (This is of course an academic question rather than a practical one. But presumably it should be the time in the airport frame that one wants to minimise, not time in one’s personal frame.)

It is not too difficult to answer these questions on both a rigorous mathematical level and a physically intuitive level, but ideally one should be able to come up with a satisfying mathematical explanation that also corresponds well with one’s intuition.

I have read several blogs talking about this puzzle from Terrence Tao (here and here). I have no idea how I can solve the third question. But maybe one of comments from his blog provided the whole strategies. (It is a pity that Terrence Tao's blog has been blocked.)

I’ll be honest. It’s getting late, and I’m not feeling up to reworking all my algebra for a blog comment. But I think there are some subtleties to the special relativity case. For example, there is not a single answer to question one if you analyze if from your own point of view (get there are fast as possible, by the time on your wristwatch.) Instead, the answer of where you should tie your shoe actually depends on $u$ and $v$

The problem states,

“Your objective is to get from A to B in the shortest time possible.”

But it does not state in the shortest time possible according to whom. In SR, you will perceive the journey to take a shorter time than the airport clocks indicate, because you are moving. So do you want to minimize the time on your wristwatch, due to impatience, or minimize the time on the airport clocks, due to being late?

Let all velocities be proportions of the speed of light. i.e. c=1. You have to cover a distance $d_n$ of non-moving and $d_m$ of moving floor.

Q1, SR) airport time
Your speed while walking is still $v$ , but your speed while walking on the walkway is

$\frac{v+u}{1+vu}$ .

If you tie your shoe for a time $t$ while on the non-moving part, your total time is the time spent walking the non-moving distance, the time spent tying your shoe, and the time spent walking the moving distance:

$t_n = \frac{d_n}{v} + t + \frac{d_m (1+uv)}{u+v}$

If you tie it while on the moving part, your total time will different for two reasons:
1) you perceive yourself to spend $t$ seconds tying your shoe, but from the airport’s point of view you are experiencing time dilation. They think you take longer to tie your shoe.
2) the distance you walk on the moving platform is reduced because you are getting closer to the end of it while you tie your shoe.

Note that these effects work in opposite directions. Effect 1) means you take longer than you did before, while effect 2) means you take less time to get there. The relativistic solution must converge to the nonrelativistic one in the limit where the velocities are much smaller than one, but we might look for some transition velocity at which it is no longer beneficial to wait for the moving walkway to tie your shoe. The equation for the case where you tie on the moving part is

$t_m = \frac{d_n}{v} + \frac{t}{\sqrt{1-u^2}} + \frac{(d_m - \frac{t}{\sqrt{1-u^2}}u)(1+uv)}{u+v}$

Subtract to get the delta. The first term is the same, but the other terms don’t cancel exactly. Here are the leftovers:

$\Delta t = t \left(1 - \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-u^2}} + \frac{tu(1+uv)}{u+v} \right)$

Limiting cases: u->0, we get zero. This means that if the sidewalk isn’t moving, it doesn’t matter where you tie your shoe.
u->1, we get infinity. This gives the result that if the sidewalk is moving near the speed of light, tying your shoe on it is a terrible idea. You’re already going close to the speed of light, so the time dilation factor is huge, and you will be tying your shoe in super-slow motion. For any given $v$ , there is eventually some speed of the moving sidewalk above which you are better off tying on the non-moving portion. However, this equation only makes sense as long as $dm - \frac{tu}{\sqrt{1-u^2}}$ is positive, because that’s the distance you walk on the walkway. Eventually, for very high $u$ , you’ll spend the entire walkway tying your shoe and still not be done yet. At that point the formula breaks down.

There is a 1-D family of values of $(u,v)$ such that it doesn’t matter whether you tie your shoe on the walkway or off it. If I did the algebra right, $v_{crit}$ , the critical transition velocity, turns out to be quadratic in $u$ . The solution I got was:

$v = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$

with

$a = u^2(1-u^2-u^4)$

$b = 2u(1-2u^4)$

$c = u^2(3-4u^2)$

I might have preferred to solve for $u(v)$ , but that was a sixth degree polynomial.

At this point, you’d want to check where the determinant of that solution was positive and where you get unphysical solutions, and throw those out. But the interesting conclusion was that this transition velocity does exist.

Q1 SR) wristwatch time
The time that passes for you, $dt_y$ , analyzed from the airport frame as a function of airport time $dt_a$ is

$dt_y = \frac{dt_a}{\sqrt{1-v_r^2}}$

where $v_r$ is the relative speed between you and the airport floor. So the total time that passes on your wristwatch if you tie you shoe on the non-moving portion is

$t_n = \frac{d_n \sqrt{1-v^2}}{v} + t + \frac{d_m (1+uv)\sqrt{1-\left(\frac{u+v}{1+uv}\right)^2}}{(u+v)}$

I got this by taking the answer for Q1 and multiplying by the time-dilation factor in each term. For the case where you tie your shoe in the moving portion, the total time elapsed on your wristwatch is

$t_m = \frac{d_n \sqrt{1-v^2}}{v} + t + \frac{(d_m - \frac{tu}{\sqrt{1-u^2}})(1+uv)\sqrt{1-\left(\frac{u+v}{1+uv}\right)^2}}{u+v}$

Again perform the subtraction. The first two terms are identical, which is good news since the last term is getting ridiculous.

$\Delta t = \frac{tu(1+uv)\sqrt{1-\frac{u+v}{1+uv}^2}}{(u+v)\sqrt{1-u^2}}$

This quantity is always positive, so from the standpoint of listening to the fewest number of songs on your ipod, it’s always best to tie your shoe on the walkway. That makes good sense because the effect of drawing out the time it takes to tie your shoe is gone in this frame. Three seconds from your point of view is always three seconds.

It’s interesting to note that for certain values of $u$ and $v$ , it’s actually possible for one strategy to be best in terms of minimizing your personal time, while a different strategy can be best for minimizing how late you are to the flight.

For the special relativistic case of question 2, I’ll leave the details to somebody else. From the standpoint of airport time, running on the walkway is not going to help you as much as running on the nonmoving portions, due to velocity addition. So like the nonrelativistic case, you should always save your running for the nonmoving portions (or run those entire things if you have the energy).

From the standpoint of your wristwatch, time dilation is much more effective if you run while on the walkway, if the walkway is pretty fast. So it feels like there should again be transition velocities at which you best strategy switches.

Okay, please tell me about the copious mistakes I made, since it’ll actually be interesting to know the real answer.

I am sorry that the pics of equations are not supported here...

2008年12月10日星期三

Where The Hell is Matt?

Matt Harding is a 32-year-old video game designer who quit his job in 2003 to travel around Asia. Along the way, he recorded and posted a short video of himself doing an elbow-intensive jig in Hanoi. That clip got passed from one person to the next and eventually got the attention of Stride Gum, which decided to sponsor two more of his trips. In his latest video, Harding visits 42 countries over 14 months and invites the locals to join in the fun. That includes everyone from some Huli Wigmen in Papua New Guinea to a group of school kids in the Solomon Islands. The sheer silliness and joy of Harding's adventures will keep you smiling long after you've watched them — and give you a serious case of wanderlust.

Dancing 2008

Original Link: Where the hell is Matt?

2008年12月6日星期六

Critical Thinking...

Critical thinking is a form of judgment, specifically purposeful and reflective judgment. In using critical thinking one makes a decision or solves the problem of judging what to believe or what to do, but does so in a reflective way. Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making that judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming that judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the nature of the problem and the question at hand. These elements also happen to be the key defining characteristics of professional fields and academic disciplines. This is why critical thinking can occur within a given subject field (by reference to its specific set of permissible questions, evidence sources, criteria, etc.) and across subject fields in all those spaces where human beings need to interact and make decisions, solve problems, and figure out what to believe and what to do.

...wikipedia

Overcoming Bias

There is no simple way to reduce one's bias. There are, however, ways that one can begin to do so. The most important require developing one's intellectual empathy and intellectual humility. The first requires extensive experience in entering and accurately constructing points of view toward which one has negative feelings. The second requires extensive experience in identifying the extent of one's own ignorance in a wide variety of subjects (ignorance whose admission leads one to say, "I thought I knew, but I merely believed"). One becomes less biased and more broad-minded when one becomes more intellectually empathic and intellectually humble, and that involves time, deliberate practice and commitment. It involves considerable personal and intellectual development.

To develop one's critical thinking abilities, one should learn the art of suspending judgment (for example, when reading a novel, watching a movie, engaging in dialogical or dialectical reasoning). Ways of doing this include adopting a perceptive rather than judgmental orientation; that is, avoiding moving from perception to judgment as one applies critical thinking to an issue.

One should become aware of one's own fallibility by:

accepting that everyone has subconscious biases, and accordingly questioning any reflexive judgments.
adopting an ego-sensitive and, indeed, intellectually humble stance
recalling previous beliefs that one once held strongly but now rejects
Tendency towards group think; the amount your belief system is formed by what those around you say instead of what you have personally witnessed.
realizing one still has numerous blind spots, despite the foregoing

An integration of insights from the critical thinking literature and cognitive psychology literature is the "Method of Argument and Heuristic Analysis." This technique illustrates the influences of heuristics and biases on human decision making along with the influences of thinking critically about reasons and claims.

2008年12月5日星期五

I'm the King of the world

Titanic , (1997), “I’m the king of the world”, Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio)

Original Link: 101 Movie One-Liners Every Movie Junkie Should Know

Memorable quotes for Titanic.

台湾孩子眼中的世界地图

原图连接：http://bbs.lehu.shu.edu.cn/Uploads/UserDirs/1/249/99545/00001_20080514124946.jpg

2008年12月4日星期四

一切都是源于百度国境之南吧中的一张帖子

祖父和外祖父
他们都在日本皇民化运动中受教育

我的祖父
在酒喝多时就会唱起日本军歌

内人的祖父是东京农业大学毕业
后来是台糖屏东厂的厂长
因那时日本鼓励台湾人民去日本本土读书

台湾第一大胶带公司
生产鹿头牌胶带四维企业
杨斌彦总裁
我和他有生意上的往来
一个九十几岁的老人
台北帝国大学第五届毕业
（现在的台湾大学）
他提起日本人时
有著无限的想念

日本人统治台湾时
夜不闭户
路不舍遗
为了防止传染病
每个月都在住户旁边喷药
要检查家家户户的整洁

日本对台湾人很多压制
也取走很多的农产和资源
后来因为太平洋战争
他们已经剥夺台湾人民所有的东西
（事实上日本本土的人民也是一样很苦）
没办法
因为战争

但是
如果他们真的不把台湾人当成自已人
他们不会给台湾人受教育
不会有皇民化运动
不会鼓励台湾人去日本本土留学
也不会建设台湾
1943年开始
在台湾实施了义务教育
让教育普及化
使就学率提高到85%

五十年期间
日本带来了建设及较高的生活水平
现代化建设及所带来的安全
且稳定的社会生活

清朝年代的治安不好
土匪与贪官污吏横行
公共卫生不良
恶疫流行
与后来国民政府来台湾后
社会动乱及白色恐怖
又有很多贪官污吏横行
构成强烈对比

现在年轻一代的知道的是国民党来台湾后
所写的教科书
与我个人知道从台湾老一辈人口中听到的历史
及对日本人的看法
有很大的出入

工作关系
我常到大陆和香港出差
东莞、厦门、上海、苏州、无鍚、昆山、天津、青岛....
中国有很先进的硬体建设
但
我必须很自豪的说
台湾人民有华人中
非常高的素质
就算是曾经是英国属地的香港人
也不见得比得上

个人小小的结论
一个比台湾更先进更现代化的国家
要管理台湾
我很高兴接受
但是一个不先进的地方
以为自已武力比较强
要管理较进步的台湾

就好像
一个想用暴力让别人屈服的流氓
对不起我不能接受

我不要我的子孙
生活在落后和不被世界人所尊重的国家

下面是我说的，事实上还没完，我决定写关于这个的连载。

to 那个在这里发帖的台湾人

很理解你，也很理解台湾人的看法，包括激进的和理智的，包括喜欢统一的以及更多偏爱独立的人们。因为我在日本留过学，见到的台湾人不少，见到的日本人更多。

第一点，做到客观真的很难。这里面有统治阶级和平民之间根本的矛盾。没有任何一个政治体制是完整的，因为他们最根本的无法抛弃的一种权利就是对本国统治的维护。除非你是无政府状态。对本国统治的维护有两种最基本的方法，对本国地位的提高，以及对他国，或者他国体制的贬低。这种事情你们应该会更了解大陆的状况，因为你们的媒体是相对自由开放的。但是你们不了解的是即便是多么自由开放的媒体，也会有它的偏重性，特别是关系到自己国家的利益和声誉的时候。举个例子，在日本的时候对于中国的报道多半是负面的，即便是正面的，也总会在前面或者是结尾来上一句，民主体制不健全或者是食物污染很严重的话。事实，每个媒体关注的都是事实，但是只所以会对读者有那么大的影响是因为媒体有一个很重要的权力，资料的选择权，也是正因为它拥有这个权利，所以他才叫媒体，要不然干脆叫图书馆就的了，自己选去吧。这个权利促使他们对读者进行有选择性的引导。比如新闻联播和日本的每日新闻，不可能对一件同样的事情进行同样的报道。所以，不要说谁客观，因为客观只有上帝知道，或者说是佛祖知道。（但愿他们不要打架）

第二点，正是由于获取信息的途径以及方式的不同，导致我们的观点不同。每个人在出生的时候都是同样的，但为什么观点会有那么多的变化。我们无法拒绝周围的环境，无法拒绝我们自己的国家，所以慢慢的去接受，而最无法接受的是自己获得信息，即便是真实的，也会让我们拒绝接受其他人的，同样是真实的信息。不明白，不理解，是这些人最初的感受。于是大多数人开始了辩驳，这是对自己眼中的社会和环境的信仰。但是很少有人去了解对方的真正的处境。特别是对方是外国人的时候。这不怪任何一方，因为这里面有很多限制因素，包括财政支持，语言的支持，更主要的是，自己主观的偏见。所以，我主张的获取真正信息的渠道是，去那个国家，尽量要舍弃自己国家的习惯（暂时性的），去学习那个国家的语言，然后读他们的媒体的信息，与他们国家的人做朋友。回来之后，再更加的了解一下自己国家的文化。而到最后，你发现仍然不敢下结论，只是会对事实进行双方面甚至多方面的罗列，但是这已经够了，因为人类社会学家也只不过用同样的手段。

第三点，有了前两点的铺垫，相信你们能暂时接受一下我的观点。中国的事情，不能被以任何的历史性的，现实性的，对比性的观点来真正的决定。因为中国有太多的不同于其他国家文化的东西。比如欧洲，很长的历史间你甚至无法对国家在欧洲的定义进行了解。民主政治早在古罗马的时候就有了。而中国，几千年的历史积淀下来的经验就是，我们需要统一。只有这样，水利工程，抗灾抢险，抵御外敌才会做到成功。这让中国人的文化里面沉淀下了一种观点，以和为贵，而这个和，是建立在统一之后的那片宁静当中的。就这一点来说，有多少西方国家的人会真正理解这统一背后对我们中国人的含义。这一点在日本文化中也有很深的影响。但是还没有到必须一辈子守护的地步，所以明治维新才可以成功，而中国，至少大陆地区，到现在也没维新了。因为我们会守护它，这些东西是inherent的。

第四点，中国在发展。而台湾和日本已经发展过了，所以你不要说其他国家对中国怎么怎么印象不好，请问你知道的其它国家中有多少是资本主义的国家呢，有多少是民主体制的国家呢。当你算出来之后再从世界上的国家数量中减一下，你就会发现你说的其他国家并不是其他国家，而是其它的少数国家吧。所以不要用其他国家的字眼来诠释中国。理由在第三点中已经说了。

第五点，中国很穷，真的很穷，你从人均GDP中就能看出来了。如果你真的想比的话请用中国在人均GDP排名中前后的国家进行比较，你就会发现中国还不错，因为中国的旁边你会发现格鲁吉亚，伊拉克，约旦等等。那么你又如何对一个这么穷的国家来要求made in china的质量，要求中国要限制CO2的排放量？这是因为中国很富，如果乘上14亿的话。就像2只猪和200只鸡一样，即便市场价值一样，哪个比较好管？哪个比较干净？哪个比较容易让全体都受教育？哪个更需要中央集权？又是哪个当出国到国外的时候或更有素质，从而让国外的猪们受尊敬？（只是比方，任何动物都OK，只要一个大的一个小的就行，本来想说大象和蚂蚁来的，但是好像太悬殊了。。。）
暂时先写这么多，累死我了，希望你们能明白，中国有很多很有素质的人，他们其实比你们中有同样素质的人更优秀，因为中国同样有更多没有素质的人，而你们的生活环境相对来说好太多。

Forgotten Books

今天在查Idylls of the King的时候偶然发现了一个极好无比的网站forgottenbooks.org
上面有1736本可以免费阅读全部的书。
虽然从googlebook 或者是torrent资源mininova 上面都可以找到free books，但是在这个网站上面可以一次性阅览所有的书--因为总数不是特别多。

Timeline of a Coffee Drinker--just for fun:)

Christoph Niemann - Coffee

I order large coffees, but stop drinking when the coffee gets too cold. There’s always a couple of ounces left in the cup, so I can’t just toss it into my wastebasket. I dread the long haul to the bathroom to properly dispose of the coffee remains. Hence you will usually find a tower of paper cups on my desk.

Original Link: Timeline of a Coffee Drinker

海角七号

不得不说是一部好电影。

每個人心中都有一封寄不出的情書，
不管是寄到天涯，還是...

《海角七號》

8月22日與夢想交會

阅读更多博文 »

2008年12月3日星期三

McCain的败选演说

当Obama赢得美国，赢得无数的聚光灯的时候，在Phoenix, Arizona的一块空地上，McCain发表了一篇一流的败选演说。

McCain演说的场地离他的家很近，开车只要10分钟。就是在这块场地上，他办过结婚时的露天宴会，以及许多次参议员选举获胜的庆祝晚会。

他今年已经72岁了，这次竞选很可能是他人生中的最后一件大事。今晚过后，他长达半个世纪的公职生涯也许就结束了，那么这篇演说就是他在历史中留下的最后声音了。

...

A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama to congratulate him.

To congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

...

America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States.

...

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

It is natural. It's natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.

We fought -- we fought as hard as we could. And though we fell short, the failure is mine, not yours.

...

I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender.

We never hide from history. We make history.

...

Relative Links:

Transcript by CNN

Video by NY times

We Need a Global Carbon Tax--by Wall Street Journal

...

China emphatically opposes a hard emissions cap on its economy. Yet China must be part of any climate deal or within 25 years, notes Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, its emissions of CO2 could amount to twice the combined emissions of the world's richest nations, including the United States, Japan and members of the European Union.

...

There are three reasons why countries, such as China and India, that have traditionally resisted any notion of a common responsibility to make current polluters pay would do well to enlist in this effort.

First, while there is no limit on the downside for missing a hard cap, with a carbon tax you just pay as you go. If a fast-growing country like China accepted an emissions cap and then overshot it, they would have to purchase carbon credits on the international market. If they missed their target by a lot, carbon credits would be scarce, and purchasing them would suck dry their foreign exchange reserves in one slurp. That's why a carbon tax is much easier to swallow and, anyway, through the power of the price signal, it would produce the same desired result as a hard cap.

Second, administering billions of dollars of carbon credits in a cap-and-trade system in an already chaotic regulatory environment would invite a civil war between interest groups seeking billions in carbon credit handouts and the regulator holding the kitty. By contrast, a uniform tax on CO2 emissions levied at a small number of large sites would be relatively clear-cut. During the Montreal Protocol talks in the 1980s, India smartly balked at a suggestion to phase out CFCs in certain products and not in others because of the chaos that would result from the ambiguity.

Third, key people in China read our newspapers. They see the ominous clouds of protectionism under the guise of environmentalism in bills like Lieberman-Warner and they don't want to be harmed; neither should we, given the trillions of dollars of Treasury bills they hold. Showing compliance with a harmonized carbon tax at a small number of large bottleneck points would be child's play compared to the chaos of cap-and-trade.

...

Original Link:We Need a Global Carbon Tax