Taiwan University EE 1964

Moby Dick

2012-01-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

When I was a little kid in junior high (about 1957), I saw a movie in 台北双蓮戲院. It was '白鲸記'. I was so excited at the white whale that I couldn't sleep well for a few days. '白鲸記' was refreshing as I had never seen the whale that big roaming the sea & destroyed a whale ship in such a dramatic way. When I grew older & learned that the tale was from the book 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville. It was published in 1851, a story of a struggle between a mad man & a white whale Moby Dick. I first read the book in Chinese translation & then later moved on to English edition. The English version turned out to be very tough for me. In novel, Melville spent a lot of pages describing the whaling industry & the way they processed the whale on the ship. You need to have a lot of interest & patience to read it in details. It also refers a lot of materials from the Bible. If you are not familiar with stories in Bible, you will miss a lot of metaphors & meanings of the adventure.

When I grew up & watched the movie again. I found that my interests in this novel got more intense. Captain Ahab lost a leg in one encounter with the white whale & vowed to revenge. The whaling ship Pequod, however, was own & operated with the purpose of commercial profit, the welfare to the investors & the crewmen. But the Ahab's motivation & ambition ruined the whole operation, led to the destruction of the ship & the drowning of all crewmen except the story narrator Ishmel. It has been suggested that Hitler's adventure during WWII is awfully resemble to Captain Ahab's saga. Hitler fought on German side & got injured during WWI. German was in a shamble state after WWI with a running away inflation & jobless society. Hitler vowed to revenge. He found & set his demon to the Treaty of Versaillies & Jews. We know the rest of the story & it was so much like the fate of Ahab (Hitler) & Pequod (Germany). At the later stage of the WWII, it seemed there was no hope for German to win the war. But Hitler kept going & so some Germans rose to kill him but failed in the plot. Hitler than dragged all German people in a total defeat. The whole crew of Pequod perished except Ishmael who survived to tell us the story. Fortunately, many Germans survive to rebuild the country. If the scenario happened 2,200 years ago, the German might meet the same fate as Carthaginians---got wiped out from the map & history. A nation or people sometime got extinguished due to the lack of wisdom of the rulers. One example was 準噶爾 around 1757. 準噶爾汗國 & 準噶爾人 cease to exist & 準噶爾盆地 is only a geographical term (地理上的名詞)now.

A ship in a vast ocean is like a country in isolation. The captain is like a ruler with absolute power. In fact a ship with people on board is more like a totalitarian regime than a democratic society. 'Moby Dick' gives us some warning that we should not seek personal revenge by dragging other people in. It also gives us some lesson that we must use the reason (理性) & wisdom (智慧) to avoid conflict & war in dealing with the world affairs.

歲末感言

2011-12-24T11:49:00.000-08:00

俗語'一年之際在於春',但最能夠利用春的利益是有充分準備的冬天. 秋天是豊收的季節,冬天是思考冥想的時節. 冬至剛到,這是歲末總結和計畫來年春天的時侯.

Gradually we find that we are the oldest one in most of the social gatherings. We most of the time think the older people are those 15 years senior to us. However when we find that a lot of well known or accomplished people are not only younger than us, but also younger than our children. This is the time we feel in our soul that we are really quite old. The old is not necessarily bad, the Golden Age must be golden & good. Each period of our life has its own meaning & we must embrace it with positive attitude & fulfill it fully.

'健康是一切之本'. Without good health, we can't make decisions in a positive way. Health influences the way we think about life & so determines our life style. But like any other activities, it is an art to maintain the balance among various activities. If we forfeit all the enjoyments of eating just for the reason of health, it may just prolong our life but lose one of the basic enjoyment of our life. So every once in a while, we may indulge in some food without feeling guilty. As long as we have guidelines & stick to it most of the time, we should feel good. Life is full of trade-off & compromise.

In many early mornings of winter, I stand in my backyard & watch the blue sky. While the cirrus lines up in the blue background (藍天馬尾雲), I can never miss the upright redwood thrusting toward the sky. They are always green, erect & tall. they give you an awesome feeling of loneliness but elegance and loftiness (遺世孤高之感). Every time I watch them, I have an urge to measure their heights. Some of them can tower up to 250 feet & keep going up. The redwood species contains the largest and tallest trees in the world. These trees can live to a very old age, with some for hundreds to thousands of years. The most humble experience may be the one when we are near a redwood tree & know that it has been around here since the time of the birth of Confucius, about 500 BC. I once visited Sequoia National Park near Fresno. I have never forgot the experience the first time I saw 'General Sherman', the largest living thing in the world in volume & weight. 'General Sherman' is a sequoia, related to redwood & has a name Sierra Redwood. I am glad California adopts The Redwood as its State Tree. It is interesting to know that the redwood only found in the northern coast of California with a thin strip of about 50 miles wide. Somehow I think men should be like redwood, serene in mood, elegant in personality, erect in character & immune to a lot of violence & mistreatment.

Steve Jobs passed away this year. He left the company he founded with the most value of asset in the world. The more stunning fact is that he accomplished this feat in just about ten years though we have to trace it back to 1976. I consider he was a failure in PC business. Apple is never a major force or mainstream in the PC world although it started the Personal Publishing with Macintosh & laser printer. The three major products relive & transform Apple are iPod (with iTune), iPhone & iPad. The iPod rewrites the way music industry operates & is the more important than the iPhone & iPad. But to judge his position in history, we have to wait, only the time will tell. I think when time goes by, iProducts may not dominate for long as the competitions heat up. However, we can not judge Steve Jobs only based on the iProducts. We must judge him based on the impact of industry & activities influenced by him. Jobs's influence is in the area of Graphic Interface, Personal Publishing and Music Distribution. Many people adore him & shower an overwhelming admiration on him. Some even put him on the same pedestal of Thomas Edison & Henry Ford. I think people overreact. Jobs is more like Ford but Edison is in the another league. Although only time will tell who is more influential, Jobs is not a true inventor like Edison. He only repackages the existing technology with his aesthetic acumen to create a new market. Edison however truly invented the phonograph, motion picture and light bulb just to name a few. Each of the three inventions creates its own industry and continues for more than 100 years. Imagine even today we are talking & working on video, audio & lighting. Our PCs are still trying to optimize these three activities. One thing interesting is to find out how Jobs could accomplish the feat in just about ten years. I think it was the past twenty years from 1976 to 1996 that molded & prepared him to grab the opportunity that was matured to the state he could take advantage at the right time. The fruition of spring is from the seeding & budding of winter---最能夠利用春的利益是有充分準備的冬天.

Life & Loss

2011-11-29T18:35:00.000-08:00

While we are young, we seldom think about death except that it imparts some fear in us. When time goes by & we age gradually. We start to see or hear some of our role models like teachers, movie stars or some celebrities died one after the other. Suddenly, we feel a sense of loss. We no longer feel invincible & understand some day it will be our turns & nobody is exempt from this destiny.

We lost Mark Yang last year & this year professor Ma & KY Cheng, our classmate. Per AJ, KY suffered from oral cavity cancer last year and was cured later. Unfortunately, the cancer spread to become Lymphoma & he just couldn't make it this time. I have to admit I know very little about KY. He was a good table tennis player & was talkative sometime. However, he kept low profile most of the time. The last time I saw him was in a Taipei city bus returning from the airport after seeing someone off. It has been 46 years since but felt just happened not too long ago. I still remember the way he talks, smiles & makes jokes. I have never seen him since & he seemed never wrote anything or appeared in any of our reunion trips. Recently I visited his website & learned a little bit about him. Here is the information of his career:

鄭國揚
中央研究院資訊科學研究所
台北市南港區 11529 研究院路二段一二八號

博士, 應用數學研究所, 紐約州立大學(石溪), 美國 (1967/9–1972/6)
碩士, 電子工程研究所, 北達科達州立大學, 美國 (1966/9–1967/6)
學士, 電機工程學系, 國立台灣大學, 中華民國 (1960/9–1964/6)

副研究員, 中央研究院資訊科學研究所, 中華民國 (1978/07-1979/06)
副教授, 清華大學資訊/應數所, 中華民國 (1975/07-1978/06)
客座副研究員, 中央研究院數學研究所, 中華民國 (1972/09-1974/09)

Research Interests:
Chinese Processing
Computer Graphics
鄭博士的研究工作包括電腦圖學和數位幾何處理。負責視覺化環境實驗室，主要工作為發展一套實用之臉部動畫系統。

KY published several papers in some professional journals. The descriptions & contents of the papers look impressive. His research is in the image processing using digital techniques & algorithms. His research interest includes Chinese Processing though I didn't see any of his papers related to this discipline. I am surprised why he didn't participate in the discussion of Chinese language in the past few years as we did in our blog or forum. As far as I can remember, he never showed up in our email communication even after MarkYang urged him once to say something. Instead, MarkYang & a few of us were quite vocal arguing the pros & cons of Mandarin as a language comparing to the Western Language System. Perhaps he considered our discussion not professional enough for him. However, I think he should have said something no matter it is positive or negative.

We hear someone dies almost everyday but life keeps going on. We feel a sense of loss if the person passed away is close to us or somehow influenced us one way or the other. I think this sense of loss is inevitable. The positive attitude is trying to learn something from the dead & keeps our head high & straight. The future is always awaiting us and we should embrace it joyfully.

PS: Notable people died in 2011:
Steve Jobs (age 56) & Elizabeth Taylor (age 79), two completely different personalities & careers.

Elizabeth Taylor was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery of Glendale with other celebrities like Michael Jackson, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Nat King Cole.

Steve Jobs was buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, right across Gunn High School with other famous people like David Packard (HP's founder) & Frederick Emmons Terman (Father of Silicon Valley). Terman was the author of "Electronic and Radio Engineering", a famous book (1,078 pages) we referred to at least a few times in our school years. I bought this book (Fourth Edition, 1955) a few years ago in a Palo Alto Library book sale at $1.00. This is one of the most nostalgic bargains in my life.

馬雲龍與電机机械

2011-10-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

馬雲龍 just passed away. It is sad to hear the news. However, we are all getting old. Inevitably our professors will all fade away eventually. It was about the time of 1961 that we took his course "Electric Machinery" in NTU. I never really did well in this class for some reason. Perhaps I hated the details of intricate winding method related to the designs of motors & generators. I think this course should come with a lab work to get us familiar with the actual hardware. I think hand on experience in this course is important. We had some outdated machines operated by a technician who looked like a 退伍軍人 with a poker face & we got to see the machine only once a year. It was really a joke. I had seen many types of motors in that four years of NTU life, but never really took them apart except the one in the old electric phonograph at home. That was a little motor with black metal housing. I was particularly fascinated to see the speed control mechanism. Get back to our class, it was the assignment problems at the end of each chapter that really gave me headaches. The problems usually were quite hard & required extensive use of slide rules. I still remember the endless weekend spending time on tinkering those problems. I usually worked with 蔡宗元 as he lived nearby (長安東路 & 吉林路) at that time. However, sometime we just couldn't figure out the way to solve the problems. Here was the final backup, wait for Apo finishing his assignment & got some inside track information from him.

As far as I can remember, professor Ma got above average quality in teaching with some interest in his students. I rated him (teaching quality) above 凌霄, 江德曜, 許振發, 楊進順 & 白光弘. I once walked with him along 新生南路 & found that he was actually pretty easy to talk to & would listen to my concern & opinion. Like old soldiers, eventually our professors will all fade away & the best way to memorize professor Ma perhaps is to talk about motor & generator, his main subjects in teaching. Electric Machine is generally considered a branch of EE, Power. But Power actually consists of generation, transmission, distribution & control. Some of us switched the field & ventured into non-EE disciplines. I think very few of us actually work in the field of Power later in our career. With the coming of digital technology & semiconductor applications, the opportunities were wide open to most of us in the decade of 1970. I happened to have the opportunity to work on motors, especially step motors, dc motors & ac synchronous motors in the printers. It sounds ancient now to talk about daisy wheel printer. But between 1973 & 1987, daisy wheel printers were widely used. It actually replaced IBM's Selectric Typewriters (IST) & the famous Teletype work station at that time. Teletype was an electronic controlled communication terminal & IST were the workhorse in corporate offices. I used IST to type my Ph.D dissertation with several metal balls (font). The problems of Teletype & IST are that they got too many mechanical movable parts. Teletype has more that 600 movable parts & IST more than 300. The new Daisy Wheel Printer (DWP) got only about 10 movable parts. That is the total difference, reliability matters. What are those movable parts? Alas, they are motors: carriage, print wheel, paper feed & ribbon advance etc. These motors work hard to the moment that requires a final step of the printing: Hammer. Hammer actually is a solenoid relay. From the paper, it seems quite complicate to make a simple printing. In fact, it is hard to figure out how Teletype with so many movable parts can accomplish the task in a reasonable time. Fortunately, when I worked on DWP, I had microprocessors at my command. We found a way to convert those intricate sequence of movements to some sequential instructions, ie computer software program. After debug & check out the logic, we put the software instructions onto memory of a microprocessor. We call it firmware instead of software as we can't change the instructions after burning them onto the chip. I remember we used two Intel 8041 chips, one controls carriage & paper feed motors & the other one controls print wheel & ribbon motors. Carriage & print wheel motors are DC motors with close loop servo. Paper feed & ribbon are step motors with open loop control. Nowadays two types of printers rule the market: Ink Jet Printer (JP) & Laser Printer (LP). Why? It is the print font. Only matrix type printers can handle the font effectively. JP & LP are matrix type, construct font electronically & print it with matrix dots. It should also be mentioned that the similar motors are used widely in the disk drives to position the read/write head.

Let's get back to our main subject, motors & generators. There are three major types of electric machines: DC, AC Synchronous & AC Induction. The step motors & VRM (Variable Reluctance Machine) are similar to AC motor with no winding in the rotor (rotor is a permanent magnet). Interestingly, transformer & motor are very close in concept. If the secondary winding is cut out from the transformer (mount in the air gap) with terminals shorted, it becomes a rotor of an induction motor. The energy transfer is from the primary winding to the motor instead of going to some device like bulb. The main difference is the energy transfer to mechanical energy instead of heat & light. From the historical view point, we always think of Michael Faraday & Joseph Henry when it comes to motor & generator for their work on the interaction of electricity & magnetism. Farad (capacitance) & Henry (inductance) are the units in honor of them. With the passing of 馬雲龍, We thank him for teaching us the engineering aspect of electric machinery & enhancing us the understanding behind the physical theory.

芭蕾舞欣賞

2011-09-09T17:09:00.000-07:00

In ballet, a pas de deux (steps of two in French, 双人舞) is a duet in which two ballet dancers perform the dance together. Among the most famous pas de deux are the following:

The Black Swan (黑天鵝) Pas de deux from the third scene of Swan Lake
The Bluebird (青鳥) Pas de deux from the third act of Sleeping Beauty
Le Corsaire (海盗) pas de deux
Don Quixote (唐吉柯德) Grand Pas de deux
The Nutcracker (胡桃嵌) Pas de deux
The Flower Festival (花之慶典) at Genzano Pas de deux

Let's select the last one to demonstrate the form, grace & its rich content of ballet dancing, a unique art form that combines music & the power of body movement with grace & endurance. The Flower Festival in Genzano is a one-act ballet by Danish choreographer and ballet master August Bournonville (1805–1879). Bournonville created the work for Denmark's Royal Ballet in 1858 on the basis of the general enthusiasm among Danes for Italy. The libretto is taken from a tale found in Impressions de Voyage by Alexander Dumas and tells the story of two real-life lovers, Rosa and Paolo. It is considered one of Bournonville's most perfect compositions, a charming love duet between two young people where the steps express both their joy and their teasing playfulness. It is often performed at ballet galas to showcase the Bournonville style.

A typical Pas de deux usually consists of an entree (開場), adagio (慢舞), two variations (獨舞,one for each dancer) and a coda (結尾).

The entree is typically a short number which serves as an introduction for the Pas de deux. Adagio literally means 'at ease'. In song, Adagio means "slowly", and in ballet it means slow movement. This Adagio is typically the outward movement of the Grand Pas where the female dancer is partnered by the lead male dancer or one or more suitors. Variation in ballet is a solo dance. As with an Aria in opera, which allows the singer to demonstrate his or her interpretive skills, the variation in ballet has the same function. As in music, a Coda is a passage which brings a movement or a separate piece to a conclusion. In ballet, the coda is usually the "Finale", a set of dances and brings almost all the dancers onto the stage.

Rosa and Paolo in the Flower Festival in Genzano are in their twenties. They play and tantalize, but are throughout tempered by the sweetness of falling in love. The pas de deux opens with an episode for solo violin, succeeded by a polka-like section. More sensual tones are struck in the adagio, which is followed by a swinging waltz (first male solo). The series of relatively short, tuneful passages continues and the pas de deux concludes with a characteristic and riveting coda.

The names of most ballet positions & steps are in French. This usually causes some difficulty for non-French people. However, with the video clip with timeline, we can correlate the name with its actual step & movement that makes the whole process educational. In watching video clip, it is best to open two windows - one for video & one for the text of description. This video clip can be found in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjWgab_PFBQ

0-0.18: Prelude, opens with an episode for solo violin.

0.19-0.45: A young couple enter from upstage. They are holding hands and they look around as if inspecting the landscape (0.21-0.27). They stop in the middle of the stage (0.30), the young man invites the girl to dance & the girl cheerfully agrees (0.33-0.37).

0.46-1.10: Unlike the traditional structure of a classical pas de deux, which begins directly with the adagio, we here have a short preamble (介绍) introducing the couple: a few cabriole-leaps diagonally (0.51-0.52 & 0.57-0.58) across the stage demonstrate her graceful lightness, as does a series of swift turns on pointe resolved in a soft landing in an attitude (1.00-1.10).

1.11-1.37: The young man, to the musical repetition of the theme, responds with some characteristic Bournonville-steps: forward spring with open arms, embracing the audience as it were grand jete en avant (1.12-1.27), small circles of the leg ronds de jambe (1.28-1.34) before concluding with a spirited series of pirouettes (1.34-1.36).

1.38-3.59: This is the adagio, in which the two dance together. He invites her again to dance (1.40-1.42) and they perform a promenade. He stands in attitude whilst she is leading him round, up on her nimble toes (1.45-2.00). She is a little shy (2.01), whereas he is chivalrous and holds her waist tenderly as she slowly stretches her body in an arabesque (2.01-2.09) inclining downwards towards the floor (2.10-2.15). She then reverse the arabesque to the up position (2.16-2.20). They walk forward, hand in hand & turn around (2.21-2.28). At 2.39, she finds he is running away. He kneels (2.45) & invites her but she turns away (2.45-2.47). She decides to come back (2.48-2.51) and she executes an elevated attitude, supporting herself on his hand. She turns this position a half figure and leans backwards, still supported by his hands. They run from one another, play and come together again (3.00-3.10). They spar mischievously with their eyes as they cross the stage (3.11-3.20). She goes on pointe, supporting herself on his shoulders as she stands in attitude (3.20-3.27). He looks at her and she teasingly averts her eyes (3.27-3.42). They repeat the game until the adagio concludes with a graceful position she in an arabesque while he holds her hands from behind (3.42-3.59).

4.00-4.41: This is the first male solo. The young man demonstrates his vigour and suppleness in a series of elegant step combinations. He soars in attitude-jumps, turning in the air, his feet shifting rapidly in nimble sauts de basque (4.17-4.29), before concluding with a series of pirouettes (4.37-4.42) with upright position.

4.46-5.50: The young woman begins the first female solo in hovering flight across the stage with a series of cabriole steps (4.48-5.00) repeated three times in varying directions. This step - the legs are thrown forward, beating together in the air was one of Bournonvilles favourite steps as it gave a sensation of weightless hovering, from which his sylphs also derived benefit. Downstage, the young woman now executes elegant ronds de jambe (4.57-5.10), one hand holding out her dress, and she then plays the flirt with steps pas de chat (貓步) in which her feet seem to disappear under her dress (5.11 & 5.17,). She stands on pointe in an arabesque and suddenly turns her body rapidly forward and back (5.15 & 5.21), a subtle elegance of balance. She concludes with a series of fast little steps pas de bourre (5.31-5.42) before circling the stage in expansive leaps (5.43-5.48).

5:50-6:34 The young man is now ready for the second male solo, in which he impresses with three double-spins in the air (two clockwise & one counter-clockwise), soaring cabriole-leaps (6.12-6.28) and searing pirouettes (6.28-6.34).

6.37-7.10: The young woman in the second female solo counters with big grand-jete leaps towards the audience (6.38-6.52). This solo is characterised by the lightness of nimble feet and the play with balance and shift of weight as she goes up on pointe on one foot and down again in a lively tempo (6.52-7.00). The solo ends with a series of hops in arabesque (looks like ostrich's turnaround step) , which are resolved in a spiral-pirouette (7.01-7.12).

7.14-8.12 The two come together in the coda. Their shyness has vanished. He takes her by the waist and whirls her round with typical arabesque pose (7.14-7.34). They take wing in parallel across the stage in grand-jet leaps (7.35-7.53). The epaulement of the forward movement (7.57-8.00) is elegant. He finally supports her in an attitude (8.09). The tempo, joy and celebration thus conclude in a graceful, harmonious unit.

Gravity Hills

2011-08-22T16:10:00.000-07:00

I came to Silicon Valley in 1972. One thing I remember clearly up to these days is the visit of a place called "Mystery Spot" at Santa Cruz in 1973. It has been almost 40 years, I still remember seeing some strange things & phenomena in that place. However, I knew at that time, the whole thing was like a magic show. You were awed at what you saw & wondered how they could do things like that. The tour guide tried to convince the visitors it was all due to some magnetic field, some aliens from outer space buried heavy metals beneath or some unknown force around this mysterious spot. But deep down, you knew it was like a magic show, a full show of illusion & entertainment. The place is still open today. One thing different is that with the advancement of science, they throw in some new terms like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Torsion Field to impress the visitors. Fortunately they haven't got the Lee's gospel of "信息場". The whole scenario was interesting that I describe in the next paragraph.

In some weekend, nice & sunny, you longed for a relax afternoon & drove to Santa Cruz. After a nice lunch, sightseeing the wavy coast & some begonia garden, you came to a shop ordering some beer to quench your thirst. After that, you still got some time to kill. Ah, you noticed the board nearby enticing you to visit the "Mystery Spot". What a nice idea this was. You hopped into your car & drove to the spot. A tour guide greeted you in front of the entrance friendly. Within a few minutes, several other couples with kids joined you. The guide then briefed us this mystery spot, its history & super-natural event was going to happen. We were guided to walk in a narrow path, the slope is so tiny you didn't notice it. Meanwhile, you saw two rows of junipers or some pine trees grown along the path. Here the poem of 李白 applies " 綠竹入幽徑,青籮拂行衣". Pretty soon, you were in front of a little house with a capacity of 20 people. By this time, you were so relax & also with the help of beer drank before, you were ready to believe whatever the guide told you. Inside this little room, with window of course, the guide showed you all bunch of strange phenomena about gravity that included water flowing from low spot to high place. Also a guided marble moved from low-left corner of the window toward high-right corner. All kids were marveled at what they saw & parents awed with their eyes wide open. Whole thing was very magical & entertaining. Of course the guide showed us other attractions & spent a lot of time to emphasize the mysterious & super natural field around the spot not yet discovered yet by science. Time went fast while you had a good time. After one & half hour, you found that you were in front of the entrance again. All visitors were happy & believed what the guide had said. At this time, the poem of 李白 applies again "我醉君復樂,陶然共忘机". You totally forgot you were a "台大電机系高材生".

I found it educational, because I thought I knew all the tricks & the truth. Here is the trick. While you were guided into the narrow path, you actually walked into a slightly uphill slope that you didn't notice. The trees planted along the path were not vertical to the earth surface (horizontal plane). Instead it is perpendicular to the hill. It gave you the feeling you were not walking on the slope. The little house was built the same way, perpendicular to the hill. So when you were in front the house, you were already tricked into thinking you are leveled with the earth gravity. The angle of the slope was big enough to perform the tricks, but small enough for you not to sense you were actually on the slope. Here is the lesson, our eyes & ears are not good enough under certain circumstances like the one I just described. The figure 1 shows actual plan you are in. The figure 2 shows the plan you think you are in. You think point 'a' is the same level of point 'b' & so point c is lower than 'a'. Actually point 'c' is the same height as point 'a'. So if you pick any point d between b & c, the water will flow from d to a (since d>c & c=a). But you still think b is the same height as a & b higher than d, so a is higher than d or d is lower than a, ie water flows from low to high.

Now we go back to this Magnetic Hill in Canada. I visited Montreal, Quebec & the surrounding area 15 years ago. I heard this Magnetic Hill of Moncton. But I figured this had to be something like Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. I rather stayed & spent the time walking around the Plains of Abraham in Quebec. This was the battle field between James Wolfe & Louis de Montcalm in 1759. The battle of Quebec was the turning point of the history. Since then, French were driven out of North America & it led to American Revolution indirectly. Quebec is the only walled city in America. The wall is well kept but not that impressive comparing to China's Great Wall. Both Wolfe & Montcalm died in this battle. There is an obelisk below the fortress near St. Lawrence River commemorating both of them.

I think the whole scenario of Magnetic Hill is similar to the Mystery Spot except that the little house becomes a long hilly pavement. In order to demo it well, I add figure 3 & 4 to show the possible plan of the situation. The road can be separated in three sections with three different slopes. The slopes are possibly all uphills with the middle slope less hilly.

Here comes the interesting part when we look at the website of 林星雄(LSH). Per his own description, he is 1963 NTUEE graduate, one year senior to us. His career & track record are impressive. However, in this matter of Magnetic Hill, he seems way off the tangent of normal engineering thinking. I know we studied General Physics from 許照 & Applied Mechanics from 翁通楹. Since I don't know the whereabouts of 許照, perhaps we should just visit 翁通楹 (台北市青田街) to see what he says. He may ask you whether you believe what the website says. If you say yes, I bet 9 out of 10, he will kick you out & says, "How could you believe such a thing?" First he (LSH) believes what he saw but not simple instruments like Bubble Leveling or plumbing lines. He perhaps forgot his ears (crude leveling device). Since he trusts his eyes but not the simple instruments & forgets his ears, he can't explain the strange phenomena of Magnetic Hill. He has to elicit the help of Dark Matter, Dark Energy or String Theory, M-Theory, Universal Hidden Dimension, Parallel Universe etc. I think these are all unnecessary red herrings (misleading clues). The phenomena is really easy to explain with the Newton's Theory. The trick from LSH is that he doesn't trust the instruments because he argued that the instruments are also affected by those Dark Matter or horizontal gravity stuffs. In other words, he wants you to prove there is nothing like dark matter, hidden dimension or horizontal gravity exist. But isn't it true that the burden of proof is on him since he claims all these wield stuffs have something to do with the Magnetic Hill? LSH trusts his eyes but his argument of point 'L' is lower than point 'S' is not all that convincing.

I add Figure 3 & 4 that may depict the scenario of the Magnetic Hill. The actual terrain is as Figure 3 shows & Figure 4 is the road people think they are in. They think L is the lowest point on the road but actually as Figure 3 shows it is actually higher than the starting point S. The trick is that the guide tells you to proceed or drive down to the lowest point L. They never says to coast down (with neutral transmission) to point L. I bet you will never be successful by coasting down to L as the case of bicycle & horse carriage experienced uphills described in the website. It seems an independent test from GPS should resolve the problem. Unfortunately, even the newest GPS is not accurately enough to a few feet of R coordinate. If a modern geographer can measure Himalayas raises its peak 2.4 inches every year, why can't they measure the exact geographical location to a few inch accuracy? I think we have the technology to do it. But since nobody is serious enough to tackle this kind of magic show problem, it is just not worthwhile spending the time & money on the illusion of Gravity Hills. If there are people still thinking the whole thing have something to do with some horizontal gravity field around the mysterious spot, I will tell them the following: Give me enough money, I can create something similar anywhere in the world (except oceans where people can detect the real horizontal plane right away). As a matter of fact, if our classmates would like to build one in Taiwan, we can make it happen & may make money from it since we haven't heard anything like it in Taiwan.

One easy way to prove the point 'S' actually is lower than point 'L' is the following as shown in Figure 3 (in green color):

1. At point S & L, use water bubble to find horizon & raise a pole of 12 meters high.
2. Pick a point of 8 meters from the pole base of S & shoot a green laser beam to 'D' of Pole L. Green laser has more range & better quality for this purpose. Just be sure the laser beam is parallel to the horizon.
3. Measure the distance (D) from the laser beam on Pole L to its base.
4. If D>8 meters, it means L is lower than S. Otherwise L is higher than S.

I agree with AhMo on his statement: They are all TRIVIAL in principle but can be highly bewildering and entertaining in practice. This is the postscript. I just wonder perhaps there are some inherent problems in our NTUEE education. We have prof Lee & now we have LSH. They are all brilliant in their field & yet get side tracked to pursue something phantom & mysterious. Finally I heard that 李家同 is our another controversial NTUEE graduate, 1961. I have no comment on him as I know very little about him.

ps: You can expand the figures to see them in details.

Bicentennial of Franz Liszt

2011-08-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

Liszt was born in 1811, one year after the birth of Robert Schumann & Frederic Chopin. This is the reason why very often we see three of them show up in the same movie. Liszt was born in Hungary with German ancestry. He was a child prodigy in his early life. He appeared in concerts at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad. He was a terrific piano virtuoso & considered perhaps the greatest pianist in history. His greatest contribution is the creation of Symphonic Poem. Haydn composed 104 symphonies & earned titles of "Father of Symphony" & "PaPa Haydn". The Haydn's symphony is a form of four movements. It always begins with an Introduction lasted about 2 minutes & followed with a main theme. The 2nd movement is always slow & the 3rd movement is always a Minuet (小步舞曲). The 4th movement is usually fast & lively. Later composers followed this format closely with some adjustment as needed. For example, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony has five movements, Mozart's Prague Symphony has three movements & Schubert's symphony #8 has only two movements as it is "Unfinished". Beethoven very often replaced Minuet with Scherzo (詼諧曲). However, Liszt was the one who collapsed the four movements into one & called it Symphonic Poem (交响詩). He created a new form that he could combine literature, painting & music in one pot. The new style enabled him to express the feeling & emotion much more freely. He composed twelve Symphonic Poems. The most famous one is the #3, "Les Preludes (前奏曲)". It is based on Ode of Alphonse de Lamartine's Nouvelles meditations poetiques (拉馬丁的'詩的沈思錄').

Liszt was one of the most generous composers in the 19th century. He had the look & talent that attracted a lot of women. He was successful in career early enough that free him from insecurity, anxiety & jealousy of others. He gave helps to Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, Berlioz & even Wagner. The following is a legendary story. Liszt once traveled to a little town near Budapest. He checked in a tavern & saw one notice in the lobby. It stated "A Piano Concert will be performed this evening at 8 pm by XXX (female name), a student of Franz Liszt". Since Liszt couldn't figure out who she was, he went to knock her door. You can imagine what happened after that. This pianist was shocked to see Liszt standing in front of him. She begged his pardon. Liszt comforted her & led her to the piano. He told her to play "Hungarian Rhapsody #2", one of the piece in the evening concert. She played (誠惶誠恐地) & Liszt offered some suggestions. After 15 minutes, Liszt stood up & said to her, "Don't worry, now you are my student". The pianist was so moved that she cried uncontrollably. The story ends here. We don't know whether Liszt invited her to dinner or went to her concert. This is indeed a heart-warming story. It gives you some idea how gracious & generous Liszt was in his time.

Instead of listening to his full length formal orchestral play, I found some shorter video clips from some good old movies. They are easy to listen as the full length one may be overwhelming. The first video clip is from the movie "Song without End". This movie was released in 1960, our Freshmen days. I went to see this movie in Taipei. The cinematography is fantastic. It was shot by 黄宗沾 (James Wong Howe), a famous Chinese photographer in Hollywood. The movie portrays the life of Liszt & his love affairs with Countess Marie d'Agoult & Russian Princess Carolyn. Liszt was once considered a womanizer. Marie d'Agoult abandoned her husband & eloped with Liszt. She bore three daughters for him. Ironically, one of Liszt's daughter Cosima later eloped with Richard Wagner without permission from Liszt. Now you know how romantic people were in that Romantic Era. In this video, Dirk Bogarde acted as Liszt. His piano play looks so natural & lucid but lack of flamboyant manner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR4n2khf3KA&playnext=1&list=PLB65989737A64C98D
0-1:04: Liebestraume (Dreams of Love), slow melody, soft & romantic.
The music is based on the poem "Love as long as you can!" by Ferdinand Freiligrath. The lyrics is something like the following:
愛之夢,奇妙心声... 愛之夢,柔情蜜意...
愛之夢,温馨纏綿... 愛之夢,歡樂無窮...
愛之夢,幸福充盈... 愛之夢,綿延永遠...
0.58-1:08: Russian Princess Carolyn
1:08-end: Hungarian Rhapsody #2. This is Frisca section of Csardas, fast & brilliant. Beside #2, #6 is also a brilliant & popular Hungarian Rhapsody.

This rhapsody is a typical Hungarian folk dance Csardas. It usually consists of two parts, one slow "Lassu" section followed with a fast "Friss" section in dance form. I found a video clip of Csardas in the next link. Although the music is not composed by Liszt, it shows you how a typical Csardas looks like. The dance was performed in the Imperial Hofburg from Vienna. Thanks to Andre Rieu. If you are interested, the music is "Komm, Zigany (Come, Gypsy)" from operetta Grafin Mariza composed by another Hungarian, Emmerich Kalman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFCUlGEzoo0&NR=1
It should be noted that while Liszt is famous for his Hungarian Rhapsodies, Brahms is the king of Hungarian Dances. Brahms composed 21 dances based on Hungarian folk tunes with #5 the most popular.

The last video clip is from the movie "Song of Love". This is the beginning part of the movie. Clara Schumann played the famous Piano Concerto #1 by Liszt. She played the 1st movement & switched to 4th movement. Usually a typical concerto has three movements. Here Liszt got away with four movements & played without pause or interruption between movements, unconventional. If you are popular & talented like Liszt, you can do whatever you like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP_iU-lcZ5Y&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=PL98929D8FB524764A
0:00 - 3:02: 1st movement, heavy & forceful
3:02 - 4:01: near the end of 3rd movement
4:03 - 4:17: The person sat behind the king was Franz Liszt.
4:02 - 6:24: 4th movement, lively & brilliant
5:10 - 5:18: The person sat beside Clara was her father Friedrich Wieck.

Here is another legendary story. Liszt put words to the opening measures purposely. The first two measures sounds like "Das versteht ihr alle nicht, haha!". Translated into English is "None of you understand this, HaHa!'. 0:38- 0:42 is the first two measures. It repeats once at 0:43-0.48. I was in Davies Symphony Hall of San Francisco last October. They performed this masterpiece with pianist & full orchestra. With its acoustics & subtle echo of the hall, I heard something like "You don't know what this is, HaHa!". Listen carefully, you will know what I mean.

PS: If you are interested in listening to Liebestraume in whole piece, please visit the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGRdyfjgp8Y

Scientific Research?

2011-07-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

李嗣涔 got involved in some research that related to extra-sensory perception, especially finger viewing (手指識字). I watched his seminars (two video clips) & found that his method of research is not scientific at all. Especially some of his conclusions are shocking & wonder how he can get away that kind of conclusions without the scrutiny of scientific societies. It also raises a question how he can publish the paper without some peer reviewing. What is going on in NTU & its EE Department?

It is not uncommon for a scientist to do research related to something supernatural. You can do “大胆的假設”. But before you reach some conclusions, you had better do “小心的求証”. 李嗣涔’s research is filled with holes & false claims. The following are some of them.

He proposeed there is a field “信息場” & it leads to “靈異世界”.
But he never defines exactly what it is, let alone to prove it. What is the unit of the field strength & how does he measures it? It sounds like the good old "Ether" again.

He believes the story that a person who made a dream & got the whole copy of “数学考題” in 大專联考.
How can he verify that this person is not lying? This is simply the faith as if you believe some miracle.

地震就是陰陽不順的結果.
I don’t know what he is talking about. If this is true, who needs geology?

氣是宇宙最基本的物貭. 生命的產生是道器的交互作用所產生的.
This statement is very “玄”. I don’t know how he can say this after he learned all those basic particles in physics. The way he defines 氣 is really pseudo scientific.

古書,武俠小說並沒有騙我們
This statement is a joke. If you believe what 武俠小說 says, you live in some fantasy world. Researchers need imagination but not fantasy.

1990年,嚴新氣功在北京体育場有一場盛會,全場鬼哭神號,大家跳舞. 一些有慢性病的人就治好了,連他們的家人也跟著好轉.
李嗣涔 don't think the whole thing was a fake. This reminds me of the movie “Elmer Gantry (by Sinclair Lewis)”. There was a scene that Sharon Falconer, the evangelist was doing healing & all bunch of people got crazy & dancing.

'道'就是西方的宗教.
道 has never been defined precisely. I assume this '道' is from 道德經. Then 道 is like Nature. How can it be equivalent to 西方的宗教? His research mixes up supernatural stuff with religion & science.

氣功是一种生理狀態,完全可以用科学儀器去測量.
This is a claim never explained & has no substance. What is the unit & how he measures it? Which 科学儀器 was used?

Finger Viewing or remote viewing lead to 光的訊息 & 宗教字眼.
My comment on this is: 我胡思乱想,故我胡乱存在.

高橋武,最厲害的小妹妹,她是非常穩定的实驗者(手指識字 & remote viewing),consistent, 從來没出过錯.
It has been found that 高橋武 was cheating in some of her show. Also the condition of the show was totally controlled by her mother. There is no scientific proof that she can do 手指識字 most of the time. Yet 李嗣涔 keeps using her example in his research data & paper.

佛, Buddha, 耶穌,一片亮光,信息場像是網路的世界.
Some one did 手指識字 on some words like 佛 or 耶穌, he saw 一片亮光 in his brain. 李嗣涔 believes him & draws some conclusion that borders absurdity.

所有宗教都告訢你有一個另外的世界存在. 另外那個世界是存在的. 宗教是科学的基礎.
I don’t know how he reaches this conclusion. There is no proof, no logical reasoning that I can see to lead to this conclusion. 李嗣涔 sounds like the Pope in Vatican. But the Pope doesn’t need to spend more than ten years & large amount of money to reach this conclusion. To him this is his faith. But faith is not science. I am very disappointed that we have this kind of research in our EE Department. I am equally ashamed & embarrassed that we have a 校長 like 李嗣涔 in NTU.

李娜

2011-06-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

Li Na (李娜) just made history in clinching the trophy of French Tennis Open at Roland Garros. I watched the match on Saturday. She did a convincing win by a strong baseline drives, both forehand & backhand. The key points are the depth & the placement of balls. The opponent Francesca Schiavone equipped various strokes & spins that were also very impressive. Ultimately the consistency of Li Na's baseline drives prevailed. This is the first Chinese woman has ever achieved the feat since the tennis open era. It was reported that more than 60 million people watched this match in China. So far it seems the women in China perform much better than their male counterpart in the field of sport. There is no reasonable explanation & I haven't heard anyone tries to explain it.

Li Na uses two hands in her backhand drive. She seldom uses under-spin or slices in both forehand and backhand. This creates powerful hit & deep ball placement. Of course she sometime hits the ball out of the baseline. But overall, the high percentage of the good balls (consistency) determines the outcome of the match.

One area Li Na can improve is the serving speed. Coupled with her current >75% of first-serve in, if she can serve the balls with greater than 100 mph speed, she is going to be a formidable opponent to reckon with. However, time is not on her side. She is 29 now & we don't expect her to continue this form for more than five years.

One thing is interesting. Before Bjorn Borg & Jimmy Conner showed up in the horizon in the decade of 1970, it was rare to see tennis players use two-hand backhand. Especially before 1970, Aussie dominated the tennis circuit & nobody in Australia adopted two-hand backhand. Since 1980, most women adopted two-hand backhand & they started winning. There are pros & cons of two-hand backhand. You can drive the ball harder but you limit your range of reaches. In order to compensate this, the player has to run faster. Roger Federer used to beat Raphel Nadal, but not any more since Nadal makes improvements on serve & running speed. From the view point of health, it seems using two hands must be better. After all, why let one hand idle just to hold the racket. In fact, if you hit one-hand backhand too often, you risk to have tennis arm. Lately Justine Henen announced her retirement due to her right arm problem. Her one-hand backhand is impressive with style & power. But it will not be useful when it gets injured. I played tennis since I came to the US. I played with one-hand backhand for many years. However, I played more often after my retirement, I found that I got tennis elbow. Since last year, I started to adopt two-hand backhand. Now I am able to keep & enjoy the tennis play. I feel better especially that I utilize my left hand more. It is like a balancing diet to make my body more fit. Surprisingly, I found the another Chinese woman, Peng Shuai (彭帥), whose ranking is about 29 in WTA. She adopts two-hand forehand. She is not that strong in body built comparing to Li Na. This makes sense for her to hit the ball with more pace. However, my experience is that it is easier to control the direction & placement with one-hand forehand. So far Peng Shuai may be the one & only one two-hand forehand player in the world.

If you think it is not that hard to get a grand slam of tennis, it is. This reminds me of the Tiger Mom's book "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". Amy Chua learned that her younger daughter wanted to pursue tennis instead of violin. Her first thought was that she is not going to get any prize out of tennis. I think she is right on this. Chinese already have 林昭亮,Yo Yo Ma, Lang Lang, Li Yun-Di in the music world. But there is only one Li Na, one & only one Chinese get a Grand Slam in the tennis world. After saying all the above, I have to mention that some wise man used to say: "Life is not that simple. Sometimes, it is the pursuit of something that counts, not necessary what prize it gets ultimately." I hope Amy Chua realizes this & not blindly pursues her prize instead of her kid's endeavor.

PS: In the decade of 1980, there was a Chinese female tennis player, 胡娜 (Hu Na). She defected from China, played in WTA (Women Tennis Association) circuit. She didn't go very far, but did play in the center court of Wimbledon once. She got injured at age 29 & retired. She teaches tennis in Taiwan for several years. I remember some TV commentators in 1980's used to ask Who? when they saw this Chinese girl. The answer was unanimous Na!

成功嶺

2011-06-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

大學四年,最不尋常的是大三時暑期上成功嶺集訓. 对我們的一生,這三個月可是驚天動地,非同凡响. 成功嶺的大專学生集訓有多方面的時代意義和政治目的,但對我們正滿二十歲的年青学生,提供一個人生很難得的经驗. 這种經驗非身歷其境很難了解. 我想大部分同学會同意我的看法,也許感受比我更深.

從第一天入營後,發現時間不是你的,而是被別人控制的. 一下子失去了自由才了解自由的可貴. 最痛苦無奈的是開訓的前三個星期. 原本在大学自由自在地生活,又可家教赚外快. 現在一下子碰到一些以整人為快樂之本的士官和剛畢業的陸軍軍官. 他們騎在你頭上,發号施威,全不把我們當人看. 那頭三個星期可說是在考驗我們的忍耐力. 过了這三個星期而不神經崩潰的,大概都可以順利結訓. 這种集訓就是 boot camp 的一种,是一种初級軍官的 orientation training. 編制是十人一班,四班一排,四排成一連. 連上面是營,团,師. 算算一師總共一萬人左右. 每年有這麼多大專学生上成功嶺,可謂盛况空前. 短短三個月經歷不少,以下是我的一些感想.

軍人絕对服從. 小地方可以施展才智,但 the goal of the task is not negotiable.
獅子樣的体力. 天天操練,善用工具和武器.
猴子樣的敏捷. 迅速行動, 神出鬼沒, two-minute shower etc.
駱駝樣的精神. 長途行軍,跋踄千里
研究兵法. Strategy & Tactics (effectiveness & efficiency)
統御訓練. Leadership training
思想灌輸. 忠貞愛民,為國而戰.

這些訓練和操演和一些美國軍校的 boot camp 有雷同之處. 在以後的日子裏,多多少少發揮了不少效用. 來美國以後,發覺很多商業学院皆提到両本書,'王子論(The Prince)' 和 '孫子兵法'. 這是商場如战場的寫照,軍事乃政治之延伸 & vice versa. 將近結訓時,有一实際統御操演. 就像 business school 的 case study 一樣. 那時我深深体會到 leadership 有一大部分是天賦,衹有小部分是可以学來的. 我們那一年的成功嶺總指揮是王潔中將. 他在一次夜間演習集會時向我們訓話一個多小時. 講詞風趣,不落俗套. 他居然提到人生四大樂事: "久旱逢甘霖,他鄉遇故知,洞房花燭夜,金榜提名時". 時隔將近半個世記,現在思之,有不虛此生之感,幸甚.

在這三個月,天天与我們不離身的是 M1 半自動步槍,裝一個 clip 可射八發子彈 (.30-06). 天天学習大部分解,到後來閉著眼睛也可勝任. 麻煩的是要常常擦槍. 第一天拿槍覺得好重,以後天天操練,駕輊就熟,訓練有素,打起槍來,三百碼没問題,倒是眼力跟不上. 三個月下來,居然和這步槍有了感情. 最後一天才依依不捨地還給成功嶺. 正像計算尺一樣,它們現在都進了博物館,然而我永遠忘不了它們曾在我生命史上寫下很有意義的一頁.

在艱苦的訓練中,時而穿插一些康樂活動,彌足珍貴. 有一次,建國中学音樂教師張世傑率領國防部軍樂隊到嶺上勞軍. 那天他慷慨激昂,最後軍樂隊奏了一首名曲,印象深刻,那是 Dvorak 的新世界交响曲第四樂章. 讓我驚訝的是這個曲子祇用銅管樂器 (沒有弦樂器 )也可以達到令人動容的程度和效果. 從此以後我对國防部軍樂隊敬佩萬分.

最後一個月過得特別快,我們在算饅頭就像 new year count down 一樣. 發覺訓練變得輕鬆起來,那幾個排長 (陸軍軍官) 也開始和善起來. 最後幾天居然讓人有依依不捨之感. 最後一天,我們脫了軍裝,換上自己帶來的衣服,坐火車專車回台北. 王潔居然坐快車來送行. 當我們大夥兒在離開車站前,大家唱了那首我們熟悉而常唱的出征歌:

槍在我們的肩膀,
血在我們的胸膛.
我們來捍衛祖國,
我們齊赴沙場.
統一意志,集中力量.
衝！衝破了一切惡勢力,
幹！貫徹了領袖的主張.
抱定殺身成仁的決心,
發揚中華民族之榮光.

當走出車站的那一剎那,隱約覺得我好像由 Boy 變成了 Man. 大学四年,routine 的事都如過往煙雲. 唯獨成功嶺三月集訓,深深地刻在我的心版上.

PS: 在成功嶺幾乎天天唱的歌是 "陸軍軍歌", 乃"黃埔軍校校歌". 有正版和野版,兹抄錄如下:

正版　
怒潮澎湃，黨旗飛舞，這是革命的黃埔，
主義須貫澈，紀律莫放鬆，預備做奮鬥的先鋒，
打條血路，領導被壓迫民眾，攜著手，
向前行，路不遠，莫要驚，
親愛精誠，繼續永守，
發揚吾校精神，發揚吾校精神！

野版
早晨起床, 迷迷糊糊, 這是睡覺的床鋪,
不怕饅頭小, 不怕豆漿稀, 只怕中午出特別操,
打通関節, 賄赂班長開小差, 看電影 (my version, lose the original line)
抽根煙, 喝杯茶, 聊聊天,
大家一起, 混水摸魚,
擦槍我没精神, 發餉我有精神!

陳之藩

2011-05-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

時已五月,想起五四運動.這個運動源於1919年五月四日.胡適先生提倡德先生和賽先生,对這運動影响很大. 我想在古今文選裏找幾篇胡先生的文章,不意卻看到陳之藩的一篇文章---'失根的蘭花'. 陳先生是我們學電机工程的前輩,曾在台大講学. 我在大三時有次俏悄悄去聽他一堂課. 那時他在教Lagrange Polynomial & Matrix. 一堂課下來,我覺得他声音太小,没精打彩. 倒是他翻譯兩本書,我看了獲益良多,一本是'基本電子學',另一本是'宇宙與愛因斯坦'. 後來出國讀了他幾本文学作品---'在春風裏','劍河倒影','旅美小简'. 我不知道他在電机工程学有何特別貢献,倒是覺得他寫文章很女性化,有時傷感过了分. 本想查他对電机工程的貢献,不意竟查出他一段緋聞. 在1997年,有人在台北控告陳之藩誘拐他妻子,破坏他家庭. 這個案子後來被地檢處以不起訴為由,事情終沒鬧大. 可是餘波蕩漾,原來童元方女士背着他丈夫和陳先生做了一些不可告人之事. 後來童女士乾脆也到香港中文大学和他會合. 童女士小陳先生25歲,乃北一女高才生也. 寫到這兒不禁想起徐志摩和林徽因的恋情,胡適和 Ms Williams 的邂逅以及楊振寧和翁帆的婚事. 這些赫赫有名的人都有一些不能上台面的女人經,就像 Tiger 和 Arnold 一樣,真是嘆為觀止. 雖然這些是不光采的事,但其格調並非同等. 以我看來有classy,上,中,下之分等. 胡適和 Ms Williams 的邂逅乃屬 classy,有分寸,有romance 而又沒有 family side effect, ie 江冬秀女士照打麻將,不受影响也. 徐志摩和林徽因的恋情可稱上级. 徐先生明著來,先離婚再追求. 而林徽因揮淚挽別,恰到好處. 楊振寧和翁帆的婚事,82 vs 28,年龄差太大,加上缺乏romance 乃屬中级也. 雖說如此,82+28=00 (exclude carry,活过百歲的人不太多),乃人生重新開始, reset from 00. 至於陳之藩和童元方的軼事乃屬下级, 因為他們暗著來,又拆散一個家庭. 雖然後來正式結合,但幾年來做一些不可告人之事,在人格上總是污點. 寫到這裏,不得不提李敖. 他每次和人家私通或離婚,總是把以前女友的事公開乱翻一陣. 他又有乱show春宫照片的坏習慣. 總之在人品上,習慣上皆有可非議之處. I rate him below 下等也.

1949 往事

2011-04-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

龙應台寫了一本'1949,大江大海',引起一陣迴响. 陸陸續續有些文章報導那世代的塵煙往事. 有些令人唏噓,有些令人浩嘆. 時代巨輪,不停旋轉,芸芸眾生,隨波逐流,予人一种無助之感. 大部分的回應來自我們的上一代,他們身受体驗,身臨其境,歷盡滄桑,加上時不我與,再不寫就來不及了. 1949,我們當時才上小學,應當不受影响. 可是在那大遷徙的時代,可謂人在江湖,身不由己. 連我們莘莘幼子皆受影响. 以下是我在當時的一些塵年往事.

我七歲上小学,正逢1949. 當時家住南京西路十四巷,正好在南京西路和長安東路之間. 我的學校是在最近的建成國小. 我想我們大学四十多位同学,也許沒有一位聽过這間小学. 原來這小学的半衰期奇短,和大部分重金屬放射性元素一樣,可說是曇花一現,來去無蹤. 原來政府遷台,臨時决定把市政府設在建成國小. 從此以後,我們莘莘学子就成了一批無家可歸的社會孤兒. 每次看到地震後一些小学生徬徨無主,街頭上課的情景,就想起我的那些塵煙往事.

建成國小的消失使得住在附近的小學童必須借用別的小学教室. 我的小学生涯第一天是在日新國小. 因為教室是借用的,所以一個月後,卻要去蓬萊國小. 三個月後居然上起靜修女中. 一年下來已記不清楚究竟上了多少不同的学校. 雖然如此,校長和老師則是始終如一,他們和小學生同甘共苦倒是值得欽佩. 這樣遷徙流離的小学生涯居然有兩年. 我們這些可憐的小学生要長途跋涉,步行数里,才能上課. 小時身体還沒長好,經此顛波,常常生病. 從'來來來,來上學...' 到注音符号,居然就這樣學會了. 現在想想,這種生活實在苦不堪言,可是當時小学生頭腦簡單,也不知道抱怨,更不會上街抗議. 後來當局决定建新教舍,改名長安國小,校址在長安東路和吉林路口. 小學生聽到有新學校,雀躍萬分,可是要走好幾里路,比上日新還遠. 好在當時新生北路口有一條小溪流,可以涉水抓青蛙,鳴蟬,蚱蜢和一些蜻蜓,使得小学生涯增加不少情趣. 在快上三年级時,我生了一場病. 父親認為是我長途通學的緣故,所以决定轉學日新國小. 從此四年,日新日日新,和日新結了不了緣. 日新國小在太原路口,離圓環和台北後車站很近. 附近三教九流,賣菜的,擺攤販的,小鐵工廠,一樣不缺,很本土化. 但從此以後也是惡夢的開始. 那時小学惡性補習非常普遍,上課常到晚上八時,可稱暗無天日. 小學六年級時,老師忽然要我們買一本書"愛的教育". 原來那年初中联考國語的閱讀測驗是從這本書來的. 不看則已,一看大開眼界. 原來我們的小学生涯是恶夢連連,不堪回首. 我的小学生涯就在看完'愛的教育'和参加联考结束.

PS0: "愛的教育" 是義大利作家 Edmondo Amicis 的作品,夏丏尊翻譯.
PS1: 在我的小学生涯中,祇有一位二年級老師'宋清樑'能夠和"愛的教育"拉上關係.
PS2: 在那遷徙流離的長安國小中,有一位令人注目的女生'潘美智'.她後來考上台大外文系.

Sublimation of Faith

2011-03-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, I was walking around a neighborhood of Menlo Park in one afternoon. It was a nice day around five o'clock when the sun hang in the western sky. Suddenly I heard some singing coming out from some distance away. I found that it was a chapel with some people inside performing a mass. The solo singing was beautiful & I couldn't name the song. However, I was deeply moved at that moment. The music with the chapel, sunset & colorful cloud in the background created a spiritual world. I stood there & listened until the song was over. I later found that the song is Vesperae Solennes-Laudate Dominum by Mozart. Vespers is the evening prayer service used in the mass of Catholic church. It is also in limited use in some Protestant denominations to describe evening services or evening prayers. The psalms and hymns of the Vespers service have attracted the interest of many composers, including Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, Anton Bruckner & Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The one by Mozart is the most well known. Mozart was an Austrian & his Vesperae Solennis was for Catholic mass. If Mozart belongs to the world, his Vesperae Solennes belongs to all faiths. Indeed, this work is very ethereal & has effect of sublimation & transcendence to another world. With disaster one after the other in recent years, the nature selects no particular target. The world is a village indeed, all people should help & treat each other decently transcending nation, religion & race. Let's dedicate this music (the following link) to our village with the substitution, (Cosmos for Lord, Sun for Father, Earth for Son, Mother Nature for Holy Spirit):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ug0PYot-mE&feature=related

Lyrics in Latin:
Laudate Dominum omnes gentes
Laudate eum, omnes populi
Quoniam confirmata est
Super nos misericordia eius,
Et veritas Domini manet in aeternum.
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper.
Et in saecula saeculorum.
Amen.

English Translation:
Praise the Lord, all nations;
Praise Him, all people.
For He has bestowed
His mercy upon us,
And the truth of the Lord endures forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever,
and for generations of generations.
Amen.

Note: I sent the above in email to the classmates on 3/12/2011. I think it is proper to save it in our blog here.

Electrical Engineers

2011-02-20T14:47:00.000-08:00

There are some events in our history exert more influences to our civilization than all others combined. The following is the list of these events.

Printing Press (Knowledge Revolution)
Since Johannes Gutenberg developed a streamline process of printing press, the pamphlets & books were spread very quickly & reached almost every corner of the Europe & eventually to the whole world. It was truly a Knowledge Revolution. Common people could access the new idea & classical books easily. It led to social reforms & changes. The impact can be seen from the fact that the majority members of the’ Top 100 Most Influential People in Our Civilization’ were born after Gutenberg.

Steam Engine (Work Revolution)
James Watt improved the steam engine to the stage that it replaced human labor easily. Before this, the human beings depend on the wind or water for transportation & work. Since Watt’s steam engine, the harness of the Mother Nature is no longer limited to the sea or near the water. Human beings can harness the Mother Nature for work that replaces the human muscle labor at any place in any time. The spreading of this power & force at low cost led to the Industrial Revolution.

Electricity (Energy Revolution)
People have used fire as main energy source since ancient time. It was until Michael Faraday & James Maxwell, human beings started utilizing the electricity to power various type of equipment & lighting. Nowadays electricity is the standard of household energy source. It is hard to imagine a common daily life without electricity. The spreading of energy to every house is a revolution in itself. So far we don't see any other type of energy can replace the electricity at home in the foreseeable future.

Internet (Information Revolution)
The electronics & computer usher in the Internet. The easy access of information changes our life & social fabric. Almost all activities in our society are affected by the proliferation of the Internet. The spreading of information is truly an Information Revolution.

It is even more striking that all the above revolutions have been going on these days are enhanced by the current electrical engineering. The printing is enhanced with instant displays, laser/inkjet printers & electronic books. The train & car are gradually replaced with electric locomotives & electric cars. The power & logical intricacies of Internet are powered by the electronic technology. All in all, these revolutions are enhanced & become part of the disciplines of the Electrical Engineering. Electrical Engineering lays the foundation of our modern society. It sows the seeds for other developments that also change our life, a life to the better. Aren’t we proud of being Electrical Engineers?

Note: The photo is from the Embankment of The Institute of Electrical Engineers (London, England) with statue of Michael Faraday in the foreground at Savoy Place.

2011 & Prime Number

2011-01-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

Is 2011 a prime number? It is not obvious as there is no easy formula to test it. Since 2011 is not a large number, the Eratosthenes Sieve Method can be used. But the faster way to know is table look up. Since a table of prime numbers up to 10,000 already exists. The answer is Yes, 2011 is a Prime number. Now the question, why bother with the prime number? What is the use of it? Prime number used to be a subject of curiosity in the Number Theory. You don’t usually ask the use or application of the subject when you sit in the class of math. However, we know at least one use of the prime number in finding HCF & LCM of two numbers. We learned in the primary school, what is the HCF & LCM of 72 & 45? We factor them first into several prime numbers & find the answer.

When I was a kid, I liked cicada very much. I lived in the area which had a lot of tress & open area. During the summer, it was my busy season. The singings of the cicada were everywhere. I was fascinated on the loud audio level with their tiny body. Some of them were green, some were red, some were in between & some were black & bigger. I tried various ways to catch them but not very successful. Eventually I dwelled in the state of enjoy their singings all day long.

Several years ago, I heard the news that in the East Coast, some cicada emerged in huge number & the cycle is 13 or 17 years. Of course we see cicada every year as some of them are not synchronous or cyclical. But these two species are something special because of their huge number when they emerge from the ground. One explanation is that the Mother Nature constantly does the experiment & finds the formula: Prime Number. By mutation, some cicadas hit that number & survive easily. The theory is that most life cycle of predators is 2,3,4 or 5 years. If they hit the same year as our cicada, they eat a lot of cicadas but will miss the cicada in the next cycle when cicadas emerge because 13 & 17 are prime number. In other words, the LCM is a large number. The whole thing is very interesting. If this theory & explanation hold true, the cicadas survive & multiply in large quantity not because they are smart, but because of the Evolution by Mother Nature. Since the evolution is a long time process, we may say that “Time will eventually heal the wounds & solve all the problems”.

PS: I went to Kaiser for physical checkup on January 11. When I got out around eleven o'clock & passed by the register desk, I saw the digital clock on the wall showing 01 11 11, 11 11 11. In other words, I got eleven "1" time wise. So I hit thirteen 1 in total. You have to wait until November 11 to equal this.

Cantique de Noel

2010-12-14T18:12:00.000-08:00

During Christmas time, we heard & listened to many songs & carols year after year. Some of them are light-hearted, some of them are joyful, some of them are solemn. The most popular one among them perhaps is the "Silent Night". But none of them is so noble & holy as Cantique de Noel (O Holy Night) by Adolphe Adam.

Adophe Adam was a prolific composer but is chiefly remembered nowadays for the ballet Giselle (吉賽兒) & Le Corsaire (海盗). Giselle is considered one of the five greatest ballets. The ballet tells the story of a peasant girl named Giselle whose ghost, after her premature death, protects her lover from the vengeance of a group of evil female spirits called the Wilis. Le Corsaire is a ballet loosely based on the poem "The Corsair" by Lord Byron (拜倫). Some dances in Giselle & Le Corsaire are used often in ballet competitions for male & female dancers.

O Holy Night has achieved well-deserved popularity. However, most people don’t know the author is Adophe Adam, who was also the composer of Giselle. I have listened to this song many times before in Taiwan & the US. But none like the experience I got in San Francisco, an evening of 1965. I walked around the Union Square & suddenly heard this tune from a nearby cathedral. I just froze & watched the steeple of the church & its background sky with stars. I stood there & finished listening to the music. I don’t know the lyrics at that time but somehow the music touched the bottom of my heart. Music is truly a universal language, a precious part of our civilization. Since then, year after year, I went for my personal business. But as Christmas time comes every year, this tune always reminds me of that moment in San Francisco, my heart is still there.

Here Placido sang the French version & Luciano did the same for English translation in the following weblink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7uiqRCW6I8&feature=related

Placide Cappeau's Cantique de Noël
Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle,
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit jusqu'à nous
Pour effacer la tache originelle
Et de Son Père arrêter le courroux.
Le monde entier tressaille d'espérance
En cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur.
Peuple à genoux, attends ta délivrance.
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur,
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur !

John Sullivan Dwight's English Version
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Til He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

PS:
"O Holy Night" ("Cantique de Noël") is a well-known Christmas carol composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem "Minuit, chrétiens" (Midnight, Christians) by Placide Cappeau (1808–1877), a poet, who had been asked by a parish priest to write a Christmas poem. Unitarian minister John Sullivan Dwight, editor of Dwight's Journal of Music, created a singing edition based on Cappeau's French text in 1855. In both the French original and in the familiar English version of the carol, the text reflects on the birth of Jesus and of mankind's redemption. This song is said to have been the first music broadcast on radio.

Beethoven's 5th

2010-11-22T09:11:00.000-08:00

Chinese Adage: “人生無常, 死生有命, 富貴在天”. It is the Fate that something human being can not control. The whole world is a subject of probability. How do we exist? Why are we here? These are some questions most people ask sometime in their lifetime. If we think logically, it all boils down to a matter of probability. Here is one scenario most people agree. If for some reason on the day of our conception, our parents had a bad day & deviated or diverted from their routines, we would have vanished into a thin air & the history after that will be quite different. Let’s imagine what history would have been if there were no Muhammad, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon or Hitler. Since the existence of every human being is a random event, the history is also a result of a sequence of random events. Of course, the world will keep going on without Napoleon or Hitler. It is like Brownian movement. Microscopically, it is a different moving pattern for each individual molecule. However, macroscopically it is the same old liquid exhibits the same properties to the outside universe. Because of the random nature, people very often feel powerless. People pray when they encounter something unpredictable or face something unknown to them. To whom do people pray? It has to be something supreme and so the creation of god & religion.

Even we are powerless facing so many unknowns such as when we will die, we still manage to live a decent life, work, play, make fun & achieve something we call milestone or breakthrough. It is in this context, we will listen to Beethoven’s 5th & offer some consolation & interpretation.

Beethoven is considered immortal mainly due to his three major compositions: Symphony #3, #5 & #9. The 5th may not be the best, however, it is the most well-known & famous symphony. It is the emblem of the classical music. If you don’t know anything about a particular symphony, you can safely assume it has four movements although there are some exceptions. The 5th is no exception. Sometime people think it has three movements. This is mainly due to the confusion caused by the missing of a pause between 3rd & 4th movement. In other words, there is just a long note between the end of the 3rd movement & the beginning of the 4th movement. Here I pick the version performed by Herbert von Karajan, a famous German conductor. The link is:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2219310962212012112#

Note: It is better to open another window (window explorer) to play music, so you can cross reference between the text & music time line.

The 1st movement
To our remote ancient ancestors, the Mother Nature imposed on them a lot of unknowns. They were under a tremendous pressure to survive. The imposition is called Fate. Here Beethoven’s motif: . . . -, Fate knocking the door. It is everywhere throughout the movement. The second theme is the response of our ancestors to the Fate. It is soft, fragile, timid & subservient.
0:28-1:09: 開門見山,命運之神以排山倒海之勢,充塞四方. It came down to knock people’s door.
1:10-1:30: It was a soft response of human being, timid & subservient.
1:31-1:48: There was no negotiation between the Fate & our ancestors.
1:49-2:12: Fate prevailed & came again.
2:30: 人類在命運之神的肆威下, 委曲求全.
3:10: 人們喘一口氣, reposed & stood up again.
4:13: 人與命運之對話及 negotiatioon.
4:44: Led by oboe, 人與命運維持短暫的和平.
5:00: Fate imposed again & people responded meekly.
5:41: 人與命運之對話 again.
6:12: Fate walked away arrogantly & people followed sheepishly.
6:52: Fate had a last say.
7:05-7:18: Fate had a last word indeed.

The 2nd movement
Our ancestors found the solace from the religion. They found the God & interpret it in different ways. They found the way to live harmoniously with the universe. They created, invented things & produced offspring.
7:20: People escaped & found god.
8:12: They praised the god, sang hymns & prayed.
8:29: They seemed to get the response from god. They elated & thanked graciously.
8:48: People meditated & maintained faith.
10:00: Repeat the experience of 8:12. People enforced their faith.
10:40: People led decent lives with new faith.
11:03: They built temple, cathedral, mosque, & synagogue.
12:00: People searched for the true meaning of god.
12:52: Reformation, rejuvenate the belief & faith.
13:20: God had different meaning to different people. People tried to find their own god.
14:15: People found their own god.
15:02: Revelation & thankful to god
15:54-16:37: Resurrection

The 3rd movement
Our ancestors found themselves. They entered Renaissance, discovered new lands & the New World. They created the age of reason & enlightenment. However, they were groping to find a way to harness the nature to relieve the human labor & his relative position in the universe.
16:40: The theme represents the grope & probe by people.
16:56: French horns reiterate the Fate theme, but with a softer tone, more manageable fashion.
18:18: People found time to enjoy life & do something fun. They entered Renaissance & found classical music.
19:04: They found true human spirit & the meaning of Reason, liberty, equality, fraternity & all men are created equal.
19:40: People were groping & probing for something new.
19:57: Fate reasserted itself but with its mellow tone.
20:43: The end of the 3rd movement & enter the 4th movement, a new age for human being.

The 4th movement
Our ancestors eventually found way to harness the power of nature & the origin of species.
20:55: Something was being developed. People groped & probed in the dark. Went right, left, up, down & gradually found a way out of the pit.
21:17: Finally, human being found a new way to harness energy, a steam engine. A triumph of a new technology led to the Industrial Revolution. Here Beethoven gave us the Ode To Triumph.
21:42: Human being also discovered the evolution, the origin of species.
21:54: All other applications followed, locomotive, train, steamship, social Darwinism etc.
22:17: This was the joyful dance of human beings.
22:55: People found the impressionism in art.
23:47: People found the romanticism in music.
24:40: Something was being developed again.
24:53: People were groping again in the bottom of the pit, Oersted, Ampere, Henry, Gauss, Lenz.
25:14: Finally, Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz & Marconi came out of the pit. It was the age of electricity & radio, another Ode To Triumph.
25:30: This was another breakthrough for human being.
26:00: All sorts of applications followed.
26:18: People dance joyfully.
26:56: People kept charging ahead & forward.
27:35: Here came the six loud chords. They represented the six milestones of the civilization: Relativity/Quanta, bulb/phonograph/movie, car/airplane, double helix/DNA, moon landing, computer/Internet.
27:45: People found a new birth of freedom. Ahead was a grand, wide-open field extended to the horizon.
28:28: Music had to reach an end. The emotion & crescendo dealing with the Fate were built so high.
28:39: Here Beethoven put the brake to the music.
28:55: The start of the ending.
29:03: It requires about 30 loud chords to defuse the emotion. No other symphonies dare to exceed this number.

The Beethoven’s 5th, 史詩般的交響曲, is the epitome in the world of symphony, a jewel of classical music. This symphony was etched on a gold record stored inside the Voyager spacecraft sailing outside the solar system since 1978. We don’t know when & where it will be picked up by some intelligent beings, perhaps some million years later in a remote corner of some other galaxy. At the moment of the Voyager leaving the solar system, it took a final photo of our solar system. The photo shows a tiny Pale Blue Dot in a completely void background. It is the Earth, a planet covered with water & the lands are just some little mountains & hills. It looks so tiny & lonely in the sea of universe. It is our home, a home sweet home.

人類雖然創造了燦爛的文明, 但仰望星空, 無垠無边. 時間空間, 沒有起始, 沒有終場. 我們深覺人類的渺小和無助, 感恩節前夕, 這种感觸特別深刻. 在浩翰的宇宙中,這一小藍點的存在似乎是一個奇蹟, 也是一种恩典. 在此讓我們以最誠摯的心, 感謝上蒼, 這命運之神.

In Memory of Mark Yang

2010-11-05T07:14:00.000-07:00

In October of 2010, we lost Joan Sutherland, Paul, the Oracle (Octopus) and our classmate Mark Yang. Indeed, it was a sad month. The world keeps going on & the best we can do is to remember how they changed & influenced us in one way or another. Remember how much joy & happy hours they gave us that sometime we took them as granted. Instead of dwelling in a mourning state, we take pride to have a classmate like Mark Yang & try to memorize him as a scholar, intellect & our classmate. Here I browsed through my photo albums & collected some photos in sequence & presented on YouTubes with a song of farewell. I consider this my way of remembering him & knowing that our email communication & NTUEE64 blog will never be the same without our Mark Yang.

We can access the video via the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PuJmG2PpTQ

PS0: Some photos are the snapshots of some video created in 2007 by 洪敏弘 & 孫芳德. Their contributions are greatly appreciated.

PS1: The tune was taken from “Ashokan Farewell “ by Jay Ungar. It was used extensively in the TV series, Civil War. I watched it in 1990 & was deeply moved by the tune. I think it is proper & fitting to use it here. Music is truly a universal language.

２００７班友歡聚遊娜威

2010-10-03T04:50:00.000-07:00

少時上課同堂，晚來滄海同舟。

酬勞作母親的辛勞

沿途青山翠谷。一片世外桃園。

梵谷美術館

我們乘坐的遊輪

Smile! 請注意孫芳德身上掛的攝影機。

李純儀夫人葉公範坐輪椅與我們同遊。

Ｔｖｉｎｄｅ大瀑布。不時還有女鬼從墳墓裡爬出來唱歌助興。(In the very center of this picture. Pleace click the image to see her in the enlarged picture.)

--------------------------------

我與小慈的這次２００７ＥＥ６４班團聚應該從在Ａｍｓｔｅｒｄａｍ見到林勝彥夫婦開始。這非常難得，因為沒有任何一家比他們家跟我們班更親的了。林勝彥夫人林衍秀是林幸峰的妹妹。當年我們班上有妹妹的不少，想牽線的也一定有人。萬三就有意幫他妹子在班上找一個成龍快婿。可惜沒成功。我們兩家約好早兩天到，在Ａｍｓｔｅｒｄａｍ機場見面。我提早到是怕如果選在當天到，萬一飛機脫班，趕不上上船，就成了進退兩難。張葳春，吳振和，林幸峰敢選在當天到達，真是勇氣可嘉。其餘的八家早在三天前已先參加陸上旅遊團。「一不作，二不休。」周遊列國。

既然飛機準時到了，我們正好利用這兩天在荷蘭走走。我建議坐火車到Ｒｏｔｔｅｒｄａｍ，我想看看歐洲最大的港口。而林家說Ａｍｓｔｅｒｄａｍ梵谷美術館是他們的第一優先。兩家文化高下，不言而喻。我們先到梵谷美術館，這個館真的是很漂亮，氣派。進得屋來，二林贊不絕口，看了還要買。梵谷一生貧困坎坷，他怎能料道死後有這麼多的崇拜者？我們從Ａｍｓｔｅｒｄａｍ乘火車到鹿特丹，來回都很舒適，沿途的景色也十分宜人。可惜現在是秋天，看不到荷蘭有名的花海。鹿特丹真不愧為歐洲第一大港。我們乘小船遊港，一片寧靜，看不到繁忙。這港像一條長河，兩岸陳列倉庫，貨櫃，儲油筒。許多貨櫃都有中文字。也覺得是一種驕傲。

上遊輪是八月二十六號下午。這是小慈與我第一次ｃｒｕｉｓｅ，想不到船艙麻雀雖小，設備齊全，有自己的衛浴。艙分三等，我家訂的是二等艙，有個可以看海的圓窗。安艙後的第一件大事就是赴船長的晚宴。正要找班友，就發現「哪裡有聲音，哪裡就有阿牟」。一下子十三家都聚齊了。張葳春，孫芳德還是畢業後第一次相見。依稀可以看出當年的容貌。孫芳德這次旅遊好像只有一個目的，就是用他最新款的攝影機為大伙兒拍影。他並不是拍拍就算了。事後把它整理成一片磁牒，配上古典音樂，寄給每家一份。大有當年讓我們抄他電機機械作業的慷慨。

要不是我最近常回台灣，大多數在台灣的班友也都三十几年沒有見到了。雖然大家都可以說是不負當年之志，但多數事業巔峰已過，「好漢不提當年勇」，「且道天涼好個秋。」但也有例外，洪敏弘始終不忘提醒長年在美的班友，要多報效台灣。而張葳春也一直希望大家能投資他的電腦硬體專利，一齊打拼。女士們倒是能一見如故，有說不完的家常鎖事。沒多久，各家的現況都已交換完畢。在坐的個個都家庭美滿。說也奇怪，班上超過兩個子女的家庭幾乎都參加了這次的團聚。為的是酬勞作母親的辛勞？不過下一代唸電機的不多。可憐天下父母心，還是依聯考分數排志願，讀醫科的佔多數。倒是班上的天字第一號，４９５３０１，李純儀的女兒拿到ＵＣＢｅｋｅｌｅｙ電機的ＰｈＤ。其女能在其父身上看到電機的魅力，是本班的光榮。

這次挪威八天之行，要看的是沿海的城市。到了每個城市，我們都有下船「自由行」的時間，或港口，或街道，或公園，或廣場。大家談天說地，陳正一的笑容，何瑜笙的無憂無慮，大家互相學習。子曰︰三人行，必有我師焉。看到的都是白色的洋房，一片安詳。完全不像這是我高中心目中英雄，傑克倫敦筆下「海狼」生長的地方。倒是在Ｏｌｓｏ船隻陳列館裡可以體會出古代航海的艱辛。我坐在最豪華的郵輪中看大海，仍然感到海洋的無邊，無際，無情。這還是天氣好的日子。古人出海，沒有氣象預測，遇到狂風巨浪的機會一定不少。他們的一葉偏舟如何渡過？小時候唱兒歌，「天這麼黑，風那麼大，爸爸捕魚去，為什麼還不回家？」有多少時候爸爸就再也回不來了。
在地圖上可以看出來，挪威沿海呈鋸齒狀。到處都是天然的深水港。我們下船最久，大伙兒在一起走路最長的是Ｆｌａｍ，這個小城雖然靠海，但在挪威的中部。由一條一百多公里的狹長海灣與北海相連。我們一直都坐在船頭欣賞船在海灣裡穿過一山又是一山的峽景。挪威的山都是火成岩，也就是大片的硬石頭，已有二億五千年的歷史。台灣的山只有二百五十萬年的歷史。是歐亞板塊與菲律賓板塊所擠壓而隆起的，有大面積的水成岩。比較容易鬆動。挪威人在這石頭山上開了一條鐵路，號稱是世界上最難的鐵路工程之一。引以為傲。我們也都買票上車。看到了有名的Ｔｖｉｎｄｅ大瀑布。不時還有女鬼從墳墓裡爬出來唱歌助興。沿途青山翠谷。一片世外桃園。導遊說這原有兒有一百多戶人家，不過現在只剩下二十几戶。住這麼好的地方還要搬走？有人問，他們到哪裡去了？導遊說︰美國。哎，真笨。我們的陳英亮，一住進青山綠水的台東縱谷，就再也不出來了。

船上希望乘客玩得盡興。有賭場，戲院，健身房，游泳池，圖書館，遊戲室。尤其是吃的方面。有三個餐廳，飲食豐盛得不得了。隨你吃飽，不另收費。我們都會約定一個時間餐廳吃飯，大家一起看風景聊天。我們也會約在遊戲室見面，不知誰家帶來一副麻將牌，主要是女士們喜歡打。想不到吳振和也是此道高手，打得有板有眼，不苟言笑。打橋牌要數何瑜笙功力最深，有打指導牌的味道。我也借機變了几手魔術，一變再變，找不出破錠。有人問訣竅在那？我說︰「魔術當場解開，久失去了魔術的意義，不過有人私下要學，我一定教。」結果陳呈祿，林幸峰夜訪求教。不知他們後來有沒有在人前露過一手？

我們也預約過船上的會議廳，關起門來就是我們自己人。說話聲音大也不會打擾倒別人。林幸峰特別帶來我們班上當年的照片。一片歡呼，多少回憶。辦一次聚會也相當不容易。陳哲俊，李純儀，花功夫受氣，我們都感謝他們。尤其的李純儀夫人葉公範因腳受傷，坐著輪椅與我們同遊。大家開始想到下次的畢業五十年的團聚。規模可以擴大，但有甚麼方法可以讓參加的人數更多一些？這是人際關係，比自然科學要難多了。

林幸峰事前對這次旅遊下了深功，對我們要去的城市都作了研究。我們在Ｂｅｒｇｅｎ聽了一個音樂會，林幸峰早就知道這裡出了甚麼音樂家，寫過甚麼曲子。他竟然能聽出那個鋼琴家十几分鐘的演奏中彈錯了兩個音。正在懷疑是彈錯還是聽錯，牟在勤夫人劉家寶也說演奏錯了兩個音。昏倒﹗

最後一天是在海上，林勝彥還特別為大家示範了一套太極拳。談了一些養生之道。希望下次再見都能「別來無恙」。看他打拳，我一直在羨慕，如果我能像林勝彥站得那麼直，該有多好。這也是這次旅遊最後得相聚。我們都感嘆時間之快，包括畢業四十多年，也包括這次聚會。下次再見，又是何時，何地，何種心態？詞云︰

少時上課同堂，晚來滄海同舟，老身相聚何所有？有說，有笑，有酒。
晝看片片浮雲，夜數點點繁星，船中賭場論人生，是贏，是輸，是平？

Axioms of Evolution

2010-09-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

We have heard many observations & interpretations on the evolution. It is the time to synthesize them to some ultimate laws or axioms that govern the evolution.

Observation of Evolution
The evolution is caused by Random Events & there is No Purpose involved. Events with long lasting qualities remain. Long lasting qualities depend on the environment. Long lasting qualities tend to accumulate when time goes by. This gives a kind of impression of Direction. If this can be called Direction, it has nothing to do with good or bad, high or low, 進步 or 退化 , etc. Events with very short-lived qualities extinguish and species disappear from the earth. Here are the Axioms of Evolution.

Axiom 1: Regeneration
In order to last a long time in an environment, a species has to grow & maintain its health. It has to absorb energy to grow, renew or restore. This can be called Short Term Existence.

Axiom 2: Reproduction
A necessary condition for a species to grow in number is reproduction. An organ in the nature will eventually wear out due to constant usage. An individual of a species will die out when time goes by. The only way a species can last long is by reproduction. This can be called Long Term Existence.

Axiom 3: Interest
In order to maintain its long lasting qualities, a species must have a drive or desire to improve or enhance the well being of Regeneration & Reproduction. This Drive or Desire is called Interest. Since the state of well being is affected by the environment, the Interest also changes when time goes by. Without Interest, a species will die out eventually.

Axiom 4: Inheritance
The long lasting qualities tend to accumulate when time goes by. Some of these qualities may carry on to the next generation through Reproduction.

From the above axioms, we can try to explain or interpret the following:

(a) Regeneration & Reproduction lead to "Struggle for Existence (物競)"
(b) Interest & Inheritance lead to Natural Selection (天擇)
(a)+(b)lead to Survival of the Fittest (適著生存)

Regeneration + Reproduction: Matter (物,唯物論)
Interest + Inheritance: Mind (心,唯心論)
Regeneration + Reproduction + Inheritance + Interest: Matter + Mind (心物合一論)

Regeneration + Reproduction: 子曰 "食色性也", "飽暖思淫慾". To an individual, Regeneration (short term existence) has a higher priority than the Reproduction (long term existence).

Interest: Between countries & business circles, 沒有永久的朋友, 没有永久的敵人. 祇有利害關係 (Only Interest Matters).

Interest: How you stand depends on where you sit. (Your opinion & action depend on your situation/status in the environment [society])

"An Inquiry into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith
Interest governs the economic activities. It becomes an Invisible Hand (冥冥中有一隻不可目見之手).

World History & human activities are part of Natural Evolution, governed by the Four Axioms of Evolution. Almost all human activities can be explained by the conflicts and interactions among people with different Interests. In order to do Axiom 1 & 2 effectively and efficiently, the people form Interest that generates Political Policy. The execution of the policies forms the History.

On the Writing of Mandarin

2010-09-09T09:07:00.001-07:00

The writing of a language is one of the most important part of civilization. Without it, there will be no knowledge or experience to be handed down permanently generation by generation. The unique writing of Mandarin is from top to bottom & from right to left. We don’t know why our ancestors chose to write it that way. With the advance of technology, we find that the Mandarin is forced to make change, some minor & some major. It is a part of evolution, struggle for existence otherwise it will fade away.

Most of us had experienced the changes while we went from primary school to the college. The first is the textbook of mathematics. Suddenly, the writing was from left to right horizontally. The purpose is obvious as the formula & equations are all horizontal & from left to right. The number is written from left to right, not from top to bottom or from right to left. It seems Chinese civilization was isolated for so long that it was out of tune in the world. The event of civilization tends to have chain effect. Since most of the natural sciences are based on mathematics, it is natural all textbooks of chemistry, physics etc are written in the same way. It is inconceivable to write chemical formula & chemical equations in any other ways.

Hieroglyphics might serve the purpose of communication for ancient people. But when the civilization advances, a higher & more abstract form of representation became more important. Phoenician alphabet was created & it was much more flexible & practical in commerce. With suffix & prefix, it is much easier to make new & composite words. But the most important consequence of this is the limited number of alphabet (26 in English). It makes the movable type feasible. In fact, since Gutenberg (around 1450 AD) invented a streamline process of movable type press, the old knowledge was made available to the mass & the new knowledge was spread much faster than that before. In China, 畢昇 invented 活字版 around 1040 AD. But it was a block press, not a movable type press. It was not until last century that Chinese learned to use the movable type in printing. I think the main reason of the difference here is that the hieroglyphics hinders the use of movable type as the number of words is much larger.

The general order of writing (stroke) an individual Mandarin character is from top left to bottom right. For example, “三”, we write it from left to right for each bar and from top to bottom for three bars. With this, we’d think it must be natural to move to the right to write the next character, ie left to right as it is more efficient. Your hand will travel more distance to move to the left to write a new character. The right-to-left direction certainly slows down the writing. Other disadvantage is ink not dry fast enough that hinders the speed of writing as most people are right-handed.

The order of writing from top to bottom may not be that bad as from right to left. But it decreases the reading efficiency. Physiologically, the eyes are designed to move or scan horizontally, not vertically. It is easier to read a book written horizontally than vertically.

The most fundamental problem of the Mandarin writing is the input method to the computers. This problem actually existed when the typewriter was introduced long time ago. The problem gets worse when the technology advances. There is no consistent or unified way of the Mandarin input. The most popular way nowadays is pingying. People use English alphabet to input Mandarin characters. The long term effect of this is that people forget how to write actual characters. Although they still know how to read, they will lose the ability of writing when time goes by. When a language requires English as its writing method, it loses its orthogonality & independency. With simplified characters, pingying input & host other problems, the Mandarin, as a language, is in a state of chaos.

In this age of Internet & hi-tech, the Mandarin is struggling & limping. Will technology make a language obsolete? This is a good question. But we know human civilization is part of natural evolution. It will follow the rule of evolution: Struggle for Existence, Natural Selection & Survival of the Fittest.

I recently visited Taipei & Beijing. I found something interesting & amusing. I’d like to share them with you.

This is a panel written from right to left (中正紀念堂)

This is the panel written from left to right (中正紀念堂, same spot, different time)

This is a panel in the Forbidden City, no idea whether it is from right to left or left to write. The seal is in the middle of the panel aggravates the problem. It seems the original designer purposely tried to make a point here with humor.

This reminds me of one chemistry teacher in my junior high school (建中). He came the first day & wrote three big characters on the blackboard: 會乘車 . We didn't have any idea what he meant as we all knew how to ride a bus or bicycle. It turned out that his name is 車乘會. It was an eye opener, 車 can be a last name.

Reunion-2010

2010-08-31T11:54:00.002-07:00

Here are some photos of the reunion, 2010 in Hawaii. Hope you recognize everyone of us & try to match the ladies to the gentlemen. Time flies & these photos of the reunion will become more precious when time goes by.

Soccer & Life

2010-07-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

The curtain of the World cup soccer event was finally closed. Here are some of my observations.

Spain deserves the win & championship this time. The way it plays is concise & precise with mix of good defense & effective offense. Their goals mostly look pretty & satisfying. The way they pass & control balls are marvelous. You always see some moving triangles (formation) rolling around the field. Some players even perform some ballet style kicking. It is just amazing to watch the mix of moving triangle & occasional long passing to penetrate defense & create opportunities for goals.

Asians are underdogs historically in the world cup soccer. This year only Japan (Asian teams) got into the round of 16. South Koreans are tough but without style. North Koreans got zapped 7:0 by Portugal. It was just too brutal to watch. Japanese seem to copy German playing style & do very well this time. It was lost to Paraguay by sudden-death 12-yard kicks. Ironically, Paraguay lost to Spain similarly by missing a 12-yard kick. The fate treats all countries equally after all.

Conspicuously, the Chinese team is completely missing. They didn’t even make to the qualifying matches. It is a shame that the world factory with 1.3 billion people can’t come up with some decent soccer team. I said it sometime ago that one way to boost the morale in China & reduce the grudging emotion toward Japanese is to beat Japanese in soccer games. After that, the next best thing is to beat them also in baseball matches. Chinese government is good in playing pingpong politics. But it is really 小兒科, good for American only. I envision a breakthrough of Chinese-Japanese relation if the Chinese beat Japanese in both Soccer & Baseball. Many Chinese people have inferiority complex in dealing with Japanese due to the frustrations & failure in getting an upper hand in many human endeavors. In near future, it seems not very positive on the soccer front. We heard all bunches of scandals related to soccer in China, 打假球, gambling, embezzlement etc. These soccer players make a lot of money & we haven’t found any star player worth mentioning. It looks pretty misery right now. As to Taiwan, it is also a shame. Holland has 16 million people & produces a good soccer team. Taiwan has 23 million people & a dud in the world stage soccer. The only consolation I can think of is that India looks even worse with its 1.2 billion people & a mute in the sporting world.

France & Italy, two good old European teams failed miserably this time. They lacked of team work & organization are in shamble. Great countries seem produce mediocre teams, perhaps too much freedom or lack of discipline is the cause.

Brazil & Argentine, two good old Latin teams also failed miserably in the field. They were vociferous, loud mouth & lack of respect to other people. They were outplayed by their European opponents handsomely & sure they deserved it.

Netherlands almost pulled out a miracle but failed in some subtle ‘kick’ or ‘臨門一脚’. Their striker Robben failed several times in doing it. It seemed he just delayed a second in his fatal strikes. Opposite to this, the Spanish final strike by Andres Iniesta was timely & accurately done at the right place & right moment. The following link is the reference: (5:00-end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTIlZoGp68I

I understand the Dutch’s agony as they got so close. Dutch couch removed the medal (hung around the neck) immediately after the ceremony in front of the TV camera. It was a vivid drama. He was protesting the unfair officiating as most Dutch felt that way. Statistically, there are more arguments or bickering in soccer matches than football or other sports.

Flopping is rampant in the games. Many players seemed to use this to eat up time when they are ahead. You saw some guy held his leg in pain & needed stretcher to carry him out. But as soon as he was outside the field, he sprung up like a tiger, amazing. This kind of tactics is shameful but most players seem don’t feel that way. This gives people a sense of ‘雖勝不武’.

12-yard kick to determine the outcome is never a satisfactory solution, nobody likes it. Soccer has too many obscure rules that restrict scoring. This makes low scoring a norm & very often leads to boredom. I think this is one reason that American don’t like the game. Soccer rules favor the defense & discourages the offense. But the excitement of the game rests on the scoring. The only makeup of this is the last resort, a show case of 12-yard kicks. But this kind of kicks favors the kicker & put goal keeper in a misery situation. Nine out of ten, the ball is indefensible. It takes enormous skill of goal keeper to beat the kickers. Nobody likes this kind of solution. If you win, you feels god is on your side or lucky. If you lose, you just think it is not fair because the outcome can be either way.

The game between Germany & England is interesting. When the score was 2:1, English striker kicked a ball hitting the upper beam of the goal & bounced back to the ground inside the goal. But the referee didn’t or couldn’t see the ball from the low angle. The event happened so fast, it was hard to see the dropping point of the ball. However, the replay by TV camera showed clearly since it was mounted from the above. It is so obvious & you can understand the frustration of the English team. I do think high tech can help referee in this respect. FIFA is behind the time as most tennis tournament already use electronic eyes in helping umpires in the calls. In the following link, it shows the spot of the ball hitting the ground inside the goal (1:28-1:42).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW8SY3-6b5I

German team played very well most of games but the one with Spain, they looked so much different. It seemed they played too cautiously & Spain took advantages of it. I found that the match between German & Argentine was a classic one. It shows their skill & play style vividly in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDAYacMNEBc

During the game between Uraguay & Ghana, a Uraguay player used hand purposely to block the ball out of goal. The penalty was stiff, he got red card & couldn’t play the next game & also a 12-yard penalty kick was awarded to Ghana. Unfortunately Ghana’s star player, Asamoah Gyan, missed the goal by hitting the upper beam. Otherwise, Ghana got in the round of 8 since it occurred at the final moment of the match. Subsequently, Ghana was beaten during a battery of 12-yard kicks. Gyan did the 12-yard kick flawlessly but it didn’t matter. In life, you have to do the right thing at the right time & this is just the example. I really feel sorry for Asamoah Gyan since he is going to feel bad for the rest of his life. As to African people, that is the frustration, 失落感 & 無力感, since Ghana team is the only hope for African people. Ironically, Uraguay subsequently beaten by Spain in a similar manner by missing a free kick in hitting the ball on the upper beam of the goal. Fate intervenes, spooky? Karma? Or just God treats everybody equally.

Diego Forlan of Uraguey is a fantastic player. His chest-high kick with ball hitting ground & get into the goal is marvelous. His ‘飛燕轉身’ kick has a quality of ballet dance. When Forlan was on the ball, Uruguay seemed like a team with a chance. When he wasn't involved, its prospects were far more bleak. He has been awarded the Golden Ball as the World Cup's best player. He was also voted the most outstanding player of the tournament by accredited media after leading his team to the semifinals.

Vuvuzelas, a stadium horn was allowed to use during games. It was noisy & really served no purpose. I found it rather annoyed. I try to picture what will happen if they are allowed in tennis matches. One consolation, Maria Sharapova's shriek will be completely drown out.

Octopus prediction
Octopus, Paul the Oracle, made a big news as it successfully predicted all games of German team & the final of the event. From the theory of probability, it is a remarkable record, one out of 256 chances to be specific for 8 correct tries out of 8 games. How can you explain this? Although the octopus is the only invertebrate that has been conclusively shown to use tools. But it only has one brain & 8 arms. The only plausible explanation is that there must be some one or a team behind the whole show. It is highly possible that a team of soccer experts did the prediction based on the existing gathered data. With some aid of computer, it did a best job in prediction. Then using some high tech device to control the behavior of this Octopus (Paul, the Oracle) to pick the winner of the game. It is not uncommon for those sea world arena or aquarium to train animals to perform some tricks. Using remote devices, they can control or change the behavior of an octopus by some training or conditioning. Of course we don’t know the details of the trick, however, it is not hard to figure out a way to change the smell of the cage or mussels that attracts the octopus. Anyway, it was pretty clever & fun to pull out the stunt like this & made a big headline in the world. Paul, the Oracle (章大仙) was more famous than Obama at least in two weeks time span during the soccer matches. At this time, good & heartwarming news is hard to come by. The octopus prediction is sure one of the most memorable event in the year of 2010. Here was how it picked up the Spanish tank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9lZ2IJocqo

Chopin & Schumann

2010-07-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

Both Chopin & Schumann were born in 1810 & so this year, 2010, is their two hundredth anniversary of birth, a bicentennial celebration. It is proper & fitting to say something about them.

Chopin is popular in his piano music. Sometime he is called 鋼琴詩人. In fact he composed no symphonies, operas & very little orchestral work. His virtuoso is in the piano works. He is considered the most non-German of all great composers. Chopin had an interesting encounter with George Sand. 桑女士 , a woman frequently wore man’s clothes & indeed intended to act like a man. She wrote many novels quite popular at her time. Chopin was under her spell until he died. The fortunate things coming out of this perhaps was some of his brilliant piano works dedicated to her. Chopin’s famous music form, etude, is unique. The etude (練習曲) is a piano work written for students. However some of them are very good & romantic. Chopin Etude op.10 no.3, Tristesse (Sadness, 離別曲) is one of them. The title’ Tristesse’ was added later by publisher because of Chopin’s nostalgic mood to his homeland. His another romantic piano piece is Andante Spianato in G, Opus 22. I never heard this one in Taiwan. I heard it the first time on radio several years ago. This is one of his most romantic piano works. There are several movies from Hollywood for Chopin. “A Song to Remember” (中文 title: 一曲難忘, 1945) is one of them. I have seen VHS video released for this movie, but can’t find it on DVD, not in Netflix either. I did find some video clips from YouTube.

Chopin Met Liszt in Paris, a clip from ‘A Song to Remember’
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aDnNJ6aEWc&feature=related

A clip from ‘A Song to Remember’, a performance staged by George Sand & Franz Liszt. It was supposed to be played by Liszt. Instead Chopin played in the dark, a surprise to the audiences.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqdy4GXSh-E&feature=related

Concert Tour Highlights, samples of his great music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whqxHIeSGn0&feature=related

Chopin: Etude op.10 no.3, Tristesse (Sadness, 離別曲), played by Kempf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TR-i4r1BtM

Chopin: Andante Spianato (click button on the left side of ‘views’ to see more explanation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5G4HBRsHx4

Schumann is considered to be the most romantic of the Romantics. We often heard some of his tunes in the school, for example, the happy peasant 快樂的農夫, tramarel(夢幻曲) etc. He is unique among most composers that he also wrote music critic, encouraged & supported the late comers. His writings about music (in high quality) appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("The New Journal for Music"), a publication that he jointly founded. His romantic encounter with Clara Wick was well known. His most popular works include Symphony #1(Spring), #3(Rhenish), Carnaval, many songs, piano work Traumerei, Fantasy in C, concerto in A minor etc.

As a person, Schumann is much more controlled & dedicated to what he wants & what he think is right. He pursued Clara with zeal & dedication is far more respected than the weak & meek behavior of Chopin’s dealing with George Sand. Schumann was also quick in recognition of a genius & gave the approval. Instead Chopin seemed in failure to recognize the merit of Schumann’s work ‘Carnaval’. Hollywood likes romantic story. The movie ‘Sound of Love’ (1947) is for Robert & Clara Schumann. Same as ‘A Song to Remember’, I couldn’t find it in Netflix. However, I did find it in YouTube. Some of the music mentioned above can be found in the following links:

Happy Peasant (快樂的農夫), a tune we heard in the elementary school
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKmpQjjQOBA&feature=related

The beginning of the movie 'Song of Love'
Ironically, the opening theme is the piano concerto #1 of Franz Liszt, not Schumann.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP_iU-lcZ5Y&feature=related

Widmung (Dedication) from ‘Song of Love’
Here we listen to two versions of Widmung, the original one from Schumann & arranged version by Liszt. It seemed Clara didn’t like the Liszt version at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3eOggcKLqk

Waltz by Brahms (for the introduction to the next link ‘Brahms & Clara’)
This waltz is one of the most romantic works by Brahms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJcoaIeH3GI&feature=related

Brahms & Clara from ‘Song of Love’
The melody of Brahms’s waltz showed up at 1:54 & Brahms proposed to marry Clara. However, the fate intervened at 4:18. Widmung, the song Schumann dedicated to Clara showed up. Brahms realized that was the end of the affair, an affair to remember. This is the most romantic & poetic moment of the movie. (By the way, from 6:35 to 9:06 is the famous Piano Concerto in A Minor by Schumann. 6:35-7:27 is 1st movement, 7:28-9:06 is 3rd movement.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm-Zh0R6nMY&feature=related

Traumerei & the end of the movie 'Song of Love'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V35e5MNjLJI&feature=related

Horowitz plays Schumann Traumerei (夢幻曲) in Moscow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq7ncjhSqtk&feature=related

Widmung (Dedication, Liszt’s version) played by Lang Lang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBdffJHZ2LM

PS: Year from 1809 to 1813 was a fantastic period of Romantic Music. Here is the chronicle (the magnificent six were all born within this period):
1809: Felix Mendelssohn (date: 2/3), 抒情聖手
1810: Frederic Chopin (3/1), 鋼琴詩人
1810: Robert Schumann (6/8), music composer & critic, 嚴肅而又浪漫的作曲家
1811: Franz Liszt (10/22), 鋼琴鬼才
1813: Richard Wagner (5/22), 樂劇之王
1813: Giuseppe Verdi (10/9), 歌劇之王

For some reason, it skipped 1812. Perhaps the year was reserved for Napoleon Bonaparte. He was not born in that year, however, he invaded Russia, an important historical event.

1949

2010-06-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

“1949 by 龍應台” is a book for the unknown people get crossfire between wars. It is the most neglected part of the human history. If you read books about the modern history, you always have a kind of feeling that something must be or must have been missing. So a prudent reader searches more information from different sources in order to verify the facts. If you try to find more information about the common people in the history book, you will be very disappointed. Most of the story about the common people instead can be found in novels or magazines. But the stories in novels or magazines are not rigorous in verifying facts. To most Chinese, the modern history (1945-2010) is a giant jigsaw puzzle. You don’t trust the history books written by both sides of the regime. Here I think 龍’s book is valuable in documenting many stories of the common people before they pass away or fade away from the history. When you finish reading this book, you inevitably will have this feeling that wars are hell, terrible, disastrous & better to avoid them at all cost.

PS: 龍應台 is a woman. Her ‘野火集’ had a lot of influences to the society in Taiwan. If we rate the most influential women from Taiwan in the pass 60 years, we may come up with the list like this: (note: we are talking about INFLUENTIAL only, not GREAT, not PRETTY, not INTELLIGENT, not ...)

王錦雲 (釋證嚴) (Most influential in the time span: 1966-2010). Religion & Philanthropy
瓊瑤 (1960-1980) Novel
鄧麗君 (1970-1990) Music
龍應台 (1990-2010) History & current affairs

Of course, this is subjective. I think everyone should have his/her list.

現代桃花源 & Choice of Life Style

2010-05-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

If you have a chance to visit Philadelphia and Gettysburg, you will follow state highway 340 & go west. Don’t miss one little town called Intercourse. It is an Amish town. In case you haven’t heard of Amish people, Amish is a branch of Anabaptist. Because of their religious belief, they don’t serve in government & arm forces. They were persecuted & kicked out from Europe. They came to America & settled in Pennsylvania & eventually spread among mid-west states. I passed Intercourse twenty-five years ago. I visited the town for the whole day & very impressed what I have seen. It is a unique community and it is so much difference from the outside world. You wonder why & how it can exist in a modern society & keep its life style. Amish people don’t use AC electricity, radio, telephone, car, no bicycle either. But kids use scooter (toy type). They use horse & buggy for transportation. It is almost but not a complete independent society. For example, it depends on outside hospital for emergency & it has to buy gasoline from outside for its tractors. They can use gasoline but not ac electricity. Ironically, dc battery is ok. I can understand their logic. If they allow ac electricity in their house, the authority can’t control the use of radio, TV & a lot of communication gadgets. But if battery is ok, sure they can use transistor radio. In fact, if battery is ok, you can hook up a dc-ac converter to get 120v ac. There are a lot of contradictory & idiosyncrasies in this kind of society. It is like the society in China. The coexistence of communism & capitalism creates a lot of jokes. In fact, there is some similarity between these two societies. It boils down to the choice of life style. In both cases, they are state imposed. We, in this modern time, do select our life style individually (not by state). For example, some people choose not to use FaceBook, iPhone, cellular phone, tv etc. Some choose not to eat meat, beef, pork etc. This leads to the next question: Is religion also a choice of life style?

The Amish society can not survive without the protection of the modern government. The reason they got kicked out from Europe is that they couldn’t defend themselves. They don’t fight for other people & don’t fight for themselves either. We heard a lot of jokes about Quakers & some people resent the double standard they use. For example, in autobiography of Ben Franklin, he described a group of Quakers was on board of a war ship. When the ship encountered a British ship, they all got scared & moved to the lower deck. After the fighting was over, they came out and criticized the whole thing should be resolved in a peaceful manner without firing cannons. The religious belief can be so strong that you forget the obvious logic. Another example is that Jewish people don’t fight on certain days of the year. So the Roman picked the day & conquered them. This might be the reason why Jewish people don’t have their own country for so long. I doubt they still follow that good old habit. Otherwise the Moslem can easily wipe them out.

The western Europeans seem very open & tolerant these days. Perhaps Amish people can move back to where they came from. But they are content here in the US. If you wander around in Pennsylvania next time & somehow you enter some place looks like a 現代桃花源, it must be an Amish town. Don’t panic, you just look around & enjoy yourself. I guarantee you will get out safely & will not get lost next time either.

Law of Nature (自然律)

2010-04-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

When we study the science, we encounter all kinds of Law. Sometime they surface with terms like Hypothesis, Postulate, Theory, Principle, Rule etc. In math we learn Axiom, Theorem, Lemma, Corollary and many others. In general, the definition of the terms is more rigorous in math. But in our daily life, the definition of Law has been abused often especially in the last 40 years. Have you heard about Murphy’s Law, Moore’s Law & Pareto’s Principle? Or Peter Principle, Parkinson’s Law, Count to Three Principle? If we examine these laws or principles closely, we find that they are far from laws. They are qualified at best as Adages, Rule or Guidelines. They can’t be proved rigorously & you can always find exceptions to the laws. They can’t even be qualified as hypotheses or postulates. They are just Rule of Thumbs. Let’s examine some of them. But before we dig in, let’s examine the definition of the terms & do some translations.

Theory: the principle on which a particular subject is based, 學說 (理論)
Theorem: a rule, especially in mathematics, that can be proved to be true, 定理
Corollary: an idea, or fact that results directly from a theory, 結論 (必然的結果)
Lemma: a proven statement used as a stepping-stone toward the proof of another statement, 引理 (輔助定理)
Law: a scientific rule that somebody has stated to explain a natural process, 定律
Principle: a law or a theory that something is based on, 原理 (法則,原則)
Hypothesis: an idea or explanation of something that is based on a few known facts but that has not yet been proved to be true or correct, 假說
Postulate: a statement that is accepted as true, that forms the basis of a theory, 假定 (假設)
Rule: a statement of what is possible according to a particular system, 規則
Rule of Thumb: 經驗法則
Guideline: rules or instructions that are given on how to do something, especially something difficult, 準則 (指導方針)
Adage: a well-known phrase expressing a general truth about people or the world, 格言 (諺語)

Murphy’s Law
"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Is this really true? No is the answer. It is almost true that given enough time & enough tries, it will happen. It is like saying, “I buy lotto & I will hit it eventually” or “I walk outside very often & eventually I will be killed by a thunder." So Murphy is not a law, it is just a Rule or Adage.

Moore’s Law
"The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years." This one has been modified to 18 months instead of 2 years. Actually, the original one was one year, not two years. Now we know how accurate this one predicts. It is not a law, it can best be qualified as empirical formula.

Parkinson's law
"Work will always take as long as the time available for it." This one tries to explain or describes some human behavior. In many cases, it is true. But alas, it is not always true. Some difficult task can not be finished if there is not enough time allocated. This one can be used as a guideline for any project. This is especially true for annual tax return. Why? There are so many procrastinators that try to meet the deadline. You give them the deadline, so they just try to meet it. But it is also true that thousands of people sent their return well before 4/15 every year. Why? They just try to get the refund as soon as possible.

Pareto’s Principle
"The Pareto principle also known as the 80-20 rule, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes." It is equivalent to state, 20% of the effects come from 80% of the causes. Here the cause & effect are independent, they don’t need to add up to 100%. For example, 15% of people pay 90% of the tax in California. The interesting part of this so-called principle is the number 80 & 20, why not 30 & 70? Anyway, this is another way to explain some human behavior. You can hardly find any natural phenomena fit in this scheme. This one is best qualified as a rule applied to the area of human activities, but it is far from a Principle. The corollary of this rule is that 64 % of the effects come from 4% of the causes. Is it true or is it a fantasy?

Peter Principle
"In a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently." Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent, and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. The corollary: "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" or "Work is accomplished by those employees who are not competent." No wonder our world is a mess since the world is functioned in an incompetent way. This is another rule to explain the structure of our society or our economic system. Is it a principle? I don't think so. At best it is qualified as a low end of Principle. But it is not in the same league as Uncertainly Principle.

Most of these laws are from the management circle of business world. They are not thinking rigorously, rather very loosely. Like “Invisible hand (冥冥中有一隻不可目見之手)” & "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good", they lead to the chaos in the world of finance, economy, wall street & business world. It destroys so many lives & creates some monster banks too big to fail. The taxpayers end up holding the bag.

PS0: Count-to-Three Principle: If you don't know at least three ways to abuse a tool, you don't know how to use it.

PS1: 說, 論 & 經: 這三個字,堂而皇之. But they have been abused badly too. We have many examples (some of them are not qualified as called):
粒子說,波動說,波粒說,原子說,孔子說,聽說,細說,好說,胡說,佛說,併吞說,媽媽說,總統說,道聽途說
群論,民約論,人口論,國富論,资本論,重商論,相對論,量子論,君王論,進化論,演化論,唯心論,唯物論,海杈論,不服從論,边際效用論,天体運行論, 血液循環論
人論,典論,違心論,股市崩盤論,小金投資論,大乘起信論,命理預言論,興趣無用論,正統無視論,高談闊論
佛經,聖經,拜撲經,可蘭經,道德經,詩經,樂經,易經,水經,山海經,三字經,媽媽經,罗織經,月經,日經,神經

春神

2010-03-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

春天是欣欣向榮的季節,大家都歌頌它的來临. 記得我們小學常唱的一首歌,”春神來了”. 多年以後,我們仍記得這個曲子. 其歌詞清新可喜,又富進取情調. 歌詞如下:

春神來了怎知道？
梅花黃鶯報告。
梅花開頭先含笑，
黃鶯接著唱新調，
歡迎春神試身手，
快把世界來改造。

多年来,一直以為是中國的曲子. 後來長大慢慢才知道這是一首德國名謠. 雖然原歌詞主要以歌頌鳥為主,但仍然充滿春天的氣息. 原歌詞如下:

Alle Vögel sind schon da,
alle Vögel, alle!
Welch ein Singen, Musiziern,
Pfeifen, Zwitschern, Tireliern!
Frühling will nun einmarschiern,
kommt mit Sang und Schalle.

Wie sie alle lustig sind,
flink und froh sich regen!
Amsel, Drossel, Fink und Star
und die ganze Vogelschar
wünschen dir ein frohes Jahr,
lauter Heil und Segen.

Was sie uns verkünden nun,
nehmen wir zu Herzen:
Wir auch wollen lustig sein,
lustig wie die Vögelein,
hier und dort, feldaus, feldein,
singen, springen, scherzen.

其英譯文如下:

All the birds are already here,
All the birds, all!
What singing, music playing,
Whistling, chirping, trills!
Spring wants to arrive now,
It comes with song and sounds.

How cheerful they all are,
They move, nimble and gay!
Blackbird, thrush, chaffinch and starling,
And a whole cloud of birds
Wish you a happy new year,
Higher holiness and blessing.

What they announce to us now
Go straight to our hearts:
We want to be cheerful too,
Cheerful like the little birds,
Here and there, out and in the fields,
We want to sing, to jump, to joke.

You can listen to the song in the following youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwCiPfgKYc

Top 10 Classical Music

2010-01-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

In good old days, you always found some radio stations played classical music all day long. Some of them had special programs at specific time of the day. Also you found a lot of cities had their symphony orchestras. When time goes by, the number of them dwindled & a lot them simply disappeared in the thin air. It seems the market of the classical music get smaller each year. Does this mean the interest of people change? Yes & no, here are some of my observations:
1. There is not much innovation in the format of concert. People get bored when nothing is new or exciting. This is especially true for the young generation. I think the conductor should say something about the uniqueness of the concert instead of saying nothing & play.
2. The package of the classical music is not good enough to attract young people. For example, when people see Un Bel Di on CD, they don’t have any clue if there is no explanation on the cover. This is true for most of the arias of opera.
3. Radio stations lack of creative programs & enthusiasm.
4. CD is not cheap enough. Especially you have to buy the whole disc, not just one piece of music.
5. Only things bucking the trend are Three Tenors, Andre Rieu, Vienna New Year Special Program, PBS special music program, competitions, auditions etc. They are all something new in the musical package.
6. Internet & electronics suddenly change the market. Now you can buy a single piece of music at $1 & load it to iPod or something similar.
7. Only high profile orchestras survive. They record series music for Grammy awards or others.

Radio station KDFC is the only survived station that broadcasts 24 hours classical music in San Francisco. It gets the poll from the audiences for Top 100 Classical Music. It also creates a package this year that loads all 100 pieces of music in iPod & sells it at $299. If this is not revolutionary, it must be a quantum leap in music distribution. If you try to buy CDs to complete this top 100, you will have to spend more than one thousand dollars.

Here is the list of KDFC’s Top 10 of 2010 (the parenthesis is the rank of 2009)
1. Beethoven Symphony #9 (1)
2. Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2 (10)
3. Vivaldi Four Seasons (2)
4. Dvorak Symphony #9 (7)
5. Bach Brandenburg Concerto 1-6 (3)
6. Beethoven Symphony #6 (4)
7. Pachelbel Canon in D (11)
8. Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue (5)
9. Beethoven Symphony #5 (8)
10. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1 (20)

This represents the taste & interest of the people in San Francisco bay area. In the past several years, the # listed in the top 10 change often. The only one consistent is the #1, Beethoven Symphony #9, Choral Symphony. It really shows the #9 of Beethoven is one & only one in its own class in most people’s mind. It is also the longest piece that takes almost one hour to play it from the beginning to the end. From #2 to #10, their ranks change every year. It says the taste of people changes every year. For example, Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto #2 jumps from 10 last year to 2 this year, a quantum jump. My list is different from the KDFC’s. I don’t mean my taste is better. It just means my taste is different from a lot of people. Here is my top 10 list:

0. Beethoven Symphony #9 (Choral)
1. Dvorak Symphony #9 (From the New World)
2. Beethoven Symphony #5 (命運)
3. Beethoven Piano Concerto #5 (Emperor)
4. Brahms Violin Concerto
5. Rachmaninov Piano Concerto #2
6. Beethoven Symphony #6 (Pastoral)
7. Schubert Symphony #8 (Unfinished)
8. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1
9. Mozart Symphony #41 (Jupiter)

I do like to make some comments about KDFC’s list. Four Seasons & Canon in D are nice to the ear. But you just can’t listen to them often. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto 1-6 is not uniform in quality. You just can’t lump them in one & try to compare to other classical music. It is more reasonable to pick #5 or #6. As to Rhapsody in Blue, it is just not exciting. Perhaps a lot people like jazz & pick this piece for the mood. I found that all pieces in my list are either symphony or concerto. I think it is fairly obvious as these two forms of music use extensively & intensively almost all instruments that we can find in an orchestra. The depth & power of expression & interpretation of human emotion are just too great to describe. Everyone should have his/her own top 10 list as everyone is different & special.

0 & 1

2010-01-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Natural number is for counting. Long time ago, people didn't count nothing. So there is no concept of zero. George Gamow wrote a famous book “1, 2, 3…Infinity”. He said our ancestors used to count 1, 2 & 3. If it was more than 3, it was many and definitely no concept of 0. But when we have 4 birds and sold 2, we have 2 left. How many are left when we sell the final 2? We will say I don’t have any, I don’t count. But that is just awkward. We can say we own nothing & call nothing 0(ZERO). So finally we have 0 left. Natural number can have 0 or not depending on whom you talk to. But it seems the natural number is not so natural after all. The counting of year in the human civilization has been a mess. The lack of concept 0 & its notation led to confusion. People think it is natural to count from 1. After all, why is there a need to count nothing? This creates no problem when we count things that are not divisible like men. For example, if every man own 10 beads, ten men will have 10x10=100 beads. But when we count thing that is divisible like year (divisible to days), we encounter something awkward. In second year (year 2), we try to count how many days passed from the beginning of year 1 when the day is February 1. We have to calculate with (2-1) x 365 + 31. But what happen if it is the first year we try to calculate? We get (1-1) x 365 + 31. Here (1-1) is a concept of zero but we just don’t have the notation 0 to represent it. Without the concept of 0 also led to the absence of AD 0 in Christian Calendar. So the years between 1 BC & AD 1 is not 1-(-1) = 2, but only 1. If Chinese people count the year starting from 黃帝, 2697 BC, the conversion of 2010 is 2010-(-2697)=4707. But 2010 BC will be -2010-(-2697) + 1= 687+1= 688, assuming the first Chinese year is year 1. The reason of this discrepancy is the gap between 1 BC & 1 AD, Zero. This kind of awkwardness happens often. For example, we count day 1 of the week, 星期一…六 and on Sunday, we call it 日. Subconsciously, it means 0 and we call the starting day of the week 星期日 (Sunday). So 星期一 of the week is actually not the first day of the week. Subconsciously people treat 星期日 as 星期零 (not 星期七). The way we count the age went through the same confusion. Chinese count the infant age 1 when it is born. Eventually they found the problem & called it 虛歲. The notation of the counting without 0 is 1, 2,…,10. The last number 10 is unnatural since it uses digit 0 after 1 & it contains 2 digits. What is the definition of Decade, Century & Millennium? Since there is no zero, you have to define a decade from 1 to 10, a century 1 to 100 & millennium from 1 to 1000. But what happened to the world when Millennium came several years ago? To aggravate the situation, the so-called Y2K problem played havoc to the computer world. What was the reason behind all these problems? Just look at the number from 1999 to 2000. There are four digits that flip. But from 2000 to 2001, there is only one digit flips. It is the counting without 0! There were two camps of people in celebrating Millennium, one for 2000 & one for 2001. Since there is no 0 AD, the new millennium must be 2001. Guess what? Most people went ahead to celebrate on 1/1/2000, the last year of the old millennium, not the beginning of the new millennium. Why caused the shift? People already get used to the concept of zero in counting. Also it is just awkward to count 1001 to 2000 as a millennium. So now we have an embarrassing situation, the first millennium is from 1 to 999, only 999 years. The third millennium is from 2000 to 2999, a perfect 1000 years. This year is 2010, it is the beginning of a new decade, not the last year of the old decade.

The dawning of the computer age creates the necessity of programming languages. In digital world we use 2, 8 or 16 base system ie binary, octal & hex base system. We all order the digits starting from 0. Here we skip the 4 base system since we think it is trivial. As a matter of fact, this is what our ancestors used, 1,2,3…Infinity. 0,1,2,3 are the 4 digits for the 4-based system. All computers count from 0 to the last digit of the base & wrap around to 10. Zero is the lowest unsigned integer value, one of the most fundamental types in programming and hardware design. In computer science, zero is thus often used as the base case for many kinds of numerical recursions. Proofs and other sorts of mathematical reasoning in computer science often begin with zero. For these reasons, in computer science it is not unusual to number from zero rather than one. There have been so many kinds of languages like car companies in the early 20th century. Eventually it settles down to just a few and C language becomes the most popular one used in the software industry. The most powerful feature in C is the Pointer. It is basically a kind of Array Indexing. All indexing in C starts from 0. You define Array[40], but can only use Array[0..39]. If you get out of bound, the compiler will flag it as an error. It becomes very natural for most programmers to think things starting from 0 instead of 1. It is ironical that most hardware engineers don’t like C language. They rather like to use BASIC in their work. I know some principal engineers hate C language just because they never really feel comfortable or grasp the zero-based indexing, especially the concept of Pointers.

The indivisibility of 0 is another subject warrants separate discussion. It is interesting to note that 0 & infinity form two ends of the counting scale, one left, one right. It is not surprising that indivisibility of 0 relates to the infinity. Without the concept of zero & infinity, there will be no concept of Limit & so there will be no Calculus. Zero & Infinity are two pillars that lead to the Limit & Calculus which make our world a much better place to live.

PS0: One of the most natural number is e. When e is expressed in infinite series, it starts from index 0:
Summation of 1/n!(n=0…infinity). It is the same in sin(x) & cos(x) & Taylor series.

PS1: Some time ago (1971) when a group of philosophers tried to celebrate the 2,400th birthday of Plato (428 BC-348 BC). They got the problem as they couldn't get the consensus as to pick 1971 or 1972 for celebration. Logically, it should be 1972, not 1971 since there is no AD 0.

PS2: We have 元年, 元旦 or 正月. It sounds as if people vaguely have the concept of 0 & try to distinguish it from 1.

PS3: Have you ever heard of "雙簧管效應"? It is called "OBOE", ie Offset By One Error. This happens very often in our life, for example 植樹問題, year counting (19xx as 20th century), column count in a building & Loop index error that crashes computers.

地球的私語---如泣如訴的樂章

2009-12-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Climate Change Conference was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a distress to see constant quarrels between countries, especially the developed & developing countries. The moral question is “Who Speaks for Earth?”

On August 20th and September 5th, 1977, two identical spacecraft Voyager I & Voyager II were launched to the space. Inside each spacecraft, there is a gold plated record containing the valuable information that someday some one in the outer space may find it meaningful. After exploring Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune, Voyager I left the solar system & wandered into the remote universe. Just at the edge of the solar system, Voyager I took a last photo. In the photo, we find a Tiny Blue Dot. This is the Earth, our home. Voyager I will be near a star in the Ophiuchus constellation (蛇夫座) in about 40,000 years. It is very unlikely that it will ever be accidentally encountered. If they are ever found by an alien species, it will most likely be far in the future, and thus the gold record is best seen as a time capsule or a symbolic statement rather than a serious attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life. In September 2003, I bought a book “Murmurs of Earth” from a book sale in Palo Alto library. It contains two CDs, the copy of the gold record sent to the outer space with the Voyagers. The second CD contains 27 pieces of music. Among them there are 3 by Bach, 2 by Beethoven & 1 by Mozart. The last piece of the music in the record is Cavatina, 5th movement of String Quartet No. 13, Opus 130, by Beethoven. This music is really deep in emotion, mostly sad & murmuring. It is like 默默許願, 細細傾訴, 切切私語, 如泣如訴. Ann Druyan who worked on the project had the following philosophical comment:

Sadness alone can’t define the Cavatina. Strains of hope run through it as well, and something of the serenity of a man who has endured suffering and come to terms with existence perceived without illusion. It may be that these ambiguities make for an appropriate conclusion to the Voyager record. We who are living the drama of human life on Earth do not know what measure of sadness or hope is appropriate to our existence. We don not know whether we are living a tragedy or a comedy or a great adventure.

It is most appropriate that this piece of music concludes the space journey with the meaning of the Golden Record: Murmurs of Earth. We may listen to the Cavatina in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fosTnfoMj30

It was performed by the famous American String Quartet in Taipei, March 21 (Spring Equinox), 2008, at 台北國立藝術大学(Taipei National University of the Arts). Perhaps some of our classmates in Taipei attended this concert in 2008. The original copy in the golden record was performed by the Budapest String Quartet.

After listening to Cavatina three times, I found the following poem fits very closely to the mood:
低眉信手續續彈, 絃絃掩抑声声思, 小絃切切如私語, 說盡心中無限事.
When some species in the outer space find this record million years later, it will be 同是天涯淪落人, 相逢何必曾相識.

PS1: Both poems are from 琵琶行 by 白居易.

PS2: “Who Speaks for Earth” is the last episode of the Cosmos, A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagen (1980). It is timely to watch it again if we really concern the outcome of the Copenhagen Conference.

The Episode 13 of the Cosmos: "Who Speaks for Earth?" can be watched from the following YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LolYP3cLhzc&feature=fvw

冬之旅與林登樹

2009-12-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

Winterreise (Winter Journey, 冬之旅) is a set of famous poems written by Wilhelm Muller. Schubert composed a song cycle based on it. The most famous one is Lindenbaum, 菩提樹. It is very popular in Taiwan & Japan. Almost every school kid knows the tune. However, 怪事年年有. Lately someone found that Linden is not 菩提樹, it is 椴樹. There is a famous street Unter den Linden in Berlin, Germany. It is named after the linden trees lining the boulevard. In German folklore, the linden tree is the "tree lovers." Some famous buildings line along the street are Berlin State Opera, German Historical Museum, Humboldt University, Frederick the Great Statue. I heard that 龍應台女士 used to gather some leaves of Linden on this street (while she taught in Germany) and tried to verify whether it is really 菩提樹. She found that they are not the same trees. Their leaves look alike but not identical. Linden has 齒狀邊緣 but 菩提樹 has smooth edge. To people who sing 菩提樹 for so many years, it is like a terrible betrayal. To add to the confusion, Japanese also call it 菩提樹. Perhaps the person just translated this from the Japanese text or some one in China might just goof in translation. The error was made long time ago but should we stick to it? 椴樹 may be ideal for botany, but too bookish or serious for music and literature. I suggest we just change 菩提樹 to 林登樹 per criteria of 信,達,雅. After all, Schubert's Lindenbaum really has nothing to do with 菩提 or Buddhism. The following link shows the pictures of the leaves of 菩提樹 and 林登樹.

http://interp.sow.tw/b6_nature/botany/dicotyledoneae/bot_dicot_peepultree.htm

PS: 龍應台女士曾當過台北文化局局長. She was well known in 1980’s in Taiwan for her 野火集. We may not be familiar with her books since we were so busy in picking cups for our hot chocolate (per AJ’s pps) at that time. Her new book “大江大海, 1949” opens a pandora box & says “以失敗者的下一代為榮”. It sounds like an interesting & moving(emotional & touching) book especially for those whose parents moved to Taiwan from mainland after 1949. 龍女士 was raised & educated in Taiwan (苗栗與台南). Her 祖籍 is 湖南衡山 . She used to think she was 湖南人. Until one day she was in 衡山, nobody there thought she was 湖南人 since she knew so little about 衡山 & 湖南. Now she considers herself a 新台灣人.

Mockingbird

2009-11-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

It is approaching late autumn, the liquid amber & Chinese pistache start dropping their leaves and the yards & streets are turning to gold & red in color. It is the time of year again people prepare for Thanksgiving holidays & find time for meditation. I found one thing unusual this year. Several mockingbirds are still around & sing various calls in the early morning. They sound like a bunch of mischievous & naughty boys who chatter & make fun. They are especially vocal in the early morning & late afternoon. In the neighborhood, other notable birds are robins, ravens & blue jays. The robins always feed on the yard in pair. They have orange chest & are easily identified. Sometime you pass by them, they sort of freeze & pretend they are not birds at all. The ravens basically are crows, noisy & aggressive. They are big birds & are not welcomed most of the time. Blue jays are vivid blue in color & can be very noisy. They sound like calling 賊 in the daytime. Perhaps this is the reason why they are called Jay (jay & 賊同音, just for fun). When the autumn is fast passing by, most birds sort of fade away by migration. Except those mockingbirds, they seem still happy to hang around here. One morning I found young one tangled with the golf net & couldn’t get out of it. Its mother & father hovered around to call each other for help. After a few minutes, they were not successful freeing it. I tried to be helpful. I untangled the little bird & found that this little bird had a hard time to fly. So I put it in an open box with some water. There was nothing I can do except sitting nearby to see what is going on. This was the day I heard more mockingbird calls than any other days in my life. Lunchtime was coming & I had to leave. I let the evolution ran its course. Miraculously, they all disappeared after I finished the lunch. For some reason, I felt very happy for the rest of the day. I even tried to whistle like a mockingbird. Perhaps this is the adage: 日行一善 or 助人(鳥)為快樂之本.

When it comes to 助人為快樂之本, it reminds me of 青年守則. We all remember that we had to recite or sing the song 青年守則 every morning while we were in elementary school. I didn’t like to memorize it & was not particularily impressed by it. However, when I get older, I really appreciate #10, 助人為快樂之本 & #12, 有恒為成功之本. In the past few years, I especially valued #4, 信義為立業之本 & #5, 和平為處世之本. If most countries in the world follow #5, there will be few wars on earth. If most people in Wall Street (including CEOs & MBAs) follow #4, there will be no Charles Ponzi, Enron, Bernard Madoff & all the financial mess in this country. The next two items I like are #11, 學問為濟世之本 & #9, 整潔為強身之本.

While we are talking about birds, do you still remember a good old radio program in 1960's, 早晨的公園? This program was anchored by 潘啟元. If you tuned to this program, you would hear all sort of birds singing different tunes. When you had to get up early & head to school, you wouldn’t appreciate it. I visited Taipei once in 1975. I got wakened up by this program & I didn’t have to go to school. I felt so relaxed & really appreciated those birds that make the world a nice place to live.

The last thing about mockingbird is that famous book “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Most of us have watched this movie in Taiwan with title "梅崗城的故事" as the story occurred in a town called Maycomb. It is story about a lawyer Atticus Finch (finch is also a bird) defended a black man in the case of raping a white woman. Why is the book called “To Kill a Mockingbird”? Here is the quote from some source: 'when Atticus, having given his children air-rifles for Christmas, allows their Uncle Jack to teach them to shoot. Atticus warns them that, although they can "shoot all the bluejays they want", they must remember that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird”. Confused, Scout (the girl who narrated the story) approaches her neighbor Miss Maudie, who explains that mockingbirds never harm other living creatures. She points out that mockingbirds simply provide pleasure with their songs, saying, "They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. "To kill a mockingbird" is to kill that which is innocent and harmless—like Tom Robinson (the black man).'

秋之旅

2009-10-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

Autumn is here again, the season of harvesting, of thanksgiving, of bird’s migration, of preparation for bear’s hibernation, of meditation for some people. But is it real the season for a journey? I was in one Chinese bookstore last week. I encountered a book 秋之頌, by 余光中. I thought the poet had the mood to say something about autumn. It turns out to be a book in praise of 梁實秋. I have a lot of respect to Mr. 梁, but this is not the one I am interested at the moment. I did find a book by Hermann Hesse (赫塞), a Nobel Laureate of Literature, 1946. The title of the short novel is 秋之旅 (1907). 赫塞的短篇小說有一種獨特的風格, 意境深遠, 今人回味無窮. 這小說並沒有特別指出發生在秋天. 但重頭到尾給你一種秋氣肅穆的感覺. 秋之旅描寫一位青年在流浪和懷鄉之間徘徊的心靈. 重遊舊地的落寞和昔日情人相遇的感傷, 給人有一種人生虛幻無常又孤獨哀傷的感受. 原文是德文, 看翻譯文學最重要的是翻譯者的功力. 中譯本衹有四十頁, 分成下面幾章: 渡湖, 投宿, 風暴, 往事, 靜寂的村落, 清晨動身, 伊爾根貝克, 尤琍, 霧. 比起 Muller/Schubert 的冬之旅, 赫塞的這篇小說比較輕鬆, 並沒有給你一種失意, 失戀, 落魄而近乎絕望的感受. 秋之旅給你一種孤獨,流浪,虛幻無常的感覺, 但不是痛苦到一种近乎絕望的悲情. 也許這就是秋天和冬天的不同吧!

寫到這裹, 想起赫塞的另一篇小說 “青春,美麗的青春" (1916). 我在1965年看到沉櫻(本名陳瑛)女士翻澤的. 譯文流暢, 非常傳神,令人回味不已. 這篇小說大約也是四十來頁. 描寫一個青年冀圖開拓命運而又懷念家鄉,憧憬浪漫的愛情而又希求安定歸宿的故事. 在一個暑假裡,他回到家鄉和親人相敘,其間發生了一些親情,友情,愛情的故事. 這小說我看過三次 (age 20’s, 40’a & 60’s), 每次感受都不一樣. 想起我們剛大學畢業,申請到國外大學的 admission or scholarship. 負笈彼邦以前,每一個都是青年冀圖開拓命運而又懷念家鄉. 在暑假時回家一趟,看到親人故舊,無不感到溫馨,同時憧憬浪漫自由而又希求安定歸宿. 所以讀起這篇小說更是容易感到共嗚.

Nobel Prizes

2009-10-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

All Nobel Laureates were announced. They are all American except two, one Romanian German, one Israeli. This is the age of American as far as the Nobel Prize is concerned. Half of the American winners are immigrants, naturalized citizens. Obama is a black horse to win the Peace Prize, a surprise to most people in the world. Even he himself doesn't think he deserves it. Peace Prize is very subjective & political. Some people even interpret this as an award to the American People who after all elected him as the president & so have a foresight & promise to the peace in the future.

Now move to the other front. One resident of Mountain View in California won the Physics Prize. Charles Kao is an Electrical Engineer. He is awarded for his work on Fiber Optics. The other two persons share the prize are also Electrical Engineers who worked on Charge Coupled Devices (CCD)that makes modern digital camera possible. The only bad thing is that Kao worked on fiber optics in 1965 & he got the award a little bit late (44 years later) since he already develops some kind of Alzheimer's disease. It is pretty hard for engineers to get Nobel Prize mainly because they usually focus on the application side of the scientific discovery or invention. OSI is the open model used in the communication & network industry. It consists of seven layers: physical, link, network, transport, session, presentation & application. Only the physical layer relates to the device physics and can be a potential candidate of Nobel Prize. In this Internet age, the influence of the Ethernet protocol (link layer) is immense. But it is not in the radar scope of the Nobel Prize. I spent almost two years working on Fibre Channel Storage Network. My works were in the link, network & transport layers & had very little to do with the physical layer. Charles Kao got the prize mainly due to his research on the physical layer. Depending on your career goal, you have to focus on something, after all you only got 24 hours a day. My engineering work on fibre channel has a lot to do with the communication protocols & software. Anyway, I got four patents out of my work.

It is not uncommon for a person to wait 30 years to get the Nobel Prize. For patent, it is not that bad, but still takes time. You may have to wait three years or more to get patent granted. In our Taida days, we used to hear some brilliant classmates set the goal to get Nobel Prize in some distant future. Time flies, the distant future is now. The first one I know is 許貞雄. He was my good old classmate in high school & major in physics. He got his Ph.D from University of Wisconsin & went to Stony Brook to follow 楊振寧 for post-doctoral research. He didn’t stay long before he went back to Taiwan. I asked him about the whole thing several years later. Here is what he said: “Dr. Young is so deep (in thinking or something else) that I lost all my confidence as a research fellow of physics.” He opted to teach in 清華大學 for the rest of his life. In our EE Dept, the most notable candidates are 李純儀 & Amo, both of them are visible & vocal. Lately we haven’t heard anything from 李純儀 about his ambition. However, Amo is still pursuing. We should proudly cheer: “Carry on, Dr. Amo.”

Moon & Rusalka

2009-10-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

中秋節 of 2009 falls on October 3. The temperature hovered around 60 degree on the day & I haven’t seen the moon so bright, so round & so shining for some time. I checked the luner calendar, it said 已丑中秋節. I don’t know how many people still use or follow 天干地支 counting in China. It takes 60 years to reach a cycle & restart. So when someone says 一甲子, he means 60 years. I have no idea why our ancesters used this system. Perhaps people at that time in average only lived to 60 years of age. Otherwise it will be confusing when some one say 甲午年. It may be 1894 or 1834. Think about it, we are all over 60 years old. How about 壬午年, it may be 1942 or 2002. As a matter of fact, our history book lists all these terms: 戊戌政變, 甲午战争, 辛亥革命, 庚子賠款 etc. It is nice to know that the events occur in that year. But the problem is that you really don’t know how it relates to 公元 or how many years between those events. You have to do some conversion or cross reference. I do have an algorithm that converts BC or AD to 天干地支. It is as follows:

十天干：甲乙丙丁戊已庚辛壬癸 (index 0-9)
十二地支: 子丑寅卯辰巳午未申酉戌亥 (index 0-11)

For AD, use (Year –4) & the following calculation:
(1972 - 4) mod (10) ≡ 8，所以天干是“壬”；
(1972 - 4) mod (12) ≡ 0，所以地支是“子”。
So 1972 is (8,0) 壬子
Same conversion leads 1942: 壬午

For year from 1 to 4, it is:
4: 甲子
3: 癸亥
2: 壬戌
1: 辛酉

For BC, it is more complicate & I will reserve this for some other time. Let’s get back to a soft side of our life. Moon to most of us is romantic. It shines on us, no talking, no complain, no excuse. No wonder some poet like 李白 & others ran the imagination to the wild. Here are some examples:

暮從碧山下, 山月隨人歸.
举杯邀明月, 对影成三人.
我歌月俳佪, 我舞影零乱.
暫伴月將影, 行樂須及春.
星隨平野闊, 月湧大江流.
霧溼樓台, 月迷津渡.
明月如霜, 好風如水.
明月幾時有, 把酒问青天.
沙上珏禽池上暝, 雲破月來花弄影.
海上生明月, 天涯共此時.
露從今月白,月是故鄉明.
明月松間照,清泉石上流.
深林人不知,明月來相照.
月落烏啼箱霜滿天

But the most famous & appropriate to 中秋節 is:
人有悲欢離合, 月有陰晴圓缺, 此事古難全.
但願人長久, 千里共嬋娟.

梁弘志 wrote a song “但願人長久”using 苏東坡的水調歌頭 as the lyrics. It becomes very popular since 1980’s. On the western front, Dvorak composed “Song to the Moon” in opera Rusalka. It is one of the most well-known song dedicated to the moon. 歌詞傷感, 期待而無耐, 冷艶而淒婉. 最後一句是近乎绝望的呼喊. Rusalka is a water sprite, who seeks love with human beings that proves to be tragic. Here is the lyric in Czech & its verbatim translation: (* is repeated verse)

Mesiku na nebi hlubokem--------------O moon up in the deep sky
Svetlo tvé daleko vidi,------------------Your light sees distant places
Po svete bloudis sirokém, --------------You travel round the wide world
Divas se v pribytky lidi. ----------------You look into people’s houses
--------------------------------------*You travel round the wide world
--------------------------------------*You look into people’s houses

Mesicku, postuj chvili------------------ O, moon, stay for a moment
Reckni mi, kde je muj mily------------- Tell me where is my love!
----------------------------------------*O, moon, stay for a moment
-------------------------------------*Tell me, oh, tell me where is my love!

Rekni mu, stribmy mesicku, --Tell him please, silver moon in the sky,
Me ze jej objima rame, -----------------That I embrace him,
Aby si alespon chvilicku----------That he should for at least a while …
Vzpomenul ve sneni na mne ------------… remember his dreams!
-----------------------------------*That he should for at least a while …
--------------------------------------*… remember his dreams!

Zasvet mu do daleka -------------------Light up his distant place,
Rekni mu, rekni m kdo tu nan ceka!---Tell him, who waits here!
----------------------------------------*Light up his distant place,
------------------------------------*Tell him, oh, tell him who waits here!

mneli duse lidska sni -------------------If he dreams of me, …
At'se tou vzpominkou vzbudi! ----------… may this memory waken him!
Mesicku, nezhasni, nezhasni!---O, moon, don’t disappear, don’t go!

Here we found some striking similarity between eastern & western version that shows human feeling is universal. If we look at the first stanza of the song, it is 轉朱閣, 低綺户, 照無眠. The second & third stanzas are sort of like 不應有恨, 何事偏向別時圓.. The fourth stanza is 人有悲欢離合, 月有陰晴圓缺, 此事古難全. The last stanza is equivalent to 但願人長久, 千里共嬋娟..

The following video clip is Rusalka performed by Lucia Popp, a Slovak soprano. She is ideal for singing Czech opera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ipS1PT7CYo&feature=related

PS:
Dvorak (1841-1904) is a Czech composer. His most famous works are Symphony from the New World, Cello Concerto, “American” String Quartet & Slavonic Dances.

Music Potpourri

2009-08-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

MTT’s Miscue
Michael Tilson Thomas is the famous conductor of San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, one of the top 15 symphony orchestras in the world. MTT got several Grammy awards for his recording of Mahler’s symphonies. MTT is a good communicator & interpreter of the classical music, well respected in the music circle. To be a good conductor, you need to be charismatic & persuasive. You need to build a lot of contacts to raise fund for the orchestra. Meanwhile, you have to be dynamic & energetic on the podium, not an easy job. MTT is great. But once in a while he encountered something unusual. It may not be his fault. But if you are a CEO, you have to take the brunt anytime something go astray in the company. Here is one good example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgzsPoTp2iA
This is the famous 7th symphony of Mahler. Listen to the music:
0-0:05---everything goes nicely
0:05-0.09---hello, trumpet, come in please
0:09-0.11---come on, trumpet, where are you? MTT is not sure anymore, he has to glance the score. Amazingly the strings keep playing (softly) & waiting. This is really a team work to cover the ass.
0.11-0.14---gush, here you are. I told you several times, don't drink too much XO! MTT has to chuckle to compose himself.
0.18:0.19---this player (perhaps clarinet) tries very hard to act like nothing happened.
0:23-0.28---MTT has to read the score between lines to regain his confidence.

My opinion: In this case, it is the fault of trumpeter. Conductor interprets the music. Even if he is off a little bit on timing, you have to follow him, no other excuse.
Lesson: Don't drink too much before the performance.

Misplace of Romance
Andre Rieu is the king of romance. He makes the classical music accessible to millions of people. But occasionally he was in a limbo that he is not aware of it due to some cultural idiosyncrasy. Here is one example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzDlLtgt1BI&feature=related
Edelweiss (雪絨花) is one of the best-known European mountain flowers, belonging to the sunflower family. The name comes from German edel (noble) and weiss (white). It is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. The song is sung by Captain von Trapp as he rediscovers music and a love for his children. Later on in the show it is sung as a defiant statement of Austrian patriotism by the von Trapp family in the face of the pressure put upon Captain von Trapp to join the navy of Nazi Germany. Eventually they fled Austria & entered Switzerland & so the setting is the Swiss Alpine Mountain. Now listen to the music:
0:0:11---the cloudy mountain setting with train passing by, typical swiss scene.
0:11-0:35---the mountain looks brown, not very typical in Switzerland. Compare to Julie Andrew's green Alpine meadow, this just looks pathetic. The custume of the players is too stylish & lack of country flair.
0:35-0:59---the whole setting gives you some cold feeling. This must be a very high altitude location, perhaps only cable car can get you there.
0:59-1:38---I don't see majestic Matterhorn, so it must not be near Zermatt, a famous ski retreat.
1:38-1:50---this wooden house is spartan, no paint or color painting & geranium flowers & the old man is very rustic.
1:50-2:03---the whole thing looks like a superimposition of van Gogh's painting with a snow mountain background.
2:03-2:37---boy, these glaciers & snow mountains really give you a freezing cold feeling. So far we haven't seen a single edelwiss, ie nowhere to be seen.
2:37-2.51---now we see the lady's custume is really out of place. Julie Andrew did a much better job in her Song of the Music.
2:51-3:17---now this is the bomber. You see Andre Rieu is playing vioin so romantically to a lot of cows. You know what? They just turned & walked away, some of them actually run away. Chinese idiom "對牛彈琴" means you waste your time if you play piano to all bunch of cows. I didn't know "對牛拉琴" 也有異曲同工之妙 until now. If you think positively, you may interpret that 牛哥們聆聽,大為感動,掉頭忙著找牛小妹去.

Now try a real one, really romantic one from Andre Rieu.
Plaisir d’Amore (the pleasure of love)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y0_z_LntVo&feature=related
This is a classical French love song written in 1780 by Giovanni Martini (1741-1816). Hector Berlioz arranged it for orchestra. This may be one of the most popular love song in the world. The setting of this play probably is somewhere in Tuscany of Italy. Listen to the music:
0-0:06---the white flower signifies the purity of the love, looks elegant & noble.
0:06-0:25---the first theme serves as an introduction played by flute & clarinet with strings, very warm & lovely.
0:25-0:49---here comes the second main theme played by Andre Rieu, truly romantic style.
0:49-1:07---the introduction repeat to usher in the third theme.
1:07-1:30---the third theme signifies the enhanced & deep feeling of love when time goes by.
1:30-1:47---the love mood is augmented by the whole orchestra.
1:47-2:12---return to the second main theme, this time played by Andre & the whole orchestra.
2:12-2:31---the first main theme comes back to conclude the music with rich tone of clarinet, flute, bassoon & oboe.
2:31-2:36---the white flower shows up again to remind us the meaning of the true love.

ps: Berlioz 乃幻想交響曲之作者, 此君浪漫史不少. 有一次觀莎翁名劇 Hamlet, 驚艷女主角 Harriet Smithson, 窮追不捨. 居然頃全力創作 Symphonie Fantastique. 史女士到場聆聽,大為感動,終於成婚. 可是Berlioz 創業有餘,守成不足,最後離婚收場. Berlioz also arranged Weber’s Invitation to the Dance (邀舞) (piano composition) to play with orchestra, a true masterpiece.

Golf & Life

2009-07-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

Tom Watson is 59 & he competed in the British Golf Open Tournament. He played brilliantly until the last hole & last stroke when he missed a 8-feet putt. Instead, Stewart Cink played obscurely for three days. But he made a 12-foot birdie at the last 18th hole. In other words, the final putt or the last stroke defines & creates a champion. This is not the first time we have seen the top players succumb to the pressure or can’t finish the job in a graceful manner. Watson was able to hole a 60-feet putt but couldn’t do the same for a 8-feet one. It was almost painful to watch the finish & really felt sorry for Watson. He is a great champion. One or two more wins will not change his life much. However, if you want to fulfill your life & make something memorable, you have to play with seriousness & perseverance in a crucial moment. This needs physical & mental toughness. But the difference of outcome can be huge. If Watson made the last putt, he won the tournament & became the oldest champion in the golf history. If you look at the replay, he seemed not ready mentally & delivered a shoddy putt hastily. Perhaps it was too much emotion drainage (not lacking mental toughness) that betrayed him at the final moment.

I have watched golf tournament many times. I always got frustrated to see those professionals missed a short putt. I know I miss those putts often. But you don’t expect the professionals do the same thing. When you got a tennis ball in the right position, you are almost sure you can deliver a good forehand to score. But on the golf green, you are nervous even the ball is very close to the cup. I figure that the confidence level (probability to get thing done) of delivering a good shot/putt for tennis & golf is around 90% and 60%. Golf is a nice sport, a frustrating sport. When you lose, nobody but you yourself to blame since the ball is stationary & starring at you. If you win, you might think it is just lucky since the winning very often is from those lucky putts that you don’t expect to drop in the hole. It is not uncommon for a player to become a champion just because he got one or two lucky eagles by pitching or long putt.

PS: Tiger Wood played badly & missed the cut. He seemed losing ungraciously, slammed his club head & muttered some bad words. We saw this often in tennis. Remember the antics of Jimmy Connor & John McEnroe on courts? But golf is supposed to be a gentleman’s sport. Under no circumstances, should a player become angry or behave eccentrically. Long time ago, tennis used to be a gentleman’s sport too. But since when it becomes a yelling & shouting match between umpires & players. This is the reason people appreciate Rod Laver, Pete Sampras & Roger Federer since they were well behaved on the courts & still kept winning.

Tennis & Grand Slams

2009-07-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

I just watched the men’s final of Wimbledom Tournament between Roger Federer & Andy Roddick. It is one of the best matches I have ever seen. The Wimbledon has a rule that the final 5th set has no tiebreak. It continues to play until a player wins two consecutive games. The final score is 5-7 7-6(8-6) 7-6(7-5) 3-6 16-14. In other words, the 5th set lasted 30 games, equivalent to three sets of play & the match lasted more than four hours. In the end, Federer prevailed. In the last few games, you can tell Federer played a little bit better & had better serves. He broke the record set by Pete Sampras (14 slam titles) by winning 15 slam titles. It was very enjoyable when you watched the match on high definition TV & you hate to go back to the old TV. Most modern players glue to the baseline & hit the ball hard to find the court opening for a winning shot. The speed of the serve also makes the serve crucial to the game. If you have a fast (> 140 mph) & consistent first serve, you make your serve difficult to return & win an easy point. It is like 12-yard penalty kick in the soccer game. The kicker has much better chance to beat the goalkeeper. When time goes by, the physical condition of the human being is getting stronger, but the responding time can’t catch up. This is the problem of the modern tennis. It becomes very boring when the server keeps scoring the point without any other shots, no forehand, backhand, lob or volley. This is especially true when you watch men’s double match. The court is the same size, but the men’s strength, speed & height keep improving. This makes the server’s side having a distinctive advantage. It gets very boring when you see them serve & volley, just two strokes to end the point.

In 1968, I bought a b/w TV. I watched Joe Payne Show for relax & then I found the tennis programs on TV. It was a time when Australians ruled the tennis world. I watched the matches among Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Ken Rosewell, Roy Emerson & Fred Stoley. These Australians were great & the style was elegant & versatile. They played all around court, used various shot & stroke with a lot of variations. Nowadays players stick to the baseline & rarely advance to volley. I think the shorter mean-free-path of the volley & the speed of balls make the reaction not fast enough to do volley effectively & consistently. So when time goes by, the tennis has to change. Otherwise, it will get boring to watch & lose the viewers. We all know most American don’t like to watch soccer. The reason is that it gets very boring to see 0-0 score at the end of the game & has to be decided by 12-yard kick. Nobody likes this since it is not fair or convincing to decide which team is better by this kind of kick---goalkeeper has little chance but resolve to luck. If the tennis match has to be decided by the serve & the hitting speed from the baseline, it loses much of its luster.

The Grand Slam of tennis is confusing because people use it without precise definition. The Slam Tournaments of Tennis are the following tournaments: Australian, French, Wimbledon & US, all open tournaments. The most prestige achievement is the Grand Slam---winner of all four Slam tournaments in a same calendar year. This is the Great Grand Slam, because later people coin some other terms like Consecutive Grand Slam (winning all 4 slams not in the same year but in consecutive year) & Career Grand Slam (winning all 4 slams not in the fashion of previous two Grand Slams). There are only two men achieved Grand Slams: Don Budge (1938) & Rod Laver (1962 & 1969).

In this Wimbledon final, it is interesting to see Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver, & Pete Sampras sat in the royal box. They were also interviewed with McEnroe after the match. Someone said Federer might be the best & greatest player in history. Sampras voiced that two Grand Slams may be the most difficult to achieve. He implied that Rod Laver should be the greatest tennis player in history so far. I tend to agree with Pete. It is extremely hard to play consistently well on various courts (grass, clay, asphalt or hard(acrylic or synthetic)) & maintain top physical condition. There are so many good players in the field & some of them sooner or later will play their best match in their top physical condition. Can we guarantee that we don't get sick or contract some flu in a year? Wait, what happen to Raphael Nadal? He was absent in the Wimbledon tournament. Since he beat Federer last year, Federer may be just lucky to win his 15 slams (career grand slams). I think the way Nadal plays make it easier to injure himself. He can beat Federer when he is in top condition. However, sooner or later, he will get injured and prevent him from playing. This is exactly the reason why Federer won French & Wimbledon this year when Nadal injured his knee. The true champion is the one who plays with style consistently with smooth strokes, without being push around most of the time & so he has less chance to get injured & be able to maintain top condition physically all year round. From the above view points, grand slam no wonder must be the most prestige achievement a tennis player can accomplish. Rod Laver achieved it & achieved it twice.

I found some video clips that you can see the play style of Rod Laver & Roger Federer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR7do5BFgzA
This is Federer & Nadal. No 1 & 2 players in 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHaN2h21ANs
This is Rod Laver & Tony Roche, No 1 & 3 players in 1969.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePo6KcGQd4M&feature=related
This is Rod Laver & John Newcombe, No 1 & 2 players in 1969.

Summer Solstice

2009-06-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

June 21 is the summer solstice. Traditionally, the school kids of 嘉義 would line up in the field just before the noon time. They watch their shadows disappear from there feet. And hooray, this is the way to celebrate the summer solstice.

Historically, one significant event occurred more than two thousand years ago. It was Eratosthenes of Greece who used summer solstice to measure the circumference of the earth.

Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the Ancient Egyptian city Syene (located on the Tropic of Cancer), the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. The sun’s ray would shine to the bottom of a well. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation (using a stick to see the shadow & measure the angle) of the Sun was 1/50 of a full circle (7°12') south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the Earth. The unit he used was different from km. Anyway, after some unit conversion, it turned out to be around 39,690 km. an error of less than 1% (compared with modern data).

Now came the expedition of Columbus in 1492. He started from Cadiz, Spain. He sailed about 7,500 km to reach some place in current Cuba. Since he thought it was India, the distance from Cadiz (lies about 40 degree latitude) to India (go east direction) had to be around 40,000 cos40° – 7,500. This figure turns out to be 27,900 km. Marco Polo’s book should have given him some idea how far from Spain to India (about 9,000 km). The figure of 27,900 km is just too long to accommodate his logic or calculation. Perhaps Columbus & those experts in Spain didn’t believe the data from the measurement of Eratosthenes. Otherwise, Queen Isabella would not have the courage to finance the expedition. Why? 40,000 cos40° – 9,000 = 18,930 km, really too far to sail for Santa Maria (Columbus’ flag ship). To Spain, it was a fortune in disguise. Instead of India, Spain discovered a new continent & history turned a new page. History is interesting & fascinating. Bertrand Russell (罗素) once said “那些有信心的人們都愚昧無知,而那些有理解力的人們都猶疑不决”.

Class Reunion Photos

2009-06-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the photos from previous class reunions.

http://www.stat.ufl.edu/%7Eyang/NTUEE64/index.html

Enjoy.

Joseph Haydn

2009-06-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln & Felix Mendelssohn were born in 1809, a very productive year in history. But nature goes & works its own way---something in something out. 1809 happened to be the year Joseph Haydn passed away. So 2009 is also the bicentennial (兩百週年忌辰) of Haydn, Papa Haydn. Why is he a Papa? There may be several reasons. One of them is that he is the father of symphony & string quartet. Though he was not the inventor of these two musical forms, he worked & improved them to a form that became very significant in the music world. You might think Beethoven is the father of symphony. But in China & Taiwan, Beethoven is called 樂聖, one level above Papa. Interesting enough, we don’t find the same expression as 樂聖 in the western world for Beethoven. Haydn composed 104 symphonies. It is this quantity & sheer productivity that made him the Papa. In the following, let’s explore some of his genius.

The typical symphony of Haydn consists of four movements (樂章):
1st movement: Start with introduction, lasts from 1 to 3 minutes, a very slow pace of intro. Then the main theme follows with brilliant developments.
2nd movement: Andante, slow movement
3rd movement: Minuet (小步舞曲) & Trio
4th movement: Allegro, fast pace of finale.

The most famous symphonies of Haydn are from #93 to #104, so called Salomon Symphonies. The English impresario Johann Peter Salomon commissioned him to compose these symphonies while Haydn visited London from 1791-1792 & 1794-1795.

Symphony #94, Surprise (驚愕交響曲)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gF-Wzp8Ni8&feature=related
The first movement with introduction, 0- 1:11. Then comes the first main theme.

This symphony got its name from the 2nd movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDWh9F3Vig
It starts like stairway music, someone comes up & someone goes down. Everything goes smoothly & lightly. At 0:35, suddenly a loud chord wakes everybody up, a Surprise! If you are sleepy & dozed around at that moment, you may well be alarmed.

The 3rd movement, the minuet & trio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrZkH22V6D0&feature=related
Trio is a section sandwiched between two main minuet sections. Here the trio is from 2:34 to 3:43. This is one of the most famous minuets among Haydn’s symphonies. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen any choreographer adapts this in ballet. The melody is so delightful & lovely that you barely can sit still. Trio is usually a contrast theme but sounds harmoniously to the main theme. Minuet is a three-beat (per measure) dance form. It can go from very slow (Beethoven’s Minuet in G) to fast pace (Mozart’s symphony #39 3rd movement).
Beethoven's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jDub7eDYBk&feature=related
Trio is from 1:06-2:09. The whole thing is simple & romantic.
Mozart's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnFyS3MflIE
Trio is from 1:50-2:52, played with clarinet (單簧管) & bassoon (低音管) beautifully. Originally trio was played with three instruments, so called Trio (三重奏). In this case, they are clarinet, bassoon & strings. In most cases, there is no such restriction. So trio in minuet is usually called 中段 in Mandarin.

Symphony #45, Farewell (告別交響曲)
This was a good old story. Haydn worked for Esterhazy, a Autro-Humgarian prince, for about 30 years. Haydn & his musician were based in Eszterhaza or Eisenstadt, not in Vienna. When winter came, most musicians were homesick but not allowed to go home. So Haydn composed this symphony to tell his boss how they felt.
Start from 4:22, musician starts leaving the concert hall. Watch the following video, it is self-explainable. This is the 4th movement of the Farewell Symphony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXY4DaF9d9Y

Per history, after this performance, all members of the orchestra were allowed to go home for reunion with their families.

Symphony #101, Clock (時鐘交響曲)
It got the name from the 2nd movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0GCyxO3H9Y
It begins with a realistic tick-tock accompaniment, which runs right along under a charming melody. If you listen to this twice, you will seldom forget the tune.

Another symphony with similar quality is Beethoven's Symphony #8, also the 2nd movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0-UMiiXmO4
Beethoven's clock rate sounds twice as Haydn's. Perhaps Beethoven used a faster microprocessor.

Kaiser Quartet (Emperor quartet, 皇帝四重奏)
Listen to this 2nd movement, hear something you heard before but where? Olympic games? Soccer games?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tHc9xWhFH4
Haydn composed the melody at the request of the kaiser. It became Austrian national anthem. But during WWII, Hitler swiped it to become Uber Alles, the German national anthem. To a lot of people in the world, Germany & Austria are close enough in culture to be a unified people.

Symphony #100, Military (軍隊交響曲)
The name Military comes from the 2nd movement, Allegretto.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1UEZUgGTVE
This movement is not Andante, it is a faster Allegretto (rare exception of Haydn). You can hear bass drum, cymbals & triangle played Turkish marching tune, from 2:49. The crescendo is built with trumpet from 3:46 to the end of the movement. The whole movement is really a brilliant military march.

Symphony #103, Drum Roll (鼓聲交響曲)
Introduction starts with ketteldrum (定音鼓) followed with an elaborate cello play. The intro lasts about 3 minutes. This is the time to appreciate the cello’s deep & rich tone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmo1FLPvUIk

Trumpet concerto (小喇叭協奏曲)
The 2nd movement is often used for trumpet recital. The beginning main theme sounds familiar, sort of like that theme from Kaiser Quartet with a twist. You can appreciate the sound quality of trumpet here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ab9ti35ZTI&feature=related

Serenade (小夜曲)
This is one of the most beautiful serenades. You might think this is from Mozart, but no, it is from Haydn. Haydn’s wife was a tough lady & Haydn was really afraid of her. So when she yelled, he rushed to his study & locked inside. While he found nothing to do in the study, he composed this lovely serenade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge-7JUcTZsk&feature=related

Haydn visited London & produced 12 Salomon Symphonies. Handel visited London & created fanfare & brilliant water music. Mendelssohn visited London & came up with Scottish Symphony & Fingal’s Cave. It remained to be seen what would come out if Beethoven, Mozart or Brahms have visited London. Interestingly, Haydn’s symphony #92is called Oxford Symphony (牛津交響曲). This symphony was composed before 1791, before the Salomon Symphonies. Then why is it called Oxford? Here is the story. This was like Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, too late to compose a piece of music for the academic ceremony. Haydn was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1791 (this was during the mess of French Revolution). He had to play something worthwhile in the ceremony. He happened to compose a symphony commissioned by a French (one year earlier) & first played in Paris. It didn’t bother him, he just played it in the graduation ceremony of Oxford. So the symphony got its title "Oxford". Anyway, if Brahms had visited London before, Cambridge would have given him an honorary degree & we would have Cambridge Symphony today.

PS1: If you ask me which minuet is the most popular these days, my answer is Boccherini's. You hear it in wedding parties, cruises, radios etc all the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSE15tLBdso
The trio starts from 1:25 & end at 2:48. Boccherini, 生平作曲無數, 僅以此小步舞曲傳世. It is like it in high tech industry. If you hit it once, you get rich & retire.

Chronicle-II

2009-05-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

1961
1/1/0 This is an Up Side Down (upside-down) Year. Don’t worry, nobody surrendered or any ship sunk. Why? If you turn 1961 upside down, you still get 1961. In 20th century, this is the only year with this special attribute.
Remark:
In one English composition, I mentioned 1961 is an upside-down year without further explanation. The instructor didn’t understand & gave me a low mark. It taught me a lesson: Don’t assume anything. When in doubt, explain.
1/2/1 訪吾友江賢二兄, He subscribed 筆匯 magazine, Read ”趙無極的自白”, an interesting article.
Remark:
江賢二 likes music & art. He went to Paris later. I never heard from him since. I have heard that he becomes a 抽象派畫家 & has hold art exhibitions in Taipei frequently. 江兄是我小學和初中的同學. He once drew a portrait of Tchaikovsky, 微妙微肖, 真是精彩和傳神. I hang it on the wall in my room for about two years. Until one day he visited my place & saw the drawing, he liked it so much that he wanted it back.
1/4/3 第一次當家教. 王澤霖 always refers to this as 誤人子弟.
Remark:
Tutoring actually is a good experience for us. If you were a member of 台大電机系, you had no problem to get some tutoring job. I used to tutor various types of boy & girl. Most of them were in the senior class & desired to enhance their skills in taking exam. I enjoyed teaching them. Usually it was easier to handle boys. You know exactly what they need & what they are thinking. But the girls, it is a different matter. They usually don’t tell you how much they know or understand. You have to probe & find out some effective way to help them. Once in a while, you met some girls that you could hardly focus your teaching. Some of them were very good looking & some of them were very mature. 吾友賴光善 asked me to tutor a girl. She really impressed me as she belonged to the former catagory. Sometime I read some biographies of composers. I understand how they felt when they acted as a pianist to tutor girls. As you know romances flourish frequently & the events spin to another level. The worst case of the tutoring is to teach a group of girls (typically 5 or 6). Usually they gang together to make fun out of you & you don’t have a clue until it is too late.

1/7/6 I hang around 舊書攤, encountered a book “海外軒渠錄”. It sounded interesting. It turned out to be Gulliver’s Travels (小人國遊記) by Jonathan Swift.
1/20/5 Kennedy’s inauguration day in Washington DC
1/28/6 Went to movie, 遠東戲院. Ballet, performing by Margot Fonteyn.
Remark:
I have no record of its English title. The movie consists of three episodes: Swan Lake, Fire Bird & Ondine.
2/14/2 Visited 沈運申 to see his stereo set. Found that his set was better than mine.
Remark:
沈運申 likes music. He once played a piece of music with his stereo set & tested me. I couldn’t answer at that time. It turned out to be Brahms Violin Concerto. My familiarity of the “Three Big D” is Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & Brahms in that order. Apparently, 沈兄 was ahead of me at that time.
2/24/5 Registration of 2nd semester
2/27/1 2nd semester officially started.
3/1/3 Discussed 郊遊 matter after the class of 投影几何.
3/5/0 陽明山郊遊, wait 3 hours at the station? I can’t believe we spent such a long time in the bus station.
3/8/3 上次郊遊剩下兩件獎品. By taking lots, 何瑜笙 got two of them. 陳慶瀘 argued that because of the Woman’s Day, she & 沈安邦 should get the gifts.
Remark:
There is no record as to who actually got the 獎品. Perhaps 何瑜笙 can give us the answer.
3/14/2 Had some talks with 陳星華 in 國文課. 她是化工系同學. She sounded smart & fun, a nice girl.
4/6/4 “What is Mathematics” by Courant, Pirate edition appeared. This is a very good book. One section proves that 幾何三大作圖難題 can’t be constructed by straight edge & compass only.
4/10/1 化學系高材生洪照玉, 報各參加中國小姐競選
Remark: I have never met Miss 洪. I did see her photo in the yearbook. She looks nice & normal. With good cosmetics & right package, she can be a good contender. Later I also found that 葉秀卿 of 外文系也報名參加. I know her pretty well. Miss 葉 had a good look & nice personality that made her a good candidate. No wonder she got in the list of top ten contenders. I have no record as to who was the Miss China of 1961. Anyway, I admire both of them for their bravery just to show their body & elegant personality. I know the look of Miss 葉 off stage. But I was stunned at her look on stage. With a right package, you can transform a girl to a completely different woman. I remember one or two years later, 方瑀女士(植物病虫害系)也報名參加中國小姐競選. 她倒是後來居上,成功登上中國小姐寶座,為台大爭光. Miss 方和我們同屆, 在中國近代史課, 他和我們同時上張基瑞的課. 可惜班上人實在太多,沒有机會好好研究她. 光是電机系加僑生就有七十多人, 再加上植病系可說盛況空前. 可惜沒聽說有電机系高材生去 date 她. 也許她把我們這些男生當成動植物病虫害來研究. 後來他嫁給連戰先生,一帆風順. 後來聽說連戰有打夫人的習慣. 寫到此不禁替方女士捏一把冷汗.
4/20/4 Went to movie “玉碎塞班島”
4/23/0 Went to 新生戲院 to watch “雄才怪傑”, English title: “Inherit the Wind”. It is a debate between the Evolution & the Bible.
Remark: This movie recounted the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Edward Larson got Pulitzer’s prize (1998) with his book “Summer for the Gods”. Chinese translation: “眾神的審判”, 知書房出版社, 2002. If you like the movie, you will like this book.
5/3/3 Chemistry class, pop quiz. Murphy’s Law: I was absent.
Remark:
Pop quiz is equivalent to Calling Roll. Most students hate this. 葉炳遠 was never very popular perhaps due to his pop quiz. He walked while giving his lectures. That is a smart way to save time: exercise while working. He once said “蒲籣克常數很好記, 6 6 24…”. I had no clue about his logic. It dawned on me later that he forgot the details of the multiplication table. He thought 6 x 6 is 24 instead of 36.
5/8/1 Got NT$500, salary from the tutor.
5/13/6 Went to movie “琴琵怨" 市井小民,薪水階級的悲哀. It portrayed a couple struggling in making ends meet in the daily life.
5/14/0 台大學校運動會
5/20/6 張基瑞 said ref to Encyclopedia Britannica is a must for a serious student.
5/23/2 Soccer match, 電机系大敗經濟系. I watched the match. No record of the score.
5/24/3 電机系五子棋大賽 started
Remark:
五子棋起源於古代中国，发展於日本，风靡于欧洲. 先下的一方比較有利, So there are some rules that restrict the winning chance of the one who starts first. In Japan, it is called 五子连珠棋. There are more players with high caliber in Japan than those in China. I have no record as to who finally won the matches in our class.
5/29/1 Bought a LP record: Brahms Symphony #4.
Remark:
This one is listed in the top ten greatest symphonies in classical music.
6/9/5 王澤霖 got 三民主義 prize. He scored 90 points on the test.
Remark:
The prize was NT$1,000. I asked 王兄 about the secret in dealing with 三民主義. He said “無他,全靠吹牛也”. Once 葉秀卿 told me, in 北一女, 全靠名牌老師盛載陽之講義. 建中名牌教師如過江之鯽,然獨缺三民主義大師. 王兄從建中出來有比成績乃一奇蹟也.
6/14/3 All the equipment of Chemistry lab were gone, the locks were cut. I felt so bad that I couldn’t do anything but go to movie, watch “夕陽西下”(Sundowner)
Remark:
I was very interested in Chemistry since junior high. I listed Chemistry right next to EE in 大專聯考. I thought I could use some of the tubes, beakers etc to setup a little lab in my home. So it was a big disappointment for me. We all underestimated what those senior crooks could do to us. The movie 夕陽西下 is a story about a couple roaming around the field in Australia. Finally the wife yearned to settle down when she saved enough money. To her dismay, she found her husband gambled all her money & lost. It sure mirrors the case that we lost all our lab equipment after we paid, used & saved them in the locked drawers.

6/19/1 Final Exam started. English & Chinese Modern History went smoothly.
6/23/5 Finished Physics final exam, went to play basketball, felt fantastic. Afternoon, went to see movie “Alamo”, 邊城英烈傳.
6/24/6 Kidney got problem. Went to see doctor who treated me quickly & effectively. I was lucky. Otherwise I might miss the final exam of 軍訓 in the afternoon.
Remark:
The doctor I met turned out to be 翁通逢. I told him that his name sounded familiar. I asked if there is any relation to 翁通楹. He said 翁通楹 is his elder brother. What a small world, I told him that his brother was a great professor & really impressed on his "TighToSido". He was so glad that he gave me 50% discount on the cost of registration & treatment. Here is the lesson: 禮多人不怪, 嘴巴甜一點, make this world a happy one. I should add one more remark here about 軍訓. Usually it was very boring. But we got one 教官鄧永金. He was someone to listen. In two classes, he talked about the WWII, 滔滔不絕, 行雲流水, 一氣呵成. I am not kidding, he never repeated a word. The only defect was that he slipped his tongue several time by saying 雲南中將 instead of 南雲中將(Japanese commander in the flagship in Pearl Harbor attack). The only teacher can match his talent perhaps is 李守孔 or 孫靜山. Both of them were history teachers of 建中.
6/25/0 Saw Dr. Kuller off in a farewell dinner.
6/26/1 Saw movie “Waterloo”, 魂斷藍橋
6/27/2 Read “The Sea Around US”, 海的故事, 華國出版社
Remark:
This book was written by Rachael Carson, translated by 夏道平. I have never seen a translated book that can be so good or even better than the original text. Here is just one example:
Original text:
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye.
Translation:
千尋海底誰天下？睥睨逍遙有大鯨。
7/2/0 Started tutoring 陳偉, son of 陳和錦.
Remark:
陳偉 is the only son of 陳和錦, a well-known tea merchant. While he is the only son, he has at least 5 sisters, all older. So he acted like a little king in that environment. All his sisters were very understanding & tried to accommodate him, even forgave him most of the time for his bad behavior. I found a way to tame him. But I regretted that I didn’t stop him in various occasions that he was yelling at his sisters.
7/31/1 青年朝聖團出國, 經慕尼黑, 一去不回. 某雜誌評語: 大學之道在慕尼黑,在嘲聖,在止於 USA.
Remark:
It was said that 主教于斌, sponsored, supported or financed the trip. 一些青年才俊及名媛包括沈斐文(某屆中國小姐第三名 after 林靜宜 & 汪麗玲) 紛紛參加,一去不返.

The 2nd semester ended here & so we all had a good time in the first year of our college life. In general, I was happy as a freshman. I read a lot, made several good friends & started to see the world in a whole new way. Although Taida was not a unversity with rich resources, we all learned the basics as to how to become a good engineer as well as a good citizen.

Chronicle-I

2009-05-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

I found some old notes in my garage lately. Some of them relate to our good old college days. I list them in chronological order. Perhaps you can use the dates & events as a reference for nostalgic purposes. I also include some books & movies I read or watched in that period of time. This sort of indicates some cultural background we lived in then. The date is listed in month/day/day of week (0 means Sunday).

1960
7/29/5-7/30/6 大專聯考甲組: 國文, 英文, 數學, 物理, 化學, 三民主義. 六門科目分兩天考. 炎炎夏日, 孜孜學子.
8/15/1 閱讀 “富蘭克林自傳”, 楊景邁譯, 協志工業叢書
8/21/0 閱讀 “約翰克利斯多夫” (Jean Christophe), Romain Rolland, 黃楊譯
8/26/5 Read 地球概論, 王安宅著, 商務印書館
8/30/2 大專聯考甲組放榜, 電机系最低分 419. 錄取大約 30人. 物理系最低分 427. 醫預科最低分 440. 狀元: 高鷹, 508分
Remark:
吾友徐惠康考了439分, 一分之差飲恨, had to go to 高雄醫學院,. He cried for a week. 我想他大概栽在三民主義上面 . He & I were in the same boat, 我的三民主義衹考 53 分. I got hold on him early this year. He is now a heart surgeon working at the unversity hospital of NY State Univ at Buffalo near Niagara Fall.
8/31/3 我很高興考上台大電机系. 去大同戲院, watched movie "鴛鴦譜", Description of the movie: 青年人如膠似漆, 中年人互相猜疑, 老年人互相掩飾. Don’t know the English title.
9/5/1 Read "傲慢與偏見" (Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austin)
9/9/5 Read Bertrand Russell "世界新希望" (New Hope for a Changing World, 1950), 張易譯, 國立編譯館
9/15/4 中央日報第一版: 蔣總統說“共匪在三年內必定崩潰”
9/17/6 台大入學註冊, 李純儀 &卞昭廣捷足先登 (1 & 2), 陳英亮 was before me & Amo was behind me (my number is 30). I didn’t notice that Amo was behind me. He had to be very quiet on that day.
9/22/4 參觀台大工字院的各項設備. I was surprised that 台大電机系 was very spartan. I didn’t see anything in the Wireless Lab (無線電實驗室). It was really wireless.
9/29/4 第一天大學生活
Remark:
I had no further record on this day. However, I remember either this day or the day before, we were in the classroom in a very casual manner. I noticed one lady sat in the far corner of the room & watched us. However, while we were shooting bulls in the room, not one of us went to greet her or asked her anything. Later we knew that she was Dr. Kuller’s wife. She probably was curious about what kind of kids we were & might be disappointed that nobody greeted her. This showed how boring & woody we were in those days.
10/3/1 在腳踏車棚碰到蘇岳雄. He is 4 years senior to us & just ready to graduate from Taida.
Remark:
蘇岳雄 later became a known researcher on Fault Tolerant in the field of computer science.
11/4/5 Chemistry lab, a new experience
11/5/6 Play tennis, (軟式).
Remark:
I had no record as to whom I played with. Must be with 蔡宗元.
11/6/0 Read 盧梭懺悔碌 (Confession, by Jean J. Rousseau)
11/8/2 Physics lab
11/12/6 Read “Sailor Uncle”, from English textbook
11/14/1 五省立聯合迎新晚會, watched movie “Anne Frank’s Diary”(安妮少女日記)
11/15/2 台大校慶
11/19/6 遠東戲院, watched movie "兒子與情人”, D.H. Lawrence 之名作 “Son & Lover”
11/22/2 趙麗蓮學生英語文摘, 早上七點半電台廣播, very popular program among college students
11/23/3 Textbooks used: General Physics--Sears/Zemansky; General Chemistry---Linus Pauling
Remark:
I had the chance to review these two books sometime ago. Sears’ book is not good compared to the textbook my daughter used 12 years ago. Pauling’s book is superior. Pauling wrote “Vitamin C & Common Cold” in 1969 & became very controversial. He also is the only person got two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry & Peace (he was anti-nuclear activist & used to live in Palo Alto near Stanford).
11/27/0 昨天考完中國近代史. 到國際戲院看電影 ”天使之歌”. I have no record of English title.
12/3/6 Went to movie “Song Without End”, 李斯特傳
Remark:
電影 started with Piano Concerto #1 by Franz Liszt, very impressive. 攝影(cinimatography) by 黃宗霑. This is a very good movie. You can check it out from Netflix. You can also listen to the famous Hungarian Rhapsody in the movie. I remember two or three months later, 洪輝雄(brother of 洪俊雄) held a concert in 中山堂. He played the same piece Hungarian Rhapsody in that concert.
12/7/3 今天考了投影几訶, 牛力小試,滿載而歸.
12/9/5 化學考試
12/13/2 物理實驗, 和助教爭吵. 物理期中考
Remark:
I found the quality of 助教 (this particular one) not very good. Most of them did not have the student’s interest in mind. This one is particularly bad: 幫忙不足, 刁難有餘.
12/18/0 Went to watch 許清浩芭蕾舞團表演 "Symphony Fantastique (幻想交響曲, Hector Berlioz)", 第二樂章, The Ball (舞會).
12/24/6 三民主義課點名. Murphy’s Law: 我不在場.
Remark:
I didn’t know 三民主義 class also called the roll. 宋嘉賢's reputation was no match to 黃得時. But on the roll call, he was just as notorious as professor Huang. 越是不熱門的課,越需要點名.
12/31/6 49 年過去了,多災多難的中華民國進入五十大關
Remark: 光陰似箭, 時光流轉, 今年變成中華人民共和國進入六十大關. Must be the time for meditation.

母親節有感

2009-05-05T16:16:00.000-07:00

Mother’s Day is celebrated worldwide. It was originated in America. In 1912, Anna Jarvis persuaded her home state of West Virginia to adopt an official Mother’s Day. Two years later, President Wilson established a national Mother’s Day. Since then Mother’s Day has been celebrated by Americans on the second Sunday in May. As to why it is observed worldwide is a mystery. We might think this is another American influence. But this occurred in early time of 20th century, well before the America becoming a world superpower. To set aside a day for mothers is actually a very natural idea since the bound between the mother & children is very strong. Why didn’t this idea come from China? If we take into consideration of Chinese culture & its tradition of cherishing mother’s love, we almost think this day must have been created from China. Perhaps Chinese think it is their duty to show piety & filialness to mother & so every day must be mother’s day. This kind of attitude works against Chinese interests. Chinese invented a lot of things but took them for granted. When time goes by, other people picked them up, refined & polished them. Without making them routines, other people took them seriously & eventually claimed them as theirs, ie part of their culture. We may point out the following: 圍棋,茶道,武術 etc. Lately, Korean claimed 端午節 event is theirs & 孫逸仙 is partly Korean. It sounds absurd, but it happened before our eyes. Japanese claimed a lot of stuffs theirs even most of them were originated from China. Chinese should change their thinking. Don’t take things for granted. Don’t make something meaningful a routine. It reminds me a book by 張繼高(吳心柳), "從精緻到完美". The Chinese culture is 博大 (broad & comprehensive), but lack of the quality 精緻(refine & polish). 博大& 精緻 lead to 完美 (impeccable & finished).

Mendelssohn Bicentennial

2009-04-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago we mentioned the bicentennial of Charles Darwin & Abraham Lincoln. They are truly great men in their fields---science & humanity. There is another great man (also born in 1809) in the field of music that deserves our admiration. His is Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn. Most of us know some of his music. He was a child prodigy & born to a wealthy family. He was more conservative comparing with some of his contemporaries like Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner et al. Because of his Jewish blood (although he was converted to Lutheran), his music was shunned in Germany from time to time especially during WWII. He was one of the greatest composers in the period of Musical Romanticism.

He revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion & made Bach’s music popular. He was the first to conduct Schubert’s symphony #9, the Great. This work was buried under a pile of papers in some attic for more than 10 years after Schubert’s death. Mendelssohn's most popular works include Wedding March (from Midsummer Night’s Dream), Violin Concerto in E Minor, Italian symphony, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Spring Song (song without word, piano work), auf flugeln des Gesanges (On Wings of Song) etc.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: He composed the overture while he was 17. He finished the work 16 years later. The overture is open with a theme & end with the same theme that sounds like a curtain call, the opening & the closing of the Shakespeare’s play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUm1HU29TfI&feature=PlayList&p=C40130D5C035CDC3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6
(opening)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SLeBjvg8g&feature=PlayList&p=C40130D5C035CDC3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7
(closing)

Wedding March: Mendelssohn befriended with Queen Victoria. This wedding march was played when the Queen married her daughter to Frederick of Prussia in 1858. If you have watched “Fall of Eagles” (BBC TV series), you know the episode. Since that time, this wedding march becomes one of the most popular classical music played in the wedding ceremony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Z2vF_Nlvk&feature=fvsr

Violin Concerto in E minor: This one was very popular while we were in Taida. It was played at least once a month from some radio stations in Taipei. This concerto is unique in its opening. The violin solo just ushers in playing the main theme without any introduction. If you are familiar with other great violin concertos by Beethoven, Brahms or Tchaikovsky, you will know what I mean. You can find the first movement of this concerto played by Heifetz from the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJfKlp1ZfSg

Spring Song: This is a piano work, song without words. It depicts the glorious spring will definitely come to an end. However, it is worth the effort & time to enjoy the last trace of the season. Almost everybody loves this song & I bet you all know the tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tkqdOB5bEw&feature=related

Italian Symphony: Mendelssohn composed this piece when he traveled to Italy. This is generally considered the best one among his five symphonies. The whole piece is filled with romantic mood & the lovely melodies flow effortlessly throughout the four movements. The following link is the 1st movement of this symphony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIITKVYrHvQ

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: One of the most popular Christmas carol in our time was composed by Mendelssohn. I bet we all listened to this hymn at least 20 times during Christmas holidays.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDPwNPAV6tA

Auf Flugeln des Gesanges: This is a lovely song composed for the work by Heine (1797-1856), a famous German lyric poet. Heine was like Mendelssohn with Jewish blood converted to Lutheran. His another famous poem is “Die Lorelei”. If you have ever cruised river Rhine, you know the Lorelei Rock, its romantic & tragic tale. Auf Flugeln des Gesanges is “On Wings of Song” in English. You will love it when you listen to it. I think most of you already familiar with the melody & will not get tired of it even you listen to it 10 more times. In the following link you will find the lyrics in German, English & Chinese (click “more info”). Please compare the content & meaning of the poem among different languages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc4QC35LfhU
The soprano is Victoria de los Angeles (1923-2005), a well known operatic soprano.

In order to follow the music, you may note the following:

Die Lotosblumen erwarten
Ihr trautes Schwesterlein
(repeat once)

Und in der Ferne rauschen
Des heilgen Stromes Well'n
(repeat once)

Und träumen seligen Traum
(repeat once)

seligen Traum
(repeat once more)

PS: This one has nothing to do with Mendelssohn. If you have ever watched the movie "Death in Venice", (1971, based on Thomas Mann's Novel), you will not forget that moody melody permeated throughout the movie. The theme is from the 4th movement of Mahler's symphony #5 (the same symphony mentioned in PS1). If you are interested, go to the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpJehOi2p4

台大電机系軼事之一

2009-04-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

In our third year of EE life, most of us took a course called “Transmission Lines”. I remember the lecturer was not a resident professor. His name was 繆超鳳. He looked like a well-groomed gentleman. He was slim, clean-cut & soft spoken. For some reason, his lectures were not well received. A lot of time, we were all chatting or doing something else, even clipping finger nails in his class. I sort of felt sorry for him. Sometime I tried to focus on what he said. But it was in vain due to the high noise level, ie signal/noise ratio is too low. Professor 繆 had good temper. He seemed not upset at all, a truly gentleman behavior. He probably worked in 交通部 or 電信局 at that time. I had no doubt that he was well versed in the subject. He somehow just lacked some zest or charisma that would attract our attention. I don’t know how many of us still remember what we learned from that class. Transmission Line is a branch of knowledge or discipline nested between Lump Circuit Theory & EM Wave Theory. It was very useful when telegraphy ruled the world between 1860 to 1900. Even today, we see the transmission towers & high voltage lines across the island and continent. Theoretically, the lump theory & transmission line can all be deduced from Maxwell equations with suitable boundary conditions. Transmission line is also a one-dimensioned distribution of lump theory.

Once in a while we heard of Oliver Heaviside. For example, Heaviside’s Partial Expansion, Heaviside’s Unit Function, Heaviside’s Distortionless line & Heaviside Layer. Actually he was instrumental in developing Transmission Line & Operational Calculus. He introduced D or P operator to solve differential equations in an algebraic fashion. We have learned all the trade under the title of Laplace Transformation. It is shameful that most textbooks fail to mention his genius and contribution to the Electrical Engineering.

There are some similarities between Heaviside (1850-1925) & Edison (1847-1931). Both of them lived around the same time. Both of them were telegraph operators, well versed in Morse Code. Both of them were self-taught engineer & lacked of formal education in mathematics. Perhaps due to this, their works lacked of rigorous proof & procedure. However, Heaviside got the credit to reduce Maxwell’s 20 equations in 20 variables to 4 equations & four variables. In fact, what we know about Maxwell’s equation is in the form worked by Heaviside. In 1902 Heaviside predicted that there was an conducting layer in the atmosphere which allowed radio waves to follow the Earth’s curvature. This layer is later called Heaviside Layer. Perhaps Heaviside has become widely known due to a song by Andrew Lloyd Webber: "Journey to the Heaviside Layer" in the American Musical Cats.

Edison was a great inventor but he missed out the industry of power transmission & distribution. He advocated Direct Current instead of Alternating Current. Here came another genius Charles Steinmetz we don’t hear often enough. Steinmetz was a German got problem with Otto Von Bismarck & fled to the US. He worked in GE & was instrumental in promoting Alternating Current over Direct Current. He worked out most of the mathematical & engineering details relating to how the alternating current would be used in the power transmission.

PS1: "Journey to the Heaviside Layer" can be found in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvsRZ8FVx4o
The lyrics are very simple:
Up, up, up, past the Russell Hotel
Up, up, up, up, to the Heaviside Layer

repeated several times.

PS2: Do you know the most beautiful electrical engineer in history? The answer is Hedy Lamarr (海蒂拉瑪). She was the heroine of the famous movie “Samson & Delilah” (霸王妖姬, 1949). Here were some headlines:
How was Hedy Lamarr’s wartime invention revolutionizing wireless communications?
How “The Bad Boy of Music” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” catalyzed a Wireless Revolution in 1941?
People assume that perhaps Hedy Lamarr wasn’t intelligent because she was so beautiful. But she really had a mind…she held her own with anybody.
Hedy Lamaar & Spread Spectrum
Frequency-Hopping Spread-Spectrum Invention & Hedy Lamaar
Spread Spectrum & Internet

The following link has info about her invention:
http://britneyspears.ac/physics/intro/hedy.htm

The issue June 23, 1997 of MicroTimes magazine was dedicated to her achievement. Sadly, she passed away in 2000. Her ashes were spread in the romantic Vienna Woods.

大一國文

2009-04-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

The photos of our classmates & the campus of Taida remind me of our good old college days. I wrote this down just in case I forget it later. Our memory inevitably fades when time goes by. We had to learn 國文 or 國語 since we were a kid in elementary school. With so many years of learning, I wonder why we need to do it again in college. As a matter of fact, 大一國文 was one of the worst I have ever experienced. We had a famous professor 黃得時. He was noted for his research in some area of Chinese literature. But his accent was really out of place. Fortunately we were not learning the pronunciation of Mandarin, otherwise it was going to be a disaster. The worst part was that we had to study 左傳 & 戰國策. They are so ancient & the writing styles are so out of time. It would be much better to study some modern Chinese literature. But for some political reason, we just couldn’t do it. Most famous literary figures were in mainland & couldn’t be mentioned. Those who fled to Taiwan were second rate figures at best. Some good one like 胡適 or 林語堂 went to US & stayed there until late 1950’s. Who had heard of 鲁迅, 葉聖陶, 茅盾, 老舍, or 朱光潛 in Taiwan? All in all, 大一國文 was totally a waste of time to me.

I have to say something about 黃得時. His ancestry was from 福建泉州. He made contribution in Taiwan literature, especially in the preservation of 臺灣鄉土戲曲 & 兒童文學之編譯. His unfinished work is 臺灣文學史 . He was a professor of 台大中文系.. I have a lot of respect for him though he had some interesting behavior. Here is what I remember about him:

1. He had some problem in walking. I don’t know whether it was due to polio or some accidents. His head looked bigger than normal with his body size.
2. He called roll at the beginning of every class. As far as I can remember: 每堂課點名,風雨無阻. To make the whole thing worse, the class started promptly at 8:00 am. To get up early in the cold winter & ride bicycle to 大一教室 before 8am definitely was a pain in the neck. My home was near 新生北路 & 南京東路, not really close to the campus. Here I sort of envied my classmates from southern Taiwan. They stayed at 台大宿舍 & could reach 大一教室 in no time. Anyway, worst thing did happen to me (Murphy’s Law), my name happened to be the first one in the roll call. I still remember Professor 黃's voice (first thing in the class): 林幸峰, 黃肇崶, … If I was not in the classroom in time, I missed the class. I think 黃肇崶 must have shared the same misery. So once in a while, I found that I was late about 5 minutes, I simply skipped the class & murmured “Go ahead, make my day”. I still think it is a joke to do roll call in a university like Taida. It is an insult to freshmen. I don’t know any professor did the same in our first year classes. Imagine if 徐照 or 葉炳雲 did the same thing, the class will be over before he finishes the roll call.
3. I met a lot of freshmen from 化工系 & 机械系 in the class. I still remember two girls named 陳滿枝 & 陳星華 (化工系). They were pretty nice looking. I forgot all the rest.
4. His Japanese or Taiwanese accent in reading Chinese text is not very polished. For a professor of 國文, it is definitely a minus. For 左傳 & 戰國策, it is ok. But for "康橋的早晨”, it is going to sound like evening instead of the morning.
5. 黃得時 was noted for his research in Taiwan literature. I wonder why shouldn’t he just teach Taiwan literature for the freshman class. I think it was really a loss for us not taking advantage of his expertise.
6. Several years ago, while I performed my annual spring garage cleanup, I encountered something unexpected, three compositions of my freshman class. Titles of the compositions are: 自敘, 我與國文, 台大一角. I found the last one very refreshing & valuable. It reminds me a lot of minor details about that little corner of Taida campus---Chemistry Lab & how we performed the experiments. In the composition, I see all those hand-written comments in red by professor 黃得時. Ah…, that was almost 49 years ago. 往事如煙,字跡依舊.

PS: The early morning class forced me to get up early & reach the classroom before 8am. Sometime I got there way early especially in the spring time. Once I got into the classroom & found one girl was practicing violin. She was probably from 女生宿舍 nearby. In order not to disturb her, I sat way back in the corner & read a book. I remember she played some scales & some work by Bach. A few minutes later, she started playing something slow & mellow. I recognized it was Beethoven’s Romance #2(opus 50). Although her play was not that fluent, I could follow the main theme nicely. After a few moments, I was sort of in a dream when the music kept flowing. I didn’t know how long the time passed before she finished the playing & put the violin in the case. She carried it in her hand & walked toward the door. I kept watching her & finally decided to say hello to her. But I was way back in the classroom & couldn’t catch her in time. She simply disappeared from my eyes in no time. Since that morning, I had several occasions in that semester to be there early enough to catch her. But she never showed up & I had never seen her again.

Re-post Older Posts

2009-04-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Classmates,

If you want to revive a discussion that is older than a month or more, please re-post the original post (make a new post) with its title appended by a dash "-" and a letter, such as numeral (1,2,3...) or alphabet (A,B,C...) or in Chinese (Chia, Yi, Bing, Ting...) etc. Because older posts would be hidden from the current display, and we are more likely to just look at the most current topics shown in the display; it makes the revival of older discussion inconvenient. I am sure there are still interesting thoughts about the older posts that you may want to revive them.

3/21/2009 NTUEE64 重聚台大校園

2009-03-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

Please click at the picture to enlarge it.

「別夢依稀咒逝川，故人三十二年前。」這次相聚，是我與洪俊雄1966年分別之後四十二年第一次見面。他第一句就說，「你在 Florida，我要去找你。」非常歡迎。有朋自遠方來。不亦樂乎。我們多少年才能相聚一次？下次再見又是何時？

我們八個班友加上五位夫人，中午在「傅鐘」集合。是洪敏弘在校園的一個新餐廳為我們安排了午餐。洪董是我們八位中唯一與台大常有接觸的人。他送給每個人一本叫「挑戰創新－台大創業家」的書。洪敏弘是書中創業家當中唯一從電機系大學部畢業的的學生。是我們６４級的光榮。他也給大家一片「台灣生態探索」的DVD。我從頭看到尾。非常美麗感人。使我知道台灣每年仍然提升几個mm。每天都有地震，而且五年一大震。吃飯的時候我坐在陳正一夫婦旁邊，與他們交談最久。陳總從台灣衛星第一把手退休後，並沒有閒下來。夫人吳紀珠在中國，越南和台灣全島部有業務。陳說他是她提箱子的祕書。行影不離席上幾乎都是以台語交談。我的台語本來就不太靈光。這次回台任教，在很多場合裡，我都是「聽無」。但在這個餐桌上不同。我完全可以聽懂。原因可能是班友們仍然講的是古典台語。與我在童年時聽到的相同。現下年輕教授的台語已有相當的改變。我聽起來非常吃力。

相聚的目的之一是確定下次 REUNION 的時間地點。陳哲俊一直都為這些事情費心。基本上，我們決定在明年農曆新年左右見面。這是台灣方面同學的最佳時段。

午餐之後，我們跟隨洪敏弘在校園散步，想看看見新建的几棟電機大樓。他仍然是電機工程系的教授，有大門的鑰匙。現在電機系（包括資訊系）有100多位教授。我們的老師白光弘以九十的高齡，仍然在這裡作研究。還記得在我們新生訓練的時候，有師長以「台大之大」為題教訓我們？我現在更能體會它。以前台大的後院已建設得與我們在時的前院差不多大小，有新式的大樓，有林蔭的大道，也有佈滿野薑花的池塘。當年嶄新的化學館已顯得非常渺小。特別是我們每天上課的工程館。現在是全屬土木系。看起來是那樣的破爛老舊。土木工程系真該加油。

從椰林道路出來，已是四點多鐘。有人建議我們去新生南路吃紅豆冰。他們說我們當年這家店已經存在，但是我無法記起。當我們坐在店裡品嚐紅豆冰時，有一個年輕人很有禮貌的對我們「笑問客從何處來？」我們據實以告。我們是台大電機64校友，回母校參觀。想不到這個年輕人也是台大電機的畢業生。他比我們晚了20屆，現在是交通大學教授。當我為他介紹我們的同班同學時。有台灣電信局的大老陳呈祿，有台灣衛星太斗陳正一，台灣遙測先驅陳哲俊。他不得不對我們這一群另眼相看。後來，他說他研究的領域是光電。我告訴他我們正好有這行的專家吳振和。就坐在他面前。他不但有創新理論，而且建立一家世界級的 LED 公司。當我們離開時，他對我們一一握手道別。其實，我發現台大電機系的都非常和曖可親。幾周前，我與小慈逛台大校園，請一位面善的同學為我們拍照片。一問，他竟然也是電機系的學生。

回程，阿博(孫芳德)同我一起搭乘台北捷運。我要去火車站搭高鐵回台中，他要回他母親的家，在天母。他說他在士林下車之後，再乘公共汽車到天母。我非常驚奇。以阿博之富，竟然還等公共汽車。更令我驚奇的是，他建議我如果乘高鐵到台南，不如學他，乾脆坐到高雄，然後回頭搭區間車到台南，因為高鐵台南站離台南市區太遠，要300新台幣的計程車費。如此勤儉起家，一輩子改不過來。「一憚食，一瓢飲。人不堪其憂，回也不改樂其，賢哉回也。」

昨天我與阿牟通電話，他要看照片。一看，他說「你看起來比真人年輕，是因為你臉上的皺紋在照片上顯示不出來。」好個阿牟，實事求是，一針見血。附上兩張在校園拍的照片。

Character Writing

2009-03-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. In elementary school, we learned that 文化是血統,語言,宗教,和生活習慣的綜合体. Here language plays an important part. Why are there so many dialects in China? Because there are many mountains & rivers that tend to isolate people from contacting each other. When time goes by, each region develops its own language. Language also shapes the way you think, you behave & forges a set of values in daily life. Minority people in China usually live in a remote or isolate area. When time goes by, it develops its own language. Say it in a reverse way, if you want to separate people, let them speak different kind of languages & soon they will drift apart. Babel towers in ancient Babylon is an excellent example.

Whenever I visit Taiwan, I hang around book stores & end up buying a lot of books. When I visit mainland China, I also go to bookstores. The BookCity in Shanghai (福州路), seven-story building, filled with thousands of books. I spent a lot of time inside but I didn't buy anything. I try to explain my behavior. I found that I didn't have any incentive or interest to buy them. The main reason is that the printed words look so alien to me & sometime they look even worse than Japanese. Either 白字連連 or 錯字連篇. The culprit is the simplified characters. If I have to read the translated "Pride & Prejudice" in simplified characters, I rather read it in English directly. 文章帶感情, 文字亦然. There are two camps when it comes to writing, Traditional & Simplified. The former is called 简体字, the latter has several names: 正体字, 原体字, 傳統字, 繁体字 etc. I have no idea why some people go along with 繁体字. It is derogatory, misleading & bad. How could it be so complicate for several hundred years & people don’t feel it. I think the English translation says it better, Traditional or 傳統字. Our ancestors used traditional writing for so long & also used brush pen (毛筆). They didn't have any complains. They simply grew with it. Nowadays we don't use brush pens & we write without any problems in schools. As a matter of fact, with the help of computer technology, the input of Chinese characters is via keyboard (most kids do) & bypass the handwriting. The side effect of this is that we are having a new generation of people that can only read but can not write. In other words, people can't write without a computer. It is scary if you can't count or calculate without a calculator.

In fact, 傳統字 already has a set of characters simplified & should be adopted & included in 簡体字. The current 簡体字 is way over the reasonable limit. It is a bad idea to get rid of 同音字. We already have a lot of confusion in speech. We should use the writing to reduce it instead of aggravating it. For example, most people seem to agree in keeping 後 & 遊.

If Chinese people have the wisdom, they should sit down & really think hard for the issue of the character writing. This is important & it will have enormous influence to the future generations. Both camps should recognize the pros & cons of 簡体字 & 傳統字. Just sit down & iron out a compromise version of writing, called it 進化字. Without it, we will see Chinese people drift apart when time goes by. In fact, it already causes a lot of confusion outside China as to which is the right way to teach our kids Mandarin.

Faith in Spring

2009-03-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

The spring is coming, a time for renewal and awakening. Poets throughout history have penned many a wonderful expression of man's sentiments relating to the seasons, to nature and the world in which we inhabit however briefly. German Lied or art song has many fine examples of such expression. With the current market so depressed, we need some faith in our future and our society. I do find one lied that expresses the faith in spring, the upcoming spring. It is Fruhlingsglaube (Spring Faith) by Franz Schubert, a very lovely song, the more you listen to it, the more you will like it. The text was written by Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862):

Die linden Lüfte sind erwacht,
Sie säuseln und wehen Tag und Nacht,
Sie schaffen an allen Enden.
O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang!
Nun, armes Herze, sei nicht bang!
Nun muß sich alles, alles wenden.

Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem Tag,
Man weiß nicht, was noch werden mag,
Das Blühen will nicht enden;
Es blüht das fernste, tiefste Tal:
Nun, armes Herz, vergiß der Qual!
Nun muß sich alles, alles wenden.

The English Translation:

The mild breezes are awakened,
They whisper and move day and night,
And are at work everywhere.
O fresh scent, o new sound!
Now, poor heart, don't be afraid.
Now all, all must change.

The world is more beautiful with every day,
One knows not what yet may be,
The flowering will not end.
Even the deepest, most distant valley blooms.
Now, poor heart, forget your torment.
Now all, all must change.

You can listen to the lied sung by Christa Ludwig (born in 1928) in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMd5EY6J04M&feature=related

Christa Ludwig is a German retired mezzo-soprano, famous for her performances of opera & Lieder.

PS: 春天 has many names: Spring in English, Fruhling in German, Printemps in French, Primavera in Italian & Spanish.

Red Clay Field

2009-03-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

I came across this from Yahoo Taiwan. Please take a look.

http://www.wretch.cc/blog/crystal54321/22390093

It's amazing, and I can't detect any digital manipulation. Yet it seems someone has designed this scene for show much like those grandiose Chinese movie scenes. Can an ordinary routine farming turn out such spectacles unintentionally by the farmers? If it was orchestrated, then what was the the purpose other than the obvious?

冬天的故事

2009-02-08T17:12:00.001-08:00

Shakespeare’s play “The Winter’s Tale” is a well-known tragedy & comedy. But it really has nothing to do with the winter except that it is "A sad Tale best for Winter to tell about”.

Chinese new-year always falls between late January & early February in a cold winter season. However, we call it Spring Festival (春節). To most people, it is a festive winter event. Back to our good old winter days in Taipei, we school kids had to suffer in a classroom without heating systems. I remember we shuddered in the corner of 木造楼 between the classes. Nobody dared getting out to play. The best moment was to buy 熱騰騰的燒餅 inside the building between classes. Some street vendors got very creative to give us the service, 真是一大德政 . I sort of envied the kids in southern Taiwan as the weather there was much milder. I found that in winter we kids spent more time inside & had more time for study, read & write. It seems it should also be true for most adults. But to my surprise, I had a hard time to recall good literary work, music or art related to winter. Meanwhile most people can name a lot of them related to spring, summer & autumn. Perhaps people play mahjong or poker more often in winter instead of something more productive. Anyway, here are some I can remember.

四時田家苦樂歌, 鄭燮
This can be called “Four Seasons, Chinese Style”
冬天
老樹搓枒, 撼四壁, 寒声正怒. ... 茅舍日斜雲釀雪, 長堤路断風和雨. …田家苦.
砍松枝帶雪, … 秫酒釀成欢里舍, … 官租完了離城郭. 笑山妻塗粉过新年, 田家樂.
This shows the Chinese New Year really falls in the winter season. There seems no music composition exists for this fine literary work.

岳陽楼記, 范仲淹
若夫霪雨霏霏, 連月不開, 陰風怒號, 濁浪排空, 日星隱耀, 山岳潛形, 商旅不行, 檣傾楫椎, 薄暮冥冥, 虎嘯猿啼.. 登斯楼也, 則有去國怀鄉, 憂讒畏譏, 滿目簫然, 感極而悲者矣.
So winter is not the season to get excited about. You feel depressed, sad & dejected. It is hardly a positive season. Even Napoleon & Hitler got wiped out just because they couldn’t finish the campaigns before the winter came.

Unknown Author
大雪紛纷何所似? … 灑塩空中差可比, …未若柳絮因風起.
I have been in Milwaukee this winter. This is my version:
大雪紛纷何所似? … 白蝴小蝶滿天飛

飲馬長城窟行, 漢樂府
枯桑知天風, 海水知天寒, 入門各自媚, 誰肯相為言.
This really shows the importance of the family.

天淨沙, 馬致遠
枯藤老樹昏鴉,, 小橋流水平沙, 古道,西風瘦馬,. 夕陽西下, 断腸人在天涯.
This one is actually 秋思. But 枯藤老樹昏鴉, sounds so destitute, it really belongs to winter. If you have ever visited New England in October, you know what Autumn looks like---紅楓银杏滿山谷. I just have to assume 馬致遠 drank too much XO on the day he wrote this 元曲.

The music that carries the title of Seasons:
Tchaikovsky's “Four Seasons” is a piano work. Three pieces related to the winter are 聖誕節, 爐边 & 狂欢節.

Haydn's “Seasons” is an oratorio (清唱劇) composition.

Glazunov's “Four Seasons” is ballet music. It starts unconventionally with winter first then spring, summer & autumn. The winter contains frost, ice, hail and snow.

Vivaldi's “Four Seasons” is a set of four concertos. The winter contains three movements: Cold, Rain & Wind. The second movement has a mellow and slow tempo, can be viewed as Snow or Rain. I listened to this one while I was in Milwaukee. I was in the living room right next to a fireplace, a glass of red wine in my hand. It was in the early evening, snowflakes flying around in front of the yard. I felt so cozy & comfortable and the scene outside was so beautiful & white. It was truly a White Winter. The following YouTube link is a good one to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4g1NCnvVJ8&feature=related

Schubert “Winterreise” is a song cycle. Winterreise is Winter Journey (冬之旅) in English. It portrays a wanderer sings about his beloved, loses his beloved, feels lonliness, solitude & tries to gather his strength to carry on. There are 24 poems written by Wilhelm Muller. Schubert read it & put his emotion on music. The most famous one is the #5, Lindenbaum (linden tree or 菩提樹). We all learned the tune when we were in high school. Here are the translated lyrics:

By the fountain, near the gate,
There stands a linden tree;
I have dreamt in its shadows
So many sweet dreams.

I carved on its bark
So many loving words;
I was always drawn to it,
Whether in joy or in sorrow.

Today, too, I had to pass it
In the dead of night.
And even in the darkness
I had to close my eyes.

And its branches rustled
As if calling to me:
"Come here, to me, friend,
Here you will find your peace!"

The frigid wind blew
Straight in my face,
My hat flew from my head,
I did not turn back.

Now I am many hours
Away from that spot,
And still I hear the rustling:
There you would have found peace!

You can listen to the song in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOHFO2pSz9g

The Chinese lyrics we learned are a slightly modified version:
我家有菩提老樹, 枝幹密綠葉蔭繁. 回憶我別離家園, 曾工作綠茵边, 我对樹發下誓願, 並刻字在樹間. 倘若希望不能遂, 我誓永遠不歸返, 我誓永遠不歸返..

The original lyrics are sad & despairing. The Chinese lyrics change the mood to desiring and promising. So the way to sing the song should be quite different. This also shows the power of music as a universal & versatile language in influencing people. Lindenbaum reminds me of a good old movie of 1956. In Taiwan, the title of the movie is 菩提樹. I bet most of us watched this German movie. The movie is not released in the US. However, I found a Youtube link related to the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB68QF1NZsk

This is the last scene of the movie. The Trapp family was in the detention center of Ellis Island. Their stay in the US depended on the financial sponsors. They were in the brink of losing them. Desperately they sang the Lindenbaum. Suddenly everybody is silent & listen. The combination of the video & music is so touching & powerful that changes the whole thing. If you have visited New York & Ellis Island, you will easily understand the whole meaning here. In the video clip, watch carefully, you will see the Statue of Liberty looms in the background outside the window, a sign of hope & freedom. This final scene was well done & the music was the main theme to make the whole thing incredulously heartwarming.

PS: The Trapp family & the story are portrayed in another famous movie “The Sound of Music”, 1965. This is an American musical written by Roger & Hammerstein. Julie Andrews became a very popular actress after this movie. The movie was a blockbuster for several years.

Secret Recipe

2009-02-04T17:49:00.000-08:00

Everytime I vsited Taiwan, I was always amazed to see "secret recipe" all over the places. Ancient secret recipe, palacial secret recipe, or family secret recipe, and so forth. Not that other countries don't have secret recipes, but they seem so ubiquitous in Taiwan (I assume China is the same though I have never been to China). The most famous secret recipe is probably the recipe of Coca Cola which is even insured.

A secret recipe must have started with a good product (a unique food, drink, medicine, etc.) which the proprietor claimed to have been made with secret recipe. As the product gained recognition or commercial success, competitors began to copy; and before long the marketplace would be flooded with similar products with their own secret recipes - real or not. Here is an example. In late 2000 I was in Puli to see my family and the damage caused by the earthquake the year before. I found so many little store fronts selling salty crispy chicken (yien-su-tzi) and each claimed to have prepared the chicken with old family secret recipe. I didn't think there was such food even 30 years ago, so any such recipe couldn't have been old. It turned out, a lot of people had lost their jobs after the earthquake. To make a little extra income, many people whose home had a street front would set up a small stand with a big wok for frying the chicken. And to compete, the minimum culinary credit would be the secret family recipe. Just in downtown Puli, there were no less than 30 of them. There is little doubt that none of the stores actually has its own secret family recipe. It just shows the marketing magic of "old" and "secret" in our society.

Anything with secrecy attracts attention, for curiosity is a human nature. Sometimes, secrecy even commands superiority. It is not unusual in China for a teacher to keep one or two key knowledge from his pupils. This is understandable if someday the teacher and his pupils would become competitors - another case of survival tactics. But withholding knowledge is a costly drawback to the advancement of civilization.

We have heard often about "ancient Chinese secrets" which Chinese people are generally quite proud of, and are often envied by people around the world. Here the problem is "ancient". It implies that since the ancient time, we Chinese have been incapable of doing better; all we have been doing is following the recipes from long time ago. For generations we have been just a bunch of pharmacists grabbing herbs according to an Rx written hundreds of years ago by some doctor; as in Chinese "Tsao Fuang Zwa Yau". It is hard to believe that through generations, no one has raised the questions such as why the recipe works so well, or what happens if one of the ingrients becomes unavailable. But I have never seen any claim like "modern improved Chinese secret" anywhere. It is also quite embarrassing to keep being proud of our "ancient stuff", to which we contributed nothing, without having anything of our own generation to speak of. Are we really so inferior to our ancestors? And for so long?

Some may say that by attaching "ancient" and "secret", you imply it has been proven for a long time and is not publicly available, thus jacking up its scarcity and value. But since it is not publicly known, how can we know it will do us no harm? Or how can we know it will do us wonder?

Since we are at it, I will throw another one in here. We often hear people say, "my father used to say ....", or "my grandfather used to say..." or "my mother used to say...". As if any saying by elders automatically commands credibility. Well, how do we know his/her elders actually said it? And it gets quite entertaining when a middle aged man says, "when I was a kid, my mother used to say so and so." Now, when he was a kid, his mother probably was younger than he is now. This means that after accumulating more years of life experiences than his mother had then, he is still not confident enough to assert his own so and so.

Cheers.

Cosmos & Beethoven's Symphony #7

2009-01-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

The text in italic & bold font was added on 1/16/2011.

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, the great four (3,5,6,9), the classical four (1,2,4,8) & a mutated 7. Back in 1957, I used to hang around中華路 in Taipei. I found Beethoven’s symphonies on LP one by one starting great four, then the classical four. But I had to wait for another year to get #7. This one was rarely played on radio. The first time I listened to it, I felt that it was not really like Beethoven. It sounded some music from the outer space. It gave me a 突兀之感. After a few years, I gradually got used to it and started to appreciate its uniqueness---mutation.

During the decade of 1970 & 1980, we were busy in building our family & career. That was the age of toil, struggle & accomplishment. Of course, we also found time to watch TV for news & entertainment. Most programs were routines. Occasionally, we encountered some good, special programs. Among these high quality program, COSMOS is especially a piece of classic. This series has 13 episodes with Carl Sagan as a narrator. At that time, we were so busy that we rarely had time to watch it complete. But I was impressed at that time & could never forget it. The Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the Universe, opposite of Chaos. So the correct translation of Cosmos is 和諧的宇宙 in Mandarin.

It takes time to watch 13 episodes. If you want to save time, just watch episode 1, 2 & 13.
Episode 1: The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean
Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth

The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean
This episode talks about the big bang, life & evolution (were we come from) etc. It condenses the life of Cosmos into a one-earth-year calendar in time scale. Here is the event of the last few hours of the last day of the year:

10:30pm First human being appears
11:46pm Fire is tamed
11:59:20pm Domestication of plants & animals, tool making
11:59:35pm Agricultural communities, first city
11:59:50pm Human history starts

So all historical events occurred in the last 10 seconds of the comic calendar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1ImgOcOPM
Skip the very beginning & start from 2:04.
2:08-2:45--- Here the mysterious cosmic theme precedes each episode.
5:27-7:09---To study cosmos, it needs scientific methods & imagination. Here Sagen released a dandelion seed that will carry us to the world of dream & the world of facts.
12:14-28:55---The earth in the cosmos, our home.
28:54-30:34---The earth with Beethoven's Symphony #7 played in the background.
30:35-36:50---The way Eratosthenes found out the circumference of the earth.
38:18-50:10---The up & down of the great learning center, Alexandria, a lost civilization.
51:06-52:00---Dutch scientists in 17th century made advance to the knowledge of cosmos.
53:08-57:56--- Cosmic Calendar is presented from big bang to now.
57:14-57:55---With 15 billion years of cosmic evolution, we have a choice, enhancing our life or squandering our heritage.

One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
This episode talks about the relation between 日本平家 & 鬼面蟹. This artificial selection is actually a natural selection since human being is homo sapiens, a natural species. "The secret of evolution are time and death. Time for the slow accumulation of favorable mutations and Death to make room for new species". It condenses 6 billion years of cosmic history with a 40-second computer animation. It also illustrates what happened in the last 15 days of the cosmic calendar:

12/15: Cambrian explosion
12/18: Trilobites appear
12/19: First fish and vertebrate appear
12/20: Plants begin to colonize the land
12/22: First winged insects & amphibians appear
12/23: First tree and first reptile appear
12/24: Dinosaurs rule the earth
12/26: First mammal appears
12/27: Birds appear, dinosaurs disappear & flowers appear
12/30: Human like mannals appear

href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZxlWy0m7c
4:33-12:10---The explanation of 日本平家 & 鬼面蟹, an artificial selection.
12:10-34:07---The explanation of how the life started on earth & the theory of evolution. 15:45-16:50 is the 2nd movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. From 16:56, the cosmic calendar is shown again with some animation of evolution process from 25:47 to 28:48. The music here is the familiar Bach's Gavotte Rondeaux from Partita. 28:50 to 31:28 is the melody from Vivaldi's Four Season. Start from 31:30 is the summary of the evolution process.
37:50-46:16---The DNA is explained.

Who Speaks for Earth
This episode summarizes the beginning of the cosmos and how it is heading in the future. "We, as a human species, speak for earth. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. Our obligation to survive & flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient & vast from which we spring."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6C9taivF40&feature=related
1:20-7:08---What will happen when two different cultures encounter?
9:10-11:00---Beethoven's Symphony #7, 2nd movement.
10:53-16:20---The earth may end up this way tragically.
25:10-29:25---Center of the learning, library of Alexandria was established since 300 BC.
32:09-36:16---Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob & the library of Alexandria was destroyed, the end of a civilization. Will this happen again in the future?
37:19-41:32---The big bang & the evolution
41:46--Human being with different culture & race exhibits little difference to the aliens in outer space.
44:22-46:50---Since 400 years ago, our ancestors have created an advanced civilization. Beethoven's Symphony #7, 1st movement is played in the background.
45:47-45:52---Joseph Fourier.
46:30---Tycho Brahe
46:37---Johannes Kepler
46:53 & 47:09---Christiaan Huygens
48:42-50:48---Human beings try to find the sacred truth of the cosmos. Beethoven's Symphony #7, 3rd movement is played in the background signifying human will, tenacity & perseverance.
50:40-52:28---Human beings have achieved something significant in the cosmos.
52:28-53:32---The triumph of the human civilization. Beethoven's Symphony #7, 4th movement is played in the background signifying the pride, triumph and the bright future.
54:30-55:24---Release the dandelion seed & let the imagination fly again. We speak for earth.

While I watched this last episode 13, I was deeply moved when I discovered Beethoven’s symphony #7 dancing around the scenes. The second movement’s main theme came out when Sagan talked about a civilization may destroy itself before it acquires way to escape the planet. The music is like a meditation, murmur and sad. The first movement popped up when the last astrologer and first astronomer Johannes Kepler showed up. He deciphered the mystery of the cosmos. Suddenly I felt the power of Beethoven’s #7, the 1st movement was so mysterious and yet so powerful that moved me immensely. This happens when video, audio and the narration played out in sequence. Then Sagan continued to talk about the struggles of science, hard work and how to be objective to find the truth. Here the 3rd movement ushered in, struggled, toiled, failed miserably, limped around but made progress. Finally, human being conquered the obstacles and achieved the success. At this moment, the 4th movement marched in, head high with its brilliant theme. The whole episode and series end with the final section of the Beethoven #7, powerful and triumphant. It moved me to tears.

Every episode of Cosmos starts with a cosmic call, a piece of mysterious tune and a flying dandelion---let the imagination fly & mind explore. The tune is peaceful, yet mysterious & haunting. It talks about big bang, evolution, history, religions, DNA, memory, where we are from & where we are heading.

If you think 朝聞道,夕死可也(or 朝聞道,夕可安枕也), Sagan's COSMOS is for you.

If you are interested in listening to the complete Symphony #7 of Beethoven, please visit the following links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaV9n_XVKfI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUnhYdkjfDM&feature=fvw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LYxfcGAH7o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1lg55krMCQ&feature=related

Darwin & Lincoln

2009-01-08T23:42:00.000-08:00

This is the year of 2009. Two hundred years ago, Abraham Lincoln & Charles Darwin were born on the same date February 12, 1809. It was a very good day for our planet because Lincoln became the great emancipator of the slaves in America, and Darwin became the great emancipator of the human mind, so they both deserve to be celebrated.

Time magazine had one article in July issue of 2008, talks about the greatness of both men. The article seemed to indicate Lincoln is more influential. New Yorker reports there are 15,000 books about Abraham Lincoln in existence. It has been estimated that more books have been written about him than any other human being except Jesus. With our economic situation in dire condition, most college graduates are worrying about their jobs. Someone got a new idea of getting a stress-free career: get yourself a job in the Abraham Lincoln book publishing business and stay there for the rest of your life.

If they were not born on the same date, who will think about comparing their greatness? Of course, both of them are great men, but isn’t it true that compare Lincoln & Darwin is like compare orange & apple? Both of them are human beings but their profession & field of activities are quite different. Comparing their influences perhaps can be done.

I think American people tend to overemphasize the importance of their culture. I bet people outside America know Darwin more than Lincoln. Darwin’s influence on human thought has been great & huge. He revolutionized the entire subject of biology. Natural selection is a very broad principle indeed, and attempts have been made to apply it to other fields, such as anthropology, sociology, political science & economics. “Darwinian” becomes very popular in our common vocabulary. Even more important has been the impact of his theories upon religious thought. Until today, some states like Kansas or Mississippi still argue whether the evolution theory should be taught in the school. Some states introduce Intelligent Design Theory or Creation Theory in parallel with Evolution Theory in the school curriculums.

Both of them are great men. However, I rate Darwin’s influence to our civilization one level higher than Lincoln.

Ps1: A good old movie (1960) “Inherit the Wind” documented the “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1927. This is the Evolution versus Bible played out in the court. If you haven’t seen this movie, you should get one from Netflix. I watched it in 1961 & used to talk about it with王澤霖 while riding bicycle back home from Taida.

Ps2: As to Lincoln, there is a little book “Lincoln The Unknown” by Dale Carnegie. Chinese translation by 張心漪 titled "林肯外傳". This is a very good book about Lincoln & civil war. I read it in 1956. Dale Carnegie was the same author who wrote “How to Win Friends & Influence People”. It was on the best-seller list for several years (Chinese translation title: 處世教育).

Ps3: The following persons were also born in 1809:
Felix Mendelssohn: Great composer, "Mid-Summer Night's Dream"
Alfred Lord Tennyson: English poet, "Charge of the Light Brigade"
Edgar Allan Poe: Thriller short stories writer, 愛倫坡
Oliver Wendell Holmes: Writer & poet, mentioned in the movie "Judgement at Nuremberg"
William Gladstone: Prime minister during Queen Victoria's era

Season's Greetings

2008-12-23T05:38:00.000-08:00

Dear NTUEE64 Classmates,

Wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!

AJ reminded recently me that our next class reunion is supposed to be about a year from now at Les Vegas. It is about time for us to think more about it and to propose further detail plan.

Best regards,

Paul Chen

Foof & Wine - Chinese Style

2008-12-11T10:44:00.000-08:00

A long while back I was shopping at a liquor store (in Minnesota, we get liquor and wine at liquor store, not grocery store) when the manager, who was our neighbor and was helping a yuppie type couple pick a wine, asked me what wine would pair well with Peiking duck. To help my neighbor, I thought hard for awhile and told them, dark BEER. You could see the dejection shown on the young couple's faces.

Really, I didn't know how to pair a certain type of western or Chinese wine with a particular Chinese food or dish. To this day, it continues to be an intriguing subject for me. Since we have such a vast collective knowledge among our classmates, I would like to throw a brick and hopefully draw in some jades.

A disclaimer. I am not a connoisseur of food or wine of any kind; whether Chinese, French, Italian or Japanese, or Thai for that matter. Heck, I cannot even claimed to have had a dish prepared by a Chinese royal chef or any French or Italian dish by a 5-star chef from New York, Chicago, Milan or Paris. As for wine, I can hardly distinguish among the different wines produced in Napa or Sonoma alone, not to mention those outrageous varieties from Italy, France or Spain.

The Italian and French are known for their arts of food and wine pairng, where one compliments the other. I know no such arts in any Chinese cuisine. For one thing, the Chinese wines are fundamentally different from European wines both in ingredients and processes. And as far as I know (I might be utterly ignorant), Chinese drink liquor or wine simply to get intoxicated or loosened up so the brain becomes less inhibited (we have way too much taboo along with our rich culture) that the genius of beautiful poems, paintings and calligraphies can spout out freely; or, like in the martial art novels, that the welled up energy can be maximally released. It seems to me, the enhencement of food with wine or wine with food is the least of our concern or interest. Either the food is great or the wine is great, but never a praise of the combination of food AND wine.

In a way, I wonder if it really makes sense to try to pair western wines with Chinese food, since China is not a grapes growing land. If we had grapes in China, with our ancesters' unmatched cleverness, I would bet we would have had the most wonderful wines to go with any of the countless wonderful regional dishes.

So, where are we? Again, in today's global competition for food prestige, if Chinese wants to claim a seat at the head table, we have to come up with some wines that compliment the food. And the wines may become significant national revenue. A good idea, don't you think? Sorry, I got carried away again, as usual.

Please share your experience or opinion, so we can all learn something in food and wine - Chinese style. I am itching to try any recommendation.

美式足球

2008-12-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

美式足球

昨天佛羅里達大學橄欖球隊用以３１比２０戰勝阿拉巴馬大學。成為「東南聯盟」的冠軍。再加一場比賽，它可能成為全國冠軍。全校一片沸騰。近年來，佛大橄欖球打得非常好。每個週末，整個大學校園像是開嘉華年會。有人聲稱這是各州立大學的一個「陰謀」。州立大學依法必須招收許多不太合格的學生。他們對讀書不感興趣，特別在週末。「小人不可久處約」。閒著可能引起麻煩。有了球賽，從星期五的晚會，到星期六的比賽，到星期日的狂歡或沮喪，週末就過去了，而且學校也趁機賺了大錢。想想，足球教練的薪水是校長的10倍。我的汽車也幾次因此被拖。因為很多停車場為了校友看球過夜停放旅行車，在星期五6點半之後，教授就不能停車了。有時忘記時間，我的汽車被拖，還得付罰款。又被學校賺了。

我剛到美國的時候，總覺得橄欖球是以蠻力取勝。在我看來，不論是帶球短衝還是投球長跑，帶球者老是會被對方絆倒在地，混打成一團。而且，那誇張的護肩和頭盔，試把一個人退化成猩猩。學校的高年學長告訴我這是典型的美國文化，重力不重智。特別那時越戰打的美國人灰頭灰臉。一味以火力蠻幹。正是橄欖球文化的投影。後來，我漸漸發現橄欖球並不只是以蠻力取勝。需要智勇雙全。並且智慧比體力更為重要。在所有集體運動中，我覺得橄欖球用的智力最多。

中國在今年奧運會上贏得最多的金牌。幾乎都來自個人項目。在大的集體運動中，如籃球，足球，或棒球。中國什麼也沒有。個人項目取決於個人。中國人可不會輸，但集體運動需要合作。中國人缺點就出來了。當然桌球和羽球的雙打也要合作，但他們的合作只有兩個人。棒球需要的合作較少，籃球和足球較多，但他們都比不過美國的橄欖球。因此美國中學和大學用橄欖球作為主要運動項目是有理由的。或許這是美國人能合作得更好的原因吧？

我們從童年起就知道中國人像一盤散沙。最近我多次看見，「台灣人沒路用」這句話。說這話的人不意味著台灣個人沒用。他感嘆的是台灣人不能合作。柏楊曾經說中國人不合作不是我們不知道合作的好處。中國人能寫一本甚至一火車有關合作好處的書，但是就是不能合作。柏老這次看走了眼。怎麼可能聰明的中國人知道合作的好處而不合作？其實合作有一個壞處，它可以遮蓋所有的好處。合作也意味著犧牲，搞不好會吃虧上當。聰明的中國人當然知道，只是不說出來而已。

合作之難，可以從生物的演化史上看到。從化石的見證，單細胞生物大約在３０億年前開始出現。猜猜看，從單細胞演化到第一個多細胞生物化了多少年？化了大約３０億中三分之二的時間（注１）。多細胞生物在十億多年前才出現的。為什麼？合作真難。細胞我為什麼為了細胞你就犧牲復製？人體裡有兆個以上的細胞。他們都為卵或精細胞犧牲他們自己分裂權力 (除癌細胞之外，他們拒絕再犧牲)。他們也都是歷經了至少35億年的艱苦歲月，不曾停止過奮鬥的。但是今天，他們決定為那些卵或精細胞犧牲了。多麼大的犧牲﹗「為有犧牲多壯志，敢教日月換新天」。如果沒有這麼多細胞的犧牲，我們仍會停留在單細胞生物的過程。由此觀之，人類社會再往前進，就要看那一個制度最能推動社會成員的合作。美國之所以為美國，有她的道理。

我的高中在屏東高雄，那時就知道北部有個建國中學。如雷貫耳。到達台北以後，我意識到建中有一個橄欖球隊。這可能是台灣唯一的中學橄欖球隊。現在看起來，建中不僅聯考第一。他們在體育上也有遠見。建中之所以為建中，是有她的道理（注２）。
楊照崑

注１︰可在 google上查到。地球約在４６億年前形成。單細胞生物約在３８億到２０億年前已經存在，多細胞生物在８億年前開始出現。魚類在5億年前開始大量出現，恐龍在２億到７千萬年前統治地球。開始慢，後來快。不久的將來，新的物種几天就可以用生物工程製造出來。

注２︰要瞭解建中請看幸峰兄寫的 All Kinds of Everything Remind me of ...
幸峰談到當年在建中班上來了一個漂亮年輕的英文女老師，〞Everybody treated her like a sister”可見建中是比我們南部文明多了。如果我們有這種好運，心裡想的就像街上唱的一樣，「給我一個吻，可以不可以」（見維龍兄的 comment）。那裡會去煩惱 Seven Lonely Days 是什麼意思。

寒山寺

2008-11-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

I passed by 蘇州 last month & had a chance to see 寒山寺. This temple is not that famous comparing to 金山寺 or 普陀寺. However, it became well known after 張繼 composed the poem "楓橋夜泊":

月落烏啼霜滿天，江楓漁火對愁眠。
姑蘇城外寒山寺，夜半鐘聲到客船。

The gate of the temple is very humble. There are only three green characters 寒山寺(white base) on a brown wall. It looks very spartan & gives you a cool feeling. Inside the temple, it is spacious & nice, 給你一种佛道温暖的感覺. Several buildings spread around the temple: 大雄宝殿, 寒拾殿, 罗漢堂, 天王殿, 楓江楼 etc. The most notable one is 普明宝塔, it is high & can be seen from far away. 鐘楼 itself is a little two level pagoda with a bell in the second level. There were a lot of visitors inside the temple. I noticed a group of Japanese high school kids with uniform. They said they learned "楓橋夜泊" in the class. Apparently 寒山寺 is well known in Japan. As far as I can remember, we didn't have this poem in our high school textbook, though it is included in 唐詩三百首. Later I learned that some Japanese have a tradition to come here on New Years' eve to 敲鐘. By doing that they believe it can shave 10 years from their age, .ie. make them younger. It is kind of odd that Chinese never really get serious about 寒山寺. Perhaps, 遠來的和尚會念經. In Tang dynasty, Two monks 寒山& 拾得 were in charge of this temple. To Japanese, 寒山& 拾得 were the monks from afar, they have got to be superior. The bell 張繼 heard is not in the temple now. It is said that the bell was carried to Japan when 拾得 visited there. Japanese couldn't locate the original bell since then. 伊藤博文 recasted a new one & sent to 寒山寺 in 明治38 年四月(around AD 1906).

Mark Yang mentioned 李香蘭 & 中國之夜 some time ago. There is one song related to it is 苏州夜曲. I checked the lyrics, the last sentence is something like "鐘が鳴ります寒山寺（かんざんじ） <寒山寺的钟声在繞樑回蕩>". However, in the Chinese version of 苏州夜曲, it becomes "水鄉苏州,花落春去,相思長堤,細柳依依." It sounds nice, but it just repeats the first section, omits the third section of the lyrics & rids of 寒山寺completely.

The temple is well kept & its surroundings are beautiful & romantic. 張繼 may not be that famous as we think, but "楓橋夜泊" sure puts 寒山寺on the romantic map of the world. Nowadays, everytime I read "楓橋夜泊", it reminds me of 寒山寺, 楓橋, water way, sunset & especially its haunting bell.

百思買

2008-11-17T08:47:00.000-08:00

I was in Shanghai last month. As I strolled around 徐家滙 shopping area, I saw a big familiar store. It is “Best Buy” with three Chinese characters imprinted on the wall outside the building. It is 百思買. These 3 characters pronounce like Best Buy. However, in Mandarin, it means "Think 100 times before you buy". Personally, I think the translation is cute but it is a bad idea to use a store name like this. If a guy has to think twice, the probability of buying it is around 50%. If I have to think 100 times, I am sure I won't buy it as the probability of buying it is almost 0. When two cultures meet, all kinds of idiosyncrasies occur. This leads to that good old translation problem most Chinese encounter. 牛頓 or 牛敦? 詹森 or 強生? 聖地亞哥 or 聖地戈? 春田城 or 泉地市? 新奧而良 or 紐堮連斯? There is no standard way of name translation, it is a complete chaos. Japanese use kata kana for foreign names & they get by nicely. As to language improvement, Japanese is ahead of China about 1,600 years. Chinese always think Japanese learned the language from them & so it must be inferior. It is hard to swallow the pride to admit that now they have to follow the similar path to simplify characters & some others. I think it is hard to overcome 1,600 years of language evolution. Chinese need a quantum jump. One way to do this is just to get rid of the translation. Instead, make English as the mandatory second language everyone needs to learn from the primary school. So for all the foreign names or whatever foreign, we have the option to use English directly. This shifts the translation to the English instead of Chinese. Nowadays, all Chinese middle schools teach English, so just extends this to all primary schools & within 20 years, all the problems about foreign name disappear.

As a matter of fact, the way we communicate now (this writing) is writing English & insert Chinese word as we need it. The reverse of this is to write Chinese & insert English word as we need it. As long as every Chinese understand English as a second language, this method solves the problem. We will also find eventually that the language advantage of India & Singapore over Chinese will diminish. In a larger sense, this is very beneficial when it comes to 与世界接軌.

All Kinds of Everything Remind me of …

2008-11-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

In our life, we go through a lot of routines. But we don’t remember them much & actually fade away when time goes by. Something comes once in a while that is out of ordinary, however, will stick to our memory. Love songs are common & everywhere. There are numerous classical love songs or arias. But most people are more interested in popular music. Personally, I like classical love songs more, perhaps because of the versatility of the orchestra & instruments. However, once in a while, I encountered some love songs from the pop side that is so out of the routines & influenced me much.

It was the time of 1956 when we were in our junior high. It was the time of growing up, we looked at everything fresh & new. Suddenly, one song popped up & we heard “Seven Lonely Days” everyday & almost everywhere. Of course, we didn’t know much about the lyrics & meaning of the song. But it was there everyday that we couldn’t ignore. Here came the English teacher, fresh out of the college, looked clean, nice & lively. She treated us like a group of uncivilized kids. She was about 8 years older than us. But she looked so cute & young that we treated her just like our sisters. One day, I asked her about “Seven Lonely Days” & what the lyrics really mean. She spent about 15 minutes explaining the whole thing, very impressive. Strange enough, I became very interested in English after this. Since then, every time I hear this song, it reminds me of my English teacher. The singer is Georgia Gibbs, a Russian Jewish descent. She had a nice, strong & lyric style voice. You can hear her voice far away. She passed away two years ago at the age of 87. Strictly speaking, “Seven Lonely Days “ is not a love song, but it is love related. You can listen to the song with the following youTube site:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcNU2Dr5c5M

The lyrics:
Seven lonely days make one lonely week
Seven lonely nights make one lonely me
Ever since the time you told me we were through
Seven lonely days I cried and cried for you
(Oh, my darlin' you're cryin', boo-hoo-hoo-hoo)
(There's no use in denyin' I cried for you)
(It was your favorite pastime making me blue
(Last week was the last time I cried for you)
(Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo)
Seven hankies blue I filled with my tears
Seven letters too I filled with my fears
Guess it never pays to make your lover blue
Seven lonely days I cried and cried for you
(And cried for you)
(Oh, my darling you're crying) Seven lonely days
(Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo) Make one lonely week
(There's no use in denying) Seven lonely nights
(I cried for you) Make one lonely me
(It was your favorite pastime) Ever since the time
(Making me blue) You told me we were through
(Last week was the last time) Seven lonely days
(I cried for you) I cried and cried for you
(Oh, my darling I) Cried and cried for you
(Oh, my darling I) Cried and cried for you

Time went by, we entered senior high & the pop music was dominated by Elvis, the King. Time went by again, we entered college & the pop music was dominated by Beetles. Since they are all male singers, we boy though like the music but not the type that you will jump, scream & faint in their concert. That sort of thing belongs to girls. Not until 1965, while we just finished military service & ready to study abroad, one song hit me with a bang. The first time I heard the song, I felt this woman was sincere & serious. The title of the song is “The Wedding”. After hearing the song, I decided to look for someone that I can marry someday later. If someone put the emotion on line & sings the song from the bottom of the heart, she can’t be ignored. Nowadays, every time I think about the college graduation & military service, it reminds me of this song. Recently I found the original performance of Julie Rogers on youTube. It really enhances my original feeling about this song: sincere, earnest & emotional. Julie Rogers is an English pop star, born in 1943 & still around these days. The following is the youTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvo8vlSi8zE

Time went by again, it was the time of 1970. In the distance, I heard something “All Kinds of Everything”, a distinctive voice of a loving girl. This was the time we just finishes our Ph.D. dissertation & ready for the world. Now this song sounded so pure, sincere & real that I forgot the Ph.D. & decided to get married right away. How can you refuse a love call like this. Dana Rosemary Scallon is an Irish singer who won the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest with this title song “All Kinds of Everything”. You can see her original performance in the following youTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOnvZt1ktZw&feature=related
After I watched this video clip, it sure enhances my original feeling. My heart is almost melted when she utters the last word of the song. Nowadays, every time I think about Ph.D. degree, it reminds me of this “All Kinds of Everything”.

The lyrics:
Snowdrops and daffodils
butterflies and bees
sailboats and fishermen
things of the sea
wishing-wells
wedding bells
early morning dew
all kinds of everything remind me of you

Seagulls and aeroplanes
things of the sky
winds that go howlin'
breezes that sigh
city sights
neon lights
grey skies or blue
all kinds of everything remind me of you

Summertime
wintertime
spring and autumn too
Monday
Tuesday every day
I think of you.
Dances
romances
things of the night
sunshine and holidays
postcards to write
Budding trees
autumn leaves
a snowflake or two
all kinds of everything remind me of you.

Summertime
wintertime
spring and autumn too
seasons will never change
the way that I love you.

Dances
romances
things of the night
sunshine and holidays
postcards to write
Budding trees
autumn leaves
a snowflake or two
all kinds of everything remind me of you.
All kinds of everything remind me of you.

November's Greetings

2008-11-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

Hi, All,

After almost 2 months (June and July) of checking without any new posting, I thought our blog had been abandoned. So, I was surprised to see the good stuffs posted by Mark Lin and Mark Yang.

Mark Lin's posting about "the last rose of summer" really struck the core in me. I happen to consider this song the most beautiful folk song of them all. I have collected quite a few recordings. The best (again in my opinion) was sung by Leontyne Price in Flotow's version. Two years ago, in a Dublin pub, with Guinness of course, I asked our tour guide to sing it, but he declined. Then, when we were at a B&B in a small Irish town, the 75 years old keeper did granted my request and sang it wonderfully. She used to a choir singer in younger days. A few years back, my family was celebrating my birthday at a restaurant where there were a keyboard player and a fiddler performing. Right after we finished our entrees, the fiddler came to our table and played this song for me. Needless to say, I was quite moved. It turned out my daughter had asked them to. I have listened to so many recordings and performances from profesionals down to school kids, and I have not heard a single bad one. I guess the song is so good that no matter how you sing or play it, it just comes out nice. As far as I know, Flotow was the only composer adapting the whole folk song into his work, unlike Puccini and others. Some critics had said that "The last rose of summer" made the opera Martha, not the opera made the song. I think there are more people who know this song than people who know Flotow and Martha. By the way, I don't think Puccini did a good job with oriental materials; both Turandot and Madam Butterfly are not that great except the two famous arias that are more Italian. Actually, I feel Puccini demeaned Chinese and Japanese in those operas.

Other follow up coming.

HP-12C & New Numbers

2008-09-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

Have you ever found any high tech gadgets last more than 25 years (1/4 of a century) on the market & still produced & supported by manufacturers. It is indeed very hard to find one with average product cycle around 3 years in Silicon Valley. Believe it or not, I did find one that meet the honor. It is HP-12C Calculator. I purchased one in 1983 which I still use these days. I was in Walgreen last week, a drug store around the corner, looking for BeneFiber. I passed by one aisle and see the familiar HP-12C calculator, priced at $69. Although there is a platinum model that cost more, the original one is still there. This is a finance calculator for interest, mortgage, amortization, etc. I heard that some big financial company bought this calculator for each employee & used for company's work. This may be the reason why it is still around these days. But why they pick HP-12C? I think the reasons is the pocket size, easy to use & its long-lasting batteries. As far as I can remember, I only changed batteries once in 25 years. HP-12C is truly a classic product in itself, amazing.

Related to calculator, it is the number---unit of number, the way we do the counting. In most calculators, the number is displayed three digits in a group with comma. In other words, it is easy to read it in thousand, million, billion etc. But this creates problems for 万& 億. I am sure most of us have the same experience. When someone said 700 billion dollars to bail out the financial mess. What, 700 B, oh, it is 七千億. It takes about 4 or 6 seconds to get the conversion. How about 八拾七萬? Oh, it is 870 thousand. This time it takes about 4 sec to get the conversion. How about 四万万七千万? Oh, it is the same as 四億七千万, and it is 470 million. It takes more than 10 sec to do the conversion. I found it rather amusing whenever Chinese people in America try to quote the big number & everybody sort of sucks into some confusion. The inconsistency comes from the way Chinese count---4 zeros a group instead of 3 zeros a group. 百, 千, 万(4 zeros) then 億(8 zeros), 兆(12 zeros). But the western way is thousand (3 zeros), million (6 zeros), billion (9 zeros) then trillion (12 zeros). I think it will be a good idea that Chinese create two new units of number: ＃米 and ＃比. They are equivalent to million & billion. We might as well get used to these two numbers and save us a lot of trouble. So 470 million is just 470 ＃米 & 700 billion is just 700 ＃比. And 140 thousand can just be 140千, simple as it is. So from now on, we all live in peace & happily ever after.

PS1: You may be upset that why we have to confirm to the western way of counting. Well, it started long time ago when our ancesters wanted 西学為用. This does not mean that we abandon the counting of 万& 億, we simply add two more units of number to facilitate easy counting & communication. Take a look at Periodic Table, Uranium (鈾), Plutonium (鈽), Americium (鋂), Curium (鋸), Einsteinium (鑀), Fermiun (鐨), Mendelevium (鍆), Lawrencium (鐒), Berkelium (鉑), Californium (鉲) etc. So we already named a lot of items per western words and pronunciation. By the way, the United States fares very well in the periodic table: Americium, Californium, Berkelium. Berkeley & California are the only university & state to be named in the periodic table. Also Lawrence (Lawrencium, atomic #103) & Seaborg (Seaborgium, atomic #106) are the scientists from Berkeley.

PS2: It is funny to see Trillion & 兆 all end up with 12 zeros. The reason is simple: 12 is divisible by both 3 & 4. No wonder ancient Babylonian used 12 進位 instead of 10. 12 has factor 2,3,4 & 6. But 10 has only 2 & 5 factors. At least for division, 12 based # is twice efficient as 10 based #.

求學孫子

2008-09-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

前言

我在台灣讀書的時候，就知道有 [孫子兵法] 這本書，但從來沒有在書局中看到過。軍訓教官也只提到書名，不提內容。好像是武林密集，不輕易傳人。現在想起來，可能與 [孫子兵法] 開宗明義的一句話有關。孫子曰，兵者，詭道也。與當時宣傳的國軍乃仁義之師，相去太遠。最近回台灣，看到一本叫 [商戰孫子] 的書，其目的是教導如何用 [孫子兵法] 經商。雖然有一些見解，但牽強附會太多，連 [行軍]，[地形]，[九地]，[火攻] 諸篇，都配上商業用途，有風馬牛不相及之感。但我第一次看到了 [孫子兵法] 全文。愛不忍釋。想不到我們的祖先能寫這麼好的文章。這樣的 realistic。開門見山，水清見底。兵者，詭道也。打仗使用陰謀詭計不丟人，連逃跑也不丟人，只有打敗仗才是丟人。 [孫子兵法] 不但內容精闢，而且文筆之流暢，用來作為高中的國文教材，比 [古文觀止] 上絕大多數的文章讀起來要舒暢得太多了。請看 [兵勢] 篇中的一段，
凡戰者，以正合，以奇勝。故善出奇者，無窮如天地，不竭如江河。終而復始，日月是也，死而復生，四時是也。聲不過五，五聲之變，不可勝聽也。色不過五，五色之變，不可勝觀也。味不過五，五味之變，不可勝嘗也。戰勝，不過奇正，奇正之變，不可勝窮也。奇正相生，如循環之無端，熟能窮之哉？
顯然孫子認為文學修養對一個將軍非常重要。不然他不會把這些與作戰無關的東西寫在兵法裡。
現在有人認為 [孫子兵法] 的原則到處可用。除了戰場，商場之外，情場，官場，選舉都用得上。我一輩子讀書，看看求學能不能也套上 [孫子兵法]。

始計第一

求學者，人生之大事，終生心血，舉家甘苦，不可不察也。
故經之以五事，校之以計，而索其情。一曰道，二曰時，三曰地，四曰師，五曰己。
道者，最終之目標也，題目當與天地同壽，日月同庚，朝聞之，夕可死也。披星載月，不畏難也。時者，天時也，知所先後，則近道矣。時未至而先攻者，徒勞而無所獲。地者，學校，設備，環境也。查無書，且問無友，事倍而功半。師者，智，信，名，錢，點也。己者，能力，興趣，背景也。
凡此五事，學者當聞，知之者成，不知之者敗。故曰，校之以計，而其索情。曰道孰能申，師孰能啟，己孰能耐，錢孰能久。吾人以此知勝負矣。
學者，慎道也。知之為知之，不知為不知。近而慮之遠，遠而慮之近。不求小利，不貪近功。得之不驕，敗之不餒，思人之未見，攻人之不察。故學者之勝，不可先傳也。
夫未起步而廟算勝者，得算多也。未起步而廟算不勝者，得算少也。多算勝，少算不勝，而況無算呼？吾人以此觀之，成敗見矣。

後語

孫子有一個有名的故事，所謂 [孫武子演陣斬美姬]，也是成語 [三令五申] 的來歷。最近在網上有一部關於孫子的歷史小說，中間有一段，作者希望還原這段悲慘的事件。為什麼孫武會帶宮女練兵，殺死了吳王的愛妃之後，為什麼吳王沒有為愛妃報仇？想像得合情合理，也許您有興趣一看。
http://vip.book.sina.com.cn/book/catalog.php?book=48636

楊照崑

Mid-Autumn Festival

2008-09-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on 9/14 this year. Traditionally this is a big holiday most Chinese people rush to their family for reunion. No other holiday except Spring Festival is more important than 中秋節. There are a lot of poems related to the moon & the mid-autumn festival. But there are not many nice songs composed for the occasion. Some like 中秋怨 does not have universal appeal. Rather, it is for persons with broken family. Perhaps most people choose to 吟詩 instead of 唱歌. The most famous poem for the occasion is 水調歌頭 by 苏軾. There are some songs composed for this poem. One of them is "但願人長久". In western world, since there is no such festival, you don’t find any music composed for this occasion. However, there is some music either dedicated to the moon or related to the moon. Doris Day sang “By the Light of the Silvery Moon”. It is a very lovely song except that she sang for the Thanksgiving holiday, a very late autumn event. For something classical, the most famous one is Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the other is DeBussy’s Clair de Lune (月光曲). I happen to remember the 2nd movement of Eine Kline Nacht Musik (by Mozart) has been adapted as moon related song (Meditation under the Moon) used in some elementary school. As to the aria of opera, there is one dedicated to the moon & well known. It is "Lied An Den Mond (Song to the Moon)" in Rusalka by Dvorak. Rusalka is a water spirit who sings this aria to plea to the moon for help in finding her prince. In 2001, Masterpiece Theatre released a movie “The Song of the Lark” featuring this song as the main theme. I think it is proper & fitting to sing this song under the moon on mid-autumn festival if you are a woman in love. For a man in love, he should play Moonlight Sonata, the 1st movement, very romantic. For the rest, just try Clair de Lune (play by piano) or the 2nd movement of Mozart’s Eine Kline Nacht Musik (小夜曲).

但願人長久
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xcxCv06tXk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIdDASnirbY&feature=related

By the Light of the Silvery Moon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbkEeVkkzMs

Lied An Den Mond
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwuNqcKUxto&feature=related

2nd movement of Mozart’s Eine Kline Nacht Musik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGK3zsbPj5Q

Moonlight Sonata, the 1st movement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFSRs7iqAv8

Clair de Lune
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfSV_k3MhCw

PS: Moonlight Sonata was not named by Beethoven. It was added in 1832 by a music critic, Ludwig Rellstab, who said the 1st movement reminded him of moonlight over Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. I am sure some of you have visited Switzerland & seen this lake. It is one of the most beautiful lakes in Europe. If you have a chance to cruise the lake, you will see a nice building along the shore. It happens to be a museum of Richard Wagner, Tribschen. I visited the place in 1984. It is worth visiting if you are fit & can walk a mile to see it.

The Last Rose of Summer

2008-08-31T22:48:00.000-07:00

The autumn starts on 9/22 this year. This is the definition from astronomy. Traditionally & meteorologically it starts roughly around September 1 or Labor Day in Canada & US. So 8/31 is the last day of summer. This reminds me a lovely song “The Last Rose of Summer”. Although the last rose of summer does not necessary falls on the last day of summer, it conveys the same message that the summer will soon be over & the last rose will wither & fade away---sad emotion. The song is from an old Irish air “The Groves of Blarney”. John Stevenson adapted this tune on “The Last Rose of Summer”, a poem by Thomas Moore. Since then this song becomes very popular. In fact, Flotow used this song in his opera Martha & appears several times in different acts. Martha is a comic opera, a love story of two boring ladies & two farmers who hire them as servants. When farmer, Lionel fell in love with the leading lady Harriet, she gave the rose she wore to him & sang the Last Rose of Summer. After that, the two ladies fled & returned to the court. Lionel was so distressed, he sang a famous aria “Ach! So fromm” (恍如夢中). The opera is not very long & generally considered to be a light opera. The ending is a happy one --- they marry & live happily ever after (有情人终成眷屬). Just before the curtain falls, they sing once again “The Last Rose of Summer”.

Though there are many arias in Martha, only the above two are really famous. The opera is very unique in some way, as Germans consider it a German opera, French consider it a French opera, Italians consider it an Italian opera. Of course English think it is an English opera with setting in Scotland with Irish Last Rose of Summer. Flotow is a German receiving music training in France. He composed Martha in German, but the original script is in French. The opera was translated into Italian with high quality that most Italians think it is from Donnizetti. Especially, the aria “Ach! So fromm” is translated into Italian “M’appari tutt’amor”. It is this title aria made Martha well known in the opera world. I think European Union (EU) needs a lot of people like Flotow to unite the Europe. Something similar happens to Dvorak’s symphony #9, “From the New World”, 2nd movement. American people think it is very American. But most people from Czech & Slovakia have no doubt about it. It sounds so Bohemian that they become home sick immediately. I haven’t found anything like this among China, Korea & Japan. The one close to it are the songs we all familiar with, 送別 & 憶兒時. 送別 becomes “旅愁”in Japan. 憶兒時 becomes 故鄉の老家. Japanese think they are Japanese songs. Most Chinese have no doubt that they are Chinese songs. But the truth is that both of them are American folk songs. 送別 was composed by John P. Ordway (1824-1880) with title “Dreaming of Home & Mother. 憶兒時 was composed by W.S. Hays (1837-1907) with title "My Dear Old Sunny Home”. The peculiar thing is that not many American people know Ordway & Hays, let alone these two songs.

The following are some YouTube links that you can listen to the songs I mentioned above:
The Last Rose of Summer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCEXyBSvtho
Ach! So Fromm, sing in German by Wunderlich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGuWTAzUfF0&feature=related
M’appari tutt’amor, sing in Italian by Pavarotti & Lanza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnQCD1_pj7w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvC7A2YoMs&feature=related
Dreaming of Home & Mother
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWSP0dD8gnM&feature=related
My Dear Old Sunny Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l9wA_Ho-v0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-b08yZSUVY&feature=related
http://www.pdmusic.org/hays.html; Move the screen to 1871 & click My Dear Old Sunny Home

Dvorak's Going Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEuoE9sViA
Some photos from Hubble Space are spectacular. You almost think our home is in the deep space of our cosmos. But at the last moment, the distintive blue marble shows up from the corner & it is our Earth, an almost ocean sphere. The Earth is truly our home.

Slide Rules

2008-08-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

I just cleaned the garage & found a good old slide rule I used to use in our Taida’s day. It is a Hemmi 153 for EE. After so many years, I can barely remember the scales & functions. Most of you use Hemmi 255, also for EE.

For some reason, I seldom used it in my graduate classes in the US, although I was still an EE major. The discipline of EE consists of many fields such as communication, power, control system, computer & logic, circuit & network, electronics, solid state physics, etc. Most of these fields stress on theory & application. The numerical calculation is minimal. In other words, due to lack of case study or field application, the calculation is fairly limited & so the use of slide rule is rare. Compare to law & MBA programs, our EE seems less exciting & lack of colorful or hot discussion. I spent half day to review my good old slide rule & would like to share some of my finding. Of course, most of us knew these long time ago. Here are the scales I found in Hemmi 153:

L: Logarithm
K: Cube
A: Square
A,B: Multiply, Divide
C,D,CI: Multiply, Divide, Proportion
T: Tangent
GTheta: Gudermanian Angle for Sinh on T scale & Tanh on P scale
Theta: Angle of Trigonometry, 360 degrees in a circle
RTheta: Radian Angle of Theta, 2 pi in a circle
P,Q,Q’: Sin, Cos & Hypotenuse of Right Triangle
LL3, LL2, LL1: log log scale for exponential functions

The operation of the slide rule is by sliding center bar and finding the answer using various scales. So the operation is basically Addition & Subtraction in nature. However, if the scale is calibrated in a logarithmic fashion, then the multiplication becomes addition & division becomes subtraction. That is exactly what scale A,B,C,D & CI do. In fact, the scale L is calibrated from 0 to 10 in equal spacing. As to the calculation of exponential functions, it takes one more log to convert exponent to multiply. In LL3, LL2 & LL1, the scale is calibrated in log log fashion, so the calculations of exponent is converted to addition, a slide rule operation. GTheta is Gudermanian Angle for finding Sinh on T scale & Tanh on P scale. It is not obvious why hyperbolic functions have anything to do with Tangent & Square functions. I think the key is how GTheta is defined. Most electrical engineers are not really interested in the definition of GTheta. All we care is getting Sinh from T scale & Tanh from P scale. As a matter of fact, the graph of Sinh looks like Tan & Tanh looks like Sin in the range of principal values.

Nowadays we don’t see slide rules except the places like museums. This is one example that technology changes the way we calculate, and so the way we live. You might ask why. In 1972, HP introduced HP-35 Electronic Calculator. It has 35 buttons (so called HP-35) with four functions, trigonometric, logarithmic functions, square root & exponential functions. The accuracy of the calculation is 10 significant digits. Since it can perform all the functions of the slide rules & do them more accurately (10 significant vs 3 or 4 digits in slide rules) and efficiently (much faster), it sent the slide rules into oblivion. From then on, slide rules faded away like old soldiers & books of math tables disappeared in no time. In 1972, I worked for Mostek, a spin out of Texas Instrument. Mostek supplied three ROMs for HP-35. I had the chance to see the complete binary code of the algorithms & its architecture. The processor operates fetch, store, branch, add & shift with four registers. Each register has 56 bits, organized as 14x4, ie 14 digits in BCD. The internal register calculations are 14 digits and the accuracy is 10 digits. It is a very primitive but compact processor dedicated just for scientific calculations. The four functions are calculated with add & shift. Logarithm is calculated using Sequential Table Lookup (log 2, log 1.1, log 1.01 & log 1.001). For example, log 30 is converted to a series of numbers as follows:
Log 10*3 = log 10* 2*1.5 = log 10*2*1.1*1.36 = log 10*2*1.1*1.1*1.1*1.01*1.01=
Log 10 +log 2 + 3*log1.1 + 2*log 1.01.
Since log10=1, log 2, log 1.1, log 1.01 are the constants store in ROM, you just look them up & add to get the correct answer. The method seems cumbersome. But the processor is fast enough to get the most results within 3 seconds.

Trigonometric functions are calculated by Rotation Method (CORDIC) with Sequential Table Lookup (arctan 1, arctan 0.1, arctan 0.01, arctan 0.001 & arctan 0.0001). The angles correspond to 45°, 5.71°, 0.57°, 0.06° & 0.01°. For example, Tan 52° is converted to Tan (45+5.71+ 0.57 + 0.57 + 0.06 + 0.06 + 0.01 + 0.01 + 0.01). For each rotation, use the formula we learned from Analytic Geometry:
X’ = xcosA - ysinA
Y’ = xsinA + ycosA
The values of sin & cos of the angles 45° to 0.01° are stored in ROM.
The final result Tan 52° = X’/Y’. Sin52° = Y’/SQRT(X’²+Y’²) & Cos52° = X’/SQRT(X’²+Y’²).

Exponential function exp(x) can be obtained similar to logarithmic function. Convert x to m0*c0 + m1*c1 + m2*c2 + m3* c3 + m4*c4. The constants in ROM c0, c1, c2, c3, & c4 are the values of ln10, ln 2, ln 1.1, ln 1.01, ln 1.001. So exp(x)= exp(m0*c0 + m1*c1 + m2*c2 + m3* c3) = 10^m0 + 2^m1 + 1.1^m2 +1.01^m3 + 1.001^m4, can be calculated by add & shift operations.

Some of us might have chance to take a course called Numerical Analysis in graduate school. It is considered part of the computer science curriculum. Alas, it didn’t mention anything that I found in HP-35. One thing I did know at that time why HP didn’t use Infinite Series, it is the speed of the convergence. It is hard to find infinite series converges fast enough for the slow processor in 1972.

Composition & Fate

2008-08-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago in our classmate email communication, we talked about the composition in our joint entrance examination & how important it was to our future. Here is another example. I read a book “小脚與西服” several years ago. It was written by Natasha Chang who is the grandniece of 張幼儀, the first wife of 徐志摩. This is a very interesting book which describes the whole thing from the interviews she conducted with 張幼儀. Several years ago, Taiwan produced a TV Show--人間四月天--, a very good show that traces the love affair of 徐志摩. In小脚與西服, it mentioned 張嘉璈, the brother of 張幼儀, went to 杭州第一中学 to see the condition of the school. While he examined the work of the students, he was so impressed by 徐志摩's composition, he made a decision to arrange the marriage between 徐志摩 & his sister 張幼儀. After this, we all know the rest of the story: unhappy marriage, divorce, can’t marry林徽因 as she refrained, found another lover 陸小曼, financial difficulty, … , airplane accident to end his life. This is the hindsight: If it were 林長民 (father of 林徽因) instead of 張嘉璈who read the composition, the future & fate of 徐志摩 would have been completely different. It would have been a perfect marriage 徐志摩+林徽因 & the Chinese literature might have been added one brilliant chapter. Anyway, this is just another example of the importance of composition to one’s future.

Ps1: 林長民 was well known, literally & politically and became a very good friend of 徐志摩. While 林長民 stayed in London, his daughter 林徽因 lived with him & attended college in London. 徐志摩 went to Cambridge & had chances to meet her. And so the love affair flourished. 張幼儀 moved to Cambridge but couldn’t salvage the marriage as 徐志摩 divorced her in no time. She later moved to Germany & eventually returned to China.

Ps2: The title of TV series “人間四月天“ is from a poem by 林徽因: “你是人間四月天”. She majored in architecture and well verse in literature. Her father-in-law is 梁啓超. Her father is 林長民, the cousin of 林覺民, one of 黄花崗七＋二烈士.

Gleaners

2008-08-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

I bought an old book recently in a book sale of local library. It is Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets (Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1954). I read Giselle & Swan Lake. Somehow it reminded me that I read the same text somewhere before. I happened to have a copy of “笆蕾舞與樂曲的故事", published in 1958 by 拾穗雜誌. It dawns on me that the latter is the translation from the Balanchine’s book. Anyway I am sure most of us knew 拾穗雜誌 when we were in high school & college. It was a pretty high quality monthly magazine. Beside this book, 拾穗雜誌 also published “西洋歌剧的故事”and “交响樂的故事”around 1956. After 1957, 吳心柳 founded “音樂雜誌 and published it for several years. These two monthly magazines were fairly influential in the last five years of 1950’s. 吳心柳, also known as 張继高, wrote some other books like 樂府春秋 and 從精緻到完美 etc. I learned a lot from these two magazines when I was in school. Time goes fast, they are all gone & passed away. It is quite nostalgic when I reread some of these books. After 1960, 文星雜誌 & 皇冠雜誌 entered the center stage. That was the time of 李敖 & 瓊瑤. Somehow 李敖 didn’t like 瓊瑤 & attacked her novel ”窗外”. Anyway, that is another story. Go back to 拾穗雜誌, its cover is the famous painting by Jean Francois Millet, a French impressionist. Millet was a painter fond of the peasant scene. His paintings show the relations between nature & human being. They give you a feeling of hardworking peasants toiling their labors & still find harmony with the nature. Usually the background is the golden sunset or blue sky with patchy clouds couple with a remote chapel with its steeple. It has a profound effect to the viewers. I heard that his several paintings are now on display in Taipei, including his two most famous paintings: The Gleaners (拾穗) & The Angelus (晚祷). I saw these two original paintings at Musee d’Orsay in Paris in 1986. The museum was used to be a railway station. It was just converted to a museum at that time. Several years later, I purchased the reproduction copies in Palo Alto downtown at $16 apiece. I hang them in my family room since then. The Gleaner has three women in the foreground, one looks like mother in the center, the one on the left looks like her daughter and the woman on the right looks a little bit older and can’t bent comfortably. The background is a field with harvest activities and golden sky. The golden field extends remotely to the sky and forms a uniform color---穗野共長天一色.. You watch this painting & realize there are still some poor people live on the grains left by the harvest. Perhaps they have some children to feed at home & so they have to work hard to get by. You feel very sorry for them and hope their children will eventually get good education & get out of the situation. I remember during 1970’s, there was an engineering weekly magazine in Silicon Valley ran a contest matching famous painting with engineering activities. The Gleaner won the contest with title: “Boy, if those guys in Texas Instruments find out this is the way we grow semiconductor chips, ……”
The Angelus is even more famous than the Gleaners. This painting shows a peasant couple takes time off in the field to say prayers before going home. It is after sunset, it is getting dark but the sky is still glowing with golden color. The most prominent & moving scene is the remote church steeple. It gives you the ambient of bell ringing & you seem to hear it. At this moment, you really feel & understand---勞動神聖. Long time ago (1936), 開明書店 published a book by夏丏尊, title 平屋雜文. In this book, there is one article “米萊的晚鐘”. 夏丏尊 said “信仰, 勞動, 恋愛, 這三者融和一致的生活才是我們的理想生活. He then extended the argument that the women need to labor physically or mentally in order to gain economic-independent status in the society. I wouldn’t go that far but I like his imagination. This painting gives me a feeling of peace, harmony & assurance of the future. It is interesting 夏丏尊 used 晚鐘 instead of 晚祷. That means he focused more on the church steeple than the prayer.

Ps: 夏丏尊 also translated the well-known book 愛的教育 (by Edmondo Amicis). There are several versions of translation published after him. However, I think his version is the best. 夏丏尊 was a teacher & educator & I always found passions in his work & writing.

Midsummer Night's Dream

2008-08-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

This is the midsummer time, time for vacation & relax. It is also a time for dream, a midsummer night's dream. Shakespeare wrote a lot of tragedies, but they are too heavy for most people. It is this Midsummer Night's Dream makes him a great playwright of comedy. Since its first performance in 1596, it continues to capture people's imagination & attention. The plot of the play is a mixture of mytholody, fairly tale, romance, jealousy, mischief, etc. After all, it is like a dream. It does show that our love affairs tend to go astray, go blind pursuit & wake up to the reality eventually. It may be the most popular play of Shakespeare. They are numerous music, opera & ballet performed every year based on this play. The most popular one is Mendelssohn's Incidental music of Midsummer Night's Dream. He composed the overture of it when he was 17 years old. He eventually finished the other part of the music 16 years later by the request of German Kaiser. The most famous pieces are the following:

1. Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h1MGAlkqno&feature=related

2. Scherzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dLhSZLIpvA&feature=related

3. Nocturne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QElxEypehc&feature=related

4. Wedding March
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVjyLbTItmw&feature=related

Wedding March is traditionally played in a wedding ceremony after the couple make the vow & parade down the aisle. It was started by Queen Victoria in 1858 by marrying her eldest daughter. From then on, it becomes a tradition.

Mendelssohn was a German with Jewish blood. However, he converted to a Lutheran christian. Even with this conversion, he was still shuned by people like Wagner & Hitler's Nazis. Most of the discrimination occurred after his death. He is generally considered the most fortunate composer in history. He came from a rich jewish family, have happy family & marriage. He was a child prodigy & a good painter, got acquantance with Gothe, Humboldt, Liszt, Chopin, German Kaiser and Queen Victoria etc. All in all, he lead a very happy life. No wonder his music is gay, lively & merry with romantic mood. If you listen to his Violin Concerto & Italian Symphony, you will surely appreciate his romantic quality. He also selflessly revived the music of Bach & Schubert to a new height.

He was very close to his sister Fanny. He died due to heart-broken one month after her death . His another sister Rebecca married Dirichlet, a great German mathematician. Most of us are familiar with Dirichlet, a person credited with modern definition of Function. It is interesting to know that Dirichlet's doctoral advisors were Simeon Poisson & Joseph Fourier, two heavy weights in electromagnetics.

Poisson's equation with no charge is Laplace's equation. We all know that they can be deduced from Maxwell's equations. But in history, it was the reverse procedure. Maxwell got to know all these equations & summed up with his great four equations. Fourier developed Fourier series & integral via his study on heat transfer. He worked under Napoleon on the expedition to Egypt. It was a failure campaign with some valuable bonus to the history. It was during this expedition that French army discovered Rosetta Stone. It is displayed in British Museum these days. The Rosetta Stone is a piece of rock that contains the same text with three different languages: hieroglyphic, Demotic (ancient Egyptian) & Greek. It is surely an open-sesame to understand Egyptian hieroglyphics which was undecidered at that time. It was a breakthrough event in history. I was in the British Museum several years ago & touched the stone to feel the history, a unique experience. Napoleon was graduated from the French academy of artillary. He was an expert of gun warfare. Fourier at that time was solving heat problems of French guns in the field of Egypt. He developed the famous Fourier series & the concept of representing any non periodic function with Fourier series. His work increased the efficiency of guns, influenced the campaign & the mathematics. As we all know, Napoleon was defeated in Egypt not by British army, but by British navy, lord Nelson in Battle of the Nile. Nowaday we go to Trafalgal square in London, a statue high up in the column is (you guess it right) Nelson. French army shouldn't feel bad on Egyptian expedition & Fourier certainly must be proud of his work. He also discovered in 1824 the so-called GreenHouse Effect which becomes a very important subject these days.

40 year after graduation reunion

2008-05-07T14:46:00.001-07:00

You may enlarge any picture by clicking on it.

35 years after graduation reunion

2008-05-05T18:35:00.001-07:00

Photos for 2007 Norwegian Cruise

2008-05-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

This is the first try. It may not work.

Spring

2008-04-01T15:34:00.001-07:00

Spring is here already. When you don't have to get up early and fight traffic, you really appreciate the poem: 春眠不覺曉, 處處聞啼鳥. Around 5am, the mockingbirds are calling, & then the doves follow. I got awaken, but I know I don't have to get up, so I fall asleep again. But mockingbirds are tenacious. They arm with at least 10 different calls & easily make good music. Spring is such a nice season, full of life & energy. The followings are some things I remember related to spring while we were in school.

春, by 朱自清,
盼望著, 盼望著, 東風來了, 春天的脚步近了. ....春天像小姑娘,花枝招展的,笑着,走著 ....

康橋, by 徐志摩
春,這勝利的晴空彷佛在你的耳边私語. 春,你那快活的靈魂也彷彿在那裡回响.

四時田家苦樂歌, by 鄭夑
細雨輕雷驚蟄後, 和風動土, ....漸茅簷日暖,小姑衣薄.

Longing for Spring, by Mozart
This is a little piece of song longing for spring, especially delightful sung by Vienna Choir Boys.

Concerto Spring, by Antonio Vivaldi
This is the first concerto from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. You can sense all the spring environment in the first movement.

Spring Symphony, by Robert Schumann
Schumann composed this symphony right after he married Clara, one of the best time in his life. You can hear all the high spirit of spring season. Especially the first movement with title: Visiting of Spring.

Voice of Spring, by Johann Strauss
Everyone knows this delightful waltz. It sounds as if the dance occurs right at the mid-spring with everything in full bloom. I happened to watch a new year program two years ago. It featured this Voice of Spring with Ballet dancer from London Royal Ballet. You will always remember that performance if you watch it.

Rite of Spring, by Stravinsky
This is a heart-pounding music used in that famous movie Fantasia. You can exercise a much wider area of imagination in painting music. The movie shows all volcano erupting, the earth shaking & sends all dinosaurs into extinction. It is a very powerful portrayal.

Spring Song, by Mendelssohn
This is a short piece of gem, a song without word. It fits the mood of late spring. Although the melody is sweet & light, you just feel that you miss or lose something at the end of the song: 淡淡哀愁,若有所失.

Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
This book is the forerunner of the current Green Movement. It is the warning of using pesticides uncontrollably in our environment. Carson also wrote that famous bestselling book: The Sea Around Us. There is a Chinese translation by 夏道平: 海的故事.

論語, by 孔子
莫春者,春服既成,冠者五六人,童子六七人,浴乎沂,風乎舞雩,詠而歸.
This sounds as if everyday is a holiday, what a good life. Our life should be like this, especially in spring. By the way, this text gives the hint that Confucius really had 72 disciples, 30 (5*6)adults & 42 (6*7) boys. Don't get serious, this is just for fun.

Hi, All

2008-03-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

This blog has been very quiet. I wonder how many of our classmates really read it or even know about it. You feel as if you are doing some monologue when you write something here. Life should be a many splendored things. Don't just work all the time, enjoy life should be a higher priority.

Taiwan just finished the presidential election & all of you already know the result. One week before the election, I took a walk in a nearby park with some of my friends. It was a beautiful day, I raised my head & see some cirrus hanging in the blue sky. Cirrus is a kind of clouds formed in very high altitude, about 5,000 ft. I have seen this before in autumn of Taipei during our college days. Suddenly, I have an urge to make a poem out of it. I said "藍天馬尾雲", I asked my friends to finish the sentence .ie. 对联 or 对句. We had some interesting combinations. I invite our classmates to do the same if you are interested to supply the inputs.

Engineering Drawing

2008-03-04T01:15:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I hang around a local library's book sale. I encountered a book: Engineering Drawing by French (French is the author, not language), 1960. This is the text book we used in our sophmore year. I don't know how many of you still remember the class by 凌霄. My memory is fading fast, so I think it is worthwhile to write something about him & his class. 凌霄 was unique because he always complained something in the class. For instance, 你看那些窗子, 都不是垂直的. 工程館是怎広盖出耒的? 一包水泥八包沙! Apparently, he was not a happy man at that time. I heard that he was running some kind of bufferfly business in southern Taiwan. Life must be tough at that time as a professor. I just hope those poor butterflies don't get perished or extinguished. I browsed this text book, it reminds me a lot of interesting stuff. After we finished the drawing assignment, we needed to have the drawing checked by him. Nine out of ten, we got problem and had to redraw. It was very frustrating and really a pain in the neck. I am not sure this class have anything to do with my future career. Anyway, the same holds true for 投影几何, 工程材料 & 三民主義, totally a waste of time. I did remember a person who did the best in 凌霄's class, 黃中平. Since I left NTU, I have never heard of him & the classlist has no information or data of him. Anybody knows where he is?

Life can be boring sometime. We always remember something unusual & forget all the boring routine stuff. For instance, when it comes to 翁通楹, it is "Tighto Sido", 李举賢, it is "你這是 shami-isu", 白光弘, it is Reading the text book Antenna in the class. How about 楊進順, it is "楊都美". She reminds me of him instead of the other way around. I actually forgot the title of his class & I am not sure I learn anything from him. One thing I did remember what he said, "我一碰到 delta 和 epsilon 就頭痛". He probably hates calculus. Next, how about 馬雲龍? His 电机机械 is another pain in the neck, too many assignments. I remember we had to spend those precious weekend just toiling along with slide rule for his assignment. If we had electronic calculators, it might save us some time. But slide rule, it is killing. We all found out that we might as well wait a little while until Apo finished his work & shared some of his secret.

I am sure some of you have good memory & stories. Please blog & share them before we all forget those good old days.

A Wise Old Man

2008-02-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

Remember the slide show sent by AJ? I wonder about the following.

1. The guy has no human companion. A dog won't disagree with him, and if it did, he certainly will have the upper hand.
2. The picture of the guy with his dog at the beach looks good. Would it look as nice if the background is changed to something else, say, a busy street in Taipei?

Get On Board

2008-02-12T00:03:00.000-08:00

Dear EE64 Classmates,

Thank Wei Chen for setting this blogger up for us. I am happy to be the first one to try this out. I hope to see many postings about nostalgic old days or interesting new things from all of you.

Since my retirement from National Space Orgination in Hsin-Chu last summer, I moved to live with my 100 year old (Chinese way of counting) father in Taipei. The NTU campus is among my favorite places in Taipei for taking a walk. It has many more buildings extending all the way back now, but the section near entrance remains pretty much the same as the old days. The old library has been converted to the university museum now. The azalea starts blooming already though it will be another month before it gets most spectacular. I know some of you are coming back to Taiwan in March or April. I will be glad to take you for a campus stroll if you like.

Paul (Cheng-I) Chen

Greetings

2008-02-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Classmates,

A.J. Chen, Mark Yang, Cheng-I Chen and I have chosen NTUEE64 as the name of our class blog. Let's use it and have some fun.

Wei-Long