Moby Dick

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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 準噶爾人 cease to exist and 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 and war in dealing with the world affairs.

歲末感言

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 and good. Each period of our life has its own meaning and we must embrace it with positive attitude and 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 and 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 and stick to it most of the time, we should feel good. Life is full of trade-off and 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 and immune to a lot of violence and 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 and 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 and budding of winter---最能夠利用春的利益是有充分準備的冬天.

Life & Loss

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 and 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 and he seemed never wrote anything or appeared in any of our reunion trips. Recently I visited his website and 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 and keeps our head high and straight. The future is always awaiting us and we should embrace it joyfully.

PS: Notable people died in 2011:

Steve Jobs (age 56) and Elizabeth Taylor (age 79), two completely different personalities and 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) and 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

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

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

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

Liszt was born in 1811, one year after the birth of Robert Schumann and 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) and Liszt offered some suggestions. After 15 minutes, Liszt stood up and 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 and generous Liszt was in his time.

There is a movie "Song Without End" which 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 and his love affairs with Countess Marie d'Agoult and 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.

One of Liszt's famous piece is Liebestraume (Dreams of Love), very very dream like romantic piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGRdyfjgp8Y

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...

Another Liszt's famous piece is Hungarian Rhapsody #2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goeOUTRy2es

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 and played without pause or interruption between movements, unconventional. If you are popular and 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.

Note: Due to copyright issue on YouTube, the above link is no longer available.  However, you probably can check out the DVD from Netflix.

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.