Unintentional Porn

Last night my friend X said:"Lei, I hate you!" I was surprised:"Why?" He explained:"I was proctoring tonight. I knew it was going to be boring so I took the magazine you gave me to the classroom to kill time. A student flipped through it and found many porn images in it! I was so embarrassed! Why did you give me a porn magazine?"

The magazine in question is Panorama Monthly (Wan Xiang), a Chinese magazine about literature, history, people, and culture. It's like New Yorker, with a much lighter tone; or Vanity Fair without the ads. In short, it's anything but a porn magazine.

So what made X's students think it was a porn magazine? I searched my memory for all the articles on that issue. Finally, I got it. There was an article about how baths played an important role in the sex life throughout the Chinese history. Not unlike today, women could be quite active to seduce the men they liked. To be successful, they had to play some "games" or "tricks". One of them is taking baths in "fragrant water" in a not-so-well guarded room, and deliberately let men peek. Men, as we still do, took great pleasure in peeking a beautiful woman's naked body through the half-rolled bamboo curtains, half-open windows, or see-through screens. Of course, the scented steam enhanced the mystery. The article described some most powerful fragrance and some most efficient "techiques" women used, and some interesting "bath incidents" between some famous couples in the Chinese history. The author also provided some traditional paintings showing women taking bath, men peeking outside the house. These paintings must be the ones X's student saw. The article itself was funny, witty, purely educational and absolutely clean, but the American students didn't read Chinese. The only things made sense to them were these universally understandable obscene paintings. Looked through their eyes, they did look like porn!

The take-home lessons: 1) People are so different that they don't see the same things you see, and so 2)always be prepared to be embarrassed.

Two paintings from the article:



The King Peeking The Queen Bathing



Ladies Taking Bath

A Room With (Not So Much Of) A View

A Room With (Not So Much Of) A View

Le Roi et L'oiseau

I watched Le Roi et L'oiseau (The King and the Bird) again today. Of course, it was downloaded. Thank you, Internet! Used to be one of my childhood favorite cartoons. Still fresh after all these years.





Seems I have really been in a nostalgic mood lately.

The Phantom of the Opera

My favorite musical The Phantom of the Opera is going to the big screen. Yesterday Entertainment Tonight showed a teaser. Looks promising.



The Phantom of the Opera

Fahrenheit 9/11

My boss told me today that he had seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and he liked it alot. He said he would probably see it again and he urged me to see it too. I probably will.

He said he saw it yesterday afternoon, which explained why he left the lab so early yesterday. He probably didn't want us to know he went to a movie so he almost sneaked out of his office, and he left his office lights and stereo on, indicating:"I will be away for just a little while. I will be back. So don't you guys think I am a slacker!" Funny.

Yahoo!'s Chinese Search Engine

Yahoo! has unveiled its Chinese search engine, YiSou.com, a third member of its Chinese search engines (after its search enabled portal Yahoo! China, and 3721.com, a Chinese search engine Yahoo! acquired last year).

Google has reportedly tried to buy Baidu.com, a Google clone in China, but failed. Google has its own Chinese language version, so it's still in good shape.

It seems that China has become a market no one dares to ignore, even in cyber world.

Gtray

When some people are still begging for gmail accounts, some smart guy has already written a Gmail notification program-Gtray! Amazing!

Hotmail finally surrendered.

Microsoft is going to increase hotmail to 250M. It's just a trend no one can fight.

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils!

I am downloading The Wonderful Adventures of Nils! Saw it when I was about 7 years old. Favorite cartoon!

Dark Matter/Dark Energy

I was watching "AFI's 100 years, 100 songs" last night. However, during commercial, I flipped through the channels and ended up watching "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS and forgot about the "100 songs". The show was about the dark matter and dark energy of the universe. Very weird stuff. It's kinda mind-bloggling that most of the universe is composed of the matter we do not know and cannot see. Can dark matter form "dark stars", "dark planets" and even "dark life"? Maybe somewhere in the universe some "dark people" are wondering the same question. Also, if, as they claimed in the show, dark matter is everywhere in the universe, is it in the normal world? Is it an integrated part of the "normal matter"? Is it in us?

I always like this kind of cosmos weird stuff. In a book I have read before, the author not only discussed the dark mater and dark energy, but also the superstring, multiple dimensions of the universe (16 dimensions, if I remembered correctly), "mirror universe", multiverse, and, weirdest of all, multiple time axes!

Wow! Our universe is just getting weirder and weirder!

Oh, BTW, the host of that show, Alan Alda, is soooo funny! He is at least 50 years old and still behaves like a child! At one time of the show, the astronomers who were conducting a very important experiment to search for supernovae kindly invited Alan to sit in front of the main control computer for a test drive. He rolled his chair in position, and, with an excited mischievous boy's expression on his face, he rubbed his hands above the keyboard, exclaiming:"I'm gonnna strike some keys!" The scared astronomers cried out:"NO, NO, NO!" He asked:"What should I do then?" They said:"When that guy says 'ok', you hit the 'return' key." He was kind of disappointed:"That's it?" The astronomers replied firmly:"That is it!"

From now on, I'm gonna watch more "Scientific American Frontiers".

A Plant Infront of My Window

My New Toy!

My digital camera arrived today! It's so cool! I already feel like a photographer! And yet it is quite complicated, too. There is a lot of options to play with. I will experiment with them in the future.

Looking around myself, I found I have bought quite a few gadgets during the last several months:

a Sony 27" FD Trinitron® WEGA® Flat-Screen TV(quite a luxury item)

an iPAQ 1945 PocketPC(I'm loving it!)

a SonyEricsson T616 cell phone+Cingular (ditched my regular phone service)

a Jabra bluebooth headset

a Compaq Presario PC with 15" flat panel monitor(yeah!) Ditched my old Dell.

And now, a brand new member of my gadgets family, Konica Minolta Dimage Z1 DC.

Do these gadgets make me happier than before? Well, I don't know. What I know is, they make my life more convenient and more enjoyable. Aren't convenience and enjoyableness parts of happiness? If so, then YES, they make me happier. And YES, money can buy happiness. And YES, I am becoming a material boy.

The Two Things

I clicked my way into this "The Two Things" site today. Here is the story:

The Story of the Two Things

A few years ago, I was chatting with a stranger in a bar. When I told him I was an economist, he said, “Ah. So… what are the Two Things about economics?”

“Huh?” I cleverly replied.

“You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, here are the Two Things about economics. One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Very challenging question, isn't it?

My boss once asked me:"How would you explain your work to the guy sitting next to you on a plane? How would you make him think your work is important?"

I never thought of this before so I said honestly:" I don't know. What would you say?"

"Oh, just make him believe my work can cure cancer or something", he said.

So what's the Two Things about Genetics?

My answer(first draft):1. Your genes are the most important thing; 2. Don't blame everything on your genes.

I Bought A Digital Camera!

Yes. Finally I bought it. Well, it's kind of an impulse purchase, since I don't really need it that urgently. Besides, there hasn't been any really good deal on DC recently. So theoretically, I should have waited. But, I have been pondering upon this for about a month now and I just can't wait any longer. So I bought it. And if you think about it, one month is too long for an "impulse", so it doesn't qualify as an impulse purchase.

OK. It's a Minolta Z1.

It has 10X optical zoom! That's the main reason I bought it. Other features are also good. Reviews are good. My friend has one and I like it. So I bought it.

I also bought a 256MB SD card. Oh, because the 32MB SD card on that site was free after rebate, so I got one of those too.

Probably I will get them next week. Kinda high now.

Fidelity Gene?

Scientists Find Gene Cure for Cheating Lover Voles.

A single gene inserted into the brain can change promiscuous male rodents into faithful, monogamous partners, scientists said Wednesday.

Remember this because it's going to be a key factor in the remake of "The Stepford Wives": "The Stepford Husbands".

What's Gmail?

The other day I was chatting with a friend, H, on MSN Messenger. He was my college classmate, so he started as a potential biologist, but switched to computer science soon after he came to study in America. This was not suprising because he was already a computer geek in college. Now he is programming for a bio-tech lab, and soon he will be studying Bioinfomatics in Yale.

I had several Gmail invitations to give away so I asked him if he wanted it.

me: hi, do you want a gmail?
H: what's gmail?
me:#$@@&*^%$$#!!!

Next day, I emailed another friend, Z, asking if he wanted a gmail account. His reply:"If you say yes, sure I will say yes. But first tell me, what is gmail?"

I was shocked. Did they spend the last several months in a crater on Venus/an ice hole in Antarctica/Titanic under the ocean/a droll cave of Middle Earth/the dungeon of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft & Wizardry? I mean what's wrong with them?

...or me?

Did I pay too much attention to what was happening online?

So I compared our lives:

H bought a new car.
Z bought a new car a year ago.
I am driving a used car which breaks down once a month. Oh, remind me to bring it back to the garage because it's really loud now.

H bought a new house. He is moving in on Augest 2nd.
Z bought a new house (lake view!)several months ago.
I am living in an apertment (rented) sharing with a roommate.

H has a pretty girlfriend. I think they are going to get married soon.
Z married 2 years ago. A nice wife.
I..., well, I have my fruit flies.

It’s clear now: they are having a grown-up style life, aka REAL life. I am having a geek life, aka, FAKE life.

“Life style choices.” I shrugged, and sent out more gmail invitations.

Cell Phone Virus

A Virus to invade cell phones! Unbelievable.

Good thing is a "research product". But the idea is out. I am sure at this time all over the world evil geniuses are racing to make a real cell phone virus.

Nothing is safe now.

100M Yahoo! Email

Yahoo! has increased its free email to 100M! Although my existing email still shows 6M, the email size on its "new user sign up" page is showing 100M. Maybe my 6M inbox will increase in a day or two.

Anyway, I have signed up for a 100M free email account, just in case. BTW, it's so hard to think of a name now. All the names seem to be "unavailable". I had to add numbers behind my name, which I hate.

And the new system seems not stable yet. After signed up, I had a lot of trouble to login. It showed "100M" when I did login, though. I don't quite like its striped theme. Hard to read the words in the stripes.

Anyway, it's free. And you can't have too many free email accounts, can you?

WB's Superstar USA

I admit it's a sick show. To trick people into thinking their singing is good when in fact is really bad and making huge fools of themselves in front of the audience is just not very morally right to me.

So I feel guilty to admit that I actually followed this show from the beginning and was eager to watch its finale tonight.

Let's fact it: moralities aside, this show is incredibly entertaining. The competitors are unbelievable: unbelievably untalented, and unbelievably confident. I didn't even know these super lousy yet super cocky people existed until I watched the show.

However, when I was laughing at their horrible performances, I also felt a little admiration for them. At least they had the guts to stand up, although it was based on their false self-images.

In the end of tonight's finale, Jamie won the title. Then the highly anticipated moment came: the host told her that this show was to search for the worst singer in America. I had prepared to see her flip out. But she took it really well. She made a few faces all right, but she was still happy. It was like:" Worst singer? Ugh, it sucks! But who cares! I won! I am $100,000 richer!"

Well, good for her, but I was a little disappointed.(Guilty.)

And Mario, who I think is truly the worst, amazed me too. He said something like:"Before I was this shy and quiet guy. But this experience brough the inner me out. Now I feel the fire in me, the superstar in me." Well said, Mario, although still a little too cocky to me. Now I have a little respect to you. Wish you a happy marriage. (And wish your fiancee didn't watch this show.)

So which one is better: Knowing one's own weakness and hide it, or not knowing ones' own weakness and show it?

Are You Addicted To The Internet?

I took the test out of boredom, and to my surprise, I am only 46% addicted and I am just an average internet user. I always thought that I was definitely an Internet Addict.

Are you Addicted to the Internet? 46% Average@Internet-User.com (41% - 60%) You seem to have a healthy balance in your life when it comes to the internet and life away from the computer. You know enough to do what you want online without looking like an idiot (most of the time). You even have your own Yahoo club or online journal! But you enjoy seeing your friends and going out to enjoy life away from your computer. The Are you Addicted to the Internet? Quiz at Quiz Me!

I Need A Break

I have been in this "zero productivity" phase lately, partly because my boss is away again (yeah!), partly because my experiments suck. No positive results for a while now, which makes me really frustrated. Besides, I feel very sleepy around 4 pm. This is rare.

I think I need a break from work. Last summer I took a 2-week vacation to California and Las Vegas and that was so much fun! Most memorable things:

the music fountain in Las Vegas:


Dante's Point in the Death Valley:


the sea beside the No.1 highway from San Francisco to LA:


and the Back to the Future + Shrek 3D in Universal Studio:


Wish I could go back again！

Oh, a little story about the radio war.

Today, when I came back from my lunch break (which lasted for about 2 hours), no one was in the lab. I change the radio station to Classic FM, and surfed the internet for a while. Then I got sleepy. My eyes kept closing. So I laid my head on the desk and napped a little bit. When I woke up, F had come back and naturally, the radio had been changed to "93Q, the top hit music station!"

China Says Panda Population Rising

China Says Panda Population Rising



Isn't it cute?

My Boss's Dog

Molly is my boss's happy dog.

She runs to the boss when he comes through the door. She wags her tail. She jumps up and down. She scampers front and back. She licks his hands when he pads her. She begs when he teases her with a small piece of ham. She follows him everywhere he goes. She got all excited and hurries to the door when he says:"Molly! Wanna go outside?"

She is very happy and content around my boss, like a 1 year old baby around its parents.

But she doesn't like me at all, because I am a bad sign for her. Everytime I show up, she knows the boss's family will be away for a few days -without her.

The first time I pet-sitted her, it was a total disaster. That was the first time the boss left her alone at home. He asked me to come to his home the evening before he left to get acquainted with Molly. What a happy dog she was! My boss said she would probably be confused for a while but then she would probably be happy with me. "Look at how she licks your hand! Oh, she likes you!" he said.

The boss's family went away the next morning. When I opened the door that evening, I heard her neck bell tingling from upstairs to the door. But then she saw it was just me. Immediately she lost her oh-daddy's-back excitement, dropped her head, turned around and lay down on the couch. I walked in and sat beside her. She moved away a little bit to show her disappointment/dislikeness/alertness to me yet still keep decent politeness.

"Oh, Molly." I said.

I tried to break the ice and make friends. I padded her. I talked to her. I made funny noises. I shaked a toy fish at her in a way that my boss said would made her crazy.

Nothing.

Then I saw her eyes. I saw deep sadness. She probably thought her daddy abandoned her and I was the one who took her over.

"Life is just meaningless without Daddy around. Hand off me! This is not how Daddy pads me. This is not how Daddy talks to me. This is not how Daddy shakes that damn fish!"she said with her eyes.

"Don't worry, Molly! You daddy didn't abandon you! He will be back in three days!" Oh, how I wish she could understand my words!

She didn't respond. My heart sank. For the whole 3 days, I couldn't cheer her up no matter how hard I tried.

I felt sorry for her. Then I felt sorry for me. Never had I thought my feelings could be hurt by a dog. But there I was, sitting beside a sad dog on the couch, feeling depressed, useless, and incompetent.

I understood right there and then why the dog is called man's best friend.

Anti-Biotech?

150 Arrested Outside Biotech Conference.

I don't know what is in genetically modified food that made these people so scared and angry.

One of my friends who used to be in Rutgers University told me that there were always some “animal rights” people protesting outside biology department because the biologists were doing experiments on animals, which, appallingly, violated the rights of these animals. Once they even set a bomb to blow up the biology building. I hope they didn’t succeed.

I wonder if they will refuse medicine when they are sick. Most medicine nowadays are developed by using mice, rabbits and monkeys as experimental animals. Would they rather die than use these “evil” products?

Venus Transit II

I watched the Venus Transit...on the web.

Google's logo today:

iTunes in China?

Slashdot reported that Founder, China's second largest computer maker, will pre-install Apple's iTunes software in its new PCs, starting next month.

Does this mean they are going to open iTunes store in China, too? I wonder how many people are going to buy that.

Venus Transit

Venus Transit is HUGE these days.

Every morning, around 6:50, I wake up to NPR news on my SONY radio alarm clock. After local news, there is always a "Star Date" feature, sort of an astronomical events calender, which I like a lot. Over two weeks now, it's been talking about Venus Transit, about when people saw it last time(1882), about when you are going to see it this time(Jun 8th, 5:25 am to 7:26 am), about how it is a twice-in-a-life-time astronomical miracle(next one is in 2012, still possible; the one after that is in 2117, not quite likely), and about how you are supposed to observe it(look through a piece of welder's glass, at least No.14).

I have missed most of the major astronomical miracles: Halley's comet and other "easliy observed" comets, numerous "spectacular" meteor showers, lineup of planets...just to name a few.

It's very likely that I will miss this one, too. First of all, I don't have a No.14 welder's glass. Secondly, I don't know if there is any observatory around my city open to the public Tuesday morning. Lastly, and most importantly, I can't get up that early.

The Radio Wars

"It's so boring", F said.

"What is?", I asked.

"The radio."

"Finally", I thought, smiling.

Every lab has a radio. Every lab has more than one person. So inevitably, every lab has radio wars.

Especially when their music tastes collide, as in our lab:

The boss likes jazz.
F and X hate jazz.
F and X like pop music.
R (the under) hates pop music. ("cheesy", he calls them.)
R likes Rock'n'Roll.
F, X and I don't like Rock'n'Roll.
I like classical music and opera.
F and X hate classical music and opera.
The boss hates opera.
M hates rap.
Nobody likes rap.(the only common ground)

The boss's verdict:"Who comes in first has the pick." But the "picked" radio station would always be changed if the "picker" left the lab for a while. Sometimes it would be changed for so many times a day that the poor radio suffered nervous breakdowns from time to time. Otherwise how would you explain its frequent hissing sound?

It had become more and more clear that it had to stop, and someone had to give in. But who?

The boss wouldn't care because he is usually in his office, where he has a stereo playing jazz all the time;
M wouldn't care because she only works half-time and she only hates rap;
R wouldn't care because he is always in his classes and exams;
F and X would care and they are two people;
I would care but I am only one person.

So I gave in.

The radio was happily on "Y94FM, the best mix of the 70's, 80's, 90's and today" all the time ever since.

I personally have nothing against pop music per se, but that radio station has only about 20 songs and they play them over and over again, all day, all month, and probably all year. After several months of brain washing, I myself was having a nervous breakdown. That's why I was smiling with relief when F claimed he had enough, too.

My eyes followed him standing up, walking toward the radio, tuning through several stations and finally leaving it on..."Light 105.9, your continuous favorite light music!" It's like Y94FM's twin sister. You know they have different name, and perhaps different personalities, but you just can't tell one from the other.

I groaned.

What book are you?

Following the previous post, here comes "What book are you"?

I am:

You're The Sound and the Fury!

by William Faulkner

Strong-willed but deeply confused, you are trying to come to grips
with a major crisis in your life. You can see many different perspectives on the issue,
but you're mostly overwhelmed with despair at what you've lost. People often have a hard
time understanding you, but they have some vague sense that you must be brilliant
anyway. Ultimately, you signify nothing.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Sounds crazy. But I do have a "50% sane" button at the bottom of my sidebar. Coincidence?

What country are you?

Online quizzes are getting more and more outrageous-thus more fun! Take a look at this: What country are you?

Intersted in my results? Here it comes:

You're Madagascar!

Lots of people don't really know anything about you, making you
buried treasure of the rarest kind.  You love nature, and could get lost in it
whenever possible.  You're remote and exotic, and the few people who know you
value whatever they share with you a great deal.  For some reason, you really
like the word "lemur".
Take
the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Hey, don't forget to post your result in the comments!

William Manchester

Sad to hear that William Manchester died yesterday.

William Manchester was known to many Chinese readers as "the author of The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972", a book that educated, transformed and inspired many people.

It was published in 1978 in China. I was 3 that year, so I missed the cyclones it created throughout the Chinese intellectual society. It was republished once in 1988. I was 13, still too young. After that, it seemed to disappear from people's sight.

Gone, but not forgotten. 25 years later, in 2003, it has become one of the most requested and talked-about books in major Chinese book-related online forums. People were telling stories about this book, about how excited people felt when reading it, about how people finished all 4 volumes in one night, and about how hard it was to find a copy in a used bookstore and how high the price was if you were lucky enough to find one.

Finally, in May, 2004, it was republished, this time in two volumes. Sina.com, a portal site of China, put it online. I read it and, just like other people's reactions, got so excited that I wanted own one copy. So I tried to buy a set through an online Chinese bookstore that ships books to North America, but before I could place my order, it was sold out.

Mr. Manchester, thank you. And may you rest in peace.

William Hung's Predecessors

OK. This post is not lab-related.

So I was browsing Amazon.com for some opera CDs the other day, and got carried away by those "so you would like to...guides". One of them, "So you'd like to... develop a taste for opera, pooh bear", introduced a CD called "Glory of Human Voice", and claimed that "this one needs to be heard to be believed". So I got curious and listened to some clips. OMG, I couldn't believe my ears. This is easily the BEST CD ever! The singers are really "talented" in a very peculiar way. Quite an blasting experience for me.

So, William Hung, what are you afraid of? (Apparently,he is afraid of nothing.)