Christmas Questions

For the scientists:
Just what was the Star of Bethlehem? Was it really a star? Was it the Halley Comet, or some nova? Was it a UFO of some sort? Anyone else besides the wise men from the East saw it?

For the middle-eastern historian:
Did the wise men record anything about their visit to Bethelhem when they return to the East?
The census: what data about Joseph and Mary was gathered?

For the theologists:
Why can't Herod himself find Jesus by following the star?
What is the significance of the wisemen? They don't appear anywhere else after Jesus' baby times.

"Be Part of the Equation"

While walking in a department store, I saw some clothesline with the word "equation" on it. So I must take a look.
It says "Be Part of the Equation". Ok, but what equation is it? Ah, I found it, it is "1 > 0".

So it is a non-profit One is Greater Than None organization created by teenagers to help the needy in Africa.
It is great to have a heart for the needy!

But sorry, I'd like to point out that "1 > 0" is not an equation. It is an inequality. Equations have the equal sign (=) and both sides must be equal.

But "Be Part of the Inequality" sounds terrible on a T-shirt?

Besides this clothesline, there are plenty of merchandise that claims to help Africa by donating a certain amount... Although it is good thing, but doesn't fix the root of the problems.
Why are people genociding each other over there? Until there is a PEACE in there it is hard to help by donating small amounts... How do we give them fresh water and solve their food crisis and other problems? Until there is solution to those it is hard to help.

But some help is better than nothing.

Shoes thrown at Bush!

This video is remarkable. It is such great symbolism at how popular is Bush and the war in Iraq.

I wish there will be interactive books in the future, much like little icons of sounds that children's books have. This shoe video will be a great addition to such interactive books.

Bush's reactions is amazingly fast!

I suppose this will be used as basis of video games, probably flash games on the internet. I am sure late night talk shows will play with this.

Tribune and Bankruptcy

Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy. See this link on the Tribune itself. Perhaps it is painful to layout and print that story for the newspaper workers.

Will that be the last story that they publish? Not really. Bankruptcy doesn't mean it is no longer in business... I still see the newspaper on sale today.

I first learned about the word "bankrupt" when watching Wheel of Fortune as a kid. (Ok, why does this show last for SO LONG?! is another topic.) Contestants who get it gets a cartoon-style sound and the $ for the current round goes to 0. Now that's a visual demonstration of the word! The unfortunate contestants usually keep clapping to pretend to cheer for the next contestant.

Well in real life the meaning of bankruptcy is different...

Bankruptcy just protects itself from collectors collecting its debt... Ok, bankruptcy is a fairly complex concept, this howstuffworks page gives a good introduction.

The fact that Tribune goes bankrupt and other bad economy news say it is some tough times.

The newspaper industry is destined to decline! People get FREE newspapers, such as the Red Eye, from Tribune itself... who needs to pay $0.75? People get news from internet. Who needs bulky paper copy?

* * *
So the Auto industry bailout plan died in Senate. The Big 3 (or ONLY 3) may have to go bankrupt! Perhaps... let it be! Is there anyone in the country willing to BUY one of the failed business and make it work better? (Hire back the best workers of the failed Big 3) I suppose America can use a new, better run auto company.

"Sad Day for Illinois"

Politics in Illinois is once in spotlight again. The last time it was Obama: we have another president from Illinois since Lincoln! And he is of course the nation's first African-American president... Martin Lurther King's dream fulfilled.... etc.

Obama is currently a senator from Illinois, when he becomes president we need a replacement Illinois senator!

Ok, no special election needs to take place. The governor appoints one... and whoa! corruption has allegedly occured: the post would go to the highest bidder. He was arrested and released on bond, of course, denying wrong doing.

The previous governor Ryan is already in jail. Blagojevich is elected to clean up that mess. Chances are: Blagojevich may end up in jail too if proven guilty! How about in the same cell and call it the Governor's Mansion.

These politicans have lost Americans' trust. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says: "it is a sad day for Illinois."

Ok, is it a tip of iceberg? If everything that all the government officials do are revealed. Do you think there will be more corruptions all over?

Be aware, history lessons say corrption, economic depression and all that leads to revolts and revolutions.

Some people, including Obama, urge Blagojevich to resign. What I don't understand is this: how come no one talks impeachment? Well, governors from both Republician and Democrat parties are not so trustworthy, what's next for Illinois?

Golden and Silver Rule

The following is from wiki about Confucious:

Perhaps his most famous teaching was the Golden Rule stated in the negative form, often called the silver rule:

子貢問曰、有一言、而可以終身行之者乎。子曰、其恕乎、己所不欲、勿施於人。
Adept Kung asked: "Is there any one word that could guide a person throughout life?"
The Master replied: "How about 'shu' [reciprocity]: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself?"
Analects XV.24, tr. David Hinton

Golden Rule is Jesus's famous statement "do to others what you would have them do to you" Matthew 7:12

So Jesus and Confucious basically have an equivalent statement, how come one gold and one silver? (Ok, that's meaningless protest).

己所不欲、勿施於人: I always thought the meaning was something like this: don't like a gift? don't recycle it and give to another person. I didn't realize this deeper meaning. This is a statement for use throughout life: 可終身行之一言!

About the translation: 'shu' (恕) = reciprocity? Um, I thought reciprocity is x and 1/x? As far as I understand 恕 is forgiveness!

Environmental Ideas

People won't do anything, even saving the earth if there is no financial incentive. So in order to save environment, we must make it benefitial to do so.

Got some ideas here.

1. Durable Coffee Mugs
Look at the lines of your local Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. People line up and willing to pay $2 for their morning coffee. Free Coffee should be a basic benefit of a company! In that expensive $, there is also the disposable cup that is wasted.

Let's Dunkin and Starbucks to sell durable mugs (ok, they already do). Give customer a discount if they use the re-usable mugs. That is, pay just $1.75 if you use the durable cup. That way, people will BUY the mug to save $, and stores will use less paper/foam cups and benefitial for the environment! win-win-win situation.

2. Free shopping bags, make people pay for plastic bags
Even at $1 a reusable grocery bag, is the American public going to bother to buy one instead of the free plastic bags at grocery stores? How about giving them out for free. Make collector editions so it is fun to own one! After that, make customers pay a quarter for each plastic bag at grocery stores. The govenment will surely be able to recover the cost of the free bag. Plastic bag usage will instantly come down (ask Ikea how many bags it saved)

3. Fewer other models, lower cost of the hybrid
It is prohibitively expensive to get a hybrid. It costs at least $5000 more than a
regular car. How many gallons of gas to use before it make financial sense? And there are so few out there. The Toyota guy I talked to say I must wait at least a year to get a Prius. Ok, America will continue to burn gasoline and make Earth global warm like Venus if it continues that way. GM has how many models? All those chevy and pontiac stuff don't sell that well anyway? How about discontinue them, mass produce the Volt or another hybrid model... concentrate effort on it to lower the cost... make it more cost-effective and available than the Japanese models! I'd love to "buy American", but that American product needs to be better and cheaper than others!

4. Recycle cans with incentive
When I was a kid, coke (and great tasting soy milk!) comes in glass bottles. You pay extra deposit $ for the glass bottles and when you return that you get the money back. Look at a typical alumnium can, a handful of states do that. It should be extended to all 50 states. That makes people recycle cans with financial motivation... Better yet, don't drink that much pops. Look at those cute 100 calorie cans.... It takes at least 10 minutes of jogging/running to burn that!

Heavenly Events

Jupiter and Venus will be bright tonight! Here is the news item.
Astronomy events awe scientist and backyard skywatching enthusiasts. No I don't own expensive telescopes nor binoculars. I live in city and have little chance of being able to see anything other than the sun and moon (because light from city and smog). However I did go to the plantarium and observed the red planet Mars at its closest to earth in 50000 years in 2003.

It seems that scientists know a lot about astronomy. The weatherman can predict EXACTLY sunrise, sunset time and say meteor shower will occur when and where. Astronomy books are big with beautiful photographs along with charts such as oh this planet has certain diameter and mass and has so many mooons, and revolve around in exactly so many earth days. They can even tell you what gases are in their atmosphere.

Actually scientists only know some very basic information about the universe we live in. People are studying hard from the dusts of Mars... There are many, gosh so many unknowns in space. It is the final frontier.

I think every one should take an intro to astronomy class in college, unfortunately I didn't have time to do so! Astronomy 101 should be fun; beyond that may be too difficult for most! I have seen a TA dealing with very difficult looking Riemann non-Euclidean geometry and those equations make me faint. See here for a taste of it. Folks, relativity and Einstein is not just the easy looking equation E=mc².

Unfortunately I don't know any astronomy enthusiasts/experts in person... I'd like to ask: how do you know that certain bright objects are planets and not stars millions of lightyears away?

But how many people care about astronomy? Unless a huge meteorite is going to hit the earth, not many people will look up. We are like a bunch of working ants... (many of them in suit-and-tie talking about the stock market) could there be some other beings watching us like people watching ants?

Thanksgiving

So you know the story too: pilgrims get devastated in harsh winter and the Indians helped them survive. So they thank them and heaven. This is classic American story that we sing praise to every year.

Ok, some pilgrims came for freedom of religion. Many came for gold, silver, and shorter route to India and China for exotic items such as silk. The name of the game (same game today) is to make money. If these ancient pilgrims do some farming they probably won't suffer as much.

The native Americans who helped the European settlers later got genocide, got pushed to reserves. Their arrows are no match for European guns. The winners write the history, IF you find it mentioned on your history text.

Generations and centuries have past. We can only let Judgement Day take care of justice.

Meanwhile, let Americans go frenzy at the airport and at stores, and have some poor taste turkeys.

Why can't stores offer more sales another day?

Astronaunt's drinks

Being an astronaunt is many kids' dream job. (Not me, I STILL don't have one) There seems to be no job more exotic than astronaunt...

Few kids think about practical aspect of it, such as how to survive in space.

Here is what to do when you run out of water:
link.

I hope this machine never gets broken!

Transformers Animated

Transformers Animated is a new cartoon of the Transformers. I havent' seen it and probably won't be going to... I saw some advertisements for these DVDs.

Oh my, look at those drawings! The Transformers should be robots not muscle guys like Hercules cartoon. I am not sure if the cartoons will be any good. The new movie... the characters are like scrap metals. TF has lost its coolness.

Western cartoonist can't draw mechanical cartoons.

TF was fun 20 years ago for a previous generation. Kids today should watch something new and even cooler than their parents did. Unfortunately there aren't anything better.
Top blockbusters movies are about X-Men, Spiderman, etc, which are fairly old... How about some new inventions? But kids today probably don't read comics on paper now.

Bad Economy News within last couple days

1. Unemployment rate at 6.5%
1. Circuit City Bankruptcy
2. DHL layoff
3. Emergency aided need to Auto Industry

Just to name a few. Numbers are not looking good.

What's alarming is this: the trend is every industry is asking the government to help. What happened to Laissez Faire?

For the auto industry: perhaps we should ask why aren't people buying GM, Ford, Chrysler?. If you have friends talking about buying a new car, chances are they are considering Toyota or Honda. AND, their Toyota and Honda are probably built right here in North America. Customers want reliable, fuel-efficient, affordable car. We need a silver-bullet American-made effective hybrid car, in other words, better than the Toyota or Honda built right here in America. Can the American auto industry provide that?

If not, pumping money to a failed industry only hurts more.

鹿死誰手

鹿死誰手 is an interesting 4-word phrase: http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/1/11/14/c6928.htm. Oh so the deer means "the country", or the world to the ill-informed ancient Chinese.

A long time ago I read Street Fighter comics, in an exciting fight between Akuma and Urien, both have executed their most powerful attacks! including the Instant Hell Murder! The author wrote: 鹿死誰手?! 鹿死誰手?! as he lures me to buy the next issue. I anxiously waited throughout that week for the next issue.

Well Election 2008 is finally here. Who will win? This is probably not going to be a landslide victory. I predict a slight margin win. Perhaps 51%-49%.

To the winner who gets maybe 51%, ask yourself, why did 49% didn't vote for you?

What I don't understand is this: was Bush doing that well in 2004? How come the challenger Kerry didn't win? How come Bush can be a two-term president?

Grant Park is right under my workplace (I can view from window), a celebration party is setting up. Is a celebration somewhere in Arizona set up too?

鹿死誰手?! 鹿死誰手?! We will find out today.

"Do you know C Hash?"

I was asked this question one day during a visit to the nearby bookstore with a colleague.

"No, it is C SHARP, as in the musical note".
"Oh".

Apparently this colleague is not into music. This "#" symbol has many names, the number symbol, pound sign, or hash. How does your computer science pronounce "#include" and "#define" during your C lessons?

I have actually never had a formal C lesson in college. I had "AP Computer Science" with Pascal and skipped intro classes, and in college I was expected to already know C. I would suppose most say "pound include" and "pound define".

Now when you actually purchase stuff in pounds, you most likely will see "lbs" in your package.

Why is fried potatoes called hash browns? Ok, some are shaped like #, but not the ones in McDonald's breakfast menu.

Your cellphone has "*" and "#" as special keys. I have never need to use "#"

Ok, C# is a very ingenious name. It is says to be improvement from C (yeah right, actually it is just Microsoft's java). That sharp is half-step increment... Calling it D won't be so cool.

Anyway, back to the C# question. The answer is: I think I do. Sorry, no actual work experience, but I know Java... and I also know Delphi (at least a long-ago version of it), which is also created by the same guy who created C#. C# is basically java-like syntax of Delphi... I am sure I'll get up to speed quickly if someone hires me.

IBM Article: Java's new Math

I saw an article about how Java beefed up its java.lang.Math:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-math1/index.html?ca=drs-

The author agrees that the Pythagorean Theorem is important, "...that this equation shows up a lot more than in just right triangles". Um, those things that the author listed, are right triangles.

I get OFFENDED by this statement: "The naive approach (for hypotenuse) would look something like this"

public static double hypot(double x, double y){
return Math.sqrt (x*x + y*y);
}

There is nothing naive about it!
The author showed some hardcore C code for Java in bit shifting. I prefer the "naive" approach.

The author griped about log vs. ln:

"Sadly, the Java language's (and C's and Fortran's and Basic's) natural logarithm function is misnamed as log(). "

Um, computer science tends to call the natural logarithm "log". Because common logarithm is of no use in computer science. After all, common logarithm and natural logarithm differ by a constant, so it doesn't matter in order of complexity (yes, that big O notation). log x = ln(x)/ln(10). (go ahead, punch in calculator if you don't believe me).


I see little use of defining hyperbolic trig functions. They are defined in terms of the exponential function. how often does anyone need hyperbolic trig functions?

There is no need to define cubic roots either. x^1/3 = exp( 1/3 ln (x) ). So all you need are ln and exp.
How often do anyone use cube root?

Trig

The election is getting closer! Everyone has seen close-up coverage of the candidates, their VP, and their families.

So the name of Sarah Palin's youngest son is Trig. More people from the English-speaking world are now choosing their own names instead of pulling names from non-villian characters from the Bible.

Interesting name. It reminds me of the long forgotten subject of most people: trigonometry. Not sure if the Palins are thinking the same.

Although "trigonometry" is a long and formidable name, it is such fundamental subject: the study of triangles, right triangles in particular.

2 points determine a line; 3 points determine a triangle (and a plane). It is so fundamental. If you have 4 points you don't know for sure what you get.

In trig, students get introduced to functions, such as sin, cos, tan. They are more interesting than linear or polynomials they encounter in their high school algebra.

The side lengths of right triangles are dictated the Pythagorean theorem. The functions sin, cos, and tan have so many interesting relationships. If you spilled your favorite drink on your calculator and destroyed your cos and tan buttons you can still figure it out.

cos θ = sin (90° - θ) and of course, cos θ =sqrt(1-sin²θ)
tan θ = sin θ / cos θ (so you can figure out tan using sin)

That is just some very basic identities. I don't know why θ is so popular in naming angles. Please, please, Chinese/Hong Kong foreign students, don't pronounce it as thee-da.

What I think is way cool is that the derivative of sin is cos, and it is not super obvious how to derive this.

Sine/cosine can also be represented by a series:

sin x = x - x³/3! + x⁵/5! - x⁷/7!...

cos x = 1 - x²/2! + x⁴/4! - x⁶/6!...

That is Taylor series derived from calculus: alternate signs, odd powered, divided by odd factorials for sine, even powers and factorials for cosine... interesting isn't it?

Windows Defender

What comes to mind when you hear "Defender"? If you are around long, perhaps the classic 1980s video game come to mind. That game was quite remarkable... with a scanner and interesting story line for its days.

Ok, classic arcade is another topic, I am talking about Windows Defender: Microsoft's anti-spyware program.

I was recently hit by some Trojan horse thing! Although my McAfee detected it, give me an alert every 10 seconds but failed to remove it!

Oh my, gosh so many anti-this anti-that programs, I am not so familiar with, what do I use? Gosh what if it whacks my internet connection? what if it starts to delete stuff or do other wacky things? Ok, I DO have backups of priceless pictures and my programs at an external drive.

So I went to Microsoft's site to see if they offer anything free. Oh they do, it is the Windows Defender... Installed it and it WORKED. Oh mine, this is a big improvement over their DOS MSAV thing. Thanks Microsoft! Ok, I rarely say that.

Waita minute, it is Microsoft's stuff that is so vulnerable to attacks.

Dunkin beats Starbucks

Ads all over the place: Dunkin beats Starbucks. http://www.dunkinbeatstarbucks.com.

Waita minute, I see grammar parser error. Third person singular rule violated. Should it be dunkinbeatsstarbucks.com?

Ok, As you can see too many "s" without space is hard to read. Ok, the grammar parser forgives Dunkin.

Starbucks: much stronger taste, more expensive, and strange terms: tall, grande, etc, where "tall" means small.
That adds a bit of a class I suppose.

Starbucks focuses on coffee, Dunkin's original focus is of course donuts. I am not eating those expensive snacks in Starbucks... Donuts are getting much more expensive now!

Comparing coffee... I think I like Dunkin too over Starbucks.

But most Starbucks have nice couches and nice environment to read some newspaper or chat with your friends.
One time I saw some guy with a professional set of chess with roll-up board waiting for his friend to come. That's a great place for games...

I think college students will find it a great place to do homework with wifi around. When I was in college 56K modem was a luxury item (which I don't have!). Oh I didn't have a laptop either :( Even to this date I don't own one.

But both are quite expensive! I am sure the world can use another great coffee place at a dollar a piece for a small coffee. Still great margin in there. Look, I can buy a BIG can for about 10 bucks and it makes lots of cups. But I KNOW, all coffee are not the same.

Financial Tsunami

Lots of people are calling the current financial crisis a "tsunami", including Alan Greenspan.
These folks run out of terminology to describe the current situation.

That 2004 Tsunami killed tens of thousands of people.
That was bigger casualty than many wars or terrorist strikes or earthquakes.

I heard of there are some poor folks with heart problems died because of worrying over the financial crisis. Besides that, has anyone else died?

This is wrong comparison.

Ask some Hong Kong financial analysts, they say "folks, this is worst than SARS."

Was that guy a SARS survivor who couldn't breathe?

I think calling it a tsunami or compare with SARS is a bit overboard.

Look folks, money is outside the body (a standard Chinese proverb). If you bet your life time saving on the stock market you need to check your strategy.

It truly hurts if you or your loved ones are hurt or sick and hurts even more if your doctors drain your life time savings.

With descriptions by experts saying "It's a tsunami. It is worst than SARS. It is going to last", this is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I will only get scared if FDIC collapsed and everyone lose their life time savings. Hope that won't happen(!)

Do you think if every man, woman and child with a savings account demanding up to their $100,000 or whatever the upper limit is, all at the same time will the FDIC able to handle it? So don't line up draw up crowds to go to your bank to demand money all at the same time!

I think that FDIC is like "government inspected" chicken label, only serve to comfort you.

Many people already start to lose jobs. I will be scared if I am out of work for months.

Is there anything a regular person can do about this "tsunami"? Nothing. So don't need to be scared.

Although the 2004 tsunami was horrible, there were many great efforts to raise funds to help those who lost everything, showing the remarkable positive side of human. Many people voluntarily donate.
Efforts to help failed banks... I am not sure if we can compare it the same way. My tax money involuntarily donated in those billons.

Huge Disgrace

NU Kellogg students got drunk and threw stuff at Sue, the Rex fossil at the Field Museum, at a field trip. (Why bring the students to this elementary school favorite destination?)

Here is the Tribune news link.

Yikes, they even vomit on themselves. Not even rowdy high school students do that.

As a prestigious school, this is a huge embarassment. When I was NU undergrad, some students even get drunk and fell off the lake or fell from roofs of those Greek lettered frat houses and DIED.

What happens to rowdy students who can't behave in high school? They get suspension or even kicked out. What do you do with adult students?

School suspension probably of no use. I would kick them out.

Chinatown on Fire

Recently Chinatown is in the news, twice, with fire.
First, the little museum was burned.
News Link

Then, the Penang restaurant was also burned.
News Link

Fortunately there is fire station right there in Chinatown, and they did a fantastic job of putting out the fire fast.

Penang is one of the better, more distinguished restaurant there (although that sushi isn't that great, and that chicken rice declined in quality recently). I hope they open again soon, with better food.

I remember one additional fire instance from Chinatown... It was the destruction of State Farm and Hong Min...

Forutnately no one was hurt.

A truck was also turned over (probably at high speed) at the 55/Cermak exit on Sunday. I guess it wasn't big deal enough to be on the news.

Debate 3

Before the debate, I read about that this is going to be an exciting new format. Not podium, not townhall, but face to face sitting down in round table. Oh so it is actually the typical Meet-the-Press format. (The table isn't exactly round.)

Everyone's general observation is this: McCain is angry; Obama is calm.

McCain's attempt to associate Obama with former terrorists and stuff backfired. Negative ads are poor tactics.

When McCain tries to jab Obama, he smiles. When Obama jabs McCain, his eyes roll, as if you forgot to put detergent in your laundry before you hit start.

Patience is a virtue, especially as the country leader and perhaps world leader position.

Whose plans are actually going to work? Is the plan that each candidate propose actually good or bad?
It is hard to tell. Joe the Plumber is going to be better off with which candidate?

What I see is this: both candidates TOGETHER, along with the president, are not able to get that 700 billion dollar bill passed the first time. After all, the president is not the king. It takes cooperation from the whole congress too.

It takes the entire government to agree on things before anything can be passed, and I am afraid neither candidate can do that.

With less than a few weeks remaining, McCain's poll score doesn't look that good. That election map shows Obama may already have 270 electoral votes needed. Perhaps it is time for America to completely change course. But I am afraid that we won't be able to change, because it takes more than the president.

Vanished Money

Finance news says so many billions has vanished as the market drops worldwide.

Hmm, just where did the money go? Did the money exist in the first place?

There are people in Hong Kong who were mislead into buying some strange "investment product" and LOST life savings as Lehman Brothers go bankrupt. The big print says "low risk! high interest!". The fine print however says "high risk." They demand government help and the government says "well we can't use tax money to reimburse your investment loss". The bank crooks point to the fine print and says sorry you lost, this is high risk. These poor folks only hope is to use lawsuit to try to get their $ back if they can find a lawyer to crack through their disclaimer.

Even if your $ depreciates over time, it won't VANISH completely. It is best idea to hold some cash. Don't put ALL your lifetime saving into anything.

Notable items from Bookstore

1. New Head First books

Visited bookstore again and saw a suprising new Head First books
I saw Head First Physics and Head First Statistics! This series of book has extended beyond computer programming into general sciences.

This unique series is like those For Dummies books, filled with interesting people icons and handwritten notes and often try to be amusing.

However, I don't like this approach very much. I perfer a slightly more serious approach, in programming as well as science.

2.
Guide to Essential Math: A Review for Physics, Chemistry and Engineering Students


What comes to mind when you hear "Essential Math"? This really mean different thing to different people, depending on your age and level.
It could be basic arithmetic if you are an elementary school student or some algebra/geometry things if you are in high school.
Of course for most people, it is +, -, *, / and %, fraction and decimal. (That's it)

This book is for college engineering students. The introduction is most interesting.

So the author was a new professor who couldn't wait to share with his students the profound subject of quantum physics. After a few minutes in his lecture a student
raised hand and asked: what is this curly thing? The object in question was the partial derivative symbol: the cursive d. (I like to call it the flipped-6). Then the author found out some of his students don't know some very basic things such as 1/(x+y) is not 1/x + 1/y,
ln (x + y) also is not ln (x) + ln(y), so he decided to write a book.

The back cover features a young man in a scared facial expression with equations printed all over the place in the foreground.
I recognized some of these equations... Ah, the limit definition of the derivative is there.

The author seems to be frustrated because the students should know the basics.
How come students don't retain any knowledge?
How do these students even get to those advanced science/engineering classes?

I am glad I know a good portion of the math featured in that book. But I am still not ready to tackle quantum physics (and I am not going to).

I am impressed with Paulin's performance

Watched some of Biden vs Paulin debate and I was impressed. Paulin is articulate, charming, warm, and she smiles to the camera throughout. It is huge contrast to McCain who don't even look at his opponent nor the audience. Yes, she is also well prepared and handled the debate very well.

I didn't watch Katie Couric's interview. According to what I read, she didn't do that well in previous interviews.

Joe Biden did fine, pretty much what I expected. Surveys says Biden "won". I beg to differ.
At the end of the debates the families come hug them, much like winners of Wheel of Fortune. Hmm, how come Obama and McCain didn't come?

But remember it is Obama or McCain that America is going to select.

The VP is a backup, and the Constitution gives it one job: to vote when there is a tie in the Senate.

Fundamental Theorems

At work I worked an summer intern. I am not too impressed with his programming skills. I expect nicely documented, neat codes. I TOLD him, don't add a lot of Strings in Java, use a StringBuffer. He didn't listen. I haven't seen him come up with anything other than putting together in a rather slopppy way what his collegues told him.

One day calculus was the topic. So it was a couple years ago that this college intern took calculus. I decided to quiz him: so, do you recall the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus?

He doesn't know.

This is like asking "have you heard of 'To be or not to be'" to someone who says who has read Hamlet.

I am not asking for a proof. I didn't ask the intern to do an outrageous difficult asterisk problem, nor recall some little known obscure theorem. It was the fundamental theorem. I am not so impressed. Students take classes and they forget right away. What is the purpose of education?

Speaking of fundamental theorems. There are many (and I only know 3).

Elementary school students (including YOU) know the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic: all numbers can be factored uniquely into primes. Take 100 for example, we have one way to factor it: 2²5². (Ok, you got a super child prodigy if you find an elementary student who can prove it)

High school students may have heard of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra: all polynomials of degree n have n roots, where they may be complex. Can't factor a quardratic? The quardratic formula gives you two complex solutions. The proof is easy to state but difficult to prove and it is Gauss's triumph accomplishment. This really is the gateway from real numbers to complex numbers.

I don't see a Fundamental Theorem of Geometry. My vote goes to the Pythagorean Theorem. This is the gateway from rational numbers to irrational numbers.

Saw someone studying ODE on CTA

Typical college students have seen some Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) in their calculus class, perhaps just briefly because the curriculum is already jam packed. Typically a student is considered "had calculus" if he or she can take a derivative of a function and do some integration. How much of that knowledge is retained after a few years may perhaps be modeled using an exponential decay. (Now that's an application of a differential equation!)

I admit I forgot all my diff equations. These are simply not used often enough nor basic enough to retain in my memory. No, I am not going to put much effort in recalling this lost memory either, because I don't find much use of it now.

One day I was challenged: tell me ONE use of calculus, tell me ONE use of trigonometry. My answer: how do you think current technology is possible if everyone only know how to do 4 basic operations, (although I can't pinpoint exactly where that integral or derivative is needed)

On CTA, one day I saw a lady in 30s or 40s reading a photo-copied LaTex-written packet about differential equations. This looks like a professor-written unpublished book.

It's got a lot of matrices and perhaps involving some eigenvalues.

Not sure what class from what school is that lady taking. She definitely does not look like the age of a typical college student who are forced to take some requirement classes.

Yes, you can still continue to learn any subject (including math) even if your age is beyond the interval of [18..22]!

Debate 1

I watched all 90 minutes of the first McCain-Obama debate. This is the first time ever that I watched a full presidential debate. I am glad there were no commercials. America deserves full attention in moments like these.

It IS a remarkable moment in American history. That 700 billion rescue is really a huge challenge for the country. Yet we see there are so many disagreements to be worked on.... And I think the discussion is NECESSARY. We need prudent wisdom here. I don't have a good solution for the financial crisis, but yikes, it doesn't seem the candidates have a very clear solution either?! America longs for prudent leadership especially at this moment. Am I going to find it in either candidates?

Both candidates say Washington is a mess. Is one of these two candidates able to fix it?

McCain didn't even LOOK at Obama at all in full 90 minutes. He of course, won't talk to Iran... He definitely demonstrated his maverick style.

I think both candidates have well rehearsed and done well. McCain did better than I expected. But I think there was no real clear winner.

The host can't keep the gentlemen within the time limits. The candidates don't answer questions directly. I think there is some red-green lights reminding the candidates how much time is left. Suggestion: how about show that on TV. Even though they are most powerful men in politics, they also need to respect time-limit rules set.

Whoever the ultimate winner is: there is a lot of work ahead. United States is in a critical moment.

Great Depression?

You may have seen this (classic) picture from your history lessons. (Also found in Wiki)



There are lots of talks about is America going into another Great Depression.

Many ill-educated lazy American students may not even heard of the Great Depression. That Wiki article featured very good information there.

It was horrible and lasted many years. People out of work all over and poverty all over.

America did not get out of the Great Depression until World War II. It is unthinkable to see America go into another one and getting out the same way.

Pumping 700 BILLIONS. Yikes, how much did the Iraq War cost so far? It is perhaps even more costly than the war. And just how many billions we need to rob American tax money?
Ok, will pumping that 700 billions SOLVE this issue? Or just patch it temporary?

Does the very subject of economics ever progressed since the Great Depression?
I expected all those Nobel Price guys learned from experiences and able to manage the financial world. If not, give that million dollar prize BACK.

China needs much tighter quality control

The olympics put China in spotlight in a good way. Everyone was proud of China's progress (although that cute girl was only just lip-synching in the opening ceremony). Well China is in the spotlight again, in a negative way, with that kidney stone causing milk powder.

We have already seen lead paint toys and tainted dog food from China in their exports.

Tainted milk is actually not new. I have heard similar incidents a couple years ago, but not as widespread as this time.

I think the story is this: evildoers farmers add stuff to their milk to increase protein count in order to sell it to the milk company. Unfortunately the milk company only count protein. I am not sure if that stuff is detectable, but people MUST test their product safety.

How selfish are those evildoers, profit at expense of poor innocent babies. Punishment? They'll probably get shot after some meaningless trials. I would make those guys drink that stuff and have their kidney failed. However, shooting them may actually be more humane.

Just how much other stuff in China are tainted?

We should not just worry about milk powder: chocolate, cookies and many other stuff contains milk powder.

Common Sense in Finance

Recently Hurriance Ike strikes but the finance world is striked by another kind of storm: Lehman Brothers go bankrupt and AIG is rescued by the Federal Reserve. Yes, you hear about those in news too.

Whoah, stocks can fall 90+% in one day!

Of course, the question is WHY?

The answer that I am given through radio talks and news is this: mortgage problems. So it was too easy to get loans. You can even buy a house without proof of income. Lose job? no longer can pay? Foreclosure. but no one buys that house now. So a ripple effect occurs and can bring down giants like Lehman Brothers and AIG.

Of course, any bad news come and people sell their stocks in panic. Snowball effect occurs.

Bad unemployment numbers? stocks tumble.

Bad relation with foreign country? stocks tumble.

People are so sensitive to news.

This game is too volatile to play. But everyone is playing it. Your 401k is at work.
Your retirement depends on this game.

Ok, why are all those supposed-to-be-smart business executives in expensive suits are so DUMB to let people to easily get loans? Should they know better? Perhaps we should simply use common sense in finance.

The underlying problem is people can't pay. Jobs are not here. Things are not produced here. How do you suppose to make those payments? "Well it is cheaper from China and India" Although this is true. but this is so short-sighted, Mr. Expensive-Suit-and-tie-Executive. Let's see when you get bankrupt next.

yIKEs

Texans beware, Ike is coming, YIKES.



Note that pun in the headline... Ok folks, it is no laughing matter that hurricane is going to destroy some houses and business (and your insurance may refuse to pay).

I found it fairly interesting that hurricanes get names. Originally all women, now alternate between man and woman with that starts with ascending letters in the alphabet. Think they create names on the fly? No, the names are all planned out. Let's see if your name is found here.

Storms are getting more devastating... Mother Earth's wrath on global warming?
Whether you agree or not, violent weather are coming.

Unfortunately, wacking old lightbulbs and change them to "twisted yet brilliant" bulbs isn't going to stop Ike now.

Puns are fun. But a headline like "The End is Near, My Dear" is not too much fun.

Big Bang Machine

The Big Bang Machine - Large Hadron Collider is here... to create the big bang conditions to study particle physics! This big thing costed billions and created some fears that it would create a black hole to devour the earth.

Well particle accelerator is nothing too new. The Fermi lab is right here around Chicago (but I never visited, I SHOULD!) Besides studying the big bang, this Big Bang Machine will also try to detect the theoretical "Higgs boson", which explains a basic question: why do things have mass?

Ok, where does "mass" come from. Such basic question, yet nobody knows the answer now. And many people who don't know much about science think current science can explain everything.

There are plenty of basic questions that scientists don't have answers.

One more related topic: you may have heard of matter and anti-matter. Electrons have negative charge, and protons have positive charge. Anti-matter is reversed, and they do exist (not just in science fiction). Scientist can create anti-matter in those labs and they annihilate with matter (violently). The question is this: why does regular matter win and anti-matter loses?

Another unexplained observations are the dark matters... There is still a lot to study in physics. But not everyone can handle the ultra difficult mathematics involved.

Yan can cook, but the Thai PM can't

This piece of news is rather interesting. The Thai PM got kicked out of office for hosting a cooking show.

Ok, it was more than the cooking show. Thousands of people have been protesting him for a long time, camping outside of the Government House, making him declared a state of emergency.

I have no clue about Thai politics.

However unpopular President Bush gets, if he shows up in a cooking show I don't think Bush will get impeached. The Thai folks should probably come up with a better reason?

Unthinkable if something like this happens in America: people caming outside the white house demanding a president to leave office... Even more unthinkable if people do that in China. Yikes that reminds me of Tinanenmen Square...

Fireman's sacrifice

In HongKong, a huge fire killed 2 brave firemen who let the victims use their precious oxygen tank. One of them is only 25 year old. He received maximum honor and respect in the funeral, as reported by headlines*.

Yes, everyone is proud of the fire fighters.

However, what is not reported in the headlines is the cause of the fire... what cause these brave individuals die?

There are MANY old, ill-maintained buildings in Hong Kong, and most people living in that area can't afford better housing and couldn't care less about fire safety. Stairs are jammed packed with junks. The buildings probably don't have sprinklers and fire extinguishers. Poor maintained buildings and dense population is disaster bound to happen.

As we pay respect to the brave fire fighters, these old buildings need some remodeling!

But yikes, where is the funding? If you ask the poor residents who live in these areas, they close their doors.

*取義 comes from the following from 《孟子》
魚，我所欲也，熊掌，亦我所欲也；二者不可得兼，舍魚而取熊掌者也。
生，亦我所欲也，義，亦我所欲也；二者不可得兼，舍生而取義者也

Title bar out of style?

New programs hate the title bar. They take it OFF.
Google's new Chrome browser does not have the title bar.
Music programs such as Windows Media Player, Real Player, ITune and all that don't show the title bar (but some allow you to turn it on).

Why does the world not like title bars? Look folks, Windows is better than DOS because things have a consistent interface. Title bar, menu bars, window resize and all that.

I prefer the Title bar.

I played with Chrome. It is fast and tracks your browsing history very visually...
Where is the title bar and the status bar? The status bar is HALF width in Chrome.

I like the status bar in the bottom, and the Windows menu at the bottom. I NEED a bottom line. I've head some say the Start menu bar in bottom has root from video games, such as Star Raiders!

Ooh, Microsoft is going to release IE8 soon.

But what do you do with a browser: you type a URL and go. Don't need to be super fancy.

Firefox works for me... I am not dumping it yet.

New player in browser: Chrome

Google will soon release a new browser, known as Chrome. Before they release it, they released a comic book. Now that's innovative.

I am sure it will have many innovations. I *hate* IE7 and Office 2007... Those menus drive me nuts (if I can find them).

I use IE6 at work, I think it is fairly decent.
When I install AT&T Yahoo DSL, it ADDS tabs ability to my IE6, causing it to crash crash crash. I use Firefox at home. I like it much.

Let's see how much new excitement it will bring...

Surprise surprise in McCain's VP pick

McCain's VP pick is Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Wow, what a surprise. News tell me the most likely pick is Romney or some other guy (sorry don't remember his name).... and now, it is another possible female going to the White House.... While a lot of people predicted Hilary would be the first woman on either of the top 2 positions, it may be this previously rather unknown Sarah who would be able to do this. This election sure will be a remarkable chapter in future US history book: whoever the winner may be.

I'd like to hear Palin speak, hear her ideas.I hope to hear something revolutionary.
The presidential debates (and vice presidential debates) will be my must-watch TV.

Computing Constants

This site http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/constants.html contains lots of interesting information about math constants such as π, e, sqrt(2). Nice presentation. Gosh I know so little.

But the Programs link is even more interesing, especially the Tiny Programs page. Ok, I have a minor gripe: this webpage has frames.... the direct URL is http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/TinyPrograms/tinycodes.html.

Gosh, the following short C code computes digits for π

int a=10000,b,c=8400,d,e,f[8401],g;

main(){
for(;b-c;)f[b++]=a/5;
for(;d=0,g=c*2;c-=14,printf("%.4d",e+d/a),e=d%a)
  for(b=c;d+=f[b]*a,f[b]=d%--g,d/=g--,--b;d*=b);
}

I have no clue how this code work... I would expect a program to sum up some known series for π... what's this 8400 and -14?? No clue.

I tested it and it works. I am just AMAZED.

Who is the winner?

Beijing Olympics has come and gone, leaving awes in memories of those who have watched the opening and the spectacular performances of the athletes. What's the outcome? Who is the big winner?

I read a (Chinese) newspaper article griping that China should be reported as the world winner as they have the most gold medals, and that author is slamming American media for saying USA is the winner because they count total number of medals. That author even say some people even use total number of medals starting from the first Olympics, and of course USA would be the winner if you count that far.

Look folks, the athletes won, not you.

Olympics is often used as a measurement somewhat in world power. Some may have a sense of superiority over others if your country win.

Hmm, do you think Kenya and Jamaica have a louder voice in say a United Nation meeting because they have the fastest runners?

World power, I think, should be measured by GNP, military power and all that. I think the Olympics is supposed to celebrate athletes' achievements together, worldwide. So it is CLEAR that Chinese won the most number of gold medals. USA won the most number of medals. You decide who is the true winner. No hard feelings.

The Olympics athletes are the few, the talented, the dedicated. Americans should produce and watch TV shows documenting their tough trainings and dedications (and show them in prime time).

Much of the rest of America have much to work on.... that obesity ratio! that low reading and math score!

It is not enough to say "don't be a fool stay in school", it should be "you too! should excel in school!"

And yikes, our jobs are flowing overseas, quickly! To keep America strong, the entire nation needs to work hard.

Monopoly World Record

Thousands of people gather to set world record on playing Monopoly together.
See this news. London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Bogota, Lisbon, Hong Kong, Las Vegas and more than a dozen additional locations...

I played Monopoly maybe once or twice. Roll dice. Build house. Go to jail suddenly... go around and around. It can go on for hours. Yawn. Boring. Just how do you gather that many people to play that game? Chess, Clue, Yahtzee, Scrabble, and even Life are much more fun and have a forseeable end. Not so with Monopoly... I don't quite understand why people enjoy it so much.

Monopoly has so many local and even world editions. I have even seen Monopoly for Transformers! I don't know how well those sell. There are many editions for chess too... but only the standard looking ones are authentic.

Ant and Maven

You write Java and you don't know ANT? You must live under a rock. Everybody uses it. It is open source, downloadable from Apache.

Gimme a break, if it is on Apache, I must use it? Then you will forever be slave to open source libraries.

It is a strangely named tool "A Neat Tool"

This is Java's makefile, in the form of XML (and you must call it build.xml). People use makefiles for decades. Instead of the classic (but arcane) C/C++ makefile with tabs, ANT uses XML. Yes, every new tool is required to embrace XML. ANT essentially calls your javac.exe and you can write batch-file like commands to make jar files out of your compiled files the way you want it.

But I am not so comfortable with the "everyone is using it so you must know it". *I* decide to use it or not. Ancient C/C++ tools create makefiles too, automatically. Programmers should not worry to much about making builds. I want to check files into the source control and let another person worry about builds.

Enter Maven: industry's new favorite of creating builds. Instead of starting a build.xml from scratch, you can run an arcane command to create a project. (See this 5 minutes guide). Then viola, it can make builds, wow, even create some junit testing code for you. It needs another must-be-called pom.xml configuration file. I have huge complain about the long arcane command in creating the project. The console spits out all sorts of messages that it wants to download download download stuff (patches?). And it gives unintelligentable error if you have a proxy but didn't set it right.

Look folks, any program, open source or not, need to give intelligentable error messages!

The end result is that it creates some directory, a Hello World file, and a JUnit for that. Everyone embraces JUnit Test, and I find it ultra hassle, good that someone cranks those out to satisfy shallow guys who actually think JUnit makes you write better code.

I like Websphere's File->Export to create EAR/JAR, and automatic build.

VP

"It's Biden". The weekend's headline is all over Obama's VP choice, followed by McCain's ads pinpointing what Biden says before he became the running mate...

So everyone says, Biden brings foreign policy experience, he is well-respected, etc. My question is this: how come he didn't get very far in his OWN bid for presidency?

I wonder what videos will McCain's ads play if Obama selects Hilary instead. All that bitter attacks are too many to fit in a 30 second commercial.

VP never caught this much attention. Did Cheney ever get much attention during his campaign with Bush? It was Bush vs Gore. It seemed like not many cared about Cheney and Liberman. Yes, Cheney did get a lot of attention by shooting his own friend.

I can never understand why the former Bush picked Quayle as running mate. Woo young voters is what I read. Elementary school kids who are not old enough to vote won't support him. They how to spell "potato." Yes, Quayle, you will forever be logged in this history book for this. Unimaginable for America if the former Bush was unable to become president somehow and Quayle became president. Besides potatoe, gosh there are much more stupid things he says. Read it in wiki.

倪匡論金庸

倪匡 and 金庸 are both super excellent novel writers. Yes, every Chinese heard of their names, read their novels or saw TV productions of those. Although many people have trouble understanding 倪匡 verbally but he writes so clearly in his excellent novels, and the following.

Read what 倪匡 thinks of 金庸's works here. Ok, this is written many years ago.
http://www.angelibrary.com/essay/ljy/index.html

倪匡 believes no one from history has achieved 金庸's greatness, nor would anyone in the future.

How can anyone predict the achievcement of future generations? But I do agree with 倪匡. Today's generations is hardly educated, and we live in a world full of media distractions. Who will put such amazing effort in writing excellent novels? Besides, in today's full of media world, how many read volumes of text, even if they are excellent?

PDF creation with Java

Adobe's PDF is the web's favorite document format. Word doc? It may not open correctly from your Mac and it seems too clumsy because it can contain too many Microsoft propreitary things. Even the IRS takes PDF generated from Tax software. Everyone loves the PDFviewer where you can zoom, find, print with ease.

Java can create PDF files. One way is via open-source library known as iText. This neat library allows you to create PDF from scratch or insert stuff to it. PDF files can actually handle form data too. It can be used to merge your text into fields. Just 1 jar, fairly easy to use. Great tool.

Of course, people would demand more. Business apps loves reports, pie charts! Of course, you can generate your reports easily on a web page. But can you save it, zoom into it or page up and down quickly like PDF files? Traditionally, people generate great looking reports with things like Crystal Reports: drag-and-drop fields, put header and footer, and voila. You can do that with Java and JasperReport.

Instead of drag-and-drop fields in WSYIWIG, JasperReport wants you to specify a report in their XML, and then plug into your datasource. Anyone created a GUI for creating that JRXML file? It can do all sorts of things. But I am not impressed with the way the demos are presented. You get a build.xml and you are told to run ant. But it errors and errors and errors. I am not impressed.

Look, demos need to run right out of the box. I should do no more than adding jars on my classpath.

This helpful page gets me started: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~otopsaka/CIS4301/ReportDemo/ReportFromJava.html. I am able to generate a report out of Access!

Olympics and Conflicts

1/100 of a second: not sure if it is as fast as a blink of eye, is the difference between gold and silver medals in the Olympics. Yup, by now everyone has heard Michael Phelps's 8-medal victory. Amazing achievement. The second place is just 1/100 of a second behind. Even the 8th place guy is not that far behind... all within that second. All Olympics atheletes are amazing achievers.

Olympics making news headline is great... we celebrate amazing achievements from athletes worldwide. These atheletes keep pushing on human maximum ability... Hmm, I wonder if the amazing fast 100m Jamaica winner can outrun a cat when it is chased by a dog. My first grade music teacher says this: your dad walks like a half note. You walk like a quarter note, and cats and dogs (have 4 legs) run like 4 eighth notes!

Olympics is world participation, in a peaceful way. Unfortunately news of violence overshadow it as we see news from Russia and Georgia and other conflicts. It seems that no one is able to prevent tanks roaming and terrorists bombing the innocents.

I am glad the Olympics is going on peacefully. Let it continue without conflicts!

Twin Prime Conjecture

A "Conjecture" is a big fancy word for a "guess", usually for something that is probably true without a proof. The Twin Prime Conjecture is one of these oldest guesses ever known. A twin prime are two numbers with difference of 2 that are both primes. For example, 3 and 5, 11 and 13, 41 and 43, etc.

The guess is: is there infinitely many such pairs?

This is one of those simple-to-state, but hard-to-prove-or-disprove statement.

Euclid already proved that there are infinitely many primes (with a remarkable proof by contradiction). Chances are: there are infinitely many twin primes, but no one can say for certain.

Dry and boring you say? I found a great entertaining song!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3302/02.html

If presented right, math can even be an entertaining subject!

What does it matter if there are infinite or finitely many twin primes? Answer: Curiousity demands answers.

Hmm, let me start with the similar fashion as Euclid: let p and p+2 be the last set of twin primes... if I can find another set of twin primes beyond that, or another contradiction then I've got it!

Awesome Olympics Opening

Wow, that opening was awesome. 2008 drummers with lights creating LED effect! That fireworks! 2008 Tai Chi masters! That human paintbrush... and much more. Tremendous effort!

As the athletes march in, I feel sorry for the hundreds of cheerleaders clapping. Hard to do that for a couple hours straight!

It was a great geography lesson. Thanks to NBC who highlights the location of the countries. Gosh! I don't know most of the countries! Some of them I've never heard of! Ignorance! Ignorance! But when I was an elementary school student with homework exercise of coloring the world map, many of the countries don't even exist. BTW, I only need four colors to color any map.

But gosh it was interrupted by much commercials... I want to order a DVD one day! The only way to find interesting competitions is through watching recordings... Too hard to schedule the right time to watch it live.

Olympics begins!

The long waited Beijing Olympics began! Unfortunately I didn't watch the opening ceremony live. Saw some pictures on the web... it was the most elaborate and expensive opening ceremony ever. I have yet to see some videos.
Beijing has hosted many major ceremonies. Remember it is the home of emperors for dynasties. But those were probably not as big as the Olympics.

I am so glad no terrorists strike. Gosh, recently buses blow up and terrorists hacked police squad with swords in western part of China! How many remember these isolated incidents? These guys are like another al Queda. See this news for details. These are the descendants of the people that Mulan fought!

China is now in the spotlight on world stage. Even today's Red Eye free newspaper has Chinese title and "Beijing Olympics" in (simplified) Chinese.
It is prime opportunity to show the world how much progress China has made.

China still has a LOT to work on: is that odd number/even number days going to continue to control pollution? Is the rich going to be even richer and the poor more poor? Are those lead paint going to be out of our toys? Is human rights going to improve?

Here is classic word exchange about human rights: (how many times you hear this?)
US President: "We value human rights and religious freedom"
Some spokeperson: "No one should use human rights, religion or any reason to interfere with our internal affairs".
Then life goes on, absolutely no improvements can be made. After all, it is their internal affairs. If we value human rights so much, why are we tapping phone wires or torturing war detainees?

Put the politics aside, watch the atheletes. But gosh, but is robbing kids from childhood to train them to do impossible gymnastics violating human rights?

A stab at American Education

I glanced over this book. It is another stab at poor math education of Americans. As you can expect, it talks about low scores and it hurts.... Poor textbook is one reason, the author says. I don't have time to read all the authors constructive suggestions to improve math education. I found the following interesting. Here is a quiz:

12/13 + 7/8.

What is it closest to? Here are the choices: 1,2,19,21.

Yikes, 13 and 8 are not nice to find common denominators.... I know how to do this... 13x8 = 104,....I am still working on it. The author explains: look, 12/13 and 7/8 are both fractions close to 1, so add them up the answer is going to be closest 2. Easy. Oops I didn't see that. Ok, gimme about 30 seconds I can do this problem even I don't see that. But it is alarming that 37 percent of 17-years-olds don't get it right. 17 year old should be almost ready for college, and that is just an elementary school problem? The problem is this: the students didn't understand fractions! Waita minute, did they have drills all the time? The problem is: they don't understand what they are drilling.

The next page the author interviewed a calculus student who says: I can find the limit by plugging the numbers in... but I just don't know what is it used for? I don't why I am doing this...

It seems like this student is on a Freudian chair by a psychologist expressing inner pain.

Unfortunately, my homework problems rarely ask me to evaluate limit by plugging numbers in. I usually get strange cases where infinity and divide-by-0 is involved... sometimes I may need the l'Hopital's rule. We should tell the students: RELAX, you probably don't need to evaluate limits in solving a real problem. BUT you need to know the derivative and integral are both defined by a limit. That epsilon and delta definition really shut many students off. However, math demands everything to be defined precisely. Informally, limit is simply "where are you going".

Students should know the amazing lim (x->0) sin x/x = 1... This is the key to derive many derivatives such as d/dx sin x = cos x.

I'd like to see that author write a math textbook. It is always easier to criticize than doing it right.

CSS controls printing

Cascade Style Sheet is very important in designing your HTML. It gives you exact sizes. Besides font size, you can also spice up your <table> and much much more. Recently I learned that you can also control paging in printing too. Try this.

<style>
 .pagebreak
 {
 page-break-after: always
 }
</style>

<u>Page 1</u>
<p>
There are a few CSS styles that can control paging. Though you only see 1 page here on browser, however if you print it, you will see multiple pages.

<div class="pagebreak"></div>

<u>Page 2</u>
<p>
There are other styles that you may use to control printing, including preventing your elements from chopping in half at end of your page.
See <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/CSS/css_ref_print.asp">here</a> for details

Eclipse

A total solar eclipse is going to be visible today in part of the northern hemisphere! See this news for details. Unfortunately this CNN news didn't tell me when. DON'T look at the sun directly. It is going to hurt your eyes. Don't look even if you have sunglasses. I've heard the best method is use reflection from water, or ink.

Here is an interesting quote.

Just to say how special it is, in the whole universe we might be among the few beings that have the chance of seeing something like that," said Michael Khan,
a mission analyst at the European Space Agency. "The fact that we have a moon and that the moon passes in front of
our sun, and that the apparent size of our moon is approximately equal to the apparent size of the sun -- all these factors combine to create the solar eclipse phenomenon."

Hmm, we are among the few beings... Do we even know of other beings?

Amazing that the sun and the moon (yin and yang) are approximately equal in apparent size. Won't be as fun if the moon is merely a dot on the sun isn't it?
Of course today we know the sun is actually gosh much much bigger than the earth and even much much more bigger than the moon.
Moonlight are actually reflected sun light! So the balance theory of yin and yang is out of whack! (Other yin yang balances are: male/female, positive/negative charge, north/south magnet, etc. of course: good/evil!)

Eclipse used to be omen of disaster! People dance around to try to scare away the evil takeover. Of course each time they are successful.

Some doomsday sayers in China say "gosh I am worried about the olympics". Please... no separatists or terrorists attack. It is a sports event.
Doomsday sayers please find other careers.

BTW, why does that omnipresent Java IDE called Eclipse?

Small sample of the 'Big One'

A 5.4 earthquake shook LA a few days ago and thankfully it is just a 5.4. Obama vs McCain card comments and other news about crazy criminials bump off the news about earthquake.

Super unthinkable for America if it was the magnitude of the Chinese earthquake on May 12. It would not just be buildings collapse and lives lost.... there would also be tremendous financial impact: yes, gas (and everything else) will be even more expensive, and stock market would probably fall to the basement.

I repeatedly see this dire warning: "There is a 99 percent chance of California experiencing a quake of magnitude 6.7 or larger within the next 30 years". Unfortunately we can't get a better estimate than that. But if I live in LA I am moving. But yikes is there anywhere truly safe? But I would believe elsewhere has less than 99% chance. In 30 years, will we have better progress in earthquake prediction?

No News is Good News

It is very hard to find time and effort but I *do* go to a gym to run on a threadmill machine once a while. I am not in top shape. I need a break after running ONE mile at a time at speed of 5.5 to 6mph. I am not traveling close to speed of light, but time already does seem SLOWER when I am traveling just that speed. (See this link if you are interested in Einstein's theory)
It just seems so much longer to run 10 minutes than watching 10 minutes of TV.

During my run I silently watch CNN's closed captions.

The screen says "BREAKING NEWS". But it is nothing really so important: Obama visited Middle East. McCain says something to capture some attention. 10 minutes: same footage videos over and over again.

The suit and tie anchors must look like this is some important news. I feel sorry for these guys. That job sometimes must be bored to death.

On the other hand: no news is good news. Do you want to hear murders, destructions and all that in headlines?

Perhaps that was a peaceful day. Or perhaps we just don't cover important news?

Is there true journalist freedom in America?

Sometimes we feel NUMB. Suicide bomber (as long as not inside America)? How many marines dead? Wildfire in California? Besides the poor victims, news anchors and reporters that have a job to do, how many care?

Decompiling and Comparing

I have a should-not-happen situation at work. There is a coworker who left the company leaving behind multiple "workspaces" (IBM Websphere project files) for a project that haven not been touched for a year.

We were supposed to use a source control system to hold source code, and create builds off some automatic process. That way, all sources are collected and not relied on the developers' machine.

But no, the guy who left didn't.

Heck I am not even on that guy's team, but now had to look at his stuff: to determine which of the workspaces create the files in production.

Fortunately, Java .class files may be de-compiled. I used the DJ Java Decompiler. This slick tool re-create source code from the .class files so I can compare. Still a painful process but not impossible.

Is there a way to decompile a Windows EXE? Decompiling a Windows EXE will probably be some unthinkable assembly files.

This is one of the beauty of bytecodes of Java. But decompiling will not recover your comments because they are not inside the .class files.

I use ExamDiff to compare text files. It is better than the good old "fc" DOS command.

But it should not happen! SMART company should require code to be in source control. Heck that guy gave a 2 week notice, did you not require him to check in that source code?

If I lose my C:drive nobody else gets hurt, all my code is in source control.

My outrageous request is: find the right source code and put it in version control. Why am *I* suppose to do this. Then, add new functionality to this code. Heck I don't even know what is it supposed to do.

Area of a Trapezoid

So I was watching a HK TV series describing a smart and nice guy. One day he was at a restaurant and saw a kid doing homework and asking his mom:

Kid: "Mom, what's the area of a trapezoid?"
Mom: "How is mom supposed to know?!"
The nice guy tells the kid immediately: "It is top base plus bottom base multiply by height divided by 2"

Do you remember that mouthful formula? How would YOU help the kid?

Do you ever have to use the formula? No, I never had to use it.

Students whine and whine about having to remember a lot of formulas in math. You don't have to remember this one!

Why? Because you can derive it on-the-fly. Instead of remembering the formula: KNOW what you are dealing with!

I would tell the kid like this:

me: "So, what is a trapezoid?"
kid: "Is is a 4 sided figure with 2 parallel sides"
me: "Here is an interesting thing you can do with a trapezoid, make a copy of it! Fit the two to make a parllelogram"
(If the kid ask why, I will tell him about parallel lines and a transversal)
kid: "What do I do next?"
me: "Now, what's the area of the parellelogram here?"
(If the kid know, we are getting closer, let's say the kid does not know)
kid: "I don't know"
me: "For any parallelogram, you can chop off the triangle, move to the other side and get a rectangle"
kid: "So?"
me: "What's the area of the rectangle?"
kid: "base x height"
me: "In this case, your base is top base + bottom base of that trapezoid"
kid: "but what's the area of that trapezoid?"
me: "Well you got this rectangle by doubling the trapezoid, divide that by 2. So this is where the formula come from."

Mom can watch you derive that formula, moms can also know some formula too!

We should teach kids problem solving approach, and not just make them remember formulas.

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.

Tell a kid a formula, he can apply it for a problem. Teach a kid where the formula come from, he will be able to apply it for a lifetime.

This trapezoid formula you can derive on-the-fly. However, things like the quadratic formula or the Pythagorean theorem are nothing obvious: those are the ones to remember.

Want an application of the trapezoid area? You may remember the Trapezoid Rule from calculus: to estimate the area under a curve by adding trapezoids.

Not getting an iPhone

The iPhone is essentially a colorful small computer. Wow, that feature list is impressive. Price has came down, but I am still not getting one. That price tag is just 1 reason.

That monthly fee is big. That phone price is probably set smaller than the actual cost as a bait.
It is big. Can it fit in my jean pocket? My fairly basic Nokia can.

I prefer flip phone over keypad lock, even pressing * 0 is too much work for me to unlock. I want to just open-and-use it. Is that screen scratch protected? A computer deserves a protective cover like a laptop or a Palm flap.

I don't want to tap with my big finger, how about a stylus?

I demand a phone to have actual 12 buttons. Not pseudo buttons.

The Blackberry has too many buttons. I don't need a QWERTY keyboard (I prefer a QWERTY keyboard where I can tap)

Yes, I prefer the Palm over the iPhone. How I wish I can plug a headset and use as phone.

But Palm sadly is not as feature rich. At least I can't TALK with it.

Palm combined with phone is nothing new. But yikes, that rice krispie keyboard on Treo I don't like.

My Palm's stylus calliberation is out of whack and no way to fix! :(
I have my THIRD Palm now. First one is water damaged, 2nd one is cracked. How sad
Besides is Palm going out of business soon? no new products for a long time.

So here are the features of my perfect phone:
0. Able to call/receive calls (of course)
1. has 12 actual buttons (and softkeys and directional keys to choose icons) but no more, please lay them out nice and clean.
2. has phone book and alarm clock and vibrate, with quick way to go to silence mode
3. no unlocking, flip phone
4. water resistant (are there ANY?)
5. able to play J2ME games. Give me chess! Give me tetris! I don't need to fight M. Bison on a small screen. (yes, Street Fighter is available for phone)
6. No antenna stick out. (please don't destroy my jeans)
7. able to play mp3. *I* pick the songs. Damn iPod will download everything without my consent. provide a USB chord so I can upload/download address book.

Features I don't need:
internet: I prefer an actual computer with big screen
camera: I prefer a full featured actual camera with flash

10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas

Time magazine says something positive about expensive gas. See here for the article.

The list includes:

• Globalized Jobs Return Home
  
• Four Day Work Week
  
• Less Pollution
  
• Fewer Traffic Accidents
  
• Less Traffic
  
• Less Obesity
  
• ..
  

These are all good! That is the optimists view. But, gas price IS driving everything up, big time, including vital items such as food.

I have one complain though, when we watch reports from news and magazines, it says "Oil at $4 a gallon" when we in Chicago are already paying more than $4.5! They say oil at $3 when we were paying $3.5. Why are the media so late? Or, why is Chicago more expensive than the average?

The Iran missiles don't help.

We also have outrageous 10%+ sales tax.

Folks we must adapt: drive less fuel hungry cars or drive less. But I don't know what to do about high sales tax.

Missile Command

This classic video game involves the trackball and 3 buttons, an innovation in the 1980s. My Atari only has 1 button.



Waves and waves of missiles and their long trails are attacking your cities! Fortunately, you have a defense system to intercept them!
That siren and missiles indicate the fear of nuclear strikes in the Cold War.

Early video games (such as Space Invaders) often depict disaster strikes as you, the hero, attempt to save the day with quarters.

Nuclear strikes from Missile Command is simply an expanding circle cleaning out the pixels of a city.
Don't despair if you lose a city. Every 10,000 points you get a new city rebuilt.
In real life it would be unbelievably horrible. Just how many times more powerful than the A-bombs in Japan? How long does it take to earn 10,000 points to rebuild a city?

Missile strikes seem much more eminent today as we see Iran show off its missile capabilities.
Do we have a missile defense system like in Missile Command? If you build one in Europe to protect your allies will you upset your European allies?

Of course you can preemptive strike anyone to nuke them before they nuke you. Don't! We can't solve all problems by force.

Option 1: Let's talk to them. You get an example from opposition: talking to Hitler in 1940s wouldn't help.
Option 2: Let's strike them! Would we be fighting every country in the world eventually?
Option 3: Wait and see. If they really strike somebody, strike them back.

I prefer 1 and 3.

More on the Rubik Cube

The Rubik Cube is a humbling experience. I probably will never be solve it on my own. (Yet people have come up with many solutions) I can't derive the number of permutations either! How did they come up with 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possibilities?

I know something about permutations... yet I don't even know how to start figuring out the permutations for the Rubik Cube.

Ok, this is what Wiki says (this info can also be found in Rubik's site):

A normal (3×3×3) Rubik's Cube has eight corners and twelve edges. There are 8! ways to arrange the corner cubies.

Seven can be oriented independently, and the orientation of the eighth depends on the preceding seven, giving 3⁷ possibilities. There are 12!/2 ways to arrange the edges, since an odd permutation of the corners implies an odd permutation of the edges as well. Eleven edges can be flipped independently, with the flip of the twelfth depending on the preceding ones, giving 2¹¹ possibilities: 8! x 3⁷ x 12! x 2¹⁰ = 4.33x10¹⁹

I can probably never come up with that on my own.

Casually searching for info about math on the Rubik Cube, I've found this class!
http://match.stanford.edu/bump/rubik.html.
I wish I can sign up for this class. Look folks, this is abstract algebra in action!

The PDF files are beautifully written in LaTex and they look very interesting! (as long as I don't have to be tested on it in a classroom setting). I wish I understand it all. I love it when advanced math is attached to something concrete (such as the Rubik cube).

I solved the Rubik Cube!!

I finally am able to solve a scrambled Rubik Cube! I started playing with the cube when I was a kid in 1980s. I declared it as impossible to solve back then, and remain impossible after I have all grown up.

What makes it so difficult is that it is hard to build on your previous success. It is already hard to solve 1 side. If you can solve one side, you MUST mess it up to attempt to solve further. This frustrating cube seemed to have lost its popularity for a couple decades and now making a comeback. I knew there are solutions, I actually saw a booklet when I was a kid (which didn't come with my cube in 1980s), but the instructions were too hard for me.

It is decades later and now I am ready to tackle it again! Being able to solve it seems to be a fun skill to have. My new Rubik Cube comes with a 7-step solution sheet! But just following the instructions isn't so easy! Some sequence are hard to remember, and it is already the easiest layer-by-layer solution.

Terminology: each face of the cube is named: Up, Down, Left, Right, Front, Back, much like x-y-z axes. "U" means turn the upper face clockwise, "Ui" means turn it counterclockwise. Ok, so far so good.

My heart sank as I read the first step: you must solve the green cross on your own.

Fortunately after actually playing with the cube, it isn't so difficult to get the green cross. Then we can use a sequence to insert the green corners! Wow, without this it is hard to solve even 1 side.

Now, we can turn the solved green side to the bottom, the next step is the middle layer. If you see an inverted "T", you can move the tip of the inverted T left or right using a (fairly long) sequence.

Solving two layers are not too difficult.

Then it remains to solve the (blue) top. Now it gets harder.

You need to first get a blue cross. Look around for a specific pattern then apply another sequence to make the blue cross. It is not so hard yet.

The next step is to put the blue cross correctly. Apply a sequence to move the edges, repeat if necessary. (this is a little tricky, when you apply the sequence one block stay and 3 blocks move)

The only remaining cubes are the 4 corners. They can be all scrambled up!

Next we apply a sequence so that all four top corners are at the right position, color doesn't matter now (repeat sequence if necessary).

Now the last step, with red facing front, apply a sequence to fix each corner! Fix one and you mess up the rest of cube! Worry not, keep going! Fix all four corners (keep red facing you) and we are done!

How satisfying to be able to solve it!!

The sequences are difficult to remember, and it IS a lot of moves. How did those people solve it in little more than 20 seconds? How did they do it blindfold?! Ah, the method in the booklet is just the beginner's method.

On my own, I am never even able to solve just 1 side without the solution. I have NO clue how did they come up with the solutions.

Nowadays it is not just solution booklets, there are websites that you can literally put color of each face and a solution will crank out for you! There are even detailed demos on youtube!

The cube is no longer impossible to solve!

However, it will take me a while to practice and remember the patterns it takes to solve one.

Last thought: when you buy a Rubik cube,it is perfect condition, all sides are arranged properly. Why did you mess it up in the first place and want to put it back the way it was?

AJAX was here

I was able to create simple AJAX code for the most frequently used example to spice up your information website: stock quote and weather information. Where do you get stock quote and weather information? There are PLENTY of sites. Yahoo!Finance is a popular place for stock, and the national weather service give you the info.

Old school HTML will simply provide links to information on those service providing sites. Nowadays people demand more! How about those info right on your site? This is nothing new. People have been doing that for YEARS. Now I am asked to put this in the company's intranet site.

Just how do you get information from another site into your site? One way is AJAX. Basically we quietly make a call to service providers and they will send us information, in XML, or comma-delimited, or whatever, and the event handler will quietly handle the response back from the service provider. (That's the first A, which stands for Asynchronous, in AJAX). The J is simply Javascript, and the next A is merely the conjunction "And". The X is everybody's favorite XML.

The task now becomes: just what is the URL to the service provider? What type of format am I getting back? How do I parse the results?

Hopefully you will find what you need from your provider.

This link gave me some great examples to get to weather service.

This link provides the nuts and bolts I needed to get stock information! Hmm, how come I can't find field description from the CSV in yahoo!finance? I pulled all that JSF stuff out and just do simple HTML.

Philosophy and Confucius

Few has ever achieved the status of Confucius, the ancient Chinese thinker who shaped much of Eastern thoughts. His words are still frequently quoted, although some may not realize.

Do we ever quote anything from western philosophers such as Aristotle or Plato?

I am poorly educated, I can't quote any statement from any western philosopher, other than the now laughable 4 (or 5) element theory and the tale of Galileo's ball dropping experiment that marked the dawn of modern science. Math and computer graphics students may have heard of the Platonic solids.

It seems like the influence of ancient philosophers has diminished in Western culture, or that we are already practicing the society put forth by ancient philosophers without realizing? Democracy is probably rooted in ancient thoughts of some Greek philosophers but I am sure only a few elites can tell you the details.

Some of Confucius's idea are still interesting to read about. Confucius did not attempt to explain natural phenomenon like Aristotle, rather, he focus on building character, interpersonal communication, and how to run a country!

See this wiki article, the Chinese edition of course gives much more details.

Some famous quotes, with my rough translation:

"(Confucius's Student) Mr. Chung remind himself with questions 3 times a day: Am I loyal (to my king) or am I always planning to take advantage? Do I communicate with my friends but not trust them? Do I preach but not exercise what I preach?"曾子曰: 吾日三省吾身：為人謀而不忠乎？與朋友交而不信乎？傳不習乎？

This are such great questions! Mr. Chung strive so hard to be a great man.

"If there are 3 people, there must be a teacher for me within, choose his good stuff to learn, change the bad stuff of him" 三人行，必有我師焉。擇其善者而從之，其不善者而改之。

It is good to learn from friends and help friends grow isn't it?

"If you want to be quick, then you won't reach there" 欲速則不達。

This is so frequently quoted! How many times are you on a rush project without resources you need?

"If you want your work sharpened, you must first sharpen your tool" 工欲善其事，必先利其器。

This is quoted often too. Are you given a lowly computer to run that memory hog software development tool? Invest in good equipments.

"Be patient or you may ruin big plans" 小不忍則亂大謀

"See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil" 子曰：「非禮勿視，非禮勿聽，非禮勿言」

This is a very small sampler of wisdom statements as Confucius revealed in the Analects in his discussion with his students (that I copied off from that Wiki article). Although some of these may sound "common sense". Confucius collect them all.

Confucius is focusing on being the kind gentleman (Ok, it is very hard to exactly translate "仁") that practices rituals 禮.

Confucius became the role model that eventually got promoted to a "saint" level. Chinese history does not have religious saints like St. Paul or St. John. In fact, Confucius stay away from religious talk though he does have many worshippers! 子不語怪，力，亂，神.

Confucius is required reading for generations of students until modern times. Language has evolved so much that Confucius become hard to access for today's students. It needs a modern translation! (ok, there are probably a lot, but the original text is such classics).

Confucius text are not HUGE like Aristotle or Plato. It would be a great 1-semester college or even high school course.

Chinese students are trained to read and follow those in authority, and not encouraged to question authority.

Today's students should read philosophy with an open mind. Know what the ancient greats say, be able to agree or disagree with their views. It trains thinking and writing! Just what is preventing YOU to become the next great philosopher?

A new CAR

When I watch the Price is Right, there is such EXCITEMENT when the contestant has a chance to win a new car. The contestants jump up and down as the host explain how to win the car by playing a certain game. Ok, I used to watch Price is Right,haven't watched in many years. Why are some game shows so long running? ok, that's another topic.

Cars are exciting gifts for TV game shows, or awarding your children as they proudly graduate from high school.

How about a new car for perfect attendance for an elementary student? Check this news item.

http://www.nbc5.com/education/16686208/detail.html?rss=chi&psp=news

This is too big a gift, even for a straight A elementary student with perfect attendance. A couple bookmarks are just fine for encouraging the kids.

It is time to demand MORE for students! Attending school is their BASIC responsibility! If a school age child is not sick on a school day, the child SHOULD be in school. It is non sense to award them with such big gifts. Waita minute, the kid is not even allowed to drive until many years later. What's that for?

Waita minute is it a promotion trick for the auto maker?

USB toys

USB ports are great. Thumbdrives killed off the flaky floppy disks. Plug in external hard drive for extra storage. Plug in a card reader to read files from your camera, or your music device to download songs. Standardization is good sometimes.

USB can draw power from your machine to charge your device or even power a toy. A long time ago I saw a magazine featuring the USB Missile Launcher. Saw the real thing in a store. Fun stress relief if you have friendly neighbors in your cube at work.

I also saw USB Chess which I almost want to buy:

For decades most people play with computer with 2D chess pieces on screen. It feels different to play on a real set.

If it is prettier, not straight dull black and white (perhaps wooden pieces) I would have bought it.

Additional toys that looks interesting on Amazon are:
Screenmasher



Tengu





This is classic example of fun innovation. So USB can delivery electricity? Put it in use!

Am I getting these toys? No. Toy collecting is luxury for the rich. I window/web browse shop. I buy ONLY must-have items.