Human Evolution and Aesthetics

I once came across a report stating that research had shown the process of evolution for human beings had been increasing substantially in recent centuries. I believe that is because, basically revolution is through thousands of years of natural selection, and the choices given in this selection process have been significantly enhanced by the widespread communication between families, populations, and even races – an anthropoid may only choose its mate within a few miles from its habitat while nowadays people may happen to find their spouses on another continent. Individuals are better matched in a sense that the husband and wife are on the same or seemingly matchable level of education, social status, healthiness, appearance, etc.; therefore those who are disadvantaged are not very likely to find someone considerably better than them overall, thus less chances for their children’s (if any) survival; to the contrary, successful people may expect their descendents to abound. Given that the major characteristics of a person is 50% decided by their genes, and the way they are raised and educated also indisputably influence their lives, successful people tend to have children that flourish and vice versa. With the communication and cooperation between distant countries increasing, the evolution process will match up with it in an exponential manner.

 

Looking for one’s other half is not only rational thinking involving CV (and bank account) reviews; it also utilizes the most basic instincts every one of us possesses. For instance, the reason why men admire women with bigger breasts and hips is these features imply a better chance for the children’s survival and healthiness. Breasts are used to feed the baby, and the bigger the pelvis the longer the fetus can safely develop in the maternal body and the bigger the fetus’ head can be. These instincts in distinguishing a potential good mother are developed throughout history. Some, like the two mentioned above, are easy to reason out, while some are not.

 

Since childhood parents have been telling us to stand and sit straight with chest out. Many of us may find difficulty now and then in keeping such a position, and it was not all our fault. Apes, including humans, are born with the four physiological curves on our backbones, namely, the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and pelvic curves. The thoracic curve, concave forward and the longest amongst the four, is what makes it very difficult for us to be straight (I mean your spine, not your sexual preference). One may argue that it is reasonless for people to believe being straight in backbone is good-looking and attractive, as the thoracic curve is a feature we are born with and good for our physiological functioning. Well yes, it is good for our body as it reduces the pressure suffered by our vertebrae usually when we jump downward or run vigorously, so why people regard someone with spine not as bent (for this thoracic curve) attractive? Does the theory that people’s instincts regarding a good spouse are always for the better development of the child fail here? Not really. Even though it is obvious the advantage of the thoracic curve, there are disadvantages. The more bent the curve is, the shorter the height of the person. In the primitive world, being a shorty means inability to notice an approaching predator as soon as others, although such advantages are not as apparent in today’s society but they still exist. In addition to that, after comparison between the thoracic curves on humans and other apes, it is fairly easy to see that less curved vertebral column indicates better adaptation to the life on the ground (as opposed to on the tree), since tree life involves more jumping and falling that requires better flexibility. To further the argument, only by life on the ground can apes expand their population to the greater world outside the woods.

 

These are the morale behind chest-out-is-good I have found so far.

Photo by bluenot3

Official Google Reader Blog: Share anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

Official Google Reader Blog: Share anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

This is just the coolest thing I've ever wanted about Google Reader! Now I no longer need to share stuff from a web page first to Facebook and then re-share it at Reader through subscriptions. And now I can eventually share anything I like, no matter with or without a feed, straight through Reader!

The Day Is Done

Upon requests, I recorded this poetry by H. W. Longfellow. I went through it just once so this might not be the perfect. It was a little bit noisy outside - There seemed to be some gathering going on on the 1st floor. Although I shut up all windows and doors, you can still hear some background noise. Click the button below to access my recording.

Traditional Chinese vs. Simplified Chinese

This argument has been on ever since Simplified Chinese came into existence: Between Traditional and Simplified Chinese, which is better? This argument is especially distinct when there are still regions like Taiwan and Hong Kong where Traditional Chinese is the official script. I have once asked a Hong Kong college student, why people in Hong Kong are still using Traditional Chinese? Don’t they think it’s bothersome to write a character for 10 seconds when it can be just 3 seconds and its meaning is still not at all made ambiguous? The answer was: I want to know too.

There are people in Hong Kong questioning the necessity of keeping Traditional Chinese as of the use of daily life. And I think the situation in Taiwan is similar. So what’s the obstacle of the transformation?

Let’s first come to see what some Mainlanders think. Once I was chatting with a couple of my friends about the two Chinese scripts, and one said, only Traditional Chinese is the real Chinese, it’s much better than the Simplified. I did not question him any further. Such thought is quite common in some Mainlanders’ minds, especially those who love traditional Chinese culture so much, and who practice Chinese calligraphy. I have been practicing calligraphy for more than ten years, I know what’s in their mind so well.

Every experienced calligrapher, or those who are into the art of calligraphy, witnesses the beauty of a regular script character being written with a brush pen. Few of these works, although there are some these days, are in Simplified Chinese. And when people comparing the two, they think the traditional one possesses more artistic value because the combination of Simplified Chinese with brush pen calligraphy does not look “right” to their sense of calligraphy.

In the long history of Chinese civilization, the language, in either its oral form or its script, has evolved to a great extend as well. Several thousand years ago, our forbearers carved simple notations on bones and turtle shells. This kind of notation evolved to be the most primitive script in the civilization – it is called the bones and shells script. In the multi-thousand year history, our scripture has changed to metal script, seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script, and running script. What we refer to as “Traditional Chinese” in modern times emerged only in late Han Dynasty, and there were quite a handful of scriptures used as standard before regular script. Our forefathers may as well argued that the official script was the “real” Chinese scripture while the regular script was too simple to be applied in formal writing.

Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty made the seal scripture of the State of Qin the only official scripture in China. This action left profound influence to China. All following rulers of this nation followed him to unify the scripture, and even the oral language since the wide spread of Putonghua. Without the unification of the language, there would not have been this convenience of communication, thus the prosperity of China, the most powerful country in the world for a thousand years.

The ancient Chinese people have given the answer to the reform and evolution to our language. If any of us is to stubbornly follow the legacy of our ancestors, he should support the use of Simplified Chinese. I am not saying we should abandon Traditional Chinese completely – even the most primitive form of Chinese characters has been preserved until now. And there’s always the need of various forms of Chinese characters in the field of art, especially calligraphy. I am a calligraphy lover myself. When practicing calligraphy, particularly when imitating the classics, I would never hesitate to choose Traditional Chinese. Through the many years of practicing, I can easily recognize and write many Traditional Chinese characters. But still, I think the promotion of the use of Simplified Chinese is a must. By using Simplified Chinese, we are sure to shorten our time when writing and make our life more efficient. This is inevitable. This is what the history would be written.

Han

2008/1/15

Subway Line 5

Today I went to the Zoo with Brinley. When going back home, I deliberately took Line 5, as I had not tried it yet although I had already been back to Beijing for 2 weeks. I expected nothing other than what Line 13 had, but it surprised me. It’s much like what we have in Hong Kong – automatic doors separating the train and the platform, signal lights that show the station where the train is, elevators for passengers with bulky items; even the different kinds of notice boards were really similar. No wonder it was said that the Line 4 was co-constructed by MTR Corporation. Still there had been even more than what they have in Hong Kong, marked are: LCD screens that shows what the current/next station is, signal lights beside every automatic doors that shows the doors are to be opened. I spared some attention to the English translation of on-board broadcasting and notice boards, and they were fine as far as I know. Overall, Subway Line 5 impressed me.

The Broken DVD

Mother told me that the DVD of “The Pursuit of Happyness” is broken. I recalled about one year ago I watched it through and found no glitch of any kind. But my parents insisted that it would stop unexpectedly while playing. I tried and found they are right. The disc is broken for some undiscovered reason; I succeed in watching it through with no defect but now it’s broken.

It may have already been a year since I recommended this video to them, but they didn’t watch it until not long ago. Sometimes, you have to grasp hard one thing to make sure that you have it. If you hold for too long, it would be no longer reachable. I think.

How to download videos on YouTube

Have you ever found it disappointing that you can only watch your favorite videos online but cannot keep it in you own disk, and you always have to wait for it to be loaded when the file is on a server far away?

Now you have the utmost solution with real ease! First of all, you have to upgrade your Real Player to the latest version. If you have no Real Player on your computer currently, you can always download it for free at www.real.com. After your upgrading, turn up the YouTube page displaying your beloved video, or just any other similar page embedded with a flash video, move your mouse pointer on top a the video, refer to the up-right corner of the video frame, can you see the button for downloading the video? You can always change your downloading settings inside Real Player.

Han

How to learn a second language

After years there are still people keeping asking me how to learn English well. Most of them are students who have been learning English for years, but they are still not confidence enough with their own learning methods under continuous development for years. The reason they wonder is their unsatisfactory English grades and the overwhelming of the idea of cracking the exams without learning hard.

I’ve been learning English for 13 years – This is quite a long time for a Chinese college student at the age of 18. And what I want to tell them after this long time of learning is that, when it comes to language study, time speaks. Although developing a smart learning style is as or even more important, the defect of nowadays English learners is not a methods problem. It’s just that they are not spending enough time on this.

Years ago I wrote an essay discussing this same topic, and my point has not changed. Language learning is hard labor. And you have to hold it on.

Han

My fully customized Firefox browser

This is just my fully customized Firefox interface! It's enhanced with the Vista-Aero theme, and I changed the layout of the bars and buttons. A spitting image of IE7 isn't it?

Actually the VA theme is not only a "look", but it enhances the usability of the interface and makes it more user-friendly. It equips the tabs bar with buttons, which shortens the distance from your mouse pointer on the web page to the button you want to click. Like IE7, the buttons on the right hand side of the tabs bar is composite.

On the status bar, there are also features to discover! On the left there is a "Find in this page" button. This function is really frequently used, at least for me, and with Firefox' "Find in this page" bar, it's really convenient to search for anything you want in a page. On the right corner, there's a zoomer. Although it is not of much use to me, still such application of space on bars that almost have to be shown is a inventive and effective approach.

Han

An Example of Bertrand Russell’s Argument against the Existence of God

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Today I would like to introduce one of Bertrand Russell’s approaches to argue against the existence of God. Although I do not fully support his idea, as I think the existence of God is not something for you to prove but something you choose to believe in or not. Thus I totally respect anyone's beliefs. Moreover there exists some minor defects in this argument, according to my understanding of it. But still, Russell is one of the wisest minds in the twentieth century, so I would really love to share this brilliant argument with you all.

The argument which Bertrand Russell argued against is called the Natural-law Argument:

People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so.

First of all, as we know, the law of gravitation changed to a more complicated one from Isaac Newton to Einstein. And with the advancements in observatory technology, we may one day find that the rules needed to describe the motion of planets are just too complicated and then we come to a point where there is simply no rule applicable to explain it in some organized manner. Then it’s like what we found in the motion of electrons rounding a nucleus. Actually a great many things we though were natural laws are really human conventions.

There is also the confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that. Even supposing that there were, then why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?

If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say God gave these specific laws in order to create the best universe -- if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary.

These are my interpretation of a slice of Bertrand Russell’s argument. If you would like to find more I encourage you to read “Why I am not a Christian” by Russell. You will find something you need there. Thank you.

Han

Why do I choose Gmail?

- The greatest spam filtering I have ever seen in the ten plus years of my web mail usage history.

- Equipped with either Google Notifier or Google Talk (which works like Windows Live

Messenger, and even better, without any advertisement), you never need to check your inbox. Whenever there is a new mail, you will be notified in time - what's even better, you don't need to bind your mobile phone to use this function!

- With the best mail search, you never need to remember where did you store your mail or when was the mail sent to find a mail. Everyone knows Google is the greatest search engine; why not equip your mailbox with one that's as powerful?

- A great storage. It seems to me that the storage of Gmail increases according to your need. When I first registered, it was about 2GB, but now, it has been upgraded to 5443 MB now (actually I’ve only used up a fourth of its capacity)! And you can also apply to upgrade your storage if you think it is needed (but you hardly ever need to – it’s an automated upgrading system).

- You can chat within your mailbox! No need to install a separate instant messenger client anymore! Of course you can still have one for free – try Google Talk.

- There's more than you would expect! And it's specially designed with functions that meet many advanced users' needs!

Watch this promotional video if you want to.

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

See more of what’s special about Gmail, click https://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html

I promote Gmail totally voluntarily, and I will not benefit from successful promotion, except there are more friends that share the same privilege of using the best free email service, and the advantage of easier communication.

If you are interested, there are also other Google free services which I found surpasses other competitors. And there’s much more still for us to explore!

Han