Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus

Out of my unfading interest in paleontology, I came across an article telling the origin of the names of apatosaurus a.k.a. brontosaurus. I found it quite similar to TOEFL reading passages. It can be found here.

Personally, from a scientific view, I recommend the use of the name "apatosaurus".

Image Source.

Green Dam's Twin Sister

Now website servers in China are required to install the Blue Shield - a similar filter software, server-side counterpart of the de-facto-aborted Green Dam.

Change of License

The copyright license of the posts in this blog has been changed to Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (from the CC Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license before). That means readers of this blog have gained more freedom in using the items posted here. For more information, please visit creativecommons.org.

Why Health Care Needs Reform

A Harvard medical scientist explains.

Speaking Italian

Second language instructors always tell us to be brave and try to speak with the language in whatever occasions we can find.

Reflection on the H1N1 Flu

Eight days ago, on September 5, the Student Housing Section (SHS) sent us residents an email that has the sentences:

The number of confirmed H1N1 cases increased from 8 on 1 Sept to 16 on 2 Sept and 19 on 4 Sept. A lot of residents who had fever earlier have now recovered. At this moment, there are only 4 students suffering from fever.

...While this wave of flu seems to be going away, you are advised to remain vigilant in enforcing all the health precautions.

I do not know from what does SHS recognize that the wave of flu is fading, as the report from Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health reads like this:

One can easily tell from the diagram that on September 4, the day before this message was distributed, there were about 370 reported cases of H1N1 flu in Hong Kong (and yesterday, Sept. 11, the number was 625).

Also, according to the SHS message,

The Environment Health and Safety Unit informed us of a latest advice of Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s that once the fever of a confirmed H1N1 patient has gone for 24 hours without the use of any fever-reducing medication, isolation is no longer necessary. In view of this, the Hall Management has now revised the isolation policy of confirmed H1N1 residents as follows:

1. Isolated residents previously confirmed of H1N1 may return to the Halls if fever has gone for at least 48 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication. 

2. After returning, the resident should wear face mask for at least 3 days,

3. Resident shall avoid social contacts with other persons for 3 days.

4. Resident shall wash hand frequently and maintain good ventilation.

I still remember that just about a week ago, when a student was tested positive for swine flu in a university in Beijing, not only was the student isolated immediately (I am not sure of the exact length of time, but I heard that in China it's usually one to two weeks), all the classes in the university had been canceled and students are advised to stay at home and rest.

Now, with my next-door diagnosed of swine flu and a student taking class with me having just recovered from 38-degree fever, and I am still required to attend classes and free to go to any populated venue, the difference in the attitude toward the pandemic between Hong Kong and China is now obvious. That is probably not the minutest contributor to the fact that there are only 7,505 cases among China's enormous population (and actually most of these should be located in the South, especially Guangdong Province which shares its border with Hong Kong), while in Hong Kong, a city of 7 million, there are already nearly 17,000 by yesterday.

Cultural Difference

I met a young couple traveling for sightseeing in Hong Kong on the train from Beijing earlier this month. The wife was a fresh graduate with an associate degree from an institution in the Province of Guangdong; the husband was a white American with a degree in agriculture and currently teaching ESL at a university in Beijing. At first I thought they were probably just girlfriend and boyfriend, but later, after I asked the girl, I found that they had got married a few months ago. The lady encountered this American man from a course she had been taking; they fell in love and got married in a few months after that.

I never seriously thought about a marriage between a Westerner and a Chinese. The cultural difference was just too huge to be dealt with in a marriage that was to last a couple of decades hopefully, and I truly wondered how this couple had been managing it. Watching the wife talking in English with an obvious Chinese accent, the question mark grew even bigger.

The second day on board, I woke early and met the husband sitting by the window. I took the next seat and began initiating a conversation. After talking about his career, my university life and other things, I raised the question: Is there any cultural differences that are difficult to overcome in your marriage? "Of course!" He replied loudly, laughing. I laughed with him and changed the topic.

I do not believe in anything racial; neither am I stating something nationalist. It just that, even when the language obstacle is fully overcome, the cultural difference, which could be in religions, ideology, past education received, political beliefs, and even merely cuisine, is sufficient to break many happy couples apart, or at least make the relationship a challenge to be worked out.

The girl and I exchanged our emails before debarking, and had some correspondence afterward. I am never against any marriage on the basis of love and commitment, and I sincerely wish them happiness till death.

Mathematics in Economics

It's now during the add/drop period of this new semester. I've been struggling in deciding what math courses to take that do not conflict with my core courses, and at the same time maximizing the total utility in getting myself into a good shape for future studies in economics. That's when I come across this article by Paul Krugman on the relationship between math and econ, and he writes:

[Y]ou can have great work in economics with little or no math. I can’t pull up papers now, but as I recall, Akerlof’s market for lemons had virtually no explicit math in its main exposition; yet it was transformative in its insight.

And later he says, "So by all means let’s have math in economics", but also stresses: "as our servant, not our master."

Laissez Faire

God's in his Heaven -

All's right with the world!

- Robert Browning, Pippa Passes

College Drop-out

An NYT report startled me:

Only 33 percent of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years. Less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana, and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico. The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as “failure factories,” and they are the norm.

This dropout rate is kind of unimaginable in China, or Beijing at least. I can't stop thinking how difficult it would be to graduate from a graduate program, say, a PhD.

Economists as Prophets

The Age:

Professor Roubini embodies the old joke that a good economist is someone who accurately predicted nine out of the past two recessions.

Update: My friend Amy Wang sends in with a nice story:

In one of my economic lecture, when the professor Tony talking about the basic assumptions about economic theory, he said that Let's assume there is no arbitrage in the world, and then some students look at him doubtfully, then he said" Hey, we are economists!"

I think it is the assumptions behind the theory that make it hard to apply to the real world and fail to predict with accuracy about the past and future events.

Evangelion 2.0 in theaters October 16 (HK)

This is a 43-second trailer.

Walt Whitman Quote

I read this sentence in the Leaves of Grass today:

Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras. 

-Walt Whitman "To Him That Was Crucified"

I should remember this.

Suspicion

Source.

Home

My family moved from the bungalows at Lane 7 Hongju, Xuanwu District, to an apartment in a building of more than a score stories near Zhongguancun in the second year of my life. Parents have been telling me that in the first few nights of our new life there, I could not recognize this apartment as home and was always crying to “go home”. At that time, home to me was a place that I was familiar with and could rely on as a shelter from the complicated world outside. A change of location was enough to deprive me of the sense of security.

When ten years later my family moved again to a house in outskirt Beijing, I did not have such resistance anymore. What was left was a strong feeling of inconvenience brought by unacquaintance. I had to give up almost all I had: my friends, my neighborhood, and a proximity to downtown. What was preserved was my family who stayed with me as before, and made this place feel like home again.

Last year, a floormate in our residence hall asked where my “old home” (literal meaning of the Chinese word for “hometown”) was. I told her, I had no old home. I came from Beijing, and that was where my home was. I am not saying that I do not enjoy life in Hong Kong or something, but I really do not feel at home here, although the University has made every effort in making the student hostel like one with hall tutors installed on every floor and hall activities every now and then. It just isn’t home. Here’s no family.

One night a week ago, I was lying in my bed at home in Beijing, thinking, throughout my life I would probably travel to many places and take them as temporary residences; but wherever I went, there were always family waiting for me at home, the people who supported me and cared for me.

Thinking about them, I know I am not far from home.

Performance at AMHKY Singing Contest 2009

Stan [Live] AMHKY Singing Contest 2009 from Han on Vimeo.

Featuring Catherine Young

Due to the Internet cencorship in mainland China, I could not post this video here until now.

Second Interview

The news report on qq.com (Chinese).

This is from the three-hour interview I made last Friday. The author kind of exaggerated, and some of the quotes of me are not verbatim, so don't take me wrong.

Photo: Dr. Zhang Hongwei (right) (blog) and me.

Calendar for Students

Study Hacks recommends Google Calendar.

"I'm psychic, you know."

Source.

Gmail supports SMTP of alternative addresses

With this, you can send emails with your own SMTP server instead of Google's. This is especially useful for   professional addresses (of universities, companies, etc.). The recipient of your message will not be able to identify whether your message is sent from Gmail, an email client, or the standard webmail interface provided by your institution.

After some investigation, I have found the SMTP server (as well as the POP and IMAP ones) of HKBU to be net16.hkbu.edu.hk, and the SMTP port code 587.