The 7 Habits and Confucianism

Recently I have been rereading The Seven Habits by Stephen Covey which I first read in junior high. When reading, I find that the Seven Habits are sometimes closely related to the wisdom taught by Confucianism. For example, Habit 6 is Synergize: "Synergize is the habit of creative cooperation. It is teamwork, open-mindedness, and the adventure of finding new solutions to old problems." Covey teaches that it is most important to find the difference in people's paradigms and respect this difference. This makes me think of the teaching by Confucius: "The superior man is affable, but not adulatory; the mean man is adulatory, but not affable (or I would rather, The gentlemen are in harmony but does not need to agree on the same things; the villains agree but are not in harmony; Junzi he er bu tong, xiaoren tong er bu he)."

At the same time, Covey says that Synergy is the essence of nature. Everything is in such harmony in nature; everything is so synergized. Laozi, the founder of Daoism, says, "Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Dao. The law of the Dao is its being what it is (or, The Dao takes its law from Nature)."

What computers looked like when I first used them as a kid

Windows 3.1.

Source.

Liberty and freedom

Marginal Revolution: Google ngram: the word "liberty"

For the pointer I thank Kevin Edwards. The link here allows you to see the full graph. In contrast, here is "freedom."

But if you plot both "liberty" and "freedom", you'll see that, added together, the use of these words still declines.

Source.

The Legal State

Today I read on NYT that

But two other cases — United States v. Lopez in 1995 and United States v. Morrison in 2000 — limited Congress’s regulatory authority to “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”

When will I be able to see a case in China titled PRC v. Wang?

Things happen.

My Gmail account is close to the storage limit. What am I going to do?

Been using it for five years.

No ads Wikipedia?

I don't understand. Why can't Wikipedia post some ads on its pages to make up for their operational costs? If they integrate Google text ads it won't be a distraction for the readers while it may even provide some relevant commercial information to them. Since editing Wikipedia is made by volunteers, the revenue generated from these text ads should be more than sufficient to maintain its operation, given that Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website on the World Wide Web. It's not like because you are a non-profit organization then you cannot post any ads on your website; it's not like advertising is an unethical conduct - and if it is, then Wikipedia needs to remove that strikingly colorful photo of Jimmy Wales from its billions of pages.

Posting ads is good to Wikipedia (so that it does not need to go this far to beg for donations), good to its readers (so that they don't need to face Jimmy Wales every time they use Wikipedia and may also get some relevant information in the text ads), and good to the economy as a whole (after all most commercial activities will indeed increase the revenue of the whole society). Then what's been hindering Wikipedia?

A few quotes from Milan Kundera, *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*

Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Faber and Faber, 1999.

If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all. P.8

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers. P.171

And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good, and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third or fourth life in which to compare various decisions. P.219

The longing for paradise is man’s longing not to be man. P.293

Coffee Stains on your paper

You can't be completely sure how much (more) LaTeX can do (to your documents). My favorite package of the year. Pointed by Cheap Talk.

Doomsday

I have a good friend who is a Christian and usually talks about the doomsday as described in the Bible, when according to her everyone who have died will come back to life to face God's judgment (Those who really have read the Bible, please forgive me for any mistakes here).

I do tend to believe that there is an end to our time, just like there is a start (possibly out of nothing). That end may be explainable by a singularity in the development of human civilization. If our development can be measured by a monotonically increasing function with time being the independent variable and the level of develop the dependent, then if there is a vertical asymptotic limit line lying somewhere in the future (which can possibly be Year 2012), we will one day realize, in the final seconds of our time scale, that we have utilized all forms of resources in this universe and become "all-knowing", and since time is nothing but a form of energy, we will be able to take control of time as well. Time, as a dimension that constrains us in this positive direction (so that we cannot go back to the past) will lose its power and meaning, and literally we will have reached the end of time.

Alternatively, if human development follows some sort of exponential function, which is not asymptotic, if there is an upper bound to the level of development, then we will at some day "suddenly" reach a point that ends this universe we came to understand. Compared to the former scenario, this is less romantic, without the myriad of miracles that we will witness in the final seconds. How come there is this upper bound instead of any other is also difficult to reason out, rendering this conjecture not all that probable.

I picture in the doomsday, some individuals of human beings will transform into an existence close to God, and the remaining of our species may be wiped out from the Earth. A sad story. But it is nothing more than a million possibilities that our limited intelligence can come up with.

Quantitative Easing: An entertaining yet informative update on Fed's policy

Posting quite some videos recently... Seen on Cafe Hayek.

Update: J.D. Hamilton has a much clearer explanation to the questions raised.

Da Vinci - The Gay Genius

The Hong Kong Science Museum has been recently exhibiting the Marvelous Inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci in its G/F Exhibition Hall. I yesterday paid a visit and recommend everyone nearby interested in science and art to have a look. They made physical models of many of Da Vinci's inventions that were far beyond the time that Da Vinci lived in, many of which have made major contributions toward modern mechanical engineering. Da Vinci's major paintings are also on display, including a digitally restored version of "Mona Lisa" hung side-by-side with the original painting for the visitors to compare.

I regard Da Vinci as one of the few "super geniuses" in world history, alongside Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla and Su Shi, and probably a few more. Not only were they the experts of experts in quite a handful of areas, but many of their inventions were truly beyond their era, and maybe even ours.

The Exhibition Hall

The Warship

The prototype helicopter

Perpetual motion

The bicycle

An alternative approach to the pressure to appreciate the Yuan

Okay now the whole advanced world seems to be unanimous in attacking the manipulation of the exchange rate of the Renminbi, how much longer can the Beijing government withstand this pressure? It seems that eventually China will have no choice but to free the trade of Yuan and see it appreciate. But does it have to be so?

Exactly two years ago China began to release it’s 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package; that is roughly 603.86 billion U.S. dollars, or more than a tenth of China’s GDP in 2008 ($4.33 Trillion US dollars at current prices). Yes, China is one of the most successful in overcoming the late financial crises, but that is achieved at a cost. Housing price skyrocketed, with house-price-to-income ratio as high as 164, and we are witnessing the 17^th straight increase in property price; CPI has risen to a 25-month high in October; food alone rose 10% from a year earlier.

Besides giving up manipulation over its currency, China may be litmus-testing an alternative approach: lowering the real value of the Yuan by gradual but continued inflation. Four years ago when I first came to Hong Kong, consumer prices was still about twice those in Beijing; but last summer when I went back to Beijing, prices were already comparable to those in Hong Kong in many categories, if not most. While the CNY-USD exchange rate has been quite stable in the past two years (until recently), the true purchasing power seems to be depreciating throughout the years (this I based on personal experience but not official data). It is now quite reasonable to expect banknotes with 500- and 1,000-yuan denominations to be out in the market in the near future.

With such continued effort, the Beijing administration may well depreciate the value of the Yuan to a level consistent with or much closer to the pegged exchange rate before unleashing the Yuan exchange market, while earning a huge amount of seigniorage revenue from thin air.

Sources:

CNTV.cn. (2010, November 10). China Winds Down Stimulus Efforts. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from Beijing Review: http://bjreview.com.cn/special/2010-11/10/content_311065.htm

Global Property Guide. (n.d.). House Price to Income Ratio - China Compared to Continent. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from Global Property Guide: http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/China/price-gdp-per-cap

Google. (n.d.). Gross Domestic Product. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from Google: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+china

Pierson, D. (2010, November 10). China's inflation rate hits 25-month high. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/10/business/la-fi-china-inflation-20101111

RRT Staff Writer. (2010, November 10). China Property Price Growth Cools In October. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from RTT News: http://www.rttnews.com/Content/AsianEconomicNews.aspx?Id=1475327&SM=1

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

We China have a Nobel laureate today!

Textbook Adverts

Have you ever thought about advertising on textbooks? Textbooks are widely circulated, and the readership is well targeted; then, why not? This website is doing exactly this. Now you can download a wide variety of textbooks (and travel guides and business titles) for free - even without registration. These textbooks are written for this website and only available here. I'm not sure how many professors will begin using such free texts for their teaching (and I do hope my professors will), but this could be an alternative future of the over-profiting textbook market we are facing now.

The use of "de" in a Chinese-English bilingual environment

It is not uncommon these days for people in the Chinese community to use Chinese and English interchangeably while speaking. In Chinese, adjectives are usually followed by a de, classified as an "auxiliary word" in Chinese grammar, and somewhat like a preposition but placed between an adjective and a noun. When adjectives in English are translated into Chinese, they are also usually followed by a de, to indicate their classification as adjectives and to make them easily integrable while translated in sentences, e.g. joyful, huanle de, and beautiful, meili de. However, as people colloquially often insert English terms into sentences otherwise Chinese; in the case of English adjectives, they are also often followed by a de, even though as an English adjective, it is an unnecessary complication; and theoretically, while the commonly accepted translation of English adjectives already contains the de, it is incorrect to attach a redundant one on top of that.

The reason why people often commit this redundancy and feel awkward if without it, is probably attributed to that when people speak, their logic and thinking pattern is in a Chinese environment. The English adjectives are treated like Chinese adjectives, ripped off their English-ness. Therefore the English word in a Chinese sentence is only easily identifiable by a Chinese audience as used as an adjective when it is accompanied by a de. With the use of English widely accepted in the Chinese community, more studies into the effect of language integration and its impact on both languages are expected to be carried out.

The Christian Sin

One concept that I cannot understand in the Christian teaching is that, if man are after all sinful, how come they can be created by God, who is perfect and almighty? According to my understanding of perfection, if something imperfect or even unpleasant can be derived from some other thing, this latter being must be flawed and definitely not perfect to produce such a faulty creation.

This is also where I like about Daoism. Dao respects the natural state of things. There is nothing as perfection in Daoism – anything proclaimed to be “perfection” must be flawed viewed from another angle, put another way, perfection by itself will always turn into inadequacy. Human beings are a byproduct and part of Nature; they inherently come to this world, without restraints as they are in accordance with Dao. They default but they are not considered sinful because of this as it is only an innate occurrence in Nature.

A Simple Model on Marriage

Finding your life partner is in some sense like doing a numerical approximation. After the first a hundred steps if you still cannot find a satisfactory approximation to the true value, you're probably better off stop and try with another algorithm. Despite that there might be a "perfect" match for you in these some seven billion people, but since one's life-span is finite, we can only meet finitely number of people from which we choose the most suitable spouse among them.

Assume you are a male (for the convenience of narration only; all the results can be similarly applied to a female reader. However, due to the radical difference between marriage markets for hetero- and homosexuals, this model may not well apply to the latter group.) in your twenties; you have met some 300 similarly-aged women whom you have contact with throughout these years. Let's further assume that 280 of them do not qualify your life-partner criteria, and ten of the twenty left are separated from you geographically or otherwise physically unreachable. Among these ten, five have already been married off or are currently engaged in a long-term relationship. Therefore there are only five candidates, from the initial 300, that meet your criteria and is geographically available.

Okay, now since most people have similar judgements over a "fit" couple, the five candidates tend also to find you somewhat suitable too. Therefore the chance of engaging with one of them should be sizable. Mostly likely the first one among the five that initiates / accepts a partnership with you will eventually make it to the end of this life's most extensive filtering process.

About Plagiarism

I every now and then find my fellow students plagiarize materials from a wide variety of sources and in many different forms. Whenever that happens, I would try my best effort to correct the student's behavior. The critical and dreadful thing is that many students are unbelievably ignorant about plagiarism, and do not know how to create their own work (which should have long been an integral part of their ability after more than a decade of education). This situation would improve significantly should every college student take their studies seriously and investigate themselves the right methods to do research.

Change of BU Mail SMTP Server

Last week I experienced a series of connection failures while using Gmail as a client to send emails via the BU Mail account and server. It seemed that the SMTP server I had been using, net16.hkbu.edu.hk, was not working any more. I googled the problem and found the new SMTP server

• server address: smtps01.hkbu.edu.hk
• port: 465
• secure connection option: SSL

It has been working well so far. Please comment should you find problems using this server. The original file I found documenting this mail protocol setting is here.

Once upon a time in Beijing High School Four

I’d like to share a few stories that happened during my years in high school, this being the first one.

 

Suicide

The senior year was obviously the most busy and stressful of all. Three days after the final exam of the First Semester, the scored papers were returned to the students and the total score rankings released. Inevitably there are students complaining about poor performance once again and others cheering, mostly silently to themselves.

The school days always ended early after major exams; and since this was only less than a week before the winter vacation, students only had morning classes; by noon, even some students living on campus had gone home, leaving less than a handful of students in each classroom. A few friends who had not performed well gathered and decided to eat out and have a drink for lunch.

People in China count days after the Winter Solstice in nine-day intervals to endure the long bitter winter waiting for the coming of spring. And at this time, it was right in the beginning of the Fourth Nine Days, the coldest of all. As the old saying goes: In the Third and Fourth Nine Days, on the ice people walk their ways.

Saddened for the result of the exam, and at a lost about what to do merely a little more than three months before the College Entrance Examination, or Gaokao, the students easily got drunk. Having finished the meal, against the roaring wind that scratched the face, they stumbled their way back to the school through a narrow lane, with their necks covered by heavy cotton scarves and hands tucked tightly into the pocket.

The Academic Building was almost empty. Eventually they made it to their warm classroom on the Third Floor, and sat together and continued their chatting, with one tired from the day and went back to the dormitory and another student, Ming, leaving to stay alone for a while in the hallway for the fresh air.

It was only a while past midday, yet the winter sun seemed distant and chilling. Upon opening the window, the piercing wind soared onto Ming’s sorrowful face. He stood, staring out of the window at nothingness. The view was blurred. His mind was addled by alcohol and he could not concentrate to think, to think of what he will do with this messed up future, what to do with this grinding life.

Gradually he began losing his conscientiousness. He couldn’t catch his breath and climbed onto the sill seeking the cooling air; he felt that he was lifted, high and out of the open window, and then he lost it, hearing people shouting, “He’s falling!”…

Am I dead, he thought. He felt the pain in his back, and slowly opened his eyes; the sky was blue, and there was not a piece of cloud. He struggled to get up, only to see the small circle of people standing around, totally amazed. He silently stumped away.

Luckily Ming was saved by the grassland, and was actively discussed on campus for his somewhat amazing experience of falling from the Third Floor while landing almost intact; however, he was also openly and seriously criticized by the Head Teacher of the Grade in the Grade Assembly on the next day.