Thought on This Year’s July 4th Celebration
Being an immigrant, I always thought of myself as an outsider in these events. And for the most part during the celebration, that’s how I felt, except for one moment.
What Your neighbors watching? Netflix Rental Ranking by Zip Code
Very interesting interactive graph on NYT.
A Poem: A Worker Reads History, by Bertolt Brecht, and a Bill Moyers Essay.
I’m against the war. But when I think about the poem, I was reminded the individual soldiers are usually ignored, and they are the ones we should care about, even we are against the abstract ideas because of which they are in harm’s way.
The poem was used as the closing in the first lecture of Yale’s “European Civilization 1648-1945″ course online by John Merriam.
A Bill Moyers Essay: Restoring Accountability for Washington’s Wars also sends a similar message.
A Worker Reads History
Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves. Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him? Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper? So many particulars. So many questions. -- Bertolt Brecht
Music Animation Machine
Music is a predominately auditory experience. Is there anyway to add visual components to it? Although musicians have been doing that for a long time: score is one form of visual representation of music. How ever, the interplay between lines, or musical instruments are not the easiest to grasp when reading music. Not to mention the scores mean very little to a layperson.
Music Animation Machine provides a new way of presenting music visually. Which makes one appreciate the music even more.
Ingenious Ideas: Simple and Cheap Water Desalination and Safer Syringe
Every now and then, I come across brilliant ideas that just make me smile, out of appreciation of the ingenuity of a fellow member of our society whom I never knew. They excite me, and add a little hope to the usually crazy world.
I had such a moment last night. As my bus approached the South Station Bus Terminal, I was reading an article on the Economist about two Canadians worked out a way to desalinate sea water. It struck me that their idea is so simple thus elegant. I couldn’t help but emerged from the bus with a uncontrollable grin . One of the biggest challenge of desalinating sea water is that a huge amount of energy is required. Most of the conventional schemes use electricity. But this new method use the sun more directly to do the heavy lifting.
Here is the article.
Another such moment was from a week ago. It came from a TED talk from Mark Koska, about a safer design of syringe.
In the talk, 80% of the time was spent on explaining how many health risk was brought by the unsafe reuse of syringe. The problems are not confined within the population of drug-addicts. Millions of used syringes are recycled by Chinese in the most primitive way. They were simply washed, repackaged and resold to healthcare providers. Coming from China, I can imagine how these cheap and dirty recycled syringes win the favour from the corrupted, profit seeking, cold-blooded hospital purchasing staffs over the more expansive but cleaner ones.
At the end of the talk, the presenter demonstrate his invention. It was, again, simple thus elegant. But I couldn’t smile. I was asking why such a simple solution is not adopted. Thinking about the risk still present in many part of the world, I cannot smile.
