Work, Meaning, etc.

Through this article on FT, I stumbled into a rabbit hole and just barely pulled myself out before sinking a whole evening into reading more and more lateral links on this subject.

Does work have meaning? What a can of worms. If yes, what is it and why is it so obscure? If no, why work beyond the poverty level?

Of course, on the most fundamental level, the purpose --- if not meaning --- of work is survival. Survival of the self and our genes. It's simple.

But then it got more and more complicated.

Just like "happiness," the word "meaning" should send a shiver down anyone's spine. Both are so chronically abused by cliches and wishful thinking and propaganda that they have by now lost all meaning.

When economists barged into the happiness business, all hell has broken loose. The problem is that economists do not see individuals when they think about people. So intent are they in seeking universal theories about the world and, worse, people, that they would never stoop to the level of individual persons and observe their similarities and differences --- some external and some internal, some constant and some ever-changing. And yet, without taking the interperson and intraperson complexities into consideration, the search for a universal theory of meaning or solution to happiness is doomed.

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Post Script: Actually, the whole point of this post is that all the talk about "meaning" --- as in the meaning of work, the meaning of life, blah blah blah --- reminds of me Harari's assertion that almost everything that binds human society together is fiction: morality, religion, human rights, and money.

Or I prefer to quote GRRM:

"Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill.”

It applies to the modern concept of "meaning" just as well. Meaning is what one assigns to it. No more and no less. There, GRRM has solved the existential question for ya.

Procrastination

Apparently the "war" on procrastination has been raging around the world. Hanging out on the Chinese twitter, I saw how the issue has become a fashionable epidemic among the ambitious and upward-mobile Chinese youths. Hmm. And of course self-help books that claim to cure your procrastination problem fill up bookshelves in the only bookstore left in my neighborhood.

I don't have any remedy to cure anybody's procrastination. I am bothered by my own apparent tendency to put off doing things that are unnecessary but not enjoyable, sometimes, occasionally. I can't cure myself or anyone of occasional laziness.

The thing is, I just recently realized that institutions and even companies that are supposed to be ruthless money-driven machines procrastinate, and far worse than any individual person. People put off not only doing their work but making decisions that affect others' work downstream. And the problem is rampant. Especially by the end of the year, all the previously unmade and delayed decisions have snowballed into a gigantic snowball that swallow a bunch of innocent bystanders who did nothing to contribute to the others' indecision and laziness.

Yeah, indeed, when institutional procrastination is far worse and destructive than minor transgression by individuals, why beat oneself up over it?

It's perfectly logical for institutions to procrastinate than individual persons, because an individual knows the direct and first-hand effect of delays in doing laundry and taking out trashing, but the effects of procrastinating on making decisions and doing work in an organization are almost completely painless, until your boss or colleague comes to your office and looks at you with disgust and reproach. It's all the more painless when employees on salary see no difference in their paycheck, regardless of how much they have slacked off.

Corporations are not people, and people seem to know that instinctively. That is why they don't give a shit at work.

Whims 2014

At the end of the summer, I dragged DH with me up to the Deep Creek Lake in Maryland and hopped into it twice. Did not swim for more than 15 minutes each time, as it was quite cold. Whenever I submerged my head into the murky lake water, the cold shocked it like an icy clamp. So I turned over and floated on my back, with the backhalf of the head in water. It was all right, but unlike the rosy, filtered memory of that one other time when I had swam in a lake nearly three decades ago. It had been unbearably hot that summer and the water had been comfortably warm. My mother took me on a retreat of sort sponsored by her employer. I spent the idle days with a couple of her colleagues' daughters. There was a translation of Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales collection lying around, which I devoured in a couple of days.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I again dragged DH (poor Mr. S) with me up to New York City and skated at the Wollman Rink in Central Park. It is smaller than one would infer from photographs, but I liked it nevertheless. The vegetation growing by the boards and the rocks and trees of the park surrounding the ice are an odd contrast to the skyscrapers in the background. The ice is of an irregular shape, suggesting that it used to be a pond on which people skated. Incidentally (or perhaps logically), this fancy was also related to a memory from childhood -- the movie "Portrait of Jennie" starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton (based on a novella by Robert Nathan). A painter met a strange girl in Central Park one winter, and they skated on the ice rink. In the movie the park was deserted, leaving only the two of them in the world.

A Theory of Laziness (2)

Similar to physical strength, there is variation in the attention reservoir between any two people and within one person over time. Some have more muscle; some have more endurance; some have less; some are weaker. Mental capacity is probably more complicated, and the rate of ego depletion or exhaustion may depend on the activity and effort. Some people may have more to begin with. A small minority of the population need substantially less sleep than the rest of us. Some people mentally lift more for longer than others.

Obviously, a person's strength peaks in youth and decline in the middle age. I suspect the same curves can be observed in the brain. Neuronal loss and brain mass shrinkage are natural aging process. Older adults' brain compensate for the loss to an extent by increasing processing efficiency. But the
decline is inevitable.

We already know that watching TV is less strenuous than reading, and reading is less strenuous than writing. Lying is more strenuous than telling the truth or omitting the truth, except for psychopaths. The energy expended by the brain in any task can be quantified by measuring the radioactively labeled glucose consumption and blood flow in the brain.

I suspect this is why, most of the time, we prefer reading/writing emails to writing a long, complicated article (like what I'm doing now). Organizing a collection of thoughts and ideas and sort out the logic and connections between them and put it all down into words is heavier lifting than responding to one question, one thought, on a single matter, one email at a time. I am feeling this difference right at the moment. I can spend hours reading and answering emails without fatigue, but writing an article or technical document exhausts me after a couple of hours.

So, is it any wonder that we would rather doodle on the Web and check and re-check emails every 15 minutes rather than do some real work for an hour? The same reason humans would rather watch TV than reading a book, even though neither has a very long history in evolution. The same reason most people love to hear stories but only a select few can tell stories, and making up stories is an even rarer talent.

A Theory of Laziness (1)

I am developing a theory about laziness.

The phenomenon of ego depletion has been observed. It describes the observable limitation of attention and self-control. A famous experiment showed that people are more likely to reach for a chocolate cake over fruit after a mental exercise.

Is mental capacity and its exhaustion analogous as physical strength?

To an extent, yes.

When I am well rested, I can run/swim/skate harder than when I am tired. I am tired when I have done a certain amount of physical activity. This is not so apparent in mental effort, because most mental activities during the day do not bring on a sore brain, just like walking around for a few minutes at a time, doing some very light housework, or driving the car would not cause sore muscle. However, the muscle gets sore quickly and reliably if I lift a couple of dumbbells up to my capacity. I have become aware that certain mental exertions can be similarly exhausting. For example, I was reviewing the statistical analysis plan of a study I just picked up yesterday afternoon. After spending almost two hours with full and deep attention on the document, I could not finish it. My reading and thinking speed slowed down considerably. I knew my brain was tired. I had to rest a bit, go on to some less strenuous work, and resume the mental "heavy lifting" today.

We instinctively prefer sitting to standing, standing to walking, walking to running. Without added reasons --- improving health, building muscle, losing weight --- we naturally choose resting to activity. Resting takes up less energy, obviously. The instinct likely came from the need for energy preservation during the long history of food/energy scarcity. Among all organs in the body, the brain is disproportionally energy expending. So it makes sense that our instinct also favors a state of inaction in the brain. Like physical objects, the body would return to the low-energy state as much as possible. It burns energy to do strenuous activity, mental or physical.

In other words, being lazy is a natural instinct. Without other factors, we would all be lazy if we can.

Of course, things are never so simple with the brain. 

Untitled (for now)

For the past nine years or so, I have been going to this online forum for figure skating. Well, actually it started out much earlier. First, I found a figure skating group on usenet back in the 1990s, when I was still in pharmacy school. Once the worldwide web came to popularity, the same circle of figure skating fans migrated to several online hangouts. At some point, someone clued me in on two largest forums that have remained to this day, and I generally frequent one of the two. I go there off and on for nearly a decade, with stretches of indifference alternating fervent passions. This forum's owner is based in Europe, and many regulars are as well, giving the discussions a European perspective not apparent in North American skating circles.

On any online forum, there are always people with a larger presence than others. They have a more constant and concentrated presence than lurkers and casual visitors. Given the limited size of worldwide skating fans and limited outlets elsewhere, the regulars on the forums have remained surprisingly stable. A few years ago, a Polish young man became one of the big regulars. His posts ranked high in both volume and frequency. He was one of the die-hard skating fans who take obscure skaters and junior-level competitions as seriously as the Olympics. He was passionate about skating and about voicing his opinions --- primarily about but not limited to skating. Smart, articulate, strongly opinionated, passionate. He couldn't help but leave a lot of footprints on the forum.

About a week ago, it was suddenly announced on the forum that this Polish young man had died in an accident. He was just past 30. It was a shock, since he left posts all over the forum only a day or two ago. Many people wrote mourning comments under the announcement, including lurkers who rarely come out of the woods, saying how much they had respected and enjoyed reading his opinions and jokes and snarks. The loss is clearly felt by many people. Two of his friends found their way onto the forum and declared that they had no idea he had so many admirers online. According to the friends, the young man was well loved and popular in real life as well. He was certainly not a loner, despite the substantial time he apparently spent on the skating forum.

Except for three or four local skating fans whom I have met and socialized with in real life, I have always maintained a mental distance with the skating forum. I don't socialize or seek friendship that is solely online. I had no direct connection with any fan on the forum that I have not met in person. Yet, I've been thinking about the Polish young man a lot since the announcement.

I wonder if he knew how much his persona as an uber skating fan had been respected and admired and enjoyed by so many people. I wonder if he had any inkling how acutely his own absence would be felt. I often agreed with his opinions, but said so only occasionally with my trademark restraint and distance. Now I wish I hadn't had so much restraint and had openly praised his passion and insight more often, or just engaged with his discussions more even if I disagreed vehemently --- I think he would have enjoyed it, too. I hope he had known the size of the footprint he had left on other people's minds, but I doubt that.

Does anyone know one's own impression on the world? On people around him or her, close and far? It seems impossible. It is impossible, unless you believe in the afterlife. The thing that struck me is how little we tell each other "I care about you/your opinions." Perhaps we don't even think about it. It feels awkward and gratuitous to discuss our connections of varying degrees. The attachment is only felt acutely upon a loss, when it's too late.

So the inevitable question is, if I were dead now, who would feel a loss? Naturally, some would feel it more strongly than others. I think I have a pretty good idea. I have never thought about my interpersonal relationships in this way. Who will mourn me for the person I am and who will mourn the loss of my usefulness? Who will be empathic enough to feel it and who will be too narcissistic or numb to care? 

One of the common traits of neurotics is their obsession of others' opinions of them. "How do they think of me?" is the question that keeps them (us) up at night. Let's be honest. Most everyone cares about other people's opinions of himself to some degree, and those who completely do not give a shit are more likely to be jerks, assholes, and psychopaths. But the balance between caring and obsessing is precarious and potentially problematic.

Perhaps defining one's place in a social context can be approached from one's absence. At least, this way of thinking has immediately crystalized for me my relationships with people I know. Who care about me? Who do I care about? How much? Of course, people differ on the types of relationship they care about. If you are Andy Lau or Jackie Chan, your first loyalty might be to your fans rather than to your wife and children. Nevertheless, this provides a useful framework to sort out the importance and meaning of various relationships --- rather than intimacy alone --- and makes it easier to choose where to invest one's time and emotional energy.

The Cashier

I had a few hours free on Wednesday afternoon, so I decided to go watch the 3:30 show of Boyhood at the theater around the corner.

The ticket price was $9.50. I took out a twenty and two quarters and handed them to the cashier, a short, pudgy guy in his late twenties to early thirties with a scraggy and rather inadequate beard. He opened the register and stuffed my bill into the twenty-dollar slot, and then started pulling out one-dollar bills one after another after another. 

Being a mildly obsessive-compulsive neat freak with an aversion to small changes, I had a gloomy suspicion that he was going to give my change in a fiver and six singles. "What are you doing?" I wanted to say, "Look, you've got several five-dollar bills in the slot. Just give me two fivers and a single." 

He didn't though. I watched his two fat fingers pulling out a dollar bill, crumple it into a ball in his left palm, and another one, and another, four or five times, until he finally switched to the right hand and handed me a one-dollar and two fivers. The other crumpled dollar bills stayed in his other hand. 

It was not until I sat down in the darkened theater that I realized that he was probably stealing from the cash register while I stared at his fingers --- drawing the dollar bills and crumpling them in his palm. He did it calmly and paid no attention to me whatsoever. 

Then I remembered the few years in which the green stuff passed between my own figures, first at a small independent drug store in Monterey Park, California and later at the outpatient pharmacy at Kaiser hospital in West Los Angeles. At the former, I was paid five dollars an hour sitting or standing between the low counter in the front and the high counter behind, through which the pharmacist would hand me bottles of prescription meds to give to mostly Cantonese-speaking little old patients. There wasn't any kind of security measures guarding the cash register, but then the bosses --- pharmacists and part-owners of the outfit --- were by configuration always standing behind me. The senior technician and the boss's favorite girl, Brenda, would take cash straight out of the register to buy us lunch every day. Later at Kaiser, I would run the cash register only occasionally when it was short-handed in front, as I mostly worked in the back on dispensing, as I was a licensed intern pharmacist then. Every tech was assigned a specific register on the counter with a PIN. At the end of the day anyone manning a register was required to reconcile the sales printout and the money in the register. Pharmacy interns and pharmacists shared one register, under the assumption that they were less likely to steal. Indeed during my three years of employment, the pharmacists' register never seemed to miss more than a few bucks at any given time. 

Anyway, in those years the thought of palming a few bucks here and there never crossed my mind, as far as I can remember. It's not like I have never thought of stealing in my life, but when the thought did cross my mind, it was never induced by currency. That's not because I don't like money in a general, practical sense, but rather money in itself is so impersonal and abstract --- pieces of paper or cloth --- that seeing and holding it never quite inspires a salivating desire to possess it, somehow. Its allure is one or two steps removed for the actual pleasures it promises. Impulse is not enough; one has to think and imagine. 

Living in Others' Dreams, continued

When I read Oliver Burkeman's column this Sunday something clicked in my head. The subject of pursuing "the interesting" rather than "the truth" has to be related to in some way to the issue of living in other people's dreams instead of one's own dreams instead of a waking state.

Burkeman quoted Murray Davis to suggest that our pursuit of ideas is not motivated by a pursuit of truth but rather a pursuit of mental excitement. Or, more precisely, an escape from boredom.

I am as guilty as anyone in this escape. The mind is bored by ... what? Not working outdoors? Not hunting and gathering? Not struggling for survival every day and every moment? Not threatened by a thousand dangers of living in the wild? Not exhausted by constant physical exertion day after day? I'm not complaining, but the butt is indeed in the chair all day (like now), and the mind is indeed bored.

For a short while I got into the Chinese knock-off version of Quora known as 知乎。I could spend hours on it browsing various answers to various questions, most of which I could not give a toss or relate to my own life. It's positively addictive. Of course one could argue that this addiction has to do with the urge to know others, to learn, to understand, to peek into another mind. Whatever, but at one point I began to wonder about the meaning and purpose of acquiring knowledge.

In the world I grew up, the acquisition of knowledge is always good. The more the better. When I was small I had a knack for acquiring and retaining a variety of factoids from books I read. My father was proud of that, and a lot of people envied my "wide base of knowledge." Positive reinforcement might have given it a push, and now it is self perpetuating. This thirst for knowledge led me into a journalism job at one point, which I enjoyed a lot. I could have been at it still, despite sometimes wondering about the point of it.

I occasionally read the blog Farnam Street by a Canadian economist (or maybe a trader, I'm not clear on the difference). He reads several books a week, mostly nonfiction, and posts thoughts about them daily, usually quoting blocks of text from each book. The volume of his reading is very large. The tag line in his email newsletter is "Do you want to get smarter?" It's another big subject altogether about whether knowledge makes one smarter.

I'm not knocking this lifestyle of constantly trying to absorb a lot of knowledge and living in other people's dreams. That is how I have lived for most of my life. The proliferation of TED Talk is an indication that I am not alone in this. Of course, the mind's thrills do not have to come from TED Talk type of knowledge. It could also be knowledge of how your family and friends are living, what they had for lunch, what movies they saw, and how big their babies are now, via Facebook and WeChat and whatever. Or knowledge of how your favorite celebrities are living.

This is also a part of the issue of the separation of mind and body. The mind pursues thrills that the body cannot provide (unless you're an extreme sport practitioner). So it goes elsewhere and, in today's world, finds thrills easily in movies, computer games, and the Web. Not even books any more for the thrills come too slowly from the pages.

Skating is the only time when the mind cannot detach itself from the body. Running is only partially so. What is real experience of my own? If the mind does not register the body's experience, is it real? If the mind gets its thrills without the body's involvement, is it real? Are we all living in day dreams all day long? Worse, are we all living in other people's day dreams all day long? The problem is, at least in today's world, it is so easy for the mind to find endless thrills, and the body only gets in the way. The real thrills brought about by the body, like the sunset mentioned in Burkeman's article, can't compete with a blip on the screen.

Living in Each Other's Dreams

The weather was atrocious today. Nevertheless I dragged Mr. S out to lunch at a fancy Thai restaurant we used to visit a lot but had not been back to for a year. On our way home the wind picked up and the rain turned into little ice pellets bouncing off the car's windows and hood. After some grumbling about the foot-dragging winter, we got into a discussion about an article reporting on research about ... well, the subject is not important, but I began to argue that the abstract representation of something that induces a projected, simulated experience in a person's head is not the same as actually having a real experience.

Then it occurred to me that this is an issue that has plagued my mind recently. When we watch a movie, when we read a book (especially but not limited to fiction), when we watch TV (including reality TV), are we not living in a simulated experience and feel emotions induced by a representation of experience that is NOT REAL to ourselves? Of course one could trace this back to storytelling by the fire pit ("Once upon a time...") and the drawings of hunting scenes on cave walls. When people listen to or watch (or both) an abstract representation of other people's adventure, they feel as if they were going through the same adventure and experience a part of the same feelings, emotions, and thrills (etc., etc.), all in the safety of their own caves or living room.

I'm sure someone --- probably a philosopher or a psychologist --- has described this odd phenomenon. Humans can experience something without actually doing anything for real. The fake experience, induced by abstract representation of others' actions and experiences, can induce a sense of actually being there and doing it. Sometimes it can feel very real.

So the line between reality and induced armchair experience is blurred. An extremely ambiguous example is playing computer/virtual reality games. You are doing something for real, but most of it is fake. The threat is fake, but the adrenaline rush is real. A number of recent experiments show that the brain cannot tell the difference between reality and fake reality, and a clever VR trick can even create an out-of-body experience for real. 

Now that we don't NEED to do much of anything in daily life any more, do we need real experience any more? We don't have to craft our own table and chair from wood, build our huts from clay and straw, cook our meal on fire, and harvest our own grains any more. If we want to know what it feels like to make things, we can watch programs on HGTV or the Food Network. We don't have to actually make things.

I remember the stirring fascination I felt watching the TV program "Alone in the Wilderness", in which a man made a living alone in Alaskan forest, building his own house, carving his own boat, catching his own fish. Also the Swiss novel "Heidi," which describes, in meticulous and credible details, the mountain life ranging from milking the cow to herding goats. Importantly, "Heidi" suggests that doing these things are so easy that even children can handle them. --- And so can you! But you don't need to bother. You can get all your satisfaction from projecting your mind into these people on the pages or on the screen.

Pushing the life a little farther, one could argue that many other experiences can be felt without doing anything. Can we eventually simulate all experiences, including the most instinctive pleasures, such as, uh, the tingling of smelling the woods on a clear autumn morning? All without moving your butt out of the chair!

Living someone else's experience through an abstract representation or a vivid medium is like living in a dream, a dream shared by me and the other person, because there is an eerie sense of both being and being surprised in either case. When I wake up in the morning and read the twitter feed or emails of news of the world I have missed in my sleep, it is not unlike walking straight into another dream. Throughout the day I share my friends' and colleagues' experiences through emails and messages, and the world's collective experiences through news and Web sites. In fact I have not left my chair, and my hands have not created anything tangible besides an electronic copy of some words and numbers that exists inside the machine.

Note that "someone else's experience" could be merely someone else's made-up experience, like fiction. In such cases, the author is dreaming and I enter his or her dream. The difference is the author has more control and spends more effort. I'm just a lazy consumer of the dream created by the author and deservedly have less control.

The question is this: If there is no difference between real and simulated experience, if we get the same emotions and reactions from nonreal representation of life, why live for real? Why do things for real? Why touch and hold real objects? Why eat real food? Why love real people? Why make anything real? How much of my life is real and how much is a dream created by others and shared by me?

Why not stay in the continuous, endless dream? 

Autumn in the Woods

Seneca Creek Park, Maryland

Even when the wind was too light to be felt, the rustling never stopped above, the trees making music. Then there was the crunching of dried leaves and pine cones under foot. No birds though, probably all gone to warmer places. On the lake shore, tiny waves broke on the boat house's wooden launch pad, the ripples quieter than a whisper. The boating season was over and all the rental boats had been stowed away, the kiosk shut and empty. On the playground children were jumping up and down recycled old tires and laughing and screaming on swings.

The air was filled with the fragrance of broken leaves and pine needles and dimming sunlight, and the shimmering afternoon lake.

A Dream

Every so often I would have a recurrent dream. I was walking in a stretch of grassland, with home behind me --- not far away --- and some destination ahead of me within walking distance. Lately the destination has been a grand and magnificent palace with a golden tower or dome. Like many palaces in Europe, it is possibly a museum, because in one of the dreams I was taking a group of people to on a tour.

Last night the journey was unusually vivid. The trail was surrounded by green and delicate ferns as high as my knees, gently swaying in the wind, and the prairie spread to as far as the eye could see. I was convinced I could get there very soon, perhaps in half an hour. The vision was so sharp that I could count the number of ridges on the leaves.

This is home, I thought. I have lived here all my life and know every path and every turn in the grass. Everything felt familiar. I had taken the road from the home behind me to the tower before me a thousand times. How fortunate that glamor and beauty are so close to home. The sweet anticipation before I get to the happy destination.

Suburbia

This week I'm visiting in-laws in deep suburbia outside of Atlanta.

It is odd how lifestyle in suburbia is so fundamentally different from that in an urban or semi-urban setting. Everyone drives everywhere --- pick up grocery, go to movies, hang out at Starbucks, etc. Naturally people settle into their three- to four-bedroom single-family houses. Their time is consumed by lawnmowing, floor-sweeping, cooking in the open kitchen, and, perhaps, gazing at the big, green backyard for hours on end and napping on the back or front porch. I would bet (since I have no real data to prove the theory) that suburbanites spend more time with their spouse and children and less time with friends and social acquaintances. It takes a lot more effort, time, and gasoline to go out.

There are sidewalks, but no one to walk on them. One person I know takes his daily walking exercise in a mall. He drives 2 miles up the parkway from his house to a shopping mall and makes loops from Macy's to Burlington Coat Factory and back. I can understand why. It feels incredibly lonely for one to walk on bare concrete sidewalks with cars rushing by and not a human figure in sight. Walking inside a mall, one is surrounded by not only blaring neon signs but also straggles of teenagers and their giggles and chatters. Instead of a sense of being surrounded by steel leopards running by you, one has a sense of living in Asimov's Caves of Steel, permanently cut-off from the sun and natural air. Of course, the best setting for a walk is alone in the woods, but alone by the highway is disturbing.

As I've been living in a more-or-less urban setting for years, I've taken my own lifestyle for granted. Perhaps the urban lifestyle has its own unnatural aspects and artificiality. I promise I will reflect on that at some point during this week.

I am not interested in the simplistic, idealized, wishful-thinking-driven theories of Richard Florida. Rather, what I am interested in is how the divergent lifestyles between urban and suburban residents subtly shape their views of life and psychology --- it can't have no effect on a person's mind being surrounded by your house and lawn and the walls of your car versus being surrounded by strangers without such distance and barrier.

The Great Storm

Can't forego the opportunity to record the storm, the most violent I have ever witnessed.

*********
It was windy two days ahead of Sandy's arrival, but one day before the air was oddly calm and balmy. The only abnormality was the darkness. On high noon, the sky had an inkiness that bled from the low clouds into the air. It looked like dusk all day.

The rain came slowly in the evening, no more than a drizzle, mild and warm. The night passed peacefully, until the rain intensified in the predawn hours.

I had a strange, anxious dream in the morning right before I woke up. Outside the window it was pouring, but quiet. The trees swayed gently in the wind, not even hard enough to shake off the leaves that had recently turned amber and crimson. From the window I could see headlights moving down the street. Crazy people were still out and about? But I heeded warnings and stayed indoor.

In the afternoon, I went to the exercise room in the basement of the building and walked for a while on the treadmill. A few young residents braved the weather to take their dogs out and let them do their business around the building, before rushing back inside wetter than the pets.

The day moved slowly, especially as I was stuck home and the sky never changed for 10 hours straight. The gloom merely persisted until darkness suddenly smothered everything at half past six in the evening.

The only sign of the passage of time was the wind, which grew more wild and violent as the day inched on. Before the darkness descended, the wind really picked up, tearing at the trees like a raving meth head on a three-day binge. I stood at the window, gazing out with amazement, wondering why none of them had yet been torn down onto the soggy ground after hours of being horribly shaken. They must have at least a severe concussion.

Although it hardly seemed possible, but the wind became even stronger after dark. Ominous noises made themselves heard through the tightly-shut windows like a thousand ghosts howling and jostling and battering each other. The poor window panes shuddered desperately for hours on end, as if just about to be punched through and shatter into mangled pieces.

I am sitting in the living room, waiting for the power to go down. It's a miracle that our lights are still on after a whole day of the worst storm I have ever seen. I doubt we will last over tonight. This truly feels apocalyptic.

Don't Troll the Idiots

There are stupid questions, and there are idiots who will never let facts get in the way of beliefs.

I was a bit taken aback (and delighted) by the blunt words of Pamela Gay, a professor of astronomy at some university in the Midwest who gave a talk on common misconceptions and flat-out wrong ideas in astronomy. She has a podcast online that I mean to check out.

In addition to disputing theories like the end of the world according to the Mayan Calendar and why the moon has different phases (not the Earth's shadow), she gave the advice "Do not troll the idiots, because they will just troll you back. There are people who do not understand, and there are idiots. Know the difference. When you get into an argument with idiots, find an escape as quickly as you can." 

Another funny comment from her. She mentioned that, in her class, a student asked, "Dr. G ...", because this is the Midwest and people can't say "Gay."

Kenwood Cherry Blossom

昨天带人去看樱花，到马里兰的Kenwood住宅区而不是著名的DC城里，主要因为可以开车而不必走路。不到一百年前，Kenwood住宅区种了一大堆樱花树，现在成为本地的昂贵区之一。

看到一半下起阵雨来，而且越下越大，不禁庆幸自己的英明决定。如果去了城里的 Tidal Basin 看花，肯定变成落汤鸡，又湿又冷，连躲的地方都无。

因下雨没机会下车拍照，偷张别人的照片贴出来。明年希望天气合作，可参加一个当地的walking tour。

英文 vs. 中文

以前 barb 问过是看中文快还是看英文快，我说看中文快一点。

今天在网上听了一下 The New Yorker 驻京作者 Evan Osnos 在北京的公开讲话，他用英文讲，旁边有中文翻译，我一边眼睛里看着其他网站，一边耳朵里听着中英文交错的音频。当然没有也不能集中精神，而是有一搭没一搭的，过程有点类似眼睛快速扫描书页，抓住几个关键词，脑子可以连贯起来获得大概的意思而已。

听到后半段的时候忽然惊讶地发现，英文部分听得略微轻松些，听中文部分需要略微多一点的注意力。也许这并不是因为我的英文听力明显高过中文，或许是因为 Osnos 自己说话比较有情绪，比较抑扬顿挫，而翻译的女孩子按照记下的笔记翻译，所以音调比较平板，不容易突出关键字抓住我的注意力 --- 不是说她翻译得不好，实际上我很佩服她能飞快地记下每一句话，然后全部翻译成中文，但是二手发言总不能跟一手发言的腔调相比。

翻译，对我来说是件费力得要死的事情。

各得其所

无意中在This American Life的旧节目archives中撞见关于钱的一集: Windfall，有点兴趣，正没事做，就听了一听。其中的一个部分是Elizabeth Gilbert与丈夫Michael Cooper讲述他们对钱的不同习惯与态度：Liz来自一个节俭的家庭，自己继承了节俭的生活习惯；而Michael视钱如粪土，虽然不是挥金如土，但是抱着＂千金散去始复来＂（这句成语要认证核实一下）的态度，不当回事。两人第一次认识就是Michael向Liz借钱。结婚时，Gilbert爹妈送给她一万块嫁妆，是多年积蓄哦，她想存起来，而他坚持要花在婚礼上---当然一万块的婚礼也不是什么豪华仪式。Liz在节目里喜滋滋地说，我们花了钱办了事，我很幸福，一点也不后悔肉痛。

听到一半，我把网页打开细细找了找：哈，这节目是1998年录制的。后来的事情，大家都知道了：2002年(?) Gilbert 跟 Cooper 离婚，然后写了一本书 Eat, Pray, Love。这本书大红大紫，极其畅销风行。很多读过此书的人得到印象是Gilbert是娇生惯养的作女，挥霍一年的时间周游世界用来治疗爱情创伤, 连电影都把她描绘成spoiled brat。另有很多读者以为她的前夫必是个自私而讨厌的家伙。实际上呢，事实比cliches更加合乎逻辑。Cooper是罗斯福研究所国际人权办公室的头儿，的确是个不在乎发财也很习惯用别人的钱的人；他的事业就是用别人的钱做国际事业。Gilbert呢，努力写作，早早发财，下半辈子不愁。

我觉得这件事真是太有趣也太合乎逻辑了。现在听他们当时录制的节目，真是既定命运啊。

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同一节目中Dan Savage也抱怨了男友Terry Miller太爱花钱而自己很节俭。我一边听一边想，他俩也一样长不了。结果却猜错了，在网上一查：他们在一起十六年，现在仍然没分，前几年还婚了。

The Opera Singer

前阵子，也记不清何时，反正不出六个月之前，隔壁公寓搬进某女，每隔几周会发出很响的做爱声 --- 不是爽到呻吟的那种，而是引吭高歌的那种。岂止我在卧室里隔着墙被吵得睡不着觉（这墙不算薄，平时说话与音乐声都传不过来），而且在门外的走廊里都是回音嘹亮，估计连走廊对面的住户都听得到。而且绵绵起伏，一山更比一山高，途中且每一步都颤音重重叠叠，七回八转的。每次都要折腾半个到一个钟头。正当你以为她已经一览众山小，无限风光在顶峰，她安静一会儿又来了，而且更上一层楼。没有亲耳听见真难以想象她的声音穿透墙壁还有多响！

开头几次喊啊喊的，我跟S同学抱怨。他说这不象做爱嘛，倒象狗叫，而且是体积很小但是叫声很响的那种，不如你去敲敲门问，你们家的狗怎么叫个不停，要不要戴嘴套。

后来又经历几次，大家不得不接受女高音有天赋的现实。奇怪的是从来没听见其他声音，就她一把好嗓门。昨晚又来，折腾了半个多小时。我把耳朵贴到墙上听了听，感叹说听不见任何男声，S同学开玩笑说，Yeah, she's going at it with a vibrator. 我说别逗了，可靠的老好 vibrator 能有这么厉害，我们还不得天天听歌剧！

结果有一个周末下午，隔壁传来了歌声---原来这位邻居果然是歌手！隔着墙也听不出是否专业，但嗓音与运气训练有素还是听得出来。

让我好奇心起的是她的咏叹调没有明显的规律，差不多每隔一两个月才出现一次，多为周末但也不尽然（例如昨天周四）。如果她有固定男友，为什么间隔如此之长呢？也许平时都是在对方家里唱歌剧？如果没有固定男友，这些也不象一夜站，太有规律也太爽了。另一个可能是，也许她有个friend with benefits。如果是这样，这个朋友的本领如此高强，我祝他们赶快同居换个地方住。

当官的料

连着一星期开会(conference)，一日一日地从早坐到晚，闷且累得半死，真是吃呀么吃勿消。尤其是被迫听某官员的浓重法国口音，费劲得要命，还声调平板，催人入睡，差点让我当场打响呼噜。

我的老板六十岁，一天坐下来精神奕奕，晚上还参加reception，跟诸位各界人士觥筹交错嘘寒问暖发挥她的巨大女性魅力---我可没参加reception，会一开完就溜回家了，是听她自己说要留下来参加今晚社交节目的。可见当官有两个先决条件，如果没有就别给自己找麻烦了：一是有真诚强烈的愿望，二是有铁屁股。

This is not a joke.

最近几个月一直在考虑一个问题：下半辈子到底想要做什么？怎样追求人生的幸福？

今天终于想通了：下半辈子的理想是 ---

Baking muffins and scooping ice cream in Wellington, New Zealand.

这个念头一旦浮现在脑子里，心头一块大石立刻落地，幸福感油然而生。

唯一担心的是这样会变成一个大胖子。

公元2010年12月1日，我终于搞定了理想。立此存照。