后怕

在阿拉斯加的时候，有一次看到网上的新闻说俄国掉了一架飞机，挺为自己的返程担了点心，但觉得还是可以信任美国航空业的安全记录。没想到这个记录在今天就被打破了，而且是我刚刚乘坐的三角洲航空公司。星期四我在亚特兰大转机的时候从一个出口走到另一个出口，还留意到了从亚特兰大到肯塔基莱克星顿的航班出口，心想，除了麻州，别地也有莱克星顿啊。没想到就是这个通勤航班从莱克星顿起飞就出了事，还可能是因为跑错跑道这样的简单错误。

在Denali国家公园的时候，我们的旅行车在山间崎岖狭窄的路上行驶，和对面来的旅行车错车。旁边就是一两百米的碎石堆满的峭壁。Troubadour还有坐我们后排的两位（好像是肯塔基来的哦）乘客仿佛有恐高症发作，我却非常高兴地欣赏“无限风光在险峰”。我的理由：我百分百信任我们的司机兼导游，一个开了二十多年Denali公路的中学老师。可Troubadour说，这理由不一定够吧。

在安克雷奇最后一天，我独自去了阿拉斯加植物园。这个植物园很奇特，得自己拉开一扇小铁门进去，害得我第一次没看见，在周围绕了一大圈。看了植物我决定锻炼一下，走一个两公里的trail。植物园里人很少，走了半天才看到一个人带了两条狗。想起大门口的警告“bear country”，我只有自己哼点儿小曲壮胆（满脑袋都是王菲，听了一路的，Troubadour是个比我还大的菲迷）。可是到了一处，我发现了路边小柳树被吃的痕迹，还有像动物的蹄印，就担心起moose来。这个动物可比狗熊更难对付。怎么办？好在很快对面就来了人，我离园口也只有五分钟的路程，我的阿拉斯加植物园历险记就这么有惊无险地结束了。

Clouds, Alaska

Clouds and Peak at Mile 79 on Glen Highway


Clouds, Richardson Highway


Clouds, Richardson Highway


Mountain and clouds, arriving at Valdez

(All photos taken on Aug. 17, 2006)

I'm back! I made it back safely from this exciting and adventurous trip. I'll write more about it later. I know I will go back again, maybe in the spring next time.

Just a few photos here. Wait till I find hard drive space to process the rest of my photos.

From Valdez, AK

A beautiful small town.

See You in Alaska

Mt. McKinley, Wonder Lake
Alaska (1948)

I hope that it will be somehow dry during this rain season in Alaska. I hope to see Mt. McKinley, too.

Off I go tomorrow!

Americans in Paris

James Abbott McNeill Whistler
The Coast of Brittany (1861)
Oil on canvas. Private collection.

I love MFA's exhibitions. Americans in Paris is just one of them. I went with Sophie yesterday. I was so overwhelmed to learn so many new names (though they were 19th century painters, a lot of their names are still new to me), especially so many women painters, and to see so many beautiful paintings.

This exhibition is about paintings American painters made and exhibited in late 19th century in Paris, the artistic capital of the world. Among them were John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt. I knew their works before, but it was still interesting to see so many Mary Cassatt's portraits of her family members together in one exhibition hall.

The one (new) painter that impressed me most was James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), a Massachusetts native. The painting above, The Coast of Brittany, shocked me when I first saw it: the sharp edges of the rocks, the abrupt juxtaposition of brown next to blue, the crushing waves and the sleeping girl. Yet stepping back and looking at it from faraway, I really liked the colors and the composition.

I had to go back to the other room to see again his Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1871), which is almost monochromatic except for the rosy colors on his mother's face and hands. It is said that Whistler's mother prayed for her son's success as a painter while sitting for this painting. The painter would have been 37 that year. You see, a son is always a boy in a mother's mind. Whistler did succeed and this painting won him prizes and was later bought by the French government.

Arrangement in Grey and Black, No 1 (Whistler's Mother) (1871)

It is Whistler's theory that art should essentially be concerned with the beautiful arrangement of colors in harmony. This is shown by the names of his painting: Symphony in White, No. 1 (this is also in the exhibition, on the opposite wall to Arrangement in Gray and Black), his Arrangement seriel and Nocturne series, etc.

Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862)

The following is the description to the exhibition at the MFA website:

Explore the romance and magnetic attraction of the French capital to nineteenth-century American artists through the irresistible “Americans in Paris.” From about 1860 to 1900, hundreds of American painters traveled to the capital of the western art world to enroll in art schools, to establish their artistic reputations, or to join the city’s significant American expatriate community. The cosmopolitan city's influence is evident in the vibrant paintings and sculpture by some of America’s most celebrated artists, including James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt.

The exhibition explores paintings Americans made and displayed in Paris, including Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother; images of the city by such painters as Childe Hassam, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Sargent; depictions of Americans “at home” in Paris by Cassatt and others; and views of several popular summer art colonies, including Giverny and Brittany. Finallly, the show explores how Americans adapted distinctly French styles to paint American subjects.

Data Mining

Earlier this week, D came to me, "wanna see something scary? It's in the computer room." Worried that I might have got scooped, I followed him to his big screen and saw many names next to social security numbers. That was scary! Identity theft had happened to one friend of mine. And those people with their SSN out there are apparently in danger. How did D get all this?

D explained that he was only extracting data from the "accidentally" released AOL dataset of 20 million web queries collected from more than 650 thousand users over a period of three months this spring. Who would know that people sometimes search their own SSNs online to make sure nothing bad happened to their identities, but such queries would be one day released for academia research, and into the public domain?

Poking around a little bit, we found more interesting behavior of individual users. For example, a lot of people had to query "google" to find the google site; a lot of people query their own names or their family and friend's. This was very interesting! In the last few days, data-mining from this 2-gigbyte dataset had become our computer gurus D and M's favorite past-time. They could pretty much reconstruct an user's personal life from the searches they did, and figure out what they do in real life. For example, today they found

1) a cancer patient on a special diet who also had some special "physical" need
2) a high school student who had to search online to complete his/her biology homework in DNA replication (Oh, my biggest dream when I was a high school student was to have a home phone so that I could discuss homework with my best friend! How technology had changed our lives! To GOOGLE the answers!)
3) more weirdoes (I can't remember more now)

How shocking a person's privacy could just easily be revealed in a few search strings. Just like what I said in one of my previous posts that the Internet is not as private as we had thought. You just have to leave too many traces.

Looking back at my most recent google searches, I am glad to see that I am such a simple person. But still, you can see what has been going on in my mind from the following queries:

aol data release
google analytics
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
google suggest
窦唯 摇滚世界杯
duke pharmacology

What's going on in your google searches?

怎么回事？

过去的这几天里，有好些新IP访问我的博客，而且是看我一个半月前写的有关《山楂树之恋》的那篇。他们全都是从古狗那过来的。我去瞧了一眼，好家伙，除了原版的联接以外，我的古狗排名第五！这是怎么回事儿呢？

我的问题是，这小说现在在那个论坛流行？

推荐美食博客

美食博客也看过很多，这一个格外赏心悦目：菜让人流口水，图片绝对专业水平，难得的是，几乎每天更新，不知美女博主是什么职业。当然，博文里的小故事我是跳过不看的。

超级丑瓜的美食厨房

Roof-top Garden

When the elevator door opened on the R level above the parking garage, it was an amazing sight awaiting me: the roof-top garden seemed too nice to be in such a busy part of town. There were a few people enjoying their late afternoon hours. There were other photographers, too. One of them compared their lens with mine.

For the full set, visit my Flickr.

You might know these.

What's this? (hint: top view)

Side view. A mutant.

Another butterfly. She is very beautiful.

热浪

这星期的热浪和我小时候经历过的连续三周摄氏37度及以上的酷暑相比，简直就是小巫见大巫。相当年我们还没有空调，有电扇吹就已经不错。还得跑到学校去上竞赛班，那可是没风扇吹的，而且因为科目繁多，下午也得上，只是改到四点以后，“以避暑“。所以来到波士顿以后觉得夏天真是舒服，我在家从来不用空调的。

这星期总共热了三天，其中第二天有101F（38.3C)。下午的时候明显空调负载，室温都有80F(26.7C)，很难在室温和冷室（4C）穿梭工作。这天气在傍晚的时候把我们的Internet给热晕了，连Local Network都连不上，Server也去不了。这种情形持续了十五小时。无聊中看老徐的新电影《梦想照进现实》，觉得更加无聊，三十分钟我就不行了。王朔就这么无趣了吗？还有，老徐的门牙得整一整。

热天难免没胃口。我最近的对付办法是：四川凉面和四川泡菜。泡菜是上星期泡的，四天就好了，味道非常正，太开胃了。哪位有兴趣，我再写菜谱吧，巨简单。