Clueless

As titled.

特发此博以记之。

Lang Lang in Symphony Hall

A great recital on Jan. 28, 2007
in Boston

他还是穿了唐装的。(The power of telephoto lens.)

My personal review to follow.

Homemade Chocolate Truffles

Four delicious flavors by H.

H 真的是 心灵手巧。

Words That Shocked Me

"At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle."



"Mankind's intelligence finally trumped mankind's killer instinct, and reason came to rule over mankind's maddest impulses. That, too, was survival."


Excerpts from Stephen King's novel Cell. pp206, 207

This novel is a crazy story, but so far these are the most shocking words I've read (only half way through the book). I have to agree there is some sad truth in it.

想起前几天看王朔说他内心有无限的黑暗与光明。我读的肤浅，不知所云黑暗与光明是何意。Troubadour说，“we are our own angel and demon.”看来王朔和Stephen King有异曲同工之效。

有待提高文化修养

午饭时瞎聊，从小米和小罗的最新一期Podcast谈星巴克说起，我就讲了个自己也不知到底怎么回事的国人要将星巴克请出故宫的事情。所以得说一说这个 Forbidden City为什么Forbidden，科普一下。对面的小哈同学就说，中文是叫“紫禁城”的吧，为什么紫啊？

这可问着了，我就胡说，紫，是皇家的色彩吧。好在人家也没深究。回来我就查，原来“紫”是指紫微垣， 也就是北极星，所有星宿的中心（我欣赏的菲就唱过一句什么紫微星的，现在才明白什么意思）。皇上当然认为自己的所居是人间的 “正中”了。下次见到小哈要纠正我的错误。

小插曲：为了下饭，我请出了我的辣酱。来自东瀛的小哈表现出兴趣，问，这是不是象日本的豆瓣酱啊？“豆瓣酱”的发音，可是和中文一模一样。

我们中华文化的影响，还是很深远的。为了成为文化交流的友谊桥梁，我还是有待提高文化修养的。

米国的法庭还素有点良心

贺梅案有感。Especially it's a unanimous decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court that reversed lower court rulings which had terminated the parental rights of her biological parents in 2004.

This poor little almost 8-year-old girl will probably be retured to her parents soon, but still this whole thing is very sad. Who does she think her parents are? After 6 or 7 years of prolonged legal battles while she lived and bonded with her foster family, I am not sure what outcome would be best for her.

久病成良医，贺梅的父母最后自己代表自己撰写了一份动议给田纳西最高法庭，其后的过程都无律师代表，这种精神和勇气非常令人敬佩。

WCRB 99.5FM

This morning while listening to my favorite Classical Music station WCRB, which has recently moved from 102.5FM to 99.5FM, I heard the good news from Laura Carlo that the WCRB website is back online again. This is very nice: I can find out easily what I have heard on the radio from their online play list again.

I remember many many years ago when I first arrived in Boston, WCRB website was the first website I had ever surfed (yes, that was a long time ago!). From there I found webcrawler (eons before Yahoo and Google) and it helped me find other websites. So many years have passed while the Internet has enjoyed an exponential growth, WCRB's market share has been falling (it once was the highest rated major market classical station in the country in 1995 and 1996) and it was sold to another management company last fall, and had to switch to a less powerful frequency. Thus is the fate of a classical music station. I feel sad about it. I hope it will gain popularity again.

Just my random thoughts today to commemorate my first surfed website. The nice thing about the growth of the Internet: now you can listening to live WCRB broadcasting online!

Amos

Fluffy 9-month-old puppy of Golden Retriever / Australian Shepherd mix
Really really sweet

Inconvenience

On one of the coldest days of this winter (11F, i.e. -11.7C, at 11:15am), many people come to find that all the card-readers to our building's entrances are broken and all the doors are locked. We are locked out in the cold weather, and can only get in at the mercy of someone who happens to exit at the moment.

I understand that it's an extremely cold day, and we don't want to prop the door open.

So I will just stay inside today.

But there is a problem.

The water main at the corner intersection is broken, possibly due to the cold weather. Thus we don't have running water in our building, which also means there's no water to flush the toilets. The suggestion is to go to the adjacent building when you feel the urge to do your business.

Wish yourself good luck that someone will come out through the door when you want to get back in the building.

Comet McNaught

I've seen it with my own eyes! Now I really believe that it is there. I have been stargazing this comet for the past three days and finally today we have no clouds to obstruct our view. It is a really bright comet, given that this picture was taken 30 minutes after sunset. Today it moves closest to the Sun, and then it will fly away, and never come back again.

ps, a pair of 10X binocular is so much more powerful than my 300mm telephoto lens :(.

The Piano Tuner

I have just finished reading this debut novel by Daniel Mason. It is one of the better books I have read recently. The story was about Edgar Drake, an English piano tuner summoned by the British War Office to tune an Erard grand piano for a Surgeon-major in a remote jungle in Burma. The book is full of history, exotic cultures, music, literature, and (my favorite part) medical science. I realize that I still have so many questions about the book that a second reading is necessary in the future.

The author, Daniel Mason, was a medical student at UCSF when the book was published in 2002. He graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in biology. He spent a year studying malaria on the Thai-Myanmar border. This was a big reason why I started reading the book: a biologist-turned-writer writing about music, diseases, and cultures. It turned out to be a good choice.

This book also made me study Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC). I found this website that analyses all 48 fugues in Book I and Book II. It is really cool to be able to visualize the fugue subjects appear in different voices and develop and interact. I highly recommend it.

The fugue in F Sharp minor in Book II of the WTC is mentioned in the novel in a somehow romantic and dream-like setting. It is said to remind the protagnist of "the opening of a flower, the meeting of lovers, the beginning of a song." How do you interpret it?

Global Warming?

Today we broke the record. Officially, the high was 68F at the Logan Airport, easily beating a 62 degrees record set in 1913. Unofficially I recorded a 70.8F on my porch at the sun-setting 4pm. Yes, it feels like Spring, and in fact, my daffodils and hyacinths are making another early appearance. The two silly cherry trees have been blooming since Christmas. I am a little worried, but really can't complain about a very beautiful day.

On another note, I might really have a green thumb. This year I have successfully forced 3 amaryllises to form flower buds (that's a 50% success rate). I have grown four of them from seedlings. It was extremely fulfilling to see one of the babies blooming two years ago.