My First Star Trails

Apr. 10, 2010, 9:50pm, total of ~36 min exposure, Av 6.3, ISO 800, 18 mm.

Did I catch a meteor in this one? (detail of above image)


The Big Dipper: 10:37pm, ~7 min exposure.

Thanks to D for telling me how to merge multiple images :)

Becoming a Birdie

I was surprised that I didn't become interested in bird identification earlier, considering that the last Chinese character in my name actually is some kind of a bird. Until this morning, while driving around a curved road I noticed a small black-and-white bird with a patch of red on its head. It landed on the side of a tree, and started pecking. Instinct told me that it might be a woodpecker, but what woodpecker? And so small?

Then I think about my friends, A, V, and D, who are all enthusiastic bird lovers. Their ability in identifying birds are just beyond me. True, they must have books and manuals and iPhone apps to help them, but they are really devoted. V, on our trip to Peru, took 234 pictures of birds, and identified a large majority of them; I, on the contrary, probably got pictures of 5 birds, and identified none. D had rented a 400mm super telephoto lens and used two laptops to trigger his camera, which was aimed at his bird feeder, for picture-taking every 2 minutes for the length of 4 hours or so to catch as many birds as he could. That sounded very geeky to me, yet A had an additional suggestion for D, that he should install a motion sensor rather than wasting his camera battery. Well, what can I say? These are my scientist friends!

I knew I could always go to A for bird identification help. But the thing is, usually I don't see those birds clearly, so I can't describe them accurately. That is because my eye sight is bad (though A and D wear glasses, too). I think that is why I am not aware of the presence of birds around me. They simply fly away so fast that I can't even have a good look at them. But today, I saw that bird quite up close and clearly.

Before I went to A for help, I saw that National Geographic had a new Backyard Bird Identifier. It is just for people like me! I successfully identified my birdie as a Downy Woodpecker. It is interesting to know that it is quite widespread, though I had not noticed it before.

I think today is the turning point from which I will become more interested in birds.

它使一切受难的人感到温暖，觉得这世界还有希望

选自《新华日报》1943年7月4日 社论《民主颂——献给美国的独立纪念日》

————————————————————————————————————————

我一个读书少的人，总是后知后觉。

Freakonomics

It took me just one day to finish the New York Times bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a holiday gift from J. What an eye opener! Thank you, J! I really enjoy this book!

Only before yesterday, Economics to me was a subject that I felt I couldn't get close to, or enjoy studying. Like all the college students in China, I was required to study Marxist political economics; for a change, I took a selective in Keynesian economics. Neither course interested me much. To me, Economics dealt with people, and people are irrational, thus Economics couldn't be as rational as natural sciences. So I stuck to my dear natural sciences, and had not looked at Economics other than a simple demand and supply curve.

Freakonomics grabbed my attention from the very beginning. The provocative idea that Roe v. Wade actually contributed to the decrease in crime in the 1990s really intrigued me. I won't give away what the book talks about so that you can enjoy reading it, too. The book made me realize that economists study their subjects just like scientists do: with careful controls. Only by doing so can one arrive at a valid conclusion and understand how things work this way but not that. I am glad to find that the book totally changed my attitude towards Economics. Now I believe that Economics is really science, a social science, the only difference from natural science being that it deals with people and people's incentives. How correct I have been, that people are irrational, and people's incentives can be very strange!

Now some random thoughts:

1. The first time I spent time to learn what was Roe v. Wade was when I saw the debut performance of Joe Wong, a Chinese immigrant comedian, on the David Letterman Show. Answering the question "what is Roe v. Wade?" he looked around, and said, "two ways of coming to the US?" I had to check it out in order to understand his joke! So, Troubadour, I still need a lot of enlightenment about the US law!

2. Speaking about cheating teachers (yes, teachers cheat, too!), I now believe that Sword Angel's Chinese Revolution History teacher was one. Remember that your class got a list of important stuff to study? Our teacher gave us nothing. So I was a little nervous to just study based on the list, worrying that it might be misleading. Oh boy, wasn't I surprised to see the exam which was literally every second point on the list! So the question was, what was the incentive for the teacher to do so? Was he simply very sympathetic to us poor students who had to put up so much effort on recent history on top of our work load in our major?

3. What a surprise to learn that the economics of drug dealing is so similar to that of any big company, in that lower rank employees strive to become the top executive so that they'd be paid better!

4. The chapter on good parenting makes me feel disheartened. The authors seem to believe that how a child turns out depends on whom his/her parents are, not what they do. So should I feel lucky that I have parents who were well educated, thus I myself became well educated? Does gene determine it all?

5. While I was starting to write this entry, a high school classmate came online on MSN (I seldom sign on MSN) so we chatted. He then said, "as an economist in Shanghai, I'd like to hear your opinion on the next economic drive, seeing that we've had a sustained development driven by the revolution in the IT industry for the past 20 years." Me, a biologist? I then told him that I had only been enlightened by Freakonomics only yesterday, and I really enjoy it and now I like to study people, too!

6. The last time I read a book as exciting as this was David Pollan's The Botany of Desire. I would love to have more suggestions for exciting books!

7. I am going to work on Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking next. Thank you, Troubadour! Hopefully I can at least show you some photos, if not my cooking itself!

Sincerely yours

I've been listening to Dan Brown's newest Robert Langdon novel The Lost Symbol these days. It's a (surprisingly long) 17-hour audio book, and right now I am at hour 11. Having read all his previous books, I am quite familiar with his formula and can predict a lot of the plots. Often times I feel very impatient as to why it takes so long to get to the point. One other thing I learned was to take a grain of salt in every FACT he introduced in his books. How naive and easily convinced I was when I read The Da Vinci Code (especially considering that I am a scientist)!

So far there hasn't been any extraordinary revelation that has grabbed my attention. But last night I learned something interesting: the origin of the word "sincere". In the old times sculptors used to use wax to cover up parts of a stone that was mistakenly chiseled away, and then spread stone dust to make it look like untouched. This was considered cheating. The word "sincere" actually means no wax (sin: no; cere: might be from Greek keros wax). So when one signs his letter 'Sincerely yours', he means he wrote the letter without wax, thus without pretense or deceit.

The other word I know where sin means no was one of the few Spanish words I learned during my Peru trip: agua sin gas (water without gas). After being served carbonated water (which I really hate) a few times, I learned agua sin gas pretty well. The other Spanish words I know are cuánto (how much -- but if they answer, I would be at a lost) and gracias (thank you). Impressive vocabulary!

It's nice listening to Susan Boyle while writing this entry. Her renditions of Madonna's You'll See and the Carpenters' The End of the World are quite good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stargazing

Away from city light pollution, in Hillsboro, NH, the sky is really dark. Here you can see the Milky Way with naked eyes.

The Milky Way, looking south. Half of Sagittarius (the Teapot, center of our galaxy) was already beneath the horizon.
The Milky Way, zenith. Summer triangle: Deneb (top), Altair (left), and Vega (right, toward center)

Milky Way and Cygnus, Lyra, and Aquila (basically the same constellations as above, but with a shorter exposure).

Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest neighbor: the fuzzy yellow smear near the center
Andromeda Galaxy: yellow fuzzy streak just above center (why do the other stars look different?)

Beautiful Pleiades

It was getting really cold (38F. NE September!). My camera frosted. Jupiter looks like a shining star with spikes!

After I warmed up my camera with my body temperature, I was able to get this picture of Jupiter and its four moons: Europa, Callisto, Io, and Ganymede (top left to lower right). Please excuse my inability to focus!
Here is something I just learned about the four largest moons: the orbits of Io, Europa, and Ganymede, form a pattern known as a Laplace resonance; for every four orbits that Io makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly two orbits and Ganymede makes exactly one. How cool is that!

We also observed many nebulae (Ring, Veil, and Dumbbell), star clusters (M13, M11, and M15), double star Albireo (cool colors), double-double star epsilon-epsilon Lyrae (except we weren't able to resolve the double-double), galaxies M81, M82, and maybe others. It is really nice to see all these with my own eyes, albeit professional photographs look undoubtably better, I feel like walking the path of pioneer astronomers. Imagine Galileo Galilei discovering the four largest Jupiter moons in 1610. I see the strips on Jupiter with the help of the telescope. Truly amazing.

All through the night (cold it may be), meteors kept falling (might be from Piscis Australis), and then around 12:56am, while I was reviewing my picture of the Pleiades, I saw a bright light through the corner of my eye. There was it, the brightest, biggest meteor I have ever seen in my whole life, falling ever so slowly in the moonless night sky, with a green flare trailing, in the direction of east-southeast. It was dream-like, so silently, yet felt so close because it was so bright, that I was thinking, "oh no! We are gonna get hit!" I wasn't sure whether I should take cover, though there was nothing to cover me, or to take a photo -- my camera was pointing east-northeast. Before I was able to make the necessary turn, the meteor disappeared. We were absolutely stunned, by our good fortune for seeing such an unusual event. Later in the day there was some confusion as whether we saw the NASA weather rocket launched earlier Saturday night, but I believe we saw a meteor, one to remember.

Birds, Back Yard, Black Friday

Many birds came to my back yard after the heavy morning rain. They were quite noisy, chirping all the time. Here are some of the birds I saw:

A blue jay.

Starlings. Quite gregarious.

A starling.

A robin.

Then all the birds left as suddenly as they came. The back yard turned quiet again, until something strange caught my eye, and I started taking pictures non-stop:
This bird landed in the garden, with its wings spread out, looking quite suspicious. I wonder what he was doing, what he was up to. What I saw and heard next would shock me for a whole afternoon.
It turned out that this bird was a sharp-shinned hawk, and it caught a starling. Since they arrived in the garden, the hawk had been plucking feathers out of the poor starling, which cried every time a feather was plucked. (I'm ignorant about birds. This was identified by our resident bird expert A. Before this, I didn't even know a hawk could look like so innocent and small.)

I thought about weather I should save the poor starling from this cruelty, but then I decided I'd better let Nature run its course. It had been a quite difficult experience, witnessing the killing with my own eyes. I hid safely in my study, while the unfortunate starling was being torn apart little by little. At some point, I coughed, hoping my existence would scare the hawk so he would leave the starling alone. Being a predator, he didn't even care. He knew I was watching, and he looked directly into my lens:

In this picture he looks like a hawk.


Minutes later, he took off, with the starling in tow，只留下一地鸟毛。

Sinterklaas

Last Friday, Dec. 5, was Sinterklaas, a traditional Dutch holiday celebrating the birthday of Saint Nicholas (280-342), patron saint of children. We came back from JC, and were surprised to find personalized gifts on our desks! I got a flower shop, filled with chocolates.

Thank you, Sinterklaas!

仓颉造字

转自百度百科

相传仓颉在黄帝手下当官。那时，当官的可并不显威风，和平常人一样，只是分工不同。黄帝分派他专门管理圈里牲口的数目、屯里食物的多少。仓颉这人挺聪明，做事又尽力尽心，很快熟悉了所管的牲口和食物，心里都有了谱，难得出差错。可慢慢的，牲口、食物的储藏在逐渐增加、变化，光凭脑袋记不住了。当时又没有文字，更没有纸和笔。怎么办呢？仓颉犯难了。
　　仓颉整日整夜地想办法，先是在绳子上打结，用各种不同颜色的绳子，表示各种不同的牲口、食物，用绳子打的结代表每个数目。但时间一长久，就不奏效了。这增加的数目在绳子上打个结很便当，而减少数目时，在绳子上解个结就麻烦了。仓颉又想到了在绳子上打圈圈，在圈子里挂上各式各样的贝壳，来代替他所管的东西。增加了就添一个贝壳，减少了就去掉一个贝壳。这法子顶管用，一连用了好几年。
　　黄帝见仓颉这样能干，叫他管的事情愈来愈多，年年祭祀的次数，回回狩猎的分配，部落人丁的增减，也统统叫仓颉管。仓颉又犯悉了，凭着添绳子、挂贝壳已不抵事了。怎么才能不出差错呢？
　　这天，他参加集体狩猎，走到一个三岔路口时，几个老人为往哪条路走争辩起来。一个老人坚持要往东，说有羚羊；一个老人要往北，说前面不远可以追到鹿群；一个老人偏要往西，说有两只老虎，不及时打死，就会错过了机会。仓颉一问，原来他们都是看着地下野兽的脚印才认定的。仓颉心中猛然一喜：既然一个脚印代表一种野兽，我为什么不能用一种符号来表示我所管的东西呢？他高兴地拔腿奔回家，开始创造各种符号来表示事物。果然，把事情管理得头头是道。
　　黄帝知道后，大加赞赏，命令仓颉到各个部落去传授这种方法。渐渐地，这些符号的用法，全推广开了。就这么，形成了文字。
　　仓颉造了字，黄帝十分器重他，人人都称赞他，他的名声越来越大。仓颉头脑就有点发热了，眼睛慢慢向上移，移到头顶心里去了，什么人也看不起，造的字也马虎起来。
　　这话传到黄帝耳朵里，黄帝很恼火。他眼里容不得一个臣子变坏。怎么叫仓颉认识到自己的错误呢？黄帝召来了身边最年长的老人商量。这老人长长的胡子上打了一百二十多个结，表示他已是一百二十多岁的人了。老人沉吟了一会，独自去找仓颉了。
　　仓颉正在教各个部落的人识字，老人默默地坐在最后，和别人一样认真地听着。仓颉讲完，别人都散去了，唯独这老人不走，还坐在老地方。仓颉有点好奇，上前问他为什么不走。
　　老人说：“仓颉啊，你造的字已经家喻户晓，可我人老眼花，有几个字至今还糊涂着呢，你肯不肯再教教我？”
　　仓颉看这么大年纪的老人，都这样尊重他，很高兴，催他快说。
　　老人说：“你造的‘马’字，‘驴’字，‘骡’字，都有四条腿吧？，而牛也有四条腿，你造出来的‘牛’字怎么没有四条腿，只剩下一条尾巴呢？”
　　仓颉一听，心里有点慌了：自己原先造“鱼”字时，是写成“牛”样的，造“牛”字时，是写成“鱼”样的。都怪自己粗心大意，竟然教颠倒了。
　　老人接着又说：“你造的‘重’字，是说有千里之远，应该念出远门的‘出’字，而你却教人念成重量的‘重’字。反过来，两座山合在一起的‘出’字，本该为重量的‘重’字，你倒教成了出远门的‘出’字。这几个字真叫我难以琢磨，只好来请教你了。”
　　这时仓颉羞得无地自容，深知自己因为骄傲铸成了大错。这些字已经教给各个部落，传遍了天下，改都改不了。他连忙跪下，痛哭流涕地表示忏悔。
老人拉着仓颉的手，诚挚地说：“仓颉啊，你创造了字，使我们老一代的经验能记录下来，传下去，你做了件大好事，世世代代的人都会记住你的。你可不能骄傲自大啊！”
　　从此以后，仓颉每造一个字，总要将字义反复推敲，还行拿去征求人们的意见，一点也不敢粗心。大家都说好，才定下来，然后逐渐传到每个部落去。
　　还有相传说仓颉造字成功，发生了怪事，那一天白日竟然下粟如雨，晚上听到鬼哭魂嚎。为什幺下粟如雨呢？因为仓颉造成了文字，可用来传达心意、记载事情，自然值得庆贺。但鬼为什幺要哭呢？有人说，因为有了文字，民智日开，民德日离，欺伪狡诈、争夺杀戮由此而生，天下从此永无太平日子，连鬼也不得安宁，所以鬼要哭了。

How Camera Lenses Are Made

开眼界了！

Another video:

成语典故 走马观花

W的宝宝现在两岁半了，活泼可爱，认识很多的动物图片，还很有礼貌，说话很甜。一见到我就对我笑，说：“阿姨好！”晚上睡觉前说：“阿姨，I love you! Good night!”这一切都离不开W对宝宝的耐心教育。宝宝每天要听好多故事，传统的小动物的故事啊，等等，还有成语典故。不过象这一本国内出版的所谓专家编辑的幼儿成语典故书，其权威性就值得怀疑了。

比如，它对走马观花的解释是：


继W之后，我也看傻了！这是“走马观花”吗？

好了，为了恶补我的中文，现特摘抄Google出来的成语典故：

走　　马　 观　　花

　　唐代著名诗人孟郊，40岁以前一直过着隐居生活。后来在母亲的勉励下，他赴京城赶考。但两次都没考中，第三次才终于榜上有名。高兴之余，他提笔写下了《登科后》一诗，用以表达自己喜悦的心情，诗的后两句是“春风得意马蹄疾，一日看尽长安花。”

　　后来，人们从这首诗的后两句概括出了“走马观花”这个成语。常用来形容不深入细致地观察事物，只是粗略地观察，比喻被表面现象所迷惑。

哎呀，不Google还好，一Google居然发现“走马观花”可能也有这跛子和鼻子的典故哦。互联网时代，我该信谁？

“走马观花”又解

The Answer

to a crazy experiment:



It worked! The phone is back again, and it completed one call while we were watching.

Seeing is believing. I am convinced that miracles do happen.

(Sorry for the blurry pics. An Image Stabilizer would be so helpful here.)

A Crazy Experiment

E accidentally spilled orange juice on her AT&T LG cell phone. The phone was not happy after that: basically it refused to turn on. Thinking that they have nothing more to lose, C and E decided to soak the phone in the purest water they can find, Milli Q water. Their reason: water might be able to remove the juice from the phone and thus fix it. However, M was critical about that reasoning. He thought the acidity of the OJ had already killed the circuit. I am curious and doubtful as whether this would work at all. After all, my friend X lost her phone after it had a brief accidental bath in water.

Do you think C and E's experiment will work or not?

I will provide an answer if I get enough feedback on this post.

Now to prove that THE phone was really soaked in water:

E retrieving the phone from water as C, M, and A look on:

The serial number on the phone (notice water drops on the phone):
C and E are smart as they only soaked the phone but not the battery or the SIM card.

Once in a Blue Moon

Yes, stargazing is still my obsession.

How rare is a full blue moon? (From Earth & Sky)

Tonight's Sky for Tuesday, May 01 2007

The moon will look full tonight, lighting the night from dusk till dawn. In the Americas, though, the moon won’t be truly full till tomorrow morning, at 5:09 a.m. Central Daylight Time. For the Americas, tomorrow’s full moon will be the first of two full moons in May. The second full moon to occur in a single calendar month is popularly known as a blue moon. We elaborate on today’s radio show.

Every 19 years, the phases of the moon recur on (or near) the same calendar dates. So in 2026, there will be two May full moons. Once again, the second full moon will be dubbed a blue moon.

This famous 19-year cycle reveals how often blue moons occur. Every 19 years, there are 235 full moons – yet only 228 calendar months. Therefore, the 7 leftover full moons (235-228=7) have to share the same calendar month with another full moon. That gives 7 blue moons in 19 years.

Yet, there’s one big hitch! February of 2018 has no full moon whatsoever. That’s another displaced full moon that falls right into the lap of March. So that’s a total of 8 blue moons for the next 19 years.

Written by Bruce McClure, 1 May 07

Guinness

I'm not a beer drinker, so when Mac Daddy D told me he named his new dog Guinness it didn't ring a bell. Today I told V and L about D&H's new addition. They both started laughing, "What? He named his dog after the beer?"

Apparently Guinness fits very well with his name: he's a doberman/shepherd mix with a black coat mixed with tan above his eyes, around his muzzle, under his chest, and on his legs. Guinness the beer is dark colored with tan foam on top.

Now I really like the name and the dog and admire D for his cleverness and passion for beers.

March to Spring

It used to be "spring forward, fall back". This year the Daylight Savings Time begins early. Specifically it started at 2am this morning. Thus now it should be called "March to Spring". This energy saving bill was coauthored by the congressman of my district, Ed Markey. Congressman Markey does good things.

However, 3 weeks ahead of its usual time is bound to cause confusions. For example, my laptop still needs an update. It also confused my friend Q.

Q called me last night saying that we should have lunch together today, at 12pm. So I reminded her, "the new time 12pm, right? Time changes tomorrow." Q said, "yes!" "OK, I hope I can get up for it", I said.

So my smart atomic alarm clock went off at 8:30am this morning and I got up some 70 minutes later, and checked emails, surfed the web, had breakfast, sharpened my cleaver (for making a second batch of spicy Sichuan sausages -- 毫无疑问，我做的麻辣香肠，是世界上第二好吃的）, and did some cleaning. It's almost 11:30am so I should get going. I thought I should give Q a call.

"Are you on your way now?"

"What? It's too early. It's just 9:30am. We are about to have some porridge."

"OMG! You turned the clock back! It's in fact 11:30am now!"

Q thought that she gained an hour today. Wishful thinking :-)

Johnson Space Center

Oh my, don't we all like to gossip! I guess the astronaut love triangle / attempted murder is hot news today. Apparently love drives one crazy, even astronauts can't be spared.

I visited the Johnson Space Center (JSC) on the last day of 2006. I am posting some pictures in case you haven't been there yourself. As you might know, JSC serves as the mission control center for all the space shuttle flights and much more. Remember the famous "Houston, we've got a problem"?


No shuttle was in space that day, plus it was a Sunday, so the control room was empty. But you still can see on the screens where the International Space Station (ISS) was currently orbiting the earth, and live video feeds from the ISS.

Training facility

Rockets

Why did I become suspicious about the Moon project after I saw the exhibition?
Maybe I should spend more time reading about it.

Bonus pics:

Houston

At sunset
The last ray of 2006

Screen Shot

On Mac OS X.

I'm so technology-challenged. Big sigh. Thanks to V for showing me the trick.


It's cooooooold in here, and I had to park outside today, because everybody wanted to park their cars in the heated underground garage!

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 :(.

My First NBA Game

Tonight I went to the TD Banknorth Garden and saw my first NBA Game (or even any basketball game) ever. I was surprised that I actually enjoyed it, even though my home team lost to the Philadelphia 76ers and neither team played that well. I realized why basketball is a favorite pastime:

1) Sportsmanship: work hard to win; work as a team; tactics, etc.
2) Cheerleaders (Celtics Dances) are hot. Many dances and costume changes.
3) Great entertainment:
a)) National Anthem performed by a 4-person choral in Colonial costume (the mic could have worked better)
b)) Trampoline Sky Riders were cool
c)) Aerobatics performed by Celtics Dances and assistants
d)) Really cool to see yourself on big screen, funnier when it's from a fish-eye lens
e)) Junior cheerleaders: girls and boys were great
f)) Everyday Hero: today's was an animal-rescue officer who led a cute black dog to the arena

Other things I saw:

1) Many ads
2) Many kids in the audience
3) Many kids involved in entertainment programs
4) Audience likes to make noise and chant "D-fense"
5) Sports photographers use Canon L lenses (gosh, those are EXPENSIVE)

Last but not least, I learned some of the basketball rules. Thanks to X for being a very patient personal commentator, who also taught me baseball rules.


Will I see another NBA game? Given the chance, sure. Maybe I should go see Yao Min in Houston :)