Five Years

Has it been really that long ago? This human tragedy. I can never forget that day.




Dr. MacDaddy D built an ice bucket tower all the way to the ceiling last night, only to find this morning that the top had collapsed overnight. Instead Dr. D constructed a more stable ice bucket pyramid (that used all the 21 buckets in the B Lab!). I call it Dr. D's 9/11 memorial:



Now the following one is the only-at-MIT Sept.11 tribute: a fake fire truck on top of the Great Dome.

Moonrise Over Boston

Sept. 6, 2006. 7:30pm.
Focal length 210mm. ISO 100 Av 5.0 Tv 1/4 (My hands were very steady :-) )

The building says "STATE STREET"
The hot air balloon says "Sovereign Bank"

Thanks to HB for notifying me of the moonrise.

Next month the photographer will get prepared for the Harvest Moon.

节目预告

Denali photos uploaded. Blog to follow (when I have time).

Alaska, Day 2

Rainy Day

Purple Fireweeds dot the highway

Glenn Hwy

Photos are here.

It was still raining on the second day. Outside of the rear window, the mountain looked so green in the rain. Laura, the owner of the B&B, had left early for her work at the hatchery. We helped ourselves to some breakfast in the kitchen and also met other guests. There was a young couple who seemed to be very quiet and left the breakfast table early. Then there was this old couple who chatted with us for a long time. They were from Ohio, retired, and had been in Alaska for a while. They lived in Beijing and Shanghai for two years, in 1998 and 1999. The husband worked for a British ice cream company (that I haven’t heard of). They loved China. Then came the two ladies from Fairbanks. They came to visit a friend and went fishing the day before. They caught about 18 salmons.

Before I went to breakfast, I turned on my laptop, and found that there was wireless Internet. I chatted with HB and HQ and also blogged one entry. Troubadour said that I should waste no more time online, for we had 500 miles to drive that day. I hurried up and we were off by 9am.

It was rainy and foggy and misty as we drove out of town. The mountains still did not reveal their true identities to us. We stopped as we approached Thompson Pass, and I took this picture



Pippin Lake looked completely different from the day before. Compare these two pictures:

Aug. 18, 2006

Aug. 17, 2006

In Glennallen, we headed directly to the only Radioshack, because we had been really fed up with the few music CDs I had packed for the trip. We need a cable that could connect my mp3 player to the car stereo. I found a dabbing cable that looked right, but I wasn’t sure. I asked for help. Alaskans surprised me again. The guy who worked in the store first tried to find me a cheaper version of the gold cable; then he torn open the package and handed me the cable, and said, “you go to your car and try it out.” I was totally shocked by the trust he bestowed on me. And luckily it was the right thing, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about making him torn the package open.

We saw the only moose during our whole trip on this day. He was right next to the road, munching on leaves, in the rain. He was very close to Palmer.

We went to a MacDonald’s in this town, because I craved for a milkshake. I also convinced Troubadour to get a French fry to share, too. As we were waiting for our orders, we heard someone say, “你们从哪里来？(Where are you from?)” That totally surprised us. In this remote town of 4,500 people, out of nowhere! It was a young American guy. Lesson learned: never say bad things if you don’t want people to hear.

It rained harder after we turned north on to Parks Hwy. Wasilla seemed to be a large town, with its center stretched on the highway for miles, causing traffic delays. The rain just wouldn’t stop. It was down pouring (like Boston’s Nor’easter) for the three hours we were on Parks Hwy. Though it was raining hard, I could still maintain 60 mph. We passed numerous creeks and rivers. On each one there would be a sign. I laughed at this one creek for its name, Troublesome Creek (at Milepost 137.4). What a silly name. Only if I knew that one day later, it was going to wash out the highway bridge and cut off Parks Hwy.

Of course, with the limited visibility, we couldn’t see the Alaskan Range. No Mt. McKinley today.

Central Square, Central Scare

Years ago, YL told me the nickname for Central Square, Cambridge. "Central Scare! Yes! It's getting better now, but it used to be really unsafe before. Drug dealers used to do their business there at night. Don't walk alone at night. Roll up your windows when you drive through."

It sounded really scary. I carefully followed his suggestions and never walked alone at night. Central Square is a nice place during the day: I especially like the Pearl, the art and craft store; the Harvest, the local grocery co-op where you can get exotic spices in bulk for low prices; and lots of restaurants, and clubs. Maybe it would be better without those clubs. Over the years we've heard about fights, and one time a gunfight where someone got killed not far from D's purple house. I mean, that was really scary. But it was never really close to me.

Not until last night, or very early this morning, did I feel the scare. After staying late to set up a second plate of real-time polymerase chain reaction (yeah! I've finally advanced to the 21st century!), I took off around 1:30am (yes, I am still in the Mountain Time). I stopped at the red light on Mass Ave. at the fire station. I felt lucky that I didn't run the yellow light because a cop car was stopped in front of me on the right. The cops pulled over one car. The young driver was ordered to stand behind the car, with his hands on the trunk. The two cops were searching the inside, one of them shining a flash light at the passenger, the other holding a baseball bat. He looked at it for a while, and then went back to the cop car, and threw the bat to the back seat. What was going on here? Suddenly I felt really scared. What if those kids had a gun in the car? What if they just started shooting? I was too close to them. Oh I was in danger! Now I really understood why it was Central Scare. Those scary kids!

It seemed to me to take forever for the light to become green again. I drove as fast as I could without any residual curiosity at what was really going on with those kids in that car. Not far away, on Western Ave. I encountered another three cop cars and some cops outside talking. Oh my, it must be a block party for cops late at night. Again I was lucky that I didn't speed above the posted limit of 25mi/h when I approached those cops.

How Much Does a Musician Make?

That was my question to Milos when we were at a (free, thanks to Jenny and BSO) BSO concert last year. Apparently they don't make much. Some of them even work a second job to make enough money for a decent living. That sounded so dread to me. Much like us scientists (at least us students and postdocs), musicians devote their whole life to what they really love, yet they don't get paid well. That saddened me, especially when I was enjoying the music they were making.

Then I read in last Friday's NY Times that BSO's musicians have ratified a contract giving them a 13.6% salary raise over three years, to a minimum salaray of $128,180 in the 2008-9 season. The musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra also ratified a 10.5% raise over three years, to a minimum of $115,440.

Well, that sounds like good news to me. At least they are making relatively good money. But these are two of the five most famous symphonies in this country. What about musicians in less renowned music groups? They probably really have to toil (like us poor students and postdocs) to make ends meet.

我的天啦！

副标题：超女怎么啦？
副副标题：周末开心一笑

警告：非常恐怖，慎入。本博不负任何精神损失之责任。

注：需要有Windows Media Player播放。如有播放技术问题，请看source去原址。


今天浏览一年轻娱记的博客，忽然间被一阵喧哗的噪音吓住，仔细一看，原来是本周超女十进八的开场歌舞。那个方言的“你知不知道”让我怀疑是不是合肥话，感觉和“从肥东到肥西，买一只老母鸡”如出一辙，竟然有一点亲切感哩。大伙儿说呢？

要说超女唱的啥？与时俱进，“八荣八耻”啦！差点儿没把我的隐形眼镜给跌出来。我怎么发现我这么反感喊口号的宣传呢？按说我早过了少年叛逆期了啊。只能说这宣传水平太差。我想知道有多少人可以接受这“八荣八耻”的教育，除了小孩子之外。其实我觉得，那些大大小小的官员们才该带头，深入地，彻底地，认真地，长久地学习和贯彻“八荣八耻”。难为了时尚的超女，要做这样的宣传。好了，我的政治观点发表完了。

我总共看过两场超女的比赛。祖国遍地是人才啊。小姑娘们歌普遍唱得不错，绝对够王菲的水平，就差那么一点点巨星的气质。准备看今年的决赛，当然我想跳过评委的环节和所有的广告以及李大脸的主持，只看唱的就最好了。我看好我的四川小老乡谭维维，不知我的预言是否会实现。


贴给大家看看什么是“八荣八耻”：


以热爱祖国为荣、以危害祖国为耻，

以服务人民为荣、以背离人民为耻，

以崇尚科学为荣、以愚昧无知为耻，

以辛勤劳动为荣、以好逸恶劳为耻，

以团结互助为荣、以损人利己为耻，

以诚实守信为荣、以见利忘义为耻，

以遵纪守法为荣、以违法乱纪为耻，

以艰苦奋斗为荣、以骄奢淫逸为耻。


后注：贴得我好辛苦啊。以为我出了技术问题，害得我viewed my blog a dozen of times.

Alaska, Day 1

Green, green everywhere

(set of photos on Flickr is here.)

I know you are all eager waiting for my photos from the trip. So here is the first day, Aug. 17. In fact, I arrived Anchorage at 8:30pm on Aug. 16. When my flight approached the airport, I saw underneath the thick clouds a place so green that I couldn't associate it with the notion of a snow country in winter. The aircraft circled and to close in the airport from over Fire Island, an island with steep cliffs all around, covered by thick woods, in the silt-filled Cook Inlet. In a short distance, a small arc of rainbow appeared opposing the setting sun. That was the first welcome sign Anchorage showed me, only I didn't know that it was going to be the wettest August in many many years. I must have jinxed my luck by pre-posting wishing myself a drier trip.

I woke up to a rainy day, a little unnerving. But I was on vacation! Anchorage is a small city according to my standards. Besides, I was here for the Alaskan wildness. So we set off around 10am after getting the car and some food supply for the road. It rained really hard at times as we were heading north towards Palmer. Our destination today was Valdez, about 300 miles away. We took Highway 1, the Glenn Highway, towards Glennallen. From there we would go south on Highway 4, the Richardson Highway, to Valdez.

After we got into the mountains, the rain let up a little bit. Little by little, we started to see the other side of the river valley. At mile 79, we saw this river (Matanuska River). Notice the silt deposit in the river:


The peak next to the river (notice: it's all green):


At Mile ~100, we first saw the Matanuska Glacier (the source of Matanuska River):

The glacier is 27 miles long, 6 miles wide, and 300 meters deep.

Its close shot:


Peaks in Clouds:


Colorful rocks show their volcanic past:


Yet another glacier: Nelchina


Glennallen is a tiny town. It has two gas stations and a Radioshack on Glenn Hwy. We turned right at the end of the road, and followed the road on Copper River valley.

At Pippin Lake, we could see the distant mountains in east as the Wrangell Mountains (3000 to 5000m above sea level). From afar, they looked small. Notice the white dot on the lake shore. It was a float plane.


We took Highway 10 and drove to Chitina. The view of the Wrangells was spectacular. Chitina was even smaller, compared to Glennallen. The only Bed and Breakfast had this sign out:


The paved road ends in Chitina. We walked over to the other side of the cut-out pass,


and the Copper River and the Mountains appeared in front of us:


Coming back and continuing on Richardson Hwy, we saw yet a third glacier of the day, the Worthington Glacier:

Only later did I learn that it was very easy to approach. I would have hiked over there if I knew this earlier, and if the weather weren't so bad.

The famous Thompson Pass was completely trapped in thick fog. Visibility was probably 10 feet only. We carefully followed the truck ahead. We didn't get to see what I expected to be breathtaking view of the Chugach mountains. But we did see some waterfalls later on:


Then we got to Valdez. We passed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline several times on the Richardson Hwy. Now we saw it ending on the other side of the bay. It is said that daily flow is 1.7 million barrels. I think the flow was stopped right before we started our Alaskan trip up north in the Prudhoe Bay because of corrosion in the pipeline. That's probably why we didn't seen any big ships.

There was road construction close to town. Traffic was reduced to one lane. We experienced our first traffic jam in Alaska.

When we got in town, I found out that I mis-placed the address of the B&B we were going to stay. Luckily I map-memorized its location, and with the help of a GPS, we found L&L's B&B. Laura, the owner, told us that we were lucky because it was one of the best days in weeks, for we could see the mountains across the bay from the house. She also recommended the best seafood/Italian restaurant in town, Mike's Palace. We asked for a key. She said, "We don't lock our door. You know, we are in this part of the town."

Valdez is called "the Switzerland of Alaska". The harbor was very beautiful, in the overcast natural lighting at 9pm.


There we watched fishermen (and a fisherwoman) filleting fish. I marvelled at a flat fish with two eyes on one side, "big fish!" The fisherwoman said, "that one? No, it's a baby halibut. It's only about 25 pounds. It's about $13 per pound."

We watched people dumping the fish debris into the bay, and seagulls eating them. That evening I ordered a baked halibut, and it was delicious.

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。

Allegro, the Wedding Photographer

Subtitle: North Lab, Are You Reading My Blog?

Dr. and Mrs. Mac Daddy D

The Rings

I became a wedding photographer last Friday! It was very moving to attend this small, beautiful and intimate ceremony. I am very happy for the beautiful bride and the handsome groom. I am also glad that they like my photos. Thanks so much to H and D for trusting me with such an important job. And thanks to the cooperating weather and good lighting conditions.

It feels very good to be useful :-)

For obvious reasons, I will only put these two photos here.

Liebestraum and Liszt

Franz Liszt, age 28
(a portrait by Ingres dedicated to the Countess Marie d'Agoult)

Liebestraum is a set of three solo piano works published in 1850 by Hungarian virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886). The most famous is the last one, in A flat major. Subtitled "Notturno (Nocturne)", the three pieces were arrangements to Liszt's songs set to the 19th-century German poet Freiligrath's "O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst (O dear, so long you can love)". I found the music online today, and added it to my blog to share with my dear readers. Listen to it by clicking the play button to your left.

Liszt was a musician who would make the 19^th century European art circle look like a small one. His father was a pianist and cellist at the court of Count Esterhazy, whom (Papa) Haydn served for many years. Liszt studied music with his father when he was six. Like many music prodigies who started everything early, he composed his first piece at age eight, and gave his first piano recital at age nine. He was sent to Vienna to study piano with Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny, the only piano teacher Liszt ever had. Antonio Salieri taught him techniques of composition. Legend has it that Beethoven gave the little 12-year-old Liszt a kiss for his marvelous playing.

Three musicians greatly influenced Liszt: Berloiz, Paganini, and Chopin. Berloiz’s ideal of program music was represented in Liszt's works with their explicit programmatic titles. Paganini's amazing violin technique inspired the young pianist to become the Paganini of piano. Liszt made piano transcriptions of some of Berloiz’s and Paganini’s works, and his piano style was based on Chopin’s with his own lyrical melodic qualities and harmonic innovations.

Liszt in his days was the most successful concert virtuoso. His popularity was like today's rock stars. He toured all over Europe. Wherever he went, women threw themselves to this tall, thin and good-looking young man. He himself was a womanizer, yet at the bottom of his heart he secretly desired to become a priest (which he became later in his life). He was never married, but he had several well-publicized love affairs with married ladies of high position. His first liaison was with the Countess Marie d'Agoult, who was also known by her pen name Daniel Stern. They had three children. Their second daughter, Cosima, had an affair with Richard Wagner when she was married to Hans Von Bülow, a German pianist and conductor, who was also Liszt's favourite pupil. Von Bülow conducted the premieres of two Richard Wagner operas while his wife was giving birth to Wagner's children under his roof. Cosima eventually divorced him and married Wagner, whom also divorced his first wife.

Liszt was a loving father. He was also a modest man. He lived his life simply and unpretentiously (in spite of the affairs). He contributed greatly to charities. He promoted publications of music by Bach, Handel, and Mozart. He was a great teacher: he taught telanted pupils extensively, for free. He befriended and helped many contemporary composers, among whom Richard Wagner was the one who received most assistance. Liszt died on July 31, 1886 in Bayreuth, after travelling their to attend the Bayreuth Festival celebrating Wagner's operas.