Why using bad languages is not offensive.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Beastie Boys -- Intergalatic
Way before Eminem, 50 Cents, Kayne West and all those rappers, there was the Beastie Boys. Nope, they don't do gangsta rap, but I love them all the same. This is one of my favorite track.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
如何选购旅游纪念品
（刊登于联合早报四面八方版 ）
由于纪念品的用意将决定它的性质，因此在选购时必须考虑究竟是要自己收藏，或者是送朋友的。前者能让自己的旅游有回忆和经验以外的实质收获，而后者是为了履行某种社交礼仪。对于价钱的考量，前者多昂贵都无所谓，只要负担得起，而后者就得看彼此的交情了。私人收藏的纪念品可以随便买，只要自己喜欢就好。要送人的话就必须考虑对方的感受，如果不小心送了不合适的礼物，对方不仅不会感激，搞不好还会制造敌意。
当然，除了以上的考量，还必须留意所购买的纪念品是否标志着 “中国制造” (Made In China)的字眼。此状况在二十年前绝对不是问题，但近年来几乎所有的商品都有 “中国制造” 的字眼。德国著名的运动品牌？中国制造。令人垂涎的瑞士巧克力？中国制造。仔细想想，本应拥有浓厚地方性的旅游纪念品都可以中国制造了，还有什么不可以呢？
购买到中国制造的纪念品会有种被欺骗的感觉。所谓选择旅游地点就等同和那个地点签署某个不成文的合约：我到此处一游，你就必须用当地特产来招待我。如果我要中国制造的纪念品，难道我不会自己跑到中国去吗？如果纪念品是买给自己也就罢了，就当吃一次暗亏。如果是送礼的话，收到礼物的人大概会怀疑你的诚意。嗯，他应该是忘了给我买礼物，而此礼物是他在回国后随便在某个商店里购买的吧。更糟糕的是，有些人甚至会怀疑你是否有出国旅游。嗯，这个人搞不好只是打肿脸皮充胖子，到处跟人家说他到过许多国家，其实从来没有出过国吧？那些旅游照片多数也都是用电脑弄出来的合成照罢了。
好了，假设你已经确定纪念品是当地制造的，接下来必须决定的是应该买什么样的纪念品。 最普遍的纪念品是印有该旅游胜地图案的杯子、衬衫、帽子等商品。不过，这时你开始担心了。即使杯子底下的文字显示这是当地制造的，谁也不能保证这不是纪念品店的老板对中国厂商的要求，只为了制造当地性的纪念品。更何况，杯子、衬衫、帽子等商品在任何地方都可以买到，那些怀疑你吹牛的人说不定会认为这些纪念品都是你找人把从网路下载的图案印上去的。现在不是有很多照相馆都提供类似的服务吗？
仔细想想，所谓旅游纪念品不仅应该反映该地区的风土民情，更应该在若干年后你记忆有些衰退时让你想起此旅程的独特性和异国风情所给你带来的冲击和反思。或许你该到当地街坊走走，搞不好会找到独特和值得收藏的纪念品。然而，导游已经开始在催了，还有两个旅游胜地得去，没时间磨蹭了。因此，你只好随手拿起几个看起来还不错的纪念品，并且取出信用卡，走到柜台准备付账。
或许，如此笼统的纪念品最适合反映出如此走马看花的旅游经验。
由于纪念品的用意将决定它的性质，因此在选购时必须考虑究竟是要自己收藏，或者是送朋友的。前者能让自己的旅游有回忆和经验以外的实质收获，而后者是为了履行某种社交礼仪。对于价钱的考量，前者多昂贵都无所谓，只要负担得起，而后者就得看彼此的交情了。私人收藏的纪念品可以随便买，只要自己喜欢就好。要送人的话就必须考虑对方的感受，如果不小心送了不合适的礼物，对方不仅不会感激，搞不好还会制造敌意。
当然，除了以上的考量，还必须留意所购买的纪念品是否标志着 “中国制造” (Made In China)的字眼。此状况在二十年前绝对不是问题，但近年来几乎所有的商品都有 “中国制造” 的字眼。德国著名的运动品牌？中国制造。令人垂涎的瑞士巧克力？中国制造。仔细想想，本应拥有浓厚地方性的旅游纪念品都可以中国制造了，还有什么不可以呢？
购买到中国制造的纪念品会有种被欺骗的感觉。所谓选择旅游地点就等同和那个地点签署某个不成文的合约：我到此处一游，你就必须用当地特产来招待我。如果我要中国制造的纪念品，难道我不会自己跑到中国去吗？如果纪念品是买给自己也就罢了，就当吃一次暗亏。如果是送礼的话，收到礼物的人大概会怀疑你的诚意。嗯，他应该是忘了给我买礼物，而此礼物是他在回国后随便在某个商店里购买的吧。更糟糕的是，有些人甚至会怀疑你是否有出国旅游。嗯，这个人搞不好只是打肿脸皮充胖子，到处跟人家说他到过许多国家，其实从来没有出过国吧？那些旅游照片多数也都是用电脑弄出来的合成照罢了。
好了，假设你已经确定纪念品是当地制造的，接下来必须决定的是应该买什么样的纪念品。 最普遍的纪念品是印有该旅游胜地图案的杯子、衬衫、帽子等商品。不过，这时你开始担心了。即使杯子底下的文字显示这是当地制造的，谁也不能保证这不是纪念品店的老板对中国厂商的要求，只为了制造当地性的纪念品。更何况，杯子、衬衫、帽子等商品在任何地方都可以买到，那些怀疑你吹牛的人说不定会认为这些纪念品都是你找人把从网路下载的图案印上去的。现在不是有很多照相馆都提供类似的服务吗？
仔细想想，所谓旅游纪念品不仅应该反映该地区的风土民情，更应该在若干年后你记忆有些衰退时让你想起此旅程的独特性和异国风情所给你带来的冲击和反思。或许你该到当地街坊走走，搞不好会找到独特和值得收藏的纪念品。然而，导游已经开始在催了，还有两个旅游胜地得去，没时间磨蹭了。因此，你只好随手拿起几个看起来还不错的纪念品，并且取出信用卡，走到柜台准备付账。
或许，如此笼统的纪念品最适合反映出如此走马看花的旅游经验。
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Miracle... Again???
This is an article by Daniel Dennett in the Edge! magazine (found here) which discusses his near death experience. It is similar to the post below in the sense that Dr Dennett gave tribute to the team of medical specialists keeping him alive rather than some supernatural entity.
================================================
THANK GOODNESS!
There are no atheists in foxholes, according to an old but dubious saying, and there is at least a little anecdotal evidence in favor of it in the notorious cases of famous atheists who have emerged from near-death experiences to announce to the world that they have changed their minds. The British philosopher Sir A. J. Ayer, who died in 1989, is a fairly recent example. Here is another anecdote to ponder.
Two weeks ago, I was rushed by ambulance to a hospital where it was determined by c-t scan that I had a "dissection of the aorta"—the lining of the main output vessel carrying blood from my heart had been torn up, creating a two—channel pipe where there should only be one. Fortunately for me, the fact that I'd had a coronary artery bypass graft seven years ago probably saved my life, since the tangle of scar tissue that had grown like ivy around my heart in the intervening years reinforced the aorta, preventing catastrophic leakage from the tear in the aorta itself. After a nine-hour surgery, in which my heart was stopped entirely and my body and brain were chilled down to about 45 degrees to prevent brain damage from lack of oxygen until they could get the heart-lung machine pumping, I am now the proud possessor of a new aorta and aortic arch, made of strong Dacron fabric tubing sewn into shape on the spot by the surgeon, attached to my heart by a carbon-fiber valve that makes a reassuring little click every time my heart beats.
As I now enter a gentle period of recuperation, I have much to reflect on, about the harrowing experience itself and even more about the flood of supporting messages I've received since word got out about my latest adventure. Friends were anxious to learn if I had had a near-death experience, and if so, what effect it had had on my longstanding public atheism. Had I had an epiphany? Was I going to follow in the footsteps of Ayer (who recovered his aplomb and insisted a few days later "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief"), or was my atheism still intact and unchanged?
Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.
To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.
Do I worship modern medicine? Is science my religion? Not at all; there is no aspect of modern medicine or science that I would exempt from the most rigorous scrutiny, and I can readily identify a host of serious problems that still need to be fixed. That's easy to do, of course, because the worlds of medicine and science are already engaged in the most obsessive, intensive, and humble self-assessments yet known to human institutions, and they regularly make public the results of their self-examinations. Moreover, this open-ended rational criticism, imperfect as it is, is the secret of the astounding success of these human enterprises. There are measurable improvements every day. Had I had my blasted aorta a decade ago, there would have been no prayer of saving me. It's hardly routine today, but the odds of my survival were actually not so bad (these days, roughly 33 percent of aortic dissection patients die in the first twenty-four hours after onset without treatment, and the odds get worse by the hour thereafter).
One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are trying to do what (God says) is right, that is all anyone can ask. Not so in medicine! If you are wrong—especially if you should have known better—your good intentions count for almost nothing. And whereas taking a leap of faith and acting without further scrutiny of one's options is often celebrated by religions, it is considered a grave sin in medicine. A doctor whose devout faith in his personal revelations about how to treat aortic aneurysm led him to engage in untested trials with human patients would be severely reprimanded if not driven out of medicine altogether. There are exceptions, of course. A few swashbuckling, risk-taking pioneers are tolerated and (if they prove to be right) eventually honored, but they can exist only as rare exceptions to the ideal of the methodical investigator who scrupulously rules out alternative theories before putting his own into practice. Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough.
In other words, whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does! And I'm not just talking about the standards 'at the top'—among the surgeons and doctors who make life or death decisions every day. I'm talking about the standards of conscientiousness endorsed by the lab technicians and meal preparers, too. This tradition puts its faith in the unlimited application of reason and empirical inquiry, checking and re-checking, and getting in the habit of asking "What if I'm wrong?" Appeals to faith or membership are never tolerated. Imagine the reception a scientist would get if he tried to suggest that others couldn't replicate his results because they just didn't share the faith of the people in his lab! And, to return to my main point, it is the goodness of this tradition of reason and open inquiry that I thank for my being alive today.
What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends' remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: "I've been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK." The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.
But isn't this awfully harsh? Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. For another, we now have quite solid grounds (e.g., the recently released Benson study at Harvard) for believing that intercessory prayer simply doesn't work. Anybody whose practice shrugs off that research is subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking. If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn't conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying "But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?")
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.
Or you can thank God—but the very idea of repaying God is ludicrous. What could an omniscient, omnipotent Being (the Man Who has Everything?) do with any paltry repayments from you? (And besides, according to the Christian tradition God has already redeemed the debt for all time, by sacrificing his own son. Try to repay that loan!) Yes, I know, those themes are not to be understood literally; they are symbolic. I grant it, but then the idea that by thanking God you are actually doing some good has got to be understood to be just symbolic, too. I prefer real good to symbolic good.
Still, I excuse those who pray for me. I see them as like tenacious scientists who resist the evidence for theories they don't like long after a graceful concession would have been the appropriate response. I applaud you for your loyalty to your own position—but remember: loyalty to tradition is not enough. You've got to keep asking yourself: What if I'm wrong? In the long run, I think religious people can be asked to live up to the same moral standards as secular people in science and medicine.
================================================
THANK GOODNESS!
There are no atheists in foxholes, according to an old but dubious saying, and there is at least a little anecdotal evidence in favor of it in the notorious cases of famous atheists who have emerged from near-death experiences to announce to the world that they have changed their minds. The British philosopher Sir A. J. Ayer, who died in 1989, is a fairly recent example. Here is another anecdote to ponder.
Two weeks ago, I was rushed by ambulance to a hospital where it was determined by c-t scan that I had a "dissection of the aorta"—the lining of the main output vessel carrying blood from my heart had been torn up, creating a two—channel pipe where there should only be one. Fortunately for me, the fact that I'd had a coronary artery bypass graft seven years ago probably saved my life, since the tangle of scar tissue that had grown like ivy around my heart in the intervening years reinforced the aorta, preventing catastrophic leakage from the tear in the aorta itself. After a nine-hour surgery, in which my heart was stopped entirely and my body and brain were chilled down to about 45 degrees to prevent brain damage from lack of oxygen until they could get the heart-lung machine pumping, I am now the proud possessor of a new aorta and aortic arch, made of strong Dacron fabric tubing sewn into shape on the spot by the surgeon, attached to my heart by a carbon-fiber valve that makes a reassuring little click every time my heart beats.
As I now enter a gentle period of recuperation, I have much to reflect on, about the harrowing experience itself and even more about the flood of supporting messages I've received since word got out about my latest adventure. Friends were anxious to learn if I had had a near-death experience, and if so, what effect it had had on my longstanding public atheism. Had I had an epiphany? Was I going to follow in the footsteps of Ayer (who recovered his aplomb and insisted a few days later "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief"), or was my atheism still intact and unchanged?
Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.
To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.
Do I worship modern medicine? Is science my religion? Not at all; there is no aspect of modern medicine or science that I would exempt from the most rigorous scrutiny, and I can readily identify a host of serious problems that still need to be fixed. That's easy to do, of course, because the worlds of medicine and science are already engaged in the most obsessive, intensive, and humble self-assessments yet known to human institutions, and they regularly make public the results of their self-examinations. Moreover, this open-ended rational criticism, imperfect as it is, is the secret of the astounding success of these human enterprises. There are measurable improvements every day. Had I had my blasted aorta a decade ago, there would have been no prayer of saving me. It's hardly routine today, but the odds of my survival were actually not so bad (these days, roughly 33 percent of aortic dissection patients die in the first twenty-four hours after onset without treatment, and the odds get worse by the hour thereafter).
One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are trying to do what (God says) is right, that is all anyone can ask. Not so in medicine! If you are wrong—especially if you should have known better—your good intentions count for almost nothing. And whereas taking a leap of faith and acting without further scrutiny of one's options is often celebrated by religions, it is considered a grave sin in medicine. A doctor whose devout faith in his personal revelations about how to treat aortic aneurysm led him to engage in untested trials with human patients would be severely reprimanded if not driven out of medicine altogether. There are exceptions, of course. A few swashbuckling, risk-taking pioneers are tolerated and (if they prove to be right) eventually honored, but they can exist only as rare exceptions to the ideal of the methodical investigator who scrupulously rules out alternative theories before putting his own into practice. Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough.
In other words, whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does! And I'm not just talking about the standards 'at the top'—among the surgeons and doctors who make life or death decisions every day. I'm talking about the standards of conscientiousness endorsed by the lab technicians and meal preparers, too. This tradition puts its faith in the unlimited application of reason and empirical inquiry, checking and re-checking, and getting in the habit of asking "What if I'm wrong?" Appeals to faith or membership are never tolerated. Imagine the reception a scientist would get if he tried to suggest that others couldn't replicate his results because they just didn't share the faith of the people in his lab! And, to return to my main point, it is the goodness of this tradition of reason and open inquiry that I thank for my being alive today.
What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends' remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: "I've been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK." The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.
But isn't this awfully harsh? Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. For another, we now have quite solid grounds (e.g., the recently released Benson study at Harvard) for believing that intercessory prayer simply doesn't work. Anybody whose practice shrugs off that research is subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking. If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn't conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying "But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?")
The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God is that there really are lots of ways of repaying your debt to goodness—by setting out to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. Thank goodness for the music of, say, Randy Newman, which could not exist without all those wonderful pianos and recording studios, to say nothing of the musical contributions of every great composer from Bach through Wagner to Scott Joplin and the Beatles. Thank goodness for fresh drinking water in the tap, and food on our table. Thank goodness for fair elections and truthful journalism. If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan, buy books for schoolgirls in the Islamic world, or contribute in thousands of other ways to the manifest improvement of life on this planet now and in the near future.
Or you can thank God—but the very idea of repaying God is ludicrous. What could an omniscient, omnipotent Being (the Man Who has Everything?) do with any paltry repayments from you? (And besides, according to the Christian tradition God has already redeemed the debt for all time, by sacrificing his own son. Try to repay that loan!) Yes, I know, those themes are not to be understood literally; they are symbolic. I grant it, but then the idea that by thanking God you are actually doing some good has got to be understood to be just symbolic, too. I prefer real good to symbolic good.
Still, I excuse those who pray for me. I see them as like tenacious scientists who resist the evidence for theories they don't like long after a graceful concession would have been the appropriate response. I applaud you for your loyalty to your own position—but remember: loyalty to tradition is not enough. You've got to keep asking yourself: What if I'm wrong? In the long run, I think religious people can be asked to live up to the same moral standards as secular people in science and medicine.
Miracle???
"That is a miracle." This is a comment that is often heard from people of faith who justify every "amazing" things that have occurred in their lives. Also, it is an opportunity for them to "thank the grace of god" with every chance they have. I remembered having this friend in NUS who would "thank god" for giving her good grades every time she did well on a test or exam. I tried to explain it to her once that wasn't her effort and work more of a reason why she did well on the test, and was chastised for being a cynic and someone who does not understand the mysterious workings of god.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
吾乡印象
（刊登于联合早报2007年12月9日）
每当告诉外国朋友我来自新加坡时，对话的内容接下来多数都会牵扯到鞭刑和死刑、或者是新加坡政府打压言论自由和进行政治压迫。甚至有许多朋友认为我一定讨厌在新加坡生活，因此当他们得知我打算在毕业后回国时都表示些许讶异。
当我听到这些误解时，都会尽量纠正朋友们的偏见。例如新加坡虽有鞭刑，不过有关当局并不会随便鞭人、或者我国也有民主投票制度，只不过方式异于其他国、或者我国虽然没类似美国宪法第一修正案的宪法保护自由言论，不过同时也不容许任何类似Ku Klux Klan的组织利用自由言论做为散播种族歧视言论的借口。
其实，我并不怪外国朋友对于新加坡有所误解，毕竟他们都没亲身体验我国民情。更何况，即使许多土生土长的新加坡人也对本地抱着同样的态度和见解。老实说，我在十年前也抱持着同样的误解和偏见，认为我国没言论自由和不是个真正的民主国家。为何当时会有此想法？大概是阅读许多歌颂西方民主和批评我国的文章，以及从媒体看到粉饰其他国家的画面而开始产生向往，所以才会觉得生活在新加坡不怎么样。
以上态度和看法有所改观是大学假期和朋友到亚洲其他国家背包旅行时所发生的事。看到了其他国家的不足，心里不禁默默承认有关当局至少在某种层面上采取了正确的政策和管理方式。当然，自己当时因为对本地的建国史和邻国与我国的历史关系感兴趣而阅读了许多学者不同的见解和意见。虽然要充分了解本地历史比了解学校灌输的那种一味粉饰本地历史的官方教材还要困难许多，不过其复杂性却让我对新加坡的历史地位有了更深一层的了解。
然而，虽然我的态度有所改观，不过还是认为新加坡在某种程度上有待成长，是个俗称work in progress的国家。跟发展中国家相比，咱们或许在多方面胜过它们，不过要是跟第一世界的西方国家相比，恐怕就孙色许多。我在大学时一直秉持此看法，直到近几年在国外生活后，更清楚地了解有关西方国家的民生状况和政治运作时，发现言论自由精神在美国也不完全被体现时，看法才再度改变。
最近，我的好友阿国来到美国陪同我到加州游玩，而我在他的身上看到了自己近年来态度改变的缩影。阿国上次到美国已经是很久以前的事了，不过他沿着高速公路看到许多简陋的建筑、感受到比本地更为逊色的电讯服务、在三藩市看到许多露宿街头的游民、得知美国惊人的医疗费用和没有公共医疗服务的消息时，不禁向我说其实美国并非他想象得那么好，而新加坡在许多方面都不会逊色于美国。至少，我们不会在乌节路上看到大票的游民四处游荡。
当然，我并不是一味粉饰新加坡的成就和认定这里是人间天堂，因为我认为本地还有许多地方可改善，例如公共医疗服务应该效仿法国和英国等国家完全不收费，或者有关当局应该区别充满暴力的示威和和平的抗议游行，或者有关当局对于许多社会现象能采取更开放和宽容的态度，或者新加坡能通过最低劳工工资的法令，或者有关当局能够对人民少一点管制和多一点信任，别老是把人民当成是长不大的小孩，而应该把我们当成决定这个国家发展方向的一份子。
我也并非秉持某种 “大新加坡主义” 的态度数落着其他国家的成就，毕竟他国有很多值得我们学习的地方。况且，要管理小国毕竟比管理大国还要简单，因此以上有许多比较是不公平的也说不定。我想说的是，我们常常听到对于新加坡的批评不仅只存在于本地，而尽管新加坡不是人间天堂，不过这个地方许多我们当成理所当然的东西在他国却不是理所当然。
应该这么说吧，吾乡印象在我随着时间成长、经验的累积和体验到其他国家不同的生活后，变得越来越清晰，也变得越来越自然和容易理解。
Steve Jobs Talk
This is Steve Job's speech at Stanford's 2005 Commencement ceremony. I have came across the transcript of this speech before, and has found it to be enlightening. I must say that when I was kind of ambivalent about whether to continue in graduate school or go work for a big company to earn more $$$, I read the line where he said "You want to do something you love. Don't live your life under someone else's dogma, but live your life to pursue what you love to do" (somewhat paraphrasing), and realized that even I am not earning big bucks now, research is what I enjoy doing. Hence, you can say that Steve Jobs indirectly influenced me to stay on as a graduate student doing research.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Mazzy Star: Fade Into You
One of my favorite bands. Hope Sandoval's voice is just perfect for the somewhat haunting and melancholic atmosphere in this song.
RX: Sunday Bloody Sunday
Another brilliant montage from RX, starring the biggest assholes and crooks in the world.
Friday, December 07, 2007
RX: The End Of The World
A collage of videos by RX, who mixes video clips with versions of "classic songs". See if you tell what the original song was (Hint: the band who played the original song can be spelled with three letters).
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Robot Chicken Star Wars Edition
Robot Chicken is a animation parody that airs on the AdultSwim Channel in USA. I quite enjoy the show and I always thought that if Gary Larson's Far Side Gallery was made into TV, it would look something like this.
Here is the recent "Star Wars" special edition of Robot Chicken, which parodies everything related to Star Wars.
Is The World Flat???
This is why I am fearful of religion. It breeds ignorance and make people say and do crazy freaking things. Below is an incident that happened recently on a talk-show in USA, where one of the co-host, Sherri Shepherd, said that she did not know if the world is flat or round. Wow. Are we in 1492???
Just in case anybody thinks that what she said was taken out of context, this is the entire segment of the original program where she says she doesn't know (and don't care) if the world is round.
And also, in another episode, the same woman shows that she is seriously in need of some history lessons.
Just in case anybody thinks that what she said was taken out of context, this is the entire segment of the original program where she says she doesn't know (and don't care) if the world is round.
And also, in another episode, the same woman shows that she is seriously in need of some history lessons.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
How To Kill A Chocolate Bunny
Found this rather disturbing(?) clip on YouTube... Probably not for bunny lovers.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Michael Moore On Norway
I have watched the movie Sicko and found it to be a very good movie, despite some of the flaws regarding data presentation. This little clip is from the bonus feature of the Sicko DVD. Although Michael Moore was comparing American society to Norway, we here in the little red dot can also look at how other people are running their country, and think of how we should run our own country.
Classical Conditioning, Office Version
Any psychology major would be able to tell you about classical conditioning. It is one of the most fundamental principles in psychology, especially in the learning and memory literature.
This is a clip from the TV show, The Office, where the theory of classical conditioning is put into good use by Jim on Dwight. And the scientist he was talking about was Ivano Pavlov.
Jon Stewart in 1996
Sadly, most of the stuff he addressed about Iraq and Israel are still relevant today...
The Power of Nightmares.
This is the opening sequence of the BBC documentary, The Power of Nightmares.
From Wikipedia:
The films compare the rise of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and noting strong similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
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