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04/03/08

on censorship, Part II

This part of the blog is going to deal with the question of freedom of speech. Stanley Fish made a series of lectures titled "There is never freedom of speech and it's probably a good thing too." I've never been to any of those lectures, but the main gist is probably right. Let's take the US as an example. The government is set up in a way that protects the citizens from advocating a relatively broad range of things. But even in the US, historically there are numerous examples where freedom of expression is severely limited by either political prevailing opinion, or national security concerns. An example is the Smith Act, which was enacted many years ago to limit the scope and intensity of the communist protests. Generally speaking, in the US as long as you don't advocate violence, you are okay. This is in contrast to some other certain countries where even strictly academic discussions of political changes can get you many years in jail. The principles though seem utterly similiar. You can go to jail for what you say, especially what you say in public.

Scientists must be shrewedly aware of this limitation. Physicists, as a group, were acutely politically sensitive in much of the 20th century precisely for that reason. If you are a particularly well-known scientist, your political freedom expands considerably. But even then you are not handed a carte blanc. The best contemporary example is James Watson and the ensuing outrage. Advocating racism, for instance, is seen as much more egregious in the US. Advocating segreation of nationhood, on the other hand, much less so. In some countries, advocating separatist ideologies, or a democratic political system, or the lack of god or even homosexuality, is seen to be extremely subversive. Racism, on the other hand, can be tolerated. Now there is an argument as to if there is a factual basis as to which set of values of tolerance vs. intolerance we should espouse, but the underlying censorship remain consistent. The guiding principle is this: if you want to voice your opinion and have it heard and influence people, you have to be smart enough to protect yourself, which means you can only make certain opinions public that are deemed controversial, yet harmless. What constitute this "golden" set of opinions differ from region to region.

The difference between Western democracies and authoritarian states can be complex and subtle when one think in terms of the practicality. The Western states do grant substantially more freedom--people are punished less for what they do, generally speaking, without a compromse to overall functioning of the society. But the basic set of acts that can cause an individual to be punished by the government is braodly similar. So perhaps thinking more broadly in terms of political reforms, the approach should be one of gradual release of rights.

Finally, there is one point that I think is more than anything the most important contributor to stability in a society: the rule of the law. Even if the government is authoritarian, if the laws are clearly defined and intrepreted and executed, at least the citizens know very clearly what they can and cannot say. The biggest problem seems to be that there are subjective evaluations and abuse of the legal system for a political end. In principle the rule of law must supercede any political authority in order for a clean transition from one system to another. Historically this has been true as well, for instance in the case of the Magna Carta. Now scientists probably do not contribute directly to "Nation Building", but in general whereever the rule of law is established, the due procedure of enacting proper legislature should be the venue of advocacy. I.e. for a scientist looking to educate the public, a lobby for a national course on climate and the environment would be a good idea. Writing an underground newsletter, a bad one.

13:36:02 | Comment/Question

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03/25/08

On banalization, yet again

I feel like I'm writing on the same set of topics over and over, and yet for some reason I just keep having new thoughts, sort of. There's a young writer in Shanghai (Han Han) who has gotten pretty famous recently for writing incisive criticisms of the education system. He observed that the 80s generation was deemed particularly apathetic to politics, and hence lacking in idealism, by their parents. He claims that this argument is absurd because the current atmosphere does not active participation in politics. What the older generation thought of as participation is merely victimization. He made the analogy that being raped shouldn't be counted toward having sexual experience. And political participation still awaits its proper time.

Now, in an authoritarian regime this may be so. Why is it that the youth in the US is increasingly banalized? Is it also because that we feel that the power to elicit change is diminished because the politics is increasing controlled in the hands of special interest and lobbying groups? Or more likely, a consensus emerging so that politics is in the domain of the experts, the technocrats who manage the intricate details of government? I think it's the latter. The political process is becoming vastly more complex and a true grass-root politician can almost never succeed. Now this is potentially why young people flock to Obama, since he sort of exuded a certain sense of control and put it back into the hands of the masses. As an avid reader of blog, of course, you would know that I'm an advocate for the banalization of the public. Politics should be all about technicality and pragmatic decisions. This is perhaps another reason to for my slight negative view of what Obama represents. This of course is problematic in that ultimately the people should have an agency. My analogy isn't quite as lurid as Han Han's. Think of the relationship between the public and the government as one not between the rapist and the rapee, but between the doctor and the patient. The patient would want to see the doctor as little as possible. (i.e. small government.) But when the patient does see the doctor, he wants him to be as competent and knowledgeable as possible, and indeed strongly suggest one course of action over another. In the end though, the decision is left to the patient, should he want to kill himself. Democracy preserves this final degree of autonomy. Is it a good thing? Well, should fat people be forced to lose weight because they are taking healthcare dollars away from others by staying fat? Similarly, should the American public be forced to lose jobs and stop driving because global competition and the volatility of gas?

02:24:16 | Comment/Question

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02/18/08

censorship, continued Part I

I was going to begin the post by talking about how a responsible scientist ought to manipulate the public sphere so as to advance a particular political agenda that may be beneficial. Global warming is a good example of this. This topic was enumerated by Newt Gingrich at SFN last year at the infamous "neuroscience and society" lecture. I'll go into a bit about this later, but I realized that there's something more interesting that I need to address first.

The question of self-censorship often comes up with internet journalism/blogging because a blog is often voyeuristic--it opens up a small window of someone's internal life to strangers. A blog can serve many different purposes. It can be a diary. It can be an artistic fictitious account. On the other hand, it is also something that people may hold you responsible for. The question of when and how does something that is fictitious become something factual is controversial. Great literature often has two both factual and fictional parts. On the other hand, blogs are also timely, which means something that is posted one day may lose its significance the next day. It is also a personal log. It has specific set of meanings and associations that may sound completely senseless to someone other than the author. At one extreme, this blog can be seen as a work of fiction written in the first person. It has no plot, but that shan't be a problem since many novels don't have plots. It maybe autobiographical in some sense, but as we all know, autobiographical novels are first and foremost, novels, not autobiographies. Fiction require literary devices to make it sound more entertaining, and entertainment is, at the end of the day, the only purpose for a blog like this. Entertain the author, entertain the netizens. For me, it's more of an exercise of writing. I know if I don't write, I'll lose the ability to write. Oh yes, and make some money off AdSense.

Some people write remarkably carefully about a range of topics that would arouse the least amount of outrage. Now, considering that this blog is mostly about Derrida and how he hates science, I think that it should be pretty non-outrage forming. But, sometimes I let a teeny tiny bit of gossip leak through, and I can see already how Wonkette got so fabulous. I wonder maybe if I should do a porn site instead, and write erotica and post them. I think that might violate some sort of fairness of use policy at Columbia. I personally think that most of the entries are pretty well written, and I'd gladly discuss with anyone anything I've written here. There are some deep questions in this, I think, when you look and ask what truly constitute self and which part of self are you afraid of presenting to the "public". There are things that I would never post here, but my musings about the literary theory of science should not constitute any significant transgression.

23:02:44 | Comment/Question

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02/15/08

on censorship, again

The question of what should be posted on the internet and what shouldn't is raised again. The government, or institutions at large (say the Catholic church) may have an impetus to censorship, even with violence. This seems to be the historical norm in general. Does that mean then individuals should, therefore, think twice before voicing their opinion because of the possible, however intangible, repucurssions? I tend to disagree with this position. While institutions at large have historically favored a illusory and coerced consensus, the great works of intellectualism, from Galileo to Darwin, were invaribaly first concieved amid such unfavorable environment. I see self-censorship as invariably damaging to human "progress" per se. And I am not to about to cede to the Derrida-esque position that The Theory of Evoultion by Natural Selection is but another "text" to deconstruct. The pragmatic side of me, though, see that great thought and great politics are not mutually exclusive. Darwin, as a great example, was quite successful at both.

So how should a scientist and intellectual use and abuse a system of censorship to his/her advantage? This question has a complex answer. The most controversial social question in our era, I surmise, is going to yet again come from the natural sciences. A scientist has two communities to which he is responsible, his/her peers and the general public. Impression management, a la Erving Goffman, is a crucial component in being successful in both. All the successful scientists I know are masters of this art. They say seemingly outrageous things with calculation and precision. I think the smart intellectual knows that censorship, per se, is bad. It's bad not necessarily because of their ideology. Rather, it is clear that if one agrees with the consensus, creativity is impossible and innovation can't happen. In another word, being censored is a necessary consequence of being creative. And being innovative, in this day and age, is the only way to be successful. But, more importantly, the smart scientist knows how to break through censorship and get away with it unscathed, and perhaps enhanced in reputation. The analysis of this needs to be divided into two parts. Fristly, how a scientist might need to raise a controversial scientific question without being censored by the senior people within the community and get tenured in the process. The second, how a scientist (or a group) may be able to raise a politically controversial issue (say global warming) to the public. Perhaps I'll write about my meager understanding of both of these topics in future posts.

11:14:03 | Comment/Question

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02/12/08

don't do a PhD in theory unless you are a genius

and by theory i don't mean literary theory. This is not particle physics and yet I still hate my PhD cause i can't do it. Maybe it's the nature of my work, or maybe it's the nature of my stupidity. What I realized is that I'm completely useless without my advisor. He basically came up with all the original ideas. I'm a dumbass idiot who can't come up with anything. My math sucks and I can't do elementary probability theory. And this paper will never be written. Who knows when I'll graduate. Clearly I'm not good enough to do any of this stuff by myself. This level of protraction and lack of progress is astounding. It's kinda crazy you can't even communicate this to an experimentalist. And I can imagine myself doing experiments...I might've already dropped out.

23:56:36 | Comment/Question

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02/12/08

toward a political movement of apathy

most postmodern theorists aptly describe the contemporary life as one that is demoralizing, and hence, debasing. We live in an age devoid of heros and idols, except the artificial ones created by rampant commercialism. Any grand and noble position is increasingly trivialized into a reptition of some failed ideology of the past. This, in general, is considered a bad thing by the academics, both from the left and from the right. The intellectuals may embrace a particular ideology, say neo-conservatism. But they still want an ideology--a position of argument, a way of differentiating right from wrong through deduction.

I wonder if there are academics writing about a more utilitarian position, and if that position is going to resurface. Right and wrong should be inductive--that is, based on evidence--rather than deductive. Ideology is no different from religion, since the essence of the beliefs themselves require no justification. This position argues for flexibility and technocratic know-how in politicians of power, rather than moral upstanding.

Ideology can lead to strange logical fallacies. Prince Charles, for instance, refused to go see the Olympics because he believed that China supplied weapons for the atrocities in Darfur. It is unclear, however, how the organizers and laborers of the Olympics contributed to this supply chain. A comparable scenario would be boycotting the World Series because American military is bombing innocent Iraqies. Now, perhaps the Yankees do supply the military-industrial complex, but any reasonble person would see that such a leap is a bit extreme, and quite a bit absurd. And yet when the exact same argument is thrown around for a perhaps politically hostile country, it becomes naturally noble. This like that often makes me wonder if Western liberalism is indeed but a secular form of Judeo-Christian hedgemony. I have to admit that I do still believe in the existence, in principle, of some sort of universal rights and code of conduct for all man kind, but more and more I am holding the content in suspect. It is just too hard to tell these days what is real and what is propaganda.

The safer position is indeed the one of banalization, and I'm sad that no philosopher has advocated that. Perhaps there's something noble in being an everyman. Maybe souless consumption isn't really that bad. Maybe the idea that people should even have a soul is what has been killing us.

02:12:08 | Comment/Question

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01/25/08

interesting question concerning feminism

not so much interesting as banal...Alex lost his scarf on the subway. It's a scarf that his mother knitted for him. Sad story. But this does make me think about knitting as an indicator of feminism. My mom sorta knows how to knit. I think she knitted me a sweater before. My grandmothers, on both sides, don't know how to knit at all. They were the first generation after the May 4th liberation movement. So my mom I guess regressed a little bit. I don't know of any med student who knitted. What occured to me though, is this: since women are taking over men's jobs, why can't men take over women's? I think these days if you are a smart guy and you really want a handmade scarf, you could beg your girlfirend. But the much more effective strategy is to just learn to knit yourself. Oh I don't know, you might do that during the superbowl for balance. I personally think men would make much better knitter.

00:22:33 | Comment/Question

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01/10/08

the annoying but praise-worthy David Brooks

ok...He's mostly pretty cool. His book (i.e. Bobos in paradise) was hilarious. But he has this really weird tick on his various youtube that reminds me of people I know at U of C. In the spirit of this blog of being a meta-journalist commentary, I'd rather comment on the third degree of headlines. He has this huge bald spot on the back of his head. I have to say that the very interesting idea that there's this "third way" logic that has being quite attractive to me. I think to a certain extent being right has a certain demand for expediency, a sort of ideological flexibility. This sort of thing might come from seeing the sort of disaster ideological raves created in China. Political consistency should matter less than the actual, technocratic execution. I have evolved to become quite a bit more libertarian, but exactly what to spent is enormously complex and subtle.

So then the more interesting and literary question becomes whether a social movement comparable to the 60s will again emerge? Or emerge within the time frame of my life; and what is the nature of this movement. Is it going to be catalyzed by someone within the US or a complex relationship between the US and the rest of the world? Historically the second option seems more likely. Or perhaps another dramatic technological revolution is on the horizon, and this time from deeply within our biological self? I have often told people that I advocate the "banalization" of the world. If everyone has the oppurtunity to live even a down-graded, sustainable version of the boring suburban American life, the world would already be a much better place by a long shot. But even I cannot resist the temptation of some Tolstoyian historical tidal wave that just makes the world so much more facinating to watch as an academic.

20:43:51 | Comment/Question

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01/06/08

cannot escape politics

election year, can't open my browser and read the NYTimes without seeing news about the various candidates who are crazy. I just want to read fashion and style, and education and read about yet anohter i-banker drowning while having sex with his pool boy. I vote for the vulgarization of the news media. I do want to make a personal secret public: I'm no fan of Obama, even though if he was elected it meant someone who's an alumus of U of C would be the president. First of all I think he is way too thin to be reliable. Second of all he has this scary idealistic thing going on. It does make me think whether we could predict the polularity of someone by doing focus groups on people in an MRI. These things really should be thought of. So I read that they are using machine learning in electral population stratefication and things like that. Wooezer! Math is just so useful isn't it

20:47:40 | Comment/Question

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01/05/08

make your Blog work for you

I just very recently added a Google adsense ad to my website, and surprisingly it has already generated $0.67. An apperciable number of visitors trickled into my website and decided to pay a gander to my lofty raves. Now granted the amount is not terribly significant and I am not really hoping to become the next Mark Zeckerberg, but the prospect that my words might be worth something is pretty exciting! I guess the whole cafepress.com merchandising turned out to be a failed venture.

Since I've taken my time to write and maintain this blog, I've decided that I should refocus and actually have a theme for this blog. Now I am doing a PhD on some sort of brain research, and in a few years I shall obtain a medical degree. I was hoping that I can write a little bit about my musings of health and science and so forth. But then I didn't really want to change the title of this blog. I need to find a timely subject. Something timely, yet not boring to the masses. i.e. not minutiae out of my life.

Recently I've been working on this scientific paper. Alex suggested that we should have a school, akin to Iowa writer's workshop, that teaches you how to write a science article. I guess writing of the article itself is not the issue. Doing the science is. You cannot just cook up an idea and write a paper like you would writing a novel. The act of writing is not the craft itself. Thankfully being a good writer has its redeeming qualities, as a well written paper is much more of a pleasure to read. Sometimes I wish review articles would have more humor and artistry in them, if not simply limited to a small section. I guess scientists can always write their own blogs about their discoveries, where literary talents can yet be demonstrable. Perhaps that ought to be one focus of this blog, to write literary commentaries of science.

Well, let's just start with this one, shall we. I went to Meena's office last night seeing him suffering through yet another miserable failed session of patch clamp. I've decided that such a device concocted by the venerable Sakmann and Neher is pure torture instrument. Maybe devices of such extraordinary frustration should be dispensed in Gitmo. I've seen Neher once at a lecture with his balding heads and unsteady gaits. I wonder if his own masterpiece undermined his youth. But really, the brain at such a magical level of precision...it's secrects yielding to such a disruptive needle. Neurons are so soft and fluidy. You poke them and they become really sad really fast. Sometimes you wonder if the great Heisenberg principle renders all these papers worthless.

18:43:56 | Comment/Question

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12/23/07

censorship

My mom called and told me that she didn't like it that I post someone's personal such and such on my website. But it's completely annonymous! That's what annoys me about Chinese people. They are too poisoned by cultural revolution and its residual influences. Maybe I'll censor myself in China but I refuse to do it here. Richard told us a story that once one of the students, a Chinese import, wanted to shut him up because the student felt publicly humiliated. Richard told him that he was wrong in the class room, for good reasons. Firstly he picked the wrong fight to fight, clearly unaware of who Richard is. Secondly he tried to silence the guy who's right. That's not acceptable in the US. Of course, picking the right fight is important. Some fights are not worth fighting for. Sometimes you need a lawyer, etc. Sometimes public humiliation isn't as bad as you think. But the principle is pretty much consistent. Going to the Dean to censor your teacher might work in China, it ain't gonna work here. And the woman who tried to censor me at U of C was fired and hopefully still as much a hippo as I last saw her. There are many purposes for a blog, and I think effusion of negative energy regardless of the facade is one pretty darn good one. I think part of being confident is about singing praises whenever it's appropriate. But another part is about being capable of contempt when the situation calls upon it.

Knowing the laws can be helpful too. For instance, you get sued for money. the legal fees are high so someone actually pursuing something with me is unlikely, at least not now. I'll be more careful when I have a real bank account. Robbers are you listening to my internet rants? Secondly, I'll never make UP something. So then we get into the murky territory of amateur reporting writing about limited public figures. ACLU is on my side. An artist in fear can't be a good artist, not even someone who's got a day job. Furthermore, furthermore, I'm already a US citizen, so the worst case scenario is that they detain me in PRC. I'm sure the nice gentlemen at the consulate would bail me out should I make any remarks that can be construed as political.

I think the sadder thing is that I've become more or less the nice guy in the crowd, incapable of saying anything that's really damaging. Neither motivation or inititive, or just that I've seen way too many jerks prosper despite their lack of decorum. Tact should be a byproduct of personality, not a goal to strive for. Blogs should be where heinously unverified yet public, semi-annonymous rumors were posted, not where carefully constructed fact checked newspaper articles are denigrated. Alternative media need to serve a special purpose, like trashing one's own alma mater for its socially incompetent students.

19:22:02 | Comment/Question

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12/20/07

yet another UofC mess up

My mom called me yesterday and told me this horror story. Her friend so-and-so has a son, who was the pride and joy of the family. He decided to go to the University of Chicago and study mathematics. Midway through his third year in college, he had a breakdown. Since then he has stayed at home and pretty much can't do much of anything. Does this sound familiar to you? It sounds hella familiar to me. I wonder why this place is so legendary in producing tales of terror like this, esp. in the lofty Eckart Hall of mathematics. Is it a self-selection bias? It's not just the smart, but the somehow out of balance smart...the solicitations of a paticularly peculiar combination. I have deep seeded fear that one of my kids is going to end up like that. In this day and age, even in science, even in math, you gotta be charismatic. You gotta have that salesmanship, that positive enthusiasm. I wonder if this guy isn't hopeless yet and he'll get treated in some way. My best wishes.

10:00:48 | Comment/Question

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12/03/07

Turkish and American toilets

There is this peculiar format in comparative studies where you go somewhere for 2 months and you write a book about the something something of XXX and that same thing in America. The implication, of course, is that you can tease apart the cultural specifics through the mundane objects. The authors most frequently employ subsequently some stereotype to explain away the difference. This is not what I'm going to do today. I just want to point out the interesting fact that the Turkish toilets have very low water levels. I think I've complained to someone before that American toilets have such high water levels that you invariably splash on yourself. This sanitary nightmare is obviously avoided in Turkey, but another problem presents itself. The excrement tends to slide gradually down the bowl, as opposed to, in the US version, become quickly submerged by the high water level. The direct contact of room air with warm fecal matters makes the room smell rather unpleasantly. I suppose having your buttocks splashed on is a small price to pay in that scenario.

16:26:55 | Comment/Question

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11/16/07

beyond the struggle for identity

So my day consists of talking to my friend about third-world countries into the wee hour of the night while having to wake up to see electro-convulsive therapy delivered to hapless depressed patients. And I read this article in the New York Times blog from Jeff Gammage, who wrote "China Ghosts: My Daughter's ourney to America", and we can probably guess what the content of that book is from reading its title.

It's sort of interesting that the sort of things in the blog is so similar to what I read in the Chinese expat BBS. Let me quote--"A Chinese friend who visited from Beijing thinks I'm daft...They are not Chinese. They are American, she told me. The irony is that in this country, my daughters are seen as wholly, fully Chinese..." etc.

Pity me! Such an absurd position! Gimme a break. Really, who really thinks these people (i.e. the second generations) are Chinese? Honestly, when will they really assimilate? The author is making offensive remarks. He's basically saying Asians (or, for that matter, blacks) are not American. And why is that distinction so important anyway. People hold on to these ritualistic things, like language, when they really should look forward. Literature is only meaningful because of the content. Yes, style maybe important too, but we can live okay without that. If I adopted a Chinese girl, I'd teach her that yes, you were born in China, but you can do whatever you want with that piece of information. I think my view is hugely biased, but I guess I just love the lyrics for Imagine too much.

03:17:31 | Comment/Question

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11/08/07

the perils of being interested in everything

more and more, I'm starting to realize that people who get anywhere in life get there really really early. Take the example of the specter that's haunting neuroscience in the past five years, the invention of channelrhodopsin. The co-inventors were both certifiable child prodigies. Karl Deisseroth graduated college at 20; Ed Boyden went to college at 15. I think MD/PhD programs should have an age cut-off. Anybody below 21 should be preferentially accepted. Anyone over 25 rejected immediately. Furthermore, maybe it's just that I'm getting old. I'm getting really sick of young people full of fevor who are really into everything. Yes, I remember the days when I was interested in everything. Esp. the flashy things (i.e. neuroeconomics). Yes, there are postdocs who still have the same enthusiasm that an undergrad from some liberal arts college might have. I really respect that. I need a transition though. I need somehow love that brimming youthful energy again. I think to a certain extent PIs need that energy to survive. It's this parasitic thing. But right now, oh god, do I hate it. It's all fashionable nonsense, don't you see! And yet I can't make myself sit down and do a real experiment. Cause I don't even like doing experiments. It's truly ironic. I don't expect anyone to make sense of it though.

01:07:53 | Comment/Question

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11/05/07

summary

what has happened since the last time I updated? It seems as if days have passed and never left a mark. I guess I've entertained myself quite nicely. Between watching video on the internet and playing myst off the internet, I don't know what else I have. It seems that I do work pretty hard. Oh yeah so I went to take my citizenship test and it was really pretty easy. The possibilites are endless. You really should try Dvorak keyboard layout. Now that I use regular keyboard on Mac it's interesting to see how nice the Dvorak is. It's like so ergonomical. The only problem is that certain combinations I got used to on the regular keyboard that I never got used to on Dvoark. These things include MATLAB commands and unix commands and so forth. I don't know when I'll be able to do all of these things with Dvoark. Sometimes I watch the cartoons I've seen as a teenager, and get all sentimental about childhood. No really people like me shuold look into the future. I think once you stop updating a blog people stop checking it.

00:39:14 | Comment/Question

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08/31/07

the magic of EtOH

Rarely do I have the opportunity to observe a terribly drunk person when I'm not myself terribly drunk. Chanting "I'm fine..." over and over while laughing hysterically, and making unintelligible sounds of pleasure, and singing, the notes bust into another hysterical gust of laughter. For some reason it reminds me of certain moments in cinema that I can't quite quote, on a ship and the cabin mate of the protagonist is drunk. Drunk people are always happy, and they tell you things that they don't remember telling you. You can tell them things that you know they won't remember you telling them. Drunk people are great creatures--gifts from the gods, the freedom of the soul, like an incandescent light, dizzying, dazzling, fuzzy in its glow at night. In the end it all turns into a bellowing stupor. The sound of silence, you know they couldn't last in this exhaustion. People get drunk for many reasons. Sometimes they are happy and they want to be happier. Sometimes they are sad and they no longer want to be sad. Most of the time, though, they just feel old, and they want to feel younger. They want to feel relaxed, in a pool of warm, sticky fluid, like in the uterus. Deep deep imprinting of the mind, so early. Do we really remember anything in that warmth?

02:36:17 | Comment/Question

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08/19/07

remembrance of things past

i spent a lonely night with a friend with whom I used to be close. I can write about him because he doesn't read this anyway. He has been incapacitated by a certain illness for the past nine years, and I tried very hard to help him to no avail. I think he had made peace with it. I had trouble letting go. I had trouble believing that I simply wasted all this time, talking to him, sharing my misery. I think now I'm finally able to make peace with it myself.

He hasn't changed. I have. I guess we were only close because we were both miserable. That sad, immature kind of misery when you were a teenager, that's what I had. I realized that I'll never be that miserable again, no matter what happens to me in life. But with him everything's different. He's in his own world now, inaccessible, floating away. Even his parents have pretty much gave up. I guess it's still fair to commemorate that misery, for me, even though I have moved past it. It's not a waste of time at the end of this long road. At least I don't think he hates me even though the closeness has waned.

I've never had girlfriends like this. I was quite mad and sullen about us fighting, or splitting, and falling out. Somehow gradually I recovered, and we've both at a good place now. It really was like a breakup. If he ever cared he'd read this blog, but I know he won't. If I had met him today, I probably wouldn't give him a second look. The only thing left that's sweet is the past. I'm emulating Proust, lying at the bottom of that pebbled river of memory, watching branches and plastic bottles, carried away by the chilli stream of recollection. When you try deliberately to reminisce, you realize how much you have already forgotten. Only the present is real. The most interesting thing is that he was the only person who always insisted on the fact that a friend is forever. In him, I saw that all my suspicions about life were probably true. In him, I grew a little. I guess if you didn't have some road sign you'll never know how far you've gone. Some experiences are worthwhile because they demarcate past from present.

02:52:33 | Comment/Question

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08/16/07

free association

a slow patch in the work week. I like to read. I haven't read any book in Chinese in years. This most recent one by Wang Xiaobo got me thinking again. Wang is what they call "po-mo lit" in China, quite famous, and pretty good. I read a short novella by him, about the days in rural villages during the Cultural Revolution, and having lots of careless, adulterous sex, and getting into trouble because of it. Nonlinear narrative, ironic style, humorous prose. Sort of reminiscent of lots of familiar authors. His essays are probably canonical now. It makes me think about cultures and their boundaries. It makes me think about how Harold Bloom is a clueless crackpot. My elementary school friends don't read Infinite Jest and can't talk to me about E. O. Wilson, and Consilience is probably much more important to me as any contemporary Chinese book. But then nobody here knows Wang, and people here are sort of missing out in some way. The idea of some form of canon implies something evil. It trivializes identities that are not part of it.

On the other hand, it does seem to demonstrate that my life will be evermore richer than that of Harold Bloom. So I went out with one of his students once. I wanted to add her on Facebook because I think she's a cool girl. She wouldn't let me. I think she hates me now. I don't really know why. Don't you hate it when people suddenly hate you for no reason at all? Maybe there is a reason. Wang studied computer science and was a stat professor. Just shows you that good writers can do science too. I always had a theory that smart people can do everything. Dumb people can do nothing.

13:20:24 | Comment/Question

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08/13/07

misery at Kendell Square

this past weekend proved quite fruitful. I went to two different parties graced by MIT students, both undergrad and grad. The results weren't pretty. MIT seemed to be stuffed with tedious, sexually deprived, not very good looking male students, many of whom though not of the Oriental extraction, nevertheless shared the same negative stereotypical qualities. The female population wasn't redeeming either, especially considering the dire imbalance in its number. According to a very reliable source, Beckett S., MIT's suicide rate is equivalent to the national statistic while that of the U of C is, quite paradoxically, lower.

I remember back when I applied to college, I had to go on an interview for MIT, and it was with this (Asian) guy who seemed terribly arrogant. I told my mother afterwards that perhaps MIT isn't the right school for me. Nevertheless I think had I not been rejected I would have gone. If I knew then what I know now I'd never even waste my money applying there. Walking down Mass Ave. early on a Sunday morning, I realized that I was sickened by the downright provincialism. I realized that I kept dreaming what loud obnoxious bodegas in Washington Heights would have looked like. I realized that what a lucky bastard I am and how unappreciative an ass I could be. I fully concede that I'm a pretentious snob of the first rank, but at least I'm doing pretty damn well to deserve it.

When people ask me about my college life I often tell me that I had a terrible time. I used to date a girl who claim to have loved the U of C, and it scared me shitless. U of C now begins to carry with itself a strange nostalgic haze in my mind, the Proustian adolescent torture--preparing your gall for better times to come. The alumni events were universally more pleasant than most of the college parties. Thank god I went to medical school. Thank god I live in New York. Thank god a certain life past is never gonna come back, except in memory.

14:59:40 | Comment/Question

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07/23/07

Knocked up

i don't know what possessed me to watch this into the wee hours of the night. It turned out to be not all that good, at least for me. Guess the critics can be wrong sometimes. I mean, perhaps it is good; it's just that I can't understand it terribly well. I can't sympathize with this kind of comedy. Same with Old School. These movies depict a world that I've always been an outsider to. The group of happy-go-lucky teenage boys who were happy being adolescent perpetually. The group that never accepted me--I myself never accepted. I can look that sort of life contemplatively, mock its vacuous innards, and feel proud of my "substance", for the lack of a better word. And yet at the end of the day that existence is as alien to me as, say, the life of a Southern Baptist. It's the more acceptable trajectory, I suppose, in that it underlines the typical, but not necessary, epiphanies a boy must transpire before he turns into a man.

There is a fatal continuity flaw in the movie. But how dare we advocate abortion in a studio film? If that happens, all comedic power vanishes. What rational person will keep such a bastard child though? It's not a story about sex, or children per se. It's a story about something eerily implausible: love at the first sight. In the end it's telling a fairytale. It's depressing in that fatalistic assertion dressed up in cookie dough sort of a way--real life, it seems to say, can only be misery.

I kept thinking about Annie Hall. Why is it that I prefer that movie so much more? Why is it that I feel like it is far superior in so many ways to a litany of comedies that appeared in recent years? Firstly, I feel like the Woody Allen character is the quintessential antithesis to the perpetual stoner archetype. It's a kid that never had an adolescence--"I never had one [latency period]." It's a neurosis, an anxiety, coming out of a deep sense of responsibility, fundamentally adult things, manifesting themselves in a child in a pedantic, intellectual sort of a way. We grow up to worry about the universe expanding. We grow up to become Harvey Pekars, write serious music and torture ourselves on the very possibility of mediocrity. We have a responsibility to our parents, and significant others, future children, friends, lovers, teachers, partners, global warming, intellectual freedom, everyone and everywhere in the world we feel like we have to do something about. Anything. Woody Allen somehow brings that out without making it sappy. He says, sure, perhaps sometimes life throws you a lemon or two, but at the end of the day you've had oodles of fun and good things are happening all the time, even in real life, even with out any fantasies. I wish Hollywood would make another movie about us. The thoughtful young men. The precocious types. And I don't mean Spider Man XI. And do not ever, ever cast Tobey McGuire.

02:35:34 | Comment/Question

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07/21/07

does this work?

Referring to a Richard Serra sculpture. The intruiging thing about this is that I can "steal" other people's photos off Google, and make my website prettier without adding bulk and cramping my account. The problem is who knows how long that pic's gonna last. I remember back when I still had a photo of homosexual necrophilic ducks. The good old days.

19:18:03 | Comment/Question

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07/21/07

the post postmodern manifesto

so i've decided to try the following

does this work? See many humanities people erroneously believe that whatever happens after postmodernism has to do with specificity of culture. I think it has more to do with unification of culture through technology. The morality behind it is still vague. What is clear though is that if one doesn't understand science and technology, one can't understand the contemporary condition with any insight. To that end, every humanities major should take a good science course.

19:12:52 | Comment/Question

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07/21/07

interface update

this site has been revamped and cleaned up to conserve space. I'm no longer in my early 20s.

13:17:48 | Comment/Question

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07/18/07

trashcan intellectuality

tonight I was mired in the task of going through all my utterly outdated New Yorkers and pick and choose the articles that are of any import. A inquisition, of a particularly kind that is parochial to residents of the big apple. Things that were ignored: shouts and murmurs--outdated news baby; Yet another personal history piece from our favorite Turkish Nobel laureate; Yet another raging j'acuse from Seymour Hersh; All the fiction pieces: com'on, my mother can write better than that! Things that were scanned with little care and fanfare: my good god, Will Wright is getting ANOTHER article? Oliver Sacks? I could be David Remnick at this rate. And then you see David Sedaris. So what if he makes up his stories. Who doesn't? When you master the English language to such a extraordinary degree...It kinda makes the $29 *professional* rate all worthwhile.

22:05:16 | Comment/Question

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07/16/07

the FBI

here's what I think of the FBI. I always thought the FBI agents are amazingly awesome, from the Silence of the Lambs to the X-files. They always look really fahsionable in a dark way. Also they have these cool clearances where they could just call an operator and she'll tell theym everything they need to know. When I was young, the thought of joining the FBI has occured to me many times. Sadly they make no money. And most of the cases are on the banal side of things, even with regard to interstate traffic and federal law. Little kids think about the world in a totally different way. Isn't that interseting? guess it's the same as some sort of "federal" police force. I always get along remarkably well with police officers. All they ever do for me is telling me where the subway stop is. I wonder maybe one day I'll turn into a little old lady.

16:08:38 | Comment/Question

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06/14/07

a kiss is a tort

I've compared a kiss to a firefly, a drop of winter dew, etc. A friend of mine, a lawyer (actually, a law student) told me that a kiss, unrequitted, is also a tort. Hence, the "grab and kiss" logic would translate to a civil court judgment. I told him that sometimes in life you just have to pay that price. He insisted that he'd wait till his Indian arrangement comes along. When is a kiss a tort, and when is it a firefly? I think if you can't answer that question you still haven't graduated puberty, even though you might have graduated law school. Meanwhile, it seems like everyone and his mother is now reading this lil ditty of mine. Two things need to be kept in mind--firstly it's a rave, meaning that it's not carefully thought out and shan't be taken too literally. Seocndly, it's wholeheartedly brillant. Sometimes, even if something has a little bit of liability associated with it, you still have to do it. We ain't robots.

00:39:38 | Comment/Question

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06/10/07

illusion of time

Some people forget the time of the day. Some people forget the day of the week. I forgot the year. I woke up groggily after a lil nap after lunch. Then I saw Jimmy Carter on C-SPAN. Then I thought it was 2008. Holy crap! Is it already election year? Is W's reign coming to an end! Nov, 4th? Then I realized that it's only 2007. The painful year long TV coverage has yet to begin. Why! God why!

14:52:31 | Comment/Question

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06/08/07

the nightmare that is sugary soda

so this bulking up program of mine turned out to be quite interesting. Firstly I've discovered that through yearss of subliminal inculcation my stomach and hypothalamus have learned to crave healthy foods--veggies, mushroom, various melons and fruit, whole wheat, etc. Trashy, calorically rich food taste nasty and bloating. But, two months, so be it. Secondly, the most calorically rich food is probably fruit juice! Now I almost always drink diet coke back in the day, and it is shocking to see that a tiny little bottle of Tropicana grape juice has 300 calories! So if i have three for three meals, plus two protein powder supplement (each 120), that's a whopping 1200 calories extra! EVERYDAY!! Little surprise that Americans are getting fatter every day. By and by there's high fructose corn syrup in it. STOP THE MADNESS!!! unless, that is, you are trying to bulk up and lift weights everyday, and even then I'd only do it for two months, with appropriate "diet vacations" of healthy foods. Hail to the pretentious preening lifestyle of health and glory!

13:55:57 | Comment/Question

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05/24/07

squats

I've decided to add squats to my exercise routine. This move is also known as the king of compound movements. Everyone should do it. Very simple, just squat down and then stand back up. Do 50 a day if you don't put some weight on your shoulders.

I told my mom to do it and three months later her cholesterol dropped back to normal range. I don't know if that's actually causal. In any case, I feel like my legs aren't properly exercised even though I do jog up the hill.

13:43:40 | Comment/Question

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05/18/07

the solution

Seems like pontification helps, at least to a certain extent. I think the answer to the question, WHY do theory, is similar to the answer given to a girl when she rejects you. Well, if you think theroy is not worth anything then please, by all means, don't bother with it. But it WILL be your loss. I'll always find someone else who's willing to collaborate and we'll do a better job in whatever we do than you ever could. Thank you! The interesting thing is that it seems having a HUGE ego is the solution to every problem in life. Self-help books call that "confidence". I don't have to justify my existence. AT ALL.

07:05:57 | Comment/Question

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05/18/07

the limits of theory

I went on a dinner with a few of the postdocs and a faculty member. They all do experiments for a living. After a few glasses of wine and the foie gras, the true colors started to come out. For some strange reason they all loved doing experiments. They professed this love that they see something new that nobody has seen before, on and on. Of course, the conversation turns touchy immediately when they start to tell me to do experiments. And that is when I felt, quite acutely, that my existence necessarily requires justification every step along the way, that support is not there, to say the least of it, if not outright hostility towards what I do and how I live, and that at the end of the day we are just all out looking for ourselves.

It's a depressing conversation. Every postdoc is staunchily narcarssistic about his own work. I can't see the light, toiling years of life away in some little dark room, working on a problem so little that it's almost petty, learning a technique that becomes obsolete just as you start to learn it. I can't imagine that experimentalists not having some sort of crises of faith all the time. At least when you do math you'll know you are right after you are done. And that you'll be right forever. I can't find the balance between pushing something (in the case, my career) and trying to be modest and open-minded about other people's careers. Often I feel that experimentalists, in their hot-headed stubborn narcarssism, don't know how to analyze their own data, and scientific progress is hampered. But a thoerist can hide in his own cacoon of abstraction. Waking up at 4AM and unable to sleep afterwards seems to be indicative of the kind of intellectual quicksand--yes, not just muddy waters, not just thickets of thorns--hidden vortex of a painful, suffocating death, that is so unbearable. You won't find validation from your peers. Oh no. It's about getting the best of them. I mean, who's going to get funded in the end? I'm so sick of having to justify my own existence. Scientists are so cagey. The questions are so NOT interesting. I just want to get out.

06:04:55 | Comment/Question