Radon

When I tell my parents that I have advanced to another belt in TKD, my father likes to remind me that the purpose of martial arts is not to get a belt or even to know how to fight. Instead, it is a way to keep fit and to discipline the body; it is to better oneself.

The club I am in runs color belt testing every two months. In the first color belt test, the yellow belt test, they ask children under 5 or 6 years old to practice a series of punching and at the same time shouting out loud “TKD, yes I can; TKD, yes I can. I respect myself; I respect my parents; I respect my masters and teachers.” For kids so young, practicing martial arts is also a process for character-building; and character, as Theodore Roosevelt said, “in the long run is the decisive  factor in the life of an individual and nations alike”. Mind you, not wealth, social status, family background, or even intelligence. It is character.

When a martial arts becomes a sport, competition becomes routine. Talent will definitely play a factor when people are pitted against each other. However, the true essence of martial arts is not competition, not about fight, though competition and sparring are central parts of it. When I practice TKD and Taiji, I always feel there is another side of those martial arts that balance the brutal side. And that is the side that gives the martial art a spiritual aspect. Louis Cha (Jing Yong) resorted to Buddhism. Right now, I simply feel it gives a comforting effect and gives  me a calm and peaceful mind.

Having the first paper accepted, published, and printed, naturally I felt a sense of relief. When I started out, I was told that if one didn’t get a paper out after the second year, the pressure would mount quickly. It surely did. Now after the first project, I am more or less free to do what I want to do. So at this turning point, I feel the need to reflect my past habits, and to keep the good ones and discard the bad ones.

First, reading. There are two types of reading. One is fast and rough; the other slow and in detail. Browsing ASAP papers belongs to the former while reading those I intend to reproduce is the latter. The latter requires a higher mental concentration than the former, so naturally the latter deserves quality times such as mornings. Other reading such magazine browsing and newspaper reading also belongs to the second category. So the general rule of reading is simple: read important papers in the morning. (An important corollary is that do NOT read newspaper in the morning.) If there happened to be important paper coming up while I browse the journals, put it in the ReadMe folder for later reading. And for those interesting but not immediately relevant papers, store it in Connotea.

Second, literature research. This activity can be quite time consuming, and at the same time also requires a significant level of mental concentration, sometimes just in order to keep focused. It is also better to be done while sufficient alert.

Third, experiments. It might sound odd, but experiments are actually more time-intensive than mind-intensive, especially those routine experiments. But the interpretation of experimental results is a different story. It is mind-intensive. If one thinks about reading and experimenting as ways of data input, then the analysis of these information is data processing. Both are important. The first stage requires constantly asking myself what I am looking for in order not to get lost, the second step requires answering the question why it is so.

Fourth, multitasking. Swift switch between minds is necessary. What I find particularly helpful is to have a short period of buffer time, usually 5-10 minutes, to review what has been done previously and to prepare myself to get into the mood of a specific task.

Fifth, knowing where the end is (or seems to be). Whitesides’ recommendation, using a paper to organize a project is immensely helpful. No project ever ends. But papers do. Writing the outlines of a paper as early as possible can help keep the project focused and efficiency high. And writing an outline is a mind-intensive activity.

Finally, about balancing experiments and thought. Bruce Albert wrote in a Science editorial on Becoming a Scientist, “An enormous number of different experiments are possible, but only a tiny proportion will be really worthwhile. Choosing well requires great thought and creativity, and it involves taking risks.” Everyone can do systematic work; but for creative work, work that explores a new frontier, picking the right combination of conditions is where the genius’s intuition lies.

“It’s not about money, but sending a message.” — Joker, The Dark Knight

“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.”  — J.K. Rowling

My summer trip to NYC,  London, and Edinburgh cost me US$ 2500 in total. It includes $900 for transportation, $400-500 for accommodation, and $1000 for food, souvenirs, tickets, and others. And my spending has also increased in the last year. It includes an increase in rent, food expenses and six TKD testing. As a result, I not only don’t have any saving during the past year, but also had a big money problem during the summer. It was fortunate that I got extra TA sessions in the summer to cover some costs.

It’s funny that you won’t realize its importance until you don’t have it. But then again, being a graduate student means choosing to be poor. And there is a difference between being poor and choosing to be poor.

Cut back unnecessary expenses.

Rains in fall are mainly caused by the cold air moving from north to south to replace the warm air. And this replacement will not only result in rains, but also a change in the humidity, atmospheric pressure and of course temperature. All of these  change in the environment will affect body functions. Since the body needs to adjust to the change, it will use a part of its energy for this adjustment and will not perform as efficient as it usually does. And naturally, the efficiency of one’s daily activities will go down, in work and other ordinary routines. My observation tells me that this low activity period due to weather change happens to everyone. And for me, it also causes stress because I like to keep a high level of activities. Being self-aware about this chain of effects help me cope with similar situations. But every now and then, when I just got lost in the middle of all the things I was doing, it’s hard to remind myself to slow down and not to stretch to the breaking point.

I just watched the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Just as different music gives different mood,  different movies have different moods as well. This movie gives me a new perspective. There are different ways of living a life: running is one; walking is also one. When you run, you enjoy the speed. When you walk, you enjoy the scenery. Slowing down the daily activities doesn’t mean accomplish less, but rather it is just a different way of living, if the eyes and the mind are kept open.

TKD black stripe. Black belt test next July.

These models are provided in the Flamingo tutorials. They are beautiful. Seeing these pictures being rendered under the eyes is just fantastic.

I have always wanted to write something about London since I came back in early September. But there were so many things to say: the history, the art, the architectures, the religions, the science, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, Sherlock Holmes’ imaginary residence on 221b baker street, and Samuel Johnson’s House. So naturally, I don’t know where to start, and haven’t written anything yet. Now it seems that my memory is fading, and I have to resort to photos to remember what I have seen in London.

I still remember there is one piece of advice in the Lonely Planet Travel Book: if you have to pay for one ticket during your stay in London, make it the Tower of London. Even though it is called the Tower of London, it is more of a castle than just a tower. When I visited it, there was an exhibition on Henry VIII going on. Many of his original manuscripts, weapons he has used, armors he wore, his portraits, clothings and many other things were on display. His biggest contribution, according to the history book, is that he separated England from Roman Catholic Church. And that separation has a lasting effect in the politics and religions of Europe. Besides being a king, he is also a great athlete, a strong warrior, and a master of various languages. Body, mind, courage, he has them all, so he seems to be the right king material.

But there is another side of his marvelous genius, as most talents do: the ego. It was mentioned in the exhibit that he was only concerned about his own glories and care little about others. The separation from Roman Catholic Church freed him from his last constraints. He is effectively the only power in England. He was famous for settling dispute on gallows, disputes in politics, religions, and in personal aspects. Especially astonishing is his disastrous family life. Though the eager to father a son might be a reasonable human desire,  to attain this goal, he has literally destroyed his family: He had 6 wives: two were divorced, two beheaded, one died, and one survived.

It is often said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is true for Henry VIII. And it also seems to me that any man, even without power, needs a balancing force just to counter one’s own ego.

It occurs to me today that if time travel is possible, not only will the chain of causes and effects be disrupted, but also the law of mass conservation will be broken. Science fictions seem to like exploring the consequences of the former, a few of which I happened to watch this week, such as Back to the Future and Star Trek. In those movies, things called parallel universes or alternative realities come to rescue the logical sequence of causes and effects. But I haven’t seen anyone trying to explain what happens to the broken law of mass conservation. Einstein might have a solution: instead of the conservation of mass, it is the conservation of energy. But energy is a slippery concept that anything can turn into a form of it or transform from one form into another .

Now jump to a totally unrelated perspective. During a dialogue between Buddhist monks and theoretical physicists, the monks likened the meditation in Buddhism with maths in physics. Maths in physics is a tool to guide the logic reasoning; and through years of experience, users of these maths tools can see through the symbols and equations and get direct intuitions of the actual physical images and relationships they represent.  For example, Jonh Pendry, the theoretician who proposed the construction of negative-refractive-index meta-materials, said the idea of split-ring resonators came to him on a raining afternoon when he was playing around with Maxwell equations. Similar things happen in meditation, the monks said: only through years of practicing meditation, they start to see things normal people don’t see (figuratively, and maybe literally as well).

This argument strikes me particularly strong because science thrives due to human intuition, and if there is another completely different source of intuition that hasn’t been explored, it means that we have left many things out of our considerations, and hence whatever we come up with in science to explain the world is incomplete.

When teaching young Luke Skywalker the art of Jedi, Yoda famously said “You need to unlearn what you have learned” in order to learn how to use force, for example to levitate a spacecraft. So it seems that to leave a slight doubt on everything, including what we believe and what we hold as absolute truth, is necessary for a healthy science.

But it’s not just about science. Humans are known for mistaking beliefs with facts, and convictions with truth. To acknowledge the one is fallible and to accept that fact is essential in any relationship not only between us and the physical world, but also among ourselves, humans. And as colleagues, we have ups-and-downs in our relationships in the past year, and will definitely have more ups-and-downs in the coming year. I treasure all those experiences, and am thankful for everything we have shared in the past year, and look forward to the exciting things coming in the new year.

Now what do all these have anything to do with holidays? Wait.

So if the law of energy conservation doesn’t hold, what disrupt it? It is the FORCE! (Recall the derivatives of energy with respect to distance is force!)

On the occasion of a new decade, I wish all of you “MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU! “.

Warm regards,
Wendong

PS. This is my new year’s greeting letter to my group. Weird chain of thoughts.

Cartoon Source: http://athene.as.arizona.edu/~lclose/teaching/nats102/time_travel_cartoon_2.gif

Last Tuesday, it was the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, and this year is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. This event has inspired many discussions in the scientific community about Darwin and the theory of evolution. I intend to give you one of the views held by Darwin himself.

Drawing: It takes 8 minutes 19 seconds for the light to reach from the Sun to the earth, and it takes 12.8 seconds for reflected light to reach from the moon to the earth. On the earth, billions of years ago, one cell or a small organism started the circle of life, and have formed millions of branches. And one branch, miraculously, leads to human.

Most of the materials you learn in this class and in other science classes, you will forget in one or two years after your graduation. And it is normal: Two important parameter of our brains, comprehension and retention; even if you perfectly understand everything now, you will forget most of them because human brains only have a limited retention time. If you do not revisit it from time to time, the brain will free those space for new information. That’s completely normal and human. Now, the question is,  since you will forget the materials, why bother learning them?

The fact that the earth orbits the Sun, and the moon orbits the earth, and the fact that matters are composed of atoms and molecules, and the fact that almost all of the mass of an atom concentrates in its core, are not known to the mankind just a few hundred years ago. It is a privilege to know more about how the world of Nature operates more than the most intelligent person living just a few centuries ago.  We enjoy this privilege because science accumulates. Those facts have become the common knowledge in the modern times, and it is a literacy requirement for any person of the modern days. That’s the first reason why you should learn them, even though you will forget all the details, you will at least be aware of those facts.

The second reason is more profound. To our civilization as a whole, they have deeply shaped the way we humans think about the world and about ourselves inside this world, and help us realize really how little we are in this Universe. To you and me, to each individual, they also offer a view of life. In the concluding paragraph of On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Associated with names such as Francis Bacon, Sir Issac Newton, James Maxwell, Charles Darwin, Watson and Crick, in Cambridge one has every reason to be serious, yet Cambridge students decidedly do not take themselves too seriously. The photo is the front page of Cambridge student newspaper May 2009 issue, which I took from the tourist center in Cambridge University. The year 2009 happens to be the 800th anniversary of this ancient institute, and the front page depicts this 800th graduating class in the most disarrayed form.

The student newspaper is merely one illustration of the light-hearted spirit of Cambridge. Another amusing story I learned is about the champion of the Cambridge pub crawl. The latest winner drank 14 pints in 17 minutes, and was presented a green scarf after his feat, presumably to match the color of his face. The university administration certainly does not like its students spending all their time entertaining themselves. And that’s why the Cambridge railway station is built so far away from the university town. The campus police, as I was told, had the authority to arrest any student in possession of a ticket to London on the platform when the station was first built. Another anecdote has to do with the first woman college Girton College. When it was first opened in 1870s, it was located 30 miles from Cambridge, with the intention to keep its female students from “male distractions”.

The name Cambridge alone inspires awes and admiration, yet the campus is full of refreshing youthful spirits, sometimes defiant and mischievous. Despite its age, Cambridge is still a quintessential example of vibrant university town. Its success may just depend on this very defiant and mischievous spirit of youth, which is best captured by Rudyard Kipling in “Taking everything you like seriously, except yourselves. “