Monday, November 21, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Back to the TRACK!!!
I have to apologize to my dearest readers for not being able to keep my promise and update my blog once a day in the past week. My life was sort of off track in terms of my mental states... But I'm back! And I'll keep my wish of living naturally and energetically as a plant :)
The past week is truly full of new experiences. Every day are worth blogging. To have a quick review (so that we can move on to new life awaiting us), I'll just summerize all the events quickly:
First time at Harvard.
First time sleeping in a sleeping bag.
First time showing up at China Education Symposium and met lots of new friends.
First time be an audience of business competetion in life -- it was lots of fun!
Shopping... so much shopping OMG.
Learn how to cook pasta (penne) with new friends!
The Mikado -- first opera at Brown!
And another big event was, the premiere of Xinyu's newest drama at Zhejiang University on Nov 18th, 忠笑两全, was a huge success! Big congrates to you!
The past week is truly full of new experiences. Every day are worth blogging. To have a quick review (so that we can move on to new life awaiting us), I'll just summerize all the events quickly:
First time at Harvard.
First time sleeping in a sleeping bag.
First time showing up at China Education Symposium and met lots of new friends.
First time be an audience of business competetion in life -- it was lots of fun!
Shopping... so much shopping OMG.
Learn how to cook pasta (penne) with new friends!
The Mikado -- first opera at Brown!
And another big event was, the premiere of Xinyu's newest drama at Zhejiang University on Nov 18th, 忠笑两全, was a huge success! Big congrates to you!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
New thing today? What about be a member of Star Alliance, and... think about social cognition from computational modeling way?
Let's push it a little bit forward... Agent File? Hey, isn't this idea cool?
I need some time to digest this new perspective. But it is gonna be an revolutionary reading experience...
I can still remember my excitement of reading my first Ullman's paper. A new world quitely opened its door.
I need some time to digest this new perspective. But it is gonna be an revolutionary reading experience...
I can still remember my excitement of reading my first Ullman's paper. A new world quitely opened its door.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Nov 6...It is called... daylight saving? Have a monthly brunch, and a pleasant afternoon tea with nice chatting. Buy some nice books and greeting cards, and receive a call from an old friend on the west cost!
Got an extra hour today, YEAH!!! All the sadness of losing one hour from time to time when we were sailing around the globe from the west to the east on Semester At Sea has gone away!!!
And, it is called Sunday -- a day of sunshine? Really lovely reunions with friends, at brunch party, afternoon tea, and also over the phone.
I bought two books from the book store. One is The Ship -- my heart just stopped beating for a moment on seeing that huge ship on the cover! I was reminded all the great memories on the ocean! Another one is Chinese Culture and Art -- I need to learn how to introduce Chinese cultural heritage to my western friends. And I'm also gonna give this book as a present to 2012 spring Chinese voyagers!
One of my Chinese good friend was robbed on Thayer Street. Be careful, guys!
And, it is called Sunday -- a day of sunshine? Really lovely reunions with friends, at brunch party, afternoon tea, and also over the phone.
I bought two books from the book store. One is The Ship -- my heart just stopped beating for a moment on seeing that huge ship on the cover! I was reminded all the great memories on the ocean! Another one is Chinese Culture and Art -- I need to learn how to introduce Chinese cultural heritage to my western friends. And I'm also gonna give this book as a present to 2012 spring Chinese voyagers!
One of my Chinese good friend was robbed on Thayer Street. Be careful, guys!
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Liszt "at" Brown! My first concert on campus! And hear from an organ for the first time! So cheerful!
Highlight of the Day:
And Orpheus is also impressing, which is so cheerful and lovely, just like Alice in wonderland... a huge contrast to Totentanz!
Link of the Day:
1. Enrico Pace playing Liszt's Totentanz. I don't know whether there're some better versions out there. But this is definitely fabulous!
2. Check this out! MIT Brian&Cognitive Science has an amazing video archive of their lectures. MIT is so cool (esp. in technology)!!!
I went to my first on-campus concert tonight -- Lisztomania! A Bicentennial Festival Concert. It was truly breath-taking... just magnificent!!
What we had are:
Prelude and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H (organ)
Anima Christi (organ)
Ossa Arida (organ)
Consolations, No.4
Hosannah for Trombone and Organ (organ, trombone)
The beatitudes from Christus (baritone: Andrew Garland)
Ave Verum Corpus
Pater Noster from Christus (chorus)
Orpheus (Symphonic Poem No.4) (orchestra)
Totentanz (orchestra; pianist: Kenneth Hamilton)
The Bells of Strasburg Cathedral (orchestra, organ, baritone)
Among all the music they played, I was especially impressed by Totentanz (with orchestra) -- the appearing and reappearing chant Dies Irae with rich variations, the explosion of giant power, the unbelievable skills of the pianist, and the excellence of this Brown orchestra! I played it on loop on Youtube after the concert!
And Orpheus is also impressing, which is so cheerful and lovely, just like Alice in wonderland... a huge contrast to Totentanz!
Link of the Day:
1. Enrico Pace playing Liszt's Totentanz. I don't know whether there're some better versions out there. But this is definitely fabulous!
2. Check this out! MIT Brian&Cognitive Science has an amazing video archive of their lectures. MIT is so cool (esp. in technology)!!!
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Planning on my Boston trip!
I cannot believe that it is this close! Next week!
Had a meeting with our new faculty member from Harvard this afternoon. Lots of information about Harvard from an insider's view!
This is a long and busy week with exams, deadlines, presentations, lectures, and always papers, ect. And it's not done yet.
Had a meeting with our new faculty member from Harvard this afternoon. Lots of information about Harvard from an insider's view!
This is a long and busy week with exams, deadlines, presentations, lectures, and always papers, ect. And it's not done yet.
Writing research proposal for grant application on Nov 3
I have never applied to any grant before...
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
First Talk at Lab Meeting! Two Interesting Lectures on the same day! Floral Water Tasting with Good Music!
Highlight of the Day:
1. Yes! I finally gave my first talk in the lab meeting today, bringing my first project to the table! I didn't know I was gonna talk about it until 2 hours before the meeting. Somehow, I just felt that it should be in the next week, or in the last week. Consequently, I got less than one hour to make my PPT...
But yes! I made it! And it went on great! Several lab members showed good amounts of interests in the project, coming up with lots and lots and lots of cool ideas -- more than I can handle at this moment! And my advisor is super supportive and helpful, as always!
2. My Ayala's herbal water has arrived today. The most delicate, poetic, flowery, and pricy water I've ever tried (I know there's Bling H2O... but do you really want to spend $60 on a bottle of water?) I got 6 different blends and enjoyed a 40-minute water-tasting with Scarborough Fair as my selected background music -- there is the lyric of "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" in it.
The crispy refreshing clearness with deep smooth sweetness in the aromatic water (and in the music) caresses my palate like a soft, warm breeze. Truly a delightful and natural experience!
3. And I had two good lectures (both with free food) today! By the way, I can never imagine this at ZJU. That's why it is so intellectually stimulating to do research here!
One lecture at Brain Science Program is delivered by William Fifer at Columbia University (Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics), titled "Fetal Roots of Child Neurodevelopment". It was about the knowledge we have about infants beyond they can sleeping, sucking, and defecating (mostly done by EEG research). And what we know about fetus... not psychologically, of course, but physically measurable "behaviors" like heart rate and beyond.
Though the lecture is not easy to follow, the lecturer did show some great taste of humor. I like the following three points in his lecture:
i) "In the next study, we went to South Africa. We had a great time there, watching cheetahs watching us". This saying suddenly remind me of the days when I was in S.Africa. I didn't go on any Big Five safari, though.
ii) When he was showing how animal could (or couldn't) learn from past experience, he played and re-played the very funny, and sort of well-known, video clip in which one penguin waddled by the other one standing pretty still, but all of a sudden, the second guy slapped the first guy with his wing and the poor guy fell onto the ground! It was just so appropriately entertaining at that point!
iii) At the end of his lecture, after presenting a good variety of different studies in recent years and intensive progress at his lab, he showed a piece of jig-saw puzzle on the slide, and circled a smaaaaaaall corner of the piece, modestly saying that he was just working on a tiny piece of the field, but hopefully that one day, research can shed light on the whole piece. Another pretty well-used picture with a pleasing tone.
Another lecture at CLPS is delivered by Todd Gureckis at NYU, titled "Follow Your Own Path: Exploring the Impact of Self-Directed Information Sampling on Learning". It was even more difficult to follow. Instead of examining "passive" learning by limiting participants’ control over the information they experience at each point in time (and do Bayesian analysis or connectionist or whatever), the current study explores how people gather information in "self-directed" learning environments. In other words, the primary aim of this research is to characterize the information sampling strategy that participants use to reduce their uncertainty, and to examine how self-directed learning influences acquisition. Guided by this idea, researchers have found that learning is faster when they can select and sequence learning episodes themselves, depending on the abstract structure of to-be-learned concepts and the space of hypotheses that the learner considers.
So, that's it about today! Well, I don't really want to mention that there are too many emails coming in which sort of troubles me, and that I'm having more and more problem falling into sleep in recent days and feel a little bit tired (probably because I am too excited by current research?) As you see, I like to KEEP POSITIVE THINKING in life, because life is truly a gift!
Link of the Day:
Since I just mentioned about Ayala's Herbal Water, please click on this link to get a better idea of what it is and what different herbs are used for.
Quotation of the Day:
As you may know, I'm reading David Thoreau's Walden to (hopefully) give myself a better understanding of the rhythm and thyme of the language called English. I encountered a very well-known paragraph today, which is probably among the earliest ones I happened to read long ago. I want to quote it for today's quotation, especially because it can also serve as an excellent footprint of my "One New Thing A Day"!
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching Thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that."
这里也附上我早先读到的中文翻译版，正是这一段文字让我对《瓦尔登湖》产生了兴趣：
“每一个早晨都是一个愉快的邀请，使得我的生活跟大自然同样地简单，也许我可以说，同样地纯洁无瑕。我向曙光顶礼，忠诚如同希腊人。我起身很早，在湖中洗澡；这是个宗教意味的运动，我所做的最好的一件事。据说在成汤王的浴盆上就刻着这样的字：‘苟日新，日日新，又日新。’我懂得这个道理。”
1. Yes! I finally gave my first talk in the lab meeting today, bringing my first project to the table! I didn't know I was gonna talk about it until 2 hours before the meeting. Somehow, I just felt that it should be in the next week, or in the last week. Consequently, I got less than one hour to make my PPT...
But yes! I made it! And it went on great! Several lab members showed good amounts of interests in the project, coming up with lots and lots and lots of cool ideas -- more than I can handle at this moment! And my advisor is super supportive and helpful, as always!
2. My Ayala's herbal water has arrived today. The most delicate, poetic, flowery, and pricy water I've ever tried (I know there's Bling H2O... but do you really want to spend $60 on a bottle of water?) I got 6 different blends and enjoyed a 40-minute water-tasting with Scarborough Fair as my selected background music -- there is the lyric of "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" in it.
The crispy refreshing clearness with deep smooth sweetness in the aromatic water (and in the music) caresses my palate like a soft, warm breeze. Truly a delightful and natural experience!
3. And I had two good lectures (both with free food) today! By the way, I can never imagine this at ZJU. That's why it is so intellectually stimulating to do research here!
One lecture at Brain Science Program is delivered by William Fifer at Columbia University (Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics), titled "Fetal Roots of Child Neurodevelopment". It was about the knowledge we have about infants beyond they can sleeping, sucking, and defecating (mostly done by EEG research). And what we know about fetus... not psychologically, of course, but physically measurable "behaviors" like heart rate and beyond.
Though the lecture is not easy to follow, the lecturer did show some great taste of humor. I like the following three points in his lecture:
i) "In the next study, we went to South Africa. We had a great time there, watching cheetahs watching us". This saying suddenly remind me of the days when I was in S.Africa. I didn't go on any Big Five safari, though.
ii) When he was showing how animal could (or couldn't) learn from past experience, he played and re-played the very funny, and sort of well-known, video clip in which one penguin waddled by the other one standing pretty still, but all of a sudden, the second guy slapped the first guy with his wing and the poor guy fell onto the ground! It was just so appropriately entertaining at that point!
iii) At the end of his lecture, after presenting a good variety of different studies in recent years and intensive progress at his lab, he showed a piece of jig-saw puzzle on the slide, and circled a smaaaaaaall corner of the piece, modestly saying that he was just working on a tiny piece of the field, but hopefully that one day, research can shed light on the whole piece. Another pretty well-used picture with a pleasing tone.
Another lecture at CLPS is delivered by Todd Gureckis at NYU, titled "Follow Your Own Path: Exploring the Impact of Self-Directed Information Sampling on Learning". It was even more difficult to follow. Instead of examining "passive" learning by limiting participants’ control over the information they experience at each point in time (and do Bayesian analysis or connectionist or whatever), the current study explores how people gather information in "self-directed" learning environments. In other words, the primary aim of this research is to characterize the information sampling strategy that participants use to reduce their uncertainty, and to examine how self-directed learning influences acquisition. Guided by this idea, researchers have found that learning is faster when they can select and sequence learning episodes themselves, depending on the abstract structure of to-be-learned concepts and the space of hypotheses that the learner considers.
So, that's it about today! Well, I don't really want to mention that there are too many emails coming in which sort of troubles me, and that I'm having more and more problem falling into sleep in recent days and feel a little bit tired (probably because I am too excited by current research?) As you see, I like to KEEP POSITIVE THINKING in life, because life is truly a gift!
Link of the Day:
Since I just mentioned about Ayala's Herbal Water, please click on this link to get a better idea of what it is and what different herbs are used for.
Quotation of the Day:
As you may know, I'm reading David Thoreau's Walden to (hopefully) give myself a better understanding of the rhythm and thyme of the language called English. I encountered a very well-known paragraph today, which is probably among the earliest ones I happened to read long ago. I want to quote it for today's quotation, especially because it can also serve as an excellent footprint of my "One New Thing A Day"!
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching Thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that."
这里也附上我早先读到的中文翻译版，正是这一段文字让我对《瓦尔登湖》产生了兴趣：
“每一个早晨都是一个愉快的邀请，使得我的生活跟大自然同样地简单，也许我可以说，同样地纯洁无瑕。我向曙光顶礼，忠诚如同希腊人。我起身很早，在湖中洗澡；这是个宗教意味的运动，我所做的最好的一件事。据说在成汤王的浴盆上就刻着这样的字：‘苟日新，日日新，又日新。’我懂得这个道理。”
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The first day of Nov. To experience Brown's excellent student service. To start "quotation of the day" section. And spent sometime on CAPE
Highlight of the Day:
On making decision between Harvard and Brown, I did some research into both, and I learned that Brown takes great care about her students (mostly towards undergraduates? That's not true!). I experienced it a little bit when I was having a sponsor meeting with Dean of International Policy Department with Strait Talk friends in last month, and I experienced more today! Private tutoring on searching funding by appointment!
I did a lot of work with my un-replied emails today. Here is my discussion on what CAPE will be:
I did a lot of work with my un-replied emails today. Here is my discussion on what CAPE will be:
据我的观察，CAPE目前是⋯⋯
- 一个圈子。
Pro：这个圈子所囊括的1）人脉和资源尚在其次，更重要的是2）集体的智慧，3）共同的理念和相互点燃的创造力。
Con：“圈子“意味着相对的封闭性，对于CAPE而言，确实存在这样的”问题“， 就是现阶段的向青年大众推广的行动非常有限—— 也可能是时机不成熟的考虑。
- 一个博客集合。
Pro：可以很好地和大家分享个人故事。博客的网站外观，对于访问者比较熟悉亲切。 Con：目前的信息混杂，效率比较低，用户体验不好。今后倘若有了专业技术支持，希望我们能有一个门户网页，漂亮、 大气、高效、一目了然。
据我的观察，CAPE将会是⋯⋯
- 一个社区。
基于目前的浓厚讨论氛围的发展态势，在我的认识里，CAPE最终将会发展成为一个网络社区， 有更多更多的人加入各种话题的讨论。
- 一种媒体力量。
我一直在想，我们从来没有提出我们要/我们在做媒体的想法。但现在的CAPE其实实在做媒体的工作，采访、整合、 传播信息和理念。 但我们目前和媒体最大的区别是，媒体要有话语权，但我们没有足够的、稳定的观众群—— 比如你看每篇博文下面的留言，基本都为0。 我们还处在自己和自己说话的阶段。 如果时机成熟，今后也可以在reach out上面着力？
- 一个信息资源库。
基于目前在进行的项目整理等等project，加上我们成员的各种项目背景和经验，这将是水到渠成的。
- 一个品牌。
指的是从我们现在的小小的CAPE，发展成为可以囊括各种教育与青年发展类服务的“四通八达”甚至“ 一手遮天”的品牌。那天会很远，但如果有打算，也有志气， 就会到来。
Quotation of the Day:
Children cannot be made good by making them happy, but they can be made happy by making them good.
E.J. Kiefer, as quoted in Reader's Digest, July 1959
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