Thank you toastmasters, friends and guests. Ben Franklin's admonition that our critics are our friends, for they do show us our faults. Am I a lion or a sheep? If I am a lion as I thought, why do I feel the anger when unexpected bad things happen to me? == In ACM-ICPC World Finals sponsored by IBM competitions, Chinese students continuously ranked in high places. Another fact that shows China has a great supply of talents is that one by one, world renowned companies are opening up research centers in China. Given a huge pool of talents, why China lags behind US in economic development? The key is the rewarding system chosen by the society. US obtained economic success b/c US chose the correct rewarding mechanism to stimulate people's potential talent, while China lagged behind b/c in China rewards come with political power and relationship, these factors suppresses the expression of talents. 04/15/2006 == No doubt Chinese are bright people, many evidences have shown that including a recent research conducted by British professor. However, what I wanted to address here is that Chinese people are not only talent but also humble and nice. Being nice and making peace, in stead of making confrontation and being aggressive, are valued in Chinese culture. No doubt there are differences between the values of Western culture and Eastern culture, but what I see in Western society is that many people don't want to open up their mind, that's the fundamental reason for misunderstandings and even conflicts. Those who are afraid of China's rise should be those people who have inflicted great pain to Chinese people. They will get what they deserve finally. Chinese are like Jewish people who have suffered a lot of setbacks during thousands of years of history, their brightness were developed during this long process. They win not because they become rich, but because they survive and prosper. 1:19 PM 3/29/2006 == What are necessary in successful dealmaking - a Jewish people's insight 1. The right person, in a more accurate way, the right person to start a company with. A person who is capable of doing everything would possibly be interested in taking over the leadership. As a result, Mark Levin used Holzman as CBO, who has strong reasoning, interpersonal, and dealmaking skills, but he doesn't have strong technical background to start a company by himself. 2. Define the playing field by yourself, make the proposal and draft contract by yourself. 3. Understand your counter party's needs. Think in their shoes. One of Holzman's major capabilities is to always undertsand what the other party needs. 4. When you don't have credibility, add a celebrity to your team. Doing that adds a lot of bargaining power. For example, Eric Lander helped Millenium a lot in its early deal negotiations. == On 1-26-2006, a china-bashing video was shown during a class "Managing Across Culture" where about 40 students were sitting, among them about 5 were from China. Rather than showing cultural difference which was indicated by title, the video shows the educational difference between chinese and american kindergarten teachers. The culture of china is not really what's shown in Levin's movie, but how Chinese people respond to it, silent toleration and being numb to the offense. Chinese history is filled up with repression, people have been trained to stay silent as they are treated unsatisfactorily, offensively, unfairly. A typical Chinese thinking in the situation of showing the video is, I feel insulted, should I claim this to the professor? If I claimed this fact, what would be the consequences? Will he possibly take my action as an offense and get a negative oppinion of mine? Probably yes, what's more, my classmates are not doing anything. == 一天活动 查/写邮件：1.5 hours bostonprofitor@yahoo.com jbaty2001@yahoo.com everest.stone@gmail.com jiangbo@brandeis.edu == 关于男人为了社会稳定强制自己接受一夫一妻制度的佐证 财经时报2006年1月22日“世界语境下的蒙古往事”中援引拿破仑的话：“我不如成吉思汗，他的四个虎子都争为其父效命，我无这样的好运。”可这仅仅是命运的安排吗？Genographics项目研究发现数百万的中亚人的DNA都能够追述到同一个古代军阀，也就是说这个男性军阀使这些中亚人的共同祖先。不难理解和推测出来在弱肉强食，没有社会规范制约的草原上，像成吉思汗这样的强者会有无数的妻子，并子孙满堂。而在拿破仑时代的法国，拿破仑虽贵为皇帝，可他却要为社会言传身教一夫一妻制度，哪有那么强的繁衍优秀后代的能力？ 1-17-2006 == 07:08 PM 12/28/2005 回国感想 李敖是个很伟大的人, 他有一种独特的魅力, 那就是他让人相信不管生活多么一团糟, 不管社会多么不公, 不管人群多么狡诈善变, 你的理想还是有希望实现. 在这样一个复杂多变的社会里, 在当今中国, 思想, 生活方式, 文化, 价值观都在经历翻天覆地变化的时代, 国力迅速增强, 人民逐渐富裕, 丰衣足食, 扬眉吐气, 在此同时, 环境污染, 腐败, 以权谋私, 外行领导内行, 观念陈旧愚腐, 道德沦丧, 淳朴民风丧失, 问题弊病比比皆是. 在这种环境下, 有很多人忍了, 他们就是那些鲁讯所说"在沉默中死亡"的人; 有很多人从了, 他们接受现状, 并不加思索的支持, 他们不仅接受社会进步带来的恩惠, 也接受并支持以上的那些弊端; 剩下的人"在沉默中爆发", 象美国人一样为自己的利益, 权利, 民主抗争, 可是中国毕竟不是美国, 因此他们无不碰得头破血流. 回过头来, 李敖的思想展现出他的魅力. == 电影In Good Company和风险分析作业 谁使这个世界的领导者？工程师还是推销员? 还是都不是? 知识爆炸带给我们的不是创造力的爆炸,因为我们无法在有限的生命中学完人类积累的所有知识. 知识爆炸给我们带来了前所未有的尴尬,虽然全世界为教育投入巨资,然而学习知识却仍然是每个学生的痛苦记?人类的知识积累速度迅猛,也意味着学习并融会贯通这些知识越来越难. 知识爆炸给我们传统的学习方式带来了挑战,人类正在通过变得肤浅来适应这一变化. 人类的大脑的容量也许是无穷的,然而向这个巨大的容器里装进知识的速度却无法加快. 11-27-2005 == 神经衰弱患者总体来讲,有意思的是,症状却是在某些时候非常兴奋,并且过于容易兴奋以至于难以平息心情. "神经衰弱病人在患病前多有持久的情绪紧张和精神压力" (http://health.sohu.com/50/41/harticle15194150.shtml) == It's said that Asians are harsh to asians, but lenient to white people. Is this true? The following article provide another perspective to this question: it is the development status that defines the impact of a life: (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/01/04/deliver_us_from_faraway_evil/) Deliver us from faraway evil By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | January 4, 2005 'Susan Sontag died," my mother murmured, not raising her head from the two-day-old Financial Times I had bought her in the hangarlike waiting room of Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose, Costa Rica. Just the day before, she heard a fellow tourist refer to the ''late" actor Jerry Orbach. ''He isn't dead, is he?" she asked me, and I had no idea. That evening, I snuck into the VIP enclave (''Servicio Real") of our hotel and snitched a day-old Miami Herald. Frazier Moore's Associated Press obituary confirmed that the gravel-voiced Orbach, now famous as detective Lennie Briscoe from ''Law & Order" reruns, had died at age 69. At 25, Orbach, an up-and-coming song-and-dance man who would later win a Tony award for his role in the musical ''Promises, Promises," starred in the original ''Fantasticks." Who knew? Oh, and 137,000 people died that same week in a tsunami in Southeast Asia. ''A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Just because the famous aphorism is attributed to Joseph Stalin doesn't mean it isn't true. It is a commonplace of the pulpit and the editorial page that we are all joined in one great brotherhood of man and woman, that ''each man's joy is joy to me, each man's grief is my own," to cite a popular hymn. But for many years I have wondered if that is true. I think compassion is like a radar signal that loses force the further it radiates from our hearts. I can easily understand why someone is more affected by the loss of a favorite actor, of a well-regarded talk-show host -- the circulating e-mail tributes to the late David Brudnoy are wonderfully articulate and emotional -- or by the death of an author one has enjoyed, than by the passing of tens of thousands of faraway strangers. In 1994, I remember seeing a picture of dozens of bodies washing over a waterfall during the Rwandan genocide, and reacting with shock and indifference. Those events seemed to be taking place in a galaxy far, far away. Human apathy toward mass deprivation is legendary. Aid organizations know this. For decades, the relief organization Save the Children has urged first-world donors to underwrite the well-being of a specific child somewhere in the Third World. Why? Because no one cares about saving children in the abstract. But people do care about saving Marzina, an 8-year-old from Bangladesh, who is currently seeking a sponsor. The media likewise know that gargantuan disaster stories have to be correctly packaged to capture readers' attention. There is an old, politically incorrect saying in newsrooms: How do you change a front-page story about massive flood devastation into a 50-word news brief buried inside the paper? Just add two words: ''In India." I was in a remote hotel last week and tripped across a news report from Deutsche Welle, Germany's government-supported international network. With tens of thousands of Asians already confirmed dead, DW headlined the disappearance of four Germans in the tsunami. My immediate reaction was: Who cares about four Germans? Answer: The Germans care about the Germans. The Americans care about the Americans. And so on. Europeans and others sometimes dismiss America's ''overreaction" to the Sept. 11 attacks. Statistically speaking, the losses on 9/11 equaled those during a few hours of one of the European continent's epic land battles. But the impact was felt all over the Eastern seaboard, and all over the country. A man who lived a few houses down from me died on one of the airliners. Waiting in line to move my son's belongings into his college dorm in New York City a year later, I met several families from New Jersey for whom the memory of the year-old attacks remained painful and dramatic. They hadn't experienced an event, they had lived through a tragedy. When my family returned home from our vacation on Saturday, we were greeted by a handwritten note from a friend, saying she may have lung cancer. One of my sons burst out crying. Her biopsy was yesterday; as of this writing we don't know the results. For us, that's a tragedy. The rest is news Jan 9, 2005 == Knowledge is chunks of information that are relatively independent to each other but are closely knit networks within itself. Is there a way for computer to learn these knowledge and form a sort of intellect? Nov.11, 2004 == 发信人: spectator (火车司机), 信区: Overseas 标　题: 很明显张栋心灵阴暗 发信站: Unknown Space - 未名空间 (Wed Jun 23 16:37:34 2004) WWW-POST 钱给就给了,人走就走了,杀哪门子人呀? 不过我得提醒各位中国男士, 各种各样的迹象表 明, 中国女性正在飞快的向美国女性靠拢, 象gu这样的女孩会越来越多, 务必擦亮眼睛, 学会忍辱负重. 另外, 我认为The tragedy of gu yan is a lesson to both the female amd male chinese young people. For males, 1. Decisively resist the lure of good-looking female, recognize that fact most good-looking females are not yours. 2. Anger management. Although chinese men know what is pride, few know what is humbleness, and what is forgiveness. It needs more sense of others, less sense of self-righteousness. For females, 1. If you think your face is good-looking, then please try to forget it, otherwise, you may use it as a capital to get things from men. If you decide to do it, don't make a chinese student as your target, Go to get big fish! -- 人生的意义在于折腾 ※ 来源:．Unknown Space - 未名空间 mitbbs.com．[FROM: 68.162.] == Why being honest is not always good? it depends on your personality, if you are a mild and obediant person, your behavior is always under the rule, being honest can do no harm to you while gain you reputation. If you are a revolutionary type person, then be careful when you face the choice of telling a truth or a lie. If you are honest about what you did, sometimes it will bring you disaster. The fact is this society is formed by humans, so the rules are created by the powerful, so there is no absolute truth , there is just absolute interest. Jun 16 2004 03:36pm == 自我评价绝密版 不太热衷于把垃圾扔到垃圾箱里. == 读了两遍崔永元批评冯小刚的文章, 以及follow ups, 得出两个结论, 一个希望: 1. 当今中国人的心理承受力弱, 对言论的承受力差, 骂不得. 2. 媒体的水平偏低, 提问大多是废话或者幼稚. 媒体队伍水平亟待提高. 不过我觉得这又触及到基础教育的问题上. 我想这个问题往深层次上考虑, 媒体记者也受过高等教育, 按说品位不应该太低, 但是媒体是为了迎合读者服务的, 因此读者的水平限制了媒体的水平, 从这个角度上说, 中国人的修养, 品位, 幽默感亟待提高. hope: 中国今后多些崔永元.