Reminder of my favourite book

Well, I am escaping again!! This is yet another long sleepless night.

Google search reminded me yesterday that it was the birthday of the author of my favourite book -> The Little Prince. Since when did I start liking the book? Hmmm, long long long time ago.... the lines and pictures are so simple and yet so inspiring.... I am definitely going to read it again after I submit part of my thesis draft to the supervisor tomorrow!!! thinking of that gives me lots of motivation to continue my work!!

A phrase from the book that I really like is this: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." Although it is very "unengineer" and "unscientist", I believe that it is the heart that defines human being and differentiate us from the animals. (Well, I am definitely not a Darwinian advocate).

But I think I have been having more problem listening to my heart as I grow older. Many a time I've forgotten to ask what is in my heart before I draw a rational formulations to the considerations that I encounter in my life. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's birthday definitely reminded me to go back to my real self, to be simple, to listen more to the heart and to live life as I want it to be.....

Values

ok, u are right, I am trying to escape from my research again..... it's 12:44 midnight and I am waiting for my MATLAB simulations..... it has been quite a productive day, I managed to write 2 pages of programming codes that do work as I want them to be. Thank God!! :) This article has been hidden in my post for many days so I decided to finish it up today.....

I found that human being have difficulties to rationally value many things. For example, how do we justify economic progress vs environmental impact vs social impact vs generation equity vs nationalism and many other things. Another example would be the values of arts. A few weeks ago, I went to Fitzwilliam Museum after sitting for examination to immerse myself into the beauty of arts and history after days of endless calculations and formulation of equations. I saw Picasso's pieces there and it immediately reminded me that one of his drawings was just sold for 100 million++ USD recently. As an engineer, I naturally put them into a very simple calculation. The value for a human being's life is equivalent to about 1 million pound for UK Court. So Picasso's drawing is actually worth 100++ human lives!!!! The last example is the value of Gates Scholarship, the scholarship that I am holding. I remember people told me that when Bill Gates was here last summer, he told the Gates scholars that the money that spend on each of us each year can actually help to vaccinate thousands of lives in Africa and save them from deadly diseases!!!!

While sometimes soft sciences can help answer some of the questions above (such as carbon pricing for environmental impact etc), we as human being depend largely on our gut feelings and experiences in making big decisions, both individually and collectively. That explains why we tend to make the wrong decision(ssssss). Can we change this fact of today into history tomorrow? I doubt so and I hope not. The world will be very dull if every thing can be formulated into a mathematical model and full of engineers and scientists....... I really can't imagine that, can you?

Life Maximization

Optimization is the name of one of the ten modules that I am taking here in Cambridge to get my master degree. Keeping the examination part aside, it was a very interesting subject to read. In short, it is a subject that deals with maximizing or minimizing certain objective function subject to certain constraints. An example for its application in engineering is a manufacturing plant trying to maximize its production subject to the limit in labours, raw materials, machineries etc. The theories are also widely adopted in minimizing the distribution cost of giant retailer like WalMart. All in all, it is a subject that tries to help people to make rational decision(s) with all the information available and of course, some assumptions.

For amusement purposes, I am now trying to put the theory of optimization into pondering about how I should maximize my life time. For me, life maximization consideration is like trying to formulate the objective function that I am trying to optimize with the constraints my life time, energy, ability etc. Mathematically, it can be formulated as below:

Assume that this is a linear programming problem,
Objective function, f(x) = ∑ a(i)x(i)

where ,

coefficients a(i) = {a(1), a(2), a(3)....... a(n)}

variables x(i) = {x(1),x(2), x(3).......x(n)}

f(x) is the overall objective that we would like to maximize and it is supposed to be able to measure the value of my life time. The difficult part is what are the variables that should be included in the objective function and how to determine their respective coefficients? Each x is a concern of life, for example, money, fame, family, environment, society, passion etc, whereas the values of the coefficients are associated with the weight of their respective variables.

What variables and coefficients would you place in your objective function of life? Of course, unlike many engineering solutions, there is no right and wrong answer in this mathematics question......... Also unlike many engineering solutions, there is no turning back, everyone only has one life to maximize.......

Keeping on in Cambridge

so it has been a while since I last updated my blog..... I have always been wanting to write an article in chinese by the title of 我的剑桥梦 (My Cambridge Dream) as this is my childhood dream comes true.... the experience I went through to come here, the hope, anxiety and excitement..... sadly, I've not had the luxury of time..... anyway, I'll try to do that after my sustainable energy paper.... hehe... hopefully i'll not be as busy by then.....

anyway, it's 2 am in the morning now and I am still struggling with my coursework on analysing Virgin Group's strategies and the its business sustainability..... have not been sleeping much.... it's going to be a long march....... how long more to go? not sure..... but what else can be better than this? to learn, learn and learn..... to be drown in the sea of knowledge of no boundaries...

my favourite stanza of the poem 再别康桥 suddenly comes to my mind.....

寻梦撑一支一支长篙
向青草更青处漫溯
满载一船一船星辉

在星辉斑斓里放歌

It's here I fulfil my dream of the pass, and dream dreams of the future. so yeo bee yin, keep on keep on, keep on...... Lord, give me strength.....

论科学精神

看了　Stephen Hawking 的 A Brief History of Time　（自译：宇宙的源头） 和 Richard Dawkin 的 The God Delusion　（自译：神的幻觉）后有了很深的感想。小妹没有什么能耐去完全的明白或质疑这两个剑桥博士对他们的领域（前者物理，后者生物）的诠释。可是却从他们的文字得到了一些启发。

应该是从文艺复兴开始的吧？科学这领域的“社会地位“变成了不容漠视。好像什么都需要‘科学证明’。几百年间，人类已经完全的依赖科学来解释一切。虽然‘还’没获得诺贝尔奖，现代科学家里， Stephen Hawking 和 Richard Dawkin 在民间里算是很有知名度的。我想应该是因为他们写的书吧！他们有能力用简单的文字把那些复杂的理论清楚的表达出来。

在Richard Dawkin的文字间，你不难看到他好像认为自己知道和明白一切。也不难看到他那过分主观的言论。是因为畅销作者或剑桥博士的冠冕蒙蔽了他吧？ 庆幸的是，Stephen Hawking 还好。 这让我想起了牛顿一句著名的话：I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me．．．（自译：我就像在海边玩的小男孩幸运的找到了几个特别的贝壳（牛顿定律），可是摆在我面前的还有那浩瀚的真理大海。）

当科学成为人类生活的主流，小妹所希望的是，科学家们能够秉持着应有的科学精神：没有什么是绝对的，因为我们所知道的不多。希望 Stephen Hawking 能够继续的秉持这精神发现更多对人类有贡献的物理定律。希望Richard Dawkin 有朝一日能够明白这简单的道理。希望芊芊学子能够不自满，不自我吹捧，因为学海真的无涯。　

No one will ever know it all

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are

This is one of the galaxies in the universe - Whirlpool Galaxy

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" Psalm 8:3-4

Freedom to Pursue Happiness

I saw this quote in one of the walls in Royal Museum of Scotland and thought that it was good. It is written:-

"For we fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honour, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life."

No, no, no, I am not advocating wars. To me, freedom is not restricted to the kind of freedom deemed by the Scottish heroes like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. While I saw this, what sprang to my mind was the freedom to pursue happiness, first conceived by Thomas Jefferson.

My Life in Turkmenistan (2006-2008)

I spent most of my time in Turkmenistan from year 2006 to 2008. Now that I have left the country for good, I realized that I've not written a single bit about my life in this country. So I decided to start a series here in my blog before my memory about this country faded away.

What? Where? Why? When? How?