Extraterrestrial life
9/20/20 fall is a good time for hiking, picnic and watch the stars! the weather is great here lately, but the sky isn’t clear, maybe due to the west coast fire?! I am looking forward to seeing some nebula one day, hoho!
Lately, we have some exciting news about extraterrestrial life! Scientists found ph4 (phosphine) in the atmosphere of Venus. Based on what we have known today, ph4 is organic, which means it only can be produced from some form of life (or under very extreme conditions). So the finding means that either Venus contains some form of life or we need to update our knowledge on how ph4 is produced!
Venus is named after the god of love. It is one of the closest planets to the earth (the other one is Mars). Venus’s atmosphere mostly contains CO2, and on the top, there is some kind acid containing the element of S. The CO2 air close to surface is dense and heavy, and as a result, the planet is extremely hot. But there exists a layer of atmosphere on Venus whose temperature and pressure close to the earth air. Some science fiction writers have proposed a human habitat in a balloon floating in that area. There are always people who are not intimidated by the not-life-friendly conditions on Venus. They think that the Earth’s atmosphere in its early stage is also not human friendly. It is the large amount of algae (early life) that produced oxygen and changed the atmosphere!
Venus in fact is one of the earliest planets we sent probes to. But soon after we obtained the first set of pictures, the probes were destroyed by the heat, so we did not get further information about the planet. Venus has a very strange axis of rotation. One day on Venus is close to 250 earth days.
Our current approach of looking for extraterrestrial life is to first look for stars like sun, and then look for their planets. When the planet crosses its star, our telescope can capture the usable light spectrum. We then can analyze the light spectrum and look for the organic chemical elements and compound. It will be very exciting to see what our next telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, can find for us!
When planets have a moon(s), they are more likely to have life. Moon is very important to stabilize and slow down the rotation of a planet. It creates the tide in the ocean, which can make the planet warmer and also change the life in the ocean and near the shore. So lucky, the earth has a moon!! If I remember correctly, the moon is there before the life of the earth. There are different sayings on why the moon is there. Some said that the moon is an asteroid captured by the earth. Some said that a very large impact once hit the earth, and the moon is a part of the earth! Wow, both sound significant and romantic.
(I wrote the above informally based on what I remembered. I did not double check with the literature, so there can be some mistakes. )
Ender’s Game
9/12/20 Knock knock 😉
When the days get shorter, it is so nice to tuck in and read under warm lights. I don’t care about the format of books —- papers, e-readers, English, Chinese … whatever is cheaper 🙂 I don’t like to borrow books as during my reading, I scribble, I draw, and I mark 🙂 Which-book-to-read is a very personal thing. New York Best Sellers usually do not work for me. I have read Murakami Haruki because his Paris Review interviews resonated with me. I started reading Shakespeare lately because hey, you just cannot escape from stupidities this year and I need a break. I read more science fictions lately than before. I had a science fiction idea back in my mind for a while now. It has not developed much until recently, I got inspired by a random conversation and had one piece filled. I am very excited about it.
I was cooking and my son was drawing on the floor.
I made a bookmark from his drawing.
Ender’s Game is a beginner science fiction. It is easy to read. Many people read it in one sitting.
- this book talks about the extraterrestrial life: We are making constant efforts looking for extraterrestrial life. The approach is to analyze the light spectrum captured and look for the element of C. This book has a very interesting vision on what some extraterrestrial life may look like. It’s called buggers. They action in swarms. They do not have languages but can synchronize their brains instantly. They can know what people are thinking and have interesting ways to communicate with people.
- this book shows one category of the best people: they are precise, they work super hard, they finish it.
- this book is touching at the end. Human beings are no longer bounded to the earth but settling in space. It reads realistic and achievable.
- I can connect this with DARPA projects 🙂
- I am curious how many people can visualize all these fight scenes and positions. I was totally failing. Converting text to video certainly requires high intelligence. As a result, I feel the book has a very strange rhythm, very slow for the first 12 chapters and then suddenly there are many things happening in the last 2 or 3 chapters.
- Chinese parents need to read it. My mom does not let me use microwave even when I was 20. But hey, kids are very intelligent!
Hospital Zine (1)
9/5/20 happy September everybody! This year, our beloved decision makers prepared so many surprises/horrors for us. For example, recently, our dearest IT decision makers decide no longer support cs faculty and lab web pages, WOOOOOOO. Our B-612 sometimes should run a “studiest decisions in 2020” trivia 😉
Cover
To my awesome doctors and surgeons and to the nurses, family, friends, colleagues who brought me care and love —-
Page 1
The doctor said, “if you don’t do any cure, your face will turn red and round maybe with pimples, your belly will accumulate fat, your shoulder will become wide, your arms and legs will become very thin and grow purple strips … “
What a strange disease I have had! I felt I did a cosmetic surgery 😉
Page 2
This is my first meal after I waked up from my general anestesia. I was very excited to see “smoothie” in my menu. “Surprise! hospital has smoothies!” An hour later, my smoothie arrived (see the white cup in the picture below). “oh, come on, hospital, why don’t you call it tiny-smoothie or mini-smoothie?!?!” Apparently, I was thinking about New York’s my-head-size smoothie sold at 10 bucks.
My doctor had warned me, “some patients manifested depression after surgery, like the caffeine withdrawal effect ..” But here I was after surgery — I was stabbing my spinach and talking the same time, “you know, you are awesome, you are tough, you are cool, you just can do it, ah, you are F rock …” Then a shadow moved through my window, and somebody just passed by in the hallway. Meh, hope she/he did not think there is a psycho living in this room (sweat!)
(to be continued)
Everyday makes a favorite dish
7/26/20 since March, I have not eaten out or taken out. Nowadays, my cooking album accumulated 400+ pictures. I am making a book called “everyday makes a favorite dish” and hope to make it publicly available together with my code so people can play with it interactively powered by neural networks. But I sleep too much, so don’t know when it can be done 🙂
Although I have been in US for many years, I mostly eat Asian food. In retrospect, my mom’s cooking is boring :). I cook much more variety. My husband pretended to like Chinese food for the first year or two when we were together. Then he is quite happy with just burgers and sandwiches. So I mostly cook for myself and my son. Often, I do childish things like this:
I make myself happy by cooking my hometown food. Yesterday I was cooking this kind of Chinese pancake (梅干菜饼). Sooooooo Yummy. I ate it whole day yesterday plus this morning’s breakfast!
2 cups of flour + 1.5 cup of hot water
mix and then knead for 10 minutes
make a ball and spread it like a pancake
adding ingredients, e.g., sesame oil, scallion, picked vegetable, pepper, salt
roll it and then spread it one more time
cook on the oiled surface
When cooking this, I also did some experiments. I made some pancakes thicker and smaller, some bigger and thinner, some with more toppings and some less, some cooking a little longer and some not. My conclusion is that we should make it the thinner the better. When I reheat it on the second day in the oven with 350F bake for 10-15 minutes, that’s the most authentic street food in my hometown!
I also like to make different kinds of drinks (oh, don’t be too high, guys, they are not cocktails :)):
green bean 
minty milk 
watermelon 
flavored tea 
soymilk 
bubble tea
iced lemon water 
carrot and pear juice 
hot chocolate 
black rice 
smoothie 
sesame milk
I love to make dessert. Cookie and brownies are too heavy. I like to make something light and pretty.
tapioca mango 
ice cream cone
It is also cool to have some restaurant festivity like this:
sticks 
beef jerky
tempura 
fried beancurd rolls (炸响铃）
hotpot 
korean BBQ
dry pot 
spring rolls
Cruising Mediterranean
7/18/20 Some of my friends bought drones lately. One of the usages is to explore hiking trails, I think that is brilliant!! I miss hiking so much, not the Iowa kind, but the “pee in the woods long days” kind 😀
Cruising!! Tip no. 1: find a group of awesome friends or family members, and tip no. 2, select a good line. There are many interesting cruise lines and themed cruises. For example, some world-travel cruise will take you travel around world and visit exotic islands!! There are also Broadway show cruises, board game cruises, Disney cruises that I am looking forward to go. Besides good food in buffets and fine dining, Every cruise has many activities like pools, rock climbing, zip line, casino, bars, libraries, shows, hair salons, kids club, bowling, dance floors, gym, movies, running trails, VR games, Jacuzzi, tennis, soccer, table tennis … The free activities can have long lines, so don’t get too excited when you see free water parks or zip lines on the cruise. I love the hair salons on the cruise. They are not too expensive but the stylists are good for the time I tried.
Mediterranean cruises run throughout the year. Winter is their off-season. Even for Christmas/new year cruises, I think you can get a spot if you book one month before (sometimes, there are awesome last-minute deals too). Mediterranean during the Christmas time is 10 C-20C in most of the places. So snorkeling/diving and even swimming in the outside pools and oceans are not practical. There are eastern and western Mediterranean cruising lines. The east Mediterranean cruises go far to Turkey, Israel and Greece. Southern Italian islands are popular destinations. The western lines go to Spain, sometimes as far as Portuguese, England. You will need to fly to those big port cities like Barcelona, Marseille, Genoa and Rome/Civitavecchia to get embark. I was very excited to go through the Strait of Gibraltar, so we selected a western line. MSC is an economic line with about 120$ a person a day. The food is good but no fancy activities.
A beautiful historical port
The cruising companies will send you emails long before you embark. The packages offered in the emails sometimes are good. For example, I found the Internet is cheaper if you order it before you go. I have selected some off-shore activities that way too. It is cheaper and avoids the lines on the boat. Nowadays, many registrations can be done online, that saves your troubles at check-in time. For the cruises I have been too, you don’t need to use cash on the boat. There are automatic machines where you can register your cruise cards with your credit cards. When you disembark, you can just pay your credit cards at the front desk. The emails also provide information for you to select outfits on the cruise. Cruising can be very dressy places, you can have fun to try out your wardrobe there. Note that laundries are awful expensive on the boat though.
How many days of cruising are good? I see the cruises as short as 3 days, but there are 5 days, 7 days, 10 days, 2 weeks and even months. This time we selected about 12 days cruise. I thought I would be bored to death. But I survived 🙂
How high is this bridge, xixi 
Cool tugboat helps cruise turn around
At the end of our cruise, there embarked many new guests for a close-120 days world trip. I was about to go with them 🙂 Who knows that those poor people got stucked on this boat for most of the days because of the pandemic …
Beetlejuiceeeee
7/12/20 there is some front line atmosphere going on about the new semester: face masks, face shields, backup instructors for each course; younger teachers are talking about replacing older teachers for in-person classes … Cheers for all such ridiculous life!
Beetlejuice is a super fun Broadway show. I was laughing so hard from the beginning to the end. The story is lead by a demon called “Beetlejuice”. He is invisible to all the living persons and tries to make them to say his name three times. Many random ridiculous crazy shits happened when he interacted with the living and the dead.
I remembered two plots still. There is this little girl called Lydia. She missed her mother so much after she died. Lydia hated and blamed his father as he never said a word about her mother since her death, and it seemed that he already forgot her. Everyday he looked so happy and is very indulgent in his new life with his new girl friend. Finally, at the edge of their deaths, Lydia and his father opened up. It turns out that it is so much pain for him to think about her death so he used the indulgence to escape.
Another interesting scene is about this middle class couple Adam and Barbara Maitland. They were the new dead and Beetlejuice was teaching them how to scare away the people who wanted to take over their favorite house.
“ah —-”
“WAhh —-”
“ROARRRR—-“
The poor couple tried different ways but they … JUST … CAN’T … BE … SCARY … They either just talked louder or acted like a lion in a puppet show. Very sarcastic in my opinion. Are human beings over civilized in some ways?
I often met this category of people and in fact, I think these types of people are highly regarded in the western culture: they are polite, they are careful, they follow every correct rule other people define, they do all the appropriate things, they are political and make people feel good constantly … But, OMG, I just want to slam their faces. Shouldn’t be the heart and the brain that matter but not the optimized social behaviors?!?!?!
discussions on the matters of 2020
July 4th is a good time to think about what happened in US this year:
Pandemic: this pandemic is caused by human’s stupidities and self-interest; as a result, many people died, suffered, and at the modest have to stay “in prison”.
Race and equality:
- When I firstly arrived in US, I was very shocked by how important “race” is in US. It’s almost like a person who has a psychology problem.
- I met many people from different races in the past years. I met intelligent, responsible, nice, black people, and I also met stupid, arrogant white people. It is certainly wrong to label e.g., stupid/lazy to a race and mistreat a person because of his/her race.
- However, I am not sure how to judge “racism”. I had occasions where I was mistreated by strangers and acquaintances. Some of these people are well-educated and even always talk about equality. Is this a racism or I did something that offended them? I am not sure. In science, causality is not easily to be proved. So we need to discuss cases by cases, not simplify/generalize things.
- I have been avoiding the research topics of “fairness”, as I think “fairness” is subjective, dependent on who interprets it. Is it fair we should give today’s black people opportunities and resources that other equally-qualified people cannot have because of the slavery history or it is fair to provide everybody equal opportunities and resources in dependent of their races? I think both has their perspectives.
- While all the people this year talk about equality, I think another trait is also very important for a society, that is “excellence”. I don’t think I would be interested in living in a society where we just evenly distribute wealth and opportunities to everybody in dependent of their contributions to the society.
Free speech: Suppress is a very scary thing, meaning “if you don’t agree with me, you go hell” (considering Christianity and political correctness). In China, there is government’s censorship. In US, you still cannot talk anything freely in public. You need to talk aligned with your bosses/clients even off work. I think a more healthy environment should be “at work, you follow bosses/clients requirement” and “off work, you should have any private life unless there is evidence that your attitude negatively impacted your work and clients”. Writing/speech has to be free in dependent of title, time, format, content … but aiming to deliver the best of the work. For this reason, I refused to work for Chinese medium although that can bring in both money and fame. Even when I am writing my blog, I pursue bravery and freedom. That requires the trust from my readers that in dependent of my skills on words, at least I have a good intention towards people (when I am not insane :D)
in his mind
6/28/20 recently, news keep telling me that my classmate X arrived in the Yth rank in terms of wealth. If I have the money, I will create some top hospitals. I have waited months to get my insurance done for out-of-state doctors, waited a few more months to finally see my doctors, and then I will still need to wait some months for surgery. Yet, I am still the lucky one who CAN access to good doctors.
“The very beginning mind itself is the most accomplished mind of true enlightenment” Due to the pandemic, I am able to 24/7 see my son. I write down a few his stories here. Wish the sweetness and warmth can reach all of you.
– What is this, Amos?
– It is a heart, a heart for everybody!
– What’s inside a heart?
– People. (Amos then added some people inside)
-I want to take a picture with my friends!
Mama, wake up!
Surprise! this is a surprise bag! (He reaches inside the bag)
You got these toys for surprise!
here is some lollipop for you!
this is yours, Chicken Soup ! 
I made you a beautiful bracelet!
Mama, did you see rainbows? 
this is the round rainbow
– I made you a gift and inside the giftbox, you can find these toys, and you can play them by putting them together like this!
– aha
Festivities designed by Amos
– I made an obstacle course
– okay, let’s play. What are you doing with my socks?
– it’s a glove
– (%$&S**??S)
The truck is plumbing 
This is a bunker bed, I sleep on the top, my toys sleep in the bottom, towed by my truck (his RV, I guess)
Everyday, there are different things that are arranged to sleep with me.
This firetruck is saving a cat 
many different versions of firetrucks
Yesterday, we were launching a rocket and at the third launch. The rocket went up and never showed up again. Today he made this below and said “this is our lost rocket, the parachute is folded inside and there is an astronaut in it”
The above is our today’s main character “Amos”. Besides his name, I also call him “cutie” “little people” or his Chinese names. When I hold his hand across the street, he said “Mama, I like to hold your hand so much” When I say ” I am going to hospital” He said “Mama, I take care of you. Oh, I start taking care of you right now, I help you carry this headphone” Then he took my headphone to his room and enjoyed himself.
He likes to draw crazy people and make crazy vehicles
He doesn’t think that’s a dipper, but it’s a truck that has a long tail towing something
And he negotiates. One day, he followed me to the exercise room, and laid down flat and grued into my yoga mat.
– get up please, I need to use it. (in an instructive tone)
– (no response)
– oh, Amos, you are such a good boy. (in a soft tone)
– (no response)
– Alright, an ice bar. (in a business tone)
– Okay! (bounced up like a spring)
fun stores in New York
6/20/20 Hope everybody stays strong and in sane! I just finished a creek walk, which is awesome! Which is not awesome is that when I was drying my feet, five big guys were walking towards me fearlessly with no masks and no desire of social distancing. I ran away like a mouse on my bare feet on a stony road and a car was chasing behind me!!! To cure my insanity, I wrote down this blog …
Dear readers, I miss New York! I miss China! I miss yummy restaurants! I miss crowds! I miss loudness! I miss dancing! I miss bars! … I miss everything! Today’s blog is about “I miss everything therapy”!!
Let’s begin with the dessert!
This place is called the LROOM cafe. If you are rich, there are many more beautiful choices 🙂
The uncool part is that I did not find any handsome/hot men in the store! Disappointing 🙂
The next place is a Japanese noodle shop. Many famous stars have been eating here. For example, the first picture below is a Chinese star called Zhao Wei.
Inside, it looks like a jail?! Each people get assigned to a cell to eat (or to visit the people in the jail). I had forgotten the name of the restaurant and I found it by searching “jail roman noodle store in Manhattan”. Here you go https://www.ichiranusa.com/
The food is sent out creepily like this. The door opens but you cannot see the servant’s face. When you are ready to order, you can select the soup type, the meat type, the size … and then push the bell.
In their bathroom, you can select which toilet paper roll(s) to use and it never runs out. Creepy ++
This is how waiter/waitress know where to assign you. Does this feel like the control room of a parking lot, xixi
This is my favorite store in Williamsburg. It is big and empty. It sells clothes collected from all over the world especially the artists from the developing world, and then it has some installation art here and there like this, NOT FOR SALE of course!
The following probably is not a great picture. But this is a famous Williamsburg restaurant called surf bar http://brooklynsurfbar.com/ The food is so so, but hey, you got to take off your shoes and sit in the sand to eat your dinner after a whole day Manhattan walk!
The following is the place I like in Chelsea, called “the very fresh noodles” or something like this. It serves (authentic) Chinese spicy and tasty noodle in a cheap price (compared to other eats in Chelsea) You can sit across the chefs to watch how other people’s noodle is made. They used many bottles of Chinese vinegar as decorations! LONG lines most of the time though!
I also like these pentagon sinks. Guess where I am?!
What about this place, where you can design your own cakes? It is called milk bar https://milkbarstore.com/products/build-a-cake-ny. Yes, you can put together a cake as simple as putting together a frozen yogurt or a frozen ice-cream …
If you like pets, this place you can shop pets like shopping clothes. Taking them out from the boxes, playing/trying with them until you decide which one you want to be with …
NYC crowds are very soothing. I remember that in the first winter break after I arrived in US and lived in a small town for 3+month, I came to NYC in a greyhound and lived on the floor (she has no couch) of my friend’s apartment in Brooklyn for the entire winter break, just to see people …
