Welcome to my personal website.
I just spent one week in Montreal for a meeting. It was my third visit within six years! What made me keep returning? The culture, food, scenery, theatres, museums, parks, high street shops……
I never felt bored at the Mount Royal Park. It is one of my favorite places to go! Walking in deep woods made me feel like breathing the nature. I wish I could be there every day!
I came to Oaxaca for a meeting. In between the meetings, I joined the tours to visit Monte Albán, the Tree of Tule, and the downtown.
Though my lack of knowledge of the Mexican language has caused me much trouble, I got to see the city a little bit.
Oaxaca is a small city located in a mountain valley, the temperature is not that hot probably due to the high altitude. The air flow is not good, which gives rise of air pollution problem.
About one thousand years ago, this place was the political and economic center of the Zapotec civilization. The pyramids in Monte Albán are the evidence of that glory period.
I went to “worship” that tule tree, a 2000-year-old living legend, as everyone else did. This magic tree has witnessed the rise and fall of civilization in this land.
What amazed me most is the colorful, vibrant downtown Oaxaca. I heard the architecture of this city is mainly the legacy of Spanish colonization.
I came upon a local art market, which reminded me Montmartre in Paris.
I recently found that Spice girls, that British girl band, share some link with Beauvoir, the French philospher.
Once upon, I was quite drawn by Spice girls’ Billboard hit song — <Wannabe>.
“Yo, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
So tell me what you want, what you really, really want”
Later, they raised their slogan “Girl power”, which is deemed as the legacy of this already dismissed band.
Indeed, “what do you really want?” and “Girl power” are two propositions from Simone de Beauvoir, one of the earliest feminists, “One is not born, but becomes a woman.”
As a representative of Existentialism, Beauvoir refused to be defined by convention nor by others.
We must be true to ourselves!
I happened to see this topic the other day.
Two people came into my mind– Coco Chanel and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
I don’t intend to judge their morality or discuss their weaknesses. Every human has chapters they don’t want to publish. Nevertheless, no one can deny Mme Chanel and Goethe are two forward thinkers and their ideas are still relevant today.
Mme Chanel is a design genius embodied with business savvy and innovative ideas. Simply said, this woman is a trend-setter. She laid foundation for concepts like haute couture, celebrity culture, luxury brands, etc. Nowadays, the celebrities in limelight, along with those influencers, KOLs on Instagram, Tiktok, and Youtube, are simply imitating Mme Chanel’s styles and behaviors.
The other person I would like to bring to present day is Goethe, the German polymath. He wrote novels and plays, he also worked as a lawyer in the government. When he was fed up with his job, he travelled to Florence and sought romance. This man knew how to balance life and work, he might inspire people in this chaotic era how to lead an enriched life.
Like other high school students in the world, French students need to take a college entrance exam. The first subject is philosophy, which is different from other countries who often place language as the first subject.
“Je pense, donc je suis.” I am very interested in their questions.
This year, their questions are:
For general test:
2. L’État nous doit-il quelque chose?
3. Le commentaire de texte, un extrait de La Condition ouvrière de Simone Weil
For STEM majors:
2. L’artiste est-il maître de son travail ?
3. Le commentaire de texte, un extrait du livre IX des Lois de Platon.
I have to give up question #3, because I never read La Condition ouvrière or Platon, Lois, livre IX. How shallow I am!
It seems both questions are about laws. The questions intend to test students’ judge on law and human rights, I suppose?
There is a flower design in front of my work place. I call it “a heart of tulips”. Last November, I saw a gardener planting the bulbs into the hole. Since March this year, I’ve been blessed to witness their full prime beauty, which has brought me enormous joy and surprise throughout the whole spring.
It is sad to see the bloom gone so quickly, but I recorded their images in different periods using my phone. I made a video to memorize the “fleeting youth and beauty” with BGM “Dying in the sun” from The Cranberries.
The release of AlphaFold3 has triggered a lot of discussions. People acclaim better prediction result using AlphaFold3, not only predicting from peptide sequences to protein structures, but also predicting the protein binding with RNA, DNA, metal ions. This can help new drug development greatly!
However, some people criticize AlphaFold3 team did not disclose the codes.
Actually, it is not a new issue. The pharmaceutical companies protected the formula of their new medicine with patents. These pharmaceutical companies as well as AlphaFold3 team are sponsored by private sector funding, so the publishing of AlphaFold3 is more like commercial behavior, like new release of Apple products, instead of pure scientific research.
This is my point here, the new released AI models are commercial products instead of scientific achievements. We should lower our expectation of these new AI models
Update on May28,2024. I learned a new word “soft”!
Today is April 29,2024, the international dance day!
I love dancing, though I am a quite awkward dancer. I just think it is a fantastic way to express myself without language.
While aging, I lost my muscle and technique. However, I transfer my passion to watching dance dramas. My favorite play is “Giselle”, Svetlana Zakharova’ s “Giselle” is my all time favorite! Beauty, elegance, technique, musicality, Svetlana embodies perfection!
Space and time, these are two philosophic concepts, which are so common that people often ignore their existence.
Physicists study substance in space and time, termed as theory of relativity.
Ecologists study species diversity in apace and time; Geneticists study genetic variation in space and time; Writers and artists create their work in the context of space and time.
Time is more abstract than space. One needs to apply some thinking ability to feel time.
How to stop time? Kissing. How to travel in time? Reading.
This morning, I happened to read this statement from a bunch of the most brilliant minds in our era —“Strong Math Foundations are Important for AI“. https://www.mathmatters.ai/
They strengthen the importance of math in AI. The math fundamentals, linear algebra, calculus, probability, play the key role in machine learning.
These tech gurus applaud the new Math curriculum in California’s public schools. https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/boars/documents/boarsacwphase1report-20240221.pdf?mc_cid=9de3e6e6f2&mc_eid=8f769d3245
They support the idea that teaching high school students “Fourier transform and least squares algorithms”.
So, who said AI can make our life easier? AI just accelerates the adaptive requirements of human beings to a higher level!