Wall Street Smarts - NYTimes

Article from NYT: Wall Street Smarts.

The fantasies and tricks of financial products know no bounds.

Introduction - The novel "The Catcher in the Rye"

The Catcher in the Rye, my friend, is a famous fiction. Its title is translated as "麥田守望者" in Chinese. The specific novel gets mentioned, recommended, or read time after time across the entire English-speaking world.

I perused the novel the other month. For one thing, the protagonist berated those phonies in the American society while possessing a heart of gold, if you will. The tale is elegant, and the language accessible and suave. Highly recommended.

Always wonderful - Moscow State University - Wikipedia

Introduction at Wikipedia: Moscow State University (a.k.a. 国立莫斯科大学)

Quote:

Moscow State University has educated 8 future Nobel laureates, 5 Fields Medal winners, as well as a number of writers, philosophers and politicians. The university is alma mater for the famous writers of the 19th century, such as Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev, mathematicians and physicists of the 20th century, such as Boris Demidovich, Vladimir Arnold and Andrey Kolmogorov.

Speaking of academic prestige, Moscow State University is in fact on a par with McGill U., UToronto, and UPenn and the likes. But all these higher education institutions, are well behind the, ah, formidable yet munificent Havard University, with which around 75 Nobel laureates and a few Fields Medal winners are affiliated.

BlackBerry's PlayBook

After having read some hype over the official announcement of the still phantasmal Blackberry Playbook, I've concluded RIM made a move that's not too smart. Eventually RIM will be toast, under the management of the seemingly prodigal Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, who seems to be always wanting to buy a hockey team. Think about it, what real needs of customers will the BB Playbook be able to satisfy? Not quite much.

On the front of the consumer market, Playbook seems to be lackluster in comparison with iPad and the increasing slew of Android tablets, in my opinion. And on the front of the enterprise market, I suppose, only few people have a workspace larger than a typical desk, and they don't need a tablet beside their work desktop computer; as for those field sales reps, when they hit the road, they mostly only want to carry a more portable smart phone, not a somewhat clunky BB Playbook; and as for those executives with their own little offices and couches, there's a bad omen for RIM, which is 50% of the Fortune 500 executives have been reportedly considering deploying iPads within their companies.

I understand that RIM's been a little desperate lately and scrambling hard. But to launch Blackberry Playbook isn't a very suave move. RIM will continue going south, but it will survive for a long time notwithstanding. And that prediction isn't a fantasy only owned by me. I don't want to bash RIM all the time, seriously.

On the article "亲子教育，从接纳孩子的情绪入手"

Here goes a superb article: 亲子教育，从接纳孩子的情绪入手-心理健康与家庭教育-搜狐博客.

Well, the ideas expressed in the article are subtle and complex. I don't think the author did a suave job expressing the set of and logical relations among the ideas.

My take is, for one thing, as following:

看来，喜、怒、哀、惧，这人类的四种基本情绪中，怒、哀、惧在童年不被父母无条件接纳的话，从此通通会转化成变形的“怒”的情绪能量。但是，如果“怒”的本能在童年被抑制被消灭的话，怒、哀、惧就会转化成“哀”、“惧”中的两种或一种。


Nonetheless, the article is an eminent piece, for my money.

Quebec - The most corrupt province (in Canada) - Macleans

Article from the Macleans magazine: Quebec: The most corrupt province (in Canada)

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Well, Quebec's politics is obviously pedestrian. Posses of politicians slink and siphon off sums and sums of public money. Look at what truthful services some public servants have rendered.

Is it a fantastic project to get Quebec politics clean? Or more cynically, is politics clean from money always just a phantom, in the human world?

Updated - Netflix has finally arrived in Canada!

(Image from http://bit.ly/axERTe)

Here's a piece of new news from NYT: Netflix Faces New Competition in Streaming.

For one thing, most U.S. companies have been fantastically sluggish coming to Canada. Is the Canadian market too small for them? You bet!

In addition, Google TV is noteworthy, for my money.

***
My old post just few days ago:

Netflix has finally arrived in Canada! Here it comes: Netflix Canada - Unlimited TV Shows Online & Movies Online

Well. Netflix, an American giant business and a Johnny-come-lately into Canada, are sweepingly blasting the hitherto remaining phantasms of relatively inefficient video rental stores. Somewhat poignant, eh? I'm wondering if the phantom limbs of the Blockbuster video rental stores will sheerly rent games, in lieu of movies, in the forthcoming years, if not months.

博客來書籍館>IBM老總教你1500字溜英語(上)：跨國主管的英語反而最簡單(附mp3)

Introduction from the web: 博客來書籍館>IBM老總教你1500字溜英語(上)：跨國主管的英語反而最簡單(附mp3)

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Perhaps the Globish language that the French author preaches is sheerly a new watered-down and valueless version of the elegant English tongue, or perhaps it is surrogate English which

Books of The Times - The Human Behind the Heroic Pose - NYT

Article from NYT: Books of The Times; The Human Behind the Heroic Pose

Simon Bolivar used to have a fantastic dream of assembling the then largest country in the world by uniting the South America. He for sure failed and lamented, "America is ungovernable". How can a person distinguish realistic dreams from fantastic dreams? It's one of the hardest questions every human being ever faces.

The Greenroom » History Written By The Losers

An article from the web: The Greenroom » History Written By The Losers

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It's interesting to look at Obama, who's used to churning out cunning speeches, from the side of his enemies. Speaking of his management of the slippery U.S. economy, people're never going to know whether the assumed economic catastrophe without mammoth fiscal stimulus packages will be phantasmal or not. Or are they?

On a different note, I've been wondering if the whole world will regain their confidence in the economic U.S. It's probably just a fantastic project, if the United States of America can't get their loathed Wall Street straight.

In the end, for the majority of the American population, let's hope all's well that ends well.

Stratford-upon-Avon

(Image from http://bit.ly/ajMHZo)

Stratford-upon-Avon is Shakespearean all the way! It's marvelous that the matchless Shakespeare had been born in this seemingly pedestrian town.

Like someone once put it, "Shakespeare... familiarizes the wonderful". But not too many people nowadays read Shakespeare, to my knowledge. Is it fantastic to peruse Shakespeare in this modern era?

Switching from iPhone to Android

Here's an excerpt from Switching from iPhone to Android - Computerworld Blogs:

The iPad was a game-changer for me in my relationship to the iPhone, and not in a good way. Most of the things I used to do on the iPhone are now things I do in the iPad: Reading, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Web browser. The iPad has made the iPhone a lot less important in my life.

And it got me thinking. The fact that the iPhone with iOS is a pretty closed platform is just unmeet for the majority of the consumers population. That kind of systems means potential deep lock-in. I doubt that iPhone will ever grab a fantastic amount of market share, even sheerly in the developed world.

Curiously, I'm waiting to see the next moves of Nokia, which has become largely phantom in the U.S. and Canada. And, ah, there's Samsung, whose products I personally regard to be a little shoddy but have been extremely popular among consumers nevertheless.

Music video - New Slang - The Shins

Its lyrics is here.


Oh, I love The Shins. For your information, the song's been quite popular and received just well by a great many discerning music fans.

It's a blast from the past for me, isn't it? I for one hold it dear. Its lyrics are a little labyrinthine. Just the same, those're excellent English, for my money.

Music video - Cara Dillon - Bonny Bonny

&

The song's lyrics

Beautiful English is showcased in Cara's lyrics.

Ah, what bliss! Just an exalting piece of music, lyrics, and singing, by Cara and her husband! I simply can't keep myself from being fond of it.

However, the video illustration uploaded by someone to YouTube isn't terribly tasteful, for my money.

On a different note, Ireland, the once poor country, has spawned so many poignantly wonderful creative singers such as U2, The Corrs, and Cara Dillon.

It's sad to see the particular nation's economic prospect, which had been rosy in the not so distant past, got blasted by its own folly and the current global recession.

Last but not least, sorry for my wordiness. :-)

Profoundly significant - Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers

Article from NYT: Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers

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Mark this, ladies and gentlemen, mark this heavy and taxing article.

Ah, this unfeeling world of business decision-making, this apathetic world of business cost-aversion. American and Canadian employees have been carrying the overbearing brunt of off-shoring

Well, pictures depicting colicky babies

These pictures are just vivid: http://bit.ly/dD5mWH

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Our daughter just had a colic and cry session, I suspect, this evening. And that sent us scrambling. Sigh...

我们从一个实际的例子来看英文有多重要 - Re - Leon Chua

Memristor 是 HP Lab 的革命性新产品。而 memristor 的理论奠基人则是 UC Berkeley 的蔡少棠教授。

让我们来对关于蔡少棠教授的 Wikipedia 的中文版和英文版来做一个比较：

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%94%A1%E5%B0%91%E5%A0%82

vs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_O._Chua


以信息的丰富程度和含金量来讲，中文版较之英文版相差何止以道里计！你我当知用心用功之所在。

An excerpt and my two cents - "But Old Man Stark looked at the Boss"

"But Old Man Stark looked at the Boss, and said, "I sorta reckined--I reckined you was gonna stay out here tonight." There was any trouble figuring out what he said, though. The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn't got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It's not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium. Anyway, that is what I would have said back then, that evening."

--p.35, the novel "All the King's Men"

In the author's perception, this yearning for possession of one's children's life, as described in the paragraph, is distinct from love. And it is interesting to note that this distinction made by the author has never been stated in any Chinese film or article that I have encountered.

Pictures - Three sorts of bats

Sometimes I smart from the phenomenon that mastering short English words can be harder than long words.

I've taken notice that there're three sorts of bats. And each of them is popular.

I googled the pictures of "bat" for my benefit and found them somewhat interesting.




A bat in the night






Baseball bats






Cricket bats

Eureka! I have discovered a top-notch novel which I like to read through - "All the King's Men"

In this world, who doesn't like reading groovy novels and having a good old time? And luckily, one nice way to advance a person's English language skills is to peruse fine novels. So in this holiday season, I set out to look for some worthwhile fictions to pour down into my brain. The famous 'David Copperfield' or 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'? I tried but soon concluded they were too dull for me. Perhaps that's because the lives of the protagonists were not immediately relevant to my own life and so the two books couldn't rouse my interest.

Hmm... Then what could I do? I turned to the All-Time 100 Best Novels list, which was compiled by the Time magazine, in order to dig out a fiction that I'd like to invest time to read. Finally I seemed to have observed one--'All the King's Men', by Robert Penn Warren. Then I borrowed a copy of it from a library and started to read through it. My typical and favorite location for the reading has been the various coffee shops, which are actually not so various from each other sometimes, in Montreal.

You can take a peek at the gist of this novel and some customer reviews on it here:
http://www.amazon.com/All-Kings-Robert-Penn-Warren/dp/0156004801