Black Holes and Time Warps

Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy (1994)

by Kip Thorne

It is my all-time favorite among the popular-science physics books. It presents a serious discussion on how to build a time machine, without misleading the readers.

— Me@2010.08.31

天才之道 3

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Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that’s one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it’s not our fault if we can’t do something as good.

I’m not saying there’s no such thing as genius. But if you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

— Paul Graham

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2010.08.31 Tuesday $ACHK$

虛擬機器

3. 在原本的作業系統（Operating System）上，安裝一個 Virtual Machine（虛擬機器）。再在 Virtual Machine 上，安裝另一個作業系統。

（安：回到剛才「學習新事物」的比喻。如果新知識與自己原有的「思考作業系統」有衝突、不兼容的話，除了剛才所提及的解決辦法外，還有另一個可能，就是在自己原有的「思考作業系統」上，安裝一個 Virtual Machine。那樣，你就可以在保留自己的「思考作業系統」，而又毋須作任何修改的情況下，去駕馭新知識。）

（安：又例如，「中國特色社會主義」其實是 Virtual Machine 的一個大例子。）

— Me@2010.08.31

— Me@2010.07.21

李世民 2

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People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

— Ralph W. Emerson

— Me@2010.08.30

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2010.08.30 Monday $copyright ACHK$

— Me@2010.08.30

反白論前傳：教科書 篇

Even college textbooks are bad. When you get to college, you’ll find that (with a few stellar exceptions) the textbooks are not written by the leading scholars in the field they describe. Writing college textbooks is unpleasant work, done mostly by people who need the money. It’s unpleasant because the publishers exert so much control, and there are few things worse than close supervision by someone who doesn’t understand what you’re doing. This phenomenon is apparently even worse in the production of high school textbooks.

— Paul Graham

2010.08.29 Sunday ACHK

Startup 2

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Startups in 137 chars: Make something someone specific needs, launch fast, let users show you what to change, change it, repeat last two.

— Paul Graham

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2010.08.29 Sunday $ACHK$

心靈作業系統 5.2

「Virtual Machine」（虛擬機器）的另外一個用途是：

1. 更換作業系統，或者 買另一部（用另一個作業系統的）電腦；或

2. 修改原本的作業系統，令它與新程式兼容：前提是，你電腦的作業系統是 open source（開源，開放源程式碼）的；或

3. 在原本的作業系統上，安裝一個 Virtual Machine。再在 Virtual Machine 上，安裝另一個作業系統。

— Me@2010.08.29

Jesus, Buddha, Einstein 3

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I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.

— Mohandas K. Gandhi

— Me@2010.08.26

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2010.08.28 Saturday $ACHK$

Lessons from the Light

My answer is that you would be a truly free person. You would be forever liberated from the tyranny of others’ opinions, from self-doubt, from the fear of life and the fear of death, and from the demands of time.

Instead, you would be free to enjoy life as it is and to find fulfillment and joy in helping others.

— Kenneth Ring’s Lessons from the Light

I sometimes want to be a teacher but think my teaching role can best be by my example — not by class or going to find students.

— Kenneth Ring’s Lessons from the Light

1. Not everything in this book is correct. Read it with a critical mind.

2. There is a copy of this book in the Hong Kong Public Library.

3. There are more than one book called “Lessons from the Light”, written by different people. The one I mentioned is written by “Kenneth Ring”.

— Me@2010.08.28

Central limit theorem

In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) states conditions under which the mean of a sufficiently large number of independent random variables, each with finite mean and variance, will be approximately normally distributed (Rice 1995). The central limit theorem also requires the random variables to be identically distributed, unless certain conditions are met. Since real-world quantities are often the balanced sum of many unobserved random events, this theorem provides a partial explanation for the prevalence of the normal probability distribution. The CLT also justifies the approximation of large-sample statistics to the normal distribution in controlled experiments.

— Wikipedia on Central limit theorem

2010.08.27 Friday ACHK

Rebellion

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Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don’t just do what they tell you, and don’t just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it’s pretty sweet. You’re done at 3 o’clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you’re there.

— Paul Graham

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2010.08.27 Friday $ACHK$

— Me@2010.08.27

Hackers & Painters

1. Why Nerds Are Unpopular
Their minds are not on the game.

2. Hackers and Painters
Hackers are makers, like painters or architects or writers.

3. What You Can’t Say
How to think heretical thoughts and what to do with them.

4. Good Bad Attitude
Like Americans, hackers win by breaking rules.

Web-based software offers the biggest opportunity since the arrival of the microcomputer.

6. How to Make Wealth
The best way to get rich is to create wealth. And startups are the best way to do that.

7. Mind the Gap
Could “unequal income distribution” be less of a problem than we think?

8. A Plan for Spam
Till recently most experts thought spam filtering wouldn’t work. This proposal changed their minds.

9. Taste for Makers
How do you make great things?

10. Programming Languages Explained
What a programming language is and why they are a hot topic now.

11. The Hundred-Year Language
How will we program in a hundred years? Why not start now?

12. Beating the Averages
For web-based applications you can use whatever language you want. So can your competitors.

13. Revenge of the Nerds
In technology, “industry best practice” is a recipe for losing.

14. The Dream Language
A good programming language is one that lets hackers have their way with it.

15. Design and Research
Research has to be original. Design has to be good.

— Paul Graham

2010.08.26 Thursday ACHK

地球 3

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— Me@2010.07.26

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2010.08.26 Thursday $copyright ACHK$

— Me@2010.08.26

A First Course in String Theory

Rather than speculate on the ideas that might have developed in the absence of string theory, we can celebrate the remarkable insights that have emerged from it. It has explained, for example, why black holes have entropy and temperature. It has also demonstrated a surprising fact: theories of strong nuclear forces are equivalent to theories of gravity. Over the last two months, several new papers use string theory to describe the motion of quarks in the plasma created by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven! Not bad for a theory whose critics say is pie in the sky.

— Barton Zwiebach: a letter to the editor

2010.08.25 Wednesday ACHK

Bureaucracy 2

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The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

* Eugene McCarthy, quoted in Time magazine, 12 February 1979

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2010.08.25 Wednesday ACHK