Einstein

Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age - Einstein

Moss On Gunung Ledang

I love this picture. Beauty and strength in the harshest conditions.

Where the sidewalk ends - Silverstein

Ducks at Kahang Rice Farm 2005
Originally uploaded by _Cheng Puay.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

If - Kilpling

He's good.

If - Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

First Basketball match

Went with the B division girls for their friendly with Unity Secondary. Must try to know all of them soon and it does not help that I am not good with faces and names.
It was a very good game, the girls were really intense and could see that they fought very hard for every possession, rebound and shot. This is a team that will go far if they continue to play with such focus and intensity. Well, I'm fortunate to be part of this journey. Something to look forward to for this year. Now I need to find my niche in the team, still abit unclear and hope that things will get better.

Miles to go before I sleep

Yes miles to go before I sleep. When will be the next break? Possibly in March, where the sunny island of Tioman beckons. Hope this group going will be a fun and enthusiastic one. Make the trip so much better for everyone.

Basketball season is starting. Hope that I will be able to contribute somewhat to the team as well.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

念

一念一清净
莲花处处开
一花一净土
一土一如来

Rana hosii

Rana hosii
This is one of my favorite photos. And it was the first photo that was posted online (thanks to otterman in Habitatnews). Taken when I had my first camera, going back to tioman for the fourth time, releasing the frog after a sampling trip. It perched itself comfortably on the rock after I let it go, probably savoring the taste of freedom and getting orientated to the surroundings, and at that moment, everything fell in place to form the perfect picture. The nice soft light of the evening, the nice pose of the frog, and a good dry rock for me to rest my camera on. So braving the cold water, I waded into the stream and fired off a series of shots, and caught the frame just when the frog decided to hop away.

Be With Me

Be With Me
A touching film about growing up, grown up and being old. It's also about how one, at each stage of life, seeks to love and for love. This film, with 3 storylines interwoven together, is inspired by the touching tale of Madam Theresa Chan, who overcame her seeing and hearing disabilities to be a guide and inspiration for others. The first show I have watched since November 2005, albeit not in the theater but; at rather aptly at home, alone too. Think it brings out the flavor and mood of the movie more. Kudos to Eric Khoo for this raw, simple and amazing production. Sometimes glitz, glamour and effects do not make the story, a keen and sensitive eye does. Do I have the eye and heart for such art? Something to work towards to in my photos.

Be With Me offical website.

Be With Me Fund for the physically disabled.

Green fluorescent pigs

Image from BBC News

The green fluorescent protein (obtained from a jelly fish) strikes again... this time in pigs. This is not an attempt to improve the culinary experience when you eat spam (though it'll be quite cool) but now we have the option of using the transgenic pig's cells for research such as stem cell studies.

For the full article - Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs

Plants as possible methane source

Another classic example showing how knowledge is constantly evolving and how new findings may change what we know about nature. Now plants, often hailed as a candidate carbon sink, and a possible solution to control carbon dioxide levels, could be a source of methane gas. in fact, studies done by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany estimated that 10 to 30 percent of the world's methane emissions could come from plants. This finding, if verified, could mean a re-assessment of using plants as a carbon sink.

For the full report please go to Plants revealed as methane source by BBC.

Life of a Scientist

What picture comes to mind when the word "scientist" is mentioned? Messy hair, absent-mindedness, glasses, lab coats? How about an image of worrying about research money, fund chasing, trying to mentor students, trying to optimise experiments, trying to find the best way to gather and analyse data, spending weeks or even months just to get results?

Dr Daniel Glaser's article provided a very realistic insight on the life of a modern-day scientist. An interesting read.
Science seen under the right conditions
By Dr Daniel Glaser - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4596662.stm

Professor Christopher Frayling is head of the Royal College of Art, but he's recently been conducting scientific experiments.

He's been going into primary schools and asking the pupils to draw a picture of a scientist.

Examining the sketches afterwards, he is surprised to discover that the children consistently draw images from a bygone age long before they were born: with wild hair, lab coat, staring eyes, coke-bottle glasses, a withered hand; in some cases they've even written the word "MAD" with an arrow pointing at the scientist.

Sir Christopher has replicated this study several times and concludes that, "in the tests I've done about 80 to 90% are mad scientists with one of more aspects of the iconography of the 1960s alive and well".

The stereotype of the unhinged and dangerous scientist isn't only held by school children.

He believes that this is part of a "funny sort of schizophrenia in the public understanding of science".

On one hand there is a desire to believe in scientific progress, particularly in the field of medicine, and an admiration of everything that science has made possible; on the other a suspicion that the scientists themselves are "Mad, bad and dangerous to know".

Science vogue

The image of the mad scientist is a stereotype which reflects a sense of anxiety amongst the general public about the way science impacts on their daily lives, whether in the form of vaccine scares, nuclear power or GM food.

This anxiety stems, perhaps, from a sense that science affects people in ways they can't control. And yet they may take comfort from the fact that it's a two-way street.

Public support or public hostility towards a given area of science does in fact filter through to the daily lives of scientists.

The idea of scientific "fashion" - what's considered cutting-edge at any given moment - plays a major role in the granting of research funding, which is the life blood of science.

This is a source of frustration for Chris Shaw from Kings College London, for example, who works on motor neurone disease, a disease which kills more people in the UK every year than either multiple sclerosis or HIV/AIDS, but which receives a fraction of the research money compared to those more high-profile diseases.

Chris Shaw puts it down to the fact that the victims of motor neurone disease are often older and die quicker; they are simply less visible.

Since grants last only a few years, scientists can spend a great deal of their time chasing funds rather than actually doing science.

The demands of the system keep a few top scientists out of conventional academia altogether.

The old way

Steve Grand is an internationally recognised roboticist, renowned for building a baby monkey robot affectionately named "Lucy", but he carries out his research in a garden shed in rural Somerset.

Grand believes that the grant system actually slows down scientific progress: "I wish we could go back to the days of patronage: somebody very wealthy out there who wanted to know stuff but couldn't do it themselves, so would give me the money to do it for them, and that would be wonderful."

His science has an originality and vision that eludes laboratories with hundreds of times more money, but Steve and Lucy lead a hand to mouth existence.

There is a danger that people get grants because they're good at getting grants, not just because they're good at science.

There's another way in which public anxiety about science doesn't quite reflect reality, namely, the process by which science is regulated and evaluated.

Peer review is the yardstick by which all science is measured, and it determines whether research gets published or not - the preoccupation of every scientist.

Being published is not just a question of who you know, or even whether a particular journal editor likes your work.

Mundane reality

Every research paper has to be approved by two or three anonymous fellow scientists before it can be accepted as part of the scientific canon.

Occasional rumours circulate about skulduggery and unethical behaviour by reviewers. For example, Richard Templar of Imperial had a paper repeatedly blocked by an anonymous reviewer.

He recalls: "One has suspicions that the referee who doesn't like your research is actually just holding your piece of work and trying to replicate it in their own lab so that they can publish before you."

But such stories seem to be the exception. Most scientists regard peer review as the "least worst" option, and they expect to spend a significant proportion of their time reviewing the work of competitors.

So the image of the mad scientist, free to do his own thing in a laboratory near you, is a far cry from the reality of scientific life, which is dependent on rather more mundane concerns.

But there is a way in which the image of the mad scientist does contain a grain of truth. Science is a creative business, and sometimes the results can be unpredictable; even explosive in more ways than one.

The moment

The passion for discovery is a common thread in all scientific careers, and it's often the sudden euphoric flashes of discovery that keep scientists going.

Cornelia de Moor of Nottingham University remembers the night she cracked one important aspect of how frogs' eggs mature.

"There was nobody else in my lab, I was so frustrated I couldn't tell anybody, I just went around the corner trying to find somebody to tell, I just grabbed anybody that I knew shouting 'Do you know what I've just discovered?'".

It's true that these moments are few and far between; less than half of those who complete a doctorate in science go on to become research scientists, and often the explanation is surprisingly prosaic: it's just hard to get the experiments to work enough of the time.

Oliver Choroba, a former research fellow at Cambridge who left science to become a school teacher, regards his old lab records as "notebooks from hell more or less, because every single notebook has a lot of disappointment and frustration in it".

The everyday business of science is more routine than the student dreams might suggest. But when the Eureka moments do happen, they are priceless.

As Richard Templar of Imperial College London puts it: "All of a sudden, you've discovered something that nobody else understands; its like being an explorer and discovering a new continent - it's the most wonderful feeling."

Dr Daniel Glaser is a neurobiologist from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. In a two-part series for the BBC, he takes a journey around Britain's labs and scientific institutions to find out how science really works, and what goes on behind the white coat.

For free knowledge - Wikimedia

I have always regarded Wikipedia as a convenient source of information and has benefitted from it many times. At moments, I was even critical and was interested in knowing how the information in Wikipedia measures up against more established information banks.

Now having read the donation appeal by Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, I realised I'm being a silkworm again. Need to change that.

..Reporters are always asking me why I’m doing this, why Wikipedians do this? I think you know why.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I’m doing this for the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him. But for this child, a website on the Internet is not enough; we need to find ways to get our work to people in a form they can actually use.

And I’m doing this for my own daughter, who I hope will grow up in a world where culture is free, not proprietary, where control of knowledge is in the hands of people everywhere, with basic works they can adopt, modify, and share freely without asking permission from anyone.

We’re already taking back the Internet. With your help, we can take back the world.

Please consider a generous donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimedia Foundation Personal Appeal by Jimmy Wales

2006 Happy New Year

Happy New Year.
Hope everyone will have a good 2006. :)

New Year, new start. A good many things to look forward to when I return to school; new classes, new cca, new duties and responsibilities. Though I'll dearly miss my 2005 Sec 3 classes and of course my sec 4 RS, Tioman, and Kahang field trip students. Well, all the best, hope we keep in touch.

Cheers to a good year.