Filed under: Random
Today, I would like to reveal the truth behind Batman.
As you can see, Batman rhymes with a Fat Man. *Gasp!* The creator of batman has been secretly making fun of fat men all along! The reason behind the cryptic encoding is likely due to the batman creator’s fear of a law suit from the “Big Bones Empowerment Society.” However, this verbal veil cannot trick the intelligent eyes of yours truly. It is now clear to me that the inspiration of batman is from a fat man who has lost a lot of weight. As the following demonstration shows:
You can now call me a genius.
Filed under: Random
I remember when I just moved to US, my classmates always use the word “chill”. In British English, there is not such word (I think…from my British English education in Hong Kong). Add on to the fact that most people who used this word (when I was a kid) are Americans and tended to be slackers in school, my impression to the word “chill” is indeed chilling.
Anyways, the wiki-how has an interesting entry on “How to be Chill.” Here are two definitions of how to be chill:
4. Chill people like to, well, chill. Chilling is pretty much the same as hanging out, only when you’re ‘chilling,’ your activities are usually much more relaxed. You wouldn’t go skydiving when you’re chilling, for instance. Also, try to invite Chill people to chill with you, because usually hyper people can ruin the chill mood, and then it’s not chilling, is it?
7. Chill people are also known to listen to good music, like “chill” music. This chill music usually includes, every song that “slaps”(songs that appeal greatly to you). If you were to view a chill person’s Itunes for instance, you can usually discover an array of all genres of music.
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According to #7 then, I should be a chill person. But according to #4, I wouldn’t be since my idea of chilling indeed is to go skidiving.
Last summer, I spent a couple days of refuge at the library of US International Trade Commission (to avoid some unpleasant distractions in my office). During those couple days, I would be the sole wanderer in the narrow aisles of that stuffy and small library. Always having this natural attraction to old books and manuscripts, I sought out the oldest looking annual reports of US international Trade Commission. And from those aged and untouched pages, I learned the little known fact that the US international Trade Commission used to be called US Tariff Commission, and it was sometime between 1970 and early 1980s that it changed name. What a funny change, I thought to myself then. It is a totally trivia knowledge. That is, until yesterday.
So a professor in my school is looking for certain old tariff data (around World War II), and while the post 1980 data is widely available, he thought that he had to march all the way to Washington DC to US international trade commission in order to photocopy the 1947ish old data from hard copies manuscripts. Having spent some wonderful memories in the USITC library, I just thought that it probably ain’t worth that effort to go there for those manuscripts. So I did an advanced search in my school’s library for “International Tariff Commission,” which should be the author of periodicals dating back before 1970s. VIOLA. Found. They are located in a dark, dark corner of the basement of the library.
In the dim light, I saw that on the rack is an amazing array of tariff schedule manuscripts. Some dating back to Civil War!
And so that’s how it went.
Filed under: Teaching
Dear Students of Intro to Macro,
Tomorrow is you 2nd exam. Many of you flunked in the 1st exam, so I understand why so many of you are attending office hours today. I am sorry that you began to hate macroeconomics due to studying for this exam. There is a reason why the course is structured in such a way that you are studying history of economic thoughts with the AD-AS models. I understand that you are hating it because all these shifts of AS and AD and the short run and long run shapes of AS and what shifts AD confuse you. I can tell you that some professors in top school are confused too. I am very sorry that even the best of these intro to macro textbooks is not able to convey to you just how much debate still surround these models. I am sorry that all you do is shift these curve left and right, never knowing for sure what is THE RIGHT story. I am sorry that these so called accounting identity doesn’t tell you what is the underlying causal relationships. I am sorry that at this level, you are not able to learn about the magnitudes of variables.
But that’s how this course is taught. Truth is, nobody have the objective answers. So it’s okay if you feel there could be various stories to how we go back to the LR equilibrium. OKAY? Now go study in peace.
Best,
Your sorry TA
My bones do not listen to me. I’m genuinely annoyed by the fact that my body is so inflexible. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have noticed it. But now that I am on my 3rd serious ballet lesson, I realized that out of about 10 women and 1 man in the class, I am the most inflexible!
My ballet class is so slow that it goes like a yoga class, where the predominant amount of class time is devoted to stretch excercises. Whenever the instructor told us to lean down to touch the toes, or lean down to touch the floor, or to do butterfly (press knees down and lean down), I would look at the mirror and I would be the single head popped up with body. The only part of my body that is leaning down is my head. Everybody would be waist down on the floor. I mean, for goodness sakes, even the 40+ women who had babies already are down on the floor (as well as the single male)!
So I went online to search for how to be more flexible. Then I see all these youtube clips of 6-year old telling me how to do a split. Yeah, right.
But ballet is sort of like yoga. The point is to be flexible. After my first lesson, I went home feeling like doing an upside down arch on the floor the whole week. Or just turning my whole body upside down. It’s sort of wierd how simple stretches can make you feel.
Can trying to be flexible become addictive?
PS. I display the following picture, borrowed from the site of “first day of Yoga” to demonstrate what I meant, by people’s head and waist touching the floor in my ballet class (in the following picture, it’s yoga).
Filed under: Music
Stop and Stare
If only I can be part of a band…
The lyrics of the song actually kind of reflects what I am currently feeling about my research:
Steady feet, don’t fail me now
I’m gonna run till you can’t walk
But something pulls my focus out
And I’m standing down…
Stop and stare
I think I’m moving but I go nowhere
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared
But I’ve become what I can’t be, oh
Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you’re here not there
And you’d give anything to get what’s fair
But fair ain’t what you really need
Some novels, everytime you read them you feel differently. Austen’s novels read like that. On the surface, it just seems like Victorian chick-flicks. People who read it once will think so. People who read them more them once, and analyze every Austen novel, will think differently. These Austen analysts are an esoteric bunch. I consider myself one of them. I have read Pride and Prejudice at least 15 times (and every other Austen book except Northanger Abbey), and watched almost all existing version of it and some more than 5 times. I can almost complete the sentence when I watch it. Sense and sensibility, to the less degree has I studied.
But PBS has been rebroadcasting Sense and Sensibility since last weekend, so I watch again. The last time I watched sense and sensibility was when I was in high school, and just watched it for the plot and thus, I naturally favored Marianne, since she’s the action in the novel and movie.
Not that I am much older, I am really touched by Eleanor Dashwood. When Edward Harris paid the Dashwood a visit towards the end, and clarified the mistake, Eleanor could not help but break down her cool, understanding demeanor, and finally gave up to tears. At that point, I, for some totally unknown reasons, started break down into tears!
It is just that, given that Marianne, the passionate one, had all the goods news, and finally it’s Eleanor’s turn! She who has given up on the future and adopted that peace!
If Jane Austen’s books are considered chick flick, it sure is 1000% better than Hollywood chick flicks.
Filed under: Movies
This movie is based on the self-help book which shares the same title. The punch lines of the book is that:
He is just not that into you if:
1.) he’s not calling you
2.) he’s not sleeping with you
3.) he’s not marrying you
While the movie is quite funny and entertaining, the ending of the movie just completely defeat the main point of the book! The blunders and forwardness of Gigi in the movie makes the audience wince and oos, yet her ending again supports the fairytale belief that, well, we’ll all find love eventually!
Damnit, and I was hoping I could love this movie.
Filed under: Musings
Yesterday, my classmate’s wife trusted me enough to let me play with her 5-month old baby. And so I did. I took him and went around the room meeting nationalities of the world.
The curious thing, very curious thing, about the baby is that he doesn’t kiss properly. When he tries to show his affection to his mother, he just opens his mouth, making some “MUHHH MUHHH” sound, and sticks it onto his mother’s face. Sort of like licking, with his mouth wide open. And he repeatedly did that. His mouth is still on his mother’s face. And he only does it to his mother (not stranger like me).
And so I conclude, if babies don’t know how to kiss, it means that kissing is not natural.
Filed under: Music
I don’t understand a word of this song. Yet everytime I listen to it or watch this MTV I feel this strange sentimentality (not surprising, being so sentimental as I am). Another reason why I like music.
COFFEE & BISCUITS 