The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mar 01, 2008
I like this book very very much which written by Mark Haddon (personal website). I like Christopher’s acting and his thinking eventhough he is not a normal guy. I like the imagination. I like the way Mark wrote in this book.
Chapter 181
I see everything.That is why I don’t like new places. If I am in a place I know, like home, or school, or the bus, or the shop, or the street, I have seen almost everything in it beforehand and all I have to do is to look at the things that have changed or moved. . . .
But most people are lazy. They never look at everything. They do what is called glancing which is the same word for bumping off something and carrying on in almost the same direction, e.g. when a snooker ball glances off another snooker ball. And the information in their head is really simple. For example, if they are in the countryside, it might be
1. I am standing in a field that is full of grass.
2. There are some cows in the fields.
3. It is sunny with a few clouds.
4. There are some flowers in the grass.
5. There is a village off in the distance.
6. There is a fence at the edge of the field and it has a gate in it.And then they would stop noticing anything because they would be thinking something else like, “Oh it is very beautiful here, or “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on,” or “I wonder if Julie has given birth yet.”
But if I am standing in a field in the countryside I notice everything. For example, I remember stnding in a field on Wednesday, 15 June 1994, because Father and Mother and I were driving to Dover to get a ferry to France and we did what Father called Taking the Scenic Route, which means going by little roads and stopping for lunch in a pub garden, and I had to stop to go for a wee and I went into a field with cows in it and after I’d had a wee I stopped and looked at the field and I noticed these things
1. There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.
2. There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.
3. There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was called a ridge and furrow field and people who lived in the village would have a ridge each to do farming on.
4. There is an old plastic bag from ASDA in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.
5. The northeast corner of the field is the highest and the southwest corner is lowest (I had a compass because we were going on holiday and I wanted to know where Swindon was when we were in France) and the field is folded downward slightly along the line between these two corners so that the northwest and southeast corners are slightly lower than they would be if the field was an inclined plane.
6. I can see three different types of grass and two colors of flowers in the grass.
7. The cows are mostly facing uphill.And there were 31 more things in this list of things I noticed but Siobhan said I didn’t need to write them all down. And it means that it is very tiring if I am in a new place because I see all these things, and if someone asked me afterwards what the cows looked like, I could ask which one, and I could do a drawing of them at home and say that a particular cow had patterns on it like this
(the photo is absent here)
And I realise that I told a lie in Chapter 13 because I said, ‘I cannot tell jokes’, because I do know 3 jokes that I can tell and I understand and one of them is about a cow, and Siobhan and I didn’t have to go back and change what I wrote in Chapter 13 because it doesn’t matter because it is not a lie, just a clarification.
And this is the joke.
There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logican and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don’t know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
And the economist says, ‘Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.’
And the logician says, ‘No. There is at least one com in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’
And the mathematician says, ‘No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’
And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathemticians are best.
And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn’t any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and then can talk to you and do things that you don’t expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes, when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be doing.
And that is why I am good at chess and maths and logic, because most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, ‘I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.’
The Songs of Distant Earth - Apr 17, 2008
刚看完一本名叫The songs of distant earth的科幻小说,作者是Arthur C. Clarke (亚瑟·克拉克, 16 December 1917–19 March 2008)。这本书属于牛津书虫系列,所以很缩简和简略。在这个版本里面有五个短篇小说:
1. The Nice Billion Names of God
We know what the lamas are trying to do. But we didn’t know why. It’s the craziest thing but old Sam’s just told me the reason. He’s getting a bit excited now that we’re getting close to the end of the list. You see, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they think that there are nine billion of them - God’s purpose in making the world will be finished. There will be nothing more for human beings to do, and indeed, no further reason for humans to go on living. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply closes everything down … bang!
喇嘛借助电脑在短短的三个月内将上帝的九十亿个可能的名字列出来后,人类也就失去了存在的意义,一切又回归混沌。 Read the rest of this entry »
Mar 31st, 2006
三月又要过去了,人总是这样,到每个特定的时间要感慨一番,我也是人。感觉不是很好,跟中山的缘分还没有断,估计得要一点时间。希望不会很晚。现在想想,如果让我考上的话–对我现在的状态来说几率比较少–如何支付高额的学费是个问题。当然有公费的。
一直对外贸比较感兴趣,因为跟英语有关系。但是只是收集资料的阶段,比如这个文件关于贸易ABC 的。下载在这里(Download, CHM, 771K ),呵呵。这些都是以前收集的,自己没看上两眼。公司要准备一个新的电子商务网站,就在这上面布局了一下,但是没有什么感觉,因为想要的那种结果没有技术把它做出来。公司的域名是Sinovacuum,但还没有建起来,看看我本身的版本 吧,分类差不多。
上次说到要说说Beyond跟我的成长之路。其实很平凡,初中时有了自己的磁带机,当时就有他们的磁带了。我仍记得姑姑拿回来的演唱会,那时还是录像带。在我的印象中,接触到录像带的使用时间很短,很快就给VCD代替了。我想,这只是我家的写照而已,从一个侧面说明了社会的进程。很喜欢海阔天空,第一次就是学这首歌,跟着唱了一遍又一遍。其他的如大地、不再犹豫等都是经典。但在我的MP3中,没有他们的一首歌,意识到这个情况,也没有怎么努力腾出空间来放几首,或许是太熟悉了,刚听到开始就知道结果怎样。我只是听旋律而已,歌词很少去注意的。从来我都是给一首歌旋律给感动,这有点想不喜欢动脑的缘故。 这次写的东东有点不明不白。
晚上看了一个关于时空转换的电影,名字为Frequency,而翻译成过去拯救未来–没记错的话。纽约上空出现奇怪的极光,做警察的儿子通过相同的无线电跟小时候自己的爸爸通上话。通过信息的交换将杀人凶手擒获,而本来早已去世的父亲也通过改变过去活到现在,而且帮上了大忙。当然不必去深入追究其中的逻辑思维,其中有想不通的地方都是为了结果而服务的。当中有个情节在我和僵尸有个约会中也出现过,告知过去的人将一个物品放到一个基本上不会改变的地方,下一刻就可以在现在拿到相同的物品,比现在所有的快递公司都快。这是一个很奇特的想法,也是一个很奇妙的方法。是否可行大家都可能没有这个机会去试。僵尸中的马小玲的做法很大胆,她回到过去发现一个物品不够用,就将自己的要求用手机录下来埋在一个现在会被考古学家发掘的地方,告知现在人将物品放在她回到过去前的要携带的箱子中;想想也很合理,就是把握好时间差的问题了。
关于时间穿梭都是从一些影视作品或小说中获得的,是否科学就不得而知。看看时间简史或许能从更科学的角度上看这个问题。但是有必要吗?生命是不能重来的。但是很多人依旧踏着历史的足迹,重复着过去的悲剧。