What is the Chinese God?

Today, one of my friend asked me if I believe in God. Honestly, I don't believe in God. I'm a scientist-to-be person. I think all scientists or people having strong believe in science should honor the power of the universe and leave God alone. But people have emotions and feelings. They need more other than solid truth. Even though I don't believe any God-like stuff, I say "God bless me" a lot. So what is the Chinese God? The Buddha? Or Yuhuangdadi, Chinese version King of the Heaven, like Zeus? In Chinese we say something meaning "God bless me" especially when we get good luck. In this case, "God" is not a person, it's more like the nature or the universe. So the Chinese God seems more scientific. Just kidding. The majority of Chinese don't have an actual belief, and some minorities have their believes. There are Muslims, Buddhists, Daoists, etc. BTW, Buddhists think human is goodness while Christians think human is sin. Why are they so judgmental instead of dialectical? We are who we are no matter what.

I almost forgot what I used to care a lot.

Today I watched a photo album of environmental theme. Those posters all spread one theme: human should hold together fighting against global warming before it becomes too late in 2050. This reminded me what I used to care a lot but didn't pay much attention to recently. I studied environmental science and engineering in college. It's generally to love our environment. Now I majored in microbiology, but it shouldn't stop me caring our environment and making our effort to make it better. What happened in Copenhagen in 2009 really disappointed all environment lovers. Politics doesn't care about our earth. Even though most presidents attended the meeting, they just pretended they care about global warming. When it was time to discuss solutions, which had business involved, they just tried their best to gain more profit from meaningless bargaining. According KP, they needed to figure out a efficient rules to follow after 2020, which is an important time point to repress global warming. But they failed, and we had to seriously think about what our life would be in 2050, which may be the end of our green planet. Tik-tok! It's time for all human beings to take climate change seriously. Do something. Do anything that may save our earth even only a little bit.

First Halloween party

We don't celebrate Halloween in China. Even though China has its own ghost festival, there's no costume involved. As my first Halloween, I don't know what costume I should wear. The first character popped in my head is Dr Horrible. I think he's the most recognizable costume I like to be dressed. I didn't get the white gloves and white boots, let alone the freezer gun. I just wear the half-baked costume and go to the party. There are many cool costumes at the party: Sookie & Bill, Cheshire Cat, The Mormon Kid, etc. After some cool shows, performed by awesome people, they announced the costume contest results. Most prizes went to those great costumes, expect the last one came to me. There are a few categories, and the one I won was not that competitive. I really think Sookie should won that prize, but she's the organizer. It's very nice of her go give it to me, because I'm new to this community. I think I don't deserve it, but it really means a lot to me. Thank you all for give me such a wonderful night.

Here's a picture of me and my favorite costume: Cheshire Cat.

Self-critique for blogging

Today Dr Hoefnagels showed various topics we blogged about. And I see loneliness, which maybe refer to mine, is the only negative topic in the list. Basically, most of the students take blog as a way to share interesting stuff, whereas I take it as a way to express out negative thoughts, which I did a lot in Chinese blog. Maybe it's just the way I am used to manage my emotions, so I won't get so much stress or depression. Or, shall I say, I treated it as a dairy. In the other word, blog probably isn't dairy but media if blog is about sharing things with friends and Dr Hoefnagels - I'm kidding, she can count as friends, if it's not so weird since she is the one grades me. BTW, I'm not that negative and loneliness is definitely not the main point in my blog. Anyway, based on these thought I just rambled, I decide to make an announcement. From now on, fun and happiness are the only things I am gonna post in this blog. Here I present you "FUN" and "HAPPINESS". I hope you will enjoy them.

Amy is so cool.

It's another time to rush a blog post right before the deadline, even though the assignment has been reduced to 2 per week.

Today I met Amy, who I already met at candle night vigil but didn't remember, and Nishan, who I met the other night and introduced Amy to me. It's good to meet friends outside classes or groups. You don't need to start with a name-tag introduce and you can talk about anything coming up to your mind. So let's talk about Amy. She   is an American girl who loves Asian and majors in Asian study. She knows Chinese, learning for two years already, and is good at it. It's hard to find a friend who can be able to talk with both American and Chinese stuff without language problem. She likes Jay Chow, SHE, Sichuan food and Korean movies. Not the same as things I like, but at least we can understand each other. Another great thing to meet her is that whenever I don't know something how to say in English I can just ask Amy in Chinese and she will teach me. I can help her with her Chinese and she can help me with my English. It's a win-win. And sorry for Nishan, we talked too much Chinese stuff, which you don't give a shit about. We will talk other topics next time.

Don't want to hang up.

Every weekend, my roommate goes back home and leaves me an empty apartment. At first I thought it's cool to own the whole apartment. But when the night comes and it getting dark, loneliness will fill up the room. As usual the feeling of loneliness reached the peak at the midnight and I started to call my friends in China, because it's daytime there. Since I got busy recently and I haven't call my friends for like 2 weeks. So when the voice came through the phone, my mind was suddenly full of joy instead of loneliness. I asked how things going on there and joked around. Then I shared some awkward moments about me in the US. I always told them I am fine here. But every time before I spoke that out, I paused a little bit. I'm not sure whether my current situation is good enough to be called OK, but I always comfort myself that things will get better latter. I don't know this is optimist or just fooling myself. All I can do is feel company and joy from my friends, even though it's just through phone and there are thousands of miles between us. The hardest part is to hang up the phone. I hope that moment can last longer, and I know if I hang up the phone I will come back to the real world, which is an empty apartment filled with loneliness. I think this is what friends mean, they will fill your heart with love at the moment you are most vulnerable. I love you guys.

Right and responsibility.

Today, right before I found out I need to do blogs from Carrie, I went to a lecture at the Union. It's about women and gender. Most of the lecture is about sexuality and sexual rights. She made some good points and there are some of her opinions I don't agree with.
One I doubted most is she think marriage is just convenient to get rights. She thinks we should more focus on fighting for rights themselves instead of marriage, which is just a format.
I think marriage should not be just about rights, There are lots of responsibilities along with the marriage. People who always says they need more rights do not pay much attention to the responsibilities they should respect. Rights are along with responsibilities. Marriage, of course, is a easy way to get some certain rights but it also requires and reminds people of their responsibilities. She is a little extreme about rights and does not see things clearly. It's cool to listen to some different ideas. But just being cool is not enough. She should be more persuasive  to let me buy her points.

I almost forgot to post blogs this week.

Last week, I thought Dr Hoefnagels (sorry, if I didn't spell it correct.) told us we don't need to do blogs for two weeks. I was really excited, because I don't know what to write about and have to squeeze words form my poor vocabulary. I went home very happy and had a few seconds doubt if I misheard what she said. But I kept it the way I expected. At weekends, with the whole two days' raining, I actually have plenty time and staff to write. But there are no assignment push me to do the blog. So I kept ignoring it.
Today, a quarter before class began, I met Carrie and checked with her what exactly Dr Hoefnagels said. She told me we just have to do 2 blogs for every week. BOOOOM! That is what it cost for being too lazy. Time to learn from this, Derek.
The good thing is there are still a few minutes for me to do the blog and quiz. So why not blog how stupid I am right now. (I think it's already 150 words and I will stop typin....

Scientific Publishing From The Inside Out, Nick Wigginton, Science Magazine

Summary

Scientific publishing is about selecting novel researches with good quality and unique scope in broad interest to communicate with others via various media. It has strict and efficient publish system, including submission, editor evaluation, peer reviewing, revision and response, etc. Scientists should plan to publish when starting a research project.

Critique

Dr. Wigginton gave a brilliant talk about general scientific publishing, Science’s publish system and suggestion for scientific authors. First, he introduced history of scientific publishing and Science magazine. Then he explained each step of publish model, e.g. submission vs. acceptation and rejection, peer review referees, source of scientific output and problems editors facing. His talk matches our broad interest and need about how to scientifically communicate our researches with others. The intense competition among rising submissions requires new researcher higher quality of manuscripts. Thus ability of writing scientific papers is much more essential. As more funding invested in scientific research and more interesting results discovered, higher efficiency of scientific communication is required to catch up with the pace of output. And scientific communication is a worldwide activity. International background of the authors, whose first language is not English, should also be considered, so scientific papers should be concise and brief. Since I’m taking BioWriting course now, there is much information that is great supplementary to what I get from class, such as magazines’ preference when evaluating submissions, things need to be done before submission. It surprised me that there are more biological topics than physical science topics in Science magazine. And ethics involved in scientific publishing is new to me. The examples of climate change rhetoric and plastic fantasy are so interesting and make me think about what we should double check during preparation. My current research, to be published, is a project set in the Tibetan Plateau, which has unique and extreme environment and is worth peoples’ attention. That may increase my chance to be published after submission, based on Dr. Wigginton’s talk taking dinosaurs as an example. Overall, it’s a great seminar and I learned a lot form it.

Breaking Bad is getting tasteless

Last night I watched Breaking Bad and found that next Sunday season finale of season 4 will be on air. Then I realized that this season's Breaking Bad isn't exciting as before and be boring for almost a whole season. If next week's season finale still stink, I don't know what to be looking forward to in next season.
At the very beginning, Breaking Bad used to be a fantastic brilliant show. It uses hyperbole and  sarcasm to show a world of people struggling between life and conscience. A high school chemical teacher got cancer and started to cook crystal meth to support his family after his death. He's still a strict teacher, so he is so different with those drug dealers. He can even use chemical reaction to produce poison gas to kill people, which is a job normally did by guns and bullets. Then he begun to involve business management of meth and went deeper and deeper in meth industry. As he ran the industry in such a creative way, he got various troubles. But he survived and solved them unbelievably but reasonably. His cancer got almost cured and he got him in a huge gang, which he couldn't get rid of. Things start to change, but still in a fun way.
But this season, after Gary's death, conflicts got narrower and obvious. There isn't much mystery but only cruelty. Walter became totally selfish and unreasonable, Skyler became meddlesome and capricious, and Jesse was fooled around and became naive. On the other side, Gus, the bad people, got more and more brilliant and powerful. Things lost balance and got out of fun.
This situation is still not solved. I hope next week Breaking Bad will come with a peaking season finale and surprise the audiences.

Games reveal people's evil side.

A lot of games are too complicate to be played by innocent children. They can affect people's humanity if people get addicted to them.
Action game involves violence and blood. There are zombies, monsters and other terrify stuff in it. People can get excitement in gunfire and bomb blast. Then there are wars and crimes involved. People start to kill enemies or criminals. It is indoctrinated that using violence to solve problems.
But this kind of games is not the most harmful kind, because people can sense it before it get out of control. What affects people invisibly is strategy game. You may wondering how strategy game can be harmful. That's the huge problem for strategy game. It seems very harmless and intelligent. But it is actually full of lair, lust and plot behind its innocent face. It lures people with huge winning price, mostly a glorious title. It encourage the participants to compete with each other by cheating or stabbing. Last minute you were friends and you will turn against each other the very next minute. The most insidious one will win by stepping others' "dead" body. People will explore their deepest evil, release their evilness and become totally different people. You will find some cruel truth you could never expect during this kind of game.
So let's play some games. It will be totally "HARMLESS".