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The Commissar Vanishes

几幅金农作品

暑假回国，在家随手捡到一本扬州八怪传，薄薄一本小册，读来还颇有趣。之后便留心想看他们的作品，尤其是大幅的画册之类可以瞧个仔细。开学后闲逛学校图书馆，居然发现数册各种辑录，作品之多反而令我没有耐心细看。最近兴起临汉碑，补习了一点隶书基础知识，原来汉魏之后，隶书的复兴便在清代，而八怪中以金农为首的几位功不可没。这位金冬心是杭州人，算是老乡，所以颇有好感。无事在网上随手一搜金农作品，果然不少。越看越喜欢，不知道是不是写了几页汉碑辨识力上升。干脆贴上两幅，隶书古朴有新意，漆书新奇有古韵。
最后贴这幅《节临华山庙碑》，是因为我在临写的恰是华山碑。不过他这个和我写的太不同了，基本上都是自由发挥的。

Washi Ningyo

Another theater inspired doll artist. This time an american dancer who fell for Japanese washi(paper) dolls and has been devotedlly capturing the drama from Kabuki theater.


My favorite piece:


For more paper-made Japanese figures, see the artist's website.

These Washi and Gourd Ningyo are not as artistic, but kind of cute.

John Bauer and the trolls

It is interesting to learn how these whimsical creatures originated from Scandinavian folklores have made their way to the doll collectors' shelves in fads starting in the 60s. They are believed to bring good luck and nowadays are made into super-cute figures appealing to both kids and adults. The common feature that helps you to distinguish them is certainly the large pointy ears and nose (yes, some of them did practice witchcraft in tales).

John Bauer is certainly one the artists responsible for most people's view about trolls today.

This illustration so reminds me of the fairtales I read in childhood (he probably did set a standard for expectation of fairytale illustrations). The hairy giants in the background look curious and stunned by the glowing calm of the slender princess. Well they don't look very intellect, but not much wickedness either. As other 'homemade' trolls by John Bauer, they don't look pretty but they are somehow lovable.

According to wikipedia:
Residents of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, known as Yoopers, refer to their lower-peninsula counterparts as "trolls", because they live "Under the Bridge"...

Doll affection

It all began from a issue of the Art Doll magazine I casually picked up in Barnes & Noble the other day. The cover story was aboutArley Berryhill, a doll artist I should be forever grateful for introducing (or rather reintroduce) me to the magical world of dolls.

At the first glance, I fell in love with his vividly postured and exotically dressed queen. The outfit was stunningly beautiful, in every bit of details, with no wonder the initial motivation of the work was to extend his professional costume designing and making technique outside theater. But there is also enough drama in the figure, the facial expression and pose (how about this CanCan dancer). The last fact that they struck me as dream coming true is that they are completely made of soft cloth, a material as achievable as you can imagine. For me the natural material gives the skin a soft and warm glow, appealing for a touch (look at her back), as opposed to the cold hard sculptures.


Another production I found interesting is the 'trio of trollums'. They are such cute baby trolls. Look at how innocent they are while sucking their thumbs (and holding a lovely giant spider...). Yeah, these are growing to be real naughty creatures.

California photos

Something more interesting to share: pictures in Death Valley, LA and San Diego. But I have no idea whether the link will work for all.

Happy New Year!

To start the new year, I'd like to share the Science Special Online Collection: Breakthrough of the Year 2005. Watch the video presentation on evolution, and listen to the podcast on the runners-up (including the breakthrough on short gamma-ray bursts).

Dawn. - Emily Dickinson

Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door;
Or has it feathers like a bird,
Or billows like a shore?

A day. - Emily Dickinson

I'll tell you how the sun rose, -
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"

 .   .   .   .   .   .

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
While little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

Science news in brief

Colour blindness may have hidden advantages
Six percent of men have deuteranomaly, the commonly known green-red color blindness. A less fraction of women are suffered, due to the recessive nature of the mutation gene that is only found on X chromosome. Interestingly, the mutant form of green pigment may help to differentiate subtle shades identical to people with normal vision, such as some different khaki shades. Given the commonness of this type of color blindness, it's hypothesized that the gene may once provided evolutionary benefit.


Warped geometry speeds airline boarding
The first application of Lorentzian geometry outside physics is for airplane boarding process. It's found that boarding passengers with window seats first is more efficient than filling the plane from the back, which creates a lot of blocking. Uncontrolled boarding - adopted by airlines such as Southwest in the United States and EasyJet in the UK - is also relatively efficient.
Well, my experience did show that the boarding on Southwest flights were pretty fast. The abstract for the paper sounds cool:
physics/0512020
Title: Analysis of airplane boarding via space-time geometry and random matrix theory
Abstract: We show that airplane boarding can be asymptotically modeled by 2-dimensional Lorentzian geometry. Boarding time is given by the maximal proper time among curves in the model. Discrepancies between the model and simulation results are closely related to random matrix theory. We then show how such models can be used to explain why some commonly practiced airline boarding policies are ineffective and even detrimental.


Does rivalry rewire the rapping web?
The network of rappers has a 3 degrees of separation and shows little assortativity in contrast to other human social networks.
What is interesting to me is a comparison between different networks. On average it takes a chain of 2.9 people in the network to connect one rapper to another. This compares with 2.5 people for the network of movie actors (popularized in the Kevin Bacon game ), 3.6 for company board directors, and 5.9 for collaborations between high-energy physicists.

老了

听说女人过了25就要开始长皱纹了。在25岁将近的时候我也有过紧迫感，置全了所剩无几的护肤品储备，还一丝不苟的执行了两周。可惜懒性更大，还没到生日，又重新过起清水抹脸就上床或出门的日子。惭愧，蓬头垢面出门完全不注重形象是老了的典型表现阿，不是25成熟的老，是...三个字如晴天霹雳砸在我脸上，“女博士”！事实上呢，我连女博士都还不是，还正处在挣扎着要成为女博士的路上，且距目标尚远。悲从中来啊。
不过话说回来，天天除了必须要去实验室，剩下的时间都赖在家里。也没有帅哥看，当然无所谓了。没有追求，该打，要振作！做面膜去！

跳舞的姐姐

从现在开始，我要努力发掘生活中一点一滴的乐趣。算不上一件需要严肃的事情，但是我对自己的光说光想不做已经忍无可忍了！
最羡慕跳舞的人，肢体的自由和思维的自由一样可望而不可及，越是四体不勤如我，越是向往。其实不论是由内而外还是由外而内，我相信有一个通道可以使自己达到身心合一的境界。要跳舞。
扯远了，缘起是在西雅图的剧社的姐姐的舞蹈日记。终于看到影子姐姐跳舞，高兴，而且以后也不用去西雅图就能看到。舞比文字更直接更单纯，我喜欢。