Hanrizon

Obama's Health Care Plan Passes House

2009-11-08T18:55:00.001+08:00

Read it on N.Y. Times. Universal health care is a moral issue - more than an economic one. However substantial the cost may be, as long as the affordability is in place, there is not a reason to reject such a plan. Thank Nelson for the pointer.

Google Dictionary is Collins Cobuild

2009-11-07T14:37:00.004+08:00

By yesterday, I already noticed that the wording and style of the Google Dictionary explanations looked familiar. A thought that it was derived from the Collins Cobuild Dictionary quickly passed through my mind. Today, I was quite tempted to check it, and it turned out that I was right.

Google Dictionary

2009-11-06T21:39:00.003+08:00

You probably already know the define: operator of Google for a long time, which serves as a quasi- online dictionary. However, do you realize that Google have a real dictionary service (which is, as you guessed it, free!)? Like the operator mentioned, the Google Dictionary provides you with definitions of a word. However, it is much more formatted than that of the define: operator, as well as enriched with example sentences; more importantly, it supports more than a dozen languages, and can help users translate around! You may also "star"/bookmark a word and review later. So besides dictionary.com and W-M (or any other such services you are accustomed to), you now have another choice.

P.S. I've enabled the Followers gadget of this blog. You can now openly (or secretly, if you wish) follow Hanrizon, if you have a Google account. The gadget is found at the bottom of the sidebar.

Statisticians who know economics

2009-11-01T20:55:00.002+08:00

When I was reading the text of my statistics course, I came across a sentence that reads:

This relationship between reliability and sample size indicates that there are, to use a phrase from economics, diminishing returns to increasing the size of a sample. It seldom pays to take samples that are massively large.

I am not sure whether it was Freund or Perles who came up with this. I guess one of them probably had taken a course in economics before; or he had done research in economics, which is vastly probable - at least there is a sub-discipline in economics called Bayesian.

Another More Exciting Trailer for EVA 2.0

2009-10-24T19:04:00.006+08:00

Why do we still need to wait until December to watch it here in Hong Kong?
Video source.

p-value

2009-10-24T09:48:00.000+08:00

I have been wondering where dose the name of p-value (in statistics) come from. Is "p" from a name of a statistician? Or is it simply short for "probability"? I googled it but found no satisfactory result. Any suggestions?

Google Maps Street View Beyond the Streets

2009-10-16T21:14:00.001+08:00

Google Blog: Dan Ratner:

With Street View on Google Maps, you can take a virtual drive over the Golden Gate Bridge or see the bustle of Times Square from the comfort of your own home. But some of the country's most interesting and fun places aren't accessible with our Street View car. What if you want to tour the campuses of prospective universities, scout a new running trial, or plan the most efficient route to your favorite roller coasters in a theme park?

I've been thinking if I am one day accepted to an institution outside China, how troublesome and costly would it be for me to pay a visit to the campuses to make the choice? Google gave me an answer.

The Future of Hummer

2009-10-10T08:08:00.000+08:00

GM agrees Chinese sale of Hummer. In the future, Hummers will be manufactured by a company based in Sichuan Province.

Obama Wins Nobel

2009-10-09T19:16:00.000+08:00

I've just heard that Barrack Obama has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Though a proponent of Obama myself, this breaking news really caught me unprepared.

Beijingese Moon Cake

2009-10-06T16:25:00.003+08:00

The story of the original moon cake that was the tradition in Beijing during Mid-Autumn Festivals (Chinese).

The Most Difficult Language on Earth

2009-10-02T22:31:00.000+08:00

On Wikipedia there is a page on the expression "Greek to me", referring to an incomprehensible language to the speaker of another language. Language Log made a tree graph of these relative relationships. By far Chinese seems to be quite hard, isn't it. Thank est's blog for the pointer. Image.

A Japanese Lady

2009-09-30T07:32:00.000+08:00

A work of my friend Kaye.

Cowen on Superfreakonomics

2009-09-29T21:06:00.000+08:00

Marginal Revolution:

This book is recognizably in the style of Freakonomics, a book I suspect you already have made up your mind about. I will say only that SuperFreakonomics is a more than worthy sequel, a super sequel you might say. If you're a fan of Freakonomics, you'll like this too. This really is the fall season of big, big books.

Life and Virginity

2009-09-29T17:27:00.000+08:00

BBC: Egypt anger over virginity faking:

A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.

Compensating people's lives for virginity? How unbelievable this is.

New Proof (wonkish)

2009-09-26T22:08:00.004+08:00

There is a lemma proposition for the Bolzano-Weierstrass Theorem, namely, a sequence converges to a number if and only if any and every subsequence of that sequence also converges to the same number (technically a trimmed-down version of this proposition, i.e. only the necessary condition part, also suffices to prove the B-W Theorem). Traditionally, this proposition, or theorem by nature, can be possibly proved with a deduction occupying one page or so. However, I discovered today that my schoolmate Ling Hao from the Math Department has a better solution to verify the sufficient condition part (from convergence of subsequences to convergence of the original sequence). He simply picks the original sequence as the selected "any" subsequence and it is obvious that this subsequence has a limit, and consequently the original sequence, which is exactly the same as the subsequence, also converges to the same limit. Proof complete. I advised he write an academic paper for this.

New Computers

2009-09-26T20:12:00.000+08:00

I just realized the true reason why the printing service in the residence computer room is faster than before. It is not that the printer server has advanced its memory, but the whole set of computers has been replaced with new ones (though the operation system stuck with Windows XP).

China's Century?

2009-09-26T15:18:00.001+08:00

In per capita terms, China is still a poor poor country; and it still faces numerous problems. Read more from FT.com.

Eliminating Pirated Online Western Films

2009-09-25T08:31:00.000+08:00

Economist.com: Public morals and private property:

In mid-September the China Internet Video Anti-Piracy Alliance, a group comprising both big Chinese internet portals and foreign rights-owners, including the Motion Picture Association of America, announced a broad legal attack. It said that it had begun collecting evidence against more than 1,000 suspected violators of intellectual property and would start filing lawsuits, with the first target being 503 videos found on Youku, an increasingly popular website, that the alliance claims are pirated...

Websites that pay for content are understandably upset about losing a war to rivals that do not always do so. If Western entertainment were no longer widely available, they might regain the initiative. Bereft Chinese consumers, in turn, might help to achieve what foreign pressure could not, by persuading their government to allow more legitimate imports.

It will be a big step in protecting intellectual property in China if to succeed; but I do not think "bereft Chinese consumers" will persuade the government to allow imports. Such persuasion does not make sense in China.

Nobel Predictions

2009-09-25T08:20:00.000+08:00

From Thomson Reuters. Pointed by Greg Mankiw.

Flea Market in BU

2009-09-24T20:10:00.000+08:00

Hi I'm thinking about creating a Google Group where every BU student can freely visit and view and post to buy or sell stuff. One thing nice about Google Groups is that it allows everyone to participate and it facilitates the common need to browse and even search through all the posted information in the group. Also you can choose to subscribe to (bundled) updates about any new information posted in this group. I want your opinion before actually carrying it out. Thank you for your time.

If you have a minute, please help me fill out a questionnaire here.

Last Words from a Prisoner to Be Executed

2009-09-22T15:54:00.002+08:00

From NY Times.

60-Year Celebration

2009-09-22T15:19:00.000+08:00

BBC: Security tight for Chinese parade:

Senior Chinese leader Zhou Yongkang said this was a "people's war" that would ensure the celebrations on National Day go off without a hitch.

War against whom? We love peace.

What the Age of Information Has Brought Us

2009-09-21T14:18:00.002+08:00

Days ago, when the new Marie Digby album was released worldwide, I wrote on Twitter:

Marie Digby's new album is out today. Still thinking about whether buy one.

8:39 PM Sep 14th from HelloTxt

The next day, I received this retweet:

mariedigby@hanrizon i was pondering the same thing ;) ... actually i think i am going to get it, i hear it's pretty okay.. lol

1:47 PM Sep 15th from web in reply to hanrizon

FYI, I've checked that this author is indeed Marie Digby herself.

How to Free Your Twitter Feed

2009-09-20T13:32:00.001+08:00

Twitter has installed a mandatory user/password verification in every user's homepage feed a few months ago, making it incompatible with Google Reader. I understand that there are other ways to free this. One of them from the Google search result, says that there is a website dedicated to reburn your feed to be an unsecured one if you can provide your user name and password to them. Well personally I am doubtful about the credibility of that website, as it seems to be a small company. So now I've found another method to free your feed: using Feed Burner (now a service from Google). Insert "username:password@" after the "http://" and before anything else in your feed URL and burn it with Feed Burner. It's quite simple. As Google is (presumed to be) a trustworthy company (at least it's big and care about social influence), there should be less worry about the safety of your Twitter account.

No Room for Heterodox Economics

2009-09-20T08:45:00.000+08:00

Notre Dame Plans to Dissolve the 'Heterodox' Side of Its Split Economics Department.

Does merely the inability to produce large number of top PhD students mean a failure for a university department? Does the fact that nowadays the field of economics is overwhelmed by neoclassicism and econometrics mean that these are the only and correct ways to do economics? Having just gone through an economic crisis that is rarely seen throughout decades, why cannot people demonstrate some openness toward a wider array of methods to study economics? A university can teach both traditional and modern medicine, then why not both mainstream and heterodox economics?