Delicious...

...And I'm the cook, a rare role for me :)

The Year of Dog

Zhao Benshan Replay

Download - Save Target As...

可能是唯一值得笑一下的。。。

春晚小品《说事儿》

表演者：赵本山、宋丹丹、崔永元

延续前几年小品《昨天、今天、明天》的内容。上过《实话实说》的白云(宋丹丹)和黑土(赵本山)再次做客小崔的节目，全面曝光了两人作为当地名人的“星”生活。

端着盒饭上来的赵本山，一上台就被宋丹丹数落：“吃，吃，你就知道吃，瞅你把整个演播大厅吃得全是韭菜味！”

这时候宋丹丹到处找崔永元，“小崔也太不拿腕儿当腕儿，怎么还不来呢。”而忙着埋头吃饭的赵本山始终以打嗝声回应。

宋丹丹：哎呀，那一年让咱俩说过的主持人现在都不咋的了。赵忠祥也不主持《动物世界》了，倪萍也改行演电影了，听说小崔也得抑郁病了。

赵本山：他那脸长得吧，过去那是“哭笑不得”，现在成了“紧急集合”……

崔永元：大叔大妈这次怎么来的北京？这次不是坐火车了吧？

宋丹丹：这回改乘专机了。

赵本山：啥玩意专机？实话告诉你吧，就是坐人家拉砖的拖拉机。

崔永元：大妈这件衣服不错，貂皮的吧？

宋丹丹：啥貂皮的？早过时了，我这是貂绒的，价值可不菲啊，4万多块。女人嘛，就要对自己下手狠一点。

赵本山：别听她得瑟了，她那件衣服40块钱一天租来的，我这才10块……

宋丹丹：上次他在老人院唱歌，刚唱了一首，七个老头晕了六个，剩下一个院长握着我的手说：别人唱歌要钱，他唱歌是要命。

赵本山：你呢？上精神病院演讲，一天一夜，效果那叫一个好啊，病人全出院了，可医生都疯了。

崔永元：大妈，你就说说你们俩回去以后的生活状况吧。

宋丹丹：无可奉告！这些事情，在我的新作品《月子2》中都有详细介绍。

An Insightful Essay - Recommendation

文章标题为《留学带回国什么? 海归派的羞耻与责任》。极度同意作者观点，特别是对国内“器物、制度、文化这三个层面”的畸形发展的认识和这句“海外经历最可贵的财富不是所谓前沿专业知识，而是独立人格、自由思想，以及因此体现的一系列价值观”。说到心坎上了，虽然我不是学人文艺术类的。特此把全文转贴过来了，与所有人共享。

商务周刊报道,陈丹青于80年代初曾被国中同仁认为是当时最具才智的青年油画家，后出国留学。在海外定居多年后回国。一年前辞去清华大学教授时再一次引起人们的广泛关注与尊敬。以下为他著文谈归国感想。

我出国前的经历是：插队落户8年，1978年考上中央美院油画系研究生，两年后毕业留校，工作一年。

这是一部分知青的典型经历。这些人日后分成两拨，一拨留在本土，另一拨出国。

像我这样出国又回国定居的，就被统称为海归。我们这一代海归相比民国时期的留学生以及五十年代留苏学生，有三个根本差异。

第一，他们主要是政府公派，我们则主要是自费出去的，特别是艺术类留学生，公费生极稀有。

第二，二三十年代的海归，出国前真的是学生；而我们这一代，像陈逸飞、徐冰、谷文达、蔡国强等人，都在国内拿了学位，有知名的作品。至少从国内的标准来看，已经是艺术家了。

第三，前面两代留学生差不多都回国来做事，特别是清末民初第一代海归，回国后为中国各领域的现代化奠定了基础；到我们这一代，大批留学生选择定居国外。

这些差异，是中国近百年大历史起伏变化的详细注脚。中国现代史，大致是海归派与本土派既合作又冲突的历史。清末民初，海归派不只引进西方的先进技术，更在文化、政治领域除旧布新。他们共同创建了共和，国父孙中山就是大海归。我看过一个数据，大概是北洋政府高官70%都是海归派。就文化的广义性而言，第一代海归派开创了中国的思想启蒙运动，启动了国家的转型，兴建了现代大学和现代教育。

我们与第一代海归的贡献无法相比。我们只是服务国家，谈不上创建。改革开放20多年，政府先是终止了闭关锁国，开放留学，后是起用陆续回来的海归，当然主要是理工、科技、管理、贸易、金融、外交这类专业的海归。这类海归在今天基本上是工具作用与工具人格。在人文艺术领域，海归派只是摆设。政府对艺术的理解，就是唱歌跳舞之类，而不是真正的思想、精神与价值观。因此，即便是人文艺术类的海归派，一旦进入体制也沦为工具，甚至自甘于工具。据我所知，个别体制外的海归真正带来了西方当代艺术的文化理念与创作活力，譬如北京的艾未未，还有几位策展人。

百年海归的命运，印证了百年中国的历史变迁。中国的现代化历程，是历史潮流与政治势力的反复较量，多半是本土派胜利，海归派挫败、调整、合作。现代化有三个层次：器物、制度、文化。所谓现代化，“文化”无疑是最本质、最深层的一环。当今国策基本学习西方，但器物、制度、文化这三个层面的彼此关系始终不平衡。

器物层面，经过鸦片战争以来150年的努力，一代代海归已经为国家达成了高度现代化：核武器、高科技、现代交通、现代资讯等等。毫无疑问，中国现在是最具潜力的发展中国家，崛起的速度与姿态空前未有，举世罕见。但国家目前堵在制度层面，包括体制内人士的全社会都认识到政治体制改革严重滞后于经济体制改革。而全面实现现代化，文化关即人的现代化是绕不过去的。今日的中国离民主思想、公民社会等还差得很远，由于“器物”层面的超速现代化，制度、文化的滞后日益凸显。

我认为这是非常畸形的状况：中国有着最现代化的种种器物与设施，富国强兵的理想实现了，但是人民没有灵魂，知识分子缺乏主见，社会失去了选择与判断的能力，只有消费意识和工具人格。社会实现了高层次的温饱，但这不是现代化。

由于制度滞后，以及普遍的急功近利和机会主义，人文艺术领域的海归派几乎没有影响，而据我所知，大部分非人文类专业的海归认同这种高级工具角色，并对现状非常满意，属于利益分享的群体。由于这类身份优越者的加入，当下畸形的文化现实更显得合理合法，文化跋涉的前景相当渺茫。

每想及此，我身为海归，感到羞耻。

在我看来，海外经历最可贵的财富不是所谓前沿专业知识，而是独立人格、自由思想，以及因此体现的一系列价值观。海归不应该仅仅带回各种专业知识或技能，现代价值观才能从深远处对中国发生影响。这种价值观，你不出国很难认识，很难成为自身的人格。新的价值观哪怕一时不能在中国奏效，先得在自己身上奏效，变成安身立命的一部分。

但我看不出海归派在整体上意识到这一点。反倒是本土的部分自由知识分子相当清醒。现在许多人都有短暂的出国经历，切身感受我们与外间深刻的冲突和反差，他们反而对国外的先进思想更敏感，并尽可能在改革现状中发出声音。我以为，清醒的本土人士比海归更值得尊重。

胡适70年前就写文章说留学是国耻，到今天，这种状况有多大改变？国内现在的学费，以家庭收入计算是全世界最昂贵学费的三倍。但是我们不提供人格教育、历史教育、理想教育，这种教育不如五四时期，甚至不如旧式教育，旧式以儒学为主，伦理道德第一。留学的悲剧还在于精英外流，回来的又和本土国情发生种种价值冲突，这种冲突十之有九以妥协或失败告终。

乐观地看，出国的人越多，海归也越多，量变到质变，或许会缓慢影响并推动制度和文化层面的转变吧。但这个过程十二分艰难，很难看清它的走向与结果。人会屈服于现实，但人还有感情。国外生涯会使你更爱国，并产生无比细腻的羞耻感。国内国外仍有太多差异，但海归者不应以自己的祖国为耻，而是在自身寻找羞耻感。 “知耻近乎勇”可能是太高的要求，但容我说句重话：我在不少海归那里看见的是取利之勇，而不是羞耻之心。

Raptors to Fire General Manager

Just received this message. Finally some reorganization of the team happened. In one of my previous blogs I doubted it would be Sam Mitchell but now it turns out to be the GM Rob Babcock. I agree to the point that the Vince Carter deal of last season proved not to be in Raps' favour at all. Arron & Eric Williams didn't play, even they were on the court, they didn't make any change to the team's ball games. And Mourning didn't even report to the team when the trade was initiated, which was believed by many connoisseurs as quite unprofessional and unparallel to his experience in his career as a senior pro. Even had he come, he would have contributed a lot on the defensive end using his amazing toughness and shot blocking abilities. So the transaction was actually to send away the grunting Vince for nothing, far from what the fans expected that at least a star player would be swapped in. Now look at the raptors team, besides the young man Chris Bosh very near to the all-star caliber, who else is able to make a real difference? I do hope that before the trade deadline in February, the new GM would make some serious trades involving some players that the Raptors just don't need, and hopefully get some valuable players coming in to the town who can bring chemistry and catalyst to boom the team's performance as well. Otherwise I might even refuse to watch any of Raptors' rest games of the season.

News Link

Google to Proceed With Censored Service

Another censorship issue of China comes out, shortly after Google was praised for not complying with a U.S. federal subpoena for its records, how ironic is that? Here is the podcast news text, take a quick look:

The Internet company Google has announced it will offer a censored version of its popular search engine for users in China.

The new service will restrict access to thousands of search terms and websites deemed unfavourable by the Chinese Government.

Company officials said they expect the website to be up and running within China in the next few months.

Websites outside China are often blocked by what is described as the 'great firewall' - a system which isolates Chinese users from the rest of the Internet.

In seeking to compete more aggressively in the world's second largest Internet market - where Google has lost ground to a more popular home-grown search company Baidu - the company is facing the toughest challenge yet to its corporate mantra of "Don't do evil".

In a compromise that trades off Google's desire to provide universal access to information in order to exist within local laws, Google will not offer its Gmail e-mail service, Web log publishing services or chat rooms - tools of self-expression that could be used for political or social protest.

Reference: Answers.com - List of words blocked by search engines in Mainland China.

Kobe's 81 Game On Google Video Store

The game has already been available on Google's video store at http://video.google.com/ for $3.95 :), and it seems that there are more content and categories added to the store today. This was even mentioned in today's NBA TV broadband and yesterday's email newsletter - NBA Daily Special Edition: Kobe Scores 81. I have to say it again: that's simply ludicrous!

Check out this article from Basketball Pro Steve Kerr: M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!

Mr. Bryant's Video-game-alike 81 Points

Even in simulated video games on XBOX360 a jerk gamer doesn't achieve that often. Mr. Kobe Bryant did it last night in real life.

If you report that number to me as a whole basketball team's score in one night I certainly would believe that, but if it is not, instead you tell me that figure was entirely from a single player in a single game, I definitely would doubt your sanity or whether some witches or clerics have cast the 8th-level raise-dead spell on Wilt Chamberlain to his full HP. That's was absolutely R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S!

I was not even aware of it last night when I was writing the last blog until I kept hearing from Chuck from Toronto Raptors in the background TV window delivering the words "unbelievable", "are you kidding me" and somesuch, then I switch to the window and found the headline on the top the TV screen read Kobe Bryant – 72 points, which I've never imagined to see on a basketball court in my life, super astonished. But that was not the end yet, he kept shooting, dunking, driving to the basket, literally at his own will in every raptor's face. The win/loss of the game didn't matter at all from that moment on, and what mattered was how much points the star could score. Last game the Lakers were with Raptors was in Air Canada Center, where I happened to be there and witnessed the season-worst performance from Kobe, but now look, what a miss and joke.

Take a serious look at these numbers:

Kobe Bryant – 81 Pts, 55 in the second half, 28-46 FG%, 7-13 3PT%, 18-20 FT%, 6 Reb, 3 Stl, 2 Ast, 1 Blk, 42 Min, Lakers 122 Raptors 104, the rest points from all his teammates 41. The 81 is ranking behind only Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point effort in 1962.

I don't know what's in Phil Jackson's skewed triangle strategy and what role Kobe was trying to play in this team. Was he trying to prove something to the world that he was very able to do something Michael Jordan couldn't or wouldn't do in his career, or was he trying to counter-strike those commentators such as Charles Barkley who well-meaningly accused him of too many shot attempts, that he was also able to help his team to a victory and probably more similar victories with his superb individual show and skill? From this night's action, I guess he does have the potential to achieve something MJ was not able to reach, and might have realized them when it's time for him to retire and look back his whole career. Or more likely, in most fans' eyes, the other way around: a mediocre star but not close to a super-star in NBA history with 3 consecutive championship rings around his fingers in early his career together with Shaquille O'Neal, several regular season scoring titles, many NBA 1st team members, plus some miscellaneous hard-to-break records.

Anyway, time will tell.

(The picture: Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers slamdunks the ball against the Toronto Raptors at the Staples Center in California. Bryant scored a stunning 81 points -- the second most in National Basketball Association history -- in the Lakers' 122-104 victory over Toronto. (AFP/Getty Images/Noah Graham))

Some Template Editing

After the media control stuff had been added to the sidebar on the right, I've been trying to edit the template code of this blog site a little bit, in a hope to probably get a refreshing face of it. But eventually I ended up with only some fonts and displaying pictures being replaced, simply because after scrutinizing the codes, I found out that the original template was very well written and designed, all the efforts trying to better it seem to turn out to be unprofessional. Moreover, were I to change the whole template to another one provided, I'd have to copy and edit the customized codes to the new one to fit them in, that's just too much trivia to do. Anyway, as this TicTac theme is still my favourite, why not keep it but bother changing it back and forth?

What I mean by saying the code is finely written is that, even to people like me who neither have the strong will to be a professional web designer nor have ever read through any single geeks' thick book of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, XML and so on in their life, the code is still decipherable and making sense, and most importantly, still be able to generate nice pages. At least when I was reading each piece of the codes of this template, they are quite clear to me and I knew what each line there is doing and what the parameters there are for. We then make a comparison by attempting to read some codes from Microsoft, their MSN web pages, a simple blank page created by MS Office tools, or whatever you think has something to do Microsoft, they are merely as messy as hell. This is a very ancient finding but it remains the same all the time. Unless you are the very hard-working engineer employee of Microsoft or have some other tool that can auto paragraph the codes to help you to understand them, the codes are the extraterrestrial symbols beyond mere mortals. Even each newsletter email sent by Microsoft seemingly has some hash values and lots of messy bits and pieces everywhere, on the place where the user name before the @microsoft.com is supposed to be a much shorter one even for security concerns, at the ending PGP signing part, etc. One thing I still don't understand is why they send me their public PGP blocks, is it to decipher the digital signed messages or just to show me the mess? But where are the encrypted messages out of the plain text they sent to me?

This might be even not worth mentioning, that is, as long as the codes are doing their jobs in your computer and result in the wanted effects, who cares about the codes are messy or what? However, quite obviously, this trifle which ostensibly has nothing to do with anything important would convey sub-consciousness to many users that the biggest company in the world doesn't actually care about many other things under his whilom and ongoing monopoly, since the day one they established that. And the ultimate company culture of theirs is exclusively to keep the monopoly and of course keep earning as much money as possible. This could also be one of the many reasons why many people are now particularly fond of Apple's Mac PCs, and some are still hoping someday the disconfirmed rumor about Google's hundred-buck PC with its own OS will come true, because they know, also as a matter of fact from today's perspectives, they will get much more user-friendly, well-organized, much cleaner and cuter products, and even with much superior customer services and interface.

It was running slowly on my laptop, which only has a 16MB ATI graphic card :(...In an undated handout image from Google.com, a still from the Google Earth mapping website is shown. Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have begun offering photographic search results so detailed a user can make out whether their neighbor's hedge was trimmed perfectly at the time the image was taken, or what car was parked in front of a favorite local restaurant. (AP Photo/Google.com)

Media Content Added

Finally, I decided to add more code to this page to further slow down your computer when you are browsing my blog :). They are the new "Music of The Week" and "Trailer of The Movie I recently Watched" sections on the right side. The music one is to stream/download some types of audio files (video files for MTV) without copyright protection, and the movie one is to recommend some movies that I've watched or any other fun short videos, probably some video podcasts or those from video.google.com. Enjoy!

(Please note that in order to run the media files without much interruption, I've replaced/added the parameter for hyper-links to target="_blank" so basically most links of this site will be opened in new windows.)

Rumors and NPV

CNN Breaking News: Al-Jazeera airs audiotaped message purportedly from Osama bin Laden warning that plans for attacks inside U.S. are under way. Ur...O...

And, a concept that always ends up vague in my mind, NPV. Do I now get bad memory or the calculation is itself so forgettable? Dunno...Let me copy it for the last time here from Wikipedia.

Net present value is a form of calculating discounted cash flow. It encompasses the process of calculating the discount of a series of amounts of cash at future dates, and summing them. It is a time consuming process, but not difficult at all.

For example: X corporation during capital budgeting is trying to decide whether or not to proceed with a new product line. The new product will have startup costs, operational costs, and incoming cash flows increasing over time.

X corporation's CFO has declared that all new projects must have an NPV of more than zero and an internal rate of return of more than the weighted average cost of capital. Which just means that the project must pay the company back within five years, and must return more than its normal short-term (money market) rate of return. The weighted average cost of capital is 10% per annum (year).

This project will have a cash outlay (up-front cost to purchase machinery and train employees) of $100,000, and the personnel and maintenance costs will be $5,000 per year. It will return nothing the first year, but is projected to earn $31,250 per year after that..

The NPV is calculated for each cash flow:
$-100,000 today = $-100,000 / 1.10^0 = $-100,000
$-5,000 today = $-5,000 / 1.10^0 = $-5,000
$-5,000 in 1 yr = $-5000 / 1.10^1 = $-4,545.45
$-5,000 in 2 yr = $-5000 / 1.10^2 = $-4,132.23
$-5,000 in 3 yr = $-5000 / 1.10^3 = $-3,756.57
$-5,000 in 4 yr = $-5000 / 1.10^4 = $-3,415.07

$31,250 in 2 yr = $31,250 / 1.10^1 = $28,409.09
$31,250 in 3 yr = $31,250 / 1.10^2 = $25,826.45
$31,250 in 4 yr = $31,250 / 1.10^3 = $23,478.59
$31,250 in 5 yr = $31,250 / 1.10^4 = $21,344.17

Then all of the discounted (current) values are added together to find the NPV:
-100,000.00
- 5,000.00
- 4,545.45
- 4,132.23
- 3,756.57
- 3,415.07

28,409.09
25,826.45
23,478.59
21,344.17
-----------
-21,791.02

Formula

Net Present Value can thus be calculated by the following formula, where t is the amount of time (usually in years) that cash has been invested in the project, N the total length of the project (in this case, five years), i the weighted average cost of capital and C the cash flow at that point in time.

If you add up the original cash flows without discounting them, you find that the money spent is entirely bought back. This particular example is why discounted cash flow methods of valuation are superior to ones not based on time value of money.

The above example is based on a constant rate being used for future interest rate predictions and works very well for small amounts of money or short time horizons. Any calculations which involve large amounts or protracted time spans will use a yield curve to give different rates for the various time points on the calculation. So, the rate for 1 year may be the 10% - the (money market) rate while the rate for 2 years will be 12% and that for 3 years 12.5%.

Some Photos of Sunday's CCTV Concert

Although there were some political conflicts outside the venue, I was just there to enjoy the music of those old songs, so please don't blame me for anything. And, before the Photocast feature might be coming out here on Blogger, let me just post photos on the Blog.