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book review Read a review on the last days of Sigmund Freud, its sideline goes like: danger surrounded Freud in Nazi-occupied Austria, why did it take him so long to see it? The book by Andrew Nagorski, Saving Freud: the rescuers who brough him to freedom, offered to tackle this question in 1938. Whatever controversy brought by psychoanalysis, Freud knew the dark undercurrent of human behavior and he was critical of the false security offered by our wishful illusions. As an expert of human nature, he was unable to think clearly when his coutry became so unrecognizable around him. These cognition bias are built-in. What is our chance if we are in the similar situation? ...

the value of science In 1955 Richard Feynman (1918-1988) had one essay, The Value of Science, published in Volume XIX of Engineering and Science. My favorite quote from Feynman is as follows: ** Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. ** Carl Sagan in his book, The demon-haunted world, said something similar: ...

words and the world The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words. – William Gass (1924-2017) 语言一如迷雾又如谜语，是一面镜子照见了当下，是一张照片抓住了某时某地某事。语言能够做到的不过是记录偌大世界一个人的一个瞬间，其他的一切不过是我们的想象而已。语言是虚构宇宙的一切。

编程与写作 写东西和编程序有些类似之处。当学习语言的时候，许多与之相关的知识也需要学。在没有自己的想法之前，写东西其实就是模仿他人的东西，练习再练习。 embrace despair the discrepancy between the world we live in and the world we might like to live in，the discrepancy between the world we live in and the world perceived in our mind 梦想与现实之间的差异（人类现状两个极端的差异） 感知与世界之间的差异（有限与无限之间） the most difficult thing is to love the world with all the evil and suffering in it 人生如深渊，唯一的路途就是不断地坠落。而如果世界不止是春暖花开，还有凛冽寒冬，你还会热爱这个世界？ 人哪有好坏，世界哪有黑白，而人生不过是自娱自乐，制造工具制造衣食，进而制造其他的一切，从随机和不确定中制造秩序、好坏、黑白、贫富和等级。 艺术 Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. – Picasso ...

如果能记下过去，未来就能有个可靠的参考，因为人的记忆实在是靠不住的。一个人会忘记，一个人会修改记忆，一个人还会添加记忆。这和一个社会会不断地修改历史、不断地重新解释历史、不断地创造历史其实是一回事。无论如何，也要让自己现在过得舒服点容易点。 不过语言自身也是一个不断更新的媒体，新的字词和概念不断添加进来，旧的字词不断获得新的意思。能在语言的波涛中留下来的，一定是个独立的世界，自给自足，浑然一体。

人生苦短不在于时间，而是快乐总是短暂。从错误推演正确，从无知而得经历，从短暂而知无常，短是个问题而时间不是。

Life The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security; it’s the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different. -~ Ernst Bloch Time Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm, and vivid candles. Days gone by fall behind us, a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles; the nearest are smoking still, cold, melted, and bent. – C. P. Cavafy ...

Folly’s Antidote But all historians are prisoners of their own experience. We bring to history the preconceptions of our personalities and of our age. We cannot seize on ultimate and absolute truths. So the historian is committed to a doomed enterprise – the quest for an unattainable objectivity. Conceptions of the past are far from stable. They are perennially revised by the urgencies of the present. When new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s soptlight shifts, probing at last into the darkness, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. New voices ring out of the historical dark and demand to be heard. ...

Our culture is centered around success in almost any area - work, art, marriage and so on. It’s committed to resisting the idea that all of this involves way more luck and uncertainty than we’d like to admit. For example, if you die climbing everyone says you are a foolhardy idiot. But if you just don’t die - and everyone who climbs long enough knows part of that is luck - everyone says you are a hero and an icon. ...

8月12日英国作家拉史迪在纽约的一个演讲上遇袭，随即他的小说《撒旦诗篇》冲上畅销书榜。他的书于1988年9月出版，在伊斯兰国家引发大论战，许多穆斯林指责该书亵渎了先知穆罕默德。次年2月伊朗精神领袖霍梅尼下了追杀令。拉史迪接受英国警方保护，躲躲藏藏多年。现在，悬赏追杀拉史迪的奖金已经高达3百万美元。 科学的进步并没有解决人类社会的诸多问题，宗教的受众依然颇多。就如弗洛伊德说的，宗教不过是大众的幻觉。许多人步调一致，在重塑现实的幻觉中，以为自己获得了幸福，获得了免于苦难的庇护。当然，分享这一切的人们自己并不会承认这仅是幻觉。 如果说《撒旦诗篇》挑战了许多人生而有之的身份认同，挑战了宗教信仰的正统，同时也挑战了国家和文化的正统。这些年来，民粹主义在全球沉渣泛起。而在这个多变的世界上，怎样才算是正统？当一个社会的包容空间不断缩小，当一个社会推崇通过暴力而非理性来解决问，文化和国家这样的认同是否也在步入宗教的后尘，成为大众的幻觉？ PS. The Satanic Verses incident is known as the Story of the Cranes in the Islamic tradition. It narrates the occasion when the Prophet Muhammad (died 632 CE) mistook the whispers of Satan for divine revelation. Of course, all Muslim group and sects today vehemently reject the Satanic Verses incident on both theological and historical grounds.