Love, Energy, Audacity and Proof.-S. Farber

2008-09-07

【Journal Review】The Wise Sherlock Holmes

I am a Holmes fan. I have taken some notes which are very insightful. Indeed, Holmesian.

You see, but you do not oberve.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.
The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.
By what it has accomplished while still teething, one may forecast what marvels it will do in the strength of its maturity.
Nobody could infer the mastermind in the top of that ediice from the edifice itself.
Work is the best antidote to sorrow.
I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are and to under-estimate oneself is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.
Quality is not negotiable.
Virtue is its own reward.
It is a capital mistake to thoerise in advance of the facts.
No chain is stronger than its weakest link.
No rose without a thorn.
Belief is not proof.
Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of business.
When you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward. That isn't going to help matters any.
Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.
If you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you would do nothing well without sincerely meaning it, and setting about it.

[Journal Review] The IF's

Journal Review(continued):
I found a poem by Joseph Rudyard Kipling very instructive. He was mentoring his young man.

If---
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourslef when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to heer the truth your've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for foos,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build'tm up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on oue turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them:"Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch:
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty second's worth of distance run-
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -which is more-you'll be a man-my son!
"Life is a tough art." After reading this poem, what else one can say? Kipling's concept of "being a man" is realy demanding. Men with those characteristics will find life rewarding in itself, whatever efforts and effects it presents.

[Journal Review]Life

Journal Review:
When handling my diaries, I found a lot of inspirational stuff collected earlier but not visited recently. Here, I copy a peom written by Mother Teresa.


Life
Life is challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is costly, care for it.
Life is wealty, keep it.
Life is mystery, know it.
Life is love, enjoy it.
Life is a promise, fulfil it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, overcome it.
Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
Mother Teresa was a great person. She showed to the world how a humble individual works incredible miracle. But Mother Teresa had her own problems. She loved life and served it well. But she was believed to be troubled spiritually.
Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness … If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul … How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, … What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true. (Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light)
Her lack of faith in God only attests to her faith in life itself. "Life is life, fight for it." Faith in God, according to those religious, has tremendous supportive power but the world is too real for one to rely on the ultimate surreal.
There was a parable saying that when one was was almost drowned in the flood he prayed and asked God to save him. A log floated by. He didn't grasped it. A boat floated by and people on it asked him to climb into it. He didn't comply. And when he finally drowned and stood before God, he accused that God hadn't come to save him. God smiled and said, "I sent a log and a boat to save you. But you didn't use them." This story is created by God's lamb not God himself/herself, I believe. The lecture delived here, possibly, is "God help those who help themselves." Really smart. But I see that the one in the flood tried to save himself by praying. He thought, innocently or stupidly, that God would personally come to save him and the critical situation was a perfect chance to test his belief in God. He was betrayed.
My point here is: "Life is life, fight for it." If you rely on others including God completely, you are dupe. When it comes death or life, it's up to you to choose. Never give up, because you are your own God. Mother Teresa didn't rely God to help the poverty-stricken. She relied on herself. She understood that only her own actions count.

2008-09-06

D[R]EAD

"When people avoid what they dread, they lose touch with the reality they shun," said Albert Bandura, the founder of Social Cognitive Theory.
And I take that means if one dreads and shuns away is as well dead.
In my dictionary, living entails meaning. His life's meaning defines the man. Do you want to survive? Do you desire self-realization? Do you see yourself valuable? Indeed, Life is about subsistance and substance.
Though fully aware of this fact, I have not succeeded in embodying the implications. I want a happy and fulfilling life. Vague? Yeah, but leave it that way for a moment, because the definite objective has kept changing.
I have dreads or fears. A lot. What I fear most is being trashed. Sometimes, to avoid that feeling, I found myself trashing others. I also fear boredom. Then I kick my own ass to excite the nerves. No more fears need to be mentioned here. And as one familiar with psycology, I know the world is full of men of my type though not so many men have been as successful in life as me. I have tried to conceal or kill those dreads and referred to a lot of experts on this matter, but the result is not satisfactory. I am still strangled by those fears.
I want to believe that I am the greatest miracle of the nature. But the world tells me I am just common because everyone is, equally and fairly, the greatest miracle of the nature. They told me to serve people and win honor. However I had been convinced that to serve is to admit that you are inferior and should be bullied and exploited. I actuall read a history-based book, arguing that those with power would always prevail. I had a hard time to accept this. I cannot deny that. As I was raised to believe that the good will win and the evil will fall, I found the base of my philosophy on life vanish away. The world is completely dark, here and there, now and then. Damn! How ignorant I was.
It all dawned on me one day: I chose to believe the convenient lies and shunned the countering facts. With so much self-contradictory and controversial information, I just shut down my power to analyse and accepted what the authorities upheld. I was willingly deceived because I didn't have the dare to accept the facts and fight for the truth. I lived a nonexistent life.
I have to open my eyes and accept the bloody reality.
Many people have the same experience. Some continued to be blind. Some determined to be true to themselves. And still others became the warriors to help the innocent.
I have not enough power and influence now. And my dreads are still in my way. Those who have tried to deceive me and those who are at a position to trash me have a stake in doing that any longer. Because I wake now. I dread and I step up. Dreads will be the dead and I will be the conqueror.

2008-09-04

Communicability Paradox

I have finished Gutt's disscussion about the application of Relevance Theory on translation studies.
Very interesting. Gutt promised that this theory does help translators to understand the gist of translation but it doesn't guarantee that a proper consideration of relevance theory in translating would produce the best translation. The reason:  Perfect communicability of the original text is dubious.  
The context is essential. And the translators' mastery of the original context, the original text, the target context (including the expectations of the target audience) and the target language determins the quality of the translation. No translator can be 100 percent sure about his own interpretation of the four aspects is true. So the quality of the translation produced is hard to assess.
Whether the translation is good enough  can be gauged against the relevance theory, and translation problems can be solved with the help of the relevance theory. The only problem is to judge how relevant. Relevant to what? Gutt suggests the translators should state the principles they follow in the preface of the translated version to inform the readers. In this way, the readers can know wheter the translators' relevance is the same as the readers' own expectations and contexts. 
Yet, there is still the problem of communicability. 

The addressee can neither decode nor deduce the communicator's communicative intention. The best they can do is construct an assumption on the basis of the evidence provided by the communicator's ostensive behaviour. For sucn an assumption, there may be confirmation but no proof.(Sperber and Wilson)

Gutt cites Sperper and Wilson to demonstrate that there must be  a gap between the addressee's perception of "the communicator's communicative intention" and the the communicator's real "communicative intention." In other words, the perfect communication can never be realized. Hence, in sight of the more obstacles it has to deal with, translation can never be so perfect or "original." 
I accept this. Disatisfaction abounds in translation. But you can "ever" improve. That is the beauty and appeal of translation. 
Because cognition has not been quantified scientifically. The relevance degree is unable to do that either, leaving a great challenge for the translators. Can they defend their translation solution by saying that "Considering its relevant degree, I chose this instead of that?" Yes, even though no one is convinced. After all, everyone's reality, or here everyone's context, is different, not to mention their individual perception.
Whatever. Here is a quotation Gutt used. I'd like to copy it here:

A statment may be pseudoscientific even if it is eminently 'plausible' and everybody believes in it, and it may be scientifically valuable even if it is unbelievable and nobody believes in it. (Imre Lakatos)

So far today. 

2008-09-03

Distracted. By What? So What?

I feel sorry for my effectiveness now, because I find I have constantly been dragged away from my priorities. My time was sliced to so many pieces that the whole-day productivity becomes small even though I feel I had done millions of things during the day. Fact: My time has been mismanaged and wasted.

I have the feeling of a curious student selecting books in the National Library. Millions of millions of books are there, and my eyes are atracted to a bunch of books, not just one book. I pick up this one, have a look and move to another and another and another. They are all fantastic and worth reading. A powerful desire rises in my heart to propel me to absorb the contents of the books all at once. I walk around, only finding myself which one should be read first. Pondering to let time fly away.

This can lead to disaster. If I continue to be charmed and read no books or read a little here, a little there, then the only result I can imagine is that I end up reading no complete book and always feel hungry.

I must concentrate on one book at a time and finish it before move to another book, another shelf or another room.

I have one story in my mind now. It's about how a prisoner became a chess master.

When a man was sent to prison, he had nothing to do to kill time. So he begged the ward officer to give him something to read. What he got was a chess book. At first, he didn't want to read it because he had no interest in that stuff. Days passed and the boredom was unbearable. He picked up the book and forced himself to read on. He learned the trick and became to love it. Then he played chess with himself, of course, to kill time. Years later, when he was set free. He played chess and won all the rivals. He became the master.

So, all I can do is to refrain myself from all the distractions and focus on the priorities, complete each item from NO. 1 to No. X. And I must do things that I will do all my life. Then I can be a master.
So, it's all about practice and heart.

History shall not live on in my future life

LIVE OUT YOUR IMAGINATION, NOT YOUR HISTORY.--STEPHEN COVEY.

I have learned that the past is a powerful determinant for one's future. And I have constantly been reminded to learn from the past. Those ideas are quite right, and I firmly believe in that. Mr. Covey, yet, throws a more inspiring light on my thought with his advice. Yes, history influences us, and even shapes us. But the future, in a proper sense, must be different from the history. We must grow out of our history to justify the meaning of our continuing life. If we change little, what's the use of a longer life.
Life is change. Only change can lend life the power to go on.
Besides the need to desert one's own past track, one also needs to desert the conventional tracks used too often by others. Otherwise, the uniqueness of one's existence is obviously unsubstantiated.
I will embrace change and challenge. They are the fuel for an upping life.
Finally, Live a life as Emerson adviced, "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

2008-08-29

Words Today

“Taking risks and failing is one of the most critical aspects of innovation.” --Judy Estrin

To fail is a must for success. This is the information I got. I fear failure, deeply. And I worked hard to shun away from failures. Now I begin to know another way to deal with failure: To fail in order to succeed. Failures benefit if I can learn from them.
But to analyze failures and take them candidly requires heart, the right emotion and attitude. To make failures work for me, I should never lost sight on my final goal: To succeed.

2008-08-27

Happy Birthday to My Girl

Today is my g's birthday. "Welcome to 23." (I am a little older than her.)
She is very adorable and extremely lovely. For two years, she has been with me. And I thank her for that, being an ideal partner. Though it is not a long time. In fact, I feel it is just a flash of a minute. But my memory is fully loaded with sweet moments with her.
The first ever kiss with a girl in my life. The first ever lasting feeling that love is there for me. The first ever realization that I have complete faith in another human being without any restriction. But there is also "down" moment, fortunately or unfortunately. Fighting because of misunderstanding is a heartfelt frustration. And our main problem is that why there should be so little time we can enjoy each other's company. As a matter of fact, we have spent a lot of time together. We meet each other every other evening and almost all the weekends. But the desire to have her at my side seems insatiable. We talk. We laugh. We tease. We hug. We do a whole lot of things together. Oh, we love a particular park where the scene is natural with water, flowers, trees, birds and bamboos. We usually go there, reading books or just talking leisurely. The place is quiet though many people are there. Maybe it's because the park is so large.
It seems that loving memory is everywhere. I am the happiest man in the world.
I hope she is the happiest woman ever. But I am not 100 percent sure. What I am sure is that I will help her realize her dream and make myself the man I want to be. I am still a young guy with a lot of potential. I have a lot to prove.
I love, but I haven't proved enough. I only need time.
I believe, like Mr. Farber, that love needs proof. I will provide the proof.

I am waiting for her now. She will be with me soon. We will celebrate her big day.
All for now.