Noewegian Wood

I re-read the Norwegian wood after the adolescence. I just can't remember where I bought this novel, until I saw the receipt - it is Montreal, and I just realise that I once promised myself to remember a place by a book, like The Boat (Stockholm),  Empire of Illusion (Hong Kong), though they just don't have any connection, and I somehow do not follow this rule in the following years (Because of Kindle, thanks). But it reminds me some trivial incidents in Montreal, the feeling of being solitude, with film cameras, the chilly temperature, paper map, Sunlights in square, and I just got in the book store without knowing what I want, and this book was at the corner side of shelves, with one of several authors I knew at that time. 

Reiko wrote to me several times after Naoko's death. 
The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place - a place where I lived with the dead. There Naoko lived, and I could speak with her and hold her in my arms. Death in that place was not a decisive elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death inside her. And to me she said,"Don't worry, it's only death . Don't let it bother you."

I felt no sadness in that strange place. Death was death, Naoko was Naoko. "What's the problem?" she asked me with a bashful smile. "I'm here, aren't I?" Her familiar little gestures soothed my heart and gave me healing. "If this is death," I thought to myself, "then death is not so bad." "It's true," said Nako, "death is nothing much. It's just death. Things are so easy for me here." Naoko spoke to me in the spaces between the crashing of the dark waves. 

Eventually, though, the tide would pull back, and I would be left on the beach alone. Powerless, I could go no where; sorrow it self would envelope me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was crying than that the tears were simply oozing out of me like perspiration. 

By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from Naoko's death was this: no truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it.

Stoner - John Williams

The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he had for an intense instant a vision of denseness into which he was compacted and from which he could not escape, and had no wish to escape.

already, he realised, he and his parents were becoming strangers; and he felt his love increased by its loss.

Master / Finch / Stoner

Masters - "Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the University? Mr. Stoner? Mr. Finch?"  "I'll bet you haven't. Stoner, here, I imagine, see it as a great repository, like a library or a whorehouse, where men come of their free will and select that which will complete them, where all work together like little bees in a common hive. The True, the Good, the Beautiful. They're just around the corner, in the next corridor; they're in the next book, the one you haven't read, or in the next stack, the one you haven't got to. But you'll get to it someday. And when you do - when you do - " "You'll protest you haven't thought of it. But you have, Beneath that bluff and hearty exterior there works a simple mind. To you, the institution is an instrument of good - to the world at large of course, and just incidentally to yourself. You see it as a kind of spiritual sulphur-and-molasses that you administer every fall to get the little bastards through another winter; and you're the kindly old doctor who benignly pats their heads and pockets their fees."

"We give out the reasons." "but that's just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn't give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive - because we have to. "

His dissertation

He wondered again at the essay, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marvelled at the bitterness, the terror, the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living. 

Edith

She was educated upon the premise that she would be protected from the gross events that life might thrust in her way, and upon the premise that she had no other duty than to be a graceful and accomplished accessory to that protection, since she belonged to a social and economic class to which protection was an almost sacred obligation.

Her moral training, both at the schools she attended and at home, was negative in nature, prohibitive in intent, and almost entirely sexual. The sexuality, however, was indirect and unacknowledged; therefore it suffused every other part of her education, which received most of its energy from that recessive and unspoken moral force. she learned that she would have duties toward her husband and family and that she must fulfil them. 

Edith parents

Anger was days of courteous silence, and love was a word of courteous endearment.

Middle marriage

And at times he felt that some closeness remained between them, a closeness which neither of them could afford to admit.

Solitude

He heard the silence of the winter night, and it seemed to him that he somehow felt the sounds that were absorbed by the delicate and intricately cellular being of the snow. Nothing moved upon the whiteness; it was a dead scene, which seemed to pull at him, to suck at his consciousness just as it pulled the sound from the air and buried it within a cold white softness. He felt himself pulled outward toward to whiteness, which spread as far as he could se, and which was a part of the darkness from which it glowed of the clear and cloudless sky without height or depth. 

Beyond the jagged outline of the apartment houses the town lights glowed upon a thin mist that hung in the air.

Love tears them apart

But from the moment he walked out of Gordon Finch's office, he knew, somewhere within the numbness that grew from a small centre of his being, that a part of his life was over, that a part of him was so near death that he could watch the approach almost with calm. He was vaguely conscious that he walked across the campus in the bright crisp heat of an early spring afternoon the dogwood trees along the sidewalks and in the front yards were in full bloom, and they trembled like soft clouds, translucent and tenuous, before his gaze; the sweet scent of dying lilac blossoms drenched the air.

Death

Edith- "Oh, Willy, You're all eaten up inside."

Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be.

It occurred to him that he ought to call Edith; and then he knew that he would not call her. The dying are selfish, he thought; they want their moments to themselves, like children.

The finders loosed, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of room. 

INK -145

記得當年花爛漫 - 施淑

在講完杜甫<樂遊園歌>感慨深長的結句：「此身飲罷無歸處，獨立蒼茫自詠詩」之後，葉老師突然從唐朝轉過身，在黑板上抄了一手沒有標題，沒有作者，只注明「近人作」的七言律詩：

慣于長夜過春時，挈婦將雛鬢有絲。夢裡依稀慈母淚，城頭變幻大王旗。
忍看朋輩成新鬼，怒向刀叢覓小詩。吟罷低眉無寫處，月光如水照緇衣。

這首讓我邊抄邊覺怪異的詩篇，慣於講詩時跑野馬的葉老師卻異乎尋常的未多作講解，只教我們注意詩中的意象，比較詩末結句與千年前杜甫的感懷。而這首讓我直覺不尋常的、謎樣的「近人作」的詩篇，直到後來我到加拿大讀書，才在圖書館裡赫然發現是魯迅紀念一九三〇年代被國民黨虐殺的左翼作家柔石的詩。

直到這之前，直到我終於了解葉老師為什麼會在一九六〇年代台灣的課堂上突然抄寫魯迅這首意象陰森。語感淒厲的詩之前，我都不知道經常披著她那身珠灰色的風衣，意態雍雅，神情自若地出現在校園和講台上的葉嘉瑩老師，竟然是一九五〇年代台灣白色恐怖的受害者。

-
翻譯的現代小說中，她最喜歡的是卡夫卡的<絕食的藝術家>，接著又說，她認為能跟這篇小說的痛苦絕望比並的是俄國作家安德烈夫的<紅笑>。這是我第一次聽到這個作家和這麼奇怪的篇名。幾年後，我從魯迅的文章讀到他把安德列夫、波特萊爾、王爾德放在一起，稱他們是「世紀末的果汁」，是五四後在黑暗中摸索的中國新文學作家的文學資源。

The Classification of Finite Simple Groups

Stephen D. Smith, Michael Aschbacher, Richard Lyons, and Ronald Solomon are the last four mathematicians who master in original proof of Enormous Theorem. This theory is about symmetry, representing the cores of forms, laws, and mathematical objects that remain unchanged under transformation. In the modern physics, the enormous theory plays a vital role - spanning classical Newtonian to string theory illustrating how its laws are intertwined with symmetry, that the Standard Model was finalised the confirmation of the existence of quarks, and and more recently the Higgs boson (2013).


* The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, as well as classifying all the subatomic particles known.
* 1972 Gorenstein proposes a 16-step program for classifying finite simple groups
* Emmy Noether determined the conserved quantities for every system of physical laws that possesses some continuous symmetry.

Reference:
1. The Classi cation of Finite Simple Groups
2. Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem
3. Perspectives on Higgs Physics

ねじ曲げられた桜―美意識と軍国主義

被扭曲的櫻花 美的意識與軍國主義

- 關於神風特攻隊-
一九四三年（昭和十八年）五月十__日，田邊在京都帝國大學面對爆滿的聽眾，發表了在今日被認為是惡名昭彰的演講，聽眾裡也有即「學徒出陣」遠赴前線的大學生。田邊讚揚「個人對國家的貢獻」，並且認為這才是改革社會的手段，但是對於在台下聆聽的同學而言，田邊所提倡的主張將會在現實中導致學生遠赴前線，並戰死沙場。

如果分析學生們所閱讀的作品，可以發現活躍於十八世紀後半到二十世紀初期之間的作家，大都曾經受到各種浪漫主義思想的影響（這類浪漫主義在十八世紀後半席捲了德國、法國、俄國）。在希特勒登上全力大位的前一年（一九三二），日本的浪漫派雜誌創刊，這本雜誌激進地將浪漫主義和國粹主義結合在一起。日本浪漫派的先驅者保田與重郎宣告了馬克思主義的終結，並宣揚浪漫主義即將帶來新的篇章。

與納粹政權下的德意志相同，日本也有部分知識份子和藝術家與國粹主義密不可分。今天我們有時會認為參與浪漫主義的運動者們有自己的「陰暗之處」，不過真正重要的是浪漫主義強調美的價值。這是因為年輕人將美的價值投射到自己的理想主義和愛國心之上，使自己的犧牲得以正當化，成為源於高尚動機、追求美好目標的行動者。

年輕人之中也有馬克斯主義者。這些馬克斯主義者不只針對已被物質主義會資本主義腐化的英國、美國，即使是對自己的國家，也抱持著為了破壞一切而獻身的覺悟。他們熱切盼望，在古老日本崩壞之後的灰燼中，會出現如鳳凰重生般的新日本。攻隊員之中，也有人認為烏托邦就存在於艾伯特。史懷哲的人道主義之中。

除此之外，還有虔誠的基督教徒。這些基督徒中，有人在最後一次出擊時代著聖經同行，也有人在最後一夜吟誦讚美詩歌 --- 雖然明知在基地嚴格檢閱制度之下是危險的行為。即使不是基督徒，也有人熱衷於閱讀基督教相關讀物，這是因為在現代日本，知識上最有影響力的領導人物是基督徒，不過也不只有這個原因。基督教是「死後」的宗教，人的精神和肉體在死後會變成怎樣，是基督教關注的焦點 ; 相反地，日本的宗教是「世俗的」宗教，是以現世的利益為中心，所以年輕人在探尋「犧牲有何意義」的過程中，選擇了靠向基督教。

如果認為他們的知識活動只是單純地信奉西方的高級文化（High Culture)，或是嘗試超越這些文化，那就大錯特錯了。在日本人用來吸收西洋文明的根基中，存在著中國的知識傳統，許多領域經年累月受到這方面的影響。六世紀傳入日本的儒家思想以新的形勢復興（特別是在一八八〇年代時)，並且提供了堅固的基礎，讓日本在此時形成的意識型態特別重視忠義和犧牲，因此，日本才具備了成為現代軍事民族國家的種種條件，而且，這個民族國家以國民的犧牲作為前提。在十七世紀傳入的朱子學 --- 尤其是陽明學 --- 特別重視個人的新的主體性，因此可以作為日本吸收康德個人主義時的精神基礎。

Think Fast Slow (edit)

Zajonc offered an eloquent summary of his program of research:

The consequences of repeated exposures benefit the organism in its relations to the immediate animate and inanimate environment. They allow the organism to distinguish objects and habitats that are safe from those that are not, and they are the most primitive basis of social attachments. Therefore, they form the basis for social organisation and cohesion - the basic sources of psychological and social stability. 

WYSIATI:
* Overconfidence: As the WYSIATI rule implies, neither the quantity nor the quality of the evidence counts for much in subjective confidence. The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgment is missing - what we see is all there is. Furthermore, our associative system tends to settle on a coherent pattern of activation and suppresses doubt and ambiguity.

*Framing effects: Different ways of presenting the same information often evoke different emotions. The statement that "the odds of survival one month after surgery are 90%" is more reassuring than the equivalent statement that "mortality within one month of surgery is 10%". Similarly, cold cuts described as "10% fat." The equivalence of the alternative formulations is transparent, but an individual normally sees only one formulation, and what she sees is all there is.

*Base-rate neglect: Recall Steve, the meek and tidy soul who is often believed to be a librarian, The personality description is salient and vivd, and although you surely know that there are more male farmers than male librarians, that statistical fact almost certainly did not come to your mind when you first considered the question. What you saw was all there was. 

Halo effect
Halo effect is a cognitive bias in which an observer's overall impression of a person, company, brand, or product influences the observer's feelings and thoughts about that entity's character or properties. It was named by psychologist Edward Thorndike in reference to a person being perceived as having a halo.

Should remember the days

Regular exercise is an excellent way to boost your mood, and also it triggers endorphins release.