Gong Cheng's Blog

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation
在网上看到这则新闻，很有意思，有一种蛋白质，叫做orexin A, 可以消除睡意。和嗅觉受体一样，orexin A的受体也是GPCR. 查文献发现，这个蛋白还和动物抚育子女的行为有关。我觉得这些神经系统中的GPCR能做很多非常酷的事情。

我开始相信，世界真的有运气这个说法。今天去篮球场活动，半场去喝水。喝完水回来，碰见一个篮球滚过来，飞起一脚，篮球应声落入篮筐。在场的中国同学和国际友人都唏嘘不已，算不算为国争光呢？运气来了，真的是挡不住的。

昨晚去wyp同学家火锅加打牌，4副牌8个人。我连续两次都只摸到三张主，我感觉这个事件的几率很小。四副牌一共有54*4=216张牌，每人手中会拿(216-8)/8=26张牌。四副牌的主一共有15*4=60张主。那么我摸到只有三张主的几率是C(60,3)*C(216-60,26-3)/C(216,26)=2.6%. 平均摸四十把牌才会遇见一次的。连续两把都是烂牌简直太背了，所以，我认为牌没有洗开。回家以后，计算了一下摸到N张主的几率。
左图是摸到的主的张数的概率分布。右图是左图的积分。
可见，大部分时候，都会摸到5-9张主，如果少于5张，算比较背，如果多于10张，是走了运。最容易摸到7张主。我觉得这个概率分布不仅是有趣的，而且富有实用价值。如果摸到11张主，就要坚持以吊主为核心的打法。如果摸到4张主，就应该趁早以副牌为核心的打法，在对方开始吊主之前把比较大副牌走完，拿走副牌的分数，把损失降低到最小。

There is a joke about the benefits of learning foreign language.
Two mice sat in their hole watching a cat wandering outside. "I know how to make Cat go away," said the first mouse. "How?" the second mouse asked in surprise.

"Watch! Bow, wow!!!" barked the first mouse. Peeking through their hole in the wall, they saw cat running away in fear.
"Ah, see the benefit of knowing another language!"

In reality, learning a new language requires a lot of efforts. New grammers, thousands of words, thousands of pages of book to read. Thousands of hours audio tape to listen to. Using the similar amount of time, it is possible to go a lot of parties, learn many new skills and earn a lot more money. Why bother to learn a language?

My first reason for this question is mind expansion. Each language has its limitation of describing complicated issues, for example, there are several words you just cannot find their counterparts in Chinese. One is "articulate", the skill of commanding language to state the circumstance clearly is not valued as much as the skill to compose delicated sentences. Many famous Chinese literature works are hard to be understood. Another example is "insidious", the way of saying something causing indirect harmful feelings. This may be an unique feature of how people from western culture sense each other’s emotion. Maybe Chinese will either tolerate  those vicious words or go outrages, rather than rationalize those words as insidious. As you can see, multilingual thinkers  have more building blocks in the mind to understand, organize and articulate the circumstance than single language speaker.

The second benefit of learning a foreign language is to obtain new knowledge beyond the knowledge base of  people you know. Everyone has limitations  about what he/she knows and can know in his/her life. Talking with people is a great way of learning however it is not realistic to learn everything necessary from people around you. Reading is one of the best complementary to listening, when you want to study a new subject that nobody you know in person has any knowledge about, a google search and/or pick a book from the library are the only choices. In this situation, if you understand two languages instead of one, your choices are doubled.

For these two reasons, I feel lucky that I know both Chinese and English. The two most frequently used language in the world. However, I do feel learning language takes too long. I hope there is a pill that people can swallow to finish up learning a new language. The languages on my want-to-learn list are  Spanish, German, Japanese and Hebrew. 

“爸” 坐进车里驾驶员的位置， 林夕和特别附属坐后面。  小张坐在副驾驶的位置。
“爸“小心翼翼的开动车，做出很专业的样子。左转开出小区。 “爸”开了一会儿，觉得车子还不错，转上一条大路，打算开上高速试试。
小张心理惴惴不安，很担心阿黄的冷却液漏光了，引擎会冒烟。一边却故作镇定的介绍车子。
“这是一辆好车，有很多功能。我是第二任车主，我要离开这里回中国，所以车子卖的便宜。“
一边说着，小张打开月亮窗的功能.  来回调节窗户的开关，林夕和特别附属都觉得不错。“爸“在专心开车，不敢看。
到了一个下坡，“爸"故意把速度放快一点,随后乘速度快的时候,松开油门, 看后面没人,用力踩了一下闸. 觉得闸是有效的,很专业的点了点头.

I barely try out many gadgets these days for two reasons. One is the amount of new software/hardware grows exponentially, it is hard to justify which one I should try. The second reason is that I don’t have much time to do that either. Following the breakdown of my laptop, I ordered a new Ubuntu Linux DVD for it because it is free anyway and it saves my downloading time.

Surprisingly, this Ubuntu is very user friendly, starting from the installation. There is almost no efforts necessary to customize the Linux before you are capable of doing most of the tasks. Another surprise is that open office is quite stable. It doesn’t leak memory and it can even understand the tracking changes from Microsoft Word. One of the nicest feature of Ubuntu is the software installation process. Almost all the packages can be installed using a simple apt-get command inherited from debian. This process automatically smoothed many package dependency frustrations for customs.

I highly recommend Ubuntu Linux to you if you are undecided yet.

感觉做了很多事情，却也不知道究竟做了什么，一下子四天就过去了。

今天下午，我在办公室边上的蓝月亮买汉堡充饥。有个人端了个摄像机把我定的汉堡的制作过程从头拍到尾。
原来亚马逊要把总部搬到我办公室边上了，电视台要采访群众做新闻，包括汉堡店的人。我订的那个汉堡就成了道具。电视台的美女主持人本来要说要拍完了汉堡店再来采访作为上班族的我，但是我正饿得慌，觉得饿着肚子排队等被采访不值得，闪了。如果你今晚看电视king 5, 上面有个MM在做汉堡，那个汉堡就是我的，现在正在我肚子里。

上周六参加了一次聚餐活动，吃完晚饭，去了ZY家继续活动。他们打牌，我和某些人打了著名的黑楼三游戏。与其说是打黑楼，还不如说是被打黑楼。基本上，我既没有招架之功，也没有还手之力。总的来说，打黑楼的技术分成两类，一是需要能够判断出敌人的方位，二是在一对一的情况下，能够搞定对方而不是被对方搞定。我两方面都不明白该怎么做，所以就只能是被打。

查网络大百科发现，现在南京已经有8百万人口了。再查查，发现以色列全国的犹太人才5百万，全美国的犹太人也是5百万。如果假设中国人的基因不必犹太人差的话，可见，大部分中国人的潜力由于这样那样的原因，都没有发挥出来。