When I was a child, I was attracted by the world beyond our planet. I did not have the opportunity to see a really starry night, for the I did not often live in the country side. But I could still imagine. I bought I lot of books which introduced efforts humans had made on exploring the outer world. I also watch cartoons related to this topic. My yearning for the vast world first led me to science.

Years have passed. Now I’ve been concentrating on mathematics. But the deep spaces still play an important role in my life. I am not fond of money, honor, reputation or something else, for I believe that there is something far greater. Money, honor or reputation only works in human society and the duplicity, deception and disguise intended for these things are simply nothing but abjection in front of the universe.

But I am somewhat worried. In the early period of human civilization, men used to respect the earth. But as they became stronger, they no more respect it. If one day men knows much enough about the universe, will my faith become absurd?

I might not be able to live long enough to see the answer. Even if that happens, I can still consider it holy regardless of the society. But anyway, I hope to find the answer.

By the way, I have just found Microsoft OneNote very useful.

2010-09-23

When I say «apple» ,an apple will appear in your mind. You can understand it. People may explain it as some correspondence between images and specific signs. And the signs themselves are images so actually we associate the images with sounds and then sounds with signs. Humans have evolved so much that today they can understand written language in silence, not needing to read them out.

The understand of concrete things may be as easy as the above. But what about that of abstract things, concepts and statements? That should be hard to explain because explanation itself is an abstract statement, which I must use my understanding system of abstract things to understand.

I used to guess, the approach to solve this problem is up to science. That is, to study the brain. But there is still a critical obstacle that we still have to think using our brain.

Is that the unreachable acme of human cognition? Do humans have to continue evolving to answer it? Or never?

2010-09-04

Human and Natural Disasters

Human activities are largely involved in the formation of some natural disasters, while not involved in the formation of some others.

As we all know, it is obvious that humans have nothing to do with the formation of volcano eruptions or earthquakes. But some other disasters, for instance, sandstorms, are related to human activities. Overgrazing and overcutting ruin vegetation, in turn causing desertification. When sands meet a windstorm, a sandstorm comes into being. Another instance is acid rain. Waste gas produced in industry activities, mostly in thermal powering, goes up to the clouds. It then blends with the water vapors. As a result, the rain from the clouds becomes acid, doing a lot of harm to humans, animals, plants, etc.

Therefore, we humans should actively take action to prevent the disasters which are mainly caused by us from happening. Education should be implemented to let more people realize the harm they are doing to the nature. Laws should be made and harsh supervision should be conducted to ensure no overgrazing or overcutting. Technologies that enable us to gain power while doing no harm to nature, such as transforming solar energy to electricity, should also be developed with exertion.

We should also actively deal with the disasters of which the formation does not involve human activities. Education is also important here. Comparing the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, why did a much heavier earthquake cause a much slighter consequence in death numbers? One of the factors is people in Chile are well educated about how to survive earthquakes, while people in Haiti are not. Technologies are important as well. With better technology, we can develop more effective methods of surviving, forecasting and maybe even controlling the disasters.

To sum up, humans are responsible for a certain portion of natural disasters. We should positively deal with natural disasters in order to survive. Actions should be taken both as not to cause disasters ourselves and to reduce damage disasters can deal.

2010-08-27