Why the concept of ghosts...spirits...zombies...halloween?

There are two schools of "thinking" here. Some people want to believe there is some kind of life after death. But anyone who has stared at a corpse (at funerals...mortuaries...accidents) long enough realizes how impossible the whole scenario is - life is no longer physically possible. It would be completely scary if it jumped back to life.

1. We like to believe in some sort of Life after Death, or Life without Death.
2. But...But...Life after Death is absolutely revolting and physically impossible.
3. Life without Death is also physically impossible. (Mortality)
4. Death cannot happen without Life first.

1 and 2,3,4 are contradictory. We must therefore pick our sides if we are to become stable, and the real side if we are to live as a happy integral whole in the present reality.

To resolve this cognitive dissonance, we create a new part, associated with the feeling of fun (or spookiness, who is more like fun and fright combined). In this way, subconscious desires have another place to manifest themselves, free from the "bounds" of reason and rationality. Here, the desires can roam free, like people in white sheet costumes...

What about ghosts and spirits? And why is fear the predominant emotion culturally associated with them?

Personally, I see this as a fear of the self by a fractured mind. Many movies have used "evil spirits", unseen forces to symbolize internal fears, conflicts.
On a deeper level of the "collective unconscious", It's a natural phenomenon that has existed for as long as the human race. Psychological trauma causes some people to hallucinate, replaying traumatic events of the past. In doing so, they repeat the emotions they actually need to replace in order to move on. This inability to live in the present is clearly related to most ghost stories which deal with the past.

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”

And it can only grow deeper.

So stop "celebrating" Halloween and go do something really fun and worth your time... because you only have less than 29,220 Days*, and counting...

"Happy Halloween(2013)!"

 *Assuming you are 20 now and have a life expectancy of 100 years old.

Re: Suggestion: Beds in the library

After 3 years at HKUST, I can conclude 3 things.

1. Universities are concerned with shameless people with too much freedom... and illicit activities.
How do I know? I've been trying to get them to put couch beds in the library and they (librarians and fellow students) shot it down. I thought the students could be much smarter.

2. The library is obsessed with OPENESS. It's also another word for MINIMAL PRIVACY. Everything has to be glass and/or transparent.

3. The library also hates a mess. The HKUST library still looks like a refugee camp everytime I go back. If you add beds, it would look too disgraceful for any self-respecting nerd.

Speaking of nerds and the like, even the new ones have found cleaner rocks to hide under.

But I do like the pillow one.

"More than 90% of people in European cities breathe dangerous air"

If 90% of people in European cities breath dangerous air, where does that leave Chinese cities?

Hong Kong?

Gravity: A Space Odyssey?

While watching the movie, I became rather curious as to why there seemed to be no telling of Ryan's story. But then I realized it's all there.

The main character buries herself in her work (18 hour shifts), which puts them in greater immediate danger, but ultimately saves them from being shredded in the false safety of the space shuttle. I saw this to mean that while overwork is better than false comfort and can help someone move on in the short term, you can't do it forever because doing it any longer would kill not only you, but also everybody who cares about you.

Her fellow astronaut helps save her from the carnage, but is swept away. Even here, we see how she must save herself by unhooking from her work (symbolized by the satellite repairs).

Surviving the initial storm, she realizes it has taken a toll on her oxygen - the problem is killing her slowly. AND she's spinning. Which, (wait for it...) could be a metaphor for how people with psychological issues tumble in endless loops forever until they get help.

Thankfully, her man returns from the carnage. He has the stupidest idea of trying to retrieve the other dead astronaut (which definitely freaked out at least one of the audience, besides me) while she is running out of air. That looked like one unlucky headshot - "such a stupid way to die".

However, she is slowing them both down. The space tow scene could symbolize how her past baggage made it difficult for them both to move on.

Once outside the international space station, they must grab onto the station, because they used up all their fuel on the way there. Here, as they tumble out of control, she gets caught in the parachute cords. A possible symbolism here would be her joining the space program. It saves her from flying off into the emotional void, but it also looks like they broke up. Plus, he's out of gas.

We don't know explicitly what happens to her man. For all we know, he could have lived for a while and chose not to respond. What matters is he's gone now. The porthole shot reminds me of those old movies where a woman stares longingly into the distance.

In the space station, we see how she gets along. The fetal position shot signifies her psychological and technical development. She does some stupid things, like flying through the burning chamber into the wall with the fire extinguisher...and knocking herself out. (that was fun, we all LOLed. Also, the interior reminds me of Halo)

Wait, fire going out of control...sealing the bulkheads...knocking herself out trying to suppress the inferno? Could that be symbolic of her internal struggle? Or simultaneously, her burning desire to leave the training and actually go to space?

People have a tendency to compartmentalize the trauma they can't deal with. It's the natural way to move on and keep going.

So, she tries to escape on the soyuz pod. She gets it out, only to have it bungie right into the exploding space station. (sorry, woman driver jokes came to mind.) It is as if her lifeline is now preventing her from moving forwards.

Lucky for her, the debris field returns and she is now free, in space. The destruction of the ISS and the cutting of the lifeline could be symbolic of cutting the umbilical cord and literally blasting off.

It's exciting for a while, but now that she is freely floating in space, she must find the meaning of her existence. Find the reason to turn the air back on. Find the will to survive and get back to earth.

She attempts to contact others for help. But all she gets is trivia. Nobody understands. It's like something out of Lost in Translation, a kind of empty nihilism - and in space too.

And of course, there are her childhood problems associated with her dad expecting a son. Parental expectations can ruin childhoods. "There is no greater pain, than to remember happy times in misery." The inner child was left alone, wondering as she was forced to grow up. To me, the howling was the innocent child attempting to reconnect with the rest of her, just as dogs howl to signify their location.  

The howling scene probably ranks as one of the hardest scenes I've watched. At first, it was like - a grown woman pretending to be a dog! - how could that not be funny? But then, it started becoming sad. That was some brilliant emoting there.

But time is running out.

The answer comes in the form of a hypoxia-induced hallucination - "Landing is Lift-Off". In psychological terms, that means to resolve a past issue is to move forwards. And to resolve issues, one must first be grounded in reality and recognize its nature. Only then can one move on. (though I'm pretty sure for a second, we all wanted Clooney back! the audience almost get what they wanted.)

Cut to the capsule blasting itself free. That was really cool and realistic. She is now ready to face life and reality all over again. But to get to her new life, she must be prepared to enjoy the ride... in the burning TianJong space-station.

Back on Earth, she dumps the life-support, symbolized by the spacesuit, that allowed her to cope with the past. Then she breaks the surface into fresh air and swims out to shore and renewed life.

---

I walked out of the movie thinking it was actually slightly hostile towards space development. Now that I realize it could be a metaphor, I realize it is not space that is the problem, but escapism from one's past. 

A word about 2001: A Space Odyssey. What 2001 expresses philosophically for the history and future of mankind, Gravity does for the individual. The two films are complementary and though both are set in space, they are on different orbits. But they do intersect.

More on this later.

Writing this review has allowed me to see the movie through new eyes. I'm sure many more interpretations will surface as more people recall the movie.

I hope you have too.

Programming & MultiProgramming

Success in programming seems to depend on your ability to divide a task into many subtasks that can then be carried out consecutively.

Which makes it ironic that we now want multiprogramming - trying to squash consecutive tasks into being done together.

What if we could skip the task dividing, or do it some other way, so that multi-programming would naturally arise?

Just a thought.

The End of Privacy

Forenote:
The definition of private data here means non-confidential data while most people would still prefer no one snoop on, are generally available for those who actually look for them. Web history, customer sales records, IP Addresses, phone numbers. I wish to exclude passwords or encryption keys.
Privacy is "the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively".
The end of privacy means the reduced ability to keep things private.

Let's begin with a cliche.

The Chinese word for danger is 危机 (wei ji), literal meaning "danger and opportunity".

The end of privacy is exactly this. There is obviously the danger of all your information being collected stored by unscrupulous, creepy people with evil intentions. 

But there is also the explosion of opportunities. Since we now expect everything to be tagged and recorded anyway, why don't we instead open up and send out information that will influence others?

Beyond the fear and reality of being exploited, there is the desire to make a mark on the world. To have people know you exist; to understand you;. We are being connected at a faster pace than ever before in the history of human existence, and with it, the influence of the individual has also become greater than ever.

Not even the best privacy in the world is going to prevent immorality - they will merely find other ways to do so. Privacy is but one of many issues that naturally arise from immorality.

To fix the issue of immorality, one must find the truth through sound reasoning and solve the root of the problem.

But that's an essay for another day. Back to the End of Privacy.

Example 1. We know that sooner or later, we are going to have tags on almost everything electronic. It's just who does it, how, and when.

Why don't we open-source the applications and leverage the community to solve problems with it?

It could solve a lot of problems that have plagued all humans for all time...

End theft
If the tags are well-hidden, stealing would become increasingly difficult. Just like the lock has prevented many many robberies, identification can be a great thing to mark ownership. And while all security devices can be broken with tools like lockpicking, the point of security has always been to make theft harder than it would be to acquire the property honestly.

End forgetfulness
Relieving the cognitive load of having to remember lots of details. And actually, it would still be easier to remember where your keys were - it's just that you now have a choice.

Promote generosity and trust
Losing something and then having strangers return it to you usually increases community trust, at least temporarily. I know I certainly did when I lost my phone at a restaurant and it was brought to the counter for safekeeping. Now, I could have remotely wiped it, but I still wouldn't get my phone back. Knowing that "being a good citizen" now easier than ever to do increases cooperation, mutual respect and generosity greatly.

Example 2. Web tracking. This is a touchy one, because there are many rules (eg. AUPs), socialeconomic norms and political restrictions here.
Ideally, nobody knows who's been where or unless it is voluntarily disclosed. The reality is it's increasingly rare and tedious for people to hide all their web-traces.

Here, the opportunity is for greater openness, discussion and more sharing. Restrictions lead to people leading double lives (remember Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"?), which is really a shame, considering how it fosters dishonesty, miscommunication, COMEDY (don't forget comedy!), plus plenty of worry.

To conclude...

Where does Privacy really come from?

We all pick and choose our information. Even the most powerful computers in the world cannot process every single bit of data created at every single moment. It is from this that privacy naturally arises - because it is not economical, effective or useful to analyze or disclose each and all of it. Technological advancements allows more storage, analysis, disclosure, etc.