Wiem, że jesteś tam

每個人都有屬於自己的一片森林，也許我們從來不曾去過，但它一直在那裡，總會在那裡，迷失的人迷失了，相逢的人會再相逢，即使是你最心愛的人，心中都有一片你無法到達的森林......

村上春樹．挪威的森林

Wiem, że jesteś tam 
(I know you are there)

Wiem, że jesteś sam
(I know that you are alone)
Wiem, że masz na głowie tyle ważnych spraw
(I know that you have on your head so many important issues)
Nie pamiętasz już co znaczy dobry sen
(Do you remember what it means to have a good night's sleep)
Nie masz czasu na niepewność ani lęk
(Even do not have time for uncertainty or fear)
Wiem, że jesteś sam
(I know that you are alone)

Nic nie musisz mówić
(You have nothing to say)
Wiem, że jesteś sam
(I know that you are alone)
Pewnie teraz nie najlepszy na to czas
(This is probably not the best time for it)
Ale dzisiaj potrzebuje twoich rad
(But today, I need your advice)

Dzisiaj proszę cie
Today I ask you
ten jeden raz zatrzymaj się
(Just for this one time)
ten jeden raz stań tuż obok mnie
(Just for this one time to stand by my side)
dziś czuje, że brak mi sił
(Today I feel that I lack of strength)
ten jeden raz bądź blisko mnie
(Just this one time to be close to me)
poczuć mi daj, że to wszystko ma sens
(let me feel that it all makes sense)
dziś wiem, że brak mi sił
(Today I know that I lack of strength)

Wiem, że jesteś tam
(I know you are there)
Nie widuję cię, lecz wiem, że jesteś tam
(I do not see you, but I know you are there)
Cały dzień i noc ktoś puka do twych drzwi
(All day and night, someone knocks on your door)
Każdy chciałby wiedzieć jak ma dalej żyć.
(Everyone wants to know how to go on living.)
Wiem, że jesteś tam
(I know you are there)
Dla każdego zawsze musisz znaleźć czas
(For you always have to find time)
I choć nigdy o nic nie prosiłam cię
(And though I have never asked for anything you do not have)
Dzisiaj proszę bez kolejki przyjmij mnie
(Today, please take me along without making me stay in queue)

Dzisiaj proszę cie
(Today I ask you)
ten jeden raz zatrzymaj się
(Just this one time)
ten jeden raz stań tuż obok mnie
(Just this one time to stand by my side)
dziś czuje, że brak mi sił
(Today I feel that I lack of strength)
ten jeden raz bądź blisko mnie
(Just this one time to be close to me)
poczuć mi daj, że to wszystko ma sens
(Let me feel that it all makes sense)
Dziś wiem, że brak mi sił
(Now I know that I lack of of strength)

Ten jeden raz
(Just this one time)
Ten jeden raz
(Just this one time)
Dziś czuję, że brak mi sił
(Today, I feel that I lack of strength)

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The Watchmaker Choplogic

The watchmaker analogy consists of the comparison of some natural phenomenon to a watch.  Typically, the analogy is presented as a prelude to the teleological argument and improbability.  This is generally presented like this:

• The complex inner workings of a watch necessitate an intelligent designer.  No one could expect by putting all the components of a watch in a sealed black box and shake it for even a very long period of time, a workable watch could be developed.
• As with a watch, the complexity of X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) necessitates a designer because it is very improbable that complex structures could be developed just by some simple physics in our universe.

But this argument of improbability and teleological is very often deviated from the fact.  It is similar to what most people would expect the chance should be less than 10% in a group of randomly selected students, say 30, with 2 of them were born on the same day of the year.  Perhaps, in human brains, there are some kind of misfired mechanisms always make us underestimate the probability of something that could be happened without our interference.

Here is a simple analogy trying to show people who still believe in the Watchmaker argument, how wrong they could be.  The analogue card game is like this:

In one shot of cards (52) , each time send 1 out to the table until it get to 13.  Then whenever 1 card is sent to the table, 1 card should be taken away at random from the cards on the table.  The question is:  What is the probability (after the 52 cards are all sent out to the table and 39 cards are taken away randomly) to get a full house (13 cards with the same suit) on the table eventually?

The calculation should be somewhat as below:

or

 
Both equations give out the same result.  The chance of the result (i.e. after sending out the 52 cards, the remained 13 cards are all in the same suit) is pretty small, around 6.3 E-12 (that is less than 0.000000001%).   If this has to be happened by random, it could be said very very improbable. 

Nonetheless, if a very simple selection rule is applied (no need of a designer to design this rule, no need a guardian to monitor the process throughout or to change the rule to achieve the result) the chance of getting this result (i.e. after sending out the 52 cards, the remained 13 cards are all in the same suit) could be increased tremendously.  And perhaps, "tremendously" is even not the right word to describe this.

The simple rule is: preserve the card with the same suit and reject cards with different suits whenever a new card is sent out to the table. 

With this simple rule in place, the chance of achieving a full house after finishing all the 52 cards becomes 100%.  That is to say,  this is for certain there will be a full house on the table before or when the 52 cards finished.  The improvement of the chance is from 0.000000001% to 100% certainty this will be achieved.  That is why the adjective "tremendously" seems a bit weak in this case to describe the betterment.

This calculation answers the Watchmaker choplogic is in fact a fallacy.  No matter how improbable it may seem that a watch could be developed with all the components in place by shaking it in a black box even for million of years, just with a little simple rule of selection, the situation turns 180 degree.  And this is how natural selection works.  The selection criterion (only cards with the same suit remain) could be a very good analogy to kin selection or species with similar characteristics which have the best survival rate in a particular environment. 

Back to the question about birthday mentioned in the beginning of this article.  Many things appear to be very improbable in the first sight and are found that the probability is in fact very high either by mathematical modeling or by experiments.  The answer may surprise for those who did not meet the question before.  Because the answer is over 50% chance, in fact it is over 70% chance there will be 2 people have birthdays on the same day of the year in a group of 30 randomly selected person.  The calculation is as below:

After all, the watch analogy does not function as a premise to an argument — rather it functions as a rhetorical device and a preamble. Its purpose is to establish the plausibility of the general premise: you can tell, simply by looking at something, whether or not it was the product of intelligent design.

In most formulations of the argument, the characteristic that indicates intelligent design is left implicit. In some formulations, the characteristic is orderliness or complexity (which is a form of order). In other cases it is clearly being designed for a purpose, where "clearly" is usually left undefined.

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Ten Commandments

The New 10 Commandments:

1. In all things, strive to cause no harm and suffering.
2. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.
4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
6. Always seek to be learning something new.
7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
10. Question everything.

No matter how nicely the original 10 Commandments be put, such as this nice little song above, the commandments are nothing more than a cruel and naive tribal rules.  They are also addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom God orders them to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate.

If we still believe these are the most important rules of human society and blindly following them, this is certainly a disgrace of the human race. 

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Wine and Sewage Law

Conventional wisdom says groups are powerful. Group dynamics are powerful. And so groups dominate individuals, not the other way around. There was tons of research, going back decades, demonstrating that people conform to group values and norms.

A recent episode of This American Life interviewed Will Felps, a professor who conducted a sociological experiment demonstrating the surprisingly powerful effect of bad apples.  Seems peer effect only has the power towards the dark side.  The experiment is as below:

Groups of four college students were organized into teams and given a task to complete some basic management decisions in 45 minutes. To motivate the teams, they're told that whichever team performs best will be awarded $100 per person. What they don't know, however, is that in some of the groups, the fourth member of their team isn't a student. He's an actor hired to play a bad apple, one of these personality types:

1. The Depressive Pessimist will complain that the task that they're doing isn't enjoyable, and make statements doubting the group's ability to succeed.
2. The Jerk will say that other people's ideas are not adequate, but will offer no alternatives himself. He'll say "you guys need to listen to the expert: me."
3. The Slacker will say "whatever", and "I really don't care."

And Will found something different.

Invariably, groups that had the bad apple would perform worse. And this despite the fact that were people in some groups that were very talented, very smart, very likeable. Felps found that the bad apple's behavior had a profound effect -- groups with bad apples performed 30 to 40 percent worse than other groups. On teams with the bad apple, people would argue and fight, they didn't share relevant information, they communicated less.

Even worse, other team members began to take on the bad apple's characteristics. When the bad apple was a jerk, other team members would begin acting like a jerk. When he was a slacker, they began to slack, too. And they wouldn't act this way just in response to the bad apple. They would act this way to each other, in sort of a spillover effect.

What they found, in short, is that the worst team member is the best predictor of how any team performs. It doesn't seem to matter how great the best member is, or what the average member of the group is like. It all comes down to what your worst team member is like. The teams with the worst person performed the poorest.

While it's depressing to learn that a group can be so powerfully affected by the worst tendencies of a single member, it's heartening to know that a skilled leader, if you're lucky enough to have one, can intervene and potentially control the situation.

Still, the obvious solution is to address the problem at its source: get rid of the bad apple.  Or perhaps the other way around:

Wine and Sewage Law:  

Dropping a piece of drink into dirty water, you would get a bottle of dirty water; while dropping a spoonful of dirty water into a bottle of wine, you still would get a bottle of dirty water.

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How to dance …..

Dancing ...... is a vertical expression of a horizontal wish. 

You have to hold her like the skin on her thigh.
And she is your reason for living. 
Let her go like your heart is being ripped from your chest. 
Pull her back like you are gonna have your way with her,
right here on the dance floor. 
And then finish ......

Like she has ruined you for life.

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Śniło mi się marzenie

Les Miserables is a story of redemption, forgiveness, charity, salvation and moral obligation. The main character, Jean Valjean, enters the novel as a thief for only a loaf of bread, having spent nineteen years in prison.  After he received his "second life" from M. Myriel, a prominent bishop, he, alone on earth, rebels against the tyranny of his fate.  He always takes the side in sacrificing his own well-being for other people's welfare.  Through Jean Valjean's life, he tries to answer one question: "how we could be decent men in an indecent time?"

However, is Les Miserables (The Miserable Ones) really with a happy ending that Cosette (the miserable little girl) married Marius finally?   There are doubts.  For Jean Valjean, his whole life is a quest for redemption, and he ultimately forsaking his only love to Cosette on his deathbed.

Cosette is the daughter of Fantine.  Fantine leads a life of suffering because of her wrong trusts on people.  She has dreams that never match with the reality.  In order to fulfill the greed of Cosette's guardians, not only is she involve in prostitution, she sells her beautiful hair and her prized prettiest feature - the non-decayed teeth.

In the contrary, Jean Valjean always faces the cruel reality, yet still he takes the side in sacrificing his own well-being for common goods.  He reveals his hidden identity as a fugitive in saving an old man's life under the wheel.  He gives up all he built for years only because he does not want an innocent man who would be convicted as him mistakenly.  He rescues Fantine from the hand of Javert in prison and promises to take care of her daughter Cosette.  He redeems Cosette from the hand of Thenardies - the guardian that treated Cosette as a slave.  And he raises Cosette from childhood to adult in a peaceful life.   He loves Cosette despite that their age difference should be over 30 years.  Cosette and Jean Valjean, they have the love of lovers, but in a completely pure way. Jean Valjean loves Cosette with all the love that he has and is truly keeping it up until his death. In first receiving Cosette, Valjean had never really experienced love.  At night ... "He would approach the bed where she slept, and would tremble there with delight.  He felt inward yearnings, like a mother, and knew not what they were.  For it is something very incomprehensible and very sweet, this grand and strange emotion of a heart in its first love."

Jean Valjean loves Cosette with a "desert of love, "unconditional that never stopped".  When Jean Valjean finds out about Cosette's love affair with Marius, he hates him. Yet because of the love he has for Cosette he spares Marius' life and brings him to her.  In the end when Jean Valjean does not get to see Cosette he literally wastes away of sadness, but then gets the chance that her mother Fantine did not, to see Cosette before his death.  Then ......

"He sleeps, although so much he was denied, he lived; and when he lost his angel, he died.  It happened calmly on its own.  The way night comes when day is done."

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Requiem For An Invention

An idea of a product really required decades to flourish.  PenPhone™, NotePen© were invented not in the right moment.  Nonetheless, with all the good memories that friends worked nights and days together to develop, to manufacture, to sell a state of art product at time.  As recalled, this was like a war and the brotherhood feelings resembled ……

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.

William Shakespeare's Henry V

Requiem For A Soldier

You never lived to see
What you gave to me
One shining dream of hope and love
Life and liberty

With a host of brave unknown soldiers
For your company, you will live forever
Here in our memory

In fields of sacrifice
Heroes paid the price
Young men who died for old men's wars
Gone to paradise

We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you'll see we can live together
When all the world is free

I wish you'd lived to see
All you gave to me
Your shining dream of hope and love
Life and liberty

We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you'll see - we can live together
When all the world is free

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Fioletowy Lilak

Mówiłeś, że kochasz liliowy najbardziej,
   bo tego kwiatu jest twoja imię 
Cóż za smutny kwiat, co osoby sentymentalny
Gdy kwiaty więdną, gdy zamrożenie ekranu
Co delikatny kwiat, ale nie jesteś w stanie ukryć się
   przed wiatrem i deszczem
Wędrując przez całe twoja życie,
   jesteś była tkania wiele piękne marzeń
W takim pośpiechu idziesz,
   pozostawiając tylko zmartwień się na resztę mojego życia

W przed twoja grób, teraz jest całe pokryte kwiatami.
   To jest piękno, chciałeś ją skwapliwie
Widzisz teraz kwiaty są na całym wzgórza i doliny.
   Czy nadal czuje się samotny?
Słyszysz teraz ktoś śpiewa tę piosenkę,
   które Jesteś najbardziej kochał
Od tego czasu, co na ziemi tobie nie potrzebują do obaw

Na dziedzińcu jest obsadzone wszystkie Lilak.
   Piękne fioletowe kwiaty kwiat w całej stoczni.
Jestem tutaj z nią, i spędzić całe moje życie
   w celu ochrony fioletowe Lilak.

A Lane in the Rain

Alone holding an oil-paper umbrella, I wander along a long, solitary lane in the rain.  I am hoping to encounter a girl with the notion of lilacs, gnawed by anxiety and resentment.  A girl who is with the color of lilacs, the fragrance of lilacs, the worries of lilacs.  And in the rain she is melancholic, sad and anxious.  Holding an oil-paper umbrella, She hovers around this solitary lane in the rain like I do.   Similar to me, she wanders along quietly, indifferently, desolately, and melanchotically.

Silently she comes closer, and closer.  She gives me a glance seems like a sigh.  Then she floats past by, like in a dream.   Dreary and confused like a dream.  Same as a single lilac, floating by as a dream, this lass sways past through me.  Silently she goes further and further, to the crumbling wall, out of the lane in the rain.

In the mournful melody of the rain, her color faded, her fragrance disappeared and vanished into the void, even together with her sigh like glance,  lilacs like melancholy.  Alone holding an oil-paper umbrella, I wander along a long, solitary lane in the rain.  I am hoping to encounter a girl with the notion of lilacs, gnawed by anxiety and resentment.

Dai Wang-shu

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Comptine d'un autre été

The music and the pictures subtly show an old man's retentiveness.
Those who know how to remember, know how to treasure memories.
Is that we could only learn what to cherish when we lost them?
Is that we could only find the tenderness when we don't have it any more?
Perhaps …… perhaps ……
We could only be considered complete when live with regrets.

A person who knows how to play piano has felicity.
With the lips closed, he could still tell everything,
happy, anger, sadness and joy.

Let tears and laughter flow between the fingers,
scene after scene, time after time,
like the rhyme of another summer ……

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The Daemon Lover

Also known as "James Harris" or "The House Carpenter" is a popular ballad from Britain.  It tells the story of a man (usually the Devil), who returns to a former lover after a very long absence, and finds her with a husband (usually a carpenter) and a baby.  He entices her to leave both behind and come with him, luring her with many ships laden with treasure.  Together they board one of his ships, and she is surprised to find that the ship does not have a crew, and put to sea.

She soon begins to lament leaving behind her child, but is heartened by spying a bright hill in the distance.  Her lover informs her that the hill is heaven, where they are not bound.  Instead he indicates a much darker coast, which he tells her is hell, their destination.  And then  the ship is wrecked by a storm at sea, drowning them both.

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