Comedy is a remedy.

Comedies are often ridiculous. For example, in The Big Bang Theory (TBBT), the four scientists are just people’s absurd imagination.  I’ve never seen any scientists who loves comic books that much. They might be a bit weird, by normal standard, but generally speaking, they are just humans, like everyone.

Yet sometimes you see some truth in comedies. In the latest episode of TBBT, Raj breaks down because he took a girl to cafe and she escaped from bathroom window. He is devastated and refuses to leave his apartment. He tells his friends that “I don’t want to have anything to do with any woman. I renounce all worldly pleasures… I must be strong so I don’t stray from my true purpose – study of the universe.” Funny, preposterous. But I remember that almost said exactly the same thing. It seemed to be very reasonable when I said these things, but when I see it in a comedy, see someone else do it, I can feel nothing guilty.  I often thinks myself as a victim, sacrifice, the most pitiful creature on this world. Now I can see that I was just playing a comedy to make myself and my friends suffer.

I will not do this again.

A proper goodbye

After watching Life of Pi, I found these paragraphs near the end of the original novel:

… At the edge of the jungle, he stopped. I was certain he would turn my way. He would look at me. He would flatten his ears. He would growl. In some such way, he would conclude our relationship. He did nothing of the sort. He only looked fixedly into the jungle. Then Richard Parker, company on of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.

… That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. I wish so much that I’d had one last look at him in the lifeboat, that I’d provoked him a little, so that I was on his mind. I wish I had said to him then-yes, I know, to a tiger, but still-I wish I had said, “Richard Parker, it’s over. We have survived. Can you believe it? I owe you more gratitude than I can express. I couldn’t have done it without you. I would like to say it formally: Richard Parker, thank you. Thank you for saving my life. And now go where you must. You have known the confined freedom of a zoo most of your life; now you will know the free confinement of a jungle. I wish you all the best with it. Watch out for Man. He is not your friend. But I hope you will remember me as a friend. I will never forget you, that is certain. You will always be with me, in my heart. What is that hiss? Ah, our boat has touched sand. So farewell, Richard Parker, farewell. God be with you.”

The boy, Pi, suffered enormous torment while drifting through the Pacific ocean with Richard Packer, a Bengal tiger, on a safe boat after a ship wreck. But I found his parting with the tiger was the most tearful moment in the movie. I had that kind of feeling several times. Since I was a teenager, I already accepted that farewell is an unavoidable part of life. However important a person is, one day he or she will disappear from your life.  There are not much you can do about that.  But I really regret the few times that I did not say Goodbye in a proper way. I wished that I had told them how important they were for me. I wished that they had known how grateful I was for the happiness they had brought me.  I wished that I had said “now go where you must. I wish you all the best with it“. I wished that they had looked back so I can have something to remember.

Farewell, my Richard Parker!

Officially finished my Master’s thesis today.

An hour ago, my supervisor approved the final submission of my thesis for Master’s degree.  There’s nothing left that I need to do to get my diploma next February.  Best birthday gift ever.

The best advertisement for probability

One of my friend recommended an lecture on ted titled “on our mistaken expectations“, which is quite interesting.  The speaker, Dan Gilbert, successfully showed that how ridiculous human can be, when you use probability theory to judge their daily decisions, especially about how to spend their money.  Maybe my professor should recommend it to his students in his next year’s probability course, it will for sure help them at least to remember what expectation is defined.

But I’d say the most interesting part of talk is the Q&A at the end.  One audience argued that, when you evaluate of a decision, how we feel about the decision,  not only the factual consequence, needs to be taken into account, which, ironically, is exactly what Dan suggested in another talk.  And happiness, as far as I can see, is difficult to represent with numbers.

BTW at the very end, he pointed out that imaging about the future can help you to be more prudent.  I happened to know that some computer scientist are using this idea to save money for their retirement.  Just as I often tell friends, “whenever there is a problem, there is a computer scientist to solve it”.

Graph G has no cycles of odd length ⟹ G is bipartite

This is my first proof on math.stackexchange.com

Un poisson froid

L’histoire est d’un homme qui s’ennuie tellement de nourriture à micro-ondes qu’il a décidé de changer sa vie fircement.

C’est un film que je ne comprends pas très bien. Donc je pense je n’ai pasbeaucoup à dire. Tout ce que je peux suggérer, c’est ne pas manger trop avant d’aller le regarder. Parce qu’il ya trop de sang et de cadavre dans le film. Vouspouvez vomir quand vous le ecoutez. Et ne pas le regarder si vous vous sentezunfortable a sens sexuel

BTW, pop-corn salé n’est pas si mauvais que je supposais.

How do you want to die?

I watched “Kill me please” last Tuesday.  It’s unusual that I postponed so long to write a review for a movie I like.  Part of the reason is I have been avoiding to think about it, part of reason is I don’t really know what to say about it.

This movie is an outstanding demonstration of black humor.  When I was watching it, I laughed spontaneously from time to time, but I always felt a bit uncomfortable about my reaction to the more or less miserable and depressed plot.  It seems that I have built my happiness on others’ mournful tragedies, which I’ve been despised for many years.  This feeling kept me away from contemplating the meaning of it most time of last week.

And it’s a movie hard to understand. The main suspense is answered at the end of the movie which might be a main reason it has a score as low as 6.2 on imdb.  Moreover, the behaviors of almost every character are just inexplicable, even if they are dramatically humorous.

But at least the movie made me clear about one thing – If someone asks me, “how do you want to die.”  My answer would be “There are so many things that I haven’t tried yet, I don’t want to die any time soon.”