By Lawrence Gemmell

My first response to the song was: Thanks god I’m a student of social science instead of humanities! This thought reminds me of a quote from Fortress Besieged(围城), a famous Chinese novel written by Qian Zhongshu in the 1940s.

Science students belittle arts students. Among arts students, those in the Dept of English Literature belittle Chinese Literature students. Chinese Literature students belittle Philosophy students. Philosophy students belittle Sociology students. Sociology students belittle Education students. Education students have no other students to belittle and have to belittle their professors.

工学院的学生看不起文学院的，文学院的学生里外文系的看不起中文系的，中文系的看不起哲学系的，哲学系的看不起社会学系的，社会学系的看不起教育学系的，教育学系的学生没有学生可看不起，只好看不起系里的先生。

Made with Erector Motorized Racing Car & More – 643 pc Metal Construction Set

Read the rest of the entry…

I use Papers to search, download, and organize journal articles. After downloading articles, I read them, take notes, then export them into an EndNote XML file that can be later imported into my EndNote library. By doing this, I can take advantage of EndNote’s “Cite While You Write” function and let it automatically generate references in APA style (or any other style I have to work with).

It sounds like a great workflow. However, there is a glitch: the default way in which the Papers’s EndNote Exporter processes author names would output their first names as initials. That is, Jane Doe would be imported as “Doe, J.” instead of “Doe, Jane.” This would cause a disaster if you have multiple articles authored by people sharing the same last names and first name initials: EndNote would treat them as the same person and their works would be mixed up.

Read the rest of the entry…

This is a heartbreaking story about a couple trying to find their son and parents after the earthquake in Sichuan Province. So many similar stories are still happening there. My heart is with the people in my home country.

A new study featured by the Onion Radio News. Yes, the Onion.

Warning: You will be directed to a podcast, which will start playing immediately. Be sure to turn down the volume.

Encyclopedia Britannica has launched a program named Britannica WebShare. It offers free access to web publishers, who are loosely defined as “anyone who publishes regularly on the Internet–bloggers, webmaster, and writers who publish on the Web.” This offer is worth $70 per year. Web publishers can use Britannica widgets to post links to EB articles on their blogs or web sites. Readers who click on a link will get the entire Britannica article on the subject, even if the article needs subscription.

Almost everyone can’t help but see Britannica Webshare as a response to the ubiquity of Wikipedia. TechCrunch has a post on this, in which TechCrunch describes Britannica’s move as being half-pregnant: “they want the benefits of web linking but don’t want to give up the subscription fees from the fools who continue to pay them.” TechCrunch also suggests Britannica adopt a wiki-like format to allow users’ editing if they do not want to go out of business. Hmm… if so, is it still Britannica? Read the rest of the entry…

I just noticed a crack on my 5-month-old MacBook. I have never dropped it. Obviously, this is a product defect since I am not the only one. As soon as I get a high-quality picture (this one was taken by my SE w810), I will post it to the “My MacBook Was Cracked By Itself” group on Flickr. Read the rest of the entry…

American Heart Association recommends hands-only CPR. NPR’s talk of the nation has a story on this.

When an adult suddenly collapses, trained or untrained bystanders – that means a person near the victim – should:

1) Call 911
2) Push hard and fast in the center of the chest.

People who have sudden cardiac arrest will die unless someone takes action immediately. Untrained bystanders might do something wrong or make it worse. But the more chances are they can save lives! In this case, doing something is better than doing nothing. Read the rest of the entry…

It’s w00t!
Facebook is the runner-up.

Two days ago, my 3-month-old MacBook was stolen in the graduate office when we were at a luncheon with new students and faculty members.

This REALLY sucks.