刚回来的一个星期了，生活日夜颠倒。总是夜里两三点就突然醒来，而且精神亢奋，然后早上七八点的时候开始犯困----于是买了运动服球鞋，每天坚持舒展一下筋骨，总算回到了东八区。

潮阳也搞美食节了！人很多，什么东西都有，鹿肉，麻雀肉，鸵鸟肉，鳄鱼肉---很奇怪什么时候潮汕有这等美食。

学车，切身体会到传说中车教练的脾气，想想每天在尘土飞扬的车场绕，很难脾气不会变暴躁。

每天还是会看凤凰卫视，二三十个电视台当中，也就觉得只有这个可以看看了。凤凰早班车，杨锦麟的有报天天读，鲁豫有约等好几个节目办得还是很不错的。不得不佩服刘长乐！ 从军队到金融，再到媒体，都游刃有余。

对于其他很多电视台，大部分时间都在播一些很无聊的东西。什么领导开会啦（who cares）, 药品广告啦（那些“砖家”的来头都很大），还有很多很没创意播了很多很多年还在播的广告。看了之后觉得媒体行业在中国还是有很大空间的。以后有一天不当科学家了，真的应该考虑搞传媒！

天涯也是一个很有意思的地方。虽然上面杂七杂八什么东西都有，但不可否认的是作为国内最大的论坛之一，他具有不可比拟的真实性，无论是好是坏。在那里，可以切身感受到中国民间正在发生的事。这些在中央电视台或是其他电视台或网站是看不到的。这不得不说是中国媒体的一个悲哀。

**************************************************

很多年没在家过冬至了，看老爸老妈忙着办节料，拜公祖，感到一种久违的亲切。这在潮汕风俗里算一个大节了吧。老妈还是自己做“肉丸仔”，煮“冬至丸”，炸素菜，还有鸭啊，鱼啊，肉啊 ----很是丰盛。想起小时候最喜欢的就是这种过节的感觉！！老妈说这次难得我回来，一定要去跟老祖公，老祖婆，老公公，老婆婆，公婆上炷香，保佑平平安安。摆香炉，插香的顺序都是很有讲究的。

想想，潮汕的地方习俗还是很有意思的。特别是在外面混了这么多年之后，更是觉得地方风俗对一个人的意义。这里一年下来过的节还是很多的，除了春节到正月十五那段日子每天要过的节之外，二十四节气里有不少也是要过的。像春分，秋分，冬至拜公祖，清明上坟，夏至，七月初七，七月十五开鬼门关，七月二十“插秧”，中秋，佛诞，十二月初四老爷上天------

还有拜天公（最隆重的祭拜仪式），“赛桌”（直译），拜伯公，城皇公，“庶民公”（纯粹音译），地主爷，“床脚婆”-----很多都已经记不清了。

以前学校里说这些是封建迷信，现在觉得这些是值得保留的民风民俗。为什么既然我们过别人的Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas 过得那么“有滋味”（虽然不一定知道或能体会到到过那些节日的含义）, 却要摒弃自己的节日呢？很久之前在《联合早报》看到龙应台的一篇文章 《在紫藤庐和 Starbucks 之间──对「国际化」的思索》，感触颇深。其中有几段话讲的很好，

不是移值别人的节庆，不是移植别人的语言，那么「国际化」是什么？
    
    它是一种知己知彼。知己，所以要决定什么是自己安身立命、生死不渝的价值。知彼，所以有能力用别人听得懂的语言、看得懂的文字、讲得通的逻辑词汇，去呈现自己的语言、自己的观点、自己的典章礼乐。它不是把我变得跟别人一样，而是用别人能理解的方式告诉别人我的不一样。所以「国际化」是要找到那个「别人能理解的方式」，是手段，不是目的。

-----

 欧洲的现代与传统之间也有一种紧张的拉锯，但是他们至少认识到，传统的「气质氛围」，并不是一种肤浅的怀旧情怀。当人的成就像氢气球一样向不可知的无限的高空飞展，传统就是绑着氢气球的那根粗绳，紧连着土地。它使你仍旧朴实地面对生老病死，它使你仍旧与春花秋月冬雪共同呼吸，使你的脚仍旧踩得到泥土，你的手摸得到树干，你的眼睛可以为一首古诗流泪，你的心灵可以和两千年前的作者对话 

 ------

最近电视里听到最多的就是改革开放30年的辉煌成就。改革开放，改革了很多，开放了很多，自己原来的东西有留住了多少呢？

I have been thinking about this entry for quite a while, but the busy schedule has always put me off.

Finally I got a free weekend and here I am sitting in this cosy reading room of the college, with some unknown classical music in the background, pondering about the title.

My new neighbour Bahig, is a medical student from Egypt. In our first chat, I learnt that his journey into cambridge wasn't really that smooth-sailing, or indeed rather bumpy.

He knew from the beginning that he wanted to do medicine. After finishing A-level in 2004, he started applying for medicine in UK. However, none of the schools that he applied for gave him an interview, despite his straight-As results. He took a gap year and applied again, the outcome was the same. After the failure, he went back to Egypt and started a medical course at the Hospital of Alexander. Undeterred by the failure, he applied for medicine again two years later and finally Cambridge gave him an interview as well as a place.

Mike is an old gentleman that I have always met in the reading room. Every morning at around 7 to 8 o'clock, he will be there studying, doing example sheets. One will be surprised to know that at the age of 60, he is actually a second year mathematics undergraduate student. After working in Philip and many other MNC for nearly 40 years, he decided that there was something more important in life. So he enrolled in a regional college in Cambridge to redo his A-level.

He said he has always wanted to do mathematics and physics since young. However, a scholarship offered by Philip changed his mind after A-level at 18. He went on to study “triple E” in Imperial college. Over the years, many things happened to and around him made him to reflect on things that are important in life. Hence after retirement, he chose to go back to school and sit with the teenagers in the class to do something that he has always wanted to do. Since he is really passionate about math and physics, he passed all the exams with flying colour and here he is, a Cambridge undergraduate mathematic student.

There are a few more, all matured students and all have some very interesting story to tell.

Being in a matured college allows me to look at education in a wider and more profound perspective.

It is always inspiring to hear about such stories, especially when they are around you.

Bahig tells a story of how determination could help one get to his dream.

Mike makes me think that studying is probably not JUST a means to an end. 

By Julianna Goldman

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's political career boasts a long list of firsts. He is the first presumptive presidential nominee to be a native of Hawaii and the president of the Harvard Law Review. He's also the first candidate with more than 1 million contributors.

Obama, an Illinois senator, is the first presumptive presidential nominee in modern times to have a father who wasn't a U.S. citizen, the first to earn an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York and the first to have attended Occidental College in Los Angeles.

``Obama's nomination would be historic in almost every respect that you can think of,'' said presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

Obama has also chalked up many near-firsts in the race for the White House. He is the fourth Illinois elected official to clinch a party presidential nomination; if elected he would be the first since Abraham Lincoln. Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois and was governor of California. Obama is the only first-term senator to lead a major party since Warren Harding in 1920.

No presidential nominee since Republican Wendell Willkie was so unknown to the American public and political establishment just a few years before he ran for president. Republicans recruited Willkie, a low-profile utilities executive, to run against two-term incumbent Franklin Roosevelt in 1940.

The first Democratic convention Obama ever attended was Los Angeles in 2000 and his credit card bounced at the rental-car station. He also wasn't able to secure a floor pass and watched most of the speeches on television screens.

Peanut Farmer

Even former President Jimmy Carter, often described as an obscure peanut farmer when he was nominated in 1976, had become governor of Georgia in 1971 and appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

Obama is the only presidential nominee in modern times whose father wasn't American. The parents of Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in 1988, were Greek immigrants who became naturalized U.S. citizens. Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr. was a graduate student from Kenya who returned to Africa after his studies.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, was born at a military base in the Panama Canal Zone, while his father, a Navy officer, was posted there.

Harvard has been in the presidential game since the first U.S. election in 1789. There have been seven Harvard graduates to make it to the presidency: John Adams, his son John Quincy, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Rutherford Hayes, John Kennedy and George W. Bush.

Harvard Ties

If Obama were to win, he would be the first U.S. president from Harvard Law School since Hayes, who graduated in 1845. Presidential nominees with Harvard degrees include Michael Dukakis, who graduated from the law school, and Al Gore.

Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt went to Columbia Law School; Obama will be the only nominee to have attended Columbia as an undergraduate. Dwight D. Eisenhower was Columbia University's president after World War II and before he ran for president in 1952. Obama transferred to Columbia in 1981 from Occidental, where former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp graduated in 1957.

Through April, the Illinois senator raised money from a record 1.5 million donors, bringing in $256 million for the primary election, just behind the $262 million taken in by Bush in 2004. His campaign confirmed that he has now surpassed Bush's record, becoming the biggest fundraiser in U.S. history.

Obama's success runs counter to the requirements set out by Cornell University political scientist Clinton Rossiter when the Illinois senator was just 3 years old.

Experience Requirement

The presidency, Rossiter wrote in his 1964 book ``Parties and Politics in America,'' is reserved for someone who appears ``experienced.'' Obama served eight years in the Illinois state legislature and has spent three and a half years in the U.S. Senate.

A presidential candidate, according to Rossiter, should be a ``small-town boy'' and a ``Northerner'' or a ``Westerner.'' Obama grew up in Honolulu, population 371,657, and Jakarta, Indonesia, population 8.4 million, before coming to the mainland for college. He has made his home in Chicago, population 2.9 million, since 1991.

Rossiter also specified that a president must be ``of northern European stock,'' adding: ``He cannot be a Negro.''

Obama, who will officially be nominated at the Democratic convention on the 100th birthday of Lyndon B. Johnson and will deliver his acceptance speech 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr.'s ``I have a Dream Speech,'' has become the first black candidate to lead a major U.S. party.

韩寒：控告CNN　我要两块钱
2008-05-03

1：强烈建议不要美元！我要7块人民币！美元天天在贬值，万一我们赢了，这过程里，我可能损失几毛钱。而且赔偿人民币更显得我们爱国。

2：你没有得到我的授权书，所以我想要两美元。

3：我们都很高兴，我们的高兴建立在美国法院受理的事实上。

4:我们法院一定要想好办法，万一哪个美国人起诉我们，一定要按常规办理，不能受理。毕竟我们的报纸几十年前没少辱骂人家。

5：对诉讼理由的第二条和第三条我不能同意：第二：被告故意给中国人造成精神损失；第三，被告重大疏忽对中国人造成精神伤害。我觉得应该是极其严重的精神损失和精神伤害，你CNN一句话，我们的精神得到了不可弥补的巨大伤害，那个谁，你轻轻松松随口一句，你知道中国人民遭受了多么大的刺激吗？全国人民几乎崩溃，大家都快成精神病了，你说，这精神损失和精神伤害应该不应该赔？要你13亿是少的。

6：鉴于官司一般不会赢，但我们会不遗余力的告到联合国。如果你们不赔偿，就不允许你们报道奥运。我们的超女和快男也永远不会上你们的节目！奥运在我们家开，所以奥运就是我们家的，我让你不准报道，你就不能报道，奥委会准许你报道都没有用那！我们居委会不允许！

7：综上所述，你输定了。但是如果你愿意调解，我代表十三亿中国人，我代表起诉你的那个亮女士，我代表她的律师，可以给你打个一折。也就是一亿三千万美元。按照中国的砍价法，砍掉一个零头，就是一亿美元。你赶紧把这个一亿美元赔付给我们的代表梁女士。然后你就可以看好戏了。

8：……没有第八条了，但我们中国人喜欢讨个吉利，所以写个8.

CNN，你姓CN，五百年前是一家，现在你居然欺师灭祖，赶紧向我们赔偿，当然，道歉也可以，示好也行，反正我们就喜欢道歉和示好。

***************************

新闻背景：

本报讯(记者张乐) CNN主持人卡弗蒂的辱华言论引起了全世界华人的愤慨，记者昨日获悉，纽约华人委托当地律师对CNN和卡弗蒂提起了诉讼，要求赔偿每位中国人一美元共13亿美元，而当地一家联邦法院已受理此案件。

　　纽约居民梁淑冰以及一位中国公民李女士22日委托纽约海明律师所6名律师对CNN及其主持人卡弗蒂提出集体诉讼，要求赔偿13亿美元。其中一位律师称， “赔偿每位中国人一美元，并不算多。”诉讼内容和理由包括：第一，被告侮辱和污蔑全体华人；第二，被告故意给中国人造成精神损失；第三，被告重大疏忽对中国人造成精神伤害。

　　昨晚，记者从当地几家媒体的网站上搜索这一消息时，发现《纽约邮报》等都市媒体“不约而同”地保持低调，仅发布了几百字的短消息。

　　对此，中国政法大学副教授许身健对记者表示，纽约华人起诉CNN和卡弗蒂的事件更具“象征意义”。从感情上讲，这是维护自身权利的积极举动，是华人的合理诉求；从法理上讲，由于西方的新闻自由和法制规范的关系一直比较复杂，而法官个人的态度也是一个影响因素，因此案件胜诉的前景有待.

Perhaps in Alia Sabur’s wildly advanced studies she came across a famous quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“Knowing is not enough. We must apply,” the German writer once observed.

That could serve as explanation for what prompted the 19-year-old to become the youngest college professor in history.

Read about this article on Varsity (The BETTER and MORE OBJECTIVE student newspaper in Cambridge!) It is really great to see Chinese students writing for the newspaper! (At least I feel represented and especially in this case!)

The Truth about Tibet---By Lilian Li

The recent Tibetan protests have done little to further the cause of Tibetan suffrage. If anything, it has set things back by antagonising China and misrepresenting

events in Tibet. From a Chinese perspective, there is a feeling that the West doesn’t understand the issue, never took time to understand the issue, but stands ready to hand out judgment on the issue.

It’s easy to dismiss China as a oppressive dictator in Tibet but really, the human rights records of China in Tibet is mixed. On one hand, high estimates of 800,000 people werekilled over 20 years from 1959 onwards and immense damage was done to Tibetan cultural heritage during the Cultural Revolution. But China suffered a loss of at least two million during the same turbulent time.

On the other hand, the Chinese government has abolished a feudal system and poured much needed money into establishing education, healthcare and infrastructure in rural Tibet. In the last 30 years, the standard of life in Tibet has increase rapidly – with life expectancyjumping from 35.5 years in 1950 to 67 in 2000. The issues of human rights in Tibet, and in China, will surely be addressed (and needs to be addressed) for China as a country tomove forwards. Yet after a century of poverty and political turmoil, issues such as clothing the rest of the population have been higher on the agenda.

Clarification is also needed on the recent riots in Tibet and the Chinese military response. The riots in Tibet were just that – riots, and the crackdown of the Chinese government should be viewed in this context. As James Miles of The Economist, one of the few western journalists in Tibet at the time, reported, only non-Tibetan businesses and people were targeted in violence; the injured were Han Chinese.

The main cause of the riots wasn’t oppression, but a growing dissatisfaction with the faster economic development of the bettereducated Han Chinese in Tibet. The growing gap between rich and poor is a common story in China but the Han Chinese have become an easy scapegoat due to their growing presence in Tibet in the last few years. Even the billions of investment poured into Tibet by the central government are not enough to reduce the gap between Tibet and rest of China. The frustration of poverty and the golden opportunity of worldwide Olympic publicity have only added fuel to the fire.

The hard truth is that Tibetan independence will not make the Tibetan people better off. Economically, the Tibetan people rely on the Chinese – 90% of Tibet government spending comes from the central Chinese government. The fastest growing sector of the Tibetan economy is tourism, which would grind to a standstill as soon as China withdres its flood of tourists. Out also goes access to higher education in mainland China (where the Tibetans are favoured with lower entry requirements) and immigration of more skilled workers. Tibet will be left with a damaged economy at a time of much needed stability, especially when they have to sort out the prickly task of separating a ruling government from a ruling religion.

Even if the recent protests have been raising awareness in the wider world, the audience it’s targeted at – the Chinese people and government – have long switched off, unplugged the TV and thrown it out the window. The western media coverage in the recent weeks have instigated a wave of nationalism in China that has drowned out the moderates. The Western media has become a symbol of Western bias. In Chinese slang, ‘Don’t be too CNN’ means ‘don’t ignore the truth’, as a response to CNN reports which vastly exaggerated the scale and intent of the Chinese military intervention. Conspiracy theories are rife in the Chinese blogosphere (yes, it does exist), where the 

whole ordeal is seen as the latest move in the West’s attempts to suppress china as a growing world power.

The Chinese see the West as hypocritical, reaping the benefit of buying cheap goods from developing China but judging its human rights record as that of a developed nation. It preaches morality while encouraging mob demonstrations that attacked a wheelchair bound torch carrier and wags its finger about censorship while filling the airwaves with cropped photos and misleading captions.

The West seems to lament China as an oppressed brainwashed mass, too controlled by a single party government to withstand criticism. There seems to be little interest in dealing with Chinese as ordinary individuals and engaging on an equal basis. The fact that the Olympics represents the Chinese people more than it represents the Chinese government has not been made clear, and criticism sounds more like cultural imperialism.

China’s failings of inflexibility and a series of unfortunate public relations events has done nothing to help the situation. Insistence that that the Dalai Lama is the puppet master behind this theatre of humiliation, heavy handedness with the demonstrations with the dubious guards in blue, leads to saving face as the main objective of the day. There are no winners with these protests. The Tibetan people blare out a skewed view to the rest of the world, the West agrees and damages fragile international relationships, and the Chinese people and government become more adamant about not being seen as weak rather than listening to either.

The effects of these are already being felt, in the hostility of Chinese immigrants whenever Tibet is mentioned, the waves of pro China protests around the world, and the boycotting of French businesses in China. This may be the issue that finally forces the reticent China to take centre stage and start speaking, but what’s going to be said may not be what we’ve been waiting to hear.