小松鼠嚇了一跳,有了魔法眼鏡後,這世界看起來完全不一樣了

2007年10月29日 星期一

lyx 1.5.2


lyx 1.5.2 版之後,對於中文的支援已經沒有問題了,Windows 下搭配的 MikTeX CJK 應該也沒有問題了。
唯一要增加的是字型, Windows 下面可以根據這個介紹的 7,8頁或者之前文章的 3,4 項來安裝字型。前面的方式比較簡單,對大部分的人應該都可行。
這時候,只要將 language 設成 Chinese(Traditional),然後在第一行按下 Ctrl-L 加上 TeX 指令
\CJKfamily{cwmu}

就能順利使用中文了。
有些頁面標頭設定下,使用中文 title 可能會出問題。我想應該不難解決,我暫時也用不到,所以就沒有解決了。

2007年10月23日 星期二

私人基金必勝法

昨天上午在電視上看到一小段「大學生了沒」,裡面一位學生提到,他幫別人投資,保障本金,但是超過 10% 的獲利則算他厲害,他會拿走。
不清楚這個 10% 是多久的投資,當成是一年好了。這樣從投資人的觀點來看,好像不錯,穩賺不賠,但事實上,套句詐欺遊戲的話,經理人有必勝法。
當然你會問,投資人看起來是穩賺不賠啊?如果經理人有必勝法,那麼錢從哪裡來?
其實錢是從投資人的機會成本裏面來的。
我們假設銀行的年利率是 2.5% 好了,如果投資人把錢拿去存,一年後他會得到 2.5% 的利息。
等而下之的經理人可以欺騙投資人賠錢,偷竊利息。但這樣就沒意思了,我們假設經理人守規矩。
假設這個經理人受到五個投資人委託,每個人投資一千萬,這個經理人可以將這五千萬放入銀行,然後拿回一百二十五萬利息,所以每個投資人目前各有一千零二十五萬。然後呢,經理人將這五筆錢投資一場「賭博」,五個人只有一個贏家,四個輸家每人付給贏家五十萬,總共兩百萬。所以呢,變成一個人有一千兩百二十五萬,四個人有九百七十五萬。
經理人可以很講信用替那四個輸家吞下虧損,還給那四個人的本金一千萬。但是對於獲利的那個投資人呢,他給他一千一百萬。結算下來,經理人不費吹灰之力就賺到了二十五萬。
定存加上「賭博」只是為了說明起見,簡化的模型,技術上呢,可以操作一些市面上的投資工具達到類似的效果。
二十五萬也有點少,不過一來反正無本,增加規模數字就會變大。二來呢,其實一般經理人應該很容易讓平均的投資報酬率超過 2.5%。
假設經理人預計一年的獲利期望值為 7% 好了,然後我們也不要浪費精神去像上面那樣弄歪機率分佈,我們假設獲利的機率分佈是對稱的,比方自然分佈。那麼如果改成虧損和超過 13%之後算經理人的,那麼經理人的獲利會剛好是零。但是現在 10% 之後就算是經理人的,所以這中間的差距就是經理人賺的。多少不論,因為跟機率分佈有關,但這是無本的。
但是只要操作到年平均報酬率 7% 就能拿錢,我覺得是個好工作。
當然,經理人的確替投資人負擔了許多風險,但是這個值不值得投資人損失的利潤,就見仁見智了。

2007年10月17日 星期三

Snowclone 老梗句型

兩個月前,突然想找找看在 slashdot 看到很多次的 "I, For One, Welcome Our Newest XXX Overlord" 句型典故出自何處,查了一下,發現他出自於 The Simpsons。身為 The Simpsons 迷,我當然知道這幕出自何處,只是我原來以為 The Simpsons 也是引用其他的典故。
The Simpsons 對通俗文化的影響力很大,並不讓人意外,比方常常被引用的甜甜圈宇宙模型,一些 The Simpsons 自創的字被收入字典。比較有趣的是我學到了一個冷知識,這一類的造樣造句的東西有個專有名字,叫做 Snowclone。
Snowclone 這個詞出自 Language Log weblog,算是這方面很有名的網站。之所以有個 snow 這個詞,是因為 snowclone 的代表性句型就是「如果雪在愛斯基摩語有N 種叫法,那麼 X 在 Y 中就有幾個叫法。」 裡面的未知數當然可以任意代入,所以 Snowclone 的定義就是公式化老句型的舊瓶新酒用法。換新一點的詞彙來形容也挺貼切的,就是老梗句型
其實實際上呢,沒有一個真正被叫做愛斯基摩語的東西,所以那句典型的老梗句型其實也只是個句型。
當然老梗這個詞也是被扭曲誤用的詞,其實是老哏,根據字典的解釋,哏是滑稽有趣的是,也有一些逗哏、捧哏、有哏之類的詞彙。老哏之意當然也就很明顯了。不過現在大家「老梗」基本上除了老笑點,還做老橋段、老故事、老把戲,基本上只有老這意思。比方老梗文其實就是內容很老的意思而已。用英文來說,老梗其實和 cliché 是一樣的意思。所以用來形容 snowclone 很貼切。
英文常見的 snowclone 還有
  • Have X, will travel. (Original: Have Gun — Will Travel, the title of old US TV western, or the vaudeville phrase "have tux, will travel"[6])
  • X or bust. (Original: "Oregon or Bust!" on the side of covered wagons in the Old West.)
  • To X, or not to X? (Original: "To be, or not to be" from Hamlet)
  • How I learned to stop X and love the Y. (Original: "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb," subtitle to Dr. Strangelove.)
  • X is the new Y.
其實當然還很多,可以從 google snowclone 或 wikipedia 的 snowclone 出發,找到很多,我就不列了。發現原來很多本來覺得還挺有趣的東西,自己代換一下還自覺得有創意,原來已經是老梗 cliché 了。
這種東西老歸老,但是其實也是有一點自我解嘲或者 meta-joke 的精神在裡面。使用者本身有時也意識到這是老梗句型,但是短短的一句話也包含著小眾文化同儕惺惺相惜的惡搞感,又帶點喚回集體美好回憶的剎那永恆感,可以說是老梗恆久遠,一句永流傳。
事實上,我們也有很多老梗句型,以 ptt 流行語來說,下面幾句多少可以算是:
  • 你有受過XX的專業訓練嗎?/你有受過專業的XX訓練嗎? (例句 )
  • 拜託不要,我對xx過敏 (例句)
  • 先承認你是xxx吧 (例句)
  • 自從XX以後,頭腦就靈光了許多,每次考試都得一百分呢 (例句)
  • 我有一批XX好便宜的,要的話就打名片上的電話
  • 摸摸你的XX 這樣oo嗎?
  • 這不是XXX這不是XXX這不是XXX~~~
  • XX是什麼?? 可以吃嗎?? (例句)
  • OO,XX,傻傻分不清楚 (例句)
  • 天天XXX,我有健康的XX (例句)
  • 我論xxx的可能性 (例句)
  • 記得xx時感動的眼淚。 (例句)
  • 身為一個XX 有XXXX是很合理的。 (例句)
  • 以下是xxx的YY名單。
  • xx是韓國發明的/xxx是韓國人。 (例句)
  • 每個人心中都有XXXXX。 (例句)
  • 保安~可以讓人家這樣x了又xx了又x嗎!? (例句)
其實還挺不少的。
最近流行的可能是「笨蛋,問題在XX」 (例句)
另外一種流行用法,剛好相反,是把任何句子的某些詞都換成另一個詞,最典型的就是把「中」換成「台」,像台肯、陳致台。也許可以稱為 co-snowclone 吧?

2007年10月13日 星期六

有學問語錄

關於數學、科學、研究的語錄

As far as the properties of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain: and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein

"Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
Eric Temple Bell

A talk in mathematics should be one of four things: beautiful, deep, surprising... or short.
Michel Mendès France, remark, c. 1986

There are only two kinds of modern mathematics books — those you cannot read beyond the first page and those you cannot read beyond the first sentence.
C. N. Yang

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math look exciting.
Steven Wright

A circle is the longest distance to the same point.
Tom Stoppard

There is very little flexibility in the behavior of the Universe. What it does once, it does again.
Isaac Asimov

What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with.
Ashleigh Brilliant

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980)

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (1950)

Science is a long history of learning how not to fool ourselves.
Richard Feynman, quoted in K. C. Cole, The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (1998)

The main object of all science is the freedom and happiness of man.
Thomas Jefferson

Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous.
George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma (1913)

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will never understand what he finds.
Claude Bernard

I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
Albert Einstein

Every hour a scientist spends trying to raise funds is an hour lost from important thought and research.
Isaac Asimov

"Research" means "to search again." Why not? Sometimes, a new interpretation emerges that is of vast importance.
Isaac Asimov

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
Wernher von Braun

In research the front line is almost always in a fog.
Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988)

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas Edison

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

The final results [of his work on the theory of relativity] appear almost simple; any intelligent undergraduate can understand them without much trouble. But the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels, but cannot express; the intense effort and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are only known to him who has himself experienced them.
Albert Einstein

The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
Albert Einstein

If we want an answer from nature, we must put our questions in acts, not words, and the acts may take us to curious places. Some questions were answered in the laboratory, others in mines, others in a hospital where a surgeon pushed tubes in my arteries to get blood samples, others on top of Pike's Peak in the Rocky Mountains, or in a diving dress on the bottom of the sea. That is one of the things I like about scientific research. You never know where it will take you next.
J. B. S. [John Burdon Sanderson] Haldane

Why think? Why not try the experiment?
John Hunter, letter to Edward Jenner

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
Wilson Mizner

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think.
Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly, The Crisis in the University (1949)

I didn't think; I experimented.
Wilhelm Roentgen

We haven't the money, so we've got to think.
Ernest Rutherford, in R. V. Jones, Bulletin of the Institute of Physics 1962, 13, 102

The joy of research must be found in doing, since every other harvest is uncertain.
Theobald Smith

Research means going out into the unknown with the hope of finding something new to bring home. If you know in advance what you are going to do, or even to find there, then it is not research at all: then it is only a kind of honourable occupation.
Albert Szent-Györgi, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1971)

If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing properly.
Unknown, Journal of Irreproducible Results 1961, 9, 43

The difference between science and magic is that magicians usually know what they're doing.
Ashleigh Brilliant

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. . . . Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.
Raymond Chandler, The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

Everything should be as simple as possible — but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Albert Einstein

The only source of knowledge is experience.
Albert Einstein

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Albert Einstein

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is incomprehensible.
Albert Einstein, quoted in his obituary (April 19, 1955)

I think and think for months, for years; 99 times the conclusion is false, but the hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein, quoted in Banesh Hoffman, Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel (1972)

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
Michael Faraday

This is common to all our laws; they all turn out to be simple things, although complex in their actual actions.
Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (1965)

Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.
Benoit Mandelbrot

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
Bertolt Brecht

Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else.
David Knuth

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams. Mostly Harmless

All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.
Ernest Rutherford

If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must employ methods never before attempted.
Francis Bacon

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
Galileo Galilei

he most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That′s funny..."
Isaac Asimov

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton

If the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, we would be too simple to understand it.
Ken Hill


2007年10月12日 星期五

帥也是一種實力

這篇朱學恆寫的蔣友柏與阿宅的怒吼....,對於社會立足點不平等這點發出了一些哀嚎....呃,我是說怒吼。
我要說的是,帥氣、美貌和魅力,絕對是屬於實力這個範圍的東西。
當然帥是有基因、遺傳或者說運氣(小時候沒生什麼大病、被車子撞之類的)的成份在裡面,但是這個同樣可以套用在大多數的運動選手或者其他有「實力」的人士身上,所以這點無法在邏輯上排除帥是實力這件事。
無法排除,並不表示就一定是,所以我們還要給理由。帥或者美這件事情,除了天生條件外,也是需要後天努力。一方面,要掌握時尚潮流,另一方面,還要持之以恆的改善弱點,維持體態。光是外表還不夠,表情、儀態等等,都要努力改善的。俗語說,只有懶女人,沒有醜女人。雖不中,亦不遠已。而且和古時候相比,現在大家胃口被慣壞,要成為大家心悅誠服的帥哥美女,不是光靠先天條件就行了。總之,要成為帥哥美女是要花時間、精力、毅力、頭腦以及金錢的。在這些帥哥美女花這麼多時間精力變帥、變美、變得有魅力之後,居然還有辦法培養一定的專業能力,你不得不佩服他們。
即使他們沒有所謂的專業能力,但是如果光靠他們的美貌就能獲得更多的掌聲,那也只能說明他們的眼光正確,把時間花在正確的地方而已。早知如此,你為什麼當初不選擇花更多的時間吸收更多美容資訊?你還在人云亦云的認定 OO 是實力, XX 不是實力嗎?醒醒吧,宅男,別再相信沒有根據的說法了。根據國語字典的定義,實力就是實際的力量。美貌和魅力是實際的力量。你還在人云亦云的用「 OO 才讓人敬佩,才算是有實力」來判斷有沒有實力嗎?
稍微想一想吧。實力跟是不是值得受敬佩沒有必然的關係,甚至可以說是無關的。努力也許還比較和敬佩搭得上關係,但是其實也沒有必然的關係。因為是否敬佩、尊重等等,是個人主觀,與是否該被稱為實力無關。
你會認為「美貌不該算是實力」比較,是因為這個代表的意思是比較政治正確、道德正確、大家好像都這麼認為的樣子,而不是比較真。
當然繼承下來的家世、財產、權力也是實際的力量。OK,沒錯,這個可以討論,有人也許會說這些都是身外之物,所以不算個人的實力。但是其實這樣有點鴕鳥就是了,我們也常常會用政治實力、經濟實力等等詞。沒錯,這些可以討論。其實這個就有點像是我們量體重的時候,通常還是穿衣服量,但是你知道你的體重體重不包含衣服。一樣的,重點在於那些東西算不算你的實力,而不在於那些東西是不是實際。要怎麼樣的東西才算是「你的」,這點還值得討論。
但光就美貌和魅力而言,我實在分不出來這個要和歌唱實力、口才、運動實力等等要怎麼區別。即使我們奉為神聖的精神力量或者思考力量,也很容易隨著身體狀況不同而受到影響。甚至美貌還比思考力還要算是「你的」。你在喝醉酒或者昏昏欲睡時,你比較容易保有美貌而不是思考力。當然就網民的思維來說,也許美貌不算實力, Photoshop 才算實力。
有的時候運氣其實也算是實力。