Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song

A colleague of mine has bought this Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song and put it in the lunch room for us to play with. The book has brief descriptions of commonly seen birds in North America, and comes with sound tracks of the their songs! The drawings and the sound tracks are from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I have been spending a lot of my lunch time playing the songs these days.

I hear this bird song at home all the time. It turns out to be the song of Pileated Woodpeckers.

The puzzle of Mirror Images

I ran into the puzzle of why images in the mirror are reversed left-right but not up-down. Then I found this blog, which seems to have been discontinued since 2003.

The host appears to be a grade school science teacher and was gathering puzzles and researching for the answers for his students.

So about mirror images, mirrors do not actually reverse image sideways. It is our perception of left and right that leads us ask the wrong question. He describes a simple solution:

Stand in front of a mirror facing north yourself. Raise your right arm to point east, your mirror image is also pointing east. Raise your left arm to point west, and your mirror image is pointing west. The same thing happens when you point up or down. But if you point your finger to the north (into the mirror), your image will points out of the mirror and to the south!

So the fact is, mirrors only reverse the direction of the object by the axis perpendicular to the mirror surface, just as the physical law depicts what happens to light when it hits a mirror - light traveling into a mirror travels backward (got reflected).

The host also suggests a few websites and books to read. This The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition seems very interesting. The books includes the original stories of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lowell Carroll and original illustrations, and very detail annotations by Martin Gardner on the historical context of the jokes and logical, topological and mathematical paradox.

World History in 40,000 words

I am reading this little book. A pretty neat idea to review human history in about 40,000 words, 140 pages. You really need to evaporate the history and get down to the essence in such a limited volume of words.

Surviving the worst-case scenario

I spent 30 minutes reading this little black book at PageOne a few years ago. I was so amused by the ingenuity and the speaking-of-the-fact guide to most possible scenario in dating and sex. I didn't buy it at that time because it was quite pricey out there. I came across it on amazon.com last week and bought it for $7. Here are some examples:

1. How to spot a fake: that includes spotting fake boobs as well as toupee. Fair enough for men and women.

2. How to deal with body odor: that includes putting on cologne or perfume, a change of clothings and cleaning with wet paper towel if you are in the middle of a date. One intriguing way is to soak chamomile teabags in hot water and hold them in your armpits for a few minutes.

3. How to fend off competitors for your date.

4. How to deal with a drunken date.

5. How to take off a back-clasping bra with one hand.

6. How to take off tight boots.

7. A step by step guide to fake an orgasm.

8. The most ingenious one: How to survive if you wake up next to someone whose name you don't remember. Haha... Well, there are different tactic to take, depends on it is his/her place or your own place or any other place. But the first and most important thing is: Don't panic. You can always address him/her as "sweetie, honey, darling" to buy a few minutes. But repeating these without addressing your date by his/her name will only make it more suspicious. If it is his/her place, you can go to the bathroom and look for prescription drugs with his/her name on them. You can also look up any subscription magazines or mail. A hearty reminder is, try to find at least 2 items bearing the same name. If it is at your place or anywhere else, try to begin some small talks that can lead you to the answer. "Do you have a nickname?" or "how do you get your name" are just ingenious.

Some of the scenario sound like joke, but life is full of jokes and the guide can really get you out of them clean.

This book is one of a complete series of The Worse-case Scenario Survival Handbook, each covering topics on Travel, Work, Life, Parenting and even Golfing. It also comes with an "Extreme Edition" Amazon.com describes it "Imperiled readers will learn immediate, hands-on strategies for surviving an elephant stampede, a 16-car pile-up, a mine collapse, and a nuclear attack. Discover how to take a bullet, control a runaway hot air balloon, break a gorilla's grip, endure a Turkish prison, and free a limb from a beartrap. Whether stranded on an iceberg, being chased by a pack of wolves, spinning out on a motorcycle, or being buried alive, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition has all the right stuff for those times when everything goes wrong."

The Art of Treason

上星期說過九龍皇帝駕崩，早幾天在商務印書館看到一本收錄了曾氏的作品的小畫集，還以為是為著記念曾氏而愴拙推出的劣貨。先翻看頭幾頁和最後幾頁，都看不到悼念曾氏的文字。細看之下，這本畫集原來是由一位認識了曾氏十多年的文化界人氏Joel Chung編寫，在今年七月初，曾灶財入院後出版的。

本書中英對照，但並非純粹中文文本英文翻譯。它的中文是由Joel Chung編寫，而英文則由陶傑執筆。本書的序言也是由陶傑用英文寫出。

本書的英文名稱《The Art of Treason》說明，曾灶財幾十年來，不論在英皇治下，或特府自治之下都自稱九龍皇帝，是可被問叛國之罪。書中有不少篇幅大力評擊政府的官僚作風，將曾氏的大部份作品清洗淨盡。例如位於觀塘翠屏村翠屏道佳廉道交界一幅牆的作品，被房署人員抹去後竟被塗上質素低劣的圖畫，宣傳父慈子孝之道。「更可悲的是，財叔的字跡被抹走之後，取而代之的竟是這般貨色！香港就只有這種水平嗎？再一次證明政府自打咀巴，一邊高嚷保留本土文化，另一邊大力清除本土文化，換上毫無特色的次貨。」「... It was whitewashed away a few days later, then replaced by a propaganda work promoting filial piety. A piece of mediocrity, which echoes well how Hong Kong is being governed after the Chinese takeover.」有幸地，香港還有不少有心人，保留了不少皇帝的墨寶，令它們不至於消失於香港的街道中。

這本《九龍皇帝 The Art of Treason》只是一本小畫集，賣九十五元。雖然它介紹了曾氏的一些背景和他的作品的內容，以一本小型畫集來說訂價仍偏高，但我想也沒想便將它買下來。算是收藏，也是對曾氏、所有令這本書得以出版的人和本土文化的支持。希望所有真正愛香港的人也買一本，支持這些有熱誠的有心人。