实在是。。。。必须邪恶的笑一下。。。

转载道歉信如下。

Dear Colleagues,

The cover of the most recent German-language edition of MaxPlanckForschung (3/2008) depicts a Chinese text which had been chosen by our editorial office in order to symbolically illustrate the magazine’s focus on “China”. Unfortunately, it has now transpired that this text contains inappropriate content of a suggestive nature. Prior to publication, the editorial office had consulted a German sinologist for a translation of the relevant text. The sinologist concluded that the text in question depicted classical Chinese characters in an non-controversial context. To our sincere regret, however, it has now emerged that the text contains deeper levels of meaning, which are not immediately accessible to a non-native speaker.

• 分类：未分类 • 关键词： Max Planck Forschung 封面 || 2 个留言

Cosmic Variance最新的一篇文章讲到这个The Science & Entertainment Exchange 计划。推荐一下。蛮好玩的。

Tomorrow is the launch event for the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a new initiative sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. It’s a brand-new program, based in LA, to provide appropriate scientific expertise to all sectors of the entertainment industry. Not just making sure that a particular scene doesn’t violate the laws of physics too egregiously, but helping conscientious filmmakers accurately portray the culture of science — how those mysterious scientists really think and talk and dress. (I think it’s pretty obvious that the acronym for the new effort should be written as SEEx, which has the useful resonance with “seeks,” which is what a good scientist does. It also has some resonance with “sex,” which is less directly related to the scientific enterprise, but won’t hurt with the Hollywood crowd.)

SEEx is off to a great start, as they recently hired the lovely and talented Jennifer Ouellette to be the director of the new program. Jennifer was brought in a bit late, but has big plans for bringing together both sides of the cultural divide between these two glamorous and creative fields of human endeavor. Personally, as spouse of the head honcho of the program, I’m hoping to also benefit; in particular, I’d like to get to meet Jodie Foster some day. Just because she was such a positive role model of a scientist in cinema, you understand.

这个题目和我的目前工作直接相关的。

过去很长时间断断续续想过一些，特别是前几天炸药奖的时候考虑过很久。事实上这是个无比重要的问题，明星在现代就是代表价值和文化，有明星才有价值观和生活方式的输出。当一个地方无论任何领域的明星全都是外来者的时候，那是多么绝望的一个地方。

上上周出差走了全国的几个音乐学院，结果就是令人绝望的。大部分音乐学院的所谓现代音乐演奏/歌唱专业，从教育方式到学生素质都存在非常严重的问题。音乐，歌唱，是个非常快乐的事情。但是从我看过的几百个学生里面，能找到快乐的寥寥无几。大部分都是循规蹈矩，照本宣科，放在注重发声方法上的努力远远超过放在表达感情上的。于是本质上很sexy和glamourous的一件事情变成了无聊透顶。

所谓通病就是这样，和国内的科学界是多么的类似。至今我还无比清晰记得04年参加一个会议的时候听到的两位很有资历的教授的对话，一位说，最近的工作如何啊，另一位回答，哎我就是混混饭吃而已。

和一些朋友讨论过这个问题，最后有个比较统一的结论，即在当代社会，如果没有独立媒体的存在，发展所有和创意相关的事情都是扯淡，而创意几乎是所有事情的基础。媒体的应该做的就是捕风捉影，去嗅探所有怪异的事情的苗头，给人看不同的东西，无论正确也好错误也好刻薄也好偏颇也好，这样这个世界才会变得有趣。看bbc或者纽约时报的网站，可以很明显看出他们不同的观点。