Drafted on Saturday, 25 September 2010. From time to time, there is a study or two about whether or not money can buy happiness. Well, two hours ago, I was composing a Blog in my head, entitled Money can certainly buy some happiness. Now, I feel like saying Money can buy a lot of trouble, too. Mid Week, my old washer stopped working again. This time, the problem sounded very serious. Since this set of washer/dryer is pretty old, so old that I wanted to rid off it when we moved in several years ago. So, as much as I hate to spend money on an appliance, I was glad to say goodbye this time, instead of calling a repairman. It took me a day to research washer/dryer online to decide which brand and what kind of washer/dryer to buy. At the end, my concern of spending too much money and of new technology won: I decided to get Sears' own brand, Kenmore, a stacked washer/dryer of 24 (model number 88752). Buying things in America can be as easy as a phone call, which was what I did yesterday. With a plastic card, and a good credit rating, one can even buy a new car over the phone. (I don't know if one can buy something more expensive, but I did buy a new car over the phone myself. Why did I do that? I was afraid of being ripped off if I walked into a car dealer. So, I called: Let's not waste your time or mine. This is what I want and this is the price I am willing to pay. Take it or leave it. It worked ...) My order went through Friday afternoon, and the delivery was scheduled for Saturday between 11:15 am and 1:15 pm. The delivery came at 11:00 am, and the two nice guys left in about 15 mins (including giving me two minutes to clean up the area for the new set and test the unit). I was so pleased with the good lucky I had thus far, and decided to run a load right away. Then, I noticed a few bits of foam floating in the washer, and decided to leave the lid open so that I could catch the floating bits and fish them out ... That's when I noticed that the water level kept on rising, much much faster that the sea-level rise due to global warming (if you are a believer). I stopped the machine, in fear of flooding my kitchen, which I eventually did during one of my test runs. Calling Sears about the problem was frustrating, and exhausting. I may write it when the problem is over, but for now I have a big white elephant to look at ...
It's common sense, right? Well, I never followed this rule. Luckily, I was around for a brand new Kenmore 88752 (stacked washer/dryer) when the water kept on filling up. You would think there is a built-in mechanism to shut the machine down when the water level exceeds a limit? No. I didn't want to give up so easily and I also need the washer badly, so I tried a few more times. This morning, I was sitting in front of my laptop for a few minutes too long, and the washer flooded my kitchen. Well, now I can tell Sears with this un-planned experiment: Your product really is a piece of junk!
也许有人注意到科学网文章：2008年最热门论文排名出炉http://www.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2009/3/216833.html 其中关于 石墨烯 （由碳原子构成的二维晶体，碳原子排列与石墨的单原子层一样(蜂窝状--英语：'honeycomb')，参考http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/石墨烯。传说可能会拿诺贝尔奖的）的有： 作者排行 ： Name Institution Field Number of Hot Papers Konstantin Novoselov University of Manchester Materials 13 Andre K. Geim University of Manchester Materials 12 热门文章排行： 21 X.L. Li, et al., Chemically derived, ultrasmooth graphene nanoribbon semiconductors, Science, 319(5867): 1229-32, 29 February 2008. 51 也许还有人也曾看到了 Konstantin Novoselovz 在Sciencewatch网站上的访谈报道：http://sciencewatch.com/ana/st/graphene/09febSTGraNovo/。 在此，写一点关于访谈的想法。 1 实验室氛围 ：周五之夜的环境，而不是每天逼着写文章，在轻松的环境下，尝试新的东西，没有什么期望，没什么包袱，就是这样创造了碳材料（石墨，金刚石，富勒烯，碳纳米管等）领域的又一风暴，很难想象以后还会出现什么？ 2 Crazy idea ：做别人没做过的! 3 人和 ：精通低温扫描隧道显微镜（STM）的工作人员，可以从原子级别看到石墨烯的晶体结构，当然这离不开高分辨率的仪器设备。 4 运气 ：他们选择了合适的衬底，利用反射的原理，在光学显微镜下看到了几层的石墨烯，也许肉眼看不到的东西就被扔掉了。 5 不放弃的精神 ：他们的一个学生在最初锉开石墨实验中失败了，但他们并没有放弃，后来选择了Scotch tape（透明胶带）的方法，才使得石墨烯没有流产，或者至少晚几年才被发现，或者花落他家；他们最初的结果投给了Nature，但被拒了，后来转投Science，这才有了大家看到的这篇文章Novoselov, K. S., A. K. Geim, et al. (2004). Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science 306(5296): 666-669. 接下来他们讨论了两篇文章的引用情况：Novoselov, K. S., A. K. Geim, et al. (2004). Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science 306(5296): 666-669.和Novoselov, K. S., A. K. Geim, et al. (2005). Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene. Nature 438(7065): 197-200.Science文章是他们的第一篇文章，至今已引用了1,142次，Nature文章引用了1,120次（2009年3月15日），且当时后者即Nature文章引用较多。Novoselov分析原因为：Science文章没有把graphene作为题目，而Nature文章的题目中包含了较多的信息（由此可见论文题目的重要性），材料科学家（关心：场效应，双极性场效应），理论家（关心：无质量的费米子等）和研究量子理论（关心量子Hall效应）的人们都对此比较关心。第一篇文章介绍了背景知识，证明了石墨烯的存在，不那么吸引人，易被人们忽略。 石墨烯的发展 ： Novoselov在做的工作：1）石墨烯上的量子点做为未来场效应管的应用（他本人曾对此不报有多大希望，但现在对石墨烯在场效应管的应用很有信心）；2）化学修饰石墨烯：作为二维晶体，或者巨大的有机分子来进行化学修饰，从而调控石墨烯的电学性能；3）透明导电涂层，来取代ITO（氧化铟锡）或者用于太阳能电池，触摸屏等。 机会来 了！多少人能够抓住呢？！
Contrarians wisdom: To illustrate a big idea that appears to challenge conventional thinking. Main themes: Theme 1: Great success is hardly ever solely the result of extraordinary innate talent but of other factors, such as luck, accidents of timing, exceptional opportunity and an appetite for plain hard work . Theme 2: We are all of us, for better or worse, products of our cultural background . Examples: Elite Canadian ice-hockey players the age factor in the selection process and eligibility.The boys born a few months early have a size and strength advantage over boys born later, due to January 1st cut-off date. Microsofts Bill Gates vs. Suns Bill Joy due to Mr. Gates good fortune of attending an expensive school at the age 13 and having almost unlimited access to a time-sharing compute terminal (something nearly unheard of at the time), he had exactly the right combination of age and experience to spot its potential.The rest is then history. Why Chinese graduate students are more successful and productive in their academic achievements in the US universities, compared to their counterparts in China (the effect of academic culture, environment and sometime mentorship). The point is that though natural ability is important, other things matter more in determining success. You have to be smart, but only smart enough to success; raw talent includes: Be in the right place at the right time Have the right antecedents (affluent, caring parents are a big help) Seize the chance to get in lots of practice (the 10,000-hour rule) Cultural Inheritance: Chinese and Japanese are better at maths and have no traditions of taking long holidays, based on an interesting hypothesis of the effect of cultivating rice for many thousands of years on mathematical aptitude and attitudes to work. In summary, the compelling conclusion is that by understanding better what makes people successful we should be able to produce more successful and happier people . Excerpts from and References: The Road to Success, How did I do that? Book review from The Economist, Dec. 13 th -19 th , 2008, p. 100. Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. Little Brown, 2008; 320 pages.
标签: luck
