晨倨夜恭
有些事是毫无希望的
busxu 发表于 2010-12-23 02:34:10
我最满意于文艺之处，也就在于它比较容易反映作者本人。有些文字，不成为那样的人，是很难写出来的。说到这，我就要忍不住转载一段文字。为什么可以写的这么好，真是没有办法。
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绝望星球
首
先，今年的天气颇为奇怪。办公室的许多水养竹子（就是被编成宝塔、篮子的那种东西）安然无事地度过了许多春天，却在今年5月咽气蔫了。其次，星球属植物令
我绝望。他们虽然状貌温柔，素来强健，在我家却呆不下去。我前后买过三次一共7枚兜，现在只剩下濒死的一枚。从粗砂到多肉专用土到园艺土我全都试过，而且
我浇水极少（常常忘了），也没有用。去年春夏他们一直长得非常非常缓慢；一到九月，仿佛听到了休眠的号令，就完全不动了。秋冬自不必说。4月翻盆，发现有
两枚的根已经完全枯死，切削之，更发现其中一枚的根芯变成了褐红色的粉末，一直到球内部。在下诚惶诚恐，换了植料，直到4月底温度稳定方浇了些水，做到无
懈可击，希望他们能有点起色。
到了百物凋敝的昨天，我捏了捏——我靠！全部烂掉！
另外讲讲50铃玉的情况。它一直都长得非常好，已经扩大到原来的十倍，看看挤满一盆，只是由于缺光，还不够肥胖短满。我正在得意，就突然有一簇倒下
去烂了……。不过，这个鄙人还是有准备。鄙人用刀片把有问题的部分切掉，剩下的扔到窗外去了。今天忘了看，不知能不能起死回生，估计一到两苗还是能保留下
来的，那么，就又回到了去年买来时的状态。鄙人要记住5月9日，死神圆月弯刀地降临阳台的日子。
父亲级冷笑话
busxu 发表于 2010-04-12 06:31:55
针对我播放的鲍勃迪伦，我爸评论说，“一听就像新疆烤羊肉串的”。
后来吃木瓜，我说木瓜有点臭味，他说“是，臭脚丫子味”。
该活可死该死可活
busxu 发表于 2010-01-19 06:08:47
彼得辛格Q&A，原文在这里
http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html
I. Affluence and Poverty
Q. You have said that it is wrong to spend money on luxuries for ourselves when we could give the money to organizations working to help the world’s poorest people in developing countries. But shouldn’t we think of the poor in our own country first?
A. We should give where it will do the most good. There is no sound moral reason for favoring those who happen to live within the borders of our own country. Sometimes, just because they are closer to us and living within the same political system, they may be the people we can most effectively help. More often they will not be. If we live in a rich nation like the U.S.A., our money will go much further, and help more people, if we send it to an organization working in developing nations. About a sixth of the world’s population survives on the purchasing power equivalent of less than $US1 per day. For a more detailed statement of my views on this topic, see ‘The Singer Solution to World Poverty’ at the New York Times and chapter 5 of One World.
Q. Are you living a simple life and giving most of your income to the poor?
A. I’m not living as luxurious a life as I could afford to, but I admit that I indulge my own desires more than I should. I give about 25% of what I earn to NGO’s, mostly to organizations helping the poor to live a better life. I don’t claim that this is as much as I should give. Since I started giving, about thirty years ago, I’ve gradually increased the amount I give, and I’m continuing to do so.
Q. To what organizations do you give?
A. I give mostly to members of the Oxfam International group. In the U.S.A. that means Oxfam America.
Q. How is keeping these people alive going to help, in the long run, when the basic problem is that the world has too many people?
A. It’s not so clear that the problem really is too many people, rather than that some people have a lot more than they need, and others not enough. But that’s a large question that I won’t go into here. I do agree that continued global population growth will eventually bring disaster. One proven way of reducing fertility is enabling poor people, especially women, to get some education. Women with even just a year or two of primary school education have fewer children than women with no education. So development aid does slow fertility. But if you want to do something more directly related to population issues, you could give to organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation or DKT International.
II. Animal Liberation
Q. I’ve read that you think humans and animals are equal. Do you really believe that a human being is no more valuable than an animal?
A. I argued in the opening chapter of Animal Liberation that humans and animals are equal in the sense that the fact that a being is human does not mean that we should give the interests of that being preference over the similar interests of other beings. That would be speciesism, and wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Pain is equally bad, if it is felt by a human being or a mouse. We should treat beings as individuals, rather than as members of a species. But that doesn’t mean that all individuals are equally valuable – see my answer to the next question for more details.
Q. If you had to save either a human being or a mouse from a fire, with no time to save them both, wouldn’t you save the human being?
A. Yes, in almost all cases I would save the human being. But not because the human being is human, that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens. Species membership alone isn't morally significant, but equal consideration for similar interests allows different consideration for different interests. The qualities that are ethically significant are, firstly, a capacity to experience something -- that is, a capacity to feel pain, or to have any kind of feelings. That's really basic, and it’s something that a mouse shares with us. But when it comes to a question of taking life, or allowing life to end, it matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that he or she actually has a life -- that is, can see that he or she is the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future. Such a being has more to lose than a being incapable of understand this.
Any normal human being past infancy will have such a sense of existing over time. I’m not sure that mice do, and if they do, their time frame is probably much more limited. So normally, the death of a human being is a greater loss to the human than the death of a mouse is to the mouse – for the human, it cuts off plans for the distant future, for example, but not in the case of the mouse. And we can add to that the greater extent of grief and distress that, in most cases, the family of the human being will experience, as compared with the family of the mouse (although we should not forget that animals, especially mammals and birds, can have close ties to their offspring and mates).
That’s why, in general, it would be right to save the human, and not the mouse, from the burning building, if one could not save both. But this depends on the qualities and characteristics that the human being has. If, for example, the human being had suffered brain damage so severe as to be in an irreversible state of unconsciousness, then it might not be better to save the human.
Q: Is it true that you have said that an experiment on 100 monkeys could be justified if it helped thousands of people recover from Parkinson's disease?
A: I was asked about such an experiment in a discussion with Professor Tipu Aziz, of Oxford University, as part of a BBC documentary called “Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing" that was screened in November 2006. I replied that I was not sufficiently expert in the area to judge if the facts were as Professor Aziz claimed, but assuming they were, this experiment could be justified.
This response caused surprise among some people in the animal movement, but that must be because they had not read what I have written earlier. Since I judge actions by their consequences, I have never said that no experiment on an animal can ever be justified. I do insist, however, that the interests of animals count among those consequences, and that we cannot justify giving less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than we give to the similar interests of human beings.
In Animal Liberation I propose asking experimenters who use animals if they would be prepared to carry out their experiments on human beings at a similar mental level — say, those born with irreversible brain damage. Experimenters who consider their work justified because of the benefits it brings should declare whether they consider such experiments justifiable. If they do not, they should be asked to explain why they think that benefits to a large number of human beings can outweigh harming animals, but cannot outweigh inflicting similar harm on humans. In my view, this belief is evidence of speciesism.
Even if some individual experiments may be justified, this does not mean that the institutional practice of experimenting on animals is justified. Given the suffering that this routinely inflicts on millions of animals, and that probably very few of the experiments will be of significant benefit to humans or to other animals, it is better to put our resources into other methods of doing research that do not involve harming animals.
Incidentally, it is important that there be room in the animal movement for a variety of views about ethics, including views that are rights-based and views that are consequentialist. Debate over such issues is a sign of an open and sound movement. On the other hand, it is also important to focus our energies on attacking speciesism, and not those who, although opposed to speciesism, do not share the particular set of moral views we may hold.
Q: I've heard about the possibility of growing meat in a laboratory, just by cells reproducing. Should this lab reared meat prove ecologically safe, cost and energy efficient and safe for human consumption, is this an ethically acceptable way in which animal meat can be developed and consumed? To avoid discrimination on speciesist grounds, providing the meat can be sufficiently engineered for safe human consumption taking into account the accusations aimed at cannibalism, would it be required that laboratories should also grow human meat for consumption?
A: Yes, this would be ethically acceptable, because no animals would suffer or die to produce it. There's nothing wrong with meat in itself.
If people prefer the taste of meat grown from the cell of a cow to meat grown from the cell of a human, that's fine too. So there's no ethical requirement to grow human meat for consumption, just because we're growing meat from other animals.
III. The Sanctity of Human Life
Q. You have been quoted as saying: "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all." Is that quote accurate?
A. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term "person" to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future. As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.
Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection - but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.
Q. What about a normal baby? Doesn’t your theory of personhood imply that parents can kill a healthy, normal baby that they do not want, because it has no sense of the future?
A. Most parents, fortunately, love their children and would be horrified by the idea of killing it. And that’s a good thing, of course. We want to encourage parents to care for their children, and help them to do so. Moreover, although a normal newborn baby has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person, that does not mean that it is all right to kill such a baby. It only means that the wrong done to the infant is not as great as the wrong that would be done to a person who was killed. But in our society there are many couples who would be very happy to love and care for that child. Hence even if the parents do not want their own child, it would be wrong to kill it.
Q. Elderly people with dementia, or people who have been injured in accidents, may also have no sense of the future. Can they also be killed?
A. When a human being once had a sense of the future, but has now lost it, we should be guided by what he or she would have wanted to happen in these circumstances. So if someone would not have wanted to be kept alive after losing their awareness of their future, we may be justified in ending their life; but if they would not have wanted to be killed under these circumstances, that is an important reason why we should not do so.
Q. What about voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide?
A. I support law reform to allow people to decide to end their lives, if they are terminally or incurably ill. This is permitted in the Netherlands, and now in Belgium too. Why should we not be able to decide for ourselves, in consultation with doctors, when our quality of life has fallen to the point where we would prefer not to go on living?
Q. What should I read to learn more?
A. You might like to start with one of the two collections of my work in print, Writings on an Ethical Life, orUnsanctifying Human Life. After that, your choice should depend on what particular issues most interest you. For my views about animals, see Animal Liberation. The fullest statement of my critique of the traditional doctrine of the sanctity of human life is in Rethinking Life and Death, and the most elaborated philosophical elaboration of my views is Practical Ethics.
These books are in many libraries. They can also be ordered from bookstores, or from online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
补记旧金山
busxu 发表于 2010-01-18 05:36:32
本来，我也没想过加州会有什么不同，事实上也是如此。要说椰子树，荒草繁茂的郊外，叫得出名字的大桥，n多的码头，世上最快的地铁（也许是之一），我也不会觉得有什么不同。这地铁的票价不菲，我因为坐了一整天才发现远为便宜的公交，懊悔不已。我住在机场附近，这没有排名的公交晃到市区要一个多小时，但是我可以睡上一觉，就算睁眼发现错过了我的站，也不至于错的太远。实际情况是，我一次也没有错过。我在外面总是很警觉。这还可以引申到我害怕错过，甚至有点紧张。
嬉皮士我一个也没有见到，连一个接近的也没有。（也许有一个，时隔太久，我已经忘了）。伯克利我没有去，一是害怕堵车，二是提前还车。只有一天的时间可以开车，总之我去了斯坦福。好像这是我见过的——以游客的眼光来看——最赞的学校，我在里面迷了路。也许只有一处在施工，但是我的GPS非要经过那里不可。
校园里有不少为挂科的学生做的雕塑，一方面勉励大家努力学习，更重要的，如果真挂了，安慰他们并不孤单。
It's not the end of the world. 挂掉的同学要团结。
差点忘了，加州确实是有一点不同的。那里有许多铅笔一样的松树（见上图）。
服务员
busxu 发表于 2010-01-12 13:22:16
她不像其他人，她担心被轻视。
她几乎想对我们说她其实不是服务员，她不久之前还在医院工作，而且是北京的医院。
刚开始看就觉得和其他不一样。她至少40十多岁吧，素颜，介于保养和不保养之间，就像那个年龄的城市事业单位女性，衣着看过之后很快就想不起来。她问候每个刚进来的人，有的人无视她。邻桌是4个学生，结帐的时候，她试图和他们说话，似乎效果不错。后来也和我们说起来。因为我听出来她的北京口音而高兴，但她毕竟是个不自信的人。她说刚来的时候站在门口，连欢迎的话也说不出口。后来她想通了，“客人都像她的家人一样”，我有点吃惊，只是一点点。
recycle
busxu 发表于 2010-01-11 04:35:04
白发的女生,漂亮的先生
busxu 发表于 2010-01-04 04:10:36
不漂亮的先生我可是亲历，话说一个三哥百折不挠的要求我送他回家，不说也罢，反正不会有下次了，也许。
如果不放假，节日统统可以取消，我就是这个态度。节日的优劣完全取决于假期的长短。所以在美国，对我来说，春节根本就不是节。圣诞节，马马虎虎吧。至于年末年初，谁出生了，哪天特别短，对我都没什么特殊意义。
祝愿别人的人，永远都有道理，永远都不会错。
昨晚躺下以后不自觉的开始想O怎样渗透到SiC和SiO2的界面，C又怎么才能出来。还远远没有到靠做梦解决问题的地步。整个上午我都在睡觉，但是睡得很一般。梦到我无缘无故被判入狱3年，我就在梦里反复地想，有哪些好处，有哪些坏处。
尹丽川说这一年需要忘我，这是一个什么样的希望啊。
