Facebook is not for the faint of heart

This comic strip is in today’s (July 26) Observer-Reporter—to show you Facebook is not for the faint hearted.

Saying goodbye to the Grand Garden

Before leaving for the airport to fly back to Chicago yesterday, Joy stopped by to take one more look at the Grand Garden, saying goodbye to the 17 kinds of vegetables and 8 kinds of flowers (We had more than 50 varieties for 2011 season).

A pitcher feels like standing in the middle of the Roman Colosseum

I read this Peanuts comic strip at today’s (July 26) Observer-Reporter; it reminds me of what I wrote on October 28, 2005 when White Sox won the World Series, in which I wrote,

“This America pastime is not just skill and strength; it is that mental game that attracts me most. Imagine it is the bottom of 9th inning, the home team is trailing 5 to 4, the bases are loaded, 2 out, a 3-2 pitch, the fans go wild screaming at top of their lungs and on their feet, chanting; imagine you are the pitcher—whether our beloved Jose Mesa or the most feared Marino Rivera—you know the fans are cheering for a ball or a home run and not cheering you.”

“Let’s use another scenario: at the top of 9th inning: the home team is winning at 5 to 4, the bases are loaded, 2 out, a 3-2 pitch, imagine you are the one at bat, and the fans are chanting ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ and you know that ‘him’ is you; suddenly you were the gladiator or slave fighting a ferocious lion in the Roman Colosseum. Evolutionary one thousand years is just an instant; the crowd in the ball parks is the same kind of people shouting and screaming in the Roman Colosseum. When you strike out, walking back to the dugout with your heavy feet and heavier heart in the deafening cheer; it is a mile long.”

Now you know why I like Peanuts [Charlie Brown]! Our thoughts are often in the same page!

HOPE is what keeps Pirates fans going

Question: Pirates rarely won; what makes you think it’ll win today?
Answer:  HOPE!!

Gift from Nature is the most precious gift: butterfly earring

I just quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson in another photo album, “Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts.” So I ‘bought’ gift from the Nature for Katy; her ornament butterfly earring is just another example.

After picking up Joy from the airport we visited Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens on July 22. There is a butterfly garden in it. The ever curious Katy went to see a worker releasing a newly-born butterfly who followed Katy and then landed on her shoulder. Seeing her so-and-so earring, the butterfly decided to add frolic and beauty to it; Joy captured this embellished butterfly earring.

This innocent butterfly must have thought Katy was just a walking tree or something; she (I do not like to use “it” for some creature so pretty and gorgeous) even climbed along Katy’s earlobe, having fun, Katy and butterfly alike, before flying away to Brave [the] New World.

Katy Tsai 我剛引述愛默生的話在另一相冊，“抱歉這戒指和其他寶石實在不是最佳禮物。”所以我去買'來自大自然的禮物給凱蒂，她的飾品蝴蝶耳環就是另一個例子。

7月22日由機場接到嘉倫後，我們去參觀了菲普斯溫室植物園。內有一個蝴蝶園。好奇的凱蒂去看工人放出一個新出生的蝴蝶，然後它飛落在凱蒂的肩上。看到她的不怎樣的耳環，蝴蝶決定將它的美麗點綴耳環。嘉倫抓到這個蝴蝶耳環的鏡頭。

這無辜的蝴蝶一定以為凱蒂只是一個走動的樹或什麼東西，她（我不喜歡用“它”對某些這麼漂亮和華麗的生物）甚至爬上凱蒂的耳垂...，在蝴蝶勇敢飛行到 新世界前，凱蒂和蝴蝶一樣感到有趣."

Katy Tsai 這初生之蝶不怕人，停在我肩不離開。甚至還爬上我耳朵與髮際。等我癢的發笑揮趕它才飛走。真是好玩!

 Lawrence Cancelmi the butterfly found in katy a beautiful place to rest for just a moment before the call of life's journey.

張嘉玲 Chia-Lin Chang this butterfly earring looks really nice on KT ^_^

Joy is coming home to pluck tomato

I have previously mentioned that we’re saving the first two ripen red tomatoes for Ben and Gaby to pluck when they came home on July 4th weekend; the squirrel sneaked in and got them the night before Ben and Gaby came back.

We do not see too many red tomatoes hanging on the plant these days; no sooner had it become deliciously red, Katy plucked it lest the squirrels or other varmints got it first; it is a rat race. I spotted this red tomato this evening and was about to pluck it; I pulled back my hand as something crossed my mind; Joy is coming home tomorrow, let Joy do it.

The “reserved” Italian squash (gourd) is still growing

Last week we had a picture of an Italian squash that is being ‘reserved’ for seeds for next season. Janice wanted another photo with someone standing next to it to get a “better sense of proportion”. Here you have it; it is twice as long as Katy’s arm and it is still growing!

The passing of George Steinbrenner—the end of a dynasty and "Evil Empire"

George Steinbrenner died today (July 13) on the day of MLB All-Star Game. We’ll never run out of adjectives to describe this larger than life New Yorker: bombastic, fierce, charismatic, flamboyant, aggressive, autocratic, controversial, dynamic, quintessential, and the one and only. His reign was tumultuous by all measure; nevertheless, he added color and fire to the baseball, making it once again the America past time. Baseball Hall of Fame should have a category of team owner and he should be voted in. If you do not like him, you would love to hate him.

He bought the Yankees at about $10 million in early 1970s; it is worth $1.6 billion now. He once coached football at Northwestern University.

Jer-Yuan Tsai He fired Yankees manager 14 times (17 times, mentioned in the wsj obituary), some of them fired, rehired and fired again (Billy Martin 5 times), during his reign

Jer-Yuan Tsai “The Yankes Capitalist” was the title of his wsj ‘obituary’ in sport section. I copy the story of his reconciliation and apology to Yogi Berra here, this tells what kind of man Steinbrenner was.

“In a fit of impatience, Steinbrenner fired Mr. Berra as Yankees manager just 16 games into the 1985 season. For the next 14 years Mr. Berra, the most popular man in baseball, refused to have anything to do with the team he had been associated with for four decades. Steinbrenner made the first move toward a reconciliation, traveling to the Berra Museum and Learning Center on the campus of Montclair State University in New Jersey to apologize. According to one bystander, Mr. Berra met him at the door with a grin, tapped his watch and said, "You're 15 minutes late." Steinbenner, tearing up, replied, "Yogi, I'm afraid I'm 14 years late.”

“Junk” RNA may not be junk after all, Miao-Chih says so in Science

My niece, Miao-Chih, who has been a post-doc researcher at Stanford Medical School the past few years; she had a big day yesterday for her work was just published at Science online (the print version later may have minor revision if needed). Having been published at Science or Nature is the ultimate dream of researchers regardless of what field they are in science. Kudos to Miao-Chih, my hat’s off! I realized how good she was about three years ago when she had a pick of Massachusetts General Hospital or Stanford Medical School. (The following link is for abstract only.)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1192002

Her article is “Long noncoding RNA as Modular Scaffold of Histone Modification Complexes”. If Miao-Chih can explain it in a paragraph or two; it wouldn’t be published at Science.

The great majority of DNA/RNA are non-coding; i.e. not making protein. Recall Frances Crick’s Central Dogma (by the way, Miao-Chih also got her Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, where Crick and Watson figured out the structure of DNA) of DNA to RNA to protein (DNA to RNA is transcription, and RNA to protein is translation). Those non-coding DNA/RNA or not doing the transcription or translation regulation are traditionally called “junk” DNA/RNA.

Miao-Chih’s work and article is trying to tell us it ain’t so! You just have to trust her; the Science editors have been asking many more questions and more experiments before all questions were answered to their satisfaction.

Just to tell you how frontier a science and what a break through it is; there was a Nobel laureate call her Lab saying he was very interested in their story, but Miao-Chih was one step ahead of him. Non-coding RNA apparently is “hot”; many top-notched scientists are trying to prove the “junk” RNA is not junk at all; I take pride in knowing Miao-Chih is contributing in this frontier of science.

I called my second brother and sister-in-law congratulating them, trying to let them know what kind of a scientific journal/magazine Science is; I do not know whether I succeeded or not.

陳老薑 Congratulations. it's a great achievement indeed.

Lawrence Cancelmi what an accomplished woman!..i will make an attempt at reading the article in science...it seems everything revolves around crick and watson. thank you miao-chih.

Cheng-Hung Lin Amazing!

My letter-to-the-editor about the proper way to mourn

There was a headline news of “Living with the dead” at Observer-Reporter on July 6, in which a 91-year-old lady (in North Central Pennsylvania) dug out her husband’s and twin sister’s corpses and took care of them in her own house for 10 years (for husband) and nearly one year (for her twin). The district attorney mulled charge against her.

(The scanned copy is difficult to read; the following is what I wrote.)

The district attorney in Braford County wouldn’t have difficulty finding the violations of the state health code in the case of “Living with the dead” (Observer-Reporter, July 6).

Ralph Waldo Emerson

After his young wife passed away, Ralph Waldo Emerson regularly walked to visit her grave in the early morning until his departure for Europe.  He was frustrated of not being able to communicate with her; we read, “Teach me I am forgotten by the dead,” and he begged his wife to meet him “on the midnight wing of dream.”  And there was an entry in his journal for March 9, 1832 (about a year after her passing), “I visited Ellen’s tomb; opened the coffin.”

He had a great sermon of “Consolation for the mourner” shortly after Ellen’s passing; and yet he couldn’t mourn the way that could be accepted as a norm by society.

The mind is a complicated thing; this case should be treated with compassion.
 

The main point of my letter is the last sentence, “This case should be treated with compassion”, and I used Waldo Emerson to state my case; who can dispute him? Who wouldn’t empathize with him?

Emerson’s story reminds me of the sad story of Richard Feynman. Shortly after Arlene’s passing (his young wife—like Emerson’s wife, also died of tuberculosis; she died at Los Almos while Feynman was in the Manhattan Project at age of 25), Feynman took a trip to Oak Ridge, “As he walked past a shop window, that he happened to see a pretty dress. Before he could prevent it, a thought came, Arlene would like that. For the first time since her death, he wept.” (This is from James Gleick’s Genius, but we have read it from Feynman’s own writing, too.) Years after her death, Feynman wrote a letter to her telling her “I don’t know your new address.”

Old soldiers never die. They just fade away

(I borrowed this drawing from Dr. Lawrence Sun whose artistic skill was well hidden from us during his stay at Pittsburgh. It captures the essence and character of this “old soldier”—resolute, intelligent, awe-inspiring, charismatic, flamboyant, and handsome; he was quite a complicated hero; he was not a simple man, indeed.)

Today (July 8) in 1950 President Truman named General Douglas MacArthur (the American Caesar as the title of one of his biographies said) commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea, as we all know he was recalled and released of duty because of “insubordination” nine months later and ended his military career with the “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away” speech at the Joint Session of Congress.

Jer-Yuan Tsai The following was what I wrote about MacArthur at Sermo (physician-only online site). This was the dark days and an agonizing defeat for the all-time hero in American military history. The saving of the "Hero of the Pacific" is a tale to tell.

How can we have a "hero" when the 70,000 troops General MacArthur led in Corregidor couldn't be saved? Was he a press-made and self-made hero? In the months before his great escape (2,500 miles of Japanese-controlled waters) from Philippine to Australia, there was a tremendous pressure (press, broadcast, and even in FDR press conferences) on FDR to bring the hero and the savior out.

Unlike Ike, General Marshall felt MacArthur's loss would be catastrophic. Ike worked under MacArthur at Philippine and was not too impressed about his competence. Marshall called Ike back to get the first hand info about Philippine.

Churchill also had a hand in this decision. At the time when FDR was agonizing about the pros and cons of saving the general, Churchill was living at the White House at the end of December 1941 and he told FDR how he decidedly ordered Lord Gort out of Dunkirk, the event inspired him to make that "Wars Are Not Won by Evacuations" speech. And that helped FDR to make the decision assuming "if MacArthur were captured or killed, the Japanese would have scored a tremendous psychological victory."

To me there was no comparison between these two events. More than 330,000 Allied troops had reached England during the Dunkirk retreat, but many of the 70,000 gallant men perished just on the Bataan Death Match alone.

To be fair the fall of Corregidor garrison was not MacArthur's fault; the troops were ill equipped and the promised reinforcements never arrived mainly due to the devastating effects suffered by the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Before MacArthur escaped Philippine on March 11, 1941, he issued food ration to assure the survival of the Bataan and Corregidor garrisons until July 1, by which time he expected to be back; and as we know it his "I shall return" didn't occur until two and half years later. Either a false promise or a poor judgment.

This was MacArthur's agonizing defeat, but a great general doesn't have to win every battle.

Depression in literature: Hemingway killed himself today (July 2) in 1961

A lion in winter

(Hemingway on a walk in the woods near his home in Ketchum, Idaho in the final winter of his life—A Lion in Winter)

On March 28 [in 1941] Virginia Woolf, with stones in her pockets walked into River Ouse in Lewes, England. She might be thinking about the last lines of her beloved novel The Waves, “Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!”

Today (July 2) in 1961 saw Ernest Hemingway shot himself, a few days after he was released from Mayo Clinic, where he stayed about 2 months for severe depression, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. He was a man of action and courage, which he defined as “grace under pressure”—that ironically deserted him in the end (the view of an article in Britannica Encyclopedia).

Hemingway suffered severe depression in the last years of his life. At his funeral the priest read lines from Ecclesiastes 1:5 “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” (This is how Hemingway got the title of his book, The sun also rises) Let’s see how depression has been described in literature.

Milton described despair and depression in Samson Agonistes,

My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems

In all her functions weary of herself;

My race of glory run, and race of shame,

And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

The depressed Hamlet uttered something similar in his soliloquy in Hamlet,

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

(“Frailty, thy name is woman!” is also in this soliloquy.)