Mother and daughters, nay, aunt and nieces

Last week we ate the last Taiwanese pumpkin (台灣南瓜) from our garden last season.  The new generations that are growing under the plant fluorescent lights are from the seeds of last year’s Taiwanese pumpkin (台灣南瓜).  So this 台灣南瓜 was happy to see her nieces.  The seasons come and go; the generations go on.

依依睏, 一夜長一寸 (sweet sleep, sweet sleep, grow one inch every night)

Not only do we provide the artificial “sun light”, we also sing the Taiwanese lullaby, 依依睏, 一夜長一寸 (sweet sleep, sweet sleep, grow one inch every night) to the "children" we plant and raise —it only rhymes in Taiwanese or Chinese.  And that was what our snow peas did; the photos are placed chronologically in reverse order.    3/20/2013 3/17/2013 3/14/2013

Grand Garden becomes “Garden 2013”

The expansion of our garden is nearly done.  These photos (in reverse order) show the job was done in different stage; Katy is the main architect, I am but a little helper (小工).  Taking advantage of the existing wooden fence of our nice neighbor, we didn’t even buy any new chain-link fences.

I haven’t measured the dimension of the new expanded garden, but it is safe to say the length was about a stone throw away.

We now regret to call our very first garden, measuring 10 x 20 feet, “Grand Garden”, as we have run out of words (and run out of wit) to name the new garden, may be just call it “Garden 2013”.

愚公移山, 愚婦移牆. Katy singlehandedly moved the chain-link fences

When I came home from work one day last week, Katy has singlehandedly moved the chain-link fences, beginning the process of expanding the garden (again).

 

愚公移山 literally means “the dumb old man moves the mountains”, but this Chinese idiom figuratively means “where there is a will, there is a way”.   So 愚婦移牆 literally means “the old lady moves the fences”; it figuratively means “When Katy has a will, there is a way”.  She used some of the principles in physics to get the job done.

T.S. Eliot turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm

I occupied my spare time reading George Orwell the past week or two; his letters, diaries and his ‘As I Please” series in Tribune 1943-7, and of course Animal Farm.  I may talk about him more during the garden season as Orwell was also an avid gardener, a fact not as well known as he was a democratic socialist.

                  

It is of interest to know that T.S. Eliot (then an editor of the publisher Faber and Faber) refused to publish it in 1944.  The book was finally published in August 1945.  The photo showed Orwell and T.S. Eliot once worked together in BBC during the war time; Orwell standing behind T.S. Eliot who was sitting.

Animal Farm is an allegorical novel depicting the Russia under Stalin (Napoleon).  I am sure Snowball is Leon Trotsky, although Orwell didn’t make Snowball assassinated like Trotsky was.  It is a satirical criticism to Stalin’s communism.

It was written from late 1943 to early 1944 when the Allied Force was fighting Nazi Germany hand in hand with the Stalin’s Red Army; comrades, so to speak.

T.S. Eliot didn’t feel that “this is the thing that needs saying at the moment.”  I would do the same if I were Eliot.  I cannot imagine how many more Britons or Americans would have to die without the ferocious and tenacious fighting of the Stalin’s Red Army against Hitler.  I am also reading “In Deadly Combat” which is a German Soldier’s memoir of the Eastern Front, the story of the Hitler Invasion of Russia and its defeat.

Eliot did recognize Animal Farm is a fine book and regret that the rejection would deny Faber and Faber the opportunity of publishing Orwell’s future work.  Eliot concluded his rejection letter to Orwell, “and I have a regard for your work, because it is good writing of fundamental integrity.”

I cannot think of any other author that always spoke the truth as he or she saw it more than Orwell did.

Photosynthesis by fluorescent light: You are my sunshine

The garden season begins in late February.  We do not have a green house, but we ‘raise our children’ just like they’re in a green house. 

We use GE plant fluorescent light rich in blue and red spectrum, emitting an electromagnetic spectrum that is conducive to photosynthesis.  The photos shows the Phase 1 of the lighting system; more to come.

When we turn on the light, the eggplant would lean toward the light singing “you are my sunshine”.

Some say the plants need a period of ‘darkness’ for some sort of metabolism to complete the cycle of photosynthesis.  Is it a science or pseudoscience?  Some more reading needed.

The young and the restless

These photos were taken within a few days apart.  Our garden was still covered by a sheet of white snow one day last week.  The young Taiwanese pumpkin, Italian squash, eggplant and luffa have been restlessly waiting for the spring to come so they can go out to brave the new world.

The photos of "the old and the restless" (it is also known as the "old gardeners") are not shown.  The young and the old share the same restless spirit.

高處不勝寒: The mood of the market

The Chinese idiom 高處不勝寒 comes from a very famous and beautiful Chinese poem.

高處不勝寒 literally means one can hardly bear the cold at high place.  It is not exactly equivalent to “one is lonely on top”; it basically says the mood is not elated or exuberant with high achievement.  It best describes the mood of the market now.

The Dow Jones index closed at record high on March 6; the last peak was on 10/6/2007 and bottomed out on 3/6/2009.  There was no sign of profit-taking the past 3 days; it inched up further each day on the strength of good economy data.

What goes up has to come down; the higher it climbs the harder it will drop; reaching the record high, the mood in the market may not be that of elation and exuberance, but that of uneasiness and jitteriness.

Credit is to the Fed Reserve policy.  The prolonged low interest rate (with 10-year Treasury Note/10-year CD interest rate of 2% and near zero Federal Fund rate.) and the unrelenting Federal bond buying create an investment environment that there is no place to go except the stocks.  It is exactly the same reason that one should feel uneasy.  Federal Reserve alone is doing all the heavy lifting; what will happen when it runs out of its ammunition?

The positive news is that, as the 3/7/13 WSJ editorial points out, the average stock price-earnings (PE) ratio is about 14 now, or 20% cheaper (lower) than in 2007; it means there is still plenty of room left for a bull market to run.  The Fed Reserve bets on the “wealth” effect that will boost the consumer’s confidence, leading to the prodigious spending; the consumer spending is about 70% of the economy after all.

Beautiful Chinese poem like this always makes me regret that I do not know Chinese as well as I should.  In case of 高處不勝寒, if one doesn’t know 勝 also means “able to bear” (everyone knows it means win, victory), one would have difficulty understanding it.

明月幾時有       把酒問青天
不知天上宮闕       今夕是何年

我欲乘風歸去 唯恐瓊樓玉宇
高處不勝寒 起舞弄清影 何似在人間

The reputation of HDL as a good cholesterol is crumbling

We have been led to believe that those who are endowed with high HDL have low risk for heart attack.  But the foundation of that concept seemed to be falling apart with the recent studies.

There is no controversy about “reduce LDL (bad cholesterol), reduce heart attack”; this has been proved by numerous studies.  Pfizer’s Lipitor reduced heart attack by one third.  With most statins became generic, the big pharmaceutical companies have an eye on HDL, aiming to further reduce the residual risk left by the statins.  And this is how they ran into trouble.

Last December Merck announced their raising-HDL drug (Tredaptive) failed to reduce the heart-disease risk compared with taking statin alone.  Tredaptive is niacin combined with a drug that prevents the flushing adverse effect of niacin.

Scientists are at loss to explain this discrepancy.  Theories abound.  May be not all HDL are created equal; the one raised by drug may not be the same as the one made by one’s genes.  May be the HDL got unduly credit for the protective effect; may be some unknown conditions that are associated with high HDL do the job.  And so no and on.

Many experts still believe the ‘good HDL hypothesis”; the epidemiology studies are hard to refute.  But, Dr. Kathiresan from MGH (Massachusetts General Hospital) is not so sure.  About 2.6 percent of the population has a variation of the endothelial lipase gene that gives higher HDL.  In the Lancet article (published online 5/17/12 and print 8/11/12), Dr. Kathiresan (and numerous authors) reported that they found absolutely no association between the HDL-boosting variant and risk for heart disease.    This was also reported in a 5/17/12 New York Times article.

I am reluctant to write medical news like this, lest the public get more confused.  But this is the true spirit of evidence based medicine; the real science is backed by good data.  Science is to get to the bottom of the truth; science is not afraid to tear down the ‘truth’ of what we used to believe.

We should keep open minded in this puzzle; the dust hasn’t settled yet.