U.S.A 美国

美国概况

http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/
人口密度

人种分布

收入分布

州税

消费税(2009)

消费税(2013)

Ship 船

bow 船头
hulk 船壳
keel 龙骨
lateen 三角帆
mast  桅杆
plank (铺)木板
rig (装)帆索
rower 桨手
rudder 舵
sail 帆
stern 船尾
strake 船底板

Stern-mounted rudder 接在船尾的舵

clinker-built vs carvel built

tacking(coming about) 改变风吹帆的方向

beating to windward

point of sail

Trireme

古希腊Trireme

Currach/Curragh
爱尔兰僧侣用。兽皮包裹。

Curragh

Knarr
北欧人商船，用于航海发现冰岛、格林兰刀、纽芬兰

Knarr

Longship



Cog

Cog 1380

Caravel 

大航海时代，葡萄牙西班牙

哥伦布Caravel Nina号

Carrack

哥伦布的旗舰Santa Maria号

df

缅因州Acadia National Park (阿卡迪亚国家公园)

时间：2013年7月14-17日
地点：缅因州Mount Desert岛上的Acadia国家公园
路线：Portland -> Lincolnville ->Acadia -> Camden -> Portland

日程：

7月14日(周日)

在Portland买活龙虾，地址

Free Range Fish & Lobster

450 Commercial St Portland, ME 04101 (866) 700-8469

1.25lb大小，每磅软壳$5.99,硬壳$8.99

晚上住在Lincolnville家庭旅馆Bay Leaf Cottages & Bistro，$100。有独栋小木屋。有自带天然气的公共烧烤凉亭。水煮龙虾。有免费早餐。

7月15日

Acadia国家公园东线海岸游(Sand Beach, Otter point, Thunder hole)

门票$20每车7天。可在上岛前的Thompson Island Information Center就买。

下午在Bar Harbor 小镇

晚餐在海边的Stewman's Lobster Pond，一个龙虾一个龙虾卷一晚Chowda汤~$50

傍晚在海边的Agamont Park草坪上俯瞰海湾

晚上住在Blackwoods营地帐篷，$20。有厕所，厕所有凉水池洗漱和充电电源。没有热水淋浴。没网络。

远看Sand Beach

Agamont Park草坪上俯瞰海湾

Acadia公园地图

7月16日

Acadia国家公园西线Jordan Pond，South Bubbles小山(爬半个小时)，和Cadilac山。

下午赶到Camden小镇

晚餐在海湾的Atlantica餐馆，一个龙虾一个海鲜拼盘，~$50

晚上在Camden Hills State Park营地露营，$28。有厕所、热水淋浴和信号不好的无线网。

Jordan Pond

South Bubbles山顶的大石头

Cadilac山上俯瞰Bar Harbar和5个小岛，最左边的Bar Island有潮汐路连接

Camden小城的海湾

基因突变的Crested Duck

Atlantica餐馆的晚餐

Camden Hill State Park山头上俯瞰Atlatica餐馆海湾

7月17日

早上开车到Camden Hills State Park山头俯瞰Camden小城

开车返回

白天晒热，穿短裤好。晚上营地凉快，蚊子多。帐篷在石子地面很硌人，铺上海绵垫好很多。露营点提前网上预订，Blackwoods营地位置比较紧张。上岛前Ellsworth城郊1号和3号路分岔点有个大Walmart(17 Myrick St, Ellsworth, ME ‎)可采购。

India 印度

Dravidian 人，《大唐西域记》中称达罗毗荼人，是雅利安人(印欧语系)入侵前的印度原住民，现在主要分布在印度南部。可能是印度河文明的创造者。

现代Dravidian语分布

印度历史

BC3300-BC1300 印度河文明(Indus Valley)

BC1500 雅利安人(Aryan)入侵, 带来吠陀文化(Veda),操印欧语系的梵语(Sanskrit)

   吠陀宗教(Vedism)或婆罗门教(Brahmanism)

   BC600-BC500演化出耆那教Jainadharma，佛教(Buddhism)

   后来演化成印度教(Hinduism)

      创造神梵天(Brahma)

      保护神毗湿奴(Vishnu)

      破坏神湿婆(Shiva, Siva)

   种姓制度

   波斯大流士、希腊亚历山大入侵

BC322-BC185 孔雀王朝(Maurya Empire)

    BC304-BC232 阿育王(Ashoka Maurya)

30-375贵霜王朝(Kushan Empire)，大月氏人

320-540 笈多王朝(Gupta)

   白匈奴入侵

720- 阿拉伯入侵

1206-1526 德里苏丹国 (Delhi Sultanates), 突厥穆斯林

1526-1858 莫卧儿王朝(Mughal Empire), 帖木儿(Timur, Tamerlane)后代

   1542-1605 阿克巴大帝(Akbar)

1858-1947 英国殖民

印度省邦划分

Greek Philosophers, Mathematicians and Scientists

Thales of Miletus (ca. 640-ca. 546 B.C.)
  demonstrative mathematics

Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 572-ca. 495 B.C.)

Zeno of Elea (ca. 490-ca. 430 B.C.)
  Zeno's paradoxes

Hippasus
 irrational number

Hippocrates of Chios (ca. 470-ca. 410 B.C.)
 quadrature of the lune

Socrates (ca. 469-399 B.C.)

Plato (427-347 B.C.)
 Five regular polygon

Eudoxus of Cnidus (ca. 408-355 B.C.)
 theory of proportion
 method of exhaustion

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Euclid of Alexandria (ca. 300 B.C.)
 the Elements

Achimedes of Syracuse (287-212 B.C.)
 Archimedean screw
 lever and pulley
 On Floating Bodies
 Measurement of Circle
 On the Sphere and the Cylinder


Eratosthenes of Cyrene (ca. 276-ca. 195 B.C.)
 The Sieve of finding prime numbers
 On the Measurement of the Eearth

Eratosthenes sieve. Animation by Sebastian Koppehel

Syene is close to the tropic of cancer

Apollonius of Cyrene (ca. 262-ca. 190 B.C.)
 Conics

Note on Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E. T. Jaynes

Chapter 1 Plausible reasoning
Boolean algebra

Chapter 2 Quantitative rules
product rule
sum rule
principle of indifference

Chapter 3 Sampling theory

Chapter 4 Hypothesis testing
4.1
X = prior information
H = hypothesis to be tested
D = data

P(H|X): prior probability
P(H|DX) : posterior probability
L(H) = P(D|HX)/P(D/X): likelihood, where P(D|HX) is the sampling distribution

P(H|DX)  = P(H|X)P(D|HX)/P(D/X)

4.2 binary hypothesis with binary data

Weber-Fechner law: intuitive human sensations tend to be logarithmic functions of the stimulus.

sequential inference

电影

1994《背靠背，脸对脸》导演：黄建新、杨亚洲；主演：牛振华

2006《看上去很美》导演：张元

2003 《盲井》 导演：李杨；主演：李易祥、王双宝
2007《鸡犬不宁》导演：陈大明；主演：李易祥
2007 《我叫刘跃进》导演：马俪文；主演：李易祥

2008《耳朵大有福》范伟

冯巩
1992《站直了，别趴下》
1996《埋伏》
1998《没事偷着乐》
2005《心急吃不了热豆腐》
2006《别拿自己不当干部》

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy

1. The Rise of the Western World

Population in the 15th century
China 100-130 million
Europe 50-55 million
Spain 5 million
England 2.5 million
Ottoman Turks 14million

Ming China
a key element in China's retreat was the sheer conservatism of the Confucian bureaucracy... all-important officialdom was concerned to preserve and recapture the past, not to create a brighter future based upon overseas expansion and commerce.

Mogul Empire
A conquering Muslim elite lay on top of a vast mass of poverty-stricken peasants chiefly adhering to Hinduism.

Europe
political fragmentation
geography-There were no enormous plains over which an empire of horsemen could impose its swift dominion; nor were there broad and fertile river zones like those around the Ganges, Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Yellow, and Yangtze, providing the food for masses of toiling and easily conquerable peasants. Europe's landscape was much more fractured, with mountains ranges and large forests separating the scattered  population centers in the valleys; and its climate altered considerably from north to south and west to east.

Regular long-distance exchanges of wares in turn encouraged the growth of bills of exchange, a credit system, and banking on an international scale. The very existence of mercantile credit, and then of bills of insurance, ...

there was no way in which such economic developments could be fully suppressed.

there existed no uniform authority in Europe which could effectively halt this or that commercial development; no central government whose changes in priorities could cause the rise and fall of a particular industry; no systematic and universal plundering of businessmen and entrepreneurs by tax gatherers..

"little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and tolerable administration of justice. "

market economy ... at least to the extent that merchants and entrepreneurs would not be consistently deterred, obstructed , and preyed upon.

a plurality of power centers

lack of cultural and ideological orthodoxy-- that is, a freedom to inquire, to dispute, to experiment , a belief in the possibilities of improvement, a concern for the practical rather than the abstract, a rationalism which defied mandarin codes, religious dogma, and traditional folklore.

economic laissez faire, political and military pluralism, and intellectual liberty

2. The Habsburg Bid for Mastery, 1519-1659

Family Tree of the House of Habsburg

Maximilian I (1459-1519), +Australia
Mary (1457-1482), +Burgundy +Netherlands 1477
Philip I (1478-1506)

Ferdinand II (1452-1516), +Aragon +Naples and Sicily
Isabella I (1451-1504), +Castile
Joanna the mad (1479-1555)

Charles V (1500-1558),
+Hungary and Bohemia 1526

Charles V (1519-1555)
Ferdinand II (1619-1637)
Philip II (1556-1598)
 1566, Netherlands
 1588, Spanish Armada invade England

Philip IV (1621-1665)
 1659, Treaty of the Pyrenees

楚汉

所有年代为公元前(BC)

210年，始皇驾崩
209年，陈胜吴广起义
207年，钜鹿之战
207年，刘邦入咸阳，秦灭亡
206年，项羽入咸阳
206-202年，楚汉战争
  205年，汉灭雍王章邯与废丘(兴平)
  205年，彭城之战
  205-203年，韩信收燕赵齐
  203年，鸿沟
  202年，垓下之战

刘邦(256-195) 61岁
吕雉(241-180) 61岁
张良(?-185)
萧何(257-193) 64岁
韩信(?-196)
曹参(?-190)
陈平(?-178)
周勃(?-169)

项梁(?-208)
项羽(232-202) 30岁
范增(278-204) 74岁
章邯(?-205)
钟离昧(?-201)
英布、黥布(?-195) 九江王

清华大学(Tsinghua University)

1900年，庚子年，八国联军进北京，庚子赔款
1901年，辛丑年，辛丑条约
1911年，美国退还庚子赔款建立清华学堂
1912年，清华学校
1928年，国立清华大学(National Tsing Hua University)
1938-1946年，国立西南联合大学，昆明
1949年，中华人民共和国接管北京清华大学, Tsinghua University
1952年，院系调整，北京清华大学变为工科学校
1956年，国立清华大学在台湾新竹复建
1984年后，北京清华大学逐步恢复理科院系

康熙，熙春园
道光，拆分为西边的近春园和东边的熙春园
咸丰，熙春园改名清华园

清华大学校园3D图

三国

汉献帝刘协(181-234)，在位(189-220)

汉献帝年表

永汉元年189年

中平元年189年

出平元年190年

出平四年193年

兴平元年194年

兴平二年195年

建安元年196年

建安25年220年

董卓死后群雄割据198年

魏(220-266) 46年; 蜀(221-263) 43年; 吴(229-280) 51年

184年，黄巾起义

190年，虎牢关之战

200年，官渡之战

208年，赤壁之战

211年，潼关之战

214年，刘备攻占成都

219年，关羽荆州之战

221-222年，夷陵之战

225年，诸葛亮南征

228-234年，诸葛亮北伐

董卓(?-192)

吕布(?-199)

袁绍(?-202)

刘表(142-208) 66岁

曹操(155-220) 65岁

曹丕(187-226) 40岁

贾诩(147-223) 76岁

郭嘉(170-207) 37岁

司马懿(179-251) 72岁

夏侯惇(?-220)

夏侯渊(?-219)

许褚(?-227+)

典韦(?-197)

张辽(169?-222) 53岁

徐晃(?-227)

张郃(?-231)

司马师(208-255) 47岁

司马昭(211-265) 54岁

邓艾(197-264) 67岁

钟会(225-264) 40岁

刘备(161-223) 62岁

刘禅(207-271) 64岁

关羽(162?-220) 58岁

张飞(168?-221) 53岁

赵云(?-229)

黄忠(145?-220)75岁

马超(176-222) 46岁

魏延(?-234)

诸葛亮(181-234) 54岁

庞统(179-214) 35岁

法正(176-220) 44岁

姜维(202-264) 62岁

孙坚(155-191) 36岁

孙策(175-200) 25岁

孙权(182-252) 70岁

张昭(156-236) 80岁

周瑜(175-210) 35岁

鲁肃(172-217) 45岁

诸葛瑾(174-241) 67岁

吕蒙(178-220) 42岁

陆逊(183-245) 62岁

太史慈(166-206) 40岁

丁奉(191?-271) ~80岁

光荣三国11地图

陕西

西安

西安城墙图

宝鸡

咸阳

渭南

汉中

安康

商洛

铜川

延安

榆林

秦
秦始皇陵，西安临潼

汉
阳陵(景帝刘启)
茂陵(武帝刘彻)

三国

定军山，汉中勉县
武侯墓，汉中勉县定军山下
马超墓，汉中勉县

唐
昭陵(太宗李世民)
乾陵(高宗李治和武则天)
大雁塔

Nature is smarter than human

Why is it the physicist who first discovered calculus (Newton) and Brownian motion as a stochastic process (Einstein, Uhlenbeck)?

Why is it the chemist who made great contributions to statistical mechanics (Gibbs, Onsager)?

Why does the fast inertial relaxation engine (FIRE) algorithm work better than the conjugate gradient method?

Because nature is smarter than human.

Being a computer scientist in Hong Kong by Olin Shivers

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/hk-schools.html

Being a computer scientist in Hong Kong
Olin Shivers
10/94


I spent two years in Hong Kong, 1992-1993, as a professor at the University of Hong Kong (my official title was "Lecturer," which is British for "Assistant Professor"). I've written these notes to paint a picture of what is like to be a young academic in Computer Science living and working in Hong Kong, and to give some idea of what the opportunities are like at the various universities in the Crown Colony. If you are considering seeking a position in the Far East you might find this to be of some utility.
To save you the trouble of reading all the way through this note, the bottom line is that HK is a *great* place to be a Computer Science professor. I had a ball. I only left to start a position at MIT, and I still miss my colleagues and my life in the East.


It goes without saying that these observations are colored by my personal biases and peculiarities. I will make a claim to some degree of impartiality: I no longer work in Hong Kong, and it is truly irrelevant to my career whether or not I upset people at the various institutions in HK, so I am free to say what I please. If I tend to favor HKU in my reviews, that's not accidental. In 1991, when I was seeking an academic position in the Far East, all of the HK universities were short-handed. I was lucky enough to have my choice of all three, and I have no reason, looking back on things, to wish I had chosen differently. (On the other hand, I will also say I would have enjoyed time at either of the two institutions I didn't attend. By the time I left Hong Kong, I had friends at all three schools.)
If you are considering moving to HK, you might also want to read a companion piece I wrote, "Notes on Hong Kong," which discusses general lifestyle issues in Hong Kong: restaurants, taxis, shopping, that kind of thing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are currently three universities in Hong Kong: 
    The University of Hong Kong, 
    Chinese University of Hong Kong, 
    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 
They were founded in the order listed.

The University of Hong Kong (HKU):

HKU is the oldest and generally most prestigious university in Hong Kong.  It is where I worked.  I gather that ten years ago, a degree from HKU was a ticket to guaranteed success in a HK career, more so than a US Ivy League diploma. That has changed; wealthy families now frequently send their children to US and British institutions. I noticed when I was at HKU that many of my students were smart and poor. Smart enough to get through a very selective admissions process; poor enough to be unable to afford harvard.

The CS faculties at all of the HK schools are small. I liked this: At HKU, most of the department would have lunch together, being able to fit into two tables. The HKU department is a friendly environment, and people work together to handle department issues.

My teaching load was light: I taught a class a semester. I taught a large service course on C programming one semester, and was encouraged to teach the courses I enjoyed most my other semesters. Teaching C is easy; the others courses were as time-consuming as I wanted to make them.

In 1993, the department had real strength in parallel processing, theory, and operating systems.  Like all Far Eastern CS departments, there was serious attention paid to character recognition and speech understanding. There was a collection of other topics represented by the faculty: programming languages and formal methods, simulation, graphics, and computer music were some of the other areas in which my colleagues worked. No networking, AI, or architecture.

The department was in no sense short on computational resources. In 1992, we were on the Internet, had multiprocessor servers for serious processing (e.g., speech recognition and 3D rendering), and had a flock of Sparcstations and SGI machines for the CS undergraduates to hack on. There were full-time employees, not graduate students, who tended the machines, retrieved your lost files from backup tapes, installed the latest copies of gnu-emacs, and generally kept things running.
The structure of the department is very horizontal. One king; all others equal. It is run by an insanely energetic and extremely intelligent theorist. The rest of the profs are just "the guys." Our king, or rather department chairman, tended towards consensus rule at department meetings -- he would postpone decisions until the rest of us had talked ourselves around to a fairly uniform position. It was all pretty reasonable; no really evil politics.


paid HK income taxes (15%). I also had housing as a benefit: I lived in an
Like any CS department in Hong Kong, HKU suffered from the problem that when professors would find a really brilliant student, they'd try to ship him off to Stanford. However, not all of them go. The graduate students I knew at HKU were very smart and a pleasure to work with. The professors understand what good research is; they publish in good journals; they know how to train graduate students to be scholars.

I was not well-paid by US standards... but wait. As a HK resident, I Mainland China rising into the mist. It was beautiful. My apartment was apartment that was owned by HKU, and rented to me for a few hundred dollars a month. In fact, its actual market value was worth more than my entire salary. In effect, my salary was less than half of my real income. As a result, almost all of my salary was disposable income.

HKU apartments are quite a fringe benefit. My apartment had a wall of glass in
the livingroom and bedroom.  When I woke up in the morning, I had only to turn
my head to see the South China sea, the island of Lamma, and the hills of

Cheap domestic labor was another unexpected perq of living in Hong Kong.  I
enormous: families of five comfortably stayed in the other units.  This is
particularly remarkable in HK, where real estate prices are sky-high and space
is the ultimate luxury.  My Chinese friends would goggle when they visited my
place; people who made a lot more money than I did were still jammed into much
smaller places. In Hong Kong, a US million-dollar apartment is not very fancy.
This is why most HK-yan live with their parents until they marry: they are
saving like crazy so they can afford a down payment on an apartment.


a date over for dinner, I could say after dessert, "Don't worry; the maid will
had a full-time, live-in maid, who had a three-room suite to herself behind
the kitchen. When I was working under deadline pressure, I would call my maid,
have her cook dinner, pack it up, and bring it to school. She would wait while
I ate dinner, and then take the dishes home. At home, my dirty clothes would
vanish, only to reappear washed and folded. I had clean sheets on my bed every
day. My apartment was spotless. Fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast. You
can sleep an extra fifteen minutes while your tub is being filled. When I had

(you have to take a commuter train). HKUST is in a beautiful, but remote
get the dishes."  This is apparently an extremely romantic thing to say.

Here at MIT, I scrub my own bathtub, buy my own groceries, take out my own
garbage, and wash my own dishes. When I'm under deadline pressure, which is
always, I eat delivery pizza, not curried shrimp and mangoes.

HKU housing is close to HKU, and convenient to the island of Hong
Kong. This last is important. HKU is the *only* university in Hong Kong
that is actually on the island. That means it is in the center of things.
Chinese U is way out in the New Territories; beyond the reach of the subway

young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you,
bay in Kowloon; it is even more difficult to reach by public transport.

To make an American analogy, living on the island of Hong Kong is like living
in Manhattan instead of Queens or Brooklyn. This made a great difference to my
lifestyle. It was a ten-minute bus or cab ride to Central, where I could have
incredible lunches, hook up with friends for dinner, go dancing or see
movies. From Central, I could use Hong Kong's great subway system to go
anywhere else I wanted. 

Hemingway said that if you are fortunate enough to have lived in Paris as a
for Paris is a moveable feast. I would say that to be a young man in Hong Kong

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
counts for a close second.  If you are going to live in Hong Kong, you want to
be in the center of things.

But I digress. HKU is not without its problems. Its principal problem is that
it is a hidebound British bureaucracy that is coasting on its reputation.  The
students are noticeably worse than they were ten years ago.  It is very
difficult to buck the system or to make any kind of a change.  This is not
helped by the fact that within the University, the CS department counts for
very little. Seniority rules within the faculty; since the CS department is a
very young department, it has little weight at the university level.

Chinese University of Hong Kong


over to the competition, HKU. A lot of our smartest guys were CUHK refugees,
In the '60s, some wealthy Chinese decided that HK desperately needed another
university. With their support, a bunch of smaller schools were unified,
creating CUHK. CUHK is a well-respected institution, one that perhaps is
somewhat more Chinese in orientation than HKU's British structure. (However,
that is not to imply a difference in racial makeup. At HKU, there were only
two other non-Chinese in my department, and all of our students, both 
undergraduate and graduate, were Chinese.)

CUHK's CS department went through a bad patch, due to bad leadership.  I'm
euphemising wildly here. One result was that they hemorrhaged a lot of people
including our department chairman. Lunchtime at HKU would occasionally involve

This is the new school. The Hong Kong leaders decided Hong Kong was still
CUHK CS dept horror stories; it was illuminating.

However, this is good if you are looking for a job in HK. After the old
department chairman left, CUHK brought in a sharp new dean for their entire
School of Engineering, and he also serves as the chairman of the CS
department. The new chairman has been energetically rebuilding the department,
which means that (1) they are in a growth phase, and (2) they have a lot of
new, fresh professors on board. You didn't want to be there then; you might
enjoy it there now.

You will still, however, be stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 


HKUST is a very aggressive school. They are the *only* university that
desperately short of tertiary education seats, so they spent an enormous sum
of money building a brand-new university from scratch, HKUST. HKUST is a tech
school, like MIT or Georgia Tech. CUHK and HKU, in contrast, are general
universities, e.g. Duke or harvard.  HKUST admitted its first freshman class
in 1990 or 1991. The campus is out in Clear Water Bay, a beautiful location in
Kowloon next to the movie studio where they make Jacky Chan movies (so your
hacking can occasionally be interrupted by enormous on-set explosions from
some firefight in a forthcoming action adventure epic).  The HKUST campus is
wild. It was designed by a very adventurous, modernistic architect. Fun to
look at; not clear you would want to live with it every day.


lectures. It was obviously an exciting school that is going places.
actually flies people out for an interview/job talk (HKU gave me a job offer
before I ever set foot in HK; HKUST flew me out). HKUST pays more. (They are
not officially allowed to do this, says every other professor I know in HK,
but they do.  So they frequently beat out HKU.) In structure and culture, they
have more of an American flavor than a British one. Because their student
pipeline was not full, they were aggressively expanding when I was there. In
1993, some friends of mine at HKUST told me they planned to hire twelve people
that year, and another ten or twelve the next year -- just in the CS
department!

In technical circles, HKUST was clearly the energetic challenger. They had a
large faculty and big resources. They brought in Nobel prize winners for guest


rotating through it. I also expect this phenomenon is a transient, and will
HKUST has some down sides. The campus is nice, but you are still out in the
middle of nowhere. It's pretentious. The school had been around under two
years when I was there, and they talked very seriously about being/becoming
(the distinction was always a little blurry) the top science institution in
the Far East. Not Hong Kong; the whole half of the planet. I had the feeling
the large department was more hierarchical than my friendly group of
colleagues at HKU. I do not believe you can hire 10 computer scientists a year
and make every decision a good one. In general, the university had a
reputation for having a revolving-door faculty, who would take visiting
positions for nice salaries and then return to their US posts.

On the other hand, if it was a revolving door, they had top-flight guys
fade as the school matures. 


any one school. First, the schools tend to operate on the British model of
The graduate students and professors I knew at HKUST were sharp cookies.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three new U's:

There are now three universities in Hong Kong. It's still not enough.
So the Hong Kong government is upgrading three more colleges and polytechs 
to university status: City Polytech of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytech, and 
Baptist College. They should be coming on line as universities starting this 
year or next year. (I believe CPHK becomes the City University in November
1994, a month from now.) This means that they have to hire new professors. 
Newly-minted PhD's might keep that in mind.

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Several of my observations about Hong Kong universities are not specific to
tenure (aka, "superannuation"). You can become unfireable without too much

It's bad: guys that *are* lazy hang out and do nothing but occupy slots.
difficulty. Instead of denying you tenure and booting you out after seven
years, you stay on at a particular grade/salary level, and never move up
again. The frantic US tenure hustle isn't there. This is good and bad.  

It's good: If you aren't lazy, and like to solve problems, you can hang out,
think about things that interest you, write them up, then loop. It's a
pleasant life. You aren't going to have megabuck ARPA grants, but your grant
proposals are going to have a much easier time getting through the government
organisation that doles out grant money. If you can do good research without a
big-dollar empire, you'll be fine. You'll have the time and leisure to be a
scholar. *This is not always true in the US.* US professors frequently live
vicariously through their grad students; they themselves are busy being
entrepreneurs and managers.

It is hard to flush them. As long as you do your minimum teaching requirement,

students, who may take up to half of their courses outside the department.)
and don't care too much about promotion or your non-consulting salary, you
can roll along doing nothing for an entire career. There are profs that do
this.

Fortunately, most of the professors I knew in Hong Kong were working scholars,
so the British system worked just fine. HKUST seemed to have the least of this
sort of culture; they had performance reviews every few years, and were
willing to let people go if their publications lists weren't up to spec.
That's good. And bad.

Another influence of the British university system is that instead of taking
classes for four years in a variety of fields (as an American student
would), HK students take classes for three years in a single subject.
(They go to high school for an extra year, so they come out even.)

This is just plain bad. At HKU, students were not allowed to take classes
outside of their major. (Strangely enough, this rule is suspended for CS
Further, I do not believe three years is enough time to train good computer

Allow me to overstate the case: something about the Hong Kong secondary education system manages to grind any vestige of intellectual curiosity out of kids. They come to university for a degree, not an education. The culture is that after working like dogs to actually get into a good school, they are entitled to a three-year vacation, before they have to go back to the grind of making a living.
scientists and engineers. Four years is a minimum.  My students were immature
as hackers; I feel the three year program is somewhat at fault.

I was not overwhelmed by HK college students. Blinded by stereotype, my naive
expectation was a crew of hard-working, super-diligent Chinese nerds, being
whipped to new levels of dedication by education-crazed parents at home. I
could throw anything at them; they'd do the work.

No way.




My students cheated like crazy. On one occasion, I caught 35 out of 100 students cheating on a programming assignment. This is not specific to HKU. My friends at HKUST had problems of a similar magnitude. I believe this is partially due to the dark side of HK culture. Hong Kong is not about intellectual achievement. It is about profit; making money; success in the material world. Half of the shelf-space in HK bookstores is devoted to books on business, marketing, negotiation, and so forth. Cheating is in some sense a profitable activity: maximum return for minimum outlay.

On the other hand, you will consistently find in your class a core of kids that take your material and run with it. The ideas go into their minds, and they light up. This is the great pleasure of teaching, and if it only came to me via a few of my students, that has also been the case for me at CMU and MIT.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My general assessment of the three HK universities is that they are all
good. They are also all understaffed and were looking to hire when
I left Hong Kong. *Plus* Hong Kong is starting up three new universities!

Cambridge, 1994
Hong Kong is one of the few places on the planet that is hiring new
professors in Computer Science. And it is a really fun place to live.
To put it mildly.
    -Olin Shivers

shivers@lcs.mit.edu

杜克大学(Duke University)

杜克大学 Duke University

杜克家族，北卡烟草制造商。父亲Washington Duke, 两个儿子 James Duke, Benjamin Duke。

位置：美国北卡罗来纳州(North Carolina)达勒母市(Durham)

面积：8400+ 英亩(acre)，号称全美校园最大；其中7000+英亩都是杜克森林。实际建筑面积不大。1英亩约4000+平方米，64m by 64m

历史:
   1838年，在北卡Trinity市建校，取名Brown School，后改名Trinity College
   1892年，搬迁到Durham市
   1924年，James Duke捐钱成立杜克基金(Duke Endowment)纪念父亲Washington Duke，学校正式更名杜克大学

校园：东、西、中三个校区。东校区是罗马、乔治亚式，本科生住宿活动区。中校区是简易的学生住宿区。西校区是1930年代才建，哥特式，各院系所在地。西校区边上是医学院。西校区和中校区之间，有美丽的杜克花园(Sarah Duke Garden, 纪念Benjamin的老婆Sarah)。

校徽 Duke Shield

吉祥物(mascot)蓝魔(Blue Devil)，类似蓝色蝙蝠侠，杜克体育的代表。

飞机上航拍杜克西校区

Duke西校区3D

Duke校园地图

杜克教堂，门口是James Duke雕像

杜克教堂 (Duke Chapel) 1932

杜克教堂顶

杜克教堂侧廊

冬天的教堂

教堂侧面

教堂内部

French Family Science Center (比尔盖茨老婆捐建)

东校区罗马式Baldwin礼堂，门口是Benjamin Duke雕像

中校区学生公寓