Category: Sharings

Marine Life Protection? Anyone?

Posted onAuthorShi ZhiXing2 Comments

I was recently talking to a friend and she indicated that she is keen in volunteering to help out in Marine Life protection.  So I was wondering if anyone would know where she can volunteer in.  Kindly leave a note.

On a side note, for those of us who may not be ready to volunteer our time to save marine life, we can avoid harming them.  For a start, you may want to give up the rod and stop fishing or netting fishes, crabs etc.  I do agree that going out to the beach or sea is rather relaxing and calming, and I know of friends who join in such fishing trips, not really to fish, but for the company or just to enjoy the sea breeze.  However, one could still enjoy the sea breezes without leaving the hook out in the sea.  And if one really wants to feed the fishes, just bring along the appropriate feed and scatter them into the sea without the hook!  Trust me you, the fishes would appreciate it a lot better! 😉

Human Rights vs Human Responsibilities

Posted onAuthorShi ZhiXing1 Comment

The one place you would not expect to find demand of “Human Rights” would be in a college, a Buddhist College I mean. One would think that 1) a Buddhist College would be extolling values above and beyond mere human rights and 2) students (monks in this case) would not really care much about human rights (HR). Afterall, Buddhism as a whole seem to point towards an attitude of non-attachment and non-self (no-self or not-self if you will!), it seem strange that they while working towards these ideals, would be so concerned with human rights. After all, without a self, who is to enjoy the rights or suffer their absence?

But this article is not about that. This article is about what I think Human Rights is and its place in an Asian society vs the role of Human Responsibilities. Read More …

It’s Not All About Winning … Really!

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Central Washington offers the ultimate act of sportsmanship 

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?columnist=hays_graham&id=3372631

Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky had never hit a home run in her career. Central Washington senior Mallory Holtman was already her school’s career leader in them. But when a twist of fate and a torn knee ligament brought them face to face with each other and face to face with the end of their playing days, they combined on a home run trot that celebrated the collective human spirit far more than individual athletic achievement.

The Mathematics of Happiness

Posted onAuthorShi ZhiXing7 Comments

When I first learnt about Probability Theory in secondary school, I went nuts! I fell in love with it, as it seemed almost magical that we could somehow synthesize or calculate the probability of something happening! I feel like I’m a psychic! Boy, was it fun finding out that the chance of a ‘1’ occurring from an unbiased dice was 1/6 or 0.1666666… 6667… or that the chance of even numbers occurring was 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 or 3/6 or 1/2. Ok, it is intuitive to arrive at 0.5 or half, but the maths behind it is the marvel.

The other thing that was fun about probability was that there were the card games. It seem like many math teachers are very into card games as many questions revolves around the probability “of drawing the next Ace from the deck, given a certain hand that was already played”. I half guess that this obsession with cards might have stem from the poor financial status of teachers in general. Literature and linguistic teachers will poke fun at the social rich strata while the mathematicians will dream about striking it rich by winning at this weekend’s poker game or blackjack! Of course, there are the boring apple and oranges in a bag questions and red and blue marbles questions, but those are for kids and no one got rich guessing apples and oranges or marbles!

Read More …