窃钩者诛窃国者候，到了西方，伊索(就是伊索寓言的伊索)也说了一模一样的话：we hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. 伊索寓言据说最早成辑于公元前300年，跟庄子的年代还真差不了多少。
中国人皮肤比较细腻，是鸡皮疙瘩（以前还提到，诗人的皮肤尤其细腻，是玉粟），英语里就是鹅皮疙瘩。李敖在狱中给女儿写了很多信，其中有一封讲到中文英文里“你鹅我鸡”的对应，就提到了这一例子。不过他提到的其它那些用法，我基本上没听人讲过。搞笑的是，李敖说伊索寓言有"杀死会下金蛋的鹅“，觉得中国有一句杀鸡取卵与之不谋而合。其实我在网上诂来诂去，大家都说中文成语的出处就是伊索寓言，大概中文典籍里只有涸泽而渔，焚林而猎，并没有杀鸡取卵的典故。原来是“谋，故合之”，不是“不谋而合”啊。很多我习惯的话，就以为是中文本来有的。我第一次在圣经里看见“以牙还牙，以眼还眼”的时候也以为是英文跟中文不谋而合，其实本来出处也就是圣经。正宗中文里的说法是“以其人之道还治其人之身”。
因为诂伊索，随便点到狼来了的故事里，中文版wiki很幽默，对寓意的总结是
* 對象為小孩：不應該說謊。
* 對象為青少年：同一個謊話不應該說多於兩次。
狼来了对应的中文故事是封火戏诸侯。
前一阵看见讲满语消亡的报道，提到汉语里一些来自满语的词，比如马虎（我笑了笑，哦，原来这样）。又比如邋遢－－看到这我就奇怪了，邋遢这两个字，几乎不分开用，如果这词来自满语，难道是清初才造的字不成？一般用音译引进外来词，都是捡现成的字来拼搭，哪有造这么两个笔画罗嗦的字的道理（每次我写邋遢的邋字，都是邋里邋遢地乱图一气，因为记不清。好在这样也符合它的面目）。然后我就诂了一下，发现王子一的元杂剧《误入桃源》里已经有” 眼见得路迢遥,芒鞋邋遢,抵多少古道西风鞭瘦马。“ 看来，不大象来自满语了。不过，满语和蒙语或者有渊源，说不定，这个邋遢先是来自蒙语。几百年后，大家忘记前朝旧事，发现汉语邋遢跟满语发音类似，断定不是”不谋而和“，必是汉语引入满语。其实可能汉语满语都抄的蒙语，彼此就不必互指抄袭了。
(后来又诂到以下结果《唐韵》里注邋遢为的“不谨事也”，《广韵．盍韵》：「邋遢，行貌。」又《广韵．叶韵》：「邋，迈也。」。总之是不是外来词不敢说，讲满语的人那么少，要说是满清才传来的邋遢一词我是不信了。）
今天土豆贴了她的梦幻之旅里佛教故地的一篇。佛教的音译里，特别爱用一些难看的字，地名里动辄“尸”啊“烂”的，大约和佛家不着相有关。好在，前朝高僧们并不是逢shi音必尸，不然又着相了。说起来语言的入侵，汉语还真是脱不开佛教的影响。譬如说，汉语文化里，怎么能没有缘字呢？然而一个缘字，又怎么翻译，解释？它既是机会（则似乎应该把握），又是注定（则似乎无法避免，又何须把握？）照我的某个歪曲理论，人生是一个伪随机过程，缘是这个过程中跟那个seed有关的一些产物。它其实是注定的，但是因为无法预测，总看起来随机。因为本世界是一个伪随机过程的产物，所以，所有的不谋而合，其实都是谋故合之。
啊，我居然绕回了原点，这不是有违what was I talking about离题万里的宗旨吗？
Friday, December 21, 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
My version of Intelligent Design
At the beginning, there is a programming class and a bunch of gods sign up.
In the first class, the language RNA is introduced. The gods learn to write programs like “hello world”. RNA is a simple language and it is executable without compiling. A lot of short greetings (rhinoviruses) are introduced to the world. They have a lot of variants and are constantly changing, like “what's up”, “how are you”, “anything new”. Other greetings (for example, poliovirus), like “how do you do”, are almost out-of-date now.
In the second class, a more stable language, DNA, is introduced. DNA has to be compiled to RNA before it is executed. The gods still find the class rather easy and generate a lot of other short greetings to the world again.
But programming is more than greeting the world. The instructor starts to teach the gods to write functions that take parameters and return values, or call other functions. As a result the gods do their homework and turn in some prokaryotic organisms.
The instructor also wants the gods to be nice programmers. The good habit of commenting your code is emphasized. Originally the functions are rather short and easy, and comments only existed in the “inter gene regions”. But soon the commenting habits get so popular and the functions become rather complicated. As a result commenting within a function becomes prevalent and you see a lot of “introns”. Introns most likely do not matter for the function, but it makes it easier for other programmers (sometimes yourself) to understand what your intentions are. However, a bad habit also emerges. The gods do not like deleting anything anymore. Whenever they want to make a change to a chunk of their code, they copy and paste it in the same genome, comment one copy out, and work on the duplicate. This way they can always keep the older copy in case they screw up the working copy. Their programs get longer and longer and there are many repeated regions in the full program. Since storage is not a big problem they never bother deleting the junk codes.
Why is there so much resemblance among species? The short answer is plagiarism. The gods borrow old homework from gods in a higher grade and they copy each other’s homework too. They do not want to get caught so minor changes are introduced. And of course, everybody copies from the book numeric recipes.
At midterm, the instructor assigned a big project. One god gets so obsessed with the project and he spends hours and hours in the computer room. He calls his project the dinosaur. His classmates like this program a lot and many begin to play with it. Changing some parameters here and there, they create many variants of the program. Everyone is having fun until one day the instructor was informed by the lab TA that some program is taking too much memory of the server. There are other CS classes that have to use the server too, he said. Dinosaur processes are killed and banned from the computer lab forever.
In the first class, the language RNA is introduced. The gods learn to write programs like “hello world”. RNA is a simple language and it is executable without compiling. A lot of short greetings (rhinoviruses) are introduced to the world. They have a lot of variants and are constantly changing, like “what's up”, “how are you”, “anything new”. Other greetings (for example, poliovirus), like “how do you do”, are almost out-of-date now.
In the second class, a more stable language, DNA, is introduced. DNA has to be compiled to RNA before it is executed. The gods still find the class rather easy and generate a lot of other short greetings to the world again.
But programming is more than greeting the world. The instructor starts to teach the gods to write functions that take parameters and return values, or call other functions. As a result the gods do their homework and turn in some prokaryotic organisms.
The instructor also wants the gods to be nice programmers. The good habit of commenting your code is emphasized. Originally the functions are rather short and easy, and comments only existed in the “inter gene regions”. But soon the commenting habits get so popular and the functions become rather complicated. As a result commenting within a function becomes prevalent and you see a lot of “introns”. Introns most likely do not matter for the function, but it makes it easier for other programmers (sometimes yourself) to understand what your intentions are. However, a bad habit also emerges. The gods do not like deleting anything anymore. Whenever they want to make a change to a chunk of their code, they copy and paste it in the same genome, comment one copy out, and work on the duplicate. This way they can always keep the older copy in case they screw up the working copy. Their programs get longer and longer and there are many repeated regions in the full program. Since storage is not a big problem they never bother deleting the junk codes.
Why is there so much resemblance among species? The short answer is plagiarism. The gods borrow old homework from gods in a higher grade and they copy each other’s homework too. They do not want to get caught so minor changes are introduced. And of course, everybody copies from the book numeric recipes.
At midterm, the instructor assigned a big project. One god gets so obsessed with the project and he spends hours and hours in the computer room. He calls his project the dinosaur. His classmates like this program a lot and many begin to play with it. Changing some parameters here and there, they create many variants of the program. Everyone is having fun until one day the instructor was informed by the lab TA that some program is taking too much memory of the server. There are other CS classes that have to use the server too, he said. Dinosaur processes are killed and banned from the computer lab forever.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
What was I talking about (VII) 未能免俗
朋友说我是八卦的黑洞，因为我只进不出。不过到了名人头上，终究未能免俗。
前一段借了些中文书，其中有一本陈丹燕《上海的红颜遗事》。其实书里讲的主要是上官云珠和姚克的女儿姚姚的故事，虽然书的卖点在上官。八卦经过时间炮制就变成传奇，对传奇的好奇也似乎比关心八卦上得台面。这本书字体不小，插图丰富，纸张厚实，所以我虽然不喜欢，还是很容易就翻完了。好看的书，看的时候不由自主，所以看完了也不必去问作者居心何在。譬如金庸，宣传暴力吗？把“民族大义”置于人权之上了吗，违背“道德原则的先后顺序”（王朔语）了吗？这些对我是无所谓的。人家写的时候是为了卖报纸，哪管得了这么多。至于他老糊涂了以后做的事另当别论。可看了不好看的书，象这本陈丹燕（天知道我从哪来的印象觉得她还不错，看了看书后附的著作单字，我以前象是什么也没看过），就不免纳闷作者想干什么。她似乎想不褒不贬地叙述而已，可是气氛总让我觉得诡异。我总觉得她有立场，这立场又飘忽不定，讲故事的人既不算超脱事外又不投入。好像身边的人以事不关己的态度给你讲八卦，你却觉得背后有牵连，所以听故事听得一肚子狐疑。
今天没抗住许多人谈论八卦的蛊惑，搜索了三联新出的生活周刊。看了王朔的采访。同一页上正好看见姚姚的弟弟写他们的妈妈上官云珠，因为看过那本书，也翻出来看了看。链接在此，看了这个绝对不必再看那书。
绕回来说王朔。作家和美女一样，有的靠天生丽质，有的靠后天打扮。王朔在我眼里，是天才一类。对天生丽质的，你没法问她美容心得。西施捧心的时候没对镜子操练过，所以也讲不出经验来。王朔说文学就给我这感觉。他写的小说，到看上去很美以前的，我大多看过，多数喜欢。可他一但号称“自觉”了之后的东西我就受不了。以为知道自个儿怎么美了，结果怎么都不是样儿了。
最逗的是王朔说看了《时间简史》（这书在90年代中期是何等的火啊，不知道王朔是什么时候看的）和《金刚经》等，领悟了生命的道理。三联的记者说:“费这么大劲懂这个事？” 王朔答，“就跟你懂似的，你懂吗？” 我笑得直翻王朔自己的话，不比你懂，可也不比你不懂。不是“大家都是傻子，谁也不比谁明白什么”嘛。其实三联的记者还真不错，看起来不跟王朔一个鼻孔出气，实际上这捧哏该铺的路都铺到了，还常常是这样不买逗哏帐的架势。
附录
王朔的自我认识之路
从无知者无畏到物质者无所谓
王朔的思想武器
前一段借了些中文书，其中有一本陈丹燕《上海的红颜遗事》。其实书里讲的主要是上官云珠和姚克的女儿姚姚的故事，虽然书的卖点在上官。八卦经过时间炮制就变成传奇，对传奇的好奇也似乎比关心八卦上得台面。这本书字体不小，插图丰富，纸张厚实，所以我虽然不喜欢，还是很容易就翻完了。好看的书，看的时候不由自主，所以看完了也不必去问作者居心何在。譬如金庸，宣传暴力吗？把“民族大义”置于人权之上了吗，违背“道德原则的先后顺序”（王朔语）了吗？这些对我是无所谓的。人家写的时候是为了卖报纸，哪管得了这么多。至于他老糊涂了以后做的事另当别论。可看了不好看的书，象这本陈丹燕（天知道我从哪来的印象觉得她还不错，看了看书后附的著作单字，我以前象是什么也没看过），就不免纳闷作者想干什么。她似乎想不褒不贬地叙述而已，可是气氛总让我觉得诡异。我总觉得她有立场，这立场又飘忽不定，讲故事的人既不算超脱事外又不投入。好像身边的人以事不关己的态度给你讲八卦，你却觉得背后有牵连，所以听故事听得一肚子狐疑。
今天没抗住许多人谈论八卦的蛊惑，搜索了三联新出的生活周刊。看了王朔的采访。同一页上正好看见姚姚的弟弟写他们的妈妈上官云珠，因为看过那本书，也翻出来看了看。链接在此，看了这个绝对不必再看那书。
绕回来说王朔。作家和美女一样，有的靠天生丽质，有的靠后天打扮。王朔在我眼里，是天才一类。对天生丽质的，你没法问她美容心得。西施捧心的时候没对镜子操练过，所以也讲不出经验来。王朔说文学就给我这感觉。他写的小说，到看上去很美以前的，我大多看过，多数喜欢。可他一但号称“自觉”了之后的东西我就受不了。以为知道自个儿怎么美了，结果怎么都不是样儿了。
最逗的是王朔说看了《时间简史》（这书在90年代中期是何等的火啊，不知道王朔是什么时候看的）和《金刚经》等，领悟了生命的道理。三联的记者说:“费这么大劲懂这个事？” 王朔答，“就跟你懂似的，你懂吗？” 我笑得直翻王朔自己的话，不比你懂，可也不比你不懂。不是“大家都是傻子，谁也不比谁明白什么”嘛。其实三联的记者还真不错，看起来不跟王朔一个鼻孔出气，实际上这捧哏该铺的路都铺到了，还常常是这样不买逗哏帐的架势。
附录
王朔的自我认识之路
从无知者无畏到物质者无所谓
王朔的思想武器
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