Present

Some of my friends knew I actually bought two books as presents for the Christmas Quiz. During lunch before the grand round, SN asked, "Have you ever read those books ?"

"Of course. How else could I recommend them to the others ?" I replied firmly.

For those from the next generation, I would recommend the followings:

• The Elements of Style by Strunk & White (English writing)
• Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (philosophy)
• How to Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (psychology)
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (natural science)
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (economics)
• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (investment)
• Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (detective story)
• Freezing Point (冰點) by Miura Ayako (三浦綾子) (fiction)
• Cobra by Buichi Terasawa (寺沢武一) (comics)
• 司馬遷 《史記》 (history)

Happy new year.

Idea

After the Christmas Quiz grand round, I told Vivian the questions I put up.

She pointed out coldly, "Fifteen pairs of hands ? Alas, the idea of your mentor's distinction viva really gets you."

As always, my wife was right. In fact, I told the story here not too long ago (see http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2009/11/contd.html).

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And I have a deja vu feeling of a scene in The ABC Murders, when Hercule Poirot described his "dream crime" to Arthur Hastings:

"Supposing that four people sit down to play bridge and one, the odd man out, sits in a chair by the fire. At the end of the evening the man by the fire is found dead. One of the four, while he is dummy, has gone over and killed him, and, intent on the play of the hand, the other three have not noticed. Ah, there would be a crime for you! Which of the four was it?"

Alas, it didn't take long before Poirot met exactly this case in Cards on the Table.

PS. According to the chronology of Agatha Christie, both stories happened in 1936. The usual Poirot would actually try to find out who was eavesdropping when he was telling his idea to Hastings (who spent all his time with Poirot during the ABC incident and was back Argentina immediately afterwards - he had no opportunity of telling anybody else).

Shift

Contrary to her usual self, my friend TW appeared hot and upset with my blog recently (see her comments during Christmas).

In my opinion, however, the annoying bit of the policy was not the resulting delay or cost to human life (by consuming everybody's time) - but the blind of shifting the responsibility.

You see, the policy of checking allergy record was put up by extra-terrestrials and executed by creatures on Neptune, but it is the duty of those who work on the Earth to decide (sugar-coated in the term "discretion on individual basis") if a particular patient needs the injection urgently. The impression to any onlooker is, therefore, all delay is the result of wrong judgement by Homo sapiens and has nothing to do with mollusks living on other planets.

And, you see, that's the general principle: Professionalism and responsibility is the two side of the same coin, which should always go together with the right to make decisions. I am always against those s0-called professionals who claim the right to decide but do away with the whole of their responsibility (often by shifting just a tiny bit of the right to the others).

Contrary to my usual self, I am serious.

Legacy

My friend VW recently expressed his concern of global warming (see http://vwswong.blogspot.com/2009/12/warm.html).

His worry was quite simple. In short, although it is unlikely that the sea level could have a meaningful rise during our life time, it seems mostly likely that the level would rise by at least 5.6 meters in the next 1000 years.

I could not agree more. As a parent, I am always concerned with what type of world I leave for Euterpe and her children.

However, at the same time, another story in ancient China comes through my mind:

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文承閒問其父嬰曰：「子之子為何？」曰：「為孫。」「孫之孫為何？」曰：「為玄孫。」「玄孫之孫為何？」曰：「不能知也。」文曰：「... 今君 ... 厚積餘藏，欲以遺所不知何人，而 忘公家之事日損，文竊怪之。」
〔史記卷七十五孟嘗君列傳〕

按：文，孟嘗君田文也。

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Is there any difference between monetary wealth and a metaphysical legacy ?

Cost

You may think my argument yesterday was irrelevant because human life should not be quantified by the dollar sign.

I fully agree. Life is the time that we spend in this world - let's measure it in terms of time and do a cost effective analysis:

• As stated yesterday, the average delay is 6 hours.
• During this period, a patient needs to stay in the ward and wait. This is the duration of life that is consumed. (Let's take aside the humanistic cost of suffering. I also try my best and used the word consumed rather than wasted.)
• We admit 60 patients each day, and 40% of them need antibiotics. In other words, 6 days of human life is consumed for each effective day of the policy.
• Let's assume the average life expectancy of a patient admitted to our hospital and required antibiotic treatment is 15 years. (Given the age and prevalence of multiple diseases, this is probably a slightly optimistic number.)
• The inevitable conclusion is: The policy would only achieve zero balance on its cost to human life if it could avoid one death in every two-and-a-half years.

I shall leave it to your own judgement whether the policy could save life that often.

PS. Our case is, in fact, the classical scenario of hidden social cost. No one dies of the policy that seemingly saves lives, but everyone pays part of his time.

And time - in aggregate - is life.

Bed

You may think my major concern on delaying antibiotic treatment is the potential threat to some critical patients. That's not (entirely) correct.

In fact, our friends outside the solar system would say clinicians could always ask for urgent dispensing of a drug when they really feel necessary. (Of course I could not imagine what would happen if we say 80% of our patients are urgent and have a necessity.)

But, let's assume they are sincere and that few critical patients were safe, there remains the problem of indirect cost that may skip your eyes.

Let's consider the following estimation:

• The average increase in time lag for antibiotic is around 6 hours.
• The time lag would be translated into an equivalent prolongation of hospital stay. (Let's assume there's no detrimental effect of the lag.)
• Let's assume we admit 60 patients each day, and 40% of them need antibiotics. (Both are highly conservative estimations.)
• The prolong in hospital stay would become 6 extra patients staying in ward (60 times 40% times 0.25 day).
• Assuming daily hospital stay costs HK$3000, the extra cost is $18,000 per day.

Sophisticated administrators would argue that hospital beds are fixed cost and would not disappear even if that 6 patients were not staying. Yes, that's true if we have plenty of empty beds. On the other hand, if the hospital is always full, six extra patients for this particular reason inevitably means that the same number of other patients in need would not receive the care.

There's something more than the dollar sign.

Amenity

One hot topic that keeps coming up in our professional casual chat (the term is self conflicting, I know) is the ban on ward stock of all antibiotics, with the resultant delay in availability of antibiotic for patients admitted through the emergency department.

To be fair, the ban is not without a reason; there had been quite a number of mishaps in the ward because antibiotic was given to someone with a known history of allergy. The solution adopted was to make sure all dispensing must go through the pharmacy, who would check on the history of allergy - and do away with the drug stocking in ward.

Inevitably, the price to pay is there would be some delay in given the drug (using the jargon of our cardiologist, the "door-to-injection time") - even for the vast majority of the patients without a history of allergy.

I shall not give my opinion here. Nonetheless, I am impressed with the comment of Charles, the cynical friend of Coemgenus, when the two discussed the traffic jam indirectly caused by blocking the road for the investigation of a traffic accident:

"Considerations of safety may have a higher priority than amenity but can never override it absolutely as the latter is what enriches life. I would ask the police whether the benefit to them in investigation, whether it be to satisfy those affected, to prepare for intended prosecution, or merely to cover their backs, always justifies the extent of the disruption to the lives of others that it causes."

Go read The Unknown Motorist in Clinical Medicine 2009; 9: 635-636.

Party

Attended the Christmas celebration held by Euterpe's kindergarten.

Oh, readers who are parents yourselves would know very well that celebration of this kind is nothing but an opportunity for each and every child to appear on the stage and have some performance. I must say I had very little expectation of the program (which was essentially all dancing and singing of kindergarten children), but was obliged to go and support my daughter, who took a small part in the dancing - what else do you expect from a kid of two-and-a-half ?

But I was (happily) wrong. The afternoon proved exceptionally entertaining. Not only was that the joy of a father seeing his daughter who had the first public performance in her life, but there was much fun for watching many (slightly naughty) kids on the stage - every piece of slip and mistake became an unintentional climax and invited big claps.

The program was planned to complete at 3:30 PM. By 3:28 PM, (although the whole afternoon was run by kids and there were so many climaxes) all the performances finished and the chancellor went up to the stage and thanked everyone. Each piece surprise was actually well planned and prepared.

Some of our friends in the business sector should really study (this) kindergarten again. (See http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2009/12/powerpoint.html)

Merry Christmas.

Balance

To our fans of environment protection, don't be too excited with my weird idea of improving the efficiency of photosynthesis - even if it were materialized, it merely alleviate the problem of food supply, but has very little to do with the prevention of global warming.

In fact, even if you have no knowledge on ecology and atmospheric structure, it is not difficult to understand the determining factors of our globe's surface temperature. Here is a simple balance sheet:

• Input of solar energy (in the form of radiation, i.e. sunshine).
• Output of solar energy reflected from earth back to the universe. (This is the bit dampened by greenhouse gas of the atmosphere. Note also that if there is absolutely no greenhouse effect, the surface temperature of the earth would be only 5 degree Celcius.)
• Input of energy from fossil fuel and nuclear reaction.

Note that photosynthesis is not in the equation, nor is wind or hydro-electric gadgets that environment protection fans are so fond of. All of these derive the energy from sunlight and would eventually dissipate as heat - the eternal last final ultimate inevitable rubbish bin of all energy by the rule of thermodynamics.

The implication ? I shall leave it to your own discretion.

Hope

You may think we are coming to a dead end.

But, unlike my usual self, I am less pessimistic on this matter.

To be specific, although the efficiency of photosynthesis seems abysmal, it also implies that an improvement to 10% would mean a doubling of food production.

In fact, a few simple figures could shed light on further areas on improvement:

• The efficiency for conversion of photosynthetically active radiation (wavelengths from 400 to 700 nm) to chemical energy or biomass is 25%.
• Only 45% of the actual sunlight is photosynthetically active.
• Plant absorbs only 25 to 50% of the incoming sunlight for photosynthesis. (The other is dissipated by reflection and respiration requirements of the plant itself.)
  

You see what we are getting at ? On the first glance, item 1 seems an attractive target. However, it is indeed quite fixed because evolution in the past millions of years have ensured the efficiency of chlorophyll and the molecular machinery.

Item 2 appears to be fixed - you cannot change the spectrum of sunlight, but we can modified the structure (and therefore absorption spectrum) of chlorophyll.

Of course, it seems more easy to make the plant reflect less light.

But, the first thing we have to accept is: We are talking about genetically modified food.

Effect

Take aside the obvious complication of acid rain, pumping sulfur dioxide onto the atmosphere - with an aim to reduce solar radiation on earth - would be a courageous (according to the definition of Humphrey Appleby) strategy.

The reasoning is simple: Despite the extensive use of fossil fuel, almost all human food comes from solar energy - directly or indirectly. Wheat and vegetables do photosynthesis; livestock and fish feed on grass and algae and so forth.

The sobering truth is, in terms of energy conversion, photosynthesis is terribly inefficient (only 3 to 6%). Reduction in solar radiation, therefore, would inevitably result in a corresponding drop in food production.

Alas, it means that the world is cooler and food is more scarce. Thank you very much.

The story of volcano Krakatoa told us that much.

PS. The next inevitable environment problem of a cooler world with less food is the increase in utilization of fossil fuel (or nuclear energy, if our fans of environment protection prefer), which increases the amount of carbon dioxide release and cancels out the effect of sulfur dioxide.

SuperFreak

While I was pondering on the superb wisdom that I learn from Freakonomics, our famous local magazine put its brother - SuperFreakonomics - under the limelight.

One of the major focus of the book was the debate on global warming. In short, Steven Levitt put much emphasis on Nathan Myhrvhold's idea of pumping sulfur into the upper atmosphere. The idea comes from the observation following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which discharged more than 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere - acting like a layer of sunscreen and reducing the amount of solar radiation, with resultant cooling off the earth by an average of one degree Farenheit.

Ingenious it seems, I am worried.

Seasoned readers of this blog may notice I put up The Scream of Edvard Munch as my profile picture.

Do you notice the colour of the sky ? Although Munch was portraying the Norwegian scene, the sky was red as a result of the 1883 eruption of volcano Krakatoa from Indonesia. With that event, temperature of the globe dropped by 2 degrees, all rain became acidic (it was sulfur dioxide !), and agricultural production fell for some years, followed by several political repercussion.

I need to scream.

Name

Another topic that Stephen Levitt spent quite some pages was the change in the parents' choice of name for their boys and girls.

I shall not go through his idea here. Suffice to say the choice of name for our children does reflect our value and wish on them - I realized this as soon as I entered the secondary school and was exposed to a wealth of different names.

But that's for our Chinese name only. At least amongst my generation, English name of a person is usually his (or her) own choice.

In other words, at least amongst people of my generation, the English name reflect what he or she wish to be, or what kind of person they are.

For example:

• A difficult person usually has a long and complicated name.
• Aggressive and fame-seeking people tend to have a name starting with "A".
• More humble people would choose to have their name beginning with "B". (Ironically, they are often aggressive subconsciously, because they are more aware of the difference between A and B.)
• Other subconsciously aggressive people would choose a name beginning with "Z", for obvious reasons.
• People who choose to have a simple name (for example, John or Peter) tend to be friendly and easy going.

I shall not elaborate further.

Dealers

One excellent story that Stephen Levitt told was the balance sheet of a drug-dealing gang.

The idea was simple: Although selling crack cocaine does make quite a bit of money, the leader of the gang always gets the lion's share of the profit - so much so that the actual salary of ordinary dealers (so-called foot soldiers) is rather abysmal. (In Levitt's own description, they've got to live with their mothers.)

Then why do so many young people want to become drug dealers ?

The answer is obviously the (hallucinatory) bright future of becoming the leader of a gang.

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I could not stop smiling while reading this chapter - a similar story is regularly happening in our circle.

I mean, our house officers. (By the way, they are drug dealers !)

You know what, as soon as we were in the final year of the medical school, we realized that the salary of a houseman was actually lower than those working in McDonalds. Nonetheless, calculated as always, our class still very much looked forward for the job.

As I told my classmate, "The paid is hell, but there is hardly any other job in the world that one would sure be promoted in a year - with the salary more than doubled."

The sobering truth is: fewer young people now wish to become a drug dealer because their leaders have much less glory nowadays - the profit has dropped a lot, and the risk of being arrested is higher than ever.

And the same is happening to our fresh graduates ?

Freakonomics

I was quite sure I could finish with Freakonomics this year (see my blog on 11 December) because I brought it with me to Chiang Mai - and it was such an enjoyable reading that I went through, from cover to cover, during the flight.

The book was a layman's summary of a few somewhat unrelated papers by Stephen Levitt, a Chicago economist.

I shall not elaborate the content here - you should really experience yourself. Although many of us have the impression that research in economy is related to tax, stock market, GDP, and other similar big topics, I agree with Levitt it is really the small bits on micro-economics that most of us find interesting.

Alas, even Adam Smith (began in the field of philosophy and) was flourished by his wealth of data in micro-economics before he could put up an overall picture in the Wealth of the Nations.

And, for an amateurish lover of wisdom like myself, there is no necessity what so ever to have an overall picture - I'm overjoyed to appreciate another piece (actually several pieces) of ingenuity.

Talk

The Thank You Dinner finished early, and HQ – a friend of mine from the mainland – invited me for a beer.

We found ourselves sitting in a seafood restaurant of the local bazaar, and were joined by BL (a senior physician from Sweden) and PH (a nephrologist from Belgium) - both good friends of HQ.

After a glass of beer or two, the two Europeans began to share their view on the history of the world - I was too happy to be a humble audience. The discussion began from the construction of the Grand Canal of China (京杭大運河), then the genetic mix-up between Mongols and Han people in the Yuan dynasty, followed by the invasion of Europe by Genghis Khan (成吉思汗), next to the invasion of England by Roman and Viking, and concluded with the development of the English language in the past millennium.

When we walked back to the hotel after a heated discussion, I said to PH, "Gosh, you are the only one I know who could tell the history of medieval England to the accuracy of year. Knowing that you are actually a Belgian, it is really an admirable achievement."

"Not at all," my new friend replied, "I lived in England for three years as a student."

I nodded, but said to myself, "Many of us lived in our country for half a century but still know close to nothing about our own history."

孔明燈

Recently attended a conference in Thailand.

I shall not elaborate the detail of the conference, which may not be entirely interesting, here. As usual, all speakers were invited to a Thank You Dinner. On the schedule, it was nothing remarkable: we were led by local tourist guides to see some temples, followed by a short boat trip on the river, and finally a BBQ buffet.

But there was surprise after the food: We were invited to go back to the river side, and were met with a few young men, who gave us tens of (what appeared as) gigantic paper bags.

One of them put up a fire under a bag, which soon became swollen because of the hot air and flied up to the sky. Suddenly I realized what they were doing, “Oh, god. They’re setting up Kongming lanterns (孔明燈) !”

We were immediately encouraged to do one after seeing. Although the “game” is not new to me, it remained slightly challenging – to prevent the fire from actually burning the paper, which happened for my first try – and it was real fun to see the paper toy grew up in my own hands, seemed to loss its weight, and freed itself up into the thin air. In now time, we saw dozens of glowing stars on the winter sky of Chiang Mai.

PS. On a second thought, did Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) make this gadget in order to confuse the astronomers of Sima Yi (司馬懿) ?

天譴

Before I left for Thailand, my attention was caught by the judge's comment to someone who was found guilty on a local drama: 必遭天譴.

As Philo Vance's criticism on Markham (the District Attorney of New York County, in The Benson Murder Case), "I can understand a lay person making such a comment. But to say this as a professional, it is a bad sign."

And that's exactly the point - our court is supposed to practice justice, and I consider our legal professionals not doing their job right if a man (oh, a woman in this case) has done something evil but his punishment is left to some supernatural power.

To go one step further, even if the guilty person could escape from loopholes in our legal system - be it the law per se, or the litigation procedure (which is far more common) - the duty of our court is to point out the loophole and arrange its fix up. In layman's term, there's not point to cry over spoiled milk.

Copenhagen

The big thing on earth (the planet we live, I mean) at this moment is no doubt the Copenhagen Climate Conference.

I shall not elaborate my view on environment protection here. Nonetheless, the Conference does provide great substance for us to ponder - on democracy.

Oh, yes, you see the right word: democracy.

Just a few simple questions:

• Are climate change and environment protection important issues ?
• Do they affect every human beings ?
• If there is any policy, should everyone contribute to make it successful ?
  
• Does everyone have a say when the policy is being prepared ?

If you answer yes to all these questions, would you come to the inevitable conclusion that any policy on global environment protection should be decided by the most democratic procedure: referendum of the globe ?

Alas, that's probably the rare occasion where you would find China is all for democracy while the States and Europeans would protest vigorously with reasons all familiar to us.

That would be fun.

Missing

While reviewing my reading list this year, I realize there are quite a number of good books that I never have the opportunity to read (from cover to cover).

This is, again, an incomplete list:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Alice's Adventure in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• The Joke by Milan Kundera
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Valley of Fear (of Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Travels of Marco Polo
  
• Genesis of the Bible
  
• From Fish to Philosopher by Homer Smith
  
• 黃宗羲 《明夷待訪錄》
• 吳敬梓 《儒林外史》

PS. For those who are not familiar with examination terminology, "never have the opportunity to" is the synonym of "forget" or "do not know".

Reading

It's coming to the end of a year, probably a good idea to look back and consider what book I planned to read but didn't.

Seasoned readers of this blog may recollect I made such a plan at the beginning of the year (go read http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2008/12/plan.html). When I go through it again, many of them were done - except Food Politics and Freakonomics - the latter of which I planned to read in the coming weeks.

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My friends KM and BK were recently amazed to find me keeping a few non-medical books in my office. I must say these volumes are there largely for reference.

Here is my (incomplete) list:

• On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser
• Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson
• How to Say It at Work by Jack Griffin
  
• Fowler's Modern English Usage
  
• Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics by Andrew Cohen and Christopher Wellman
  
• The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E. J. Wagner

PS. Strunk & White is not there; I keep it at home for careful study.

Nightingale

While recovering from my late-evening hypoglycemia, a few great speakers in the history came to my mind.

And I could not stop thinking of Florence Nightingale - the great lady who is commonly regarded as the mother of modern nursing.

Another talent of Nightingale that may skip your eyes is her remarkable presentation skill.

In fact, the great nurse was also a pioneer in the graphical presentation of information and statistical illustrations; she was renowned for her ability to use visual impact to convey important message - so as to influence various policies on public health. A particular form of pie chart which she developed, now known as the polar area diagram, is also called the Nightingale rose diagram.

Nightingale was elected as a member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1859 - she was the first female member of that society in history.

PS. Is it the reason so many of our senior nursing officers love paper work and presentations ?

Powerpoint

Went to a dinner meeting hosted by a group of extra-terrestrials. (Alas, that's included as part of my job description - or, to put it simply, my salary.)

The evening program was planned to be a simple one: There was an invited speaker from the States, who was supposed to share his experience in a brief presentation of half an hour; the dinner was after the talk.

The disaster began when the host forgot to bring a computer for the presentation.

They tried to borrow one from the venue (which was supposed to be a business center), but there was none for hire.

One of the hosts contacted a friend in office at a distance of a 10-minute walk, and it took half an hour before a small lap-top appeared - only to discover that it could not be logged on without an appropriate fingerprint.

Another audience appeared late and brought with him a computer - but it was an Apple and therefore not compatible.

The group of extra-terrestrials remained chaotic for an hour or so; I continued to wonder how Winston Churchill delivered his talks before Powerpoint was invented.

The dinner finally began by 9:40 PM. I left without saying goodbye as soon as I took the appetizer - so that I would not fell hypoglycemic on my way home. As Churchill once said, a gentleman is a man who would not be rude unless he intentionally does so.

PS. After we got married for over six years, Vivian had never heard so much colourful vocabulary from me.

Reviewer

You may laugh at my blog yesterday and think the problem of conflict of interest happens only in the circle of politics.

On that, you are wrong; we have just too much experience in academic medicine. Let me tell you a remarkable story:

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A few years ago, one of my colleagues and I were invited by a particular journal to write a commentary on a published paper - the two of us had done some similar work but the result was quite opposite. Naturally, we tried to explain the difference in result, and pointed out a few methodological problems of the others' paper.

When the journal editor showed our commentary to the original authors (for those who are not familiar with our life, it is a common practice), they protested:

"These two Hong Kong authors did not declare their conflict of interest - their group and ours work on the same area but they hold a different view."

My colleague asked how we should respond. I said, "If we work on the same area and share the same view, there is an even more vigorous conflict - we would like to suppress their paper and publish ours."

"What about if we work on a different area ?" My friend remained puzzled.

"In that case, we are not in the position to - and should not have been invited to - comment on their paper !" I laughed.

PS. I suggested to the editor that we put down a conflict of interest statement at the end of our commentary, stating that the two groups worked on the same area. The editor certainly saw the nuisance of my declaration and waved off the idea.

Conflict

For those who have no experience of being an expert witness, it is actually not easy to find someone who agrees and is agreeable.

In short, the earth is so small that everyone who have sufficient knowledge in a particular area would have something (albeit indirectly) related to the matter at hand, and people call it conflict of interest - another term that has been raped for so many times that it has become a prostitute.

A notable recent example is the barrister who failed to do business with a billionaire - and it is a conflict.

What about if there was a successful business relation ?

In fact, even if the barrister does not know the rich man at all, there remains a conflict: envy because of failure to make acquaintance.

Well, critics probably believe that there exists a human species called professional layman.

Alas, even if there were such a man, he would still have conflict of interest with that billionaire - the golden spoon that the latter was born with might have belonged to the layman if it were not for the existence of the latter.

Witness

Soon after my astronomic encounter, I was summoned to the court as an expert witness.

I shall not elaborate on the details of my appearance - it is neither appropriate nor interesting. But a small incident was really remarkable.

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To put it simply, the point of discussion was what actually happened during a critical period.

Early in the morning, a key witness - let's call him Mr. A - was asked to describe and was questioned in great detail about the sequence of event.

After an hour, another witness presented what he did. The judge suddenly interrupted, "That could not be the case. Mr. A just said that he tried the car before calling for help."

A few of the audience (including me) looked puzzled - we seemed to have heard a different story; the barrister of the (supposedly) defending side rose up, "Sir, Mr. A actually said that he called for help before he tried the car."

The judge checked with his own notes that he put down, and he insisted, "No, I did make some notes when Mr. A was giving his evidence. He tried the car first."

I turned around and looked at the seat behind me; Mr. A was humbly sitting there.

"Why don't they ask him again ?" I said to myself.

But no. The point was not what the fact was, but what was being said. The two legal professionals discussed for another minute or so; the judged then suggested, "We have tape recording of the whole process. Why don't we get back to the tape and check what was said ?"

The lawyer duly complied.

Venus

Soon after my experience with the Jupiter, I was asked which planet I would prefer after the Pluto is taken out from the list of planet for the solar system.

There aren't very many choices, and I would prefer the Venus.

Reasons ? Well, there are a few:

1. Venus is the brightest planet. (I agree there are times when Jupiter outshines Venus, but on the average the latter gives more light.)
2. Venus is close to the Earth and, unlike Jupiter (which essentially is a bag of gas), it is a terrestrial planet.
3. Venus could work both efficiently and leisurely - a day on Venus equals 243 days on Earth, but a year on Venus is 62% of an Earth year.
4. Above all, I love gold.
   

PS. Seriously, my opinion is immaterial. The established system of selecting a planet is absolutely democratic: one man, one vote.

I mean only one man could give the vote.

Jupiter

After pondering on some local black box operations, I attended a star party with Vivian and Euterpe.

In short, the kindergarten of my daughter invited a few semi-professional stargazers to give a talk. They also brought their telescopes along so that we could all share a glimpse of the clear autumn sky.

The major character of the evening was Jupiter. Thanks to the explanation of our instructor, I could learn a few interesting things of this lovely star:

• It is more close to earth than Pluto.
• In spite of its heavy mass, it has the fastest rotation of all the planets in the solar system. One day on Jupiter is merely 10 hours on earth.
• Largely because of its fast rotation, its atmosphere is highly violent. In fact, one of the best known features of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot - a persistent anticyclone storm that's been noted for a few hundred years.
• It has no fewer than 60 satellites; 4 of them are particularly obvious to lay observers.
• And, above all, although it is very heavy, its major composition is hydrogen and helium. In short, it is merely a gigantic bag of gas.

PS. Were our friends actually astrologists ?

Punish

Going back to the local political drama, the obvious question is: What next ?

In fact, it is a classical scenario in the study of game theory: the "one-side defect" for cooperation of repeated game with heavy reputation effect .

The idea is simple: Cooperation leads to a tension between what is best for the individual and what is best for the group. A group does better if everyone cooperates, but each individual is tempted to defect.

What about costly punishment (i.e. paying a cost for another individual to incur a cost) ?

You may not believe it, but there has been well conducted experiments on this area. The result ? In short, the option of costly punishment increases the amount of cooperation but not the average payoff of the group. Furthermore, there is a strong negative correlation between total payoff and use of costly punishment. Those people who gain the highest total payoff tend not to use costly punishment.

In other words, winners don’t punish; losers punish and perish.

Go read Anna Dreber. Winners don't punish. Nature 2008; 452: 348.

Blackbox

It is eye-opening to learn a certain noble council member uses the term blackbox politics to comment on the operation of another party. By definition, politics is a blackbox operation.

It is an ingenuous - no, it's not a typo; not ingenious - idea that politics means democracy, election, or referendum. I'm not saying what is good or bad, or should or should not. Just that the game is not played in that way.

Oh, rather than dwelling on the dull drama of local politics, for those who are interested in soiling their hands, may I introduce the best preparatory course before joining the blackbox operation:

I am referring to the boardgame Diplomacy.

No, this is no Risk or other ordinary chess. On the map of Europe, each of the seven players takes the control of one country. Contrary to other games, movement is simultaneous, not by turn; all players secretly write down their moves after a negotiation period, and then all moves are revealed and put into effect simultaneously. The major target of the game is to fight for the fixed number of supply centers (34 in total) - it is a zero sum game; any gains in a player's resources comes at the expense of a rival.

And, you see, the beauty of the game is all for that negotiation phase; all the (important) things happen here. Players form alliances; arrangements and agreements may be made public knowledge or kept secret. Players are not bound to anything they say during this period, and no agreements of any sort are enforceable. Players must forge alliances with opponents and observe them to ensure their trustworthiness; at the same time, they must convince others of their own trustworthiness while making plans to turn on their allies when others least expect it.

PS. It is often said that Diplomacy was the favorite game of Henry Kissinger, and the Kennedy family the game to teach their children. I'm not sure it is a good thing to learn stabbing on others' back at such an early stage, but the map of Europe is certainly an excellent gadget to teach our kids history.

冬日

While talking about the sun, another little story from the ancient China comes to my mind:

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酆舒問於賈季曰：趙衰、趙盾孰賢？對曰：趙衰冬日之日也，趙盾夏日之日也。
《左傳·文公七年》

(晉‧杜預注：冬日可愛，夏日可畏。)

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You may wonder why I brought this up - it is plain simple that the winter sun is lovely while the summer one is poisonous.

But, may I remind you, that's the same sun, just that the environment is different.

More importantly, winter is winter exactly because the sun is not working to its full capability.

Same for our professors ?