Therefore, a wise general will strive to feed off the enemy. One bushel of the enemy's provisions is worth twenty of our own, one picul of fodder is worth twenty of our own.
                - The Art of War, Sun Zi (孫子兵法)

A commentator in this forum thread explains:

Sun Tzu means that any captured resource is pure sundry and also makes the enemy weaker for having had it plundered from them. The bushel earned negates having to pay a farmer to raise a bushel, then a merchant to handle it. Also to pay for the merchant's horse's share of the grain and the depreciatin to the merchant's waggon. Once it was delivered to the general the bushel must then be carried by someone with another horse and another waggon. It is much better for an army to travel light and take what is needed. The soldiers of Sparta subscribed to similar ideals and were quite sucessfull.

Do you apply this principle in your life? Whether it's the competitive world of business (to which it has been argued, by businesspeople and educators in Japan, The Art of War is relevant) or some other endeavor: do you live off the bounty of your opponent?

This is part of a series on The Art of War (孫子兵法) by Sun Zi (孫子).

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Banazir

In the first of my recent posts on the technological singularity, I remarked on something I called the "Ramanujan Syndrome". Modern biographers of the famous Tamil mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan have often noted that his spiritual devoutness was over-romanticized, as contemporaries such as G. H. Hardy observed. Equally, however, there has in recent decades been a tendency to view his lack of formal training before the age of about 25 (in 1914) as a distinction, almost glamorous.

( M. T. Iyengar, editor of the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, on Ramanujan )
( Ramanujan's work with Hardy, 1914 - 1919 )
( My remarks )

What do you think?

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Banazir

حكمة [transliterated hikma] (Arabic, noun) - "wisdom"

From Wikipedia:

The House of Wisdom (Arabic: بيت الحكمة‎; Bait al-Hikma) was a key institution in the Translation Movement - a library and translation institute in Abbassid-era Baghdad, Iraq. It is considered to have been a major intellectual center of the Islamic Golden Age. The House of Wisdom acted as a society founded by Abbasid caliphs Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma'mun who reigned from 813-833 CE. Based in Baghdad from the 9th to 13th centuries, many of the most learned Muslim scholars were part of this excellent research and educational institute. In the reign of al-Ma'mun, observatories were set up, and The House was an unrivalled centre for the study of humanities and for sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, zoology and geography. Drawing on Persian, Indian and Greek texts—including those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Euclid, Plotinus, Galen, Sushruta, Charaka, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta—the scholars accumulated a great collection of knowledge in the world, and built on it through their own discoveries. Baghdad was known as the world's richest city and centre for intellectual development of the time, and had a population of over a million, the largest in its time. The great scholars of the House of Wisdom included Al-Khawarizmi, the "father" of algebra, which takes its name from his book Kitab al-Jabr.

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Banazir

Are members of your family devout believers in some religion or system of belief? Would you call them "fundamentalists", either in the literal sense of returning to the original scriptures and doctrines of a system of belief, or the colloquial sense of being very hidebound adherents to the old-time religion?

I would call my folks Confucian fundamentalists. In some sense, they believe in the Taoist ideals of the Doctrine of the Mean, eschewing extremism and fearmongering in the name of theocratic authority. They believe in the principle that mankind should live in harmony with society, seeking first to set oneself, then one's family, then one's village, and finally one's nation right. They hold the humility, the love of learning, and humanity highest among virtues.

( The Five Bonds: Civic, Filial, Marital, Familial, Social )
( Analects )

( A few comments and critiques )
( Seeming fair and feeling foul: Analects I.3 )

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Banazir

Today, Dr. Vinton Cerf, the 2004 ACM Turing Award recipient, and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google, came and gave a very interesting talk about the future of the Internet. Later in the afternoon, he hosted an informal question and answer session which turned into a second talk.

( Highlights of the webcast lecture )
( Questions and answers )
( Spreading the word )
( The afternoon session )
( Talks by Turing Award winners )

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Banazir

Anyone on my friends list watch Time Machine on the History Channel?

Tonight's 2-hour documentary, Rome: Engineering an Empire, was quite enthralling.

( Works covered )

In other news:

• This week got off to a very good start. I have high hopes for some of these new students, especially in CIS 730.


• I haven't seen Stargate: Atlantis or Stargate SG-1 yet, but I have high hopes for both eps. Jaffa genocide and Genii revenge are always good, rousing topics.

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Banazir

It's been an interesting day. I've been reading about the Syriac alphabet and Mongol script, which gave rise to the Manchu alphabet. Of the intermediate Mongol script, Wikipedia reports:

At the very beginning of the Mongol Empire in 1208, Genghis Khan defeated the Naimans and captured an Uyghur scribe, Tatar-Tonga, who then adapted the Uyghur alphabet — a descendant of the Syriac alphabet, via Sogdian — to write Mongol. With only minor modification, it is used in Inner Mongolia to this day. Its most salient feature is its vertical direction; it is the only vertical script that is written from left to right. (All other vertical writing systems are written right to left.) This is because the Uighurs rotated their script 90 degrees counterclockwise to emulate the Chinese writing system.

Meanwhile:

The traditional Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Mongolian language, and it would be impractical to extend it to a language with a very different phonology like Chinese. Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty (ca. 1269), Kublai Khan asked a Tibetan monk, Phagspa, to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. Phagspa extended his native Tibetan script to encompass Mongolian and Chinese; the result was known by several descriptive names, such as the Mongolian seal script, but today is known as the Phagspa alphabet. This script did not receive wide acceptance and fell into disuse with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. After this it was mainly used as a phonetic gloss for Mongolians learning Chinese characters. However, scholars such as Gari Ledyard believe that in the meantime it was the source of the Korean Hangul alphabet.

Thus, within two generations, the latter around the time of the sojourn of the Polos (Marco, his father, and his uncle) at Kublai's court, we had two alphabets imported for use in writing one language. The Tibetan script gave rise to the Phagspa script, which in one hypothesized pedigree was the precursor to Hangul. Small world!

I've also been reading a little about Chinese history, particularly the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese Civil War, and the Soong Sisters.

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Banazir

Lee Family Reunion 2006: China
A Tronkie Travellogue
Day 20: Beijing International Airport and Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant

"I fear we have awakened the sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve."
    -Admiral Isokoru Yamamoto (1884-1943), in 1941, of the United States of America, when asked about the Japanese navy's prospects after Pearl Harbor

"When China awakes the world will tremble."
    -Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), in 1809

( China's long sleep and slow awakening )
( Photographs of the city )

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Banazir

Lee Family Reunion 2006: China
A Tronkie Travellogue
Day 18: Beijing, China


The entrance to City Golf Greenery at Jiangzhuanghu, the community where my uncle's family lives. "Fifty-five North American villas" reads the street-facing side of the above arch. The contrast in architectural styles makes this development a microcosm of Westernization, an enclave set apart from the surrounding city - but not as sharply as you might think.

( Communism in China )
( A digression on dinner and state-owned wineries )

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Banazir

Pursuant to these stories about my great-great-grandparents, here is a picture from Pingdu in 1929 to inaugurate my LiveJournal Scrapbook:


(Click to enlarge.)

My father's mother is pictured among the seated, third from the left. She's nearly 16 in that photo, though she doesn't look it.

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Banazir

UK Trip 2005: A Tronkie Travellogue
Day 8: Edinburgh, Scotland to Inverness, Scotland, return (Bus Tour of the Scottish Highlands)

( Nessie Kaze No Tani )

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Banazir