餅乾罐兒

还有11个小时就2012了。我想的确有必要回顾一下将要过去的2011。今年大事小事一堆，靠记忆只能说出个大概，大致的线条就是：

旷课一学期后重新回到牛津，赶了两周论文，虽然知道质量惨不忍睹，也只好硬着头皮交了上去。开始学习，满怀希望跟热情地学博弈论。复活节跟凡仔游欧洲，发现我们很喜欢奥地利，厌恶意大利。之后再次重复第三年的地狱式复习。给SBS里的复习伙伴们起星战花名，开始跟茜茜成为朋友。搬家，称为伦敦人。终于去了Jenni家，按计划完成Road Trip。爸妈恩首次出国，毕业典礼，游英国欧洲。伦敦暴乱。开始申请工作，欢少悲多。

看了一下手机里的照片，发现有很多很小的事情，只是轻轻地在记忆里留下一道抹痕。

Cymer, Sherry and Cathy came to Oxford to spend New Year's with us.

Cocktail-making course in MCR. I did great. Had 7 drinks.

On the way to Lydia's pre-wedding drink and saw Channel 4 Headquarter.

In Notting Hill with Jenni. Saw white aubergine for the first time.

Cathy visiting London. Taken on Millenium Bridge.

First ever Europe trip. Here is in Vienna St.Stephen's Cathedral.

Formal dinner at Wadham. A nice desert, too bad that I can't remember the name.

Karaoke with Eric, Xix and Spark. Eric and I performed 'Endless Love' disastrously.

Xixi appeared in SBS in 'early morning' and stole Eric's roasted almond.

SBS picnic. We switched seats several times. I miss Eric's tea.

Breakfast at Christ Church. Finally after 4 years of waiting.

Exams Over. Not just any exams, Last Oxford Exams ever. Happy but sad.

Cathy's Graduation Ceremony. Picture from a little Polaroid-resembled Fuji Camera.

Lauren's writing. We discovered it on Lu's door. Wonder why she stuck it there.

Metaphox's visit in Oxford. Luncheon in Head of the River pub. Nice day.

Twelve Studio. Small as a hole with a dream grand as the world.

At Jenni's. Very civilised afternoon where all 3 of us were reading. ehem, not Jenni.

Everyone was knackered when we arrived in Paris. So we napped.

Graduation. My dearests in Oxford. How I wish the fun will never end.

Karaoke with the Zhu sisters. How wonderful it is to have them around.

Sherry came visit. I know I know, but this is how we roll in the shire.

The London Gang, well ok no Michael. But the guy is earning his way in the world.

SY and the Missus with their lovely cup cakes. A moment on the lips.

Cardiff. Stupid trip. Nice scene. Alone. Rubbish Museum. grr.

"Occupied St.Paul". The failure of Capitalism, or education? I don't know.

Karl Marx's grave. Some say we went to worship him. I'm not so sure about that.

All I want for Christmas is you..... and you, and you, and you......

Plant on my desk. It went through ups and downs with me. It is now in its second bloom.

天府布衣, long time no see. It made us happy as always.

One afternoon, Two teas, Two Books and Chocolates. Life doesn't get better than this.

Ding Ding our one-week lodger. He's so enjoying himself isn't he?

Very complicated 红烧肉 by chef Lü. Obviously not enough for pigs like us.

An unexpected find with Lu. Maybe my shopping skill has indeed improved.

the Royal Opera House, Sleeping Beauty Ballet. Absolutely stund by the stage design.

Sherry came for Christmas, pretty proud of her Majiong pyramid.

Christmas Day roast dinner. Looks good, but still doesn't taste perfect.

Series of documentary on the question “what makes us human”. Presented by Anatomist Alice Roberts.

This episode is about how the way we to find food and digest it have left marks on our body, and how it underpinned our success as a global species.

• Sea Squirt is an animal that only consist of a gut.
• Human evolved from Propliopithecus.
• At the back of all mammal’s eyes lies light sensitive colour receptors called cones, which most mammals have only two types to cover the blue and yellow spectrum. 30 millions years ago a genetic mutation had opened up our red and green receptor cones, which allowed us to pick out ripe fruits to gain more sugar and nutrition.
• Series of major climat change had brought us from the trees to the ground in search for food. The climat had become cooler and dryer. The woodlands were shrinking while the grasslands were expanding.
• Tapeworms found in lions’ guts are almost identical to that of human’s, which suggested that at some point human and lions shared the same meat, such as antelopes in africa. By dating, scientist believes that this meet eater of our ancestor is Homo Erectus.
• Changing diet from fruit and nuts to meat had change the tooth-shape as well as face shape of our ancestor. Meat eating Homo Erectus had smaller teeth, therefore thinner jaws, which meant a face shape more like modern human.
• Teeth enamel retains marks on the food that had been processed. The study of teeth enamel had shown that Homo Erectus actually had a broad range of diets, including meat, grass and nuts, etc.
• Human saliva had 6-8 times more enzyme amylase  than that of chimpanzees’, which means we are significantly more adapted to eating starchy food.
• The ability to eat a huge range of food allowed Homo Erectus to live in various of environments.
• By cooking food, we can get more calories out from the food itself, and use less energy to chew and digest it. It is believe that this extra energy is crucial to develop and fuel our big brain.
• Because of the division of roles in food gathering, i.e women gathers fruit and roots, men hunts and finds honey, it is efficient for men and women to pair up to share food. This is thought to be the origin of pairing up and staying together.
• Women’s preference for good hunter is thought to have shaped the way men behave.
• Men are more likely to take risks in the presence of attractive women.
• Over 1/3 of the land on earth is taken over by farming, which allowed a population explosion.

Experiment OPERA in Italy detected neutrinos travelling faster than light. Ground breaking discovery or just mistakes in measurements?

• Nearly 350 years ago, scientist believed that light didn’t travel at all, but it was transmitted instantaneously from source to eye.
• ‘Ether’ was the name given by scientist to the medium in which light wave travelled.
• Einstein discovered that light has both wave and particle properties, which is known as photon.
• Einstein’s paper on the understanding of light, published in 1905, did not have a single reference at the end.
• The ground breaking understanding of light: speed of light in vacuum is absolute, nothing can travel faster. Speed of light is the speed limit of the universe.
• Einstein concluded that time is not a constant. The faster you travel, the slower time passes.
• GPS satellites travels at 14000 miles/hour, and the time kept on the satellites runs 7 ms slower than earth per day.
• E=mc2, which means an objects mass increases as its energy increases. Therefore the faster an object travels, the higher its mass becomes, the more energy it requires to accelerate.
• There are 16 types of particles which are the fundamental building blocks of the universe. 3 of them are neutrinos.
• If atom is the size of the solar system, then neutrino is the size of a golf ball.
• The nuclear chain reaction produce a vast amount of neutrinos.
• Neutrino detectors are made of lead because it’s dense.
• The OPERA measurement shows the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds faster than the laws of physics allowed.
• If things can travel faster than light, then time may flow backwards, in which case the law of cause and effect no longer holds. If that’s true, then in principle, time travel is possible.
• Possible inaccuracies: 1. distance between CERN and OPERA. 2. the exact time when neutrinos left CERN.
• From a mathematical point of view, it IS possible to travel faster than light.
• Antimatter is a mathematical concept developed in 1920s.
• Mathematically speaking, there is equations to explain Einstein’s theory that allows particles to travel faster than light. These theoretical particles were given the name Tachyons. Their mass is an imaginary number.
• Einsteins theory does not limit objects that already travel faster than light when they are formed.
• Einsteins theory cannot be used to explain extreme conditions such as black hole and the Big Bang.
• Einstein’s grand unifying theory of the universe does not join up with the theory of quantum mechanics.
• Theoretical physicists explain the
• String Theory explains that the fundamental particles we see are all related to each other through a string. Each node of vibration represents an elementary particle.
• Einstein’s universe has 4 dimensions, whereas string theory suggests there are 10.
• String theory says our familiar 3D world is a membrane, which lives in a higher dimensional bulk space time which may have many other membranes. The analogy would be slices of bread in a loaf. They are parallel universes. Light is confined in just the membrane.
• Therefore one possible explanation to the speed of neutrino is that, the neutrinos were travelling below the speed of light when it left CERN, left our membrane during the journey, and came back in time for OPERA to pick up.