Chinese New Year BBC documentary

Jing found this fun BBC documentary series about Chinese New Year. It is entertaining and discusses a great variety of events, places, and people. The British presenters come across a little condescendingly, but you get over it ... and the "hairy bikers" at least aren't taking things too seriously! One of the most impressive things for me is the Harbin Ice Festival which consists of building "a city" .... out of ice. Here are some of the many staggering facts and fun events mentioned in the series, including several related to the Harbin Ice Festival (the time is shown in brackets):

Episode 1:
11:25 Queues of up to 100,000 people at Guangdong train station (partly due to snow delays).
11:40 An ice slide 320m long.
20:53 To prepare for Harbin Ice Festival, 8000 workers are employed to cut ice from the river.
37:48 Turning on the lights at Harbin.

Episode 2:
20:05 Flower auction.

Smart Quotes

Check out the website http://www.smart-words.org/quotes-sayings/idioms-meaning.html. It has many interesting idioms and also reminds me of the BBC programs The English We Speak and 6 Minute English.

An interesting note from today's reading

While reading a lecture notes from MIT, I found the following sentence quite amusing:
"... These bounds are known as Chernoff bounds, after Herman Chernoff, Emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics here at MIT!"
The exclamation mark at the end of the sentence seems to suggest these bounds be a heritage.

All I want for Christmas

Found this hilarious video from r-bloggers, a modern adaption of the classical song!
http://www.r-bloggers.com/because-its-friday-all-i-want-for-christmas/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RBloggers+%28R+bloggers%29

Merry Christmas! We're cooking the turkey :)

And some famous skating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2zbbN4OL98

Christmas reading from Xiao-Li

Physical theories not based on experimental evidence:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science/

Franklin Institute at Philly

It was a rainy day. I walked around the city and passed a museum that looks grand. Out of curiosity, I went inside and saw the grand statue of Benjamin Franklin and the Lego model of the Vatican! I never realize that such beautiful craft exists, and right next to me! While strolling around the museum, I also saw a special exhibition about the times of Genghis Khan still running. Although he was once a great emperor in China, I have never understood much about him. So the exhibition seems very intriguing. Maybe it's not a bad idea to come here often.

The last one pictures Christmas shopping at Macy's. I was shooting right next to the well-known eagle.