Confessions of a researchaholic

2020-06-23

Anniversary dinner

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:58 pm
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The appetizers (corn mezzaluna, Spanish mackerel) and entrees (striped bass, duck breast) were pretty light until the chocolate souffle, which was much more fulfilling than the size would suggest and continued to roll in my stomach until deep into the night.

Drawing helped me to not only remember the experience (than, say, photography) but (counter-intuitively) also better engage in conversation.

This is my last celebratory meal before I manage to regenerate a losing body part considered to be irreversible by all doctors I have consulted so far.

2020-05-26

A school bully

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:54 am
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A student greeted members of her PhD defense committee via an email, and got scorched by one of the examiners for trying to schedule her own oral defense, using a “buddy” tone (including the use of emojis), sending from a non-school email account, and not addressing the examiner with a professor salute.

I like to tell this student that (1) a person is measured by the size of things that matter to him/her, (2) do not become such a person in the future.

2020-05-08

Deep journey and genuine experience

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:51 pm
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There are these tourists who just want to visit as many places as possible to take (or even fake) photos without spending enough time experiencing the local life and culture with sufficient depth.

Researchers who abuse authorships are like such tourists.
They pretend having all the fun without actual experiencing much.

Life is a deep journey, and genuine experience is what matters the most.

2020-05-03

Impact

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:11 pm
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A few days ago I read an article about an open-source ventilator that can be built with $400 in readily-available parts.
Today I saw a Facebook post discussing an article titled “Do top conferences contain well cited papers or junk?”.

Our impact is measured more about what we do for others (e.g., solving a social issue, curing a disease, saving the environment) than for ourselves (e.g., ego or career).
I would care much more about developing useful products or services than counting the number of papers or citations.

2020-04-21

Mimetic desire

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:21 am
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It takes intelligent and independent minds to desire what are really wanted.

2020-04-16

Putting dollar values on human lives

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:14 am
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Concrete numbers and data can help rational discussion of issues, including the trade-off between lives and jobs in the current lock-down situation.

2020-04-01

Peak Asian American

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:14 am
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This is the best time to be an Asian American.
Half a century before, it was better to be an American.
Half a century after, it would better to be an Asian.

2020-03-30

The influence we have

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:37 am
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Both this NPR hidden brain podcast on the influence you have and this book on confessions of a sociopath point to the interesting aspects on how we know (and don’t know) about the psychological influences we can have on other people.

2020-03-24

Calming routines

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:14 am
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I usually found patent disclosure meetings a bit tedious. But the (remote) one held yesterday afternoon with two patent attorneys on a single-authored patent felt quite reassuring. During upheavals, routines can calm.

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