“All I could think about was her. Was she thinking about me?”

Finally got a chance to watch Moulin Rouge.  Touching story, wonderful music, and a powerful theme: the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return.

The whole movie centers around love. But what is love? How can you really tell whether you are in love or not? When can you confidently claim that you love someone?

Satine – The Courtesan

Satine told Christian that she was in love with him after he sang the song for her. But was she truly in love? We can hardly know. Probably Satine herself didn’t even know. As she said, she was a courtesan. She was paid to make men believe what they want to believe. For her, love was no more than a word, a word that she should say in appropriate time. Her job determined that she could not have her own feeling. She could only do what she was supposed to do.

In this sense, Christian actually gave her a new life, causing her to ponder upon what love is, what life is about, and to respect her own feeling.

Christian – Born to Love

“Above all things I believe in love. Love is life oxygen. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love.”

It seems that love is the meaning of Christian’s life. He believes in love, and it is obvious that Christian hopelessly fell in love with Satine after the meeting in the elephant. On that night, he was trying focus on writing, but he could not focus.

“All I can think about is her. Is she thinking about me?”

Without knowing it, he’d fallen in love. When love knocks your door, it’s hard for you to resist.

Falling in Love

People always ask for signs of falling in love. Maybe this is one sign: you just cannot get her out of your mind, and every thought is a thought of her.  You become a guesser of his mind: What is he thinking? Is he thinking about me?

For some untold reason, you sense that the other person has similar thoughts and feeling. Most of the time, you are so sure that you two are meant for each other, that her desire for you is as strong as yours for her. But sometimes, you are so uncertain. The back-and-forth thought keeps haunting in your mind, and you are like picking up petals of a flower and iterating “she loves me; she loves me not”.

This ambivalent feeling is torturing. But surprisingly, you enjoy its torture, and you cannot resist it. You get addicted to it.

Soul Mate

In The Symposium, Plato mentioned that in primal times, people had doubled bodies, who were half man and half woman. These original people were very powerful, so powerful that it causes Zeus’ concerns.  So Zeus cripples them by chopping them in half, separating the two bodies. Ever since that time, people run around looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal state of wholeness.

I like this story.  Similar to Buddhist philosophy of karma, the story adds some romance to our life. It "romantically" explains why people often feel incomplete and have this deep desire to find “the other half”.  This searching process is so long and tedious that we start to become frustrated, and as a coping mechanism, we force ourselves to get used to this incompleteness.

Until one day, the other half suddenly appears in your life……The presence of the other half reminds you again that you are incomplete. You two may appear to be quite different: different personalities, different lifestyle, and different hobbies. But you don’t know why, you just fall into each other. Maybe the only thing you can say is “I love not because who you are, but because who I am when I’m with you.”  You fall in love not because he is handsome or she smart, but only because you feel complete when you are with her – you actually complete each other: you are two bodies in one soul.

Both of you long for the reunion to make each other complete again; but it is not easy for either of you to take the first step. Both of you case too much about the other half, which is the last thing you want to lose.

This is where the ambivalent feeling happens. It doesn’t happen for everyone you hang out with; It doesn’t happen for everyone you think is cute; It happens only for the one that attracts on the level of souls. Because you can feel in your heart that the other is the one you have been searching, and you are so sure. But we the mortal can never predict what will happen and what are the consequences of our actions, and this uncertainty give rise to doubts in heart. You are so sure and at the same time, you are so uncertain. And you start playing “he loves me; he loves me not” game again and again. Actually, the two of you feel the same ambivalence, and you share the same unsettling feelings.

The adventure

Now here is the dilemma: you can freely flirt with the ones you only feel cute, but you can hardly express your feelings to the one that attracts you on the level of souls. You can hardly do anything other than to bury your feelings.

Maybe God designed us that way: even when we meet our other half, even when we feel the attraction of the souls, we still cannot know it for sure in our mind. It was an easy job for Adam to claim Eve as “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” – Eve was the only woman! But for us, it needs a little bit faith.

It is indeed an adventure for us.

Three People in Your Life

“The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

It is said that you will meet three people in your life: the one who you love, the one who loves you and the one you spend your life with.

It is a blessing that these three people are one in your life. That’s why in the film it claims that the greatest thing it not only to love, but still need to be loved in return.

But for most people, the three people are different. Maybe that’s the biggest prank that life gives us. Most of the times, however, it is us who let love slip away.

Have You Fallen in Love

You don’t care for being the center of attraction. You don’t care for turning the heads of everyone in the room. But you do want to turn someone’s head. And you do want to be special to someone.

You care too much about her that you want to show your best. But the every thought of showing your best causes you to be nervous and acting awkward. You try our best to hide the awkwardness and maybe you are so good at covering it that no one else can even notice. But in your heart, you know that you are uneasy; and you are uneasy because of her. But at the same time, you feel excited and even feel completed by her. When you are in her presence, you feel satisfied.

So have you fallen in love?

While reading this passage, if someone keeps popping into your mind, then there is no doubt that you have. Go for it, although you don’t know where it goes. It is an adventure that is worth taking.

The stupidest moment in your life may be when you fall in love. But it is better to be acting stupid than never fall in love. You might end up doing a lot of stupid things, but you are a lot closer to finding your love than those masters of dating, who can see through other people, consider them as expendable and know how to manipulate them. For your love, you are willing to be acting stupid.

“We love because it is the only true adventure.”

Someone's explanation of the Movie Inception

     Every single moment of Inception is a dream. I think that in a couple of years this will become the accepted reading of the film, and differing interpretations will have to be skillfully argued to be even remotely considered. The film makes this clear, and it never holds back the truth from audiences. Some find this idea to be narratively repugnant, since they think that a movie where everything is a dream is a movie without stakes, a movie where the audience is wasting their time.

Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director.

I believe that Inception is a dream to the point where even the dream-sharing stuff is a dream. Dom Cobb isn't an extractor. He can't go into other people's dreams. He isn't on the run from the Cobol Corporation. At one point he tells himself this, through the voice of Mal, who is a projection of his own subconscious. She asks him how real he thinks his world is, where he's being chased across the globe by faceless corporate goons.

She asks him that in a scene that we all know is a dream, but Inception lets us in on this elsewhere. Michael Caine's character implores Cobb to return to reality, to wake up. During the chase in Mombasa, Cobb tries to escape down an alleyway, and the two buildings between which he's running begin closing in on him - a classic anxiety dream moment. When he finally pulls himself free he finds Ken Watanabe's character waiting for him, against all logic. Except dream logic.

Much is made in the film about totems, items unique to dreamers that can be used to tell when someone is actually awake or asleep. Cobb's totem is a top, which spins endlessly when he's asleep, and the fact that the top stops spinning at many points in the film is claimed by some to be evidence that Cobb is awake during those scenes. The problem here is that the top wasn't always Cobb's totem - he got it from his wife, who killed herself because she believed that they were still living in a dream. There's more than a slim chance that she's right - note that when Cobb remembers her suicide she is, bizarrely, sitting on a ledge opposite the room they rented. You could do the logical gymnastics required to claim that Mal simply rented another room across the alleyway, but the more realistic notion here is that it's a dream, with the gap between the two lovers being a metaphorical one made literal. When Mal jumps she leaves behind the top, and if she was right about the world being a dream, the fact that it spins or doesn't spin is meaningless. It's a dream construct anyway. There's no way to use the top as a proof of reality.

Watching the film with this eye you can see the dream logic unfolding. As is said in the movie, dreams seem real in the moment and it's only when you've woken up that things seem strange. The film's 'reality' sequences are filled with moments that, on retrospect, seem strange or unlikely or unexplained. Even the basics of the dream sharing technology is unbelievably vague, and I don't think that's just because Nolan wants to keep things streamlined. It's because Cobb's unconscious mind is filling it in as he goes along.

There's more, but I would have to watch the film again with a notebook to get all the evidence (all of it in plain sight). The end seems without a doubt to be a dream - from the dreamy way the film is shot and edited once Cobb wakes up on the plane all the way through to him coming home to find his two kids in the exact position and in the exact same clothes that he kept remembering them, it doesn't matter if the top falls, Cobb is dreaming.

That Cobb is dreaming and still finds his catharsis (that he can now look at the face of his kids) is the point. It's important to realize that Inception is a not very thinly-veiled autobiographical look at how Nolan works. In a recent red carpet interview, Leonardo DiCaprio - who was important in helping Nolan get the script to the final stages - compares the movie not to The Matrix or some other mind**** movie but Fellini's 8 1/2. This is probably the second most telling thing DiCaprio said during the publicity tour for the film, with the first being that he based Cobb on Nolan. 8 1/2 is totally autobiographical for Fellini, and it's all about an Italian director trying to overcome his block and make a movie (a science fiction movie, even). It's a film about filmmaking, and so is Inception.

The heist team quite neatly maps to major players in a film production. Cobb is the director while Arthur, the guy who does the research and who sets up the places to sleep, is the producer. Ariadne, the dream architect, is the screenwriter - she creates the world that will be entered. Eames is the actor (this is so obvious that the character sits at an old fashioned mirrored vanity, the type which stage actors would use). Yusuf is the technical guy; remember, the Oscar come from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it requires a good number of technically minded people to get a movie off the ground. Nolan himself more or less explains this in the latest issue of Film Comment, saying 'There are a lot of striking similarities [between what the team does and the putting on of a major Hollywood movie]. When for instance the team is out on the street they've created, surveying it, that's really identical with what we do on tech scouts before we shoot.'

That leaves two key figures. Saito is the money guy, the big corporate suit who fancies himself a part of the game. And Fischer, the mark, is the audience. Cobb, as a director, takes Fischer through an engaging, stimulating and exciting journey, one that leads him to an understanding about himself. Cobb is the big time movie director (or rather the best version of that - certainly not a Michael Bay) who brings the action, who brings the spectacle, but who also brings the meaning and the humanity and the emotion.

The movies-as-dreams aspect is part of why Inception keeps the dreams so grounded. In the film it's explained that playing with the dream too much alerts the dreamer to the falseness around him; this is just another version of the suspension of disbelief upon which all films hinge. As soon as the audience is pulled out of the movie by some element - an implausible scene, a ludicrous line, a poor performance - it's possible that the cinematic dream spell is broken completely, and they're lost.

As a great director, Cobb is also a great artist, which means that even when he's creating a dream about snowmobile chases, he's bringing something of himself into it. That's Mal. It's the auterist impulse, the need to bring your own interests, obsessions and issues into a movie. It's what the best directors do. It's very telling that Nolan sees this as kind of a problem; I suspect another filmmaker might have cast Mal as the special element that makes Cobb so successful.

Inception is such a big deal because it's what great movies strive to do. You walk out of a great film changed, with new ideas planted in your head, with your neural networks subtly rewired by what you've just seen. On a meta level Inception itself does this, with audiences leaving the theater buzzing about the way it made them feel and perceive. New ideas, new thoughts, new points of view are more lasting a souvenir of a great movie than a ticket stub.

It's possible to view Fischer, the mark, as not the audience but just as the character that is being put through the movie that is the dream. To be honest, I haven't quite solidified my thought on Fischer's place in the allegorical web, but what's important is that the breakthrough that Fischer has in the ski fortress is real. Despite the fact that his father is not there, despite the fact that the pinwheel was never by his father's bedside, the emotions that Fischer experiences are 100 percent genuine. It doesn't matter that the movie you're watching isn't a real story, that it's just highly paid people putting on a show - when a movie moves you, it truly moves you. The tears you cry during Up are totally real, even if absolutely nothing that you see on screen has ever existed in the physical world.

For Cobb there's a deeper meaning to it all. While Cobb doesn't have daddy issues (that we know of), he, like Fischer, is dealing with a loss. He's trying to come to grips with the death of his wife*; Fischer's journey reflects Cobb's while not being a complete point for point reflection. That's important for Nolan, who is making films that have personal components - that talk about things that obviously interest or concern him - but that aren't actually about him. Other filmmakers (Fellini) may make movies that are thinly veiled autobiography, but that's not what Nolan or Cobb are doing. The movies (or dreams) they're putting together reflect what they're going through but aren't easily mapped on to them. Talking to Film Comment, Nolan says he has never been to psychoanalysis. 'I think I use filmmaking for that purpose. I have a passionate relationship to what I do.'

In a lot of ways Inception is a bookend to last summer's Inglorious Basterds. In that film Quentin Tarantino celebrated the ways that cinema could change the world, while in Inception Nolan is examining the ways that cinema, the ultimate shared dream, can change an individual. The entire film is a dream, within the confines of the movie itself, but in a more meta sense it's Nolan's dream. He's dreaming Cobb, and finding his own moments of revelation and resolution, just as Cobb is dreaming Fischer and finding his own catharsis and change.

The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely.

* it's really worth noting that if you accept that the whole movie is a dream that Mal may not be dead. She could have just left Cobb. The mourning that he is experiencing deep inside his mind is no less real if she's alive or dead - he has still lost her.

Excerpts From The Little Prince

You know — one loves the sunset, when one is so sad…

你知道的—当一个人情绪低落的时候，他会格外喜欢看日落……

If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself, "Somewhere, my flower is there…" But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened… And you think that is not important!

倘若一个人对一朵花情有独钟，而那花在浩瀚的星河中，是独一无二的，那么，他只要仰望繁星点点，就心满意足了。他会喃喃自语：“我的花就在星河的某个角落……”可是，这花一旦被羊吃掉了，一瞬间，所有星星都将随之黯淡无光……那你也认为这不重要吗？

Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…

花总是表里不一，而我太年轻了，不知道该怎样爱护她……

For she did not want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower…

她其实是不愿意让小王子看到自己哭泣。她曾经是多么高傲的一朵花……

My flower is ephemeral, and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left on my planet, all alone!

我的花生命是短暂的，她只有四根刺可以保护自己，抵御世界，我却将她独自留在我的星球上了！

His flower had told him that she was only one of her kind in all universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!

他的花朵曾经告诉他，自己是宇宙间仅有的一种花；可是仅仅在这座花园里，就有五千朵和她一模一样的花！

I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. A common rose…

我总以为自己很富有，拥有一朵世上独一无二的花；实际上，我所拥有的不过是一朵普通的玫瑰而已。一朵普通的玫瑰花……

To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.

对我而言，你只是一个小男孩，和其他成千上万的小男孩没有什么不同。我不需要你。你也不需要我。对你而言，我也和其它成千上万的狐狸并没有差别。但是，假如你驯服了我，我们就彼此需要了。对我而言，你就是举世无双的；对你而言，我也是独一无二的……

The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat.

麦田和我毫不相干，真令人沮丧。不过，你有金黄色的头发。想想看，如果你驯服了我，那该有多好啊！小麦也是金黄色的，那会使我想起你。我会喜欢听麦田里的风声……

It is your own fault, I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you... but now you are going to cry! Then it has done you no good at all!

这是你的错，我根本无意伤害你，可是你却愿意让我驯服你……可是你现在却想哭！那驯服根本对你毫无好处！

It has done me good, because of the color of the wheat fields. Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world.

驯服对我是有好处的——因为麦田的颜色。再回头看那些玫瑰花吧！到时你就明白你的玫瑰花仍是举世无双的一朵花。

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes.

这是我的一个秘密，再简单不过的秘密：一个人只有用心去看，才能看到真实。事情的真相只用眼睛是看不见的。

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

你在你的玫瑰花身上耗费的时间使得你的玫瑰花变得如此重要。

Men have forgotten this truth. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…

人们早已忘记了这个道理。可是你不应将它遗忘。你必须永远对自己所驯服的东西负责。你要对你的玫瑰花负责。

Only the children know what they are looking for. They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry…

只有小孩子知道自己在找什么。他们把时间花费在布洋娃娃身上。因此对他们而言，洋娃娃就变得很重要。一旦有人将娃娃拿走，他们就会号啕大哭……

As for me, if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.

如果是我，要是我有五十三分钟可以自由运用，那我会悠哉游哉向一道清泉走去。

The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.

星星真美，因为有一朵看不见的花。

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well…

沙漠之所以美丽，是因为在它的某个角落隐藏着一口井……

The house, the stars, the desert – what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!

古屋、星星和沙漠——赋予它们美丽的是某种看不见的东西……

What moves me so deeply, about this little prince who is sleeping here, is his loyalty to a flower – the image of a rose that shine through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep…

这个熟睡的小王子最叫我感动的地方是，他对一朵玫瑰的感情——甚至他睡着了，那朵玫瑰花的影子，仍像灯光一样照亮他的生命……

The men where you live, raise five thousand roses in the same garden – and they do not find in it what they are looking for. And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water. But eyes are blind. One must look with the heart…

你所居住的星球上的人们，在同一座花园培育了五千朵玫瑰——却无法从中找到他们所要寻找的东西。但是，他们所寻找的，其实是可以从一朵玫瑰花或一滴水中找到的。然而眼睛往往是盲从的。人还是必须用心去看……

All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You – you alone – will have the stars as no one else has them…

每一个人都有自己的星星，但其中的含意却因人而异。对旅人而言，星星是向导；对其他人而言，它们只不过是天际中闪闪发光的小东西而已；对学者而言，星星则是一门待解的难题；对我那位商人来说，它们就是财富。不过，星星本身是沉默的。你——只有你——了解这些星星与众不同的含义……

In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night… You – only you – will have stars that can laugh…

我就在繁星中的一颗上生活。我会站在其中的一颗星星上微笑。当你在夜间仰望天际时，就仿佛每一颗星星都在笑……你——只有你——才能拥有会笑的星星……

And when your sorrow is comforted time soothes all sorrows you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, "Yes, the stars always make me laugh!"

当你不再感到伤心的时候(时间会冲淡一切伤痛)，你就会因认识我而感到心满意足。你是我永远的朋友。将会和我一起欢笑。为了欢乐，你会经常打开窗子……当你的朋友看到你因仰望天空而大笑时，一定会感到莫名其妙！到时候，你可以对他们说：“是的，星星总让我开心而笑！”

And no grown-ups will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!

但是，大人们永远也不会了解这件事有多么重要！

6 blog tips for busy academics

Reproduced from http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/

"I don't have time," is the worst excuse not to blog.

Yet, I hear it often from fellow academics.

My advisor from grad school recently asked, "How can you write tons of papers and grant proposals, teach your classes, advise students, take care of your family and still have time to blog? Where does that time come from?"

Embedded in his question is an assumption that blogging has to take time.

Were this true, I couldn't recommend it Ph.D. students or pre-tenure profs.

The secret to low-cost academic blogging is to make blogging a natural byproduct of all the things that academics already do.

• Doing an interesting lecture? Put your lecture notes in a blog post.
• Writing a detailed email reply? "Reply to public" with a blog post.
• Answering the same question a second time? Put it in a blog post.
• Writing interesting code? Comment a snippet into a post.
• Doing something geeky at home? Blog about what you learned.

I'll save an argument for the benefits of academic blogging for another post. For now, I'll argue that those benefits need not be high to overcome the cost.

Read below for my efficient blogging strategies.

Tip 1: Lecture as post

A favorite gripe of junior professors is that teaching is a waste of their time.

Excellence in teaching buys no credit for tenure at many universities.

(Of course, putrid teaching can derail a tenure case.)

Teaching is an opportunity to convert lecture notes into blog posts and external evangelism. The conversion usually polishes a lecture too.

It's hard to teach a class without creating lecture notes.

Why not write those lecture notes as a blog post?

Examples

• First-class macros in meta-circular evaluators.
• A lambda-calculus interpreter in C++ templates.
• Compiling Scheme to C.
• Compiling Scheme to Java.

Tip 2: "Reply to public" as post

Many of the academics that "don't have time to blog" seem to have plenty of time to write detailed, well-structured replies and flames over email.

Before pressing send, ask yourself, should this answer be, "Reply," "Reply to all," or "Reply to public"?

If you put effort into the reply, don't waste it on a lucky few. Share it.

Of course, "reply to public" is not limited to email. A few of my recent posts started on Quora. If I still used Usenet, I bet the same would be true there.

Examples

• This post.
• 3 qualities of successful Ph.D. students.
• Greasemonkey scripts for Apply Yourself.
• Why guaranteed file compression is impossible.

Tip 3: Advice as post

I hear some questions with alarming repetition. To name a few:

• What is grad school like?
• How many years does a Ph.D. take?
• How can I get into grad school?
• How should I structure a thesis proposal?

Any question asked more than once is a candidate for a blog post.

Examples

• The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
• HOWTO: Get into grad school.
• A thesis proposal is a contract.
• Productivity tips for academics.

Tip 4: Vented steam as post

My colleague, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, claims that the need to vent steam is his preferred reason for posting.

Blogs are a way to safely let it out, assuming appropriate diplomacy.

Examples

• The CRAPL: An academic-strength open-source license.
• American Airlines sucks.
• Why peer reviewers should use Tor.

Tip 5: Blog as code repository

I used to be great at starting coding projects, but terrible at finishing them.

That changed when I started posting code on my blog.

Posting my code on my blog forces me to do three things:

• It makes me refactor my code into a clean design.
• It makes me comment my code sufficiently.
• It makes me search for the most concise solution.

I've stopped rewriting code, because I reuse the code I post on my blog.

At the same time, I've picked up months-old projects and continued them.

Now when I write code, I look for ways to turn parts of it into a blog post.

Examples

• Matching regular expressions with derivatives.
• A nonblocking lexing toolkit based on derivatives.
• A pipelined nonblocking webserver in Scala.
• A reference implementation of k-CFA.

Tip 6: Blog as long-term memory

There are lots of things I used to know, but forgot.

When I find myself relearning something for the second time, I write a blog post on it, so that I won't have to relearn it again.

I often write these up as a HOWTO.

Examples

• HOWTO: Create native iPhone apps in JavaScript.
• HOWTO: Make cat 5 network cables.
• HOWTO: Rip a DVD.
• HOWTO: Create an online book catalog.
• HOWTO: Fix mold and allergy problems.

A few more tips

I have a few miscellaneous tips for busy academic bloggers:

• Don't blog before a deadline.
• Don't post too frequently.
• Don't feel pressure to post with regularity. Twitter and RSS can alert your readers.
• Don't spend too much time on a post. It doesn't have to be as polished as something you submit for peer review. I don't even spell-check.
• Do store up posts if you have free time. Release when you're busy.
• Don't submit your own work to social news sites. If you write well enough, others will do it for you.
• Don't feel the need to have comments. I get plenty of constructive, meaningful interaction with my readers over twitter and email.

Academic blogs I like

• Dave Herman's The Little Calculist. I point this out to my students as a great example of grad student blogging as note-taking. (Dave recently finished his Ph.D., but he's given this blog to himself and to the community forever.)
• John Regehr's Embedded in Academia. John's posts are much more polished than mine, and they're entertaining, educational and thorough as a result. His posts are great outreach and service to the field. He nails the post-tenure associate professor blog perfectly.
• Suresh Venkatasubramanian's geomblog. Suresh's blog is a great mixture of field-specialist and pan-academic writing. There's something worth knowing in every post.
• Daniel Lemire's blog hits topics ranging from his own research interests to broader academic concerns. He thoughtfully compresses many of his posts into small, bite-sized form.
• Dick Lipton's blog does a major service to theory of computation, because he spends time writing engaging, thoughtful and accessible articles. Dick does the esteemed yet friendly full professor blog well.

10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D.

From, http://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/ 

10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D.

The attrition rate in Ph.D. school is high.

Anywhere from a third to half will fail.

In fact, there's a disturbing consistency to grad school failure.

I'm supervising a lot of new grad students this semester, so for their sake, I'm cataloging the common reasons for failure.

Read on for the top ten reasons students fail out of Ph.D. school.

Focus on grades or coursework

No one cares about grades in grad school.

There's a simple formula for the optimal GPA in grad school:

Optimal GPA = Minimum Required GPA + ε

Anything higher implies time that could have been spent on research was wasted on classes. Advisors might even raise an eyebrow at a 4.0

During the first two years, students need to find an advisor, pick a research area, read a lot of papers and try small, exploratory research projects. Spending too much time on coursework distracts from these objectives.

Learn too much

Some students go to Ph.D. school because they want to learn.

Let there be no mistake: Ph.D. school involves a lot of learning.

But, it requires focused learning directed toward an eventual thesis.

Taking (or sitting in on) non-required classes outside one's focus is almost always a waste of time, and it's always unnecessary.

By the end of the third year, a typical Ph.D. student needs to have read about 50 to 150 papers to defend the novelty of a proposed thesis.

Of course, some students go too far with the related work search, reading so much about their intended area of research that they never start that research.

Advisors will lose patience with "eternal" students that aren't focused on the goal--making a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.

In the interest of personal disclosure, I suffered from the "want to learn everything" bug when I got to Ph.D. school.

I took classes all over campus for my first two years: Arabic, linguistics, economics, physics, math and even philosophy. In computer science, I took lots of classes in areas that had nothing to do with my research.

The price of all this "enlightenment" was an extra year on my Ph.D.

I only got away with this detour because while I was doing all that, I was a TA, which meant I wasn't wasting my advisor's grant funding.

Expect perfection

Perfectionism is a tragic affliction in academia, since it tends to hit the brightest the hardest.

Perfection cannot be attained. It is approached in the limit.

Students that polish a research paper well past the point of diminishing returns, expecting to hit perfection, will never stop polishing.

Students that can't begin to write until they have the perfect structure of the paper mapped out will never get started.

For students with problems starting on a paper or dissertation, my advice is that writing a paper should be an iterative process: start with an outline and some rough notes; take a pass over the paper and improve it a little; rinse; repeat. When the paper changes little with each pass, it's at diminishing returns. One or two more passes over the paper are all it needs at that point.

"Good enough" is better than "perfect."

Procrastinate

Chronic perfectionists also tend to be procrastinators.

So do eternal students with a drive to learn instead of research.

Ph.D. school seems to be a magnet for every kind of procrastinator.

Unfortunately, it is also a sieve that weeds out the unproductive.

Procrastinators should check out my tips for boosting productivity.

Go rogue too soon/too late

The advisor-advisee dynamic needs to shift over the course of a degree.

Early on, the advisor should be hands on, doling out specific topics and helping to craft early papers.

Toward the end, the student should know more than the advisor about her topic. Once the inversion happens, she needs to "go rogue" and start choosing the topics to investigate and initiating the paper write-ups. She needs to do so even if her advisor is insisting she do something else.

The trick is getting the timing right.

Going rogue before the student knows how to choose good topics and write well will end in wasted paper submissions and a grumpy advisor.

On the other hand, continuing to act only when ordered to act past a certain point will strain an advisor that expects to start seeing a "return" on an investment of time and hard-won grant money.

Advisors expect near-terminal Ph.D. students to be proto-professors with intimate knowledge of the challenges in their field. They should be capable of selecting and attacking research problems of appropriate size and scope.

Treat Ph.D. school like school or work

Ph.D. school is neither school nor work.

Ph.D. school is a monastic experience. And, a jealous hobby.

Solving problems and writing up papers well enough to pass peer review demands contemplative labor on days, nights and weekends.

Reading through all of the related work takes biblical levels of devotion.

Ph.D. school even comes with built-in vows of poverty and obedience.

The end brings an ecclesiastical robe and a clerical hood.

Students that treat Ph.D. school like a 9-5 endeavor are the ones that take 7+ years to finish, or end up ABD.

Ignore the committee

Some Ph.D. students forget that a committee has to sign off on their Ph.D.

It's important for students to maintain contact with committee members in the latter years of a Ph.D. They need to know what a student is doing.

It's also easy to forget advice from a committee member since they're not an everyday presence like an advisor.

Committee members, however, rarely forget the advice they give.

It doesn't usually happen, but I've seen a shouting match between a committee member and a defender where they disagreed over the metrics used for evaluation of an experiment. This committee member warned the student at his proposal about his choice of metrics.

He ignored that warning.

He was lucky: it added only one more semester to his Ph.D.

Another student I knew in grad school was told not to defend, based on the draft of his dissertation. He overruled his committee's advice, and failed his defense. He was told to scrap his entire dissertaton and start over. It took him over ten years to finish his Ph.D.

Aim too low

Some students look at the weakest student to get a Ph.D. in their department and aim for that.

This attitude guarantees that no professorship will be waiting for them.

And, it all but promises failure.

The weakest Ph.D. to escape was probably repeatedly unlucky with research topics, and had to settle for a contingency plan.

Aiming low leaves no room for uncertainty.

And, research is always uncertain.

Aim too high

A Ph.D. seems like a major undertaking from the perspective of the student.

It is.

But, it is not the final undertaking. It's the start of a scientific career.

A Ph.D. does not have to cure cancer or enable cold fusion.

At best a handful of chemists remember what Einstein's Ph.D. was in.

Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was a principled calculation meant to estimate Avogadro's number. He got it wrong. By a factor of 3.

He still got a Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.

Impact is something students should aim for over a lifetime of research.

Making a big impact with a Ph.D. is about as likely as hitting a bullseye the very first time you've fired a gun.

Once you know how to shoot, you can keep shooting until you hit it.

Plus, with a Ph.D., you get a lifetime supply of ammo.

Some advisors can give you a list of potential research topics. If they can, pick the topic that's easiest to do but which still retains your interest.

It does not matter at all what you get your Ph.D. in.

All that matters is that you get one.

It's the training that counts--not the topic.

Miss the real milestones

Most schools require coursework, qualifiers, thesis proposal, thesis defense and dissertation. These are the requirements on paper.

In practice, the real milestones are three good publications connected by a (perhaps loosely) unified theme.

Coursework and qualifiers are meant to undo admissions mistakes. A student that has published by the time she takes her qualifiers is not a mistake.

Once a student has two good publications, if she convinces her committee that she can extrapolate a third, she has a thesis proposal.

Once a student has three publications, she has defended, with reasonable confidence, that she can repeatedly conduct research of sufficient quality to meet the standards of peer review. If she draws a unifying theme, she has a thesis, and if she staples her publications together, she has a dissertation.

I fantasize about buying an industrial-grade stapler capable of punching through three journal papers and calling itThe Dissertator.

Of course, three publications is nowhere near enough to get a professorship--even at a crappy school. But, it's about enough to get a Ph.D.