Week 30: Before departure

It is just one week before I set out to Beijing and Tibet. This week is mainly about doing some small tasks that are relevant to the fieldwork. On Tuesday I met my supervisors and it turns out that I need to change the way I ask certain interview questions. They also suggest that I read more about interviews conducted in another language and culture as well as hybrid research.

I considered the problem of finding an interpreter who can accompany me all the way through the study. I wonder if any college student can do this. A more practical way may be seeking them through other research institutes or organisations.

Week 29: Continue to deal with trivials

If I had better information when I was booking my ticket, I would have been packing and prepare for leaving this week. However I have to stay for another week or I have to pay dearly for a reschedule of my ticket.

Trying not to be too idle, I tried to come up with the structure of my annual report, as well as a data management system which should help me organise potentially large amount of notes and other raw data.

At the same time I tried to find some anecdotes from previous travellers who had been to Tibet in the hope that some of these writings may be helpful in providing some information on what to expect in the field. However, so far there has not been any useful hints from these materials.

Otaku 的福音书

前段时间看电影就是为了工作之余放松，到处找那些打得暴力的片子。这几天对动作片几乎失去了兴趣，反倒想找那些节奏慢的，有些剧情的片子来看。看来我这几天太闲了。

这周末又放弃了一顿晚饭，赶到电影院看刚上映的 Reign Over Me。之前看预告片，觉得应该还是比较靠谱的一个片子。看完后果然没有失望，是我个人这段时间喜闻乐见的慢节奏小场面剧情片。而且最重要的是，片子里没有坏人。

这片子就像生活一样琐碎。里面不少角色都有自己的问题，而问题最多的两人就是两位男主角——到这里为止，我以为我在看一部另类的 buddy movie；然后看两人玩旺财战大象，跟着摇滚乐 jam，我又以为我在看一部纽约背景的 otaku 电影。作为实际上过着 otaku 生活的我来说，我觉得自己白天像 Alan，总是假装很忙地把自己关在工作里，晚上像 Charlie，一个人玩旺财战大象，自然而然地就对角色有了亲切感。片子最后，跟生活一样，他们迈过了面前的很大一道坎，不过也许还有这样那样的问题等待着他们，就像我的很多问题也没有解决一样。不过观众和角色一样都看到了生活的光明面，心满意足地走出电影院回家了。

这片子线索太多，好像每个角色的问题都得放到这两小时内解决，而且观众跟着 Charlie 一起压抑了一个多小时，最后连个明显的高潮都没有，确实是一个大闷片。但是，如果能以一个 otaku 的心态来看这个片子，真正看进去之后，会觉得它很亲切。你跟着角色们一起憋屈了，又跟着他们一起舒坦了，你走出电影院，角色们走进家门，你会觉得你和他们的生活都要继续，他们并不随着演职员表的出现而在你生活中消失了，而是像你很久不联络的朋友那样，在别的什么地方继续生活着。对于我这样一个生活在虚幻中的 otaku 来说，这电影是极为真实的。至少，Charlie 的家比我现在呆的鬼地方看起来更像一个家。

Otaku 们听到最多的教训就是“Get a life!”，而这个片子的确给了 otaku 们一点生活的滋味。如果你不能体会这个片子的好，那是因为你不是或者不曾是一个真正的宅男，恭喜你。

Some (interesting to me) articles on Science this week

__ENVIRONMENT: The Burning Issue__

David J. Lohman, David Bickford, Navjot S. Sodhi

[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5823/376](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5823/376)

__Adapting to Tibet's Thin Air__

Ann Gibbons

[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5823/365](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5823/365)

__ECOLOGY: Rapid Domestication of Marine Species__

Carlos M. Duarte, Nùria Marbá, Marianne Holmer

[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5823/382](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5823/382)

报道不等于哀悼

中国国内的新闻媒体在弗吉尼亚理工惨案的报道过程当中得到的可能更多的是尴尬。从一开始转载八卦小报专栏作家的猜测被骗，到未能连线知情人士，只有被外国报道牵着鼻子走并被 [blog](http://blog.sina.com.cn/drwho) 抢去风头，再到被国内许多网民批评对几乎同时发生在国内的另一起死亡人数接近的惨案几乎没有任何动作，国内媒体在这两起事件的报道当中可谓丢尽脸面，嗯……如果他们有过脸面的话。

但是，在媒体受到的众多指责当中，我以为批评他们漠视国内工人的生命这一点是不公正的。人和人性命的平等并不是说受害者数目差不多，新闻的力度也就应该一样。除了所谓众所周知的原因阻碍了国内媒体的报道，美国的校园枪击事件和中国的工人安全问题都是近几年越来越多地被关注，但这两类事件的原因有很大的不同。就这次国内的事故而言，责任是明确的，相关人员也受到了相应处分，媒体给他们的 coverage 是完全适当的。从道义上说，可以说不给工人适当的安全保障或者没有及时发现明显的安全问题是谋财害命，但真实的报道不可能建立在这样的诛心之论上。而很多更为恶性的生产事故，从证据链上说，很大程度上也只能证明为责任人的不作为而非故意地谋害工人的性命，其影响也仅限于一个行业。而校园枪击事件则不同，首先它是少数个人出于他们自己的意志故意地剥夺他人生命的行为；其次，当事人的身份决定了事件的特殊性，无论是加害者还是受害者，都曾经可以是社会未来的希望，而事件也促使我们去探究这一代人所受的影响和他们的想法；更重要的是，由事件引发的关于青少年教育和持枪权利的讨论，以及讨论中的利益团体——学校，学生，长枪协会，军火制造商，乃至普罗大众，牵动着社会的方方面面。因此给 VT 这样的报道力度也是完全恰当的。

BBC 对中国国内的事故只发了一条新闻（[Molten metal kills China workers](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6567649.stm)），而对 VT 的事件做了系列报道。这种差异，一方面是“校园”这个环境的敏感性，一方面也是由于传统媒体的地理限制使他们无法进行深入的报道。国内媒体的类似现象确实暴露出了他们的问题，但并不存在对国内工人性命的过度冷漠或者对国外新闻的过度关注这样的问题，而是

1. 对于国外事件的报道受制于人；
2. 因为：缺乏能够第一时间开展第一手报道的前方人员；
3. 而且：缺乏在突发事件中可靠的信息来源和对情况的迅速分析能力；
3. 缺乏公信力，因此也缺乏国际话语权。

我相信最后一点是问题的根本。

从海外媒体来说，对中国的这起事故一笔带过也并不代表他们冷漠无情，或者反过来说，对 VT 枪击事件的深入报道并不代表他们对于美国的这33条人命有更多的同情。新闻的任务在于报道和记录历史，而只要做到了如实报道，人们怎样阐释历史，从中得到什么收获或教训，并不是新闻的功能。新闻没有义务用报道来表达自己的哀悼，因为它并不具备这样的感情。而我们作为有感情的具体的人，是可以给遇难者我们的哀悼之情的，这与新浪和 CCTV 首页有多少相关的报道无关，与死亡了多少人也无关。那些指责媒体不公正的人们，在不认识受害者中的任何一人的情况下，能否面无愧色地说，你做到了你对国内媒体的要求，对国内每一次悲剧的受害者都怀着同样的哀悼之情呢？媒体的特性决定了它必须很快地遗忘这些事件，将注意力转向国内和世界的其他角落，关注那里发生的新事件。媒体的任务在给予事件适当的关注后就已完成，而在这样的报道下哀悼，反省，改正和传承，是每一个普通人的责任。

小字：向 Professor Liviu Librescu 致敬并表示深切哀悼。向遇难的工人和学生表示哀悼。

小字：清华大学两位校友在得知 VT 的事件后在 BBS 上互相揶揄，让对方在自己目前所在单位也做出类似 Cho 的举动，我对你们的表示深感失望和痛心。强烈鄙视这种看客心态和行为。

Considering the database design

To organise qualitative data obtained during fieldwork, a mindmap is drawn with [FreeMind](http://freemind.sourceforge.net/). It is shown here, see the thumbnail below and click for a full size version. For now I cannot think of another item in this map but I guess there will be some additions in the coming days.

添加了 instiki (wiki)

给网站加了一个 wiki，用来记录自己平时看书会需要用到，又不容易在网上搜到的资料。地址在 http://snakehsu.info/wiki/。目前是开放编辑权限的，如果被滥用了就会关掉。

设置这个版本（0.11.pl1）时有一点小问题，很多文件都是 DOS 格式，导致在类 Unix 服务器上工作不正常，把大部分文件 dos2unix 之后就好了。

Week 28: Patches here and there

The last week passed without much writing. It seems that most documents I need have been prepared. The rest is to find what are needed and to patch these documents.

I have spent considerable time in revision of resilience concept. The study of application of resilience in social vulnerability is a feasible direction to which my study can take. However, does this make my study more complicated and exceed its original scope? One thing is for sure: that to measure social vulnerability I cannot ignore ecological vulnerability. In a resource-dependent society the two vulnerabilities are closed linked.

One point about stability and resilience

I have just read a few pages of Pimm's classic [*Food Webs*](http://www.amazon.com/Food-Webs-Stuart-L-Pimm/dp/0226668320/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9631600-9467103?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176637864&sr=8-1). One of the examples used by Pimm to illustrate the idea of stability made me think about the difference between Pimm's stability and Holling's resilience notions.

From the example of England Song Thrush, it seems that stability is a numerical measure of _species_ characteristics, while resilience is a feature of the system as a whole. While one single species can have changes and come back to its equilibrium, for the system as a whole the equilibrium may be difficult to find or simply do not exist. While stability concerns the fluctuation of a single species or a series of species, it does not indicate whether the structure of the system changes as the species shift from their ``equilibrium''. Resilience, on the contrary, does not question how impact on one species affects this species, but the implications of the impact on the whole system.

My understanding of stability may change as I read more of Pimm's book. But for now I think I grasped some essence in these two concepts.

终于看完了《忏悔录》

昨天晚上看完了卢梭的《忏悔录》的最后9页。我第一次翻开这本书时，还是刚进大学的惨绿少年，那一次只看了前45页。后来断断续续好几次试图看完这本书，却每次都没有超过100页就放弃了。小岛上精神生活的极度贫乏，终于证明了不是完全没有好处——我终于可以静心下来把这本六百多页的书看完。

作者开头就强调，这本忏悔绝对前无古人，没有人可以再像他这样把自己的一切毫无保留地展现和剖析。从书的第一部看来，所言不虚，虽然作者并没有时时强调”这么做是我的不对……“，但的确做到了比较忠实地记录自己的所作所为，其中是非，则全部交给读者自行评价。其中也不乏温馨感人的场面，例如和童年玩伴的青梅竹马，远赴他乡学艺的艰辛，以及和”妈妈“共度的美好时光。读者似乎确实可以分享作者本人那些年的感受，阅读时或者觉得和作者同病相怜，或者为作者的遭遇扼腕叹息，这是阅读其他大人物的传记时不常有的感受。

不过，从第二部开始后不久，我倒觉得这不完全是作者的忏悔，倒成了对当时欧洲达官贵人和欺世盗名的文人的控诉。或许是我阅历尚浅，读这一部分时并没有很能理解作者的感觉，只觉得被复杂的人际关系和斗争搞得晕头转向。卢梭在其中对狄德罗、Grimm 等人的指责，有时甚至显得十分偏执。

对于这一段时间自己的为人和学术，卢梭似乎都没有多作忏悔的意思。兴许这是因为这段时间的经历是他写作忏悔录时境遇的直接原因，他也不能作出非常客观的评价。

不过这本书在让读者更好地认识卢梭之余，也描绘了一副法国大革命以前的欧洲风情画卷。从卢梭本人的遭遇，折射出当时的社会现实，也许是这本书在史料方面的重要价值之所在。而作为自传，《忏悔录》虽然也算是详尽忠实，但可能不足以起到让人借鉴的作用。

Niche dimensionality and biodiversity

[Grassland species loss resulting from reduced niche dimension](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7137/abs/nature05684.html)

The idea of niche dimensionality is an analogy of ``space'' concept -- that the niche space is defined and separated by a series of ecological factors and their values. More such dimensions means that more subspaces or niches can be defined therefore more species may be supported.

Resource addition can make some limiting factors not limiting anymore, allowing fewer trade-off opportunities and thus reduce the dimensions of the niche space. Increased supplies of limiting resources can also change the [stoichiometry](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=stoichiometry) or decrease the heterogeneity of limiting resources.

The increase of resources does create new niches. However, most local species cannot occupy these new niches. Thus local species number and evenness both decline. The more the species are co-limited by multiple resources, the more likely they will be influenced in the face of diminishing limiting factors.

This concept can be considered as a formalised explanation of the effects of eutrophication. Traditionally eutrophication is interpreted as encouraging nutrient-demanding species so they outcompete those oligotrophic species. The notion of niche dimension provided us with a new perspective.

The question: is there other management actions other than increasing nutrient that can reduce niche dimensions? A guess is that any management that turns limiting factors to unlimiting ones may do so. Will the prohibition of grazing have the same effect on the grassland? It has been observed that biodiversity is higher in grazed plots than nongrazed plots (e.g. [(Taddese et al., 2002)](http://www.springerlink.com/content/vn024bc60xqrg2ca/)).

A slide presentation on interview

Office ladies please stop reading here and return to your search result immediately. This is **NOT** about how you tackle with job interviews nor how to make attracting presentation.

The slide provided [here](http://www.public.asu.edu/~kroel/www500/Interview%20Fri.pdf) is about how to conduct interviews for qualitative research. The highlights including the checklist before and at the beginning of the interview, and issues about processing of interview data.

Week 27: Brain ferreting

After I really go down to the work and made a series of plans and budgets, I find that planning an expedition is not so dreadful as I thought before. There are still many uncertainties but apparently they will not prevent my plan from being carried out.

The contact with local government and researchers is going well.

But for a newbie in interviewing like me, I am not sure if my interview outline is as good as it should be. I have so many questions to ask yet I find the question list already a bit long for a group interview. I am also uncertain about the sequence of the questions.

The application for this year's Slawson award failed, which renders my fieldwork more costly. I hope that I can get other funding later this year and next year.

Will scientists save the world (again)?

This week's *Science* magazine published [an editorial](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5821/17) by Rosina M. Bierbaum and Peter H. Raven. This editorial promotes another effort to prevent reaching the tipping point of global climate change by urging the government and companies as well as individuals to take measures. Different from IPCC, this new initiative is managed by the UN (see [http://www.unfoundation.org/SEG/](http://www.unfoundation.org/SEG/)). Hopefully, the influence of UN will be more useful than IPCC, which can only ``suggest'' the governments but cannot ``urge'' them to act.

However, a group consist of purely scientists may have a problem, that their suggestions are often theoretically sound but politically too abstract or impractical. Arguably, the suggestion made by the SEG suffers from the same problem. If you want to give advice to all over the world, you have to be abstract.

I think the next step would be giving every country a ``recipe'', indicating the costs and benefits of every measure they mentioned, that is what politicians really care about.

（我是）孤独的人（也）是可耻的

早上4点爬起来给准备去考察的县的政府打电话，也不知道电话那头有没有听出我的睡眼惺忪，不过我是觉得自己现在打电话完全没有当年那种面对任何一个小秘书都怯生生的模样了，奇怪啊奇怪，前几天给一个大学的研究员打电话还不是这样的。今天打电话的口气就好像说本西域总督大爷要到你们县视察，你们给安排车……这样。莫非本人刚起床的时候就是这么痞？还是说没睡醒就像喝醉酒的时候一样胆子会没来由地大一点？

放下电话，我又在想，我要是真变成一个坏人，该怎么办呢？

我已经是挺坏的一人了吧，灌个水都很刻薄，跟邻居室友的关系也极差。有时候我回来的时候他们在开 party，我就等到晚上10点多他们人散了我才去做晚饭。技术上说，他们只占用了客厅，我完全可以穿过客厅到厨房做饭。但是心理上，这么做我完全受不了。那简直就像一个可耻的罪犯被游街示众一样，他们的凝视会让我觉得快要发疯。

于是孤独的人会习惯于孤独并且寻求孤独，直到变成一个孤独得可耻的人。

在这种情况下，我会不断告诫自己要 tough，今后在考察的地方呆两个月，还会更加 tough，跟那些到八角街转了一圈，回来就为自己小小的头疼和皱着眉头喝下第一碗酥油茶而兴奋和夸耀不已的小青年们，和那些在西藏一边开着4500一边骂娘，在海拔5000米的县城钻头觅缝找地方浪费水洗澡，回来又一边数自己掉了几公斤肉，一边表达自己对西藏的再度向往的半老头子们都完全不同。

Tough 的人要跟人划清界限，所以就更加孤独，孤独的人需要更 tough，如是反复。

但是昨天才被人提醒，自己能还算正常地撑到现在，完全是靠别人上班似地每天花一两个小时陪我说话。没有她我会怎么样？可能是孤独到极点然后死掉，也可能是 tough 到极点然后成了不知道同情和理解的魔头。从这个意义上说，tough 的人同时也是脆弱的人。

Jason Bourne 系列的第三部电影今年夏天上映。我对它的浓厚兴趣不仅来自于 Matt Damon 的表演和（从 teaser 来看）扣人心弦的剧情，更多地是想看看 Marie 走后那些夜晚 Jason 是怎么熬过来的——在那之后，他比我更孤独。我很好奇第三部里会不会加进一些 Jason 在他的过去与现实之间挣扎，在光明与黑暗之间选择的剧情。

好吧，我知道 Jason Bourne 不是 Anakin Skywalker。

Status update: privatisation in Naqchu

[ 那曲地区2007年落实和完善草场承包经营责任制工作会议胜利闭幕 ](http://xznm.agri.gov.cn/show.asp?id=10567)

The "responsibility system" will be adopted by all pastoralists on their spring/winter pastures before April 20th.

[ 进一步完善草场承包经营责任制工作](http://xznm.agri.gov.cn/show.asp?id=10580)

There are still a few villages in Shuanghu District where the privitisation is not complete. Namely Yaqchu (雅曲) and Gatso (嘎措).

Apparently I will still be able to find a few *real* nomads although to establish contact with them may be quite complicated. The help from the government will be quite delicate, while contact through networking can only rely on luck.

More policy-friendly ecology?

[Making ecological science policy-relevant: issues of scale and disciplinary integration](http://www.springerlink.com/content/n086m8543l301q83)

One of the main reason that ecology study is not widely applied in policy making is that the two processes are carried out in very different scales. Experiments successful in smaller scales are not necessarily so in a larger scale. **Scaling** thus becomes an important issue in ecological studies.

Knowledge transfer between ecologists and policy-makers can only be done in an interdisciplinary way. However, it is still easier said than done. The difficulty is brought along by misunderstanding, misconception (from each other's perspective), and the neglegence of funding/evaluating agencies. The non-linearity of the ecosystem complicates policy-making more.

To realise these problems is the first step. The researchers from different disciplines must establish trust in each other, The funding system should make some changes to meet the demand of long-term ecological studies.

As an individual researcher, I think knowing more about policy-making process in the region/country is desirable. To make the research more useful for policy making, an accumulation of large-scale, long-term experiments and theories/models derived from them is necessary. It is not saying that a 3-year PhD program will not be useful. But to make the policy-makers know the meaning of the study and adopt corresponding policies, the researcher will have to do more work to get the idea crossed, and try to understand how the policy-makers think.

Week 26: Need some ``salt''

First of all, I have to admit that I did not do much during the week. I spent considerable time wrestling with Ruby on Rails, Mephisto and Typo, and strange \.htaccess files. The writing on resilience has brought along some interesting questions, such as social vurnerability, ecosystem restoration, and perhaps equity, which I did not address enough in the writing. However, I find myself pretty fed up after so much reading (on the same guys' articles). I can only write one or two paragraph one day, just feel not like writing.

The other part of the work, preparation of the fieldwork, has some progress. However, from time to time I feel it pressing. There may be questions that I cannot solve here but can only tackle in China. Therefore I decided that I should go back some days earlier so I can do something before May Day holiday.

Perhaps I need some fresh air, as well as some social activities, to diversify my life a bit. Or there will be weariness and tedium.