Tuesday, October 07, 2014

大陸政治之改革希望:三十年

今天上了科大突然召開的“雨傘運動”論壇,有許多啓發。於香港現狀的,有許多心得,我之後若有時間會騰出來總結一下。
現在對我來說,更為迫切需要寫的,是這些年來不斷在思考大陸政治去向不得其所後,偶然在今天的論壇中霍然開竅。

先申明,在這裡,要求大家心平氣和,切勿對號入座,也不要藉機攻擊他人。凡是欲概論的文章,難免會傷到其他人。在此,我先在這裡謝罪。
先總結一下論壇上,我所觀察到發表意見、問題的大陸學生,及其他大陸學生的反應。

我所觀察


 1. 有大陸學生提問說,他們見到有示威者衝擊警方防線,而釋放催淚彈卻遭港人抨擊,那請問警方該如何執法?
其實這一問沒錯,有趣的不是問題,而是在一提問後,零星大陸學生卻報以掌聲。

2. 當其中一位教授娓娓道來香港民主在英國殖民時期其實不被通過,是因為大陸政府的干預,大陸學生卻哄堂。教授義正言辭地說:“這不是說笑的,大家好好去翻一翻記載。“ 而大陸學生們卻似聽非聽,不知有沒有聽進去。(我揣測不出來)

3. 一位大陸學生說,大家都似乎認為民主可以改變民生,可是民主也造卻了嚴重的貧富懸殊。民主體系似乎也解決不了任何問題。論述間,不少大陸學生報以同意之聲。
  

大陸政改之”改變不了“?


 我突然發現,20-30歲這一代的大陸人,尤其是這一班精英,對大陸的政治氛圍其實是抱著一種”我改變不了“的態度。
他們明白大陸貪污之嚴重,官商勾結,產品及食肆缺乏管制下的無良氾濫。
他們這種對香港雨傘運動的旁觀及對自己國家的悲觀的態度,是否是愛國的舉動?
我倒不覺得。
因為愛國之人,會想出一份力,報答國家,改變國家。
所以就算制度有問題,他們也大可尚且在國外發展,日後國家稍有起色,可回家報國。
可是大部份大陸的精英(20-30歲群),卻是千方百計離開中國,趕快弄到綠卡、護照,然後放棄中國戶籍。
沒了中國的身份,以後回國,搞不好會被人當成奸細?這道理估計大家心裡有數。
我覺得這就反映了大陸的政改,註定不是這一輩人,因為他們已經擁有這種放棄改變的心態。

就好像現在這一輩的香港人(15-30歲),覺得香港是自己的家,並非過渡站,所以竭盡全力去改變政治體制;
大陸的20-30歲,覺得大陸的環境及局勢太過深不可測,所以謀以自全為重一樣。
  

希望在哪裡?三十年後之說


 我覺得,希望在這群20-30歲大陸精英的下一代。有些可能還未放棄戶籍,或是爭取不到國外戶籍的一班精英,抑或是自己主動迴流大陸等等原因,因為接觸過國外生活及知識的洗禮,雖然自己沒有想要做出努力,可是自己所教育出來的子女肯定不是省油的燈。

所以我說,大陸若有政治改革,也是在他們的兒女,三十年後的事情了。當然,前提是在這三十年裏,大陸政治氛圍相對穩定。可是,中國近代史上,存在著三十年穩定這麼長久的時期好像暫時沒有出現過啊?
  

大陸20-30歲精英可做之事


 對大陸20-30歲之輩,我有一些小小的提議:

1. 雖然民主體系在大陸的實現會造成分裂、或是大改變,至少不要抗拒它。多思考各個體系的好壞,同時思考實際上在大陸小型實施的可能。

2. 香港的現狀與你們有著舉足輕重的關係,請你們不要冷眼旁觀,不要以”大中國主義“去批判”香港民主”的無知及不可能性。你們迫切需要的是,密切關心這一切的發展:

a. 密切觀察及揣測中央政府的反應及措施;
b. 反思,如果香港民主成功,那深圳是否有可能成為“民主制度開放區"?
c. 如果香港民主失敗,其經濟開放地位也會因此失卻(內地公司募資都來香港開市,因為市場相對自由,媒體報導自由,可增投資者信心;上海肯定沒有這個優勢,未來十年里也絕對不會有),那大陸政治會不會掀起風波?
d. 爲什麽新一代香港人要民主?你們要非常深入地去瞭解,香港今日六大家族的勢力與英殖時代的巨大差別,及鄧小平/江澤明/胡錦濤/習近平對這六大家族的依賴等。因為大陸各大城市的貧富懸殊及官商勾結,其實和香港蠻相近的。
e. 反思,民主是否能解決d的問題?如果不能,那怎樣才能?


你們不需要參與,可是我懇求你們,你們要關注,要客觀。因為如果有一天中國等不到你們的下一代,需要的,就是你們。
香港的明天,也是你們的明天。

Friday, July 04, 2014

How I Stay Awake

I love the feeling of being trapped in a loop of thought, because that's how I used to survive and I find the familiarity in it: the feeling of being reined in, while charging towards the desired ending.

Perhaps, this is how I stay awake.

It's still in the way that I think nobody is watching
Yeah, nobody's watching me

So cover up for the rain
You see in way too much safety
Cause I don't stand a chance
Any longer than you do my friend
But you're still keeping me sane

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Pure Action

Honor not the mere act of doing;
Disgrace it not too,
with a multitude of decorations.

Right, Wrong, Success, Failure.
Such are the fictitious concoctions
when motivation delights itself in the company of desire.

Weather not the mere act of doing,
for clouds are always alive, not laden

Sunday, March 09, 2014

As Airplane Malfunctions: What to Expect

[Pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them. References are supplied in the embedded URLs]

Now that MH370 is suspected to have crashed into the sea, one cannot but hope that there will be survivors. People are praying all over the world, and we all wish for miracles. The thought of an airplane malfunctions and crashes is not new; it happens time and again, often out of the blue (which led statisticians to conclude that driving a car puts you at a much higher risk than taking an airplane). Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Brazil in year 2009, in fact not long ago. The thought that this happened to a Malaysian-owned plane leaves me shuddering. This incident tells me that I am not an outsider but am within the reach of such risk. As this broods on my mind, I then ask, what should I expect when a plane malfunctions? What should I expect, e.g. how long will it take for it to crash into the land / ocean? What if there is a structural disintegration, will I have a chance to survive?

Pray for MH370 (source: MH370 News Update Facebook page; see bottom for link)
To put this into perspective, a flight experience can be separated into the following stages: 1) taxiing in airport waiting for takeoff call; 2) takeoff; 3) achieving airlift; 4) rapid altitude climb; 5) gradual altitude climb and 6) cruising at high altitude (usually at 35000 feet or 10668 meter). The reverse is true for landing. In contrast to the fear of flying, in fact most of the airplane accidents happened in airport. Air Traffic Control (ATC) is often overloaded with information and requires a huge amount of efforts to communicate radar information to one another, so if one landing plane is overlooked, chances are two planes might cross each other. Same is true for takeoffs. So the risk of dying as a result of airplane crash is the highest when you are on a plane taxiing, about to take off or about to land. So when flight attendants and pilots tell you to buckle up your seatbelt during taxiing, take off or landing, you better heed it and behave. At least when your plane is hit, you are not thrown out of your seat and snap your neck or break a rib if nothing serious happens. I always admire people who are always in such a hurry to unbuckle their seatbelts and stand up to retrieve their cabin luggage while the plane has just come to a taxi after landing.
[see the SCMP report on the near miss of a Cathay Pacific and Dragonair jet on 18 September 2011 as they descended into the Hong Kong airport]

Aircraft check (source: AirTeamImages)
Now if a plane is well-maintained, one can be assured that great safety is what you can expect for stages like (2), (3), (4), (5) and (6). Especially (6), since auto-pilot can take over manual maneuvering. Indeed there is no such thing as total manual maneuvering anymore, since there will always be a network of motion sensors calibrating the stability of the pitch, yaw and roll. Now if something goes wrong during any of the stages when the plane has achieved airlift, it will go very wrong. This is because stability control is crucial to safety. Redundancy is built into the system to buy time for the pilot to execute emergency landing or ditching. I need compiled data to draw a statistics on how often is this desired outcome achieved. For now, my interest is on the worst case scenarios. Let us go through them one by one.

Pitch, yaw, and roll of an aircraft relative to the direction of gravity and the plane body [source: Wikipedia]

1) Electrical Power Loss

Multiple redundancies are built to ensure the scenario of power loss is next to zero. A typical Boeing 747 has 4 engine driven generators, 2 APU generators and batteries for last back-up. 2 generators can run the airplane good for the whole flight. If all else fails the batteries will supply emergency power for about 30 minutes. This 30 minutes is designed to be used in extreme condition when a lightning strike knocks out all engine generators. So there you go. At least emergency ditching can be achieved in time.


2) Human Errors (most of the time, in addition / in response to machine errors)

Yes you read it correctly. When engineers design the aircraft, they make sure humans have the last say if there are errors in the sensors or machines. But if you have operated a machine before, you will know that it is the human "error" that often leads to the fatal blow. Machines and sensors are honest stuff. They show you everything. You have to judge in time what goes wrong and how to react to them. I will go back to the availability of reaction time later, but more often than not, the time available is short (typically less than a minute; extend that to 5 minutes for an early detection of fishy machine / sensor errors). An experienced, calm and decisive pilot is very, very crucial to the passengers' survival. The rest is luck. I will give the example of Air France Flight 447 crash in year 2009 again:

The vertical stabilizer recovered (source: Wikipedia)
The final report states that the temporary inconsistency between the speeds measured caused the autopilot to disconnect. The pilots, who failed to understand the situation completely in time, made inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path. Aircraft went into stall and the pilots again failed to make inputs that would have made it possible to recover. 

All this happened in a really short time. Think about the emotionally charged situation, initial 'small' error will then lead to an emotionally-laden quick decision to correct the error, which you and I (if you are an alien / intelligent animal reading this, please disregard the 'you and I' reference) are so familiar of, often than not escalates the initial error. This is very sad indeed, but we are all humans. That's why Google is serious about self-driving cars. That way we can reduce accidents on the road if all cars self-drive.


3) Structural Disintegration

Although I speak of the assumption of a 'well-maintained' airplane, how well-maintained is well-maintained? That means how often you routinely check the plane and service it. Well, that's what most people would say. But little do they know that how you check it is actually much more important than how often you check it. You can check an airplane twenty times per day with eye inspection and might end up with a malfunctioning aircraft in flight. 

I do not wish to go in depth into NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) techniques, but I attended a state-of-the-art seminar last December and came across a shocking revelation that modern airplane NDT technique cannot reveal some of the fatigue cracks in the fuselage. I am not saying that the current techniques are not working. What I am saying is that, there are rooms for improvement. Fatigue cracks are common in structural elements that construct the building you live in, and also the airplane you are riding on. Fatigue, as you might have guessed, refers to forces coming on and off the element and over time, cracks will form. If fatigue crack happens in a bolt, it will be hard to detect! Don't worry, engineers turn to reinforced + redundant welding to make sure that does not happen. The interesting thing is, once cracks are formed, no matter how small they are, they will propagate once the element is loaded again. We do not wish to let them propagate during flight. But these tiny creatures are still a nuisance. They are very hard to detect. Next time don't complain so much when your flight is delayed again and again. Let those people make damn sure there are no fatigue cracks!

Fatigue cracks emanating from at least 42 of the 58 rivet holes in the fuselage skin, a test results on the investigation of Southwest Airlines Flight 812 accident on April 1, 2011 [source: National Transportation Safety Board]
However, if so unfortunate that it happens that fatigue should have occurred in one of the crucial structural elements of the plane, then you will risk structural disintegration of the plane. Upon this point, you will be left with almost no option but to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.


A) How Much Time to Crash?

Here I calculate possible altitudes at cruising / altitude climb at which structural disintegration begins and the plane takes a dive. Say the inner compartment stays intact, how much time do you have?

Now, nature dictates that the easiest way is the best way. So when a plane loses stability, it will fall along its long axis because nature dictates that it falls in the easiest manner, that is in the least air drag configuration. In this case I think I can safely assume there is next to zero air drag. High school physics teach us that the time taken is simply the square root of [ ( 2 * distance to fall ) / gravity constant] if you regard the initial falling velocity to be zero. Similarly, the terminal velocity is calculated with the square root of [ 2 * gravity constant * distance to fall]. Results are plotted as follows:

Time to crash in seconds vs. Altitude in feet
Terminal velocity at crash in km/hr vs. Altitude in feet
As the typical cruising height is at about 35000 feet, it takes about 46.6 seconds for the plane to crash into the sea or the ground. You have approximately a few seconds to panick, then to put on your life vest and brace for impact. That is to say, if you can survive a 1647 km/hour dip at the point of impact without snapping your neck and lucky enough to avoid flying objects coming your way. The story of the calculation lies within the short reaction time. If the pilots lose control of the aircraft (most likely when structural disintegration happens), you have less than a minute to prepare, often than not less than half a minute. It's near impossible to do that unless you are well informed of where the life vest is and how much time you have. And now you know you don't have much time to waste. Also it is very important to listen carefully when aircraft safety instructions are given and to grope for the location of the hidden life vest before you go about your own activity. The rest is luck.


B) What If Cabin is Exposed to Air?

The cabin is pressurized during flight in order to make sure the passengers do not suffer from hypoxia and go into hyperventilation. Hypoxia happens because the lower partial pressure of oxygen at high altitude reduces the alveolar oxygen tension in the lungs and subsequently in the brain. It is a matter of minutes or seconds until you lose consciousness due to the conditions of hypoxia. So let's assume you buckle up your seatbelts. As the cabin is exposed to air, it loses pressure and you are not sucked out because you have your seatbelts on. However, when this happens, you are exposed to lower pressure of the outside atmosphere, and here is a table of the time of useful consciousness you can maintain, depending on how high you are. See to it that at 35000 feet, you still have a chance of staying conscious to brace yourself against the impact for the 46.6 seconds fall. But if the plane starts falling at a higher altitude, you probably need oxygen to remain conscious. That's why there are oxygen masks popping down from above in these dire moments. It's for you to maintain conscious so you can help yourself to the life vests and brace for impact. Again, safety instructions on how to wear the mask is extremely important. And again, the rest is luck.
[Be reminded that the table is plotted for tests done for people at rest. Any exercise will reduce the time considerably]

Average time of useful consciousness at various altitudes [source: Wikipedia]


Afterword

The MH370 accident is a huge shock that jostles me out from my ignorance of the risk I face if anything happens during a flight accident. As I put together the pieces, I hope I would be mentally prepared in such an event if it should happen (immediately touch wood). I share with you the knowledge so you listen carefully to the safety instructions given to you by the cabin crew and be reminded that, in face of such a misfortune, you do not have much time left. Time is of the essence to prepare yourself so that if luck happens to cross your path, you have a conscious brain to wear a vest that floats you on the waters and a whistle to blow to the direction of the search party.

For more information on the latest news update, follow:

[Disclaimer: I summarize the contents in a go, so there must be errors. For in depth studies, one is advised to refer to the scientific literature and reliable sources instead of jumping to conclusions by basing your judgment on this article. This article is written by the author to express his views instead of stating the facts.]

Saturday, January 18, 2014

On How Time is Measured

If I compare my reading level now as compared to years ago when I was still in my teen, it definitely has improved by leaps and bounds. I can comprehend a lot more of the narratives, and connect them to life and what may lie beyond. It soothes me when I thought about this. Traces of time are meaningful only when one progresses mentally and spiritually; else it is just a measurement of space one travels. Space has a magical attribute, certainly of immediate effect as compared to time since as one is removed from a familiar daily space, one will have felt that he has moved on. However I have seen too many a face that space merely transforms itself in the form of creases on their skins, and they age not much mentally since their youth. I guess that's the reason why everyone is always looking back to his youth. That period is a measurable period, as the mind grows in pace with, sometimes even outpace, time.

The line of thought brought me inevitably to the reason why scholars graduate with degree called 'philosophical doctorate'. Philosophy weighs not in the amount of knowledge being accumulated, but in the amount of meaningful traces collected in the process of discovery. Meanings are imprinted on the memory only when one sits down to contemplate the truth and the existence of the mystery one is indulging in solving. As meanings are being fathomed, philosophies take their forms and the footsteps they then leave behind are what we remember as the passage of time.


After all, the sense of time in our memories are the traces left by our mental or spiritual growth. And it makes me sad to think that so many spend a lifetime measured so short in such traces. Maybe that's why so many think that the summit of life has passed after their youths, the times when the bustle of menagerie of emotions and reflections about life are constantly in their minds. Too many have told me that 'high school life' or 'university life' were the best times of their lives, and they wish to experience that period of life once more if they could. I would like to ask the people who make the remark this: "Do you think it's time that has left you behind, and in fact truly it is you who left time unaccounted for?"