i have the answer to a question that we've all asked. the question is, why is it that the letter x represents the unknown? now i know we learned that in math class, but now it's everywhere in the culture -- the x prize, the x-files, project x, tedx. where'd that come from?
about six years ago i decided that i would learn arabic, which turns out to be a supremely logical language. to write a word or a phrase or a sentence in arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. that's one of the reasons so much of what we've come to think of as western science and mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries of the common era by the persians and the arabs and the turks.
this includes the little system in arabic called al-jebra. and al-jebr roughly translates to “the system for reconciling disparate parts.“ al-jebr finally came into english as algebra. one example among many.
the arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to europe -- which is to say spain -- in the 11th and 12th centuries. and when they arrived there was tremendous interest in translating this wisdom into a european language.
but there were problems. one problem is there are some sounds in arabic that just don't make it through a european voice box without lots of practice. trust me on that one. also, those very sounds tend not to be represented by the characters that are available in european languages.
here's one of the culprits. this is the letter sheen, and it makes the sound we think of as sh -- “sh.“ it's also the very first letter of the word shalan, which means “something“ just like the the english word “something“ -- some undefined, unknown thing.
now in arabic, we can make this definite by adding the definite article “al.“ so this is al-shalan -- the unknown thing. and this is a word that appears throughout early mathematics, such as this 10th century derivation of proofs.
the problem for the medieval spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material is that the letter sheen and the word shalan can't be rendered into spanish because spanish doesn't have that sh, that “sh“ sound. so by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed the ck sound, “ck“ sound, from the classical greek in the form of the letter kai.
later when this material was translated into a common european language, which is to say latin, they simply replaced the greek kai with the latin x. and once that happened, once this material was in latin, it formed the basis for mathematics textbooks for almost 600 years.
but now we have the answer to our question. why is it that x is the unknown? x is the unknown because you can't say “sh“ in spanish. (laughter) and i thought that was worth sharing.
(applause)
love is shapeless and priceless. we can blame nobody when captured by it. love can not be forced, nor can it be pretended. sympathy is not love, neither is gratitude. love must be generated from the heart, and expressed in actions. it can not be called love without passions and a deep longing from the bottom of the heart. there's no impassable gulf between family love and fraternal love. some family love may turn into friendship. at the same time, natural barriers doesn't exist either between fraternal love and amatory love. some friendship may develop into amatory love. the same is true with amatory love which may change into family love after a long time of mutual grinding and polishing.the closer the relationship, and the higher the expectations are, the more difficult it is to get along with each other. family love, fraternal love and amatory love are three main human feelings. if handled well, they can bring us extreme happiness, while handled improperly, will bring us great sufferings.
the present society is a world of dazzling money and dwindling human feeling contacts. most people hold a snobbish attitude. they only make friends with people of wealth and of high social status. just as zhen shiyen said in his expounding of the song “all good things must end” in a dream of the red mansions “while men with gold and silver by the chest, turn beggars scorned by all and dispossessed”.frankly speaking, however, if we regard money the first thing in whichever one of the three kinds of loves, it will depreciate and even become worthless.
love has magical power that can exploit people's potential abilities, bring people's positive factors into full play, and provide people with the courage to face trials and hardships, to go through life and death, and even to risk universal condemnation. even in the ancient feudal society, some people were courageous enough to carry on clandestine love affairs. the examples in point were the courageous ones who dared to love the concubines of the emperors or the children of their foes. love also has miraculous power which can startle the universe and move the gods by attracting the heavenly celestials coming down to earth ( the love story of the cowboy and the weaving girl ),and by turning ghosts into human ( strange tales of liao-zhai ),love can transcend age and generation (dr. sun yat-sen and madam song qingling; luxun and xu guangping).love can show contempt for all conventions and prejudices; love can heal wounds and cure diseases, and love can readjust people's state of mind. of course, the result would be the opposite once it hurts.
great men yearn for true love even more than ordinary people. since the ancient times, so many heroes couldn't help falling into the trap of love that the sex-trap has been regarded as one of the 36 stratagems in military tactics. fuchai, the king of the wu state, couldn't be spared of this trap, and generals dongzhuo and lubu fell deeply into it while xiangyu, the king of the western chu state , bid farewell to his beloved concubine in tears. people may have to pay very high price, even their illustrious name for the love they long for even though it may last for only a very short time. nonetheless no one can tear himself away from love. people often say that their earthly affinity is not yet finished, but in fact it is the love affinity that is the most difficult to finish.
hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is zhang xinyu. today, im going to talk about growing pains. different people have different pains from different places. we are now students,so i think we have pains mainly from studies. time files. two months ago, i came to a middle school student.but i have a pain.
homework is my growing pain. in the secondary school, we have more subjects to study.and homework is more than primary school.so i could’t adapt to the secondary school’s homework. i don’t have other time to do any sports or read any books. however, i think all pains will fade away in the end. i believe that i can adapt the school life step by step. try my best. that’s all. thank you for your attention.
the vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us.
death. old age. are words without a meaning. that paby us like the idea air which we regard not. others may have undergone, or may still be liable to them-we "bear a charmed life“, which laughs to scorn all such sickly fancies. as in setting out on delightful journey, we strain our eager gaze forward-
bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail!
and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we advance; so, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations. nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them. we have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag; and it seems that we can go on so forever. we look round in a new world, full of life, and motion, and ceaseleprogress; and feel in ourselves all the vigor and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things, decline into old age, and drop into the grave. it is the simplicity, and as it were abstractedneof our feelings in youth, that (so to speak) identifies us with nature, and (our experience being slight and our passions strong) deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it. our short-lives connection with existence we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting union-a honeymoon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation. as infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled into security by the roar of the universe around us0we quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the more-objects prearound us, filling the mind with their magnitude and with the strong of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
delicacies are tasty, but eating everyday can still make one lose appetite. happiness is what everyone longs for, but too much happiness can spoil people who may not care about the happiness they already have. it's universal to live in happiness without knowing it. the same is true with love. very few people can love the same person passionately all their lives. all love stories come to an end no matter how beautiful they are, which also demonstrate the changeability of love. what one has been chasing wildly may turn into something one wants to get rid of desperately in the end. besides, love is usually blind, especially those who fall in love at the first sight. at the very beginning, both try to demonstrate their beautiful side and cover up their weakness. fooled by the mysterious color of love, one often mistakes the weaknesses as merits. however, as time passes by, frequent contacts make one bored, and even merits become defects, and then the end of love is coming. what's more, there are the capricious men and women who never take love seriously, leaving the devoted ones suffering alone. the saying that the devoted is always abandoned by the heartless has almost become the truth of love affairs. what we can't neglect is that love may turn into hatred, and lovers may also become enemies. the best proof is the numerous divorces.
even though true love is hard to find nowadays, we still can see some true and infatuated boys and girls who readily give up their families, their parents, their studies, their careers and even their lives for love. they love so passionately, crazily and wildly that they hate anyone who is against their love, and may even harm or kill him if he insists on his objection.
when i was nine years old i went off to summer camp for the first time. and my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. and this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social. you have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind. and i had this idea that camp was going to be just like this, but better. (laughter) i had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
(laughter)
camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. and on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. and it went like this: “r-o-w-d-i-e, that's the way we spell rowdie. rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie.“ yeah. so i couldn't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. (laughter) but i recited a cheer. i recited a cheer along with everybody else. i did my best. and i just waited for the time that i could go off and read my books.
but the first time that i took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, “why are you being so mellow?“ -- mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of r-o-w-d-i-e. and then the second time i tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
and so i put my books away, back in their suitcase, and i put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. and i felt kind of guilty about this. i felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and i was forsaking them. but i did forsake them and i didn't open that suitcase again until i was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
now, i tell you this story about summer camp. i could have told you 50 others just like it -- all the times that i got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that i should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. and i always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. but for years i denied this intuition, and so i became a wall street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that i had always longed to be -- partly because i needed to prove to myself that i could be bold and assertive too. and i was always going off to crowded bars when i really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. and i made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that i wasn't even aware that i was making them.
now this is what many introverts do, and it's our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss. and at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world's loss. because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. a third to a half of the population are introverts -- a third to a half. so that's one out of every two or three people you know. so even if you're an extrovert yourself, i'm talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society. we all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we're doing.
Everybody is good! Welcome to badaling scenic area tourism. Accompany you visit together, today I am very happy, hope all can spend a good time in badaling.
My friends, have a look at your feet? Guess what weigh? Tell you! This is a stone, a piece of have two or three one thousand catties! At that time, there is no train, automobile, also have no crane, is by the shoulder of countless countless hands, step by step, carry on the steep mountains. This is how many working people sweat and wisdom, to condense into the former does not see the head, after see the tail of the Great Wall!
This is the Great Wall! This is the west jiayuguan, east to shanhaiguan, which meet the sea sunrise and gobi desert sun, or turned on the peaks, or bent over in the valley, the ups and downs, stretching thousands of miles of the Great Wall. It is such a magnificent verve, Great Wall is a great miracle in the history of the world!
Dear visitors, today's visit here will be over, thank you very much for my support and cooperation. The majestic Great Wall forever awaits respectfully you the presence!
Here are the beacon tower, also known as beacons, Wolf yantai. Independent buildings is not connected to the Great Wall. Once the enemy pounce, communicate its kindle wars and light smoke during the day is called "ran, called flint fire at night. When the Ming dynasty, also on the relationship between the war with the enemy made a strict rules: the enemy hundreds, burning a smoke point a gun; Five hundred people, burning two smoke point two guns; More than one thousand people, three smoke SAN pao; More than five thousand people, four smoke four guns; More than ten thousand people, five five gun smoke. In this way, on the border of the military intelligence can rapid transfer to the imperial city ouchi. See the beacon tower, and then tell you a story, called "must play leud" : the zhou dynasty had a king named weeks you king, he has a beautiful woman, her temper is very strange, always don't smile, think of some way to you king. He lit up a distress signal (fire), as a result, drew leud come white, she laughed, you king is also very happy. But, really have an enemy to attack, you king lit the fire, but no one come, and he was killed by the enemy. There is a story, called "meng jiangnu cry Great Wall collapse" : legend was Meng Gusheng a daughter named meng jiangnu. Because of qin shi huang to build the Great Wall, need a lot of manpower. Qin shi huang was caught many people go to the Great Wall.
All of a sudden, I do not know where to come up to a rumor: only the wan xi is buried under the Great Wall, can make the Great Wall and solid, qin shi huang was, sent people seize wan xi. Wan xi good fled to Bangladesh. People see wan xi meng home good handsome, talented, good let meng jiangnu and wan xi of their marriage. The two men marry less than 10 days, good wan xi is the rulers who grasp to go to repair the Great Wall. In the fall, meng jiangnu saw her husband hasn't come back, give him the woolies. Along the way, reject, hardships, day and night, all the way to the Great Wall. Local people told her: wan xi good would have buried under the wall. She was grief-stricken, crying. Instantly, and dark, the Great Wall was crying collapsed in eight hundred. Just then, qin shi huang to have the Great Wall, with fine features, when he saw meng jiangnu just want her to do concubine. For qin shi huang meng jiangnu agree to her three conditions: one is for wan xi is a grave; The second is to make good full chao wenwu festivals wan xi; Three is in the middle of the Great Wall and the tomb of wan xi good repair a like flying grand bridge. After three things done, she threw herself into the sea.
Failure is the mother of success. Sometimes people have to cope with many mistakes and failures in order to reach the successful finals. While others might succumb to failure, they tend to retreat and give in their efforts. Success often provides confidence and satisfaction, nevertheless failure companies with bitter, saddness, and suffering. It seems people have to learn through each experience, as success doesn't always falls from heaven.
I remembered I used to fail on my vocabury test when I was in high school. I had problem to memorize new words which got lloose each day. I almost decided to give up English, but was obliged to one of my neighbour classmates who kept on sending small sheet for me. In the end of the semester, I found I had finished my vocabulary book which became a work force in reading English. I then realized that a new word came and left our brains for several times. Nobody is born as genius for success. Success tends to arrive after a serial of trials and failures.
Of course, success brings confidence and victory. But, life is not always easy and comfortable. There are more difficulties than eases in the real life. It is likely that we have to face some failures ahead. Therefore, those who learn how to deal and endure failures will taste their success eventually.