A Few Insights#
Self-reflection is essential, as is reflection on worldly matters.
- What do you have in this short life? Wasting time struggling in the world, the way has its own scenery. In the cold winter, there are plum blossoms.
- A new day, new worries, but also new hopes.
- Life is said to involve giving up and gaining, but it's just hard to let go of what we give up, nothing more than greed.
- There is always a way out in life, and time will eventually give you a stage.
- Being able to temporarily forget worries, discard pain, and then, continue to wait for the bright lights and revelry~
- Looking at Zhuozhou today, I understand that the end of all regimes is not achieved overnight.
A Tiny Space#
The world is within a tiny space.
The Quantitative Era#
Every little bit of introspection is an experience in itself.
I have some ideas recently and I'm ready to experiment.
Vocabulary Sharing#
Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle Corporation, was a programmer at Ampex Corporation before starting his own company. He developed a software system for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to manage a large amount of intelligence information. This software system was codenamed Oracle, meaning "oracle". The reason for this name is that the CIA hoped that this software system could guide them like an oracle, quickly finding the information they needed.
Later, Larry Ellison created his own company and thought that the name Oracle was good, so he used it as the name of the company and its product brand. The Chinese name is "甲骨文" (Jiǎgǔwén), which means "oracle bone script". This is because ancient Chinese people used oracle bones to record divination results, so the characters written on oracle bones naturally represent "oracle".
In ancient Greece, before making important decisions, people liked to go to the temple to seek oracles, that is, to seek the opinions of the gods. However, the oracles conveyed by the priests in the temple were often mysterious and ambiguous, and could be interpreted in multiple directions, leading to different or even opposite conclusions.
For example, according to historical records, King Croesus of Lydia in Western Asia did not know whether to go to war with the Persian Empire, so he came to the famous Delphi Oracle to seek advice. The oracle said that once they went to war, a great empire would be destroyed.
Croesus thought that the great empire mentioned by the oracle was Persia, so he ordered a large army to go to war, but ended up suffering a disastrous defeat. Croesus angrily returned to the Delphi Oracle and asked the priests why they had deceived him. The priest replied, "The great empire mentioned by the oracle is your own country."
Therefore, the adjective "oracular" derived from "oracle" not only means "related to oracles", but also means "profound and mysterious".
Etymologically, "oracle" comes from Latin, composed of the Latin root "or-" (mouth, speech), the connecting letter "a", and the noun suffix "-cle" indicating a tool. Its literal meaning is "the tool through which the gods speak". The oracle is not the direct words of the gods, but is conveyed by the priests in the temple, so it is the tool and channel through which the gods speak.
Other words derived from the root "or-" include "oral" (related to the mouth, spoken, oral), "orate" (to speak), and "oration" (a speech).
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
— Cicero
Written at the Yu Guan Xin Ge on: 2023-10-13