香港房屋政策

林本利是一位我覺得頗有見地的經濟學者，從這篇分析香港政府的房屋需求評估如何脫離現實的文章可見一班；原來他有一個blog貼了他在各大報章發表的文章。

The Galileo affair

This post has nothing to do with the heavily promoted TV series starring 福山雅治 in Hong Kong but the scientist instead. For some forgotten reasons I brought up Galileo vs the church during a family conversation even though I have pretty much lost my interest in science after college. It was my favorite subject when I was a kid. (I guess it's abandoned because chicks found artists more cool than scientists) I barely even read "soft-core" science these days but I gradually started doing that again because of the kids. First, it's a known fact that girls in the American education system tended to be uninterested or even discouraged in this area so I gotta do something to counter balance that. Second, I wanna find some heroes that my kids could look up to. Apparently they are not too interested in great composers even though they play. I guess scientists who made discovery and contributions to our world would be easier to understand and be admired. A recent article that is related to science (and also history) and I found interesting was from Quora: the Galileo Affair was voted as the top most misunderstood historical event. (Linking to Wikipedia because you have to become a member of the latter to read its article and I still couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe) Here's the gist: Galileo's contribution to heliocentricism (i.e., the Earth going around the Sun instead of the other way around) was exaggerated. His punishment by the church because of his advocacy of heliocentricism was also exaggerated (the punishment was house arrest for the last 9 years of his life but he was not tortured. And the church didn't exactly oppose heliocentricism but rather Galileo's presentation of it)