User Comments - mark

Posted on: “失独”的老人

谢谢你的纠正。

Posted on: “失独”的老人

我们的小儿子刚出家了去读书，所以我们又是两人的家，为此我能一点点地同情这个阿姨，但是孩子去世是很恐怖的。

Posted on: Homeschooling

both

Posted on: Homeschooling

Pretzellogic, your information, while interesting, doesn't detract from the weird feeling. Are we to presume these are two expat mothers speaking really excellent Chinese to each other, and that one of them graduated from a name brand college in China? Finally, Jenny explains at the end of the lesson that most Chinese people won't understand the vocabulary in the lesson. 囧

Posted on: Homeschooling

This strikes me as a really weird lesson, because it is supposedly two Chinese people discussing something that doesn't exist in China.  I also think there are, not surprisingly, some misunderstandings within the lesson and lesson banter.

The U.S. also has compulsary education.  However, we regulate educational standards rather than the organization that provides the education.  So, someone who is homeschooling their child has to prove that they are providing an adiquate education for their child.

As far as I can tell, homeschooling is motivated by two main schools of thought.  Sometimes local public schools have problems, such as, violence at the school, poor teaching, poor test scores, etc.  Parents that are affected by this look for alternatives.  The other case is when the parents have some non-mainstream belief, for example, the teaching of evolution is against their religious beliefs, and they don't want their children taught something that they don't believe.

In practice, homeschooling is often not parents teaching their own children.  Rather, it is a group of like minded parents forming a private school and sharing the work.

I suspect that in China homeschooling would be viewed as potentially socially disruptive.  So, I'm not surprised that it wouldn't have legal support. On the other hand, things like having kids work in the family business rather than go to school, might be overlooked in China, but enforced more strictly in the U.S.

My own personal belief is that public education does help to unify society.  So, when public schools are broken, they should be fixed.  God forbid we end up living in some governmentless place like Haiti or Samalia.

Posted on: Fast Cars and Shallow Women

I googled for Mei Mei, found nothing.  美美 led me to a baidu encyclopedia entry and some video clips on youku.  One of the clips was from a "Larry Lang" show where he interviewed her (郭美玲 aka baby美美） and her mother.  Her father and mother divorced before she was born, but he took her to dinner one evening and offered her a job at the Red Cross.  She replied that if it wasn't the director, she would decline, and he agreed.  (I suspect a toung and cheek conversation.)   Anyway, in real life she was unemployed and entertained herself by describing her lavish lifestyle on the net, in a Marie Antonette moment, capping it off by saying she was the director of the Red Cross.  This red meat went viral, and attracted a lot of criticism.

The Baidu entry states that the Red Cross disavowed any knowledge of Mei Mei, and the link to her blog now has an appology stating that she doesn't have any relationship with the Red Cross, and doesn't want to say too much more about it.

BTW, evidently, the Maserati turned out to be just a Mini Cooper.

Please, correct me if I misconstrued something, because all of my source materials were in Chinese, and my Chinese is imperfect.

Posted on: Farewells and iPhones

I will miss BST. I hope David has the heart to do a similar show.

As for iPhone apps, I am using an Android tablet now and think the regular Web site works fine.

Posted on: Star Trek

This was Google's icon in the US today.  To me it looks like old school Star Trek, the one that was too scary for me when it was first broadcast, but I later watched every episode several times.

Posted on: Internet Slang (Part One)

I can confirm that BBS (Bulletin Board System) comes from English.  It is from back when computers connected over point to point links (modems and phone lines) rather than the Internet.  There were some well know systems where people could post messages for others to read.  They were basically single servers with a bunch of phone lines attached.  The interface was all text based.  So, no images, formatted text, anything like that.  These types of systems were mostly replaced by Web sites after about 1994.  So, it is not surprising, if people under 35 haven't heard of them.  Also, because they were difficult to use, and required specialized equipment, only a small segment of the population ever used them.

Posted on: Duplicitous Snake Idioms

Wrapping up?  It seems like there are lots more animals in the world than you guys have covered.

我开始学习中文时，朋友们都告诉我是虎头蛇尾的事。

我觉得美国共和党的总统获选员罗曼尼是蛇心蝎肠的人，不会支持他，被·小布什咬了十年怕这群人。