User Comments - pretzellogic
pretzellogic
Posted on: Girly Talk
October 17, 2009 at 4:42 AMJohn, for the record, I think cpod found the right level of difficulty for the Intermediate lessons. As an person that started out at Elementary, I also thought there was a significant jump between Ele and Intermediate, and thought it would be helpful to have a lower intermediate. Now, I don't think that's necessary.
Posted on: Turn Right, Turn Left
October 16, 2009 at 5:16 PM3 things:
1) I put "zuo" into the cpod site search engine, and ended up with "there are no related lessons for this term". Then I put in "left" and got this lesson, and about 90 other lessons. If the search engine needs English to operate, then under the search bar where it says "Expand your search by checking the appropriate boxes below", it would probably be good to add "Please use English, as the search doesn't work with Pinyin", or something like that. Or tell me what I did wrong. Thanks.
2) At the risk of sounding like grumpy, angry, abusive, terse cpodders that have posted before ("They-who-will-not-be-named"), but this lesson, while i'm sure its cpod's usually high quality stuff, doesn't really have any new words in it. I looked at the pdf, and a quick review shows that most, if not all, of the words in this lesson, are already taught in the 90 previous lessons, including around 4-10 taxi/direction related lessons. It would be nice if we could get some lessons with really new words in new contexts at all levels that are significantly different from what has already been taught.
Just a thought. Pretty please ;-)
3) Jenny, it was really helpful to learn "turn around". I've been needing a taxi lesson for when you make a ton of mistakes, and need to say things like, "go around the corner", "follow the road", "veer to the right", "I told you wrong, do this", "go through the parking lot and turn left".
Posted on: To bag or not to bag?
October 15, 2009 at 11:20 AMuser11085, to change your user name;
Login, then on the "Me" tab near the top of the page, then click on "profile", and on the bottom of the profile page, there should be a button that says, "update your profile". after "update your profile" go to the section marked "public profile" and you should be able to type in a new username if that's what you wish, and that's what you meant by a new name.
Posted on: 郑和七下西洋
October 14, 2009 at 3:59 AMBeing a mere ele, most of the text went over my head. But my wife read Gavin Menzies "1421" book. I thought that it was interesting that 15th century China had significantly advanced knowledge of the world thanks to Zheng He, then pulled back. To me, it makes me think that 15th century China is the 1971 XeroxParc of cultures. In the early 70s, Xerox had, through the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), XeroxParc also had significant head start on many of the computing technologies we now see daily, the GUI with pull down menus, the mouse, and some of the networking capabilities were also in work. But what did Xerox end up doing? Selling much of that off. Granted, the tech they sold off, they themselves might not have been able to commercialize, but interesting that it was invented/created there.
Posted on: A Trip to the Dry Cleaner's
October 13, 2009 at 2:19 AMBTW, John, your English explanation of the measure words, jiàn, tào and chuáng were extremely helpful. I don't hear often enough "a set of suit" or "a bed of blanket". I think giving that level of detail on measure words is really helpful, rather than just saying that "tào" is the measure word when referring to suits.
It occurs to me that for anything where you're saying "a piece of clothing- yi1 jian4 yi1fu4", can you also say most things that we would use in English for the same measure word, like "a piece of pie - yi1 jian4 pie/pizza"?
Posted on: National Day
October 12, 2009 at 12:51 PMDeleted
Posted on: Drunk Driving
October 12, 2009 at 10:11 AMChangye, Interesting what a little searching can do.....
some data from the US Centers for Disease Control (oddly enough, not from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration)
Impaired Driving
Every day, 36 people in the United States die, and approximately 700 more are injured, in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver.1, 2 The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $51 billion.3 But there are effective measures that can help prevent injuries and deaths from alcohol-impaired driving.
How big is the problem?
- In 2006, 13,470 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (32%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1
- In 2007, over 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.4 That's less than one percent of the 159 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among U.S. adults each year.5
- Drugs other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana and cocaine) are involved in about 18% of motor vehicle driver deaths. These other drugs are generally used in combination with alcohol.6
- Half of the 306 child passengers ages 14 and younger who died in alcohol-related crashes in 2006 were riding with drivers who had a BAC level of .08 or higher.1
- In 2006, 45 children age 14 years and younger who were killed as pedestrians or bicyclists were hit by alcohol-impaired drivers.1
Who is at risk?
- Males: Male drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes are almost twice as likely as female drivers to be intoxicated with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or greater.1 It is illegal to drive with a BAC of 0.08% or higher in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
- Young people:
- At all levels of BAC, the risk of being involved in a crash is greater for young people than for older people.7 In 2006, 19% of drivers ages 16 to 20 who died in motor vehicle crashes had been drinking alcohol.1
- Young men ages 18 to 20 (under the legal drinking age) reported driving while alcohol-impaired more than any other age group. 4,8
- Of the 1,746 traffic fatalities among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2006, about one out of every six (17%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver.1
- Motorcyclists:
- Nearly half of the alcohol-impaired motorcyclists killed each year are 40 or older, and motorcyclists ages 40-44 have the highest percentage of fatalities with BACs of 0.08% or greater.9
- Among drivers killed in fatal crashes, 30% have BACs of 0.08% or greater.9
- Drivers with prior driving while impaired (DWI) convictions: Among drivers involved in fatal crashes, those with BAC levels of 0.08% or higher were eight times more likely to have a prior conviction for DWI than were drivers who had not consumed alcohol.1
http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html
Posted on: Drunk Driving
October 12, 2009 at 10:03 AMand Matt_c, to your point about the powerful, I thought this article was interesting.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-08/22/content_8602976.htm
Posted on: Drunk Driving
October 12, 2009 at 9:45 AMFWIW, I found this article on people's daily. At least these are some statistics. Interesting, in a 2 month period in Beijing, 1119 people were arrested for drunk driving. That's approximately 20 per day. I guess I should get out more. On the other hand, the big entertainment/bar district is about 4-6 miles from my house, where maybe many of the arrests are being made.
More hard drinking in Shanghai than in Beijing though; 1521 were arrested in Shanghai during the same period.
I also note one thing: the article says these people were caught, not arrested. Not sure what that means.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-08/23/content_8604893.htm
Posted on: Resisting Relocation
October 17, 2009 at 5:11 AMannoying that some dude with username "clarence" generated so much discussion, and yet, now we can't see his original post.