User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: Farm Animals

this is a good way to teach the animals at the newbie level; just taking "this is what animal?" and running down the list.

Maybe an elementary lesson shoud then talk more about how most villages have a cow or two, and a few chickens? Or introduce the goat and say that most Chinese farmers don't eat the animals, but use them for milk/eggs/labor. 

Then maybe an intermediate lesson can add more details about Chinese village life, like rarely do the animals get slaughtered, but that happens for special events, like family members returning for spring festival or something.

Posted on: Basketball

How do you say:

this center is slower than a snail!

Zhe1ge zhong1feng1 bi3 snail man4 le!

this might be a cultural thing, but when i was listening (as best i could, which wasn't great) to the NBA when Channel 5 in China would broadcast the games, the announcers never seemed to say something bad about the players. Even those that played badly.

Good on you, cpod, for having basketball lessons.

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi Jenny,

Thanks for the reply.  Many subscribers have suggested lesson topics, and my thoughts are around whether those topeics get included into the CPOD lesson roadmap.  I know that Mikenotinjubei suggested putting lessons in an order where the same topic received newbie/ele/intermediate treatment, pchenery suggested a lesson about Boston, pretzellogic suggested a lesson about the village, and so on.  My "broad list of topics" was really asking if there is a list of all the user-suggested topics and lesson levels for those topics.  Like, there's about 75 user suggested lessons/lesson topics for this week (or whatever the number is), and we haven't got enough lesson level detail to make decisions about where to put the topic (ele, newbie, advanced?). 

As a user, I think it benefits everyone when there's transparency in the lesson creation process.  CPOD is doing more of this with News and Features, and I'm suggesting that CPOD do even more by posting somewhere on the site a roadmap something like this:

• Week ending 10/31/08: deliver politics intermediate, video on offices, village intermediate, QW,
  
• Week ending 11/6/08: deliver Boston ele, QW, Johannesburg ele,
  
• Week ending 11/13/08: deliver spring festival update, QW, Large Hadron Collider advanced 

and so on. this could be posted on the cpod site somewhere accessible by all subscribers, and then we could make inputs on the roadmap.  we could also give better feedback about how to update/treat new lessons in the future.

Hope that helps clarify what I meant.  Thanks for asking.

Posted on: Don't Never Say Never

why no pdfs for the sentences that are used in QW?

Posted on: F1 in China

F=ma applies everywhere except near the speed of light. v^2/c^2.  Then Einstein applies, except at v^2=c^2, then whoever gets credit for quantum mechanics applies.  Tthat's what I meant about "most earthbound circumstances". I know I wasn't the most clear on that point.

I always thought that an interesting thing was that not only a F1 car could drive upside down, but given the right powerplants, my 1999 Honda Civic could "fly" in the same sense that an airplane flies.  We have Daniel Bernoulli to thank for that equation about pressure.  My back of the envelope estimate is that the Civic would do this around 210-250 mph, not within the capabilities of my (dare I say it) "stock" Honda engine. 

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi Pete,

Welcome aboard, and thanks for your study suggestions. 

Hape,

thanks for your examples.

Jenny, John,

Any thoughts on where/when we might see a broader list of lesson topics, or a sense of the decision process on what topics get turned into lessons? I'm sure it's not just, "Ken issues a decree, and we make a lesson on that topic", but any insight into why, for example, a farm animal lesson is on for this week, when it could be a month from now would be interesting.   Thanks.

Posted on: The Olympic Marathon

oh, well, you've always been fast! congratulations and continued victories!

regarding a cpod lesson on the Boston Marathon, i'm not sure about the status of lesson suggestions.  I know that many people in the 5 months i've been subscribing to cpod have made suggestions about lessons. How they get mixed up in the cpod lesson blender and baked and then delivered piping hot to us subscribers is not clear to me.

Posted on: The Olympic Marathon

pchenery, you'll have to discuss how long it to train for such an effort, let alone winning.  I'm psyching myself up to run next year's BAA half marathon in 8 minute miles. it's going to take the entire year for me to get that much speed,if i'm lucky and don't break/strain/pull/tear anything.

Posted on: The Olympic Marathon

thanks Amber! I take it that fu2cong2 is obeys, and da4nao3 is mind?

and also, how do you say, "just run to the next tree"?

pao4 zai4  xia4 yi1 ge shu4?

Posted on: F1 in China

Jenny, enjoy the Sinopec Chinese Grand Prix.  Take some pictures at the Chinese Grand Prix, and post one here.  I think us race fans would like grand prix photos. Or maybe its just me.  Make sure you have the track in the background. Video would be even better!