So I really owe you all (all two of you who read this regularly) a real post, but I’m sick and horribly busy at work. So you’re just gonna have to deal with the generic “Happy Thanksgiving” post and this beautiful and tactful reminder of what Thanksgiving is really all about:
Oh oops, did I say tactful? Yeah, that wasn’t exactly what I meant. In any case, I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving!
I was at lunch yesterday after church with several people from the worship team; Larissa, the worship leader and an English teacher at a cram school (I’m the only one of the group not currently teaching), related her teaching highlight of the week:
Whenever the kids would finish whatever activity they were working on, they would promptly proclaim: “Teacher, I finish(ed)!” Pretty close, except that Chinese people have horrible trouble with closed consonant sounds, so their pronunciation of “finish” often comes out all wrong*. Larissa, tired of hearing the word “finish” constantly being butchered, finally instructed them to say “done” instead (true, it’s grammatically incorrect, but oh so much easier to pronounce..). The end of the next activity earned Larissa a chorus of “Teacher, I dumb”. Not exactly what she had intended since she’s not there to teach the kids how to unknowingly denigrate themselves, so she promptly corrected them. Sadly, their mispronunciation of “done” at the end of the next activity was no better than their first. Decidedly worse, in fact. “Teacher, I dung!”
Larissa didn’t say if she had the students go back to saying “finish”..
__________
(*) Closed consonant sounds like the letters “F” or “L” (eff, ell) generally end up being pronounced “effoo” and “elloh” by Chinese people. Chinese consonant sounds almost all end on an open vowel sound (bu, pu, mu, fu…), so the Chinese mispronunciation of the “sh” sound often comes out as something close to “shee” (German shü) — “finish” ends up sounding like “fee-nee-shü”. Making it past tense (finished) just leaves you with “fee-nee-shü-d(uh)”.
Kindergarten playground politics, all grown up. Here’s what happens when poorly raised children grow up to become bratty adults with no self-control or anger-management skills.
I initially saw the May 08, 2007 article back in, well.. May, and was a bit surprised at the immature behavior exhibited in such a public forum. I’ve since done some more digging and found that this is not outrageous, as it ought to be - it’s merely par for the course here. I should have guessed as much, based on classroom, traffic and other unacceptable behavior I’ve observed and been subjected to. It’s just another case of undisciplined, selfish children hiding in adult bodies.
Grab a bag of chips or popcorn and prepare to be entertained and astounded by the antics of (in these articles, anyway) Asian lawmakers. This is the kind of stuff that movies are made of, where we then ridicule it as being far-fetched and unrealistic.. Only these incidents really took place - the BBC says they’re so!
Everything you were taught about science & physics apparently becomes invalid the moment you step into a church. These are hysterical. Number 6 is the best, in my opinion.
Here’s a world record definitely NOT worth breaking! The deciBel is a ratio measurement for sound pressure change (change in volume). For you fellow nerds, Wikipedia has a more in-depth write-up, with formulas and everything! You’re happy now, aren’t you??
In layman’s terms, since the decibel (dB) scale is not straight, but logarithmic, an addition of 6dB (for example, increasing the volume from 80dB to 86dB) is roughly a doubling in perceived volume!! Generally speaking, most people consider ~80dB to be a comfortable listening volume during a concert. You would experience 100dB+ at a very loud rock concert. Unless you’re already deaf, sustained unprotected exposure to that kind of volume will cause hearing loss (hearing loss is irreversible!) and ringing in your ears, called tinnitus. The louder the sound, the less exposure time your ears can handle before you experience permanent damage.
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid‑term:
“Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof.”
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
“First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities. 1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 2) Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during my Freshman year “That it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you,” and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then (2) cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic.”
The student got the only A.
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