Tuzki

Lifted from http://www.startdrawing.org/home/?cat=16

These bunnies known as Tuzki (兔斯基), are the latest to steal the hearts of Chinese netizens.

Simplistic, noseless and mouthless, these bunnies have been hot on Chinese internet, particularly with QQ and MSN users since the beginning of 2007. Wang Momo, a student in animation department of Beijing Broadcasting Institute created this popular lagomorph.

Wang Momo created this character to be able to write her diary in a graphic form. Her friends and classmates always nicknamed her “rabbit” as well. The first Tuzki was very simple, and just waved his arms and shook his head. Then Momo created more pictures and small animations for this character based on her real life experiences. To date, Tuzki has 39 different expressions. And thanks to the 150,000,000 Tecent QQ users and 20 million MSN messenger users in China, the popularity of Tuzki also generates income for this young woman. She is now designing Tuzki posters and postcards, which will take the rabbit beyond the definition of an internet idol.

The use of cartoon icons when chatting with others via MSN Messenger is considered an internet phenomenon started by the younger generations in China. At first it started with Yoyo & Cici (悠嘻猴), a launch by Chinajoy at the beginning of 2006, driven by commercial purposes. Later in 2006, the cartoon Onion replaced the Yoyo & Cici Monkeys to be the most popular internet icon. Currently, Tzuki is the new fad.

[Extracts from Shanghaiist]

Under the same blue sky

This is children from western China.

Question: Why do they study?
(Answer after the photos)




























It breaks my heart especially when I also know that there are so many children in developed countries do not treasure what they have got.

These children in western China are not happy children. But they work, work hard. When there is any slight opportunity, they study. Why?

Because they know if they ever want to change to a slightly better life, education is the only way!

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 8

In English, you need to pay attention to the first sentence when you ask a question.
For example:

You like American food, don't you?
You don't like French food, do you?

In Chinese, we don't need to pay attention to the first part of the sentence. They are

你喜歡美國食物, 是嗎?
你不喜歡法國食物, 是嗎?

Or you can say
你喜不喜歡美國食物? (Do you, or do you not like American food?)

Please also notice that Chinese answer depends on the question, not the answer.
For example,
You like American food, don't you?
No. [I don't].
is translated to
你喜歡美國食物, 是嗎?
不.

But
You don't like French food, do you??
No, I don't.
is translated to
你不喜歡法國食物, 是嗎?
是. {Indicating that I agree with the question, i.e. I don't like French food).

What is weighing down learning?

by Harold Jarche

Harold dug up a post I wrote two years ago and highlighted the baggage the current school system has.

However, I would like to take issue with his use of "learning" in his post title.

"Education system" is NOT the same as "learning". In today's education system, our children are learning, albeit not necessarily during "school hours" and not the kind of skills we (here "we" means adults or society) like them to learn. Learning IS an innate ability of human. It is not whether a child has learnt or not. The problem is about "what, when, where and how".

I have left out "who and why" in the above. "Who" is obvious. We are talking about the children - oops, everyone actually because we need life-long learning.

I don't want to ponder "why" we need to learn. It has been covered by too many people and I have no expertise in it. I would rather apply "why" to each of the "what, when and where". Why *we* want learners to learn "what", at "when" and "where"?

When and only when the above questions have answers, education system would be able to address "how" to achieve under the economic and social constraints.

Unfortunately, we do not start from a blank state. There is an existing education system. Can it evolve to the ideal state? Or it is necessary to have a revolution in order to achieve that state?

Again, I have more questions than answers!

[cross posted to Learning for 2020]

Thou Shalt Not Lie - 2

If you need to dispute why you should not believe in Creationism, see 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense from Scientific American.

Understand flaws in argument yourself, encourage children to practice good logical argument and be able to identify flawed argument. Start from Fallacy from wikipedia and follow some links for further information.

If you *really* need to teach Religious Studies [yes, I see the cultural importance of understanding the things that have been done in the name of "God"], please do the following:
1. Teach comparative religion. Make sure you invite at least 3 different religious leaders to speak to your class from 3 different religions. If you can, please invite a Buddhist monk.
2. Give this website as a resource when you study Bible: Skeptic's Annotated Bible / Quran / Book of Mormon
3. Be honest with history. Discuss how religion was used for political reasons when convenient and how new religion was created when it is inconvenient.
4. Most important or all, DO NOT VIOLATE the children and force them to believe your belief. [If you really believe in God, at least give your children a choice so that they can choose their own. Frankly, there are so many versions (that's why there are so many different religions each claiming theirs is the true God. Yet there is no overwhelming evidence to show who is correct!). Please at least acknowledge that YOU may have chosen the "wrong" God to believe in.]
5. Be HONEST. Don't lie to your children. Present facts within statistical evidence (i.e. demonstrate whether an occurrence is statistically significant or not). One person cured out of 1 million IS not a miracle!

Thou Shalt Not Lie

This post in Scienceblog generates a debate between creation and evolution.

Here is a fence-sitter [comment #4 posted by: Marta | May 26, 2007 06:04 PM]:

Can't have it both ways like the "intelligent design" crowd tries to do; either you embrace creation or evolution and live by it. New light and updates to religion & science are the norm, so somehow, the tradition of accommodating new data is familiar to both the creationists and evolutionists. Actually, respectfully co-existing beside one another with no agreement is a civilized option. Nobody owns the corner on explaining origins for the same reason that subjective consciousness remains a mystery. Enjoy studying the mystery of life from a scientific viewpoint and/or religious view point and if you don't come away with a sense of awe, YOU missed the point.

Unfortunately, I don't share that view. Creation and evolution are incompatible views and one of them is very dangerous towards future human life quality (see The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins).

Science gives us all the wonderful things we enjoy daily, from ease of travel to the convenience of communicating thousands of miles apart at the speed of light. Science helps invent cures to a large range of human sufferings. Science is based on evidence, gathered meticulously and cross-examined by many other people all over the world before it is accepted. More importantly, the current accepted theories are subjected to change if compelling evidence comes around to show otherwise. No fundamental theories in any branch of science is NOT subjected to these vigorous tests constantly. This is how human progress!

For the sake of maintaining the current status quo of "science helps the human" so that we can continue to have a better life, I urge teachers to help promote this "evidence-based, constantly testing and experimenting spirit" and forbid further spread of "blind faith". We cannot sit on the fence, and we MUST take a side. Either go back to the Middle Age or keep on advancing based on SOUND scientific principles.

Let's Go Scratch

by Andrew Pass

I downloaded "Scratch" and played with it for a while too. I share exactly the same feeling as Andrew:

When I first saw the program I struggled with it for a few minutes, realized that I had other things to be doing and so decided to come back later.

It is inspiring to read Andrew's description of how a digital native approached the program.

Michael, on the other hand, saw the program and wasted no time. He seemed to know what to do by instinct.

This gets me thinking:
1. Is "Scratch" developed by digital native too? [I'll find out later.] If yes, that means there is a way of doing things that we digital immigrants do not understand. If no, what is the bridge between the developers' world view and the digital natives that we immigrants are lacking? Or is it something else?
2. I argued that a simulator by itself cannot be a learning tool. [We need game goals which align learning objectives to the activity.] Is it true that digital natives do not need additional motivation, like game goals?

I am posting more questions than answers. All those learned, please enlighten me.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 7

In this lesson, we shall learn some more words from machine translation and look at some bad Chinese.

Machine translation of English into Chinese (such as Babel Fish Translation) produces highly "Englishised" Chinese. For example, the following paragraph

I live in Melbourne Australia. It is in the Southern hemisphere. Here, the weather changes rapidly. We have four seasons in one day: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

is translated to

我住在墨爾本澳洲。它是在南半球。這裡, 天氣迅速地改變。有四個季節在一天: 春天、夏天、秋天和冬天。

The proper way should be

"我住在南半球澳洲墨爾本. 這裡天氣改變迅速,一日四季: 春夏秋冬."

First, when referring to places, we start from the largest to the more precise: 南(south) 半球(hemisphere) 澳洲(Australia) 墨爾本(Melbourne).

迅速地改變 is Englishized Chinese. In Chinese, we should change the word-order between verb and adverb 改變迅速. 迅速地 is the "adverbizing" version of 迅速. In Chinese, we don't distinguish between such grammatical variations.

春天 is a day in Spring. For season, we can just say: 春 or 春季.

Again, there is no need to add "adjustion" between nouns in the same category. So, we don't say 春夏秋和冬.