GootStuff

Pictograms > Kanji.

2007-11-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

Pictograms are good fun.
This is a river:
川
This is water
(if you squeeze a river (the three lines) you get water):
水
I stopped smiling when I discovered there are 3000 of them and each has 2 names, one when alone, the other when in a compound.Some pictograms have 22 names and 34.6 meanings. How much fun...

Three and counting.

2007-11-08T03:13:00.000-08:00

I learned the numbers from one to ten. But I can't use them: if I want to tell I want three fishes at the marked, I cannot say I want 3 fishes. I must use a counter. Either one for cylindrical objects or one for animals (wonder whether there is a special one if they smell).
And there are other counters for flat objects: sheets, stamps, T-shirts, if neatly folded and not smelly. For mines I'll need the mackerel counter.

Negative results

2007-10-30T04:36:00.000-07:00

From: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-10/st_essay

Since 2002, the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine has offered a peer-reviewed home to results that go negative or against the grain. Earlier this year, the journal Nature started Nature Precedings, a Web-based forum for prepublication research and unpublished manuscripts in biomedicine, chemistry, and the earth sciences. At Drexel University, chemist Jean-Claude Bradley practices "open notebook" science — chronicling his lab's work and sharing data via blog and wiki. And PLoS is planning an open repository for research and data that is other wise abandoned.