User Comments - bababardwan
bababardwan
Posted on: Health Check
February 9, 2009 at 8:59 AMPete,
Actually,I wasn't questioning your translation of 富贵病 for a second and merely learnt from your translation,but I can see my comment may have been construed that way,so sorry for creating the confusion.I just noted that gout was being discussed and was just pointing out the English origin of why it was historically called a rich persons disease.Perhaps a silly point given the discussion,but I just thought it may have been of some interest.
Henning,
Yeah,very close to current reality.I don't watch many movies more than once but it was such a humdinger of a movie that I've seen it a couple of times and I could go with watching it again right now.
千钧一发 translates in mdbg as "a thousand pounds hangs by a thread".I can see the relevance of this title being applied to Gattaca [incl thread applying to hair sample for dna].Where did you get the Chinese title from? It's obviously not a transliteration but a title trying to summarise the theme.
Posted on: Health Check
February 9, 2009 at 7:30 AMGout was traditionally considered a rich man's disease or "the disease of kings" not because of the expense of the treatment but rather because it was associated with overindulgence in food and drink.
While lipomas are generally not painful,they can become mildly painful in some cases depending on size and location.
Posted on: Health Check
February 9, 2009 at 6:27 AMHey Matt,
If you don't think you're up to passing your physical mate,you may learn some tips from the excellent sci-fi movie Gattaca,a trailer of which is here.
Posted on: Health Check
February 9, 2009 at 4:57 AMExcellent lesson.
糖尿病..sugar urine sickness...diabetes... reminds me of the old diagnostic test for diabetes that used to have to be performed by junior doctors and was shown beautifully in the 1982 movie "Young doctors in love" which involved tasting the urine for sugar.Unfortunately I can't find a video of the scene,but the technique is described here.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 8, 2009 at 10:26 PMExactly mate.Thanks for sharing the survey because it is somewhat interesting,but at the same time extremely limited in what it is trying to say.In fact I would almost go so far to say that the obvious biases are so numerous and the generalisations so broad that it almost tells me nothing.But I appreciate you sharing it.Even in well conducted scientific studies there are often biases that are difficult to control and thus results need to be interpreted with caution.If we ignore the all too obvious biases in the survey,what does the answer to the question tell us? As you rightly say,what is a "good influence" anyway.How will the question be interpreted amongst the different language groups? I particularly struggle with such black and white/yes no answers.Where are the shades of grey and where are the specifics? Ok,even if we were to make broad generalisations,what if I were asked about my country and if ,for example,I felt that 90% of what my government did was a "good influence" more or less but I strongly opposed what it was doing on a particular issue.If I say that overall I think my country is a good influence,what are other countries going to read into my answer if the issue I disagree with is the issue most visible to the world? I suppose I am more one for very specific questions well asked.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 8, 2009 at 9:31 AMhehe.Yeah,great line mate.Chevy Chase was also a legend in this movie.You're attempt at translating it is going to be way ahead of mine,and google translation usually only gets somewhere near the ballpark,but for what it's worth,this is what it had it at:
“丹尼，有一个部队的这个宇宙，使事情发生，所有您需要做的就是在接触它。关闭你的眼睛，找到您的中心，并...是球”
I once had an experience pretty similar to the priest in this movie.I can't say I was playing my greatest golf,but I was enjoying my round immensely,and wasn't going to be put off by torrential rain and flash floods,or the fact that more sensible people had given the hint by deserting the place.Every dip in the fairway became a newly formed little fast flowing stream that I would have to hit my slowly rolling ball out of without taking a drop.I was totally soaked,finished with a pretty poor score,but thoroughly enjoyed finishing my round.
Actually there is an Ellie lesson on gao1er4fu1高尔夫 here if you're interested and the lesson pic is taken from Caddyshack.
btw,congrats on being named user of the month mate.I hope I can reach your level in Chinese one day.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 8, 2009 at 6:24 AMCaddyshack is one of my favourite movies.Rodney Dangerfield was superb and a great example of what you're saying.Bill Murray was priceless also.
很好笑
Posted on: Funny Business -- 搞笑， 好笑， 可笑
February 8, 2009 at 4:26 AMJenny,
不用谢。It was good practice anyway.The most important part of this lesson for me was gaining an appreciation of positive or negative connotation for these words,which is so important when it comes to humour.
Posted on: Health Check
February 9, 2009 at 9:23 AMI'm not certain of the origin of the differences between internal and external medicine.However Egyptian surgeons used to do external operations such as cutting out cysts and lancing boils and not internal operations whereas medicines were taken internally.In more modern times,internal medicine applied more to medicine relying on physiology and chemistry.In Australia ,people still refer to internal medicine [usually practiced by specialist physicians] but you don't really hear people talk of external medicine here,at least not to my knowledge.However,perhaps another way of thinking of it could be this.If you had a cancer inside your body,external medicine [surgery] approaches the tumour from the outside cutting the whole tumour out,whereas internal medicine [such as chemotherapy] gets inside the cancer and tries to destroy it from the inside at a cellular level.Just postulating here,but it may be an explanation.
Some interesting vocab in this lesson.
戒 jie4 ..to stop consuming ,rhymes with 别 bie4 which can mean don't ,so should be easy to remember jie4 now.
关节 ..guan..to close...and jie...segment...for joint.Makes me think of a knee being analagous to a door hing..opening and closing..flexing and extending
And I always love it when I learn a word lik 心电图 for ekg where I knew all the component characters but would have got the order wrong if I'd tried to guess at it,and while I recognise 图 from 地图,I don't think I would have guessed that as being in there.Should be easy to remember now though.
I also like 吃苦头 ..eat suffer,head ..for to suffer.hehe.