User Comments - tiaopidepi

Posted on: Buying Sandals

I'd call it an open-toe slingback, but I'd blame your gender instead of your time away from the US.

Posted on: Philosophy: a Useless Major?

I'm not an engineer: strictly, engineers are licensed to practice engineering. But at work they claim I'm a software engineer.

Poems and songs and novels are worthy of being appreciated. Trust me, too many of my coworkers don't have any creative thoughts or the ability to recognize beauty when it bites them in the ass. But a lot of engineering can be beautiful: the Marconi sail, aquaducts, the Mackinac Bridge, the Diesel engine, the Linux kernel. These are really beautiful pieces of work that people will talk about forever.

Posted on: Philosophy: a Useless Major?

大学的时候我研究了哲学和英文。毕业以后我不是事业的，还是我公司不好。我又一次的上大学，学了数学。 我现在工作在微软。我也觉得“研究哲学能带给人不一样的想法”还是我知道研究哲学不带工作。

Posted on: Check Your Spam

For your lovers of all languages...there's a French word for spam, "pourriel". It's a portmanteau of "pourier", meaning "garbage", and "courrier electronique", often abbreviated "courriel", meaning "e-mail". "Pourriel" is a fantastic blend of thewords"garbage" and "e-mail".

Here's the Wikipedia explanation of the origin of the term. It's in French (of course), but the key is that the Acadamie Francaise rejected the word "pourriel" because it sounds too much like "courriel". They're good at missing the point.

Le mot « pourriel », proposé par l'Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) en mai 1997, est un mot-valise construit à partir de « poubelle » et « courriel » tandis que « polluriel » est construit à partir de « pollution » et « courriel »[4]. Le mot « pourriel » est d'usage courant au Québec, alors qu'en Europe, « spam » est l'appellation privilégiée. Le terme « polluriel », quant à lui, est plutôt réservé au contexte des messages indésirables dans les forums de discussion et groupes de nouvelles Usenet[4]. La proposition d'officialisation de « pourriel » par la Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie française a été rejetée par l'Académie française[10] parce que phonétiquement trop proche de « courriel ». Le mot québécois « pourriel » a toutefois été consigné dans les éditions récentes[Quand ?] du Petit Larousse illustré et du Petit Robert.

Posted on: Check Your Spam

I got an SMS spam on the train from Shanghai to Nanjing. As I entered some town's cellular service area I got a message on my phone telling me to stop and relax, have some lunch and enjoy this beautiful town. Brilliantly targeted marketing!

Posted on: Check Your Spam

I often try to read my Chinese spam but there are often words that don't appear in any dictionaries I have online.

Posted on: Check Your Spam

(Apologies to anyone who's easily offended.) Out of 9 junk mail messages that got through my company-wide filter, four of them were from Taiwan. (The company stops a lot of spam before it gets to my Outlook/Exchange mailbox.) First lines from my Junk mailbox today:

bxe0j1l您好 www.guccixxxxx.com 超3A品質歡迎你的參觀。

and

圖看不爽≡你砍我屌?，愛現學〃生

and

清純美少∮女拍寫真?奶好大

and

老婆吵這要的情人節禮物

Posted on: World Cup and Diamonds

Actually, Bodawei, "non-American English-speaking world" sounds kind of funny to my ears.

(Just trolling, just trolling...)

Posted on: Kaixin Wang Farm Thieves

Hmmm...there is no longer a vocabulary tab for this page.

Posted on: Progress Tracking and Grammar Guide

You already have this. Just ask your favorite search engine to look for a word and restrict it to the grammar guide. Stick this into Bing, for example (or click on the link)

什么 site:http://chinesepod.com/tools/grammar

and you'll get this page. Search on the page to find 什么.