Hat tip from www.refdesk.com: thought of the day – “Everything terrible is something that needs our love.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Reading this NY Times article about how Mandarin is the trend in Chinatown hasn’t exactly convinced me of giving up on one day improving my Cantonese or trying to stop getting Cantonese and Toisanese confused; it’s not like Mandarin’s going to help me communicate with my relatives. Plus… this isn’t surprising news to me; guess the NY Times wanted to put their imprimatur on this trend in Chinese dialects in NYC.
Prof. Tim Wu of Columbia Law on fair use in copyright law for Slate readers, in light of the developments in the Obama Hope artwork case; fair use always confuses people.
The latest Explainer column on Slate ponders on copyright law in China, in light of Chinese writers being displaced with the Google scanning project (notably, Chinese copyright law doesn’t exactly have fair use theory).
The NY Times on the Cookie Diet… my response is a resounding sarcastic “Yeah, right” to the concept of a cookie diet (I like cake, but it’s not like I’m going to lose weight eating cake). And, I liked how the article closes with these lines:
“For weight loss to stick, you have to be able to settle into an eating pattern that you can adhere to over time,” said Suzanne Havala Hobbs, a clinical associate professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “That eating pattern needs to provide you with all the nutrients you need while holding calories in balance with the number you expend.
“Diets with a gimmick,” she added, “aren’t harmful for a short period of time. But they’re not likely to cause a meaningful change in behavior that will enable you to keep your weight at an optimal level.”
Her advice? “Keep a food diary, cut your portion sizes, cut out the junk and enlist support from family and friends. Start walking — daily. You’ll be better off.”