You correctly point out what is seen, but you miss what is not seen. In order to pay for the infrastructure, the government must take money from my pocket (taxes). Thus I have less money to spend at
the grocery store, Wally-World, and even local establshments such as ice-cream parlors and pizza restaurants
Infrastructure must provide a sufficient return to compensate for my thinner wallet. Smart infrastructure spending does this; vacuous infrastructure spending accomplishes nothing more than moving money from A to B.
We must consider both the benefits of the proposed infrastructure and also whether it should be funded by public dollars.
An alternative input system for Linux is the canna server combined with kinput2. When LC_CTYPE is set to ja_JP.utf8 (on my box), Shift+Space puts me into Japanese input mode.
Self-intro: 4 semesters Japanese study in college, 10 weeks in Japan in 2002, various periods of self study. Getting ready to leave next week for a year-long trip to Japan.
As others have said, the parent is exaggerating, but this is a common response to Japanese. The language requires you to almost rewrite all of the things you've come to expect in English or another Western language.
Let's start with Kanji. I believe 5 year-olds in Japan average about 500 of these, and the number just gets higher from there.
The first grade kanji run around 90, and from there it's about 200 new kanji per grade until you're out of high school and you know at least the 1,945 Joyo kanji intended for everyday use.
It is like a second langauge, but one basically devoid of pronunciation clues.
Kanji can seem this way, but that's not entirely accurate. For example, the second character of the word meirei (order, edict) is present in smaller form in other characters, such as the first character of reizouko (refrigerator). In this instance it operates by lending its pronunciation to the entire character. This pattern is present for many other kanji and is a result of the same system of pronunciation hints found in the original Chinese versions of the characters.
But please don't start with kanji -- as others have pointed out, you should definitely begin with the kana syllabaries, as mastery of these is both easier and more rewarding during your early studies.
Ok, how about saying hello? Thankfully, there is only about a dozen ways of doing this[...]
99.9% of the time you will need one of two politeness levels, both of which you should learn in college-level courses. (In the courses I took the polite form was taught first, which is incidentally opposite of the way Japanese students learn.) Finding out which one to use does not involve differential calculus -- it's mainly a matter of rank or age relative to yourself. After you've mastered the basic levels you can learn to understand the extreme forms of politeness and informality in speech without much difficulty.
The grammar is cool, but completely alien and quickly compounding.
This is where the mental rewrite comes in. Word order is very fluid in Japanese, so they use postpositions to tag parts of speech. If you work at it, you will be able to keep up. This is only accomplished through practice, preferably listening and speaking. As with all languages you will one day get to the point where you don't have to think and translate the sentence into your native tongue to understand it.
Just get subtitled Anime, and find something better to do with your life.
My advice on anime: it's good for listening practice, but don't expect to pick up a lot until you're well into your studies. I'm personally glad I didn't start watching a lot of anime until recently -- I picked up a lot more than I would have if I had started watching when I began my Japanese classes. The biggest advantage of anime (besides listening comprehension) is that it will teach you variations on the sentence forms you learned in class. If you ever go to Japan you will find out that the neat fill-in-the-blank sentences you learned in class aren't the only sentences used in everyday conversation. The trick is to become familiar enough with the language that you don't get thrown off track every time you hear something you haven't studied. If you're watching subbed anime and you find yourself commenting on the translation and suggesting a different one, you're probably there.
In conclusion, Japanese is just like any other language in that it requires a lot of work, and if you don't find a way to use it you will most certainly lose it. But I have found it to be a very rewarding experience, and I hope you will as well.
Shortly after Japan's Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Japanese government invested heavily in railroads and manufacturing in an attempt to lessen the gap between Japan and the current Western powers. As a result the government found itself in debt with inflation rising as more money was printed to pay the bills. The solution was realized by Matsukata Masayoshi, whose reforms included the selling of many government-owned endeavors to the private sector. These reforms were a shock to the system, leaving many homeless for a short period, but it put Japan on the right track for the coming decades.
Moral of the story? Infrastructure and industrial development belong in the private sector where you can let the market work.
I recall from physics class that the heat generated on reentry may not necessarily be due to "friction" between the object and the surrounding air, but rather due to the increased pressure that the object creates in the air immediately in front of it. The increase in pressure results in an increase in temperature. If this is correct, then I would not expect a falling space elevator to suffer any heat damage as it starts from a relative velocity of zero and its diameter is small enough that it would not create a significant pressure difference.
Note that I am not a rocket scientist, so I would welcome any corrections.
Remeber your ancient TNT graphics card that had 16MB of memory?
Remember? I still have one! It's a great little card, too -- STB Velocity 4400, Riva TNT chipset with 16MB of memory. Getting ready to put it in a Gentoo HTPC box, in fact.
Slashdot Mirror
You correctly point out what is seen, but you miss what is not seen. In order to pay for the infrastructure, the government must take money from my pocket (taxes). Thus I have less money to spend at
the grocery store, Wally-World, and even local establshments such as ice-cream parlors and pizza restaurants
Infrastructure must provide a sufficient return to compensate for my thinner wallet. Smart infrastructure spending does this; vacuous infrastructure spending accomplishes nothing more than moving money from A to B.
We must consider both the benefits of the proposed infrastructure and also whether it should be funded by public dollars.
An alternative input system for Linux is the canna server combined with kinput2. When LC_CTYPE is set to ja_JP.utf8 (on my box), Shift+Space puts me into Japanese input mode.
Self-intro: 4 semesters Japanese study in college, 10 weeks in Japan in 2002, various periods of self study. Getting ready to leave next week for a year-long trip to Japan.
As others have said, the parent is exaggerating, but this is a common response to Japanese. The language requires you to almost rewrite all of the things you've come to expect in English or another Western language.
Let's start with Kanji. I believe 5 year-olds in Japan average about 500 of these, and the number just gets higher from there.
The first grade kanji run around 90, and from there it's about 200 new kanji per grade until you're out of high school and you know at least the 1,945 Joyo kanji intended for everyday use.
It is like a second langauge, but one basically devoid of pronunciation clues.
Kanji can seem this way, but that's not entirely accurate. For example, the second character of the word meirei (order, edict) is present in smaller form in other characters, such as the first character of reizouko (refrigerator). In this instance it operates by lending its pronunciation to the entire character. This pattern is present for many other kanji and is a result of the same system of pronunciation hints found in the original Chinese versions of the characters.
But please don't start with kanji -- as others have pointed out, you should definitely begin with the kana syllabaries, as mastery of these is both easier and more rewarding during your early studies.
Ok, how about saying hello? Thankfully, there is only about a dozen ways of doing this[...]
99.9% of the time you will need one of two politeness levels, both of which you should learn in college-level courses. (In the courses I took the polite form was taught first, which is incidentally opposite of the way Japanese students learn.) Finding out which one to use does not involve differential calculus -- it's mainly a matter of rank or age relative to yourself. After you've mastered the basic levels you can learn to understand the extreme forms of politeness and informality in speech without much difficulty.
The grammar is cool, but completely alien and quickly compounding.
This is where the mental rewrite comes in. Word order is very fluid in Japanese, so they use postpositions to tag parts of speech. If you work at it, you will be able to keep up. This is only accomplished through practice, preferably listening and speaking. As with all languages you will one day get to the point where you don't have to think and translate the sentence into your native tongue to understand it.
Just get subtitled Anime, and find something better to do with your life.
My advice on anime: it's good for listening practice, but don't expect to pick up a lot until you're well into your studies. I'm personally glad I didn't start watching a lot of anime until recently -- I picked up a lot more than I would have if I had started watching when I began my Japanese classes. The biggest advantage of anime (besides listening comprehension) is that it will teach you variations on the sentence forms you learned in class. If you ever go to Japan you will find out that the neat fill-in-the-blank sentences you learned in class aren't the only sentences used in everyday conversation. The trick is to become familiar enough with the language that you don't get thrown off track every time you hear something you haven't studied. If you're watching subbed anime and you find yourself commenting on the translation and suggesting a different one, you're probably there.
In conclusion, Japanese is just like any other language in that it requires a lot of work, and if you don't find a way to use it you will most certainly lose it. But I have found it to be a very rewarding experience, and I hope you will as well.
Shortly after Japan's Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Japanese government invested heavily in railroads and manufacturing in an attempt to lessen the gap between Japan and the current Western powers. As a result the government found itself in debt with inflation rising as more money was printed to pay the bills. The solution was realized by Matsukata Masayoshi, whose reforms included the selling of many government-owned endeavors to the private sector. These reforms were a shock to the system, leaving many homeless for a short period, but it put Japan on the right track for the coming decades.
Moral of the story? Infrastructure and industrial development belong in the private sector where you can let the market work.
I recall from physics class that the heat generated on reentry may not necessarily be due to "friction" between the object and the surrounding air, but rather due to the increased pressure that the object creates in the air immediately in front of it. The increase in pressure results in an increase in temperature. If this is correct, then I would not expect a falling space elevator to suffer any heat damage as it starts from a relative velocity of zero and its diameter is small enough that it would not create a significant pressure difference.
Note that I am not a rocket scientist, so I would welcome any corrections.
Can I use it to power my toaster?
Heck, with the kind of power the Cell consumes, it could probably be your toaster.
Remeber your ancient TNT graphics card that had 16MB of memory?
Remember? I still have one! It's a great little card, too -- STB Velocity 4400, Riva TNT chipset with 16MB of memory. Getting ready to put it in a Gentoo HTPC box, in fact.