Sunday, March 29, 2009

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

etymology

Recently you may have hear this quip: "blah blah blah, economic crisis, blah blah blah...but we should all have some faith, for in Chinese the word "Crisis" is composed of two characters, the first means "Danger" but the second means "Opportunity", blah blah blah, therefore there is a silver lining in this economic shit storm apocalypse.I read something along those lines in the NYTimes recently and thought to look it up. Turns out, it's plain wrong. The first part of the word "危" (wei) does in fact mean danger. The second part 机 pronounced "ji" simply means "time." So 危机 (weiji) just means "dangerous time" - the ship is sinking, there aren't enough life-boats, ohshit ohshit.  It does not mean "Danger-Opportunity".
The confusion comes from the fact that the word "Opportunity" is 机会 / jihui, which contains the same /ji as in 危/weiji. So it is assumed that 机/ji must also mean "opportunity" - but it doesn't. Literally translated the word for opportunity is "Time机 - Able会" (会/hui means "able") as in: time-when-things-can-be-done. Here again, 机/ji just means Time - that's all it means. It has never meant "opportunity" and their word for "crisis" will never mean anything other than a "dangerous time".. so bascially, we're all screwed.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Future Fest India Style

If any of you find a cheap ticket to Mumbai in the next month or so, you should come.  We can have a sweet party sort of like this one.

Monday, March 9, 2009

-- Did any of you stateside catch any of the PHISH reunion? --
i heard the news and thought of you all

download it for free at: 

i'm going to california for a couple of months

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

doodlydoo

unemployed afternoons with casio.