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You think your Chinese is better than mine?! Try these words….

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土→ㄊㄨˇ
3個土呢？→「堯」之異體。 也讀 —ㄠˊ
4個土，→ㄎㄨㄟˊ(單單要怎麼排，就會出槌！)，玩大家樂的最不喜歡這個字吧！

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再來一個，
2個火，炎→這簡單。
3個火，→讀『潭』ㄊㄢˊ，等一下，還有哩！
4個火，→讀『義』，消防隊員最討厭這個字了！
好像沒有5個火的，還好。

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→2隻手，唸ㄆㄡˊ，用雙手捧物的意思。
掱→3隻手，唸ㄕㄡˇ，扒手的意思。

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來點動物的吧！
一頭牛，不錯！
2頭牛？→唸『鬼』，真見鬼了！
→應該也唸鬼嘛，如果你這麼想就錯了，人家說換個位置就換個腦袋，這裡可是換個位置就換個唸法，這字唸『厭』
那三頭牛呢？→唸『奔』

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喂！喂！羊在抗議了！
好啦！注意看→睡眠不足的，來吧，夠多羊咩咩讓你數了，這唸『羊』
當然也要有3隻羊，→唸『山』。→唸『有』

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→2條魚，也唸魚
三條魚，→唸鮮，應該不少人知道
別急，多吃一點魚嘛，→4條魚，唸『葉』

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→唸鳥，
麤→唸粗，
驫和猋→都是唸標，
可是→就要唸ㄔㄥˇ

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→唸驢，
毳→三毛，唸脆
還有這個字喔，好好笑，唸『焦』，下次說這個人很『』喔，大家就知道意思了

→不是指手毛喔！這字唸ㄇㄠˋ或ㄊㄨㄛ都可以。

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女→才一個，好應付！
→2個女人？嘿嘿….這字讀『男』ㄋㄢˊ，果然不好搞定！
3個女，就不要說了，
→哈哈，女強人出現了，沒錯，這字讀『強』
嬃→有點尷尬，這可不是酒客上酒家的心態，這字讀『需』，古時楚國人對姊姊的稱呼！

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男人有也喔！
『男男』→讀『巒』，雙胞胎的意思！
男人就比較辛苦了，例如→讀『累』，當然，一個男人做三畝田，當然累！

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看看人的五官吧！
一個耳朵，
2個耳朵聑→唸『碟』或是『哲』都可以。
3個耳朵呢？笨蛋！聶！不會呀。
→唸『具』，指眼睛左右張望的樣子。
二郎神楊戟來囉，→唸『莫』，
→唸扁，塌鼻子？

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你以為2個口只能寫成回嗎？錯啦！→ㄒㄩㄢ。
三口品，不用說啦，但是？當然不一樣啦，唸『鈴』
四口？→唸『吉』，「雷」的古字。
→哈哈，沒看過吧，唸『銀』
哈麥二齒的來了，→唸『直』

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說到吉，就想到陶，，
那他應該有弟弟喔，→也唸『哲』

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→這個唸 ㄊㄚˋ
→這個也唸 ㄊㄚˋ
那有沒有四條龍呢？答案是有的，→這個唸ㄓㄜˊ厲害吧！！
下次我打算建議姓龍的把小孩名子取成：龍→，小孩子會恨死了吧 。

See how this guy wins his million dollars! It’s hilarious and yet celebratory. So…you mean, he won? Well, you gotta watch it yourself. You wish you were in his position. Pay attention to the above image. He hasn’t used any of his lifelines yet!
View this funny Who Wants To Be A Millionaire video clip.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pluto loses its status as a planet, declared officially by International Astronomical Union (IAU) today on Aug 24, 2006 after several years of debate since its discovery in 1930.

Definition of a Planet

1. must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star
2. must be large enough in mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a… nearly round shape
3. has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit

With this definition, Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

Some Facts about Pluto

• A “demoted” planet
• Named after underworld god
• Average of 5.9bn km to Sun
• Orbits Sun every 248 years
• Diameter of 2,360km
• Has at least three moons
• Rotates every 6.8 days
• Gravity about 6% of Earth’s
• Surface temperature -233C
• Nasa probe visits in 2015
• Why the name “Pluto”? Read more…

Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) general assembly.

The scientists rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.

Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.

The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.

“The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said the IAU resolution, which was passed following a week of stormy debate.

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They agreed that to qualify as a planet, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It also must be large enough in mass “for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a… nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.”

Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

It will now join a new category of “dwarf planets”.

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Named after the god of the underworld in Roman mythology, Pluto orbits the Sun at an average distance of 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) taking 247.9 Earth years to complete a single circuit of the Sun.

An unmanned US spacecraft, New Horizons, is due to fly by Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in 2015.

Read more on: bbc.co.uk

See the official IAU’s voting result for Pluto’s planetary status.

PC Magazine:
The BetaBattery is not based on chemical reaction. Instead, it relies on the decay of the hydrogen isotope tritium. This continuous emission of electrons is the key to the ever-present charge in BetaBatteries. Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years, so after 12.3 years, its output is half its original charge. At 40 years, it has one-tenth its original charge. That kind of longevity is much longer than conventional batteries can muster.

Whoa…after 12 years of use, this nuclear battery still have 50% of charge left!!! Incredible application of isotope. Unfortunately….it’s RADIOACTIVE!!! Hence, it cannot be used by the general public.

University of Rochester Press Release:
New ‘Nuclear Battery’ Runs 10 Years, 10 Times More Powerful
A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries—and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. The details of the technology, already licensed to BetaBatt Inc., appears in today’s issue of Advanced Materials.

A layer of silicon riddled with pits, each of which would fill with the radioactive tritium gas, would be like dropping the sun into a deep well lined with solar panels. Almost all of the sun’s rays, no matter which way they were emitted, would strike a well wall. Only those rays that fired straight up and out of the well would be lost. With this reasoning, Fauchet devised a method to excavate pits into a microscopic piece of silicon. The pits, or wells, are only about a micron wide (about four ten-thousandths of an inch), but are more than 40 microns deep.

More pictures about BetaBatt battery can be found here.

Episode #1—the story we know as a child

Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started off the race.

The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he thought he’d sit under a tree for some time and relax before continuing the race.

He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ.

The hare woke up and realised that he’d lost the race. The moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race.

This is the version of the story that we’ve all grown up with.

But then recently, someone told me a more interesting version of this story. It continues.

Episode #2

The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some Defect Prevention (Root Cause Analysis). He realised that he’d lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax.

If he had not taken things for granted, there’s no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race. The tortoise agreed.

This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles.

The moral of the story? Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady.

If you have two people in your organisation, one slow, methodical and reliable, and the other fast and still reliable at what he does, the fast and reliable chap will consistently climb the organisational ladder faster than the slow, methodical chap.

It’s good to be slow and steady; but it’s better to be fast and reliable.

But the story doesn’t end here…

Episode #3

The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realised that there’s no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted.

He thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route.

The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river.

The finishing line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river.

The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.

The moral of the story? First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency.

In an organisation, if you are a good speaker, make sure you create opportunities to give presentations that enable the senior management to notice you.

If your strength is analysis, make sure you do some sort of research, make a report and send it upstairs. Working to your strengths will not only get you noticed but will also create opportunities for growth and advancement.

The story still hasn’t ended.

Episode #4

The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realised that the last race could have been run much better.

So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time.

They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back.

On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they’d felt earlier.

The moral of the story? It’s good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you’re able to work in a team and harness each other’s core competencies, you’ll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you’ll do poorly and someone else does well.

Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.

There are more lessons to be learnt from this story….

Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure.

The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort.

Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.

The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better.

Interlude

When Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO of Coca-Cola in the 1980s, he was faced with intense competition from Pepsi that was eating into Coke’s growth.

His executives were Pepsi-focused and intent on increasing market share 0.1% a time.

Goizueta decided to stop competing against Pepsi and instead compete against the situation of 0.1% growth.

He asked his executives what was the average fluid intake of an American per day? The answer was 14 ounces. What was Coke’s share of that? Two ounces. Goizueta said Coke needed a larger share of that market.

The competition wasn’t Pepsi. It was the water, tea, coffee, milk and fruit juices that went into the remaining 12 ounces. The public should reach for a Coke whenever they felt like drinking something.

To this end, Coke put up vending machines at every street corner. Sales took a quantum jump and Pepsi has never quite caught up since.

Conclusion

The story of the hare and tortoise teaches us many things.

Chief among them are that fast and consistent will always beat slow and steady; work to your competencies; pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual performers; never give up when faced with failure; and finally, compete against the situation. Not against a rival.