Weibo is the place to be

Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, has been such a blast. I randomly realized a great many of the people I follow happen to reside in Beijing.
"That makes me feel Beijing is the place to be!..." I said.
My brother's reply: "That means Weibo is the place to be."

Project Implicit - your unconscious will tell the truth (?)

I just finished reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Tons of refreshing ideas, stories and experiments are introduced in the book. Among which is this Harvard project named IAT (Implicit Association Test): https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html

Take the Race IAT for instance: You may never explicitly admit you are a racist. But this test is designed to show (and measure the degree to which) your brain finds it harder to categorize stuffs when what represents good is on the same side with black people, than doing so when good is paired with white. In other words, your unconscious does not accept black as naturally as white. Give it a try, and the result may surprise you.

I think the design of this test is scientifically sound. Everything else being equal, the only factor that would affect our responding speed is how closely two elements are connected in your subconsciousness. When it comes to explaining the results, I agree with Gladwell. Even though as rational, thoughtful and educated human beings we know and believe racism is incorrect, part of our unconscious is shaped by the mass media and social stereotypes, which are still racist, discriminating and biased in one way or another. I do accept the fact that, as the IAT revealed, my brain has moderate racist and anti-homosexual tendencies. But I think it is generally constructive to admit the existence of such unconsciousness. This is why I recommend more people do this test.

P.S.

My own favorite is the Gender-Science IAT. Results showed that I almost completely associate science/engineering with guys, and consider subjects like history, philosophy and arts a great deal more feminine.. This one is true on both conscious and unconscious level, though. I do not consider it a politically incorrect position, and I'm not ashamed to admit. :S

why learn Esperanto when we have so many living languages

I remember when I was in about Grade 8, I read in a passage from my English class about the language called Esperanto, a man-made language that some linguists invented in hope of a better communication tool for the world. Back in the days it used to be a debatable idea. But shortly after, such debates were completely gone. They were cleared out by the fact that English as a global language is doing convincingly well. There is, at least in my opinion, no need and no place for this language to be used. The reason is pretty simple: popular languages such as English and French are commonly learned because there are real people in some (in fact, lots of) corners of the world that live in these languages. Learning such languages would open yourself a window into their thinking, cultures, lifestyles, and much more. If you learn a language that no community actually speaks, you lose the opportunity of stretching and educating your mindset while learning a language.

Today I got an email fron Lingq, the language-learning community that I'm subscribed to, announcing they've launched Esperanto as the newest language available in their resource pool. Below is a message I posted on the "wall" of Lingq on Facebook:

Hi Steve and fellow Lingq users, I was surprised about the launch of Esperanto. I've always believed it's way more meaningful to learn languages that are "alive" - the ones spoken by real people and used to communicate news, ideas, knowledge and cultures. In fact I am curious how many people today have interest in learning Esperanto when we have tons of real languages to choose from. And quite honestly, I doubt if it's a good idea to do so. I personally would never invest my time learning this artificial language, nor do I recommend anyone I know to do so. No offence to anyone, just wanted to share my two cents. Thanks. -- Rony