Posted on 01/31/2021 11:59:33 PM PST by nickcarraway
Yang Zheyu, a 6-year-old kindergarten student in Chengdu, Sichuan province, is a celebrity.
In his English and painting classes outside his kindergarten, strangers recognise him. When he walks through the residential quarter where he and his parents live, neighbors ask for his autograph.
That's because the media have hailed him as the country's youngest discoverer of dinosaur footprints.
Zheyu, who was born in December 2014, visited his maternal grandfather's home in Tongjiang county with his parents during the seven-day National Day holiday last year to see "strange footprints".
His grandfather, Gou Taixiang, 56, a doctor, had told Zheyu that footprints like those of a chicken could be found on a gigantic stone slab in his mountainous home village of Chaoyang.
At around 2pm on Oct 1, Zheyu visited the slab with his parents and grandfather. Because the stone was covered with vines, the grandfather used a machete to clear them away. After the dust was swept away with a cypress twig, five footprints could be seen.
"My son asked me to send photos of the footprints to Xing Lida," said Gou Fengqiong, the boy's mother. Xing is an associate professor at China University of Geosciences in Beijing. She left a message on Weibo.
"Xing Lida replied the next day and said he would head for Tongjiang on Oct 9," said Gou who was a physician before becoming a full-time mother.
Xing, a paleontologist, reached Chaoyang village with two students and soon identified the strange footprints as those of a theropod dinosaur.
Each footprint is about 35 centimetres long and has three toes. They belonged to a dinosaur about 4 metres long, he said.
It was the first discovery of dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic Era on the northern margin of the Sichuan Basin. The prints mean that dinosaurs were active there about 100 million years ago, Xing said.
Zheyu — who was scared to tears when he was 2 years old at the sight of dinosaur replicas moving and opening their mouths at an amusement park in Chengdu, Sichuan province — acquired new interest in the beasts after the coronavirus outbreak.
"I took an online course on dinosaurs taught by Xing Lida and learned how to identify dinosaur footprints, about which species ran fast and which were the toughest fighters," his mother said.
According to Yang Yao, a 27-year-old teacher at the Fortune International Kindergarten who has taught young Zheyu for three years, the child loves science and his capacity for observation is greater than that of his peers.
Ping
Propaganda.
Clock boy is back
It sounds to me like the grandfather found them and kid had nothing to do with it.
I wish people who write or translate for US audiences would have enough respect to use our units of measure.
Forcing metric on Americans is as insulting as asking us to “press 1 for English”.
I know there are FReepers who think this is trivial, but they are wrong.
Yes, it is easy enough to translate and make conversions when necessary. I speak several languages, and there are occasions where it makes sense to borrow terms from other languages. I can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit faster than anyone I know, but why should I have to?
I’ve heard the argument that metric is the language of the sciences - but that is bullshit and it is pure snobbery. I’ve heard the argument that metric somehow better or more accurate. Bullshit.
If metric is so “scientific”, why do scientists still divide a circle into 360 degrees rather than say, 100? Why are measures of time not multiples of 10?
Some sciences borrow vocabulary from Latin and Greek as well - but that different - it is not because it is somehow better or more accurate - it is simply because those languages are older, and were spoken by the developers of those sciences.
This attempt to foist metric upon the USA is just another example of the Left’s contempt for the USA - they are ashamed to be Americans - they wish we could be more like everyone else.
I am as insulted as you are about the message (in Spanish) to choose our native language. I'm not so insulted about the use of metric units. The US is about the only developed country still clinging to the fps (foot-pound-second) system. It is not to our advantage. Countries like Canada and the UK made the switch decades ago, and are now nearly completely converted. The US is mired in this dual world. It will not go away.
Almost everything in the world now is made on metric machines. Almost every fastener in every automobile and truck sold in the world is metric. In my view, once you get the hang of it, metric is a better system. It's far easier to divide by 100 than it is to divide by 12. Time is still stuck in units derived from planetary and lunar motion, because that's been common around the world for millennia (pardon the "metric" term). Seconds, though, are still divided metrically, milli-seconds, micro-seconds, nano-seconds, etc. It's only planetary length times that get away from base 10. At least we've got time to think about that.
We are not “mired” in anything - or “clinging” to anything. You sound like Obama - referring to us as “bitter clingers”.
Using your logic, why are other nations still clinging to their languages - the entire world should just get over it and speak English.
The answer is that they don’t want to lose their culture - they don’t want to be assimilated into a globalist society run by the UN.
There is nothing wrong with our units of measure - they are just parts of our language. Yes, a foot is arbitrary, but so is a meter.
I can convert as fast as you can - and apparently I am better at dividing by twelve and eight - but you are missing the point; I don’t want our culture to be assimilated by the globalists.
Yes, it’s a small thing - but small things will be the death of us - like the proverbial boiled frog.
And by the way, the frog will die sooner under the metric system, since it takes fewer Celsius degrees to reach the boiling point.
/the US is certainly mired in a dual system. I have hundreds of end wrenches in my workshop, some are SAE, some are Metric, and even some are Whitworth. Yet I still occasionally find some fasteners that cannot be fitted properly. It happened just yesterday. I have a friend who nearly caused a fatal accident. He was in charge of an automobile test that spun out of control, ran across a grassy area, and spun into a parking area. Fortunately, no one was hurt. He had told the tester to "drive it at 100", meaning kilometers per hour, and the tester drove it "at 100"...miles per hour. As for language, English has already become the business language of most of the world. You can see traffic signs in English, even throughout China. How many Chinese signs do you see in the US? And, by the way, it takes just as much time to boil a frog regardless of what kind of thermometer you use...And a meter wasn't arbitrary. It was intended to be 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator.
You are pro-metric, obviously - and that is OK.
I am not pro-metric, obviously - and that is OK too, right?
Using pejoratives, like “mired” and “clinging”, are signs of a weak argument. So is using little anecdotes about the use of non-metric units causing near fatalities.
There are over 7000 languages spoken in the world, and if you find nonconforming units of measure dangerous, I’m sure you could rationalize that hundreds of millions of deaths throughout history were attributable to the lack of a common language.
Units of measure are simply linguistic elements, and languages differ through the world. People are (mostly) free to speak the language they are familiar with, and far from life-threatening, I think that freedom is what keeps us safe.
Frankly, it is your push for conformity that is dangerous.
What other aspects of our culture do you think we need to give up in the name of conformity?
“And, by the way, it takes just as much time to boil a frog regardless of what kind of thermometer you use.”
That was a joke, dummy.
And a meter wasn’t arbitrary. It was intended to be 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator.
= = =
Nice even base-10 number, but I think that “from the North Pole to the Equator” is arbitrary.
Soon we will learn it is based on some kind of white supremacy.
And, as Steve Martin famously said, “I hated France. I couldn’t believe there was a whole country full of people who didn’t even have the courtesy to speak English!”
...it takes fewer Celsius degrees to reach the boiling point.
Please, please, please tell me you are joking.
Yes, that was the intention, but I believe later measurements proved them to have gotten it wrong. It was a good try at consistency.
Here is something, though - most (all?) metric units are related to all the others. Using the “flawed” meter, one cubic centimeter of water at the temperature that makes it most dense (just before freezing, I think) is defined as a milliliter (volume). It is also one gram (mass). So, all the units are inter-related. Please note that a US “pound” is a weight, or force and not a mass, which makes all kinds of difference in physics and engineering calculations...
Anyway, I’m OK with metric, but prefer US units. I’m an engineer, and numbers don’t bother me. I can see how the competing systems could really frustrate people.
Well, that was a pretty good ramble. Hope you weren’t too bored. Guess it’s time to see if Rush in on-air today...
Sorry - looks like you already told me, but I didn’t read that far...
Can’t even post to the proper comment. I see you did say you were joking. Sorry.
Yes, when calculating, units are your friend.
I’ve solved a lot of problems by tracking the units.
I considered adding a sarcasm tag or smiley face, but some jokes seems to work better when you deliver them with a straight face - or so I thought. :-)
One time, I asked if the pope was catholic, and had several FReepers actually provide the answer! I thought everyone was familiar with rhetorical questions - certainly THAT one.
Such are the limitations of texting, I guess.
Right, Steve Martin also said “Those French people - they have a different word for EVERYTHING!”
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