John Ralston Saul is one of Canada’s leading public intellectuals. He believes the process of globalization has all but fizzled out. This, I think, was reason enough to invite him to the ChinesePod studio for a chat the other day. The result is posted over at Praxis.
Part 1
Part 2
Ken Carroll
The former Australian Immigation Minister, Amanda Vanstone, may be in trouble for spending somewhere between 30,000 and 70,000 (Australian) dollars on Mandarin classes while she was in office.
In ChinesePod terms that higher figure would buy something like 200 years of premium subscriptions. Even if she took the uninterrupted daily practice sessions with the 8 […]
A couple of quick updates of some non V3 issues.
- I will lead the first ever St Patrick’s Day Parade in Shanghai tomorrow morning, dressed as the holy man himself. (Go figure.) Here’s what the Shanghai Daily have to say about it.
- Learning guru signs up: Elliot Masie is a highly influential thought leader […]
It’s been some time since we talked about tones. In the past I’ve said that I see it as important to learn the tones in combination (though my preference is for meaningful examples, rather than disembodied morphemes). I’ve made other (sometimes controversial) statements on the subject of pronunciation and the tones, but now I’d […]
Since I started this blog, in Oct 2005, I feel I’ve been learning at warp speed. Why? Well, I didn’t do a brain-swap or a radical attitude change, but I did create a learning network: a collection of trusted, online sources of information, help, and discussion that keeps me constantly thinking, learning, and participating.
ChinesePod […]
We have more men than women in the ChinesePod community. I don’t have the exact stats right now, but my guess is that it’s at least 55/45, but possibly as much as 60/40. I’d like to know why. Do we fail to cover topics that women might be more interested in, or fail to accommodate […]
ChinesePod learner Paul Dillon writes a piece explaining the notion of blended learning and the effect of the 8 week program. I think he makes some great points.
Meanwhile I have some further thoughts on work and the future of learning in the workplace here.
Ken Carroll
Rob Ant asks for ‘your favorite Jenny Zhu quotes’.
Ken Carroll
Danwei reports that some researchers at the Shandong Technology University have turned a real pigeon into a remote-control pigeon (if you know what I mean) by inserting some microchips into his brain and controlling him from terra firma.
This is kind of weird as I wrote about Chinese universities yesterday and ‘robot monkeys’ today. […]
This is the kind of thing that happens when you ignore the Big Brain.
Ken Carroll
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