Are members of your family devout believers in some religion or system of belief? Would you call them "fundamentalists", either in the literal sense of returning to the original scriptures and doctrines of a system of belief, or the colloquial sense of being very hidebound adherents to the old-time religion?

I would call my folks Confucian fundamentalists. In some sense, they believe in the Taoist ideals of the Doctrine of the Mean, eschewing extremism and fearmongering in the name of theocratic authority. They believe in the principle that mankind should live in harmony with society, seeking first to set oneself, then one's family, then one's village, and finally one's nation right. They hold the humility, the love of learning, and humanity highest among virtues.

( The Five Bonds: Civic, Filial, Marital, Familial, Social )
( Analects )

( A few comments and critiques )
( Seeming fair and feeling foul: Analects I.3 )

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Banazir

Idioms are great stuff, but as those of you who work in comptranslation know, there's basically no way at present to translate them save by lookup table.

I've found a few online for Chinese proverbs such as to be old and not die is to be a thief (老而不死是為賊) and by a long road shall a horse's full strength be known;
by the test of time shall a person's true heart be revealed (路遥知马力，日久见人心), but for someone with my nearly non-existent vocabulary, it's rather difficult to look these up and verify that they're correct.

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Banazir

I'd like your suggestions on icons that represent:

• culture


• energy (emphasis on renewable, preferably an animated GIF like the Biology icon I made)


• economy

Anybody?

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Banazir

Does anyone know of a good ecological sim?

When I was an undergrad at Johns Hopkins University, one of my classmates, Phyllis Schneck (who went on to Georgia Tech for her Ph.D.) talked about interning for some company or institute, and using SimEarth. They were sponsored by some federal agency or other, and I just remember her saying "yeah, we had to take out the intelligent dinosaurs". That's when I realized that we still had a ways to go. (There's a Monolith in SimEarth that works just like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in that it uplifts Mammals, Dinosaurs, Avians, Reptiles, or Carniferns to sapience. If you are playing in a mode where you can accumulate enough "Omega", you can even uplift Cetaceans or Fish.)

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Banazir

What kind of pens are your favorite, to write or to draw with?

I have been offered a fountain pen by Banadad a few times, but I prefer the Waterman Rollerball Pen that my cousins, Drs. Ray and Chia-Ying Lee, got me as a tenure congratulations present.

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Banazir

Does anyone reading this play any of the Asian chess variants?

• xiangqi (象棋) - Chinese chess


• shogi (将棋) - Japanese chess


• janggi (장기) - Korean


• chaturanga - Indian

One of These Is Not Like The Others: If you've read a bit on the history of chess, you probably know that Chaturanga is the attributed ancestor of the first three and of Western chess, with its French queen and all her attendant craziness. I'm guessing it migrated independently to China and to Japan, as shogi has its pawns one rank forward and xiangqi has the unique pao (cannons).

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Banazir

twinbee is right; this business icon is terrible. It looks like some kind of awful seminar (or webinar¹) brochure, or maybe the business section of a clothing catalog. I can't even remember where I got the image.

Can anyone suggest or make a better one?

¹ This gets my nomination for Uncool Word of the Month. I'm going to post it to my_hat_of.

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Banazir