"user group" or "users group"?

I'm organizing a database user group (formerly Oracle user group) at my work place. One trivial question comes up. Should it be "Database User Group" or "Database Users Group" with plural "Users"? While people are making comments with respect to English grammar, I thought it would be helpful to check how most people say on the Internet. So here it is my email to them:

"users group" or "user group"? Here's Google exact word search hit count (when you search, enclose the words in double quotes):

user group: 7,950,000
users group: 3,580,000
oracle user group: 80,400
oracle users group: 70,100
unix user group: 32,100
unix users group: 50,600
linux user group: 566,000
linux users group: 2,800,000
mac user group: 53,400
mac users group: 43,300
java user group: 82,700
java users group: 36,800

Although how people say on the Internet doesn't mean it's grammatical, it's at least statistically more popular. So we can use that as a reference. It looks like more people prefer the singular "user group". When it's broken down to a specific type of user group, all that I checked except Linux and UNIX people prefer singular. (No wonder UNIX and especially Linux people are the most likely associated with geeks in this society.) My conclusion of this search: the geekier and less coherent the members are, the more likely they prefer plural, "users group".

Chinese translation of "Insight"

According to http://www.dict.org, "insight" primarily means "A sight or view of the interior of anything", as in "He had an insight into almost all the secrets of state." According to http://translate.google.com/#en|zh-CN|insight, however, the Chinese translation is "洞察", or "慧眼", "内省力", "眼光". But it does not sound natural when you substitute 洞察" for "insight" in the Chinese translation of the above sentence ("他对国家的几乎所有秘密都有洞察"). In fact, a far better choice for this word is "真知灼见", i.e., valuable views about something ordinary people cannot have thought of. The words "慧眼", "内省力" and, "眼光" are even more remote from the true meaning, because they mean the capability to gain the insight, not insight itself.

What is 聪明？

> 中學時候常常聽到的一句話“xx學生不是不聰明，就是不好好學”。
> 後來我就有想到，什麽是聰明？什麽是不聰明？不知道時間的寶貴、
> 學生時代學習機會的難得而只是貪玩，這是最大的不聰明

The Chinese sentence is playing with the multiple meanings of the word "聪明". In “xx學生不是不聰明，就是不好好學” (It's not that the student XX is not 聪明, only that he didn't take time to study.), "聪明" means having high IQ (intelligence quotient), as that could be determined by the rigorous psychological test. In the sentence "不知道時間的寶貴、學生時代學習機會的難得而只是貪玩，這是最大的不聰明" (It's the biggest non-聪明 to not know the value of time and the opportunity of study as a student, and to play all the time.), "聪明" means wise or 明智. In both cases, you could use the English word "smart" just like "聪明" in Chinese. But if you think about it, the exact meaning of the word in either English or Chinese is different.

Playing tricks with words sometimes can impress people and give others thought-provoking ideas that sound clever, smart or 聪明. But those words should be taken as nothing more than clever talk.

Off-topic: Quote of a message about atheism

Very interesting remark by a guy named Russianbear at
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=17338&PN=2&TPN=4

Atheism is not the same as religious intolerance. I am an atheist, and I think religions are stupid, but I am quite tolerant of people's stupidity and ignorance in general, and of religion-related stupidity and ignorance in particular.

Most atheists don't prejudge. (Some, like me) judge. And that happens AFTER the fact, so PREjudice is not the right word.
...
In my experience, atheists are relatively quiet; it is religious people who tend to try to ram their beliefs down other people's throats. It is also a fact that atheists tend to be better educated than religious people. And atheists tend to be more tolerant. I am yet to see atheists fly planes into skyscrapers or blow themselves (and many other people) up for their atheist beliefs. Those things are done by folks who believe in god(s).

And of course, "fundamentalism" kinda implies religiousness :)

Grammatical error: "Even if ... but"

> even if today is sunday,but we have to work.

That's a common mistake Chinese make in learning English. If you have "even if", you don't need "but". Drop one of the two. The same is true for "although".

As always, capitalize the first letter of the sentence. It makes people feel you're not writing English too casual.

Attitude thing

Educative comments from an online forum. Not just for Japanese.

Are Japanese natives generally exclusive?

"but I've met the people (some from Japan, some from China, although I'm sure it's global) that strike up a conversation with you in English but totally lose interest when you transition to their native language. That attitute would be language rape."

Off-topic: Message to My Neighbors

We're going to have a neighborhood night-out gathering and emails are sent to everybody. Neighbor's dogs used to bother me at night. So I took this opportunity to post the following message to the email list:

"I want to borrow this thread to send a friendly reminder to this wonderful neighborhood, that dog owners need to keep their best friends quiet late at night. While I need to train myself to tune out, the dogs need to be trained to only bark outdoors perhaps before 10pm or after 7am, or indoors to their happy owners' hearts' content at any time. This is a friendly neighborhood so I hope this message is taken with a friendly smile!"

As a result of this, I haven't heard any dog barking at night since then. One neighbor's email to me said "we don't have a dog...your lovely message would have been taken with all due respect and kindness. It's almost as if you were writing poetry!"