You might want to check out what it means, which any college student in the US should know. I bet that, in checking it out, you will be discovering a new world, which is surprisingly just next to you.

The fact that you understood the poem differently than I does not imply that the poem has two significantly different meanings. It is analogous to the case of "liberal arts college." The fact that you thought it meant an arts school does not mean that "liberal arts" is "arts."

The essence of a poem is its 神韵, which is the tongue in cheek for this one. And my translation is fairly loyal to the original on that aspect. The other details such as "coastal shelf" are trivial -- we are not talking about translating a scientific treatise here and the focus should not be there.

It is by no means easy to carry out the kind of tests that I suggested. But if there are really a lot of people interested in the issue about the comparative advantage/disadvantage of Chinese, such tests are doable. Just look at the open-source UNIX for an example. Plus in carrying out such a test, one might end up with extending the Chinese language to accommodate new ideas. To myself, this issue is not that interesting. I posted my note just to show that the previous discussions had been empty and vague.