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Saturday January 26, 2008

Why People Believe Americans Are Stupid

Fresh from trying to get into the APEC, Chaser went to the USA and interviewed random Americans... occassionally there was a glimmer of intelligence but on the whole, it wasn't very convincing.

To be fair, I can imagine there would be parts of Australia (and most likely other "modern" countries (such as England)) where there was a similar level of ignorance of world events, but no other "modern" country goes to the lengths that America does to assert how good it is.

Video clip: Why People Believe Americans Are Stupid.

Thursday January 24, 2008

Catches win matches

From longer ago than I can remember, the phrase "catches win matches" became associated with cricket and for a good while, Australia (as a team) was always converting a high percentage of the catches into wickets. In the first innings of the test at Adelaide this year against India, 6 catche were put down.

While they might be in the doldrums at present after being given a hiding in Perth, if they can't get their act together and hold onto the ball when it comes their way, then they're not going to win matches either. Obviously a few lads need to spend more time remembering how to catch the ball!

America, Australia, Creationism

The history of the human race is a topical discussion in many circles, with debates over creationism, intelligent design and evolution.

In comparing notes with some other Australians who had visited the USA recently, it became evident that indeed, creationism is involved. And that more over, that the North American way of life was not the final product.

In thinking this through over dinner, it became clear that whoever did create human life has been evolving their product for some time. Let me explain.

We theorise that human life arose from humble beginnings in the forests of Africa somewhere, giving birth to a primitive society. We might say that around the time of 1AD the first alpha version of human life and society had been deployed throughout Europe and Asia. The corollorary of this is that society in other parts of the world is considered a pre-alpha release.

Our creator knew that this wasn't good enough but was content to let it evolve. Over the next 1400 years, the alpha version of human society slowly but surely evolved into a beta product throughout Europe, involving many wars, diseases and so on. By the 15th centur it became clear that the beta version had undergone significant evolution and was primed to be tested as a new release candidate. Lo and behold, America was founded.

With the discovery of the new world by Christopher Columbus, our creator was given a relatively clean slate through which the first version of modern society could be deployed. During the following 300 to 400 years, North America evolved in version 1.0 of human society. Not bad for a first release but still not quite there.

In the second half of the 18th century, Captain Cook discovered Australia and New Zealand (the latter of which is often referred to as God's own country.) Hidden from the rest of the world for many millenia, again a new slate was laid bare for society to begin again with.

With the chance to start over, our creator set about their work to improve what they'd achieved with America, deploying version 2.0 of human society. The end result is easy to see - when travelling, Australians are for the most part welcome in every port with their good nature and friendliness. The way of life is by and large modern, with a few monolithic stalwarts, and relaxed, with no pressure to be anything specific, except happy.

While this may seem somewhat contraversial, it does fit with observations that while American life is good, it isn't quite right. There are a few things wrong in various places. As we all know, it is often difficult to apply patches to fix specific problems (look at what happened with prohibition!) so it has been left alone, to run its course and slowly evolve through the version 1.x versions. For the most part, Australia seems to have learnt from many of the American misakes (well up until we elected John Howard) and made substantial improvements in the say of life.

This theory can be used to explain the problems with democracy in Iraq quite well. The Americans went into Iraq, expecting to be able to upgrade the beta version of society to their latest 1.x version. However their was insufficient planning and preparation of the upgrade, resulting in a project that is running way over budget and looking a lot like a failure.

For any Americans who don't quite see how this could be possible, my suggestion is simple: spend a year or two living in Australia.

So what about Asia? It would seem that Asia rejected the beta version that was spreading rapidly through Europe and stuck with alpha 2. So too did South America. The greater parts of Africa (and also the indigenous Australians) failed to apply the upgrade that introduced the first alpha version.

P.S. This document is a work in progress, lets say version 0.1, with further refinement in various areas necessary.

Sunday January 06, 2008

Umpires and cricket.

Over the preceding 5 days, Australia played India in a cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) and while Australia won, the best summary I've seen of the 2nd test match is:

Caught Benson, Bowled Bucknor

Who are Benson and Bucknor? The two umpires appointed to adjudicate on decisions throughout the match. The umpires are appointed for the match by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and are from the countries of England and Jamaica respectively.

It is a great shame for any sport when the actions of the umpires and the decisions they make overshadow the talent and endevours of the players on the field. In Australia, football umpires are often lovingly referred to as White maggots. It appears we need to come up with an appropriate term for cricket umpires too.

As is often the case in life, people are prone to speculate about what if. The only conclusion that can be safely drawn, on reflection, is that if any particular decision is/was made is changed then everything that follows must be different. You cannot change individual events in life and expect all the others to be as they were. The joining together of events in space and time is known as the Butterfly Effect, about which a movie was made in 2004. If you haven't seen this movie, I'd recommend making the time to do so. Stop worrying about the past and focus on the present and future.

The teaching of foreign languages

During high school, I studied two very different foreign languages (French and Japanese) and in more recent times, I've been lucky enough to be in the right place and time to make some basic steps in another two very different languages: Czech and Chinese. But rather than compare the languages themselves, I'd like to reflect on how they get taught through looking at how the respective textbooks approach the problem.

The aim of learning French was quite simple: to make it possible for you to go there and speak the language as a tourist in order to achieve simple things - ask where something is, what the time is, how much, etc. Japanese was not taught in this manner but I no longer have those textbooks to examine how it was done (unfortunately the end of highschool was celebrated by some amount of book burning, much to my shame.)

When I look at the textbooks I have today for Czech and Chinese, there is similar disparity, to the point where the Czech textbooks look like they've been written for people who will need to use the language vs the Chinese textbooks that look like they're written for business people. How stark the difference is can be see in the first lesson: in the Chinese textbook, it talks about company names and what country the company comes from vs the Czech textbook is greetings, including how are you. The difference in themes continues into both books - beer/coffee appears in lesson 1 for Czech but lesson 4 for Chinese.

Does the differing approach make much difference? Yes - in a very short span of time (1 lesson), it is possible to learn enough Czech to go to a cafe/restaurant and ask for food/drink. It takes considerably more lessons with the Chinese textbook. And in reflection, the difference feels much like it did when learning French and Japanese. Why does this difference exist? I can't say. Perhaps it is cultural, I can't say, as I don't know enough about the Chinese culture to know the significance of what is taught early on. There are no such problems with Czech - in a country that has some quite excellent beers, learning the Czech word for beer is very important, probably like wine for French.

In closing, I'll mention one other prominent difference between the two textbooks: use of the language you're learning. In the Czech textbook, there's an table at the front that tells you what various words mean in English. In every chapter, those words are used in place of the English words for "Read", "Write", "Listen", etc. The Czech textbook forces you to learn Czech in order to use it and uses it throughout. The Chinese textbook makes no such attempt as even at the end of the book, the word "Sentences" is still there in English at the beginning of the chapter. While I don't recall the approach Japanese textbooks took, from memory the French ones did approach things from the same angle as the Czech one does. One is given to wonder if there is some deeper cultural difference in the way people view Asian languages should be taught vs European languages.

Addendum

I suppose I should add a note here about which method I prefer. Without a doubt, the European approach for teaching language is vastly superior to that I've experienced for Asian languages. Granted there is a new form of writing to learn with Asian languages that can be a steep learning curve, and with Chinese, tones, but then there is verb tenses with the Romantic/Latin/Slavic languages and then the modal twist as well (of which Czech is the worst with 7 cases.)