BBC stopped practicing queen’s English long time ago and there is no such a thing as British accent, people here say. Lots of lots of regional accents, that is.
ヨーロッパ
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Internet provides a lot of information but it tends to be shallow. Useful information can be found in specialized data base but most of people do not use them. Libraries provide much more comprehensive information but not many people use it for blogging.
Nationalism and Immigration Policy: North and South
Richard Sigurdson
Department of Political Studies
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3T 5V5 CanadaConclusion
In general, the North is continually brought closer to the South in terms of both freer trade and more direct flows of migrants, mainly from the South to the North. But while trade remains fairly open and western governments have negotiated various agreements to keep it so, migration is heavily restricted and regulated. Immigration rules and procedures have become less discriminatory and policies of multiculturalism or other means of accommodating culturally diverse people have been put in place throughout the North. But there continues to be a strong resentment of more open immigration policies by citizens in the North, regardless of the economic factors (most of which support the call for greater flows of immigrants). The principal reason that immigration remains such a highly controversial issue appears to be the continued strength of nationalist thought and sentiment among citizens of the Northern countries.
The main concerns with immigration continue to revolve around the fundamental role of the nation-state in providing security, maintaining sovereignty, ascribing citizenship, promoting identity, and providing a sense of belonging in a sociocultural sense. As long as nationalism remains strong, countries will resist opening the doors too wide to those who may challenge the majority understanding of the community and its national image.
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Post-National Politics in Japan?:
The Immigrant Right to Vote
Choong Hoon Lee
Department of Political Science
New School for Social Research, NY.“We do not think of aliens, legal or illegal, as being ‘disenfranchised,’ because we assume that voting must be based on nation-state citizenship. We do not even think of aliens having politics. They are here mainly for their physical survival
and our convenience: to work as janitors, domestics, nannies and drivers. They are here to scrape by, not govern. They inhabit Aristotle’s realm of private necessity rather than the space of public deliberation. We don’t pause to question the prevailing exclusion of aliens; they are meant to be ruled, not to share in
ruling (Raskin 1993, 433: cited from Varsanyi 2005). “Human rights/civil rights
• Protection of life, liberty, and property
• Due process of law
• Rights of association in economy, civil society, and cultural life
• Freedom of speech and opinion
Social rights • Collective bargaining and trade unions
• Old age pensions
• Unemployment benefits
• Health care
• Housing/child care/educational subsides
Cultural rights
• Schooling in own language
• Cultural and art subsidies
Political rights
• Run for, hold, and vote for office at all levels (local, regional, and national)
• Establish political, civil, and cultural associations
• Military service
I really cannot find good impartial discussions about French immigration problems. Probably I need to check it in French.
“France rejects affirmative action as incompatible with its republican ideals of color-blind equality for all citizens. Nice in theory, but that’s not working in practice: discrimination continues, inequality is rife, and notions of color-blindness don’t square with the rising chorus of racially loaded commentary. Color-blindness may also function to keep France blind to racial discrimination and inequality, but the rising tide of anger in the projects and racist chatter in the mainstream suggests that the French may soon have no choice but to openly confront what color-blindness prefers not to see.”
But many people think that is their strength.
“In France it is prohibited by law to create and collect any statistical data concerning race or religion. Therefore, questions such as “How many Blacks in France?” ,”How many Protestants?” , “What is the number of people of Arab origin?” or “Where do French Jews live?” have no statistically official answer. It is prohibited, under heavy penalty, to keep any such individual data on a computer file and the CNIL (Commission Nationale Informatique et Liberté) has huge powers to investigate it. The reason for this is in the vision the French have of their own identity : anybody born in France is (automatically) French and becomes identical to all his/her compatriots, whatever his/her origin. No discrimination can be made, based on the color of the skin or religious beliefs and no such community can be officially acknowledged”
http://www.understandfrance.org/French/Issues.html#ancre38162
Zacarias Moussaoui: a victim of French racism?
“It was reported that, during career interviews at school, some teachers led him to believe that, since he was an Arab, his professional ambition would be fulfilled by simply becoming a clerk. Experiences such as this created resentment, which explains in part why he started to turn towards fundamentalism.”
“This newspaper – which is owned by Le Monde – contented itself with publishing some brief portraits of Zacarias Moussaoui, no more detailed than those published in the international press. Like other regional newspapers, generally of poor quality in centralised France, their mission to explain the local dimensions of a world catastrophe—the fundamentalism of some French Muslims—was not carried out.”
“Our ethnic minorities do not have a sufficient presence at mainstream editorial desks. Despite the demographic weight of non-white residents in France, they have little visibility. The same applies to our parliaments and governments.”
The Language Divide, Writ Small, in Belgian Town
By SUZANNE DALEY 31 minutes ago
“WEMMEL, Belgium — A picturesque bedroom community offers a clear enough picture of why Belgium is stuck in a state of dysfunction.” Continue Reading
Shlomo Sand: Challenging notions of a Jewish People:
He made a insightful and entertaining talk. He discussed about Israel but his argument goes far beyond one single state. His thesis is not new and I read about it more than years ago in other’s book. His main argument is that Israel is better off to become a more normal country.
What is Globish??? There are many definitions. I just collected information I can find on the net.
“It is designed for trivial efficiency, always, everywhere, with everyone.”
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/12/glob-ish.html
I wasn’t alone in noticing this change. In 2007 I came across an article in the International Herald Tribune “the worldwide dialect of the third millennium.” Nerrière, posted to Japan with IBM in the 1990s, had noticed that non-native English speakers in the Far East communicated in English far more successfully with their Korean and Japanese clients than British or American executives. Standard English was all very well for Anglophones, but in the developing world, this non-native “decaffeinated English”—full of simplifications like “the son of my brother” for “nephew,” or “words of honor” for “oath”—was becoming the new global phenomenon. In a moment of inspiration, Nerrière christened it “Globish.” about a French-speaking retired IBM executive, Jean-Paul Nerrière, who described English and its international deployment as
……
……
This is not the end of Babel. The world, “flatter” and smaller than ever before, is still a patchwork of some 5,000 languages. Native speakers still cling fiercely to their mother tongues, as they should. But when an Indian and a Cuban want to commission medical research from a lab in Uruguay, with additional input from Israeli technicians—as the Midwestern U.S. startup EndoStim recently did—the language they will turn to will be Globish.
I encountered quite interesting articles. I was aware of the risks involving in going to graduate school. At least no physics and mathematics professor I know recommended me to go to graduate school without talking about risks. Or probably no one really recommended me to go to grad school even though I never asked their advice either. They told us that you will see other people who just do any given tasks easily and make you think their brain are made of unknown materials etc. Also many books already informed me the hardships of graduate schools.
But it is quite nice to see some one writes so clearly about the danger of going to graduate in humanity. I am really not in humanity but many things are true in science as well.
Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go By Thomas H. Benton
The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind’
What to Advise Unemployed Graduates
Graduate School? Socrates Would Approve
An ‘Unsavory’ Appraisal of the Humanities Market
He described horrific life in graduate school, but life can be much worse than he described. Any case, no matter what people write, I would go to graduate school in science or engineer even if I had a chance to change my life completely. Of course I would plan it better than before. Depending on the topic of studies, scientists may show no sympathy to difficulties of graduates from humanity disciplines. Some of the topics they study seem to be just an extension of hobby, but the real value of education is hard to measure.
A MB
A is very useful for people to understand business analytically. But if one is really serious about theories then you do economics and mathematics. Except serious prominent schools, a MBA is one of easiest cash cows for many. For business people who teach them, it is good opportunities to sell their company and possibly to recruit them.
In a professional program, as long as they are accepted, pay a ridiculous amount of tuition and study normally, they can graduate. Many people in a professional program encounter difficulties in the beginning but their difficulties are not insurmountable. Most of the people will achieve a happy Hollywood ending in the end. Or what is the failing rate in B-schools?
Getting a PhD is a totally different from getting such a professional degree. At least that is how many PhD’s see such a degree. Many people who failed a PhD program or failed to see any meaning of the program often switch to a MBA and they usually do well. Or I do not know any one who failed a MBA but did very well in a PhD in science or engineer. Continue Reading
ScienceCareers, in Science, gave me useful quick guidance about graduate schools and postdocs. Their information shed light on various aspects of the issue. Here are some highlights and links from the magazine so please read the original articles since they are open articles.
Science Careers (keys “Graduate school”) Here you see the entries about graduate schools.
“even at its best, graduate school can be a supremely unnerving experience. And at its worst, the pressure can kill you.”
“By the time you finish a Ph.D., you will be several years older and drenched in blood, sweat, and tears. Will it have been worth it?” Continue Reading
Non-Japanese often, if not always, think English of Japanese sucks. In general it does sucks, I must to admit after watching some UN meeting video; especially that of some politicians and also journalists of second class papers.
They — should I say we? — may become defiant about their poor English skill; particularly some Japanese English teachers, judging from information from the web pages written in Japanese. Some Japanese are not even aware of how bad their oral communication is while many are totally aware of it.
Many of my friends, who do mathematics and physics, told me that they often do not understand a presentation given by Japanese, while their contents are sufficiently interesting enough to attract serious attention. I went to Boston University a while ago for a meeting for system biology. Many graduate students from Kyoto U gave a talk but some of them are horrible in presentation style and English. In other occasion, I did see many good presentations by Japanese, but some people just did not understand the questions at all. Some time a questioner got angry. During a long meeting, if you give an incomprehensible talk then people will just go to sleep to recover energy or just go to restroom.
Now let’s see what they are saying.
English Proficiency: Japan vs. the Philippines
I see his point. Comparing Japan and Philippine, however, is not meaningful, since their social and economic structures are totally different. They have every reason to learn English, but many Japanese regard English as a hobby. Also Philippine has 171 languages. So English is a tool to communicate among different groups. Japan has one. If other minor languages like Ainu, Okinawa and Korean are counted then it has 4.
There are highly motivate non-Japanese English teachers around there. But, to be honest, who is teaching in English in Japan? I know many of my friends who went to teach English abroad from Canada and US. Some of them might have been dreaming about teaching since they were 3. But most of them are teaching opportunistically. Like, “Well I finished my college but do not know I want to do in my life. Humm, going to Japan might be fun and it will give me some time to think about my future. Also I can see an exotic country.”
Most of Japanese are not well prepared to communicate in English but many English teachers from abroad are also totally unprepared to teach English effectively in a foreign country and just feel frustrated. A teacher cannot teach students who are not intrinsically interested in any subject. They however can not teach when they themselves consider their job as an extension of a hobby.
Of course, Japanese do have a lot more things to learn.
Using English grammar to process
- my growing awareness of a belief among Japanese students of English that they can somehow learn English ONLY by being in the presence of an English-speaking foreigner – “English by osmosis” – and that practice (alone or with a Japanese partner), drills (both oral and written), learning vocab, are either irrelevant or can somehow be bypassed when you have a real, live, English-speaking (and preferably blond(e) and blue-eyed because we all know that those are the only real foreigners) “gaijin” to yourself, if even for a few minutes;
- a growing awareness of a patronising attitude (in some cases, open disdain) on the part of colleagues towards the “conversation” teachers: glancing references like “students are not going to progress much if they’re just repeating ‘hellomynameis’ every day” (so that’s what they think we’re doing).
“But what if students’ desire to “talk to the foreigner” was actually (at least in part) a desire to use (English) language to create meaning?
Something I should realize by now that has probably been sadly lacking in their experience of English language education.”
To sum up, Japanese are too passive. Fair enough. Continue Reading
Undergraduate and graduate
People have different experience in school but some things are also common; we can learn many things from the people who went through. I went to universities in Canada and the States both in undergrad and graduate and found many good books and articles in the web that seem useful. These days you can also Google by yourself to find many stories in webs and blogs. When I was doing graduate study I found a book in a library and it is my favorite (1). This book is based on experience by many people so you can glimpse a wide range of graduate school life. Here are some books I checked.
- The Ph.D. Process: A Student’s Guide to Graduate School in the Sciences Authors: Dale F. Bloom, Jonathan D. Karp, Nicholas Cohen. Oxford University Press, USA
- A Ph.D. Is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science
- Guide for PhD Candidates: at Cambridge Computer Lab
- Guide for PhD students (and post-docs) aiming for a successful career in science:science article
- So you’d like to… Pass your PhD qualifying exam in Physics
- Graduate School: Winning Strategies for Getting in With or Without Excellent Grades
It is for a science prof but the following book is really good; you can see the prof side of graduate life.
For an interview book, I think this book is useful,
This is the book I had with me when I came here for my interview; I should have read more papers though. Continue Reading
A Pillow Diary of an Expatriate Scientist 