A brief impression of a distant country

I just went to Northern Europe on holiday. It is amazing how refreshing the weather is there.



Not only that, but you have the chance to see as many animals as on a safari on the Serengeti.

I am so gullible

I do not know if you have heard of a company called Apple. They make computers, music players and stunning keynote presentations. I was just watching a keynote presentation, where their director, a mr. Jobs, presented new music players. The audience was enthusiastic and shouted and applauded all the time.

My own thought was that the products were probably ok, as the audience liked them, even though I was a little surprised at the exaggerated ovations.

Then it struck me that I had seen another presentation with mr. Jobs some months ago, and the audience had been equally enthusiastic. Note the word "equally". The audience was identically enthusiastic. The products were different, but they applauded in the same rhythms. Their wows were shouted with the same voices.

Only then it struck me that the room must have had loads of Apple employees commandeered in to support their director. I do not mind them being there. It would be silly of Apple not to send people in to support their products.

I only mind myself being so gullible not to have realised it straight away.

Hooray! I found a reason! Then I can have an opinion!

Strangely enough human discussions often follow a boolean pattern. Everything tends to be black or white, true or false, for or against.

"Smoking is bad for your health, so therefore I want to ban it in public restaurants", for example. The argument is catchy. It is good. It is convincing. And it is so simplified that it is wrong.

If man had been able to have serious discussions, the argument would have gone more like this: "I realise that smoking makes life much more pleasant for a lot of people, that it brings money to restaurant owners, that it can be the reason for two people to find each other for a perfect life-long marriage, that plenty of people do not get sick from it, that some tourists get attracted to our fair city if they are allowed to smoke in restaurants, that few things can bring as much happiness as a cigarette after a good meal. I realise all that, but in spite of that, I think the health risks are so serious that I want to ban it in public restaurants."

However, such balanced arguments are as rare as penguins on the slopes of the Cheops pyramid. And why? Because most listeners fall asleep, before the speaker gets to the point. That's why.

The curse of man is that we fall asleep rather than think.

Wake me up if you find any argument against that.

A few hours ago, a few hundred meters away

Around 1 o'clock today armed robbers stole four paintings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice. It was two Brueghel, one Sisley and one Monet. At that time I was only a few hundred meters away. I get a strange feeling from events at locations where I have been, when they are reported in national or international media.

I had read in the newspapers for several days about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, before I realised that I actually had been to Minneapolis once. I had not passed that particular bridge, but I knew perfectly well where it was.

But I was even more moved when I travelled by train around continental Europe in 1980. I spent a lot of time in waiting rooms at stations, waiting for trains, obviously, and sometimes sorting my things out, reading about available hotel rooms and things to see in the city I arrived to. This was before internet, so my news sources were limited to good old paper newspapers.

The third of August I arrived in Bologna. Following my habit I looked for the waiting room, but could not find it. It did not really surprise me, because the station was a mess, with something that looked like building works ongoing everywhere. I walked to the city centre, bought a newspaper and sat down at a café to read it. It was only then that I realised what had happened at the station. It was the strage di Bologna, a terrorist bomb which had killed or injured close to 300 persons in and around the waiting room of the railway station the day before. If I had arrived one day earlier, there was a pretty good chance that I would not be able to sit here typing this blog right now.

Of course I did not know at the time that there one day would be an internet or blogs, but the closeness of the event disturbed me.

This does not make me special in any way of course. There must have been thousands of people who were equally close to being in that waiting room. And thousands of thousands of people get the opportunity to feel lucky each year, when they narrowly escape terrorists, accidents or natural catastrophes. The positive message is that if you ever get close to a catastrophe, it is much more likely that you narrowly escape it than that you perish in it.

If not this, what? If not now, when?

I think it was Time magazine which used this title on the front page as an argument for sanctions against South Africa during the heydays of apartheid in the eighties. They had other better arguments in the magazine itself. Luckily. Because the title on its own is one of the worst ones I have ever seen.

The argument works equally well for almost anything.

Let's assume that an asteroid is charging against the earth threatening to extinguish all life.

• I suggest that we organise a public demonstration against the asteroid. If not this, what? Do you have any other proposal? OK. Then a demonstration it is.


• I suggest that we complain at Microsoft's helpdesk about the asteroid. If not this, what? Do you have any other proposal? OK. Then Microsoft's helpdesk it is.


• I suggest that we pray, that we burn witches, that we launch a military attack against a foreign country, that we clap our hands and brush our teeth, that we throw away our old socks, that we order red wine to fish, that we buy a new car. Do you have any other proposal? But we have to do something. We cannot just remain passive and see that asteroid smash into us. If not this, what?
  

The catch phrase "If not this, what?" is a way to pretend a displacement activity is backed up by logic.

Brack

This is how you learn a language. This is how you adapt to your environment.

At each level of saltiness of water, almost until it is completely saturated, there are life forms adapted to it. There are freshwater fish that want almost no salt at all, and there are seawater fish that need at least 30 grams of salt for each litre of water. For these levels and each level of brack water in between, there is life for which this environment works.

At each level of knowledge of a language, there is an environment where that level works. You may not be able to say more than "one beer, please", but it is a phrase that works in a bar. You may not be able to spell properly, but you may anyhow be able to discuss the current political situation in Belize. Then, feel free to discuss Belize. Look for the situations that work with your level of brack water. Practice what you know. Without practice you will never succeed.

You may not be able to write elegant sonnets in the foreign language, but you may at least be able to write blogs.

Brick

This is how you learn a language. This is how you widen your horizons.

You can reach a certain level in most things by adding lumps of clay. Learning a language, you can learn, say 50 words a day for a long time, and then you will soon know a lot of words - perhaps all the words of that language, and you will not understand much and you will not be able to express anything in that language.

Because all you added was clay.

To make a stable structure you also need bricks. At each moment when you build a house, you need to know when you can add clay and when you can add bricks to make it taller. Too much clay, and it will not be stable enough to hold its own weight. Too much bricks, and the wall will fall over if you lean against it.

When you learn a language you need bricks as well as clay - grammar as well as words. The tricky thing is to know when in the learning process you need more grammar and when you need more words. Besides there are different kinds of clay and bricks that do not work equally well in all positions in the building.

Next time you want to learn a new language, go to the nearest construction retailer for advice.

Clay

That is how you learn a language. That is how your workplace works. That is what you know of nuclear physics and gossip.

Have you ever tried to build a tall tower of wet clay? You start with one lump, add another one, a third one on top of those ones, and after a few more lumps it will all fall to pieces.

However, if you add one lump and let it dry, you can add another lump the next day. And then, when they are both solid, you can add a third one on top. Letting each lump solidify before you go on makes sure that you have a working base to build on.

When you learn a new language, you start with a few words and one or two grammatical rules. Once you have used them enough for them to stick in your brain, you can add new ones, which build on top of the previous ones. You do not have to wait of course. You can be immersed in new words and rules, but only a few ones will solidify each day for you to have something to build on next day. This is why you cannot learn a foreign language over night.

In your workplace it works the same way. If you one day add 100 new employees to a group of 10, you will probably have chaos for some time, and it is possible that the experiences of the original group will be drowned in the chaos. However, if you add one new employee a day, it is much more likely that they can integrate into the group and help building the organisation. (To be honest, that is not always good. Sometimes the initial group has some bad habits, which perpetuates unless they get a shock treatment.)

Learning nuclear physics is the same thing. You learn about atoms, neutrons, electrons and protons. Only once you have solidified that knowledge in your brain, it makes sense to talk about electron orbits and quarks and Heisenberger.

And the gossip of tabloids works the same way. No one is interested in whether mr. Smith goes to prison, as no one knows who he is in the first place. He is wet clay with nothing to rest on. However, once it turns out that he used to go fishing with a known actor, who we learnt to know through previouos tabloids and movies, and who now has solidified in our minds, the clay of mr. Smith has something to rest on, and his prison sentence will make sense and concern us. And as soon as we are used to mr. Smith, we will be interested to hear about mrs. Brown who was his sister, and who came fourth in some sport in the Olympic games. And soon we have built a tower of gossip, aere perennius.

The first time you watch a soap opera, the actors are wet clay. The second time, they have hardened and make sense, and the producer can add more actors and other television series which build on the first ones.

This is why God created Adam from clay. He always hoped Adam would make it in show business.

A revelation

There is something that should not be hidden by me, but it will be hidden nevertheless, as I do not know it.

Thanks for nothing

In the small village where my grandmother grew up, there lives an author, Bobby Brown.

Bobby had published a theatre play when he was only 17 years old, and it was widely regarded as one of the worst plays ever written in that part of the country. The plot was complex but yet boringly obvious. It would have lasted at least five hours, if there had been a theatre group reckless enough to perform it.

Bobby had paid for the publication himself, but the only copies that were ever sold, were ones he had smuggled onto the shelves of the local bookshop, where a few tourists by mistake bought some. (All copies were later returned, including one bought by an old lady who was almost blind. Her heirs found it in her library, covered in dust 15 years later. When they opened the book and realised the bad quality of the play, they promptly returned it. She had used it as door stop.)

When he turned 30, the local newspaper had a story about how lucky the town had been that Bobby had never since published anything. It then became a recurring theme to thank him for not publishing.

This weekend he turned 90 and the village council organised a party to celebrate and thank him for his long abstinence from any further production. As a sign of gratitude he got an eraser in gold.