Babel

In the book of Genesis, there is a story about the tower of Babel, and where God confounded man's language, to make it harder for us to work together against His purpose. Some people question the veracity of the account, but certainly language is often a barrier to communication. This is not only true of people that don't speak the same language, it is often true of people that speak the same language, but in different ways.

It's been said that the United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language. We say that we speak English, but there are many differences between the English spoken in the Untied States and the English spoken by the English people. Some of things that have evolved since the US gained its independence, some are things that simply were not standardized until after the split, still other things were adopted by one country or the other as a result of immigration. Automobile terminology provides several examples: What we in the US call the trunk (of the car), the Brits call the boot; what we call gas, they call petrol; our bonnet is their hood; etc. We still use the same units of measure, although the EU has tried to get the UK to adapt metric units.

It's also true that specialists in a particular field have a tendency to develop their own jargon. This is not always an attempt to be exclusionary, but it does work out that way sometimes. Jargon can make people within a certain specialty communicate more effectively with each other, but make it harder to communicate with 'outsiders' who are not familiar with the jargon. One individual I know has told me many times that PhD really stands for "Please Have Dictionary." If you've ever taken a college course taught by a PhD, you probably know exactly what he means. It isn't that they are trying to obfuscate the learning environment, however, the tendency to eschew technical terminology amongst individuals being indoctrinated into the profession isn't always what it should be. Sometimes the terms used within a profession become so ingrained that the professional doesn't stop to think that he or she needs to simplify the terminology when speaking to trainees, customers, or anyone else that wouldn't be familiar with the jargon.

Another thing that I have run across on occasion is that journalists are experts in researching things and expressing those things in such a way that the average person can understand. Journalists spend a lot of years in college learning the skills necessary to accomplish this. Unfortunately, they learn about writing, but they don't learn very much about the subject matter that they are supposed to be writing about. Frequently newspaper or magazine articles appear that have been considerably 'dumbed-down,' either as a result of the reporter's limited knowledge of the subject matter, or the reporter's belief that the average person knows even less than the reporter. Occasionally this happens simply because the publication isn't willing to let the article take up enough space in order for it to contain a thorough explanation of the subject. I get irritated sometimes when something happens, but when I read the local coverage of the event, I find myself still unsure of what actually happened. Doing a little research, I find another account of the same event, only to find that it's pretty much word-for-word the same account. Why? because both articles came off of the AP newswire, and the AP reporter didn't get the details that I was looking for. In those instances, I really wish that I could talk to somebody who has first hand knowledge.

One of the things that disturbed me the most is that a lot of people read books about what the Bible says, but don't ever actually read the Bible itself--not even to check the passages referred to in the book. Even if the author is legitimately trying to make scripture easier to understand, at best, you are limiting yourself to his understanding. I don't mean to suggest that such books are bad, or that reading those books won't help (sometimes they will, but sometimes they won't), but I will say that if you read the scripture for yourself, you may gain a greater understanding.

Liquor Is Quicker, But Innovation Is Better

Too bad there wasn't an alcohol shortage in Western Siberia (at least he wasn't driving blind). Nissan has come up with a possible solution (it looks very feasible to me).

Meanwhile, a new theory that fulacht fiadh, in Ireland, may actually be ancient breweries (traditionally, they have been thought of as cooking sites). I'm not sure anyone can actually prove that, one way or the other.

It seems funny to me that Japanese auto manufacturers tend to be more progressive than their American counterparts--building cars with better gas mileage, and frequently better safety features--and the Big Three complain that they just can't compete. How hard is it to plan ahead? We had our first gas shortage in the 70's, and Detroit still hasn't built a car that gets 'good' gas mileage. I understand that part of the problem is that Japanese auto workers work for less money than UAW union members, but by the time they pay to have cars shipped over here and pay import taxes (if they even do that--look around, there are an awful lot of 'Japanese' cars being made right here in the United States. That avoids shipping costs and import taxes, but then they probably have to deal with union wages, the same as Big Three cars made in the US), there can't be much of an advantage (if any--why do you think so many Japanese car companies have set up plants here in the US?). It seems to me that the real problem is that the Big Three have grown complacent: For a lot of years, they only had to compete with each other (I say that, I mean, the Big Three has only been around for about fifty years. Chrysler invented hydraulic brakes in 1957 and changed the face of American car companies forever). Are the American car companies afraid of another Edsel?

And now Chrysler has hired new CEO Bob Nardelli, the man who received a 210 million dollar payout from Home Depot amidst fears that, if allowed to complete his contract as CEO, he would run the company into the ground. Does Chrysler know something that Home Depot didn't? One would hope so. Who knows? Maybe Home Depot's board just didn't understand Nardelli's work ethic; maybe this is the guy that's going to infuse some real innovation into American car manufacturing. I think what Detroit is missing is just the simple philosophy: Look at what people want and need, and work out ways to build it better, and less expensively than your competition, even if your competition stops working out ways to build its product better and cheaper. Isn't that the basic model of competition? When companies work to earn business from competitors, then they win, and, more importantly, consumers win.

American Ignorance

There was an interesting survey sponsored by Newsweek--you can look at it here. 81% of respondents at least knew that they didn't know who the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court was. 28% knew that they didn't know who the Speaker of the House was. 40% knew that they didn't know who the first Republican president was. As Americans, our ignorance is astounding. We should be the most blissful nation on earth.

There were some trick questions in the poll. One question asked when did the Korean War officially end, and included in its multiple choices both '1953' and 'Did it ever end?' Both of those answers could be considered correct. The fact is that in 1953 an armistice was signed, which ended hostilities between the two nations and established a de-militarized zone (DMZ) between the two. This agreement is considered by some to be the official end of the Korean War, while others point to the fact that no formal peace treaty was ever signed, and wars are normally ended by peace treaties. Another asked how many countries have nuclear weapons, but did not offer seven or eight as a choice--the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, India, and Pakistan have all been verified as having nuclear weapons. North Korea claims to have nuclear weapons, however, there has been no detection of radioactive fallout from their tests, indicating that they may have only detonated a rather large conventional weapon. Israel will neither confirm nor deny their nuclear capabilities, but they certainly like for their neighbors to think that they have nuclear weapons. That would make nine the correct (or, at least, most correct) answer. Considerably more people answered five, presumably because only five nations have signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (the first five on the above list).

I was surprised that 20% thought that Christianity was older than Judaism--one out of five are not aware that Jesus was born a Jew? At least that means a good chunk of our population don't blame the Jews for the death of Christ... 21% thought Islam was older than Judaism. Wow.

There were a good many things that I did not know: I did not know that Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population. I could not have told you what year the Internet stock-bubble burst. Did not know the current Dow-Jones average, or the current chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (I had heard some noise awhile back about Alan Greenspan retiring, but I didn't know that he actually had). I was unaware that childbirth kills one woman every minute somewhere in the world (I wonder how many women die from botched abortions?). I could not have named the winner of American Idol this year (and I am surprised and comforted by the fact that 77% of the respondents couldn't either).

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the breakdown of political affiliations: 35% identified themselves as Democratic, 34% as Independent, 25% as Republican, 3% as no party affiliation, and 3% didn't know (just at a guess, I would say many of the 3% who responded 'don't know' would have responded 'Republican' eight years ago). If that breakdown truly represents the national population, then our next president may be an Independent. Perhaps we should pay more attention to Ralph Nader than to John McCain...