I doubt very much that shufitz originated this. I've heard "That and a token will get you on the (NYC) subway" for years and years.
I don't think Kalleh meant that Shufitz originated the saying, simply that he used it often. The similar phrase I remember most is "That and a nickle will get you a cup of coffee." Now it's "That and five dollars will get you a cup of coffee."
The poor Canadians. As of yet they've had no medals in the Olympics. Simon Beck was on NPR talking about the top 10 reasons why they shouldn't worry about the medal draught. Here they are:
quote:
To make you all feel better, here's the top ten reasons we shouldn't worry about the medal drought.
10. Five days without winning anything is still 15,020 days less than the Maple Leafs.
9. We still get to watch Diana Swain on CBC's Olympics coverage and she's a fox when she does sports.
8. So what if Togo has a medal and we don't? Their health care system is terribly underfunded.
7. There's no way Celine Dion will need to lip-synch at the opening ceremony in 2010.
6. Who cares about swimming when you've got curling?
5. We might be terrible at sports, but at least we're not Spanish.
4. We can still watch Paul Henderson's goal on YouTube any time we get depressed.
3. That Canadian fencer who opened a can of whuppass on herself last night when she lost was far more entertaining than any medals ceremony.
2. There's plenty of time to give Michael Phelps Canadian citizenship before the 2012 Games.
I heard on the chat today how apathetic Wordcrafters are to the Olympics. Okay then. I am not passionate about them, but I watch them from time to time and find them a good way for creating some international harmony. Heaven knows we need it!
If it makes you feel any better, I saw Canada win a silver in the rowing event today. So you are no longer medal-less.
am not passionate about them, but I watch them from time to time and find them a good way for creating some international harmony.
That was the original idea, I understand - but I do not really believe it has been achieved amongst countries - even though it might have been achieved between competitors.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
I watched a TV documentary about the 1908 Olympics in London. It was the first to have competitors entering under their country's flag as part of a team, rather than as individuals.
There was apparently a lot of bad blood caused by arguments over judging, especially between the USA and Great Britain, the host nation. Plus ça change ...
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
What bothers me most about TV coverage of the Games here is that NBC interviews only American competitors, even if they finish out of the medals. The winner is never talked to, even if they speak English, if they are from another country. Talk about promoting harmony among nations.
Sports writer Mitch Albom, author of such non-sports books as tuesdays with Morrie, decried that jingoistic attitude recently in a Sunday newspaper article. You might also see the official film of the Tokyo olympcs, entitled, "Tokyo Olympiad," directed by Kon Ichikawa, for something that's focused on the athletes, not on the country. It's hard to find, but excellent.
I realize it is very difficult to find "color commentators" to describe what athletes feel during the many events, but could someone tell them there is no such word as "heighth."
One of the more ludicrous comments occurred last night when a gymnast fell, putting him out of contention, and he left the platform, crushed. The commentator said, "You can tell how devastated he is by the sigh written on his face."
What bothers me most about TV coverage of the Games here is that NBC interviews only American competitors, even if they finish out of the medals. The winner is never talked to, even if they speak English, if they are from another country.
The US media? Covering only US achievements? Ignoring the rest of the world? Go on!
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
Originally posted by Proofreader: ... there is no such word as "heighth."
Oh? The OED Online says there is. Dictionary.com says it is "a nonstandard spelling of height." Michael Quinion, World Wide Words says it, along with highth, was at one time a standard spelling.
quote:
Because of its odd history, we can hardly argue that highth is truly an error, more an archaism. Though nearly everyone now spells it height, it’s not that uncommon to hear it said as /haɪtθ/ among educated people in North America, and some authorities there consider it to be a permissible variant. So strong is the ending that it is not unknown to hear people use coolth, a word which some dictionaries mark as archaic, but which has had a resurgence in favour in recent decades.
I had a roommate from southeast Missouri in the '60s who used to say heighth. He also said onct, twict, and drouth (for once, twice. and drought). I just thought it was a regionalism.
What bothers me most about TV coverage of the Games here is that NBC interviews only American competitors, even if they finish out of the medals. The winner is never talked to, even if they speak English, if they are from another country.
So how much have you watched them, Proofreader? I realize that they don't interview non-English speaking winners, for obvious reasons, but I've seen many non-Americans being interviewed (3 tonight in fact, and I haven't been watching for more than an hour). I just don't think that's a fair comment, but it surely gave Richard some ammunition for his opinions. This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,
Since at least 1956. When I first began wathching, whoever won, regardlesss of nationality, was interviewed. Period. If an interpreter was needed, one was available. Only after the winner was congratulated and given what might have been a perfunctory Q&A were any Americans who might have medalled spoken to.
That’s not the case today. I don’t know what time you watched but on at least three occasions the second or third place Americans were interviewed with scant mention of the actual winner, beyond showing the final stats list. And if the first place non-American isn't available, why not the second place before going to what is essentially the losers? Name another sporting event where the winner is ignored in this way in favor of someone out of the running.
When I first watched, professional players weren't allowed in the games. In the past, competitors who just played semi-pro baseball during the summer had medals taken away. Now the entire NBA competes, along with the National Tennis Association. I expect the National Hockey League to soon get involved in the winter games.
Aug 20 10:15 Women's 200-meter hurdles. Jamaican wins by almost a second. American 2nd place interviewed.This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Proofreader>,
I was just asking how much you've watched during this olympics, since this is the one you are complaining about. I watch them daily, but I will admit that I watch for less than an hour a day; perhaps my sampling is skewed. Just tonight, however, I saw the men's running, again a Jamaican won, and they interviewed the Jamaican.
I suppose it is U.S. television after all, and they do need for people to watch. Also, the Americans and Chinese have, by far, the most medals, and many of the Chinese don't speak English. Still, from what I've seen, there have been a lot of non-Americans interviewed.
However, as my cute father used to say, "I could be wrong, you know!"
Also, the Americans and Chinese have, by far, the most medals, and many of the Chinese don't speak English.
I hadn't bothered to take note up to now, but I checked online today and the Chinese are in first place, the USA second and Great Britain third.
Fair enough, the Chinese don't speak English but most of the British competitors will - even though it has (as we have frequently remarked in these pages) significant differences from the American version.
Have there been any interviews with British gold medalists in the USA? I assume we have seen interviews with US gold medalists on the BBC, although I don't know myself.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
Are these "live" interviews, or recorded? If live, I would think that an athlete's own country's TV would get first channce at an interview. A US athlete finishing second, say, is more likely to be interviewed by the American media immediately after the event - the gold medallist would probably be monopolised by his or her country's media.
In a "roundup" type of program, where they have more time, I'd expect to see a better balance.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In a "roundup" type of program, where they have more time, I'd expect to see a better balance.
They spray herbicide on them? (Here in the US, "Roundup" is a brand of very toxic chemical) Hmmmmm... Perhaps if we sprayed some on all the US network executives...
Proofreader, I'm glad you mentioned all the professionals in the olympics nowadays. I was griping about that just yesterday myself. Now it's not sports, it's only big business.
Not only for the NBA players, but for everyone else who comes to the winner's circle. Everything from your picture on a cereal box to shoe and equipment endorsements.
Considering the time difference, most sport segments are on tape, along with the interviews. Thus the decision to show only American "winners" is obviously, as Richard wouold say, jingoistic, by jingo.
The medal tables I've seen are always ordered with the most gold medals first, not the total number of medals.
The U.S. has always ranked by total number of medals, and not just golds. I know that some countries just think the gold medals are important.
One thing I don't think is fair is how in some sports, like swimming or gymnastics, you can win tons of medals. Yet in others, like the basketball or the volleyball tournaments, they have to win game after game after game, just to win one medal.
Another thought is that they should rate medals to the number of people in the country. One can certainly see that China, with 1 billion people, has a lot more chances to win than little Togo, for example.
One thing I don't think is fair is how in some sports, like swimming or gymnastics, you can win tons of medals.
I had heard a similar comment from one athlete (I don't know who) when the American swimmer Phelps (I can't remember his first name - that shows how interested I am!) won a record number of gold medals. He said that it was easier to win several medals in swimming, where there are separate competitions for each style (so you could get a medal for freestyle and another one for backstroke, for example). If you are a runner, then you can't enter for running forward, running backwards and running on your hands - so only one medal is possible.
The rating according to population seems on the face of it to be attractive, but in practice it doesn't seem to make as much difference as one would expect. OK, China and the USA two of the most populous countries and occupy first and second slots - but some other high ranking countries are relatively small - and low ranking countries relatively large. Take Jamaica and India, for example.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
Too much for me to read in depth, but I agree with By Janet Raloff's suggestion that many Americans nowadays choose not to read, and that this is the reason why so many of them appear ill-informed.
I have been an avid reader from around the age of 5-and I am convinced that this is why I have a good all-round knowledge of many things.
I also empathise with Thomas Benton and his reluctance to admit to his being in the teaching business. In the UK, and I suspect the USA, the people who are admired and looked upon as role models are celebrities; no matter how shallow the reason for their celebrity, their every action and semi-articulate word is reported and discussed. There will be few days in which Paris Hilton, whose only real claim to importance was to be lucky enough to have a billionaire grandfather, will not appear in the media. But when was the last time that a Harward Professor or an Oxford Don made the gossip pages? Indeed, probably their only chance would be to be caught in flagrante delicto with Paris Hilton!
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
I very much enjoyed "On Stupidity," and it even is being played out in the presidential campaigns now. Poor Obama practically has to apologize for going to Harvard and teaching at the University of Chicago's Law School.
This comment from the article is so true:
quote:
About half of the concerns I've listed — punctuation, plagiarism, argumentation, evaluation of evidence — can be effectively addressed in the classroom. But the other half make it increasingly difficult to do so without considerable institutional support: small classes, high standards, and full-time faculty members who are backed by the administration.
The worst of it is, there is an administration push, and even a Secretary of Education push, to get results. We need outcomes. Test scores must increase. Therefore, why would teachers want to increase standards if they need to increase their test scores? They begin to teach to the tests, thus lowering standards. Now I do believe in outcomes, but we must ask for quality outcomes and time for those outcomes to occur.
If digital technologies are a cause of "stupidity," it is because we have spent freely on computers — among other things — without also giving comparable support to college teachers. The students have been left to negotiate a cultural paradigm shift, comparable to the print and industrial revolutions, with inadequate support from the institutions created to help them.
I think this guy is right on.
No question that anti-intellectualism is part of American culture (the theme of the new books cited in "On Stupidity" part 1); it gets worse in economic troubles and wartime; it presumably has much to do with chronic over-politicization of public education, which typically results in money for gadgets but not for people. Regardless of one's position on individual factors such as number of students in a class, the cultural assumption of elitism-- a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that books make you stupid and you're better off earning a buck, and it's all about gov't's hand in your pocket anyway-- trumps every effort to improve things. To estimate the cultural respect for education, take a look at pay scale: a high school teacher cannot expect to own a home and raise kids without a second job or a working spouse. The attitude undermines every effort at upgrading, as illustrated in Benton's quoted example.
As I've said in another thread, we deserve our Sarah Palins. As long as the average American citizen thinks our country is best led by simple folk lacking in analytic skills (like himself), he will continue to be hoodwinked by his cynical leaders.
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!
When the interviewer asks philosophy professor Kelly Jolley "if he ever wondered whether his style of teaching might be inappropriate for a large state school like Auburn — if the cost of his approach is that he’s teaching to the few rather than the many," Jolley replies, 'My view is that you really fall into a trap when you start allowing what you believe about your students to dictate how you teach your discipline. Too often these days we end up setting up our courses in light of what we believe about our students and we end up not teaching them. At best, we end up housebreaking them.'”
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!
And what is England doing about someone possibly reading the OED?
From the Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 4: A primary school in Whitminster, England, has stopped giving its students a spelling list to learn each week because when the students don't spell the words correctly in class it can cause a ''sense of failure.''
We recently read that the Pope, after returning home from a visit to France, having observed that the French people seemed to be drifting away from the proper practice of his religion, ordered a group of Cardinals and Bishops to join him in a seminar where each participant reads aloud a section of the Bible. This is to go on until they have read the book in its entirety.
The reading of the OED is, of course, a much more comprehensive project. Listen up, you Basses, Baritones, Tenors, Altos and Sopranos !!
Sic transit .....This message has been edited. Last edited by: jerry thomas,
Posts: 6708 | Location: Kehena Beach, Hawaii, U.S.A.
From the Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 4: A primary school in Whitminster, England, has stopped giving its students a spelling list to learn each week because when the students don't spell the words correctly in class it can cause a ''sense of failure.''
This is the kind of thing you sometimes get from the "Loony Left" but I am certainly surprised that it would happen at a C of E primary school in the Cotsolds.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
If you leave the country and try to return, don't have incriminating cartoons in your sketchbook. Now they're worried that terrorists might be planning a massive attack of "copyright infringement." Check it out here.
Yes, arnie, the Daily Mail, the Mirror, and the Metro all ran stories on 2 October 2008, (link). Nothing on the school's website (link), but the bees are pretty.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh, 
