Garaphernalia 7.5

An excellent article on why our Intelligence agencies suck.

I would add, one other reason why Americans don’t learn foreign languages is that we just dont have to. English, like it or not, has become the lingua franca of the world….the irony of that statement is not lost on me. Its not necessairly because of cultural hegemony either, as the trend was underway well before the end of WWII . The EU (then the EC) picked English as their working language even before the UK joined. Likewise, the European Central bank uses english, even though the UK isn’t part of the Euro.

The only place in Europe I ever had difficulty finding english speakers was in Paris (go figure). I even had cab drivers in Taiwan know enough english to get the job done.

Switzerland recently mandated that all schools teach english as the primary second language (you used to be able to pick French, German, or Italian). It just makes good sense to learn english as a second language no matter what your primary language is.

English is spoken as a primary or working/official language by countries on every continent: US, Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, Guyana, Nigeria, Belize, Botswana, Pakistan, Bahamas, Jamaica, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, and the Philippines. There are more minor ones I’m sure.

I wonder if english has hit the tipping point where it has momentum beyond the US and the UK. Currently, if you have most any sort of international conference, its going to be in english, even if there are no english speaking countries in attendance. If a German, a dutchman and an Italian get together, they are going to speak english….and you’ll probably get a punchline too.

In conclusion, there’s a good reason why we don’t learn foreign languages. The time is better spent studying something else.

to update your site when all the old posts have expired.

I’ve actually written many updates, but for one reason or another, they never make it. I’ve even written updates as to why there are no updates. Rather than get into all of that, here’s whats new:

• I got a new tomato clownfish for my aquarium. I have a tomato clownfish that has been in my tank for a few years and I thought I’d try to get a mated pair. After about two weeks, they seem to have taken to each other. (Actually, the older, larger female stopped chasing off the smaller male) The problem is thier host anenome swllowed half of a muscle and it had a hard time expelling it. The anenome is now shriveled up, but I think it will pull through.
• Scott Kurtz was here last week. He left, got sick.
• I’ve moved to a low carb diet this week. The first 48 hours really sucked, I think because my body was removing sugar and caffene. I haven’t had a diet coke since Sunday morning. I had a terrible headache all Monday and flu like symptions. On the plus side, I feel fine now and have dropped eight pounds.
• I’ve ripped most of my classical music collection to MP3. Its more difficult to do than ripping normal CDs for several reasons: 1) More often than not, you aren’t going to have any information about the CD on CDDB. If there is something there, its probably wrong. 2) An “album” doesn’t have as much meaning in the world of classical music. There is a pretty strong division between those who write and those who perform. ‘Act Naturally’ by the Beatles would go in a Beatles directory, even though the song was written by Carl Perkins. Likewise, the ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ version by Elton John would go in an Elton John directory, not a Beatles directory. But if Yo Yo Ma performs something by Brhams, where do you put it? You would probably put in it a composer directory. But then you have CDs which are just hodge podge collections from different composers….and sometimes, the feature of a disc is the conductor, not the soloist. 3) Many times, only part of a piece will be recorded. Perhaps an overture or finale. I’ve been organizing it by composer and by work, which often means splitting up the tracks on a CD.
• One thing I’ve always wondered about classical musics is why there is so much variation in the price of the CDs? The cheap one are really cheap. The expensive ones are very expensive. Most, but not all. of what you will find has had the copyright expire already. They should be cheaper across the board. Most expensive orchesteral works are recorded in one shot and don’t require weeks of studio time. They usually own the concert hall its performed in. Nadox CDs are $4.99, Deutche Gramaphone’s are sometimes over $20.

To all of you who were in debate, here’s a little something from the New York Times.

Hopefully, this will make the next generation of debaters speak more clearly and over all improve the speed and clarity rounds.

I just realized how long its been since I posted an update. I’ve actually written several, but none of them made the cut. Here’s what’s new:

• I got a bitchen new cell phone. (do people still use that term)? Its a Samsung A620 and I switched over to Sprint. This phone is far more powerful than some PC’s I’ve owned. That is not an exaggeration. It has built in Internet access and a digital camera. I have a cable I got off of Ebay on the way that will let me get net access for my laptop via the phone at about 250k. The bandwidth isn’t metered either.
• I also picked up the new Earthlink USB GPS from DeLorme. This is so much better than their old one its a joke. Their old GPS a) used a serial port, b) required 4 AAA batteries, and c) had no on/off switch. Once you put the batteries in, they would run till you took them out or they were dead. In addition to being smaller, lighter, USB, and less power hungry, it is also way more accurate. Its WAAS enabled. I can attach the GPS with a suction cup to the back of my Vaio and have a small, neat little GPS mapping tool.
• I went to the McDonalds drive through the other day during the lunch hour. Rather than pulling up to the speaker, they had a guy outside with a wireless device walking up to the cars and taking orders. It was very slick and I enjoyed talking directly to a person, rather than through a speaker. It was also probably more efficient for McDonalds because the person taking orders didn’t also have to deal with money.
• I got a new shower head. This isn’t usually a big deal, but its a cool shower head. Its a 8″ diameter head that drops the water straight down. Its great. Especially since my water pressure sucks.
• I have a Mobile Weblog (moblog) set up at http://garndt.textamerica.com/ . Its not a real weblog, but just a place where photos taken from my phone will automatically appear. Because it has an RSS feed, eventually I’ll try to port them automatically to this site.

I usually never take these sort of tests, but thought this was sort of clever.

You’re Australia!
You’re easy-going, relaxed, and yet somewhat tough and hardy all at the same time.  You can appreciate culture, scuba diving, and even safaris.  This makes you pretty interesting and intriguing to others, though also really unpredictable and even wild.  Your knowledge of nature is unthinkable to most of those around you, even though your respect for it is sometimes less than perfect.  People really like your accent.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

As to how well this fits my personality, I will leave it up to you.