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Mark: Hello and welcome back to EnglishLingQ.

Mark here with Steve.

Steve: Hello there.

Mark: We’re here ready to go for another episode.

Steve: You know, of course, we like to talk about things that are topical because, certainly, I find when I learn languages I learn about more things than just the language.

In fact, I learn best when I’m learning something else or if I’m enjoying a book or learning about the history of a country and so forth.

So, since we live here, we can talk at least a bit about the most recent event here of interest to people who live here in Vancouver, British Columbia, was our Provincial Election.

Mark: Right. We had an election yesterday.

An interesting side note, I saw an article I was reading in the news this morning talking about how voter turnout was the lowest ever or lower than last time.

It was 51% or whatever it was and then the very next comment was, “it was a tremendous result” or something by the guy who won.

Steve: Right.

Mark: So it just seemed like that was tied into the lowest turnout ever, what a tremendous result.

It just seemed funny to me.

I don’t know why turnout keeps going down, but…

Steve: I think there are a number of reasons.

One is that the system that we have there’s a lot about it that’s not very attractive.

Mark: Right.

Steve: There is watching our politicians in our House of Parliament yakking at each other, getting all worked up about things that don’t matter, being very partisan.

You know we have a situation in our Federal Parliament where they’re attacking one Member of Parliament because her family mistreated some immigrant Pilipino nannies.

I mean it’s a dispute between this family and their nannies.

It’s not a major political issue and yet it’s taking up all kinds of time in Parliamentary discussions, so I think a lot of this turns voters off.

Mark: Because politicians don’t act on their own principles.

It’s always about posturing and showing how, in this case, pro immigrant or looking out for the little guy or look at me.

Oh, how could you?

That’s horrible.

Steve: Or attacking the other.

Mark: It’s all about posturing so that you get votes the next time around rather than, gee, I’d really like to see this change happen.

That really does not seem to be a big part of…

Steve: Mind you, it’s very difficult to say what change should happen.

You know I was watching one of the ads on TV and the head of one of the parties – head of the more socialist party – what’s her name again?

Mark: I can’t remember…Carol James.

Steve: She was saying we have to make sure that our policies just don’t favor one group that our policies have to favor all British Columbians.

Well that’s completely ridiculous.

Every policy is going to favor some people over other people.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And the job of the politicians is kind of to sort out…I mean they have their favorite group.

The socialists will tend to favor the unionized worker, particularly the public sector union employees, and, to some extent, the more conservative or centrist party will try to favor the business community, but still have to pander to these other organized groups.

It’s all about balancing these things.

I mean, yeah, if, on the one hand, one group wants more free medicine…like right now we have a healthcare system, but you pay for a portion of your medical costs.

If someone says we want that all to be free, well, someone else has got to pay for that and that’s going to be the taxpayer and that’s going to be overwhelmingly people who earn more money.

So, whatever you do, it’s always a matter of balancing off different people’s interests.

You can’t just have something that everybody says that’s great, I like it.

It doesn’t exist, you know?

Mark: No.

Steve: Most of their slogans are so ridiculous.

Mark: Well, speaking of that particular party, I have to say I was astounded by their advertising that was just so completely dishonest.

Whether you agree with that party’s principles or not, I think anyone on the fence seeing that ad…and the party in power has been in power for, I don’t know, eight years or something like that and this party is trying to take over or overthrow them.

They said, you know, eight years of fewer hospitals.

I mean stuff that nobody is aware of, is probably untrue; they probably twisted some facts somewhere.

But it’s not like these topics have been in the news, they just pull this stuff sort of out of nowhere.

They had a list of eight things that this terrible government has been doing.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

Mark: I don’t think that’s true. I’m not aware of any of these issues.

Steve: You have less money, fewer hospital beds, no money spent on education, all of which is not true.

Plus, he’s dishonest and he stole money from you and all of this stuff.

So then, okay, but what are you proposing?

Mark: To me it was so not believable.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Okay, well now everything you say is then suspect.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I’m sure he’s done some stupid things.

I mean I know he’s done stupid things and things that have proven to be the wrong thing to do.

Talk about those, but the minute you start, essentially, making things up then it just totally discredits everything you say.

Steve: Anyway… But it’s not just them, all the parties do that.

Mark: Oh, I know.

Steve: But it’s interesting. So it’s not a great system.

The other thing is, of course, people don’t understand many of the issues.

I mean they have these surveys: Do you think the government is doing a good job in terms of fighting the economic crisis?

Well I don’t think the best experts know how best to fight the economic crisis.

Mark: Right.

Steve: What possible chance does the average person have?

If you asked him, how is the local hockey team doing, he might have an idea, but, how are we doing vis-à-vis the economic crisis, he hasn’t a clue.

And a good example of that was this issue that we had a referendum on, which was whether we should change our method of counting the votes.

The system we have right now is what they call a “first past the post”.

So you have these individual electoral districts, which are called “ridings”, and in each riding the different parties will put up representatives and one of them will win.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So if there are 75 or however many ridings in British Columbia then there will be one representative from each riding.

Mark: Each party in each riding.

Steve: Oh, okay.

In the election there’ll be a representative from each riding.

Mark: Oh, yeah, right.

Steve: But in the House of Parliament you will have on representative.

It might be from Party A or from Party B or it could be an independent, but only one per riding.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So they came up with this complicated deal where you had your first choice and your second choice.

I didn’t understand it and I read quite well and I’m actually interested in politics, I couldn’t understand it.

Mark: And made an effort to understand it and I did the same.

Steve: I made an effort.

Mark: I watched…they had some video, a cartoon video.

I guess they were trying to dumb it down…

Steve: Right.

Mark: …for the great unwashed.

Okay, I could understand it, but it’s so convoluted most people aren’t going to watch the video or read the explanation.

Even if they do it’s so convoluted it’s hard to understand and, more importantly, all the different machinations of swapping.

Okay, you vote and you can vote for a first, second, third, fourth choice or just one person.

If you vote for multiple people those votes eventually can filter down to those people and those people can get at it.

I mean it was just…there’s no way a system that complicated could ever be implemented.

Steve: But you know the way they came up with that is in itself an interesting example of the problems with democracy.

And don’t get me wrong, I think democracy is the best system because there is no other system.

Mark: Right.

Steve: The other system is to simply say we want the smartest guy possible to run everything.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Okay.

That doesn’t work, because he will do things that people don’t like and if he has all the power then that will not be good in the long run.

I mean I definitely believe in the importance of decentralizing decision making.

Make it confusing, have a lot of people, whatever they do it doesn’t matter, don’t have a totalitarian system.

It has led to some pretty disastrous results, so democracy works, but it has its problems.

This process was quite a good example.

What they did was they selected, I don’t know, 500 people at random in the Province, like just names out of a telephone book.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And these people were then asked to form a special consultative committee or assembly, so that’s so far so good.

You’ve selected people at random and they’re all keen to do their bit for society and come up with a better way to elect representatives, but, then, the intellectuals come along.

Because this is not something that somebody drew up while sitting in a meeting…

Mark: Exactly.

Steve: …some guy who runs a gas station or a housewife or something.

So these intellectuals, these academics come in, here’s this one convoluted system, here’s another system, here’s another system.

And they have day after day to sit there and talk about it and pretty soon they’re persuaded that this extremely complicated system is good and then they vote on it and they decide on it.

The interesting thing is that those people who went through that whole process were very disappointed that there were people who didn’t like their recommendation.

Like they felt that because they had gone through this whole process, whatever they recommended, that people should just buy it.

Well, no, people don’t.

Mark: And I guess it needed a 60% approval from the referendum and got like 30% or something.

Steve: It was more.

It was more like 38% or something.

Mark: Oh, was it?

Steve: Yeah. So I mean that’s very difficult; to sell a new concept.

Beside which the only thing that people did understand was I will no longer have one representative from my riding.

So that there are people that understand that if I live in this riding and if I have a serious problem with the government I can go to my representative.

That much we understand.

Whether we vote or not, if I’m really upset about something I know where his office or her office is, I can go there and complain.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Now they would have larger districts with multiple representatives and it just confused people, so they said no thank you.

Mark: For the second time, so that’s dead now.

Steve: It’s dead, yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: But it is…anyway…

Mark: I think part of the problem with politics is that, in most people’s mind, it attracts low-quality people because I don’t think it’s that attractive a position.

You’re in the public eye; every move you make is watched.

In British Columbia, where most people live in Vancouver, you’d have to move to Victoria where the Parliament sits.

Steve: Or Ottawa, if it’s federal, which is a long way away.

Mark: Nobody wants to do that.

You have to give up whatever job you happen to be doing now.

Steve: You have to go around and shake hands everywhere; go to business meetings.

Mark: Glad-handing everybody, useless meetings.

Steve: It’s a thankless job.

Mark: It’s a thankless job.

Somewhere along the line…I mean maybe it’s always been a thankless job, but it doesn’t attract…

Steve: Maybe we should allow them to take bribes. I mean sure.

You know I want you to do this for me and here’s some money.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Which, at a certain level, is what happens because the politicians want your support, they understand that you may provide them maybe with a vote or volunteer or give them money, so there is this sense of you do something for me I do something for you.

Mark: Well because of the party donations that go on.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

Mark: I mean it’s not quite giving bribes.

Steve: It’s not quite a bribe, but it is to some extent. I mean in all countries…

Mark: I think, yeah, I mean the more they could…you were talking about this the other day, too, about selecting people at random to be for a four-year term.

But, again, well it’s like jury duty, you know.

Okay, now I have a four-year stint as a politician I didn’t ask for.

Steve: Well you should be allowed to decline, but it’s not a practical solution.

But I have a friend who wrote a book on the subject, suggesting that all of our members of Parliament should be selected at random.

But what would tend to happen is certain people would take over.

I think they would, you know…

Mark: Why is that?

Steve: Well within that group.

Mark: Certain people.

Steve: Certain people who were selected would be more…they would all be…let’s say they had 300 people selected…

Mark: Well, sure, in any group certain people are going to rise to the top and become leaders, but because you know you’re there for a short time you don’t have to be worried about making sure I get reelected.

Steve: Right.

Mark: You’re there trying to do the right thing and you have 500 other people or whatever the number is who are randomly selected who are there to also try and do the right thing.

Even if you do rise to become one of the leaders and you’re trying to promote something stupid, I mean not only everybody in the room, but the people in their riding are going to be letting them know.

Steve: The problem is you would have no control.

Of those 500 people it could turn out that a significant number are communist, fascist, this that and the other and they could take over the thing and now you have no control.

So, this way, you vote in a certain party which stands for certain principles…

Mark: Yeah, that’s true.

Steve: …and if you don’t like what they’re doing you’re going to kick them out next time.

Whereas, this random thing, you’re not responsible to anybody.

Mark: Right.

Steve: You don’t like what I’m doing, I’m going to make as much money as I can while I’m here and then, you know, I don’t know.

I think the system we have, with all its faults, is probably as good as we’re going to get.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Mark: Welcome back, again, to EnglishLingQ.

Steve: Hello there.

Mark: Mark here with Steve.

Having just read that spiel, it reminds me of the conference we were at last week where people weren’t quite sure how to pronounce LingQ.

When I explained that, in fact, it was LingQ and not “Link You”, someone expressed disappointment.

They thought Link You was a better name, because it links you, I guess.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Anyway, that was kind of interesting.

Steve: By the way, since you’re talking about that conference, I was very impressed; it was a conference here in Vancouver.

People who have developed wireless or other applications to be used with wireless devices gave presentations.

They were all limited to three minutes and just about everyone stayed within the three minutes.

This is in contrast to a conference that I attended, because I now am a Director of the Canadian Council for the Americas Vancouver branch.

There was a big conference about Canada and Latin America and they had ambassadors there, both ambassadors from those countries to Canada and some Canadian ambassadors who were on their way out there.

Let me say that they had a lot of trouble staying within their allotted time.

Mark: Which was probably longer than three minutes.

Steve: Which was much longer than three minutes and, so, the first group of four or five ambassadors got to hog a lot of the time.

The one thing that was fixed was we had to get out of the room so that they could set, you know, the tables for dinner.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So the first group just yapped on and on enough to hear themselves; you know all kinds of high-flying statements.

Then the next four countries, which were then Columbia and whatever, they had to stick to their time limit.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But the first group, in love with what they had to say, was able to just waffle on.

Mark: Well and a great way of doing it, I thought, at that conference you were at.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: All of a sudden, if people were going too long, there’d be some kind of a goofy audio clip of, you know, someone answering the phone or some voice saying something goofy.

That’s your cue, it’s over.

And most people wrapped it up pretty quickly after that.

There was one guy, maybe you missed that guy, but he kind of kept groaning on and looked annoyed.

I’m like, actually, everybody else here is annoyed.

You have no right to be annoyed.

People aren’t that interested in what you’re saying, fit in your three minutes and sit down.

Steve: Well, besides, they have a great long list of people who want to speak.

Mark: Exactly.

Steve: It’s not a matter of even…I think some of those ambassadors were interesting to listen to, but maybe the other group also had some things that were of interest, you know?

But, I think it’s a good idea to have it automatically timed like that because, otherwise, the Master of Ceremonies is always reluctant to interrupt his Excellency, you know, who’s droning on about something.

Mark: Exactly.

It’s much more difficult to say, oh, excuse me, excuse me, your times up, rather than all of a sudden over the P.A.

comes some goofy sound clip.

Steve: I know.

Anyway, you know I was thinking Mark, these podcasts of ours; we really are sort of contrarians.

We’re always kind of “pooh-poohing”, as we say…

Mark: That’s true.

Steve: …some of the sort of conventional wisdoms.

And along that line…and I know you have some things you want to talk about, but I just wanted to mention…I was reading in the paper this morning that the seasonal flu that every year we get here…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …during flu season is much more contagious, apparently, than the so-called Swine Flu.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And there’s nothing special about Swine Flu because we have been getting flu from swine and other animals for a long, long time.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So this whole… From what I gather, if this is correct, and certainly in terms of the number of people who die every year from flu, it’s a large number.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And the Swine Flu hasn’t come any where…

Mark: Well, no one has died from it in Canada anyway.

Steve: Not in Canada, so… I mean it’s just another example of how things are just hyped out of all proportion and, in the end, as they pointed out in the newspaper, if, as a result of this, economic activity in Mexico comes to a grinding halt, tourism is killed off, people don’t go there, that’s going to cost them a lot of money.

And so people are going to suffer economically and typically the people who suffer the most are the poor people.

If they suffer economically their health will suffer, so probably the fallout from the Swine Flu will end up having worse health effects and probably leading to the premature death of more people than the Swine Flu itself.

Mark: That’s probably true.

I think with regard to – whatever you want to call it – the normal flu or the seasonal flu, the people most affected by the seasonal flu are the elderly, I believe, and maybe young children.

I don’t know that for a fact, but I know that it’s the elderly and that’s why they always encourage the elderly to get flu shots in flu season; whereas, I think partly what’s got people’s fears aroused in Mexico is that it’s not the elderly at all, it’s relatively young adults.

Twenty to 40 or something is the age group that seems to be most affected, so maybe that’s partly the reason.

It’s obviously out of the norm for the seasonal flu, anyway.

Steve: And the problem, to be fair, too, is that if people think that there is a chance that something like a pandemic is about to happen it’s always best to err on the side of caution.

Mark: Absolutely and the fact that Mexico City, it sounds like, came to a grinding halt there for a while.

I don’t know if it’s still like that, but it could have reduced the spread.

Steve: Yeah, we don’t know.

Mark: Not being on expert on the spread of diseases, you go by what you read and hear.

Steve: I gather a bus load of Canadian students arrived in Beijing and were promptly put into quarantine.

Mark: Not in Beijing, it was somewhere in Northern China.

Steve: In China.

And, of course, being in China, you know, access…like the Embassy is only allowed to see them for 10 minutes.

You can just see that it’s a major kafuffle.

Mark: That’s the greatest.

The Embassy is only allowed to meet with them for 10 minutes and they must take their temperature three times a day and record it every day for a week.

Anyway, it just all sounds pretty funny.

Steve: On the other hand, when there was a massive sort of tidal wave of poisonous chemicals moving towards some town in North China nobody announced it because nobody really wanted to be, you know, on the hook and, hopefully, it might stop.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Anyway… Now they’re going after these Canadians, so that’s good.

That’s good, they won’t infect anyone.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Anyway…

Mark: Another topic that’s been in the news a lot in Canada recently is this banning of the seal hunt, which probably doesn’t rate in most other countries as a news item.

Although, I guess there are a lot of places where the anti seal hunt propaganda machine has got their message out.

I must be honest, I can’t recall the last time I saw a product made from seal skin.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I mean I guess they used to use seal skins for cross-country skiing to climb up hillsides, but, I don’t know.

Steve: I think one of the major products is…

Mark: I think those are synthetic now.

Steve: Yeah.

I think you have these cute mascots that are sold in Canadian souvenir stores that are made in China and they might be made of seal skin.

Mark: That could be.

Steve: But it’s a fur, it’s a fur.

I guess there are people who wear…maybe it’s a lining for something, I don’t know.

Mark: Apparently a third of their market is in Europe, so obviously there are Europeans that buy this stuff.

But, then, I guess… I mean, personally, whether they hunt seals or not, it’s not on my radar, it doesn’t bother me either way, but it does bother me when a government body does not allow you.

Steve: Right.

Mark: You are not allowed to buy seal skin.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Well, why not? What’s wrong with seal skin?

Steve: Well, I mean the argument is that it looks very cruel because you have these cute little seal pups going “oink, oink, oink” and then some mean old guy comes up and just whacks them over the head and takes their pelt and doesn’t use, you know, the meat for anything.

So if a person wants to make the personal decision not to buy a seal skin product then I can perfectly understand that.

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: I would recommend that anyone who eats chicken never ever go to a chicken farm or a place where they pluck and slaughter and then prepare chickens for our table, because that looks pretty revolting too.

Mark: Well that’s what I was going to say.

I mean what about all the cattle that are slaughtered that live in cramped conditions and, you know, not necessarily pleasant conditions?

Steve: Right.

Mark: All the poultry and…

Steve: It’s horrible, actually.

Mark: It’s pretty horrible.

And so what’s worse, that or the way the seals are clubbed?

I mean who’s to say?

Steve: Well, exactly.

And the other thing is, on the positive side…although they do have an image problem, they do have an image problem.

But, on the positive side, apparently the seal population has been expanding and we see it here on the west coast.

They have no predators, there are just more and more seals and the seals eat a lot of fish.

That’s what they do.

Mark: Right.

Steve: They eat fish.

Again, I’m not a fisheries expert, but apparently the argument is that controlling the seals is good for our cod stocks.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Now should humans be intervening in these things?

I mean we do inevitably anyway and humans are part of the predatory cycle…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …part of the food chain.

So, I don’t know.

Mark: I don’t know either, but I guess it’s a bit like…for a long time the forest industry was the poster child for all the Greenpeace, save a tree, hug a tree and all this and the seal hunt business is a similar poster child.

Steve: Right.

Mark: You know Paul McCartney and his wife were out there parading around in Zodiacs, which gives, obviously, this big PR boost to the whole seal hunt thing; otherwise, people wouldn’t even know about it.

Steve: Right.

Mark: It just happens in Newfoundland, I mean…

Steve: Well, that’s right.

To me, of all the sort of injustices that take place on this planet, it doesn’t rank very high.

On the other hand, the fur industry, in general, is regularly sort of attacked.

Mark: Harassed.

Steve: Most of the people involved in the fur industry in Canada are quite poor.

They live up north, many of them are natives.

They have trap lines; this is their means of livelihood.

It’s a way of life, it’s their culture.

And I am quite convinced that furs are just about the most environmentally-benign clothing material that there is, because most cotton is grown in massive monoculture plantations…

Mark: Lots of fertilizer, I’m sure.

Steve: …with lots of fertilizer flowing into their water system…

Mark: …and pesticides.

Steve: Not to mention the synthetic fibers, which are part of a nonrenewal industry, which is the petroleum industry.

So, furs, as long as it’s handled in a sustainable way, I think it’s great.

What I do like about the fur protestors is that you sometimes get very attractive women parading around naked to protest, you know, and they’re welcome to come and do that outside my office here, I think that’s great!

Mark: It certainly is a very effective method.

Steve: Well, yeah, they can also carry posters promoting LingQ while they’re doing it, you know?

Mark: Yeah, I mean I know that whole PETA.

I don’t know what it stands for, but the anti-fur lobby, I don’t understand it.

Why?

I mean people have been wearing furs forever and, as you say, it’s completely renewable.

Yes, you know it’s no different than how the food appears on your table; something had to die for the food to appear on your table.

Something had to die for your fur coat, but why that’s a crime and has to be so vehemently protested against, I must say, I don’t understand, especially, as you point out, because it’s probably environmentally more friendly than just about any other type of clothing.

Steve: Right.

Now I have nothing against a person who finds it cruel and doesn’t want to use seals or fur or anything else…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …people make their own decisions, but for the government to ban it I think is just silly.

But speaking of furs, I’m reminded of the story when you were playing hockey.

You’ve heard the story, but I think it might be fun for some our listeners.

You were playing hockey for Yale and, of course, Yale has a team in this Ivy League, which is this sort of elite American University League.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So your mother and I came down to watch you play and you were playing at this one college and, of course, we’re surrounded by all these Ivy League students and, of course, your mother had on a fur coat.

So the student sitting beside your mother made some comment about the fur coat and, of course, as you know, your mom doesn’t take this lying down, so to speak, and she said, “Oh yeah?

Do you eat meat?” So the American student said, “No.” And she said, “You lie.

Of course you eat meat, that’s why you’re so fat!

That’s why all Americans are fat!” she said.

Mark: Oh, well…

Steve: At this point that was unfair, but, yeah, it’s unfair. At this point I withdrew.

I ran up a few steps, I didn’t want to be there for this.

But the point is this, that, yeah, the way we deal…and maybe we should be, I don’t know, more humane, but where do you draw the line?

I mean, I don’t know.

Mark: The whole humane thing I think is just silly.

People are animals and we prey on smaller animals.

We’re fortunate that we don’t have to worry about being preyed upon, most of the time, by other animals, but we’re part of the food chain and that’s the way it’s always been and the way it always will be.

Steve: Right. I guess, again, the distinction…

Mark: Carrying on about it…I just don’t… As you say, personal preference, that’s fine, you do what you like, but don’t try and tell me or others how to behave.

Steve: But, you know this is the point, too, that I guess some people criticize the fact that they kill the seals and don’t eat the meat.

But it reminds me, too, I was reading somewhere that someone was saying that their 11-year-old daughter is a vegetarian.

I mean that’s pretty bad.

Mark: Well, that’s pretty bad, yeah.

Steve: Because an 11 year old has been totally influenced by her teacher, by someone else.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And I don’t think being a vegetarian is that healthy for you when you’re young.

Mark: No.

Steve: Because we need the protein and we need other things that come from the meat.

Now an adult can make his or her own decisions and may supplement or whatever, but for an 11 year old to be a vegetarian, I think that’s pretty bad.

Mark: Right. Well, absolutely.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, obviously, if the parents are of that persuasion…

Steve: No, they aren’t.

Mark: They’re not?

Steve: No, no, no, they’re quite concerned.

They think she picked it up at school or maybe she, you know… Because there’s all kinds of now subliminal messaging in all the games that they get about planting trees and being a vegetarian and she didn’t want to kill an animal and all this kind of stuff.

Mark: Yeah, I know.

Steve: We kill animals.

Mark: Exactly.

Steve: For millions of years humans and their predecessors have been killing animals.

Mark: And there are still lots of animals around.

Steve: I know.

Anyway, we shouldn’t get…we always get back to environmentalism.

What else have you got on the agenda?

Mark: The only other thing that’s, again, of note in Canada is that one of the cofounders of Blackberry, which is a hand-held phone that’s been very successful, they want to buy a hockey team in Phoenix and move it to…

Steve: A professional hockey team.

Mark: …southern Ontario.

And that’s big news in Canada where hockey, of course, is king.

What’s interesting is that this team was originally a Canadian-based team.

It was in Winnipeg and it moved down to Phoenix about, I don’t know, 15 years ago, I don’t know how long it’s been, but it’s never done very well in Phoenix which, not surprisingly, is not much of a hockey hotbed.

Steve: The Sunbelt.

Mark: They’ve been losing lots of money and apparently they’re going into bankruptcy and so this guy has offered to step in and buy it and move it.

I guess it’s a big story, too, because the NHL ownership…

Steve: The NHL is the National Hockey League.

Mark: …for a long time has been trying to push this idea of hockey teams in the southern United States or in the Sunbelt to try and spread the game to increase the audience.

A lot of people in Canada feel that the League sort of takes for granted its fan base in Canada and is far too focused on markets where people just aren’t interested.

Steve: I mean it’s an interesting point, because to Canadians they almost feel that they have a right because hockey is so popular in Canada and so many players come from Canada and for the longest period Canada was the main hockey nation.

I mean hockey has spread; it’s spread a lot in Europe.

Mark: Right.

Steve: We see a lot of teams now, very competitive teams, from places like Latvia, obviously Finland.

Finland, which 20-30 years ago wasn’t that competitive, now very strongly beat Canada recently in the World Cup match; although, that’s not over yet.

Hungary I see was there, Switzerland is now strong, Germany and so forth, so it’s been successful in Europe.

They’ve tried to spread it into the southern part of the United States.

Part of the problem is that out of…how many teams are there in the League?

Mark: Thirty, maybe.

Steve: Thirty teams; there’s only four or, whatever, six Canadian teams.

Mark: Six.

Steve: So the majority of the owners are Americans and they would rather see Columbus, Ohio or you know Chicago or Philadelphia come to town than a team from Kitchener-Waterloo…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …which nobody would be able to find on a map.

So in terms of their product, from a strictly business point of view, they don’t want a bunch of Canadian teams because that’s going to make it more difficult to sell the product in their area.

Fine, yet they haven’t been successful.

Those teams are dying in those places like Phoenix and Nashville.

How’s it doing in Nashville?

Mark: Not very well, they almost folded a couple of years ago.

This same guy tried to buy the Nashville team and he wasn’t allowed.

Steve: But it is a business.

So, to that extent, it’s not a matter of national interest, it’s a matter of business.

Mark: Well, absolutely not.

But the thing is, like Phoenix, they say they’ve lost something like $200 million over the last 10 years or something.

Steve: Wow.

Mark: I mean they lose $20 million a year because their rink is empty and there’s no television money for hockey in the U.S.

Steve: But is there opposition now to moving the team to Canada?

Mark: Well, from the Commission of the League.

Steve: Which means, presumably, he represents a majority of the owners.

Mark: Presumably he represents the owners.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Toronto Maple Leafs are resistant as well…

Steve: Right. Now…

Mark: …because they’ve, up until now, had that whole southern Ontario market to themselves.

I mean I guess it would affect their revenue slightly, maybe, but I mean they’re, if not the richest franchise, one of the top two.

I mean their rink is full.

Steve: But if they can get away with it and protect the market.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So the League as a League has to make a decision.

Canadians get all upset and nationalistic over it, I just think it’s a business decision and the majority of their owners have to decide what they think is in their interest, that’s all.

Mark: Right, right.

Steve: But you know it reminds me of this other issue that I mentioned once on my blog, which was the issue over… How much time do we have?

Mark: I think that’s probably enough.

Steve: Alright. So I won’t get into that subject then.

Mark: No.

Steve: We’ll save that for next time.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: Okay, talk to you later.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: Bye-bye.

Steve: Bye.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Mark: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Mark here with Steve.

Steve: Hello there. We’re going to hear a little bit of background car noise.

That makes is authentic here.

Mark: We’re enjoying the nice spring weather we’re having today.

Steve: We even have a visitor here in the room with us, Gordie the dog.

Mark: He may join in at some point.

Steve: We hope not.

Mark: But he’s kind of shy.

Steve: That’s right. Do you know what I want to talk about?

Mark: What’s that?

Steve: Mark, I think that anybody who’s not interested in what I’m interested in is a fool.

Does that make sense?

Mark: Certainly.

Steve: Anyone who doesn’t share my interest is stupid.

Mark: For sure. I mean it goes without saying.

Steve: The reason I realize that is because a person who is much listened to in Canada, at least by some people, who gets invited to speak at universities, a certain Sacha Trudeau, son of our former…I won’t use any kind of epithet…Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, this Sacha Trudeau, addressed students at the University of Western Ontario and had two things to say.

One, he said, “People who only know one language can be very myopic, just look at the United States.” That was his statement.

He speaks two languages, French and English and he’s so impressed with himself.

He’s convinced that anyone who doesn’t speak two languages…he can be a brain surgeon, he can be an engineer, he can be a ballerina or she, it doesn’t matter…these people are all myopic because they only speak one language.

Sacha Trudeau speaks two languages and therefore he is farseeing.

Mark: Well he has two purposes with that statement: (A) He draws attention to the fact that he is extremely clever because he does speak two languages and (B) he gets a cheap shot in at the States, which is part of the culture there.

Steve: With Barack Obama trying to buy out the American industry and hand out money and basically turn the United States into the American Socialist Republic, is that still fair game?

Mark: I think so, I’m pretty sure.

It’s pretty hard to eradicate that mentality, the U.S.

bashing mentality of the Liberal Party here.

That’s a pretty strong core belief there.

Steve: But it is rather extraordinary, you know.

I mean I speak 11 languages, I love languages.

I think languages are great, but there are all kinds of people who speak many languages who are (A) stupid.

Maybe I’m included in that category in some people’s opinion.

It doesn’t matter; some people like to play the violin.

Mark: Exactly.

Steve: Some people like to do other things, how can you categorize?

Mark: Lots of people do things that you have no interest in doing and are very good at them.

Steve: Well, sure.

Mark: If they think anyone who doesn’t know how to fix cars is an idiot that…

Steve: I had a great friend, an older man who was a friend of the family, and he used to build these model sailboats and put them inside a bottle.

I mean I could never do that.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That’s a tremendous skill. It’s not very useful…

Mark: No.

Steve: …but it’s a skill.

I mean there are all kinds of useful skills, too, and just to say… And then the second thing is to categorize, you know, look at America like everybody in the United States is myopic and everyone in Canada or in, I don’t know, Russia, China, Afghanistan, they’re not?

Mark: Right. I don’t know.

Steve: How can you be so retarded? And this guy gets invited to talk…

Mark: It’s amazing.

Steve: …and all the so self-righteous, intellectual people all giggle when he says stuff like that.

Mark: Right.

Steve: What an idiot.

What an absolute idiot.

He is living proof that you can speak more than one language and be an idiot.

Mark: Yes, he is.

Steve: Anyway, that was the one thing.

He also said, in the same presentation, that Canada being bilingual is worth more to us than the tarsands.

Mark: Or as much to us.

Steve: Or as much to us as the tarsands.

No, but in terms of value, money-wise.

Well, no, because being bilingual costs us money.

It costs us a lot of money because it’s a political slush fund.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So that anything that’s involved with teaching French, being bilingual, means you can go and access public money and no one is going to ask questions and we’re talking billions of dollars.

Anyway, enough of that.

Mark: Enough of that.

Steve: So, anyway, I just thought I would pick up on him.

Anyone who’s not interested in what I’m interested in is a fool.

Mark: Well, on that note, are you interested in the Swine Flu, because here’s certainly been a lot to do with the Swine Flu in the news lately?

Steve: I know. I mean it’s very hard.

We’re sitting here and all you can really do is hope that you don’t get the Swine Flu.

Mark: I guess so.

Steve: I don’t know much about it.

I gather it’s another one of these illnesses that originates where people live in close proximity to animals, whether it be fowl, you know in terms of the Bird Flu, but every day you read something different.

That the strain we have in Canada is not this virulent strain and people aren’t going to die.

I don’t know.

Mark: Well, yeah, and that all these people had died in Mexico, but nobody had died in the U.S.

Although, I saw today that one person has died in the U.S.

from it, apparently, so obviously there must be a few different strains around.

Steve: And do they really know that all these people who supposedly died of the Swine Flu, in fact, died of the Swine Flu?

I mean people die from many different causes.

Mark: Well, yeah, you wonder how they know whether it’s the Swine Flu or just a flu or what indicates that it’s, in fact, the Swine Flu.

And then, of course, you get all the accompanying hysteria and the economy is going to suffer because of the Swine Flu.

I saw another article where Rogers, which is on the local cell phone providers, was saying that their results this quarter will be affected.

Because if travel restrictions are implemented and Canadians don’t travel as much that will restrict the amount of roaming charges that people who travel and use their cell phones will incur.

Steve: I know.

You know what really annoys me with these roaming charges is I can have my phone when I’m traveling in Phoenix, Arizona or somewhere, Palm Springs, and I get one of these telemarketing phone calls.

It’s not even a live person that I can, you know, get mad at…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …it’s a recording!

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: As soon as I hear this, of course, I turn it off, but you pay for each one of those.

Mark: For sure.

Steve: Another interesting thing about mobile telephones, cellular phones, charges and so forth, I read that there was a guy who had his cell phone stolen, I don’t know, in Columbia or Bolivia; he’s a Canadian.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And he didn’t report it and so whoever stole his telephone ran up $25,000 in charges.

Now he’s responsible for those $25,000 and the cell phone company won’t back down; like he has to pay.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I guess legally…legally, I guess they’re right.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Boy, I wouldn’t want to be in that situation.

Mark: That’s unreal.

Steve: I’m going to make sure I report my cell phone if I lose it.

Mark: That’s for sure, that’s for sure.

I don’t know, I think it’s different in different countries, but I think Canada is just about the worst insofar as cell phone charges and in terms of expense of cell phone and long distance charges.

Steve: I’m sure it’s related to the fact we have all kinds of ridiculous regulations and that it’s over-regulated and less competition, so that the cell phone companies are in a monopolistic position and they can charge what they want and do what they want.

Mark: Yeah, I think that’s what it is.

I mean we don’t have many cell phone providers, so, as you say, the competition doesn’t drive the price down.

That was a big reason why the iPhone took so long to come to Canada; because the data packages were so expensive here that Apple didn’t feel like it wanted to be a part of that whole thing.

Steve: Yeah. What else do we have in the news?

Mark: Well…

Steve: I’ll tell you one thing on my blog, while we’re on the subject of the arrogance of intellectuals or people who feel they’re self-righteous.

I posted on my blog about the fact that I visited the sawmill that I’m a part owner of and I talked about how great I think the wood industry is.

That we have a surplus of wood in the northern hemisphere and in the southern hemisphere in the coniferous forests and, of course, inevitably, you’ll get the people commenting who are of the sort of environmentalist strain.

I posted some comments and research that we’ve done, because in our forest, which is a natural forest, we do research on the caribou, on the bears, on the migrating birds, just to see the impact of our activity on their, you know, ecosystem and their life and so forth.

So this person comments with his counter piece.

Fine, put out by the Green Association or whatever it is, that’s fine.

(We’ll just let that airplane go over.

) But then he says, “You know, obviously, you’re going to say that because you’re in the industry.

You know, I wouldn’t ask a whaler about the whaling industry.” Well, my question is why wouldn’t you?

Who are you going to ask, some guy at a university?

Some guy like you who’s waving some fake sign?

Mark: Some environmentalist organization that derives 80% of their income from revenue associated with talking about the negative affects of forestry or whatever the case may be?

Steve: I see nothing wrong with the fact that there are these environmental organizations.

He posted this link on my blog and I leave it there for people who are interested.

By all means, I think we should ask an environmentalist about our forest or about the whaling, but we should also ask the whaler.

Mark: Right.

Steve: He knows. He’s got a perspective colored by his interest.

The environmentalist has a perspective colored by his interests.

Let’s see who’s got which facts; compare the facts.

Mark: Unfortunately, people tend to perceive environmentalists as being objective…

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: …which is not the case at all.

Steve: No.

Mark: Their bread and butter are these environmental causes and scaring people into separating the money from them to keep up the inflow of money.

Steve: Well, that’s good, nothing wrong with that.

But, yeah, now what about the Crisis, what’s going to happen on this Crisis?

You know, every day there are three bits of good news and two bits of bad news.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, I guess the thing is, nobody knows, nobody knows.

I was reading something on the stock market, which was saying that, you know, this is not the time to pull out of the stock market.

You want to stay invested; stock markets all go up over time.

This may be the bottom, it may not, but if you miss the top that the stock market moves the most on.

A small number of days, but if you’re not invested during those days then you miss a large amount of the rise.

I think this was obviously put out by somebody trying to promote stocks or an investment, but the point is nobody knows which way the market’s going.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I guess that article is trying to get people to not be afraid to stay invested.

Steve: Right.

Mark: If they’re able to do that and if more and more people believe in a recovery, then all of a sudden things turn around.

Steve: I mean the other thing, too, is to keep in mind, you know, what really is important.

Obviously, if you have lost your job and whatever…the number of unemployed, the percentage has gone from five and it’s going to up to seven-eight or nine percent.

I mean those people are seriously affected.

If they aren’t bringing home a paycheck, then they aren’t able to buy food for their family, so that’s a really serious problem for those people.

But for most people, the value of your house went down.

But if you still owe on your house, that’s fine.

Now, if you don’t… Like there are people (I think they call them in the States “upside down”) where they owe more; that their mortgage is larger than the value of their house.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That’s a pretty serious situation to be in.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: But, still again, you’ve got to allow things; over time, the value of the house will come up.

Over time, if you have stocks, the value of the stocks will go up.

Not everyone has stocks; it’s a small percentage of people who have stocks.

I mean the sun rises every day…

Mark: Right.

Steve: If I look at the things that I like to do, I like to get out when it’s sunny.

I just went for a run today.

You know you get together with friends and family, you have something to eat.

You share things with them, you share time with them.

You know I think one can get overly-depressed thinking about the economic situation.

Mark: Well, that’s right.

Most people are still going out for dinner or they still want things, you know they’re still buying things.

Maybe not as much as they did before, but they’re still going to Starbucks or whatever the case may be.

Steve: You don’t see the evidence here.

I mean the streets are not deserted.

Mark: No, not by any means.

But you do hear stories of people whose businesses have been seriously affected, for sure.

Steve: Right.

Mark: But, you know, at a day-to-day level people still carry on.

People still need to eat, people still need to buy things, so… I mean, obviously, a large part of the Crisis is created by fear and perception and I guess, over time…

S But, it’s real too, it’s real too.

Last night I had the dinner; our hockey team won our championship.

Mark: Right.

Steve: We had our celebration dinner…pasta night… so all the guys were there.

A couple of them are in construction and a lot of people are laying off staff and there is not very much construction work.

Now part of it is the post-Expo boom, but the other part of it is…

Mark: Expo?

Steve: Sorry, the post-Olympics.

Mark: Well, yeah.

Steve: A lot of the construction is no longer there.

Mark: Has completed, you mean.

Steve: Yeah and new construction is way down.

I mean the Americans… housing starts in the United States are at a quarter of their high of a couple of years ago, so there are some people seriously affected.

Mark: Absolutely. I think the real estate and construction has been seriously affected.

Steve: And I heard on the radio, too, that one area that’s particularly…this is my Portuguese podcast that I listen to…that Africa is pretty badly affected by this.

Because obviously in Europe, where there’s now increasing unemployment, a lot of people who are affected, initially, are these migrant workers – legal or illegal – from Africa who send money home.

Now if they’re out of work they can’t send money home.

There’s been a reduction in foreign investment in Africa, which apparently was up the last few years and now that’s fallen off.

The price of oil affects countries, like Nigeria, Angola and stuff like this.

And I guess foreign aid is down; although, I suspect that the foreign aid is a large waste of money anyway.

There was a book put out by an African journalist from Uganda…I’m not sure…Kenya, one of those countries, a serious economist, who did a study of the impact of foreign aid and came to the conclusion that it damaged Africa.

Mark: I’m sure it does, I’m sure it does.

Steve: That without the foreign aid, which distorts the market, which favors certain political cliques and the whole business… It’s the same as the education sector in Canada, because the game is all about trying to grab more funding rather than improving the performance of your education system.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Here, the aid, it’s all about grabbing more aid and dividing it up amongst your friends and family and so, therefore, this distorts the market.

And without that, she concluded based on her economic studies, the African countries would be more advanced.

They would have more industries.

Mark: Right.

Steve: They would be more serious, less corrupt, so that the aid actually breeds corruption and distortion.

I’m sure that’s true.

Mark: Well, I’m sure that’s true.

I mean how many years has the West been pumping money into Africa?

Has their lot been improved?

Steve: No.

Mark: No. So probably it’s time to try a different approach.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I mean it can’t be any worse.

Steve: Right.

Mark: But, of course, people feel good.

I gave money to Africa, you should give money too and then we can both feel good.

Steve: Well, that’s right. I mean, obviously, where there wasn’t a school now there’s a school.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Where there was dirty water now there’s clean water.

I mean you can see some very, you know, specific examples where the lot of certain people was improved, which is a good thing.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, overall, if the net result is, you know…

Mark: …to keep people down…

Steve: Zambia…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …look at Zambia today.

They used to be able to feed themselves now they can’t feed themselves and with that comes disease and poverty.

So, yeah, here and there, there’s a school, there’s a new water pump…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …but in the total picture, maybe that’s not such a good thing.

Mark: No. I mean they have to learn how to build up their economy, so they can provide these things for themselves.

Steve: Right. And let the genuinely entrepreneurial and capable people rise to the top.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Not those that are able to, you know…

Mark: …advance because of who they know.

Steve: That’s right.

Mark: Anyway, that’s probably enough for today.

Steve: Right.

Mark: We will take it up again next time.

Steve: Thank you for listening.

Mark: Bye.

Steve: Bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Mark: Hello, again, welcome back to EnglishLingQ.

Mark here with Steve, again.

Steve: Hello there.

Mark: Today, Steve has a number of topics that he’s called from the news files.

Steve: Well, exactly.

You know I was thinking about the world we live in and right now, of course, everyone is talking about the Crisis and people feel that they have to get a report every hour of something that relates to the Crisis.

One report has things improving and one has things getting worse and people get pepped up and then they get depressed.

We don’t need all this information, we have too much information and particularly the slight bullets of information and Twitter and Facebook and who’s brushing their teeth and who’s drinking coffee.

I’m just not into that, I like to sit down with my book, put on my classical music and read in peace for two hours.

Mark: I think you’re mixing together a few different themes there.

Steve: I thought it would stir up the pot.

Mark: I don’t see where news necessarily relates to Twitter.

I mean most of what happens on Twitter are individual people’s comments on what they’re doing, what they saw, what they read, as opposed to receiving actual news updates.

For instance, the Financial Crisis, I don’t think it’s Twitter that’s affecting it or mini bites of information.

Steve: No, I realize it’s not causing it, but what I’m saying is every time you turn on the news…like I don’t watch the news on TV anymore, but you would essentially see similar little blips of information about the Crisis; at 5:00 o’clock, 6:00 o’clock, 7:00 o’clock, slightly changing each time, with no significant information.

The average person doesn’t need to have a report every hour on what’s happening with regard to the Crisis.

There’s nothing he or she can do about it.

Mark: Well, I don’t think that many people are sitting there in front of their TVs waiting for the next update on the Financial Crisis.

I mean I think your point about all this news coverage obviously having an affect, I think, yeah, I agree with.

For instance, well, anywhere from the massive we’ve got to get the G-20 met and have to come out with massive new funding and programs and so on, which, to my mind, if it’s supposed to make people feel confident I think it has the reverse affect.

Because what it says is there’s a huge problem and these people are clutching at straws and opening up their pocketbooks trying to somehow turn the tide.

It doesn’t really give a feeling of comfort at all, I don’t find.

Steve: No, but it did have the affect of at least causing a short-term rise on the stock market.

But I agree with you that the kinds of people there you wouldn’t trust them very far anyway.

Most politicians are not very much trusted in their own country and you’ve got a whole bunch of them together all trying to protect their own interest, to the extent that they understand it.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That’s not a great formula, but one thing too on the Crisis, just kind of wandering a bit.

One of the things about the Crisis, if you listen to programs, like I’m learning Portuguese now so I was listening to a Brazilian radio program that is loaded up in LingQ, right, and I downloaded it and listened to it.

One thing that annoys me about it, by the way, is every 30 seconds they come in with some music, which I don’t like.

I like to just listen to talk, if I want music I’ll go to music.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Anyway, there you have the perspective of Brazil, which is what they call a BRIC country, Brazil, Russia, India and China.

They’re sort of not in the lower echelon, but they’re that next level of country that’s moving from being considered not a developed country to being, in fact, largely a developed country.

Russia kind of falls in between because of their history and, of course, there in those countries, and probably in China and India and elsewhere in the world, they would like to blame the West or Japan, like the industrialized world, for global warming or for the Crisis.

Like the Crisis is the American’s fault or global warming is the developed world’s fault and, to some extent, it’s true.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Because the banking system in the United States – Canada is different – and in some parts of Europe is very creative and it has been part of creating the economic growth that we’ve seen.

Mark: Right.

Steve: The propensity of Americans to consume has created tremendous demand in the world.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And the gashouse emissions by the developed world are far, far greater, certainly on a per capita basis, than in the underdeveloped world.

Mark: Greenhouse emissions.

Steve: Greenhouse, yeah.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But…

Mark: That’s if you buy the argument…

Steve: Forget that.

Mark: …that greenhouse gas emissions do cause global warming or that there, in fact, even is global warming.

But we’ll save that for another occasion.

Steve: We’ll save that for another time.

But, let’s assume that is true.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Okay?

I agree with you, there’s lots of evidence that, in fact, there’s very little relationship and that there’s all kinds of other factors at play.

But let’s assume, in the worst case, let’s assume that we are all being bad by driving cars, flying on airplanes and drinking water out of plastic bottles.

Mark: Heating our houses.

Steve: Heating our houses or not having efficient houses.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being less reliant on nonrenewable energy, I agree with that.

Mark: Right.

Steve: However, the point is that the worse case scenario for global warming, to the extent that they can predict it which isn’t very reliable, means that various low-lying parts of the planet might get flooded.

Mark: Right.

Steve: We might get back to where we were in the year 1565 or something when it was 10 degrees warmer, whatever, so some people won’t be able to live.

I mean Bangladesh would be seriously affected and there are other places that would be seriously affected, that’s bad.

Mark: Conversely, I guess…

Steve: Let me just finish what I was going to say.

But in all those countries, I mean in India or 100 years ago, life expectancy was 30 years and today it’s 70.

In China today hundreds of millions of people have a much higher standard of living than even the previous generation.

All of that was caused by the bad industrialized world.

Mark: Right.

Steve: All.

So that hundreds of millions of people are alive today that would not be alive if it weren’t for the creative banking and the industrialized and wastefulness and the consumer society and all those bad things.

Mark: And, of course, the medicine.

Steve: Well, that’s right. No, but that’s all part of it. You can’t have one without the other.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So that society, because of the money that’s generated through big bad consumerism and all this other evil stuff…

Mark: Big bad pharmaceutical companies.

Steve: Big bad pharmaceutical companies and all this evil stuff has led to a situation where China…now, you might say China was maybe happier with only 200 million people and India was maybe happy with only 200 million people, but the other billion people are much happier for having had a chance to be alive.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I think there’s a tremendous sort of contradiction there.

Mark: Well, that’s right.

And you always hear people talk about it.

Someone was saying this, even quite recently, someone who had had acupuncture.

It had really helped their back and was saying, you know, in this case, “The Chinese traditional medicine, I mean they’ve got it figured out.

This is just so wonderful.” I pointed out that, well, yeah, acupuncture does work for many things and I’ve had it work for me.

More than anything else I think it relaxes your muscles and muscle tightness can cause discomfort, but to suggest that the Chinese medicine, as a whole, is better than what we have now or Western medicine is obviously silly because their life expectancy, when they relied on Chinese medicine, was less than half what it is now, so I pointed that out to him.

I think he kind of, “Yeah, hey, maybe you’re right.”

Steve: Well now, of course there are many other reasons.

But, no, primarily even China had a very poor, low standard of living, up until very recently, but their life expectancy increased with the introduction of Western medicine.

When I was learning Chinese, I mean there are stories by Lushun who is was the icon, you know, of Chinese literature and stories where he was very bitter about Chinese medicine and how, you know, money was wasted on buying, you know, the liver from a duck that had been, you know, rolled over in mud or whatever they did, you know, the extract or whatever.

I mean, undoubtedly, in all these folk medicines there are different herbal mixtures that are beneficial.

Mark: Right.

Steve: You can’t…after thousands and thousands of years, starting back in the caveman era, human beings have been experimenting and it’s not just in China, it’s in every society.

Mark: For sure.

Steve: Whether it be Latin America prior to the Spanish coming over.

I mean in the Middle Ages they had more of these folk medicines than we have now.

Mark: Sure.

Steve: It had some effect.

Mark: I’m sure.

They discovered some things worked; they discovered other things that they thought worked, which actually had no relation to an improvement in someone’s condition, but, then, because everyone believed it to be so it spread.

I mean the same thing occurred…you’ve talked about how scurvy was a big problem in the Age of Exploration during the long sea voyages.

They had known that it was a vitamin C deficiency way back when and had realized that fresh fruit would solve the problem.

But then, at some point, that fell out of favor and the treatment went back to drawing blood or whatever it was…burning leaches…I can’t remember.

So then for the next hundred years, even though they already had discovered the true remedy, they went back to using leeches and sucking blood and whatever.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Consequently, scurvy was a problem for another hundred years before they rediscovered lime juice.

Steve: You know it’s amazing that in Chinese medicine or in other folk medicines, they resent the idea that there should be tests with placebo…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …to make sure that, in fact, it’s the medicine and not the psychological factor that’s the cause.

Because we know that psychosomatically, like if you believe something is going to help you, it’s going to help you, in many cases.

So the fact that Western medicine has to go through this very rigorous testing over lengthy period of time; whereas, folk medicine doesn’t.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And they resent the suggestion that it should be, you know.

Furthermore, you know all these Chinese medical practitioners, half the time we don’t know what they’re putting in their potions.

You know one fellow might use a certain mixture and depending on the mood or the moment somebody else, so…

Mark: It’s different.

Steve: That’s not to say that those things don’t have their place, but, as you say, the sort of systematic sort of anti-established Western medicine must be bad.

There are things in Western medicine…I think Western medicine has been too intrusive, you know.

I think there’s a tendency to over operate.

Mark: Over operate, over vaccinate.

Steve: There are definitely things that can be learned.

They always say that Chinese medicine is more holistic or these other medicines deal with your overall personality.

Well, Western medicine, any sensible doctor is going to say what do you eat?

Are you active, you know?

If there’s sort of tension in the family or there are problems then that’s going to cause health problems, too.

Yeah, I mean…

Mark: I mean I don’t think you can find a perfect…no doctors are perfect, no system is perfect, but the average life expectancy, the health, the ability to fix serious medical problems that would not have been fixable years past, those are major advancements that have been brought about by Western medicine.

Steve: But it is interesting to think that certainly there’s nothing unique about the West.

That if you had looked at the world 1,000 years ago then medicine as practiced in the Islamic world or the Arabic world or India or China was more advanced; they were technologically more advanced.

Then there are series of circumstances and also boring from some those traditions led to the development of medicinal science in the West, so why wouldn’t people learn from that?

It might be that the next 100 years sees China or India or somewhere else as the leader.

Mark: Fundamentally, the freedom, whether it’s economic freedom or political freedom or the freedom to develop medicines or solutions, causes advancement.

Steve: You know that reminds me of something.

We should always be willing to learn from anyone who has something useful and intelligent to say, so I’m reminded of yesterday.

You and I were trying to lift a very heavy television set.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And we had these things that strap onto our arms because it’s very difficult to grab a television; you can’t grab a hold of it and it’s like 160 pounds, like 80 kilograms.

So we’ve got these arm straps and we’re holding it and we can’t lift it up.

So, Kyle, your soon to be 10-year-old son…

Mark: Well, we could lift it, but we couldn’t get it high enough.

Steve: In other words, we couldn’t get our hands underneath it with the straps.

So Kyle, 10 years old tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, he says, “Why don’t you each get a little higher thing that you could step on?

So then you just step back onto this higher thing and lift it up.”

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I mean 10 years old. We would never have thought of that.

Mark: No. Yeah, that’s true.

Steve: So, you know.

That’s because, of course, he’s much more intelligent than we are.

Mark: That’s right.

Steve: But, no, I mean one has to be willing to look at anything that works.

Mark: Absolutely. What else did you have in your bag of tricks?

Steve: Well, I always have things to talk about, you know.

One thing we could talk about is there is this Anti-Racisms Conference in Geneva.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And, of course, anti-racism is a subject that…you know it’s one of these things, I mean, yeah, in principle we’re all against racism.

In fact, racism exists everywhere.

I mean dogs are racist, wolves are racist.

It’s us against them; it’s always been there.

And so anti-racism has become a matter of beating up on some other group.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so now the Anti-Racism Conference in Geneva has become an opportunity to beat up on Israel, period, end of story.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Now the fact that, yeah, there’s a war going on there.

Mark: Right.

Steve: There are a lot of refugees who left what was then Palestine 50 years ago, some of whom live in the Gaza Strip.

Does anyone know that there were 300,000 Georgians kicked out of Abkhazia in the 1990s that still live in Georgia?

Does anyone care that there were another 50-60,000 kicked out of Southern Ossetia that are all living in rented accommodations in Georgia?

How many people left Nagorno-Karabakh when the Azerbaijanis were fighting the Armenians?

How many people were killed in that war?

Lots.

How many people were killed in Chechnya, which is a very tiny little place?

You know 100,000-200,000?

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And, yet, all of a sudden, the world campaign to fight racism is sort of concentrated on this United Nations Conference and…I have trouble pronouncing his name…

Mark: Ahmadinejad or something.

Steve: Ahmadinejad is there.

Now, yeah, there’s a struggle going on — one group doesn’t like the other group — but for the United Nations Conference on Anti-Racism to become sort of a pedestal for, basically, denying the right to exist of a country to me is an indication of just how far down the United Nations has come.

I think it’s lost a lot of its credibility.

Mark: I agree.

I haven’t had respect for the United Nations for a long time, as far as I can remember, but it’s just getting worse and worse.

It’s basically a pulpit for bashing the West and Israel is perceived as an extension of the West oppressing the downtrodden again.

So it’s just the favored cause of the left-wing and the downtrodden and Israel is now in the wrong.

I’m not saying who’s right or wrong, but it’s certainly not obvious to me that Israel is in the wrong.

What’s more, as you point out, for the United Nations to be sponsoring this thing is really wrong.

Steve: I mean I can understand the Arab position that the Israelis, largely European Jews, arrived there with their European technology and basically helped themselves to this land.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Even though I’m of Jewish background, I don’t believe that the fact that Jews lived there 2,000 years ago really justifies them taking the land away from the people who are living there.

But, lots of stuff has happened.

There are all kinds of places over the last 100-200-300 years where people have moved in; besides which, the United Nations recognized Israel.

Mark: What’s more, that’s what people have done since time immemorial; one group moves in kicks out another.

There’s no right or wrong, they’re there now.

Steve: Right.

Mark: If you think you can kick them out kick them out, but it’s not up to the United Nations.

They’re there, they’re defending themselves, the people are them are perfectly within their rights to try and take it back.

Obviously, from the perspective of world peace, we would prefer that everyone learns to get along and that they can accept new boarders and let bygones be bygones.

I don’t think it benefits anyone to continue to have that situation fester.

Steve: Well, that’s the thing.

I mean if we were able to get past that stage, because there are all kinds of people who have moved into other areas.

I mean Genghis Khan used to have mountains of skulls or something after he devastated some country.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I mean in Canada, for example, in Canada the French were defeated by the English, so forth and so on.

Mark: Yeah, but, of course, the natives…

Steve: And the natives! There you go.

Mark: …would feel like, well, it’s our land.

Steve: Sure.

Mark: But the fact is our ancestors – it wasn’t my ancestors – the original Canadian people who came to Canada from Europe were more advanced and took the land and that’s what people have always done.

That’s just how it is.

Steve: I mean the Norman conquest of England, the Anglo-Saxons. However…

Mark: Exactly. How far back are you going to go to redress past wrongs?

Steve: And, of course, the former Soviet Union is a tremendous example of peoples having been moved around at the whim of Stalin and now they’re kind of trying to settle their scores.

But, in all of this, there is no question in my mind that there is tremendous opportunity for people to let bygones be bygones and to figure out a way of living together.

If Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria that part of the world, particularly with all the oil mining that’s there, if the Middle East decided that they were all going to pull in the same direction that could be an amazing center of economic power, development, influence, which would rival now…

Mark: For sure.

Steve: …you know we talk about the Far East, China, Japan, Korea, we talk about India, but if the Middle East ever decided to work together would be unreal.

Mark: For sure. Well, with that we should probably…

Steve: We’ve solved most of the world’s problems.

Mark: I think we’ve solved the world’s problems.

We should mention, that Anti-Racism Conference, Canada did not send a delegation, which I very much respect.

Steve: And they were the first to say we’re not going.

Mark: Exactly. Anyway, we’ll leave you with that and we’ll talk to you gain next time.

Steve: Bye for now.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark: Hello, everyone, welcome back to EnglishLingQ.

Mark here with Steve.

Steve: Hello there.

Mark: We’re back for another installment, of course.

For the last few days there’s been a bit of a novelty around here, what with my commercial being on TV.

Steve: Oh, Mark is a movie star. Mark is a movie star.

Some, whatever, how many weeks ago, you were asked to come down…well, tell the story.

Mark: I was at home cleaning up on a Saturday morning and I got a phone call from a friend who has a friend who is a casting agent, I think they’re called.

This casting agent is someone who looks for actors, I guess.

In her case for commercials, but I guess maybe she would also do it for TV programs, movies or what have you.

At any rate, they were looking for a hockey player for a commercial and the description kind of suited me to a T. She knew me and said, “I think I know a guy” and so, to make a long story short, I ended up filming this Gillette hockey commercial.

Steve: Gillette being a manufacturer of shaving supplies, razors and whatever for me.

Mark: Exactly. So it’s the Gillette Fusion Razor and it just started playing the day before yesterday.

Steve: Well, the thing is we didn’t know whether they were…I mean the chances are they were going to reject it once they saw it; once they saw you they wouldn’t use it.

Mark: Well that was hardly likely.

Steve: That was a strong possibility and so…but the point is we didn’t know when they were going to use it.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But then a friend of ours up in northern Alberta phoned the office and said he saw you and so I guess you saw it yourself.

Mark: Well, yeah.

A friend of mine here saw it yesterday morning and so told me and told me that it was on this show on this channel, the Breakfast Television Show on Global.

I turned that on this morning and, sure enough, within 10 minutes I saw the commercial, yeah.

Steve: That’s good.

Well, I’m looking forward to seeing it.

You know hockey is such a big deal here.

We’re approaching the Stanley Cup Playoffs; Vancouver is in the playoffs.

Mark: Well that’s why I think the timing of the commercial is, obviously, set to coincide with the start of the NHL Playoffs, which is a huge TV event here in Canada.

Steve: Right.

It’s interesting, you know I’m just going to digress a little bit; although, everyone should be looking for that commercial if they’re watching television.

It may not be limited to Canada, it might be also aired in Russia or wherever they play hockey, Sweden, I don’t know.

Mark: Well, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be limited to hockey markets.

When they filmed it they said that it would be shown in Canada, pockets of the U.S.

and maybe in Russia, so that was what I was told anyway.

Steve: Right.

Anyway, that’s exciting, it’s fun.

Mark: Yeah, fun for the kids.

Steve: Yeah. Have the kids seen it?

Mark: Yeah. We recorded it this morning, so we all watched it.

Steve: Wow. Have you got a copy for mom and me?

Mark: Well, it’s on our PVR machine, so I don’t know how you…

Steve: Okay.

Mark: I don’t think you can extract it.

Steve: Okay, well, we’ll see it when we’re over there.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: No, I was going to say with regard to hockey, you know, it reminds me of a discussion I had earlier today.

The Canadian Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, has come out and said a number of things about immigration.

Number one, he isn’t reducing the number of immigrants, even though the economy is down and the crisis and stuff like that.

And, of course, he does that for political reasons because all these different ethnic groups their main thing is to keep people from “The Mother Country”, you know, all their relatives coming here.

But he’s saying we must increase the integration of these people and that there’s been this tremendous emphasis on multiculturalism, almost encouraging people to maintain their original culture and he’s saying the different ethnic groups can do that on their own.

They’re strong enough to do that on their own, we should be concerned about integrating them and he has said, previously, we should have higher standards of English and French, the official languages.

Today he said people should study more about Canadian history and Canadian values and be more aware of what the country is before they get citizenship and, of course, the ethnic press just criticizes him for doing this.

I was talking to a person whom I know who works for the government who’s actually of Chinese origin and he said that one of the political leaders here, Ujjal Dosanjh who’s of Indian origin, has gone around to all the Chinese press and he’s saying the government shouldn’t be doing this and it’s unfair and stuff.

I think of hockey and I think of players in hockey.

I mean we’ve got Lawango who is our superstar goaltender, obviously of Italian origin, we’ve got this guy Setoguchi who plays for San Jose, obviously, and I think he’ll be on Team Canada in the not too distant future.

We have Paul Kariya and Jarome Iginla whose father is Nigerian.

I mean all kinds of people who are very much into Canadian culture and they’re not just from British, English or French background, they’re of all backgrounds.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That’s the only way you’re going to build up a country is if you get people to buy in.

But, no, I just thought of the hockey because a lot of the hockey heroes today are people of all kinds of different backgrounds.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, anyway…

Mark: Speaking of hockey heroes, I guess you wanted to expand a little on your playoff efforts for your own, the North Shore Old Goats.

Steve: Well, I play for a team called the Old Goats.

We don’t get the same kind of coverage in the press that some other teams do, it’s quite unfair, but we’re in the finals.

Mark: Oh, you are?

Steve: We’re in the finals. We played on Tuesday and we had a very good strategy, very good strategy, only one (??? 6:43 floor) checker.

That’s a very important strategy.

No, because you can’t afford to get caught up.

Mark: Right.

Steve: With that the other team had no one to pass to and so we got up two goals to nothing and we just shut them down, so now we’re in the finals.

Anyway…

Mark: So you’ve got your defensive strategy.

Steve: Well that’s right, it’s the trap.

Mark: The trap strategy; I’m not so sure I approve of that.

Steve: It’s the only way.

Mark: That takes the fun out of the game.

Steve: It’s the only way.

It’s the only way, so, yeah, no.

The other very important strategic thing in old-timers’ hockey…

Mark: Yeah?

Steve: …is to have a better goaltender than the other team.

Mark: That’s probably a pretty good strategy.

Steve: Very important, yes, and we had that.

But, yeah, what were some of the things we were going to talk about?

Mark: Well one of the things was that Obama is visiting in Latin America.

Steve: Well there’s some conference in Trinidad and Tobago.

Mark: Conference of the America’s or something.

Steve: Conference of the America’s.

I heard that, by the way, in Portuguese because I was listening to the BBC Brazil service in Portuguese and they were talking about the Conference of the America’s and this is Obama’s first opportunity to be on the sort of Latin American stage.

You know, I mean Latin America is huge; it’s a rapidly growing population.

It has one of the four BRIC countries, Brazil, of course the others being Russian, India and China; sort of looked upon as the next super powers.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Mexico is actually in North America, geographically, but it’s part of Latin America, culturally.

Mark: Right.

Steve: It’s a huge country.

It’s 140 million people with serious problems insofar as kidnappings and crime, but with resources and an interesting culture that goes back to well before the Spanish, you know?

Mark: Right.

Steve: Yeah, it’s a fascinating continent.

Mark: I mean I guess different countries seem to be making more progress than others, but then things can change quickly.

It always seems a little more, I guess, unstable in a lot of those places.

Steve: Well it certainly has that reputation.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: It certainly has a history.

I mean Brazil, though, seems remarkably stable and it’s the biggest country in terms of size, in terms of population.

But if you look at Venezuela they’ve got tremendous oil resources and, yet, they’ve got a government…one has the impression the country is totally polarized between the sort of radical group that support Hugo Chavez who sort of like fancies himself as some kind of a world maverick and then you have the other people who are distressed at how he’s destroying their country.

Mark: And hoping that he’ll leave before things get damaged beyond repair.

Steve: And then I see where Barack Obama is also going to ease the restrictions that apply to Americans traveling to and dealing with Cuba.

Mark: Yeah, that’s an interesting one.

I mean it does seem a little bit harsh to have this embargo that they’ve had for so long, but I guess they have their own political interests they have to worry about.

Is it that, presumably, the Cuban émigré community wouldn’t be happy if the embargo was lifted?

Steve: I think the Cuban émigré is a major influence and I think just the fact that Castro expropriated the assets of American companies.

But, I am sure that if they relax the travel and trade restrictions with Cuba the net affect will be to weaken Fidel Castro.

Mark: That’s what I would think.

I mean I would think the fastest way for Cuba to modernize, to sort of throw off the yoke of communism, would be to open things up and expose people to the outside world.

Steve: Right.

I mean there are probably many of them aware of the outside world and there are perhaps aspects of their society which appeal to some members of the society, but I think most people would probably like to have a change.

But, you know, I was thinking about Cuba because I was reading or listening to something about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the Russians sent nuclear missiles disguised as, I don’t know, humanitarian aid or something…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …and set them up in Cuba.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I mean I don’t really know what the goal of the Russians was.

I mean we mustn’t forget that it was Stalin’s avowed goal to have a third world war and to achieve the final victory of international communism, so there’s no question where Stalin was headed.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But Khrushchev, of course, he had this anti-Stalinist thing, so I don’t know quite what his goal was.

But from the point of view of the Cubans, if you are a Cuban, you know, this is your little island country, why would you possibly accept nuclear weapons on your little island country?

Because if there were any kind of a conflict your island country is zapped.

Mark: Yeah, I know.

Steve: I mean can you imagine a more irresponsible thing to do?

To bring that kind of a problem to…

Mark: That is amazing. I mean I guess Fidel was pretty caught up in…

Steve: The world revolution.

Mark: …the ideology.

Plus, I guess, obviously, the Russians gave a lot of money and support to the Cubans.

Steve: Maybe it was a condition.

Mark: Maybe.

Steve: But I am sure the Russians were very happy to have a neighbor of the United States that was friendly to them.

Mark: For sure.

Steve: I doubt if that was necessary.

Mark: Yeah, who knows.

Steve: It’s amazing.

Mark: It is amazing.

Steve: But, you know, I am always very suspicious of ideologues of any stripe…

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: …of any stripe.

You know people always sort of try to criticize the merchant, the commercial, I say good for the commercial, the merchant, he’s a good guy.

Wherever the merchants have been in power it has led to more art, more freedom, more development, more technology.

You know I’m reading the history of Venice right now.

That was a commercial enterprise, basically.

Mark: Right.

Steve: If they had been, you know, ideological Jihads of whatever stripe, fascist, Nazi, you know, communist, religious, all those people, I have nothing but suspicion and scorn.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: And, certainly, they should never have the upper hand.

Mark: No.

Steve: Money, I understand money; ideology, dying for ideology, no.

Mark: Well it just makes people not very predictable, not very rational.

Steve: Exactly.

Mark: Yeah, no, it’s much easier to understand basic motivations of people.

Steve: And it’s more worthwhile.

It leads to more worthwhile because the average person who’s involved in a commercial or industrial enterprise is actually quite motivated to do a good job at what he’s doing.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Whether he’s a shoemaker or whether they’re coming up with a new design of laptop computer or the new car or new foods or new whatever, there is an altruistic element.

There’s also a money-grubbing element, but there’s…creating something for someone else.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I have no problem with that.

What else did we have on the news?

We were looking at some…because we always come back to some the same themes.

We’ve got to be careful; otherwise, people…

Mark: The other thing we were talking about was the pirates in Somalia…

Steve: Oh, the pirates in Somalia.

Mark: …which has been quite a news story, of course, lately, with the two rescues, really.

The French rescue of the sailboat…by the way, what are you thinking about sailing your sailboat with your kids — kid or kids, I don’t know how many – in the most infamous pirates’ nest in the world?

What possible motivation?

Steve: And I think he said something, we were not going to allow them to spoil our dream or something.

Mark: Well, they did.

Steve: Well, that’s right.

But, you know, this image of these undernourished pirates in rowboats, you know, chewing on qua-qua leaves or whatever it is and yet, basically, all the world shipping goes through the Suez Canal.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I mean all the world, but a tremendous amount of shipping goes through the Suez Canal and comes out into their little net there and there they are.

It looks like a small body of water on the map, but when you’re there it’s a vast expansive water and so hard to police, so what do you do?

Mark: I don’t know what you do.

Obviously, it comes back to the conditions that exist in Somalia, which I guess is essentially lawless and poverty-stricken.

Yeah, what are those people supposed to do?

You can’t…I mean, presumably, if they try to set up a legitimate business they’re probably squashed by the authorities or whatever conditions exist there.

So I guess the real long-term solution is to somehow help the Somalis or prod the Somalis to improve their situation there.

I don’t know how realistic that is.

Steve: Yeah, but not every…I don’t think that poverty is ever a justification for kidnapping, which is what they’re doing.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And it’s not the only place where there is piracy.

I think between Indonesia and Malaysia, which is another busy, busy, shipping channel, there’s lots of piracy.

I mean some of the great heroes of British history were pirates, Sir Francis Drake and others who were quite happy to capture Spanish galleons laden with gold and silver.

Mark: Yes, but I don’t know if you’d quite qualify them as pirates.

Steve: Oh, they were pirates.

Mark: I mean they didn’t attack British ships.

Steve: No, no, no, they attacked ships and stole what was on them, no difference.

Mark: Okay. No, there is a difference, there is a difference.

Steve: They didn’t ransom, they just took it.

Mark: I understand that.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: I understand that, but they were taking ships from enemies of their state, more or less.

They had a commission from their monarch to undertake that piracy.

Steve: And, by the same token, the Spanish would have been very much…

Mark: And it went both ways.

Steve: Well, the Spanish were very much within their rights to capture those pirates and hang them from the nearest tree.

Mark: Right, which I’m sure they did, too.

Steve: Which they did, yeah.

Mark: So that’s a little bit different than hijacking whatever ship happens to come by and taking what’s on it or ransoming it or whatever the case may be.

Steve: But, I must say, my view is that either you believe in the importance of world trade and the right of ships to travel the seas without being kidnapped or you don’t. I do.

In which case, I think they should use whatever force is necessary, whether these are poor people or not poor people.

If they have identified this port, which is their lair, the pirates’ lair, they should go in there in a massive operation and arrest all those people.

Mark: Yeah, I agree. I mean I’m not, by any means, defending them.

Steve: Right.

Mark: My only thought is you can go in and flatten that port or whatever, but chances are that a whole new crop will emerge of new pirates.

So it may not be the solution, but it’s probably a good place to start.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: Because, presumably, there’s some knowledge required.

I mean how do you stop a ship?

Those ships are huge.

I guess they’re not out there in a rowboat, they must have a…

Steve: No. Well somebody was saying they kind of trade up.

Like they begin with a rowboat and they steal a slightly larger boat.

Mark: Oh, I see.

Steve: That enables them to take a larger boat and eventually they get larger boats.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Although, it still seems amazing to me, I mean I can’t imagine.

I read they can’t arm the tankers because they don’t want, you know, shooting starting to happen around their tankers or they’d be some pretty nasty explosions.

Mark: Yeah. But it obviously seems to be getting worse and worse.

Steve: I know.

Mark: I mean what are you going to have to do, start escorting all your ships through that region?

I mean that’s…

Steve: Well, apparently they have sort of a narrow channel which is patrolled and they want the ships to stay within that.

And this last ship was not within that because it was going to Kenya or Mombasa or somewhere.

Mark: Oh, right.

Steve: So the ships that are on that normal route, that are not going to East Africa, are protected, I think.

Mark: Oh, I see.

Steve: But any that wander away from that, then, are vulnerable.

Mark: Well that sure would be a little bit of an unnerving experience to be on a ship in those waters, but they did manage to rescue the American captain.

Steve: That was extraordinary, yeah.

Mark: Extraordinary.

Did you hear that at one point he actually jumped off and started thrashing away, but they weren’t able to rescue him and the pirates captured him again and threw him back into their boat?

But that was amazing.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: I didn’t get the full details of the French rescue, but I guess…

Steve: It was similar.

Unfortunately, one of the French sailors was hit with a bullet and died.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So that’s not so good.

Mark: Yeah. Anyway, we should probably wrap it up at this point.

Steve: Alright.

Mark: We’ll continue again next time.

Steve: Okay, bye for now.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark: Hello, again, and welcome to another EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Mark here with Steve.

Steve: Hello there.

Mark: We thought, today, we would continue on our same theme or in the same vain as we did last week, talking about different articles in the news.

Steve: You know I had some very positive response to that, to our last show, so we’ll stay with that.

I think, yeah, it’s interesting.

Some of the things that I saw here…you know here’s one article in the National Post Canada talking about the Armenian genocide.

This word “genocide”, you know, is used all the time.

I’m not quite sure what it means.

Genocide: kill people; kill a whole group of people.

Obviously, the Nazis were out to exterminate the Jews, so there was a deliberate intent to get rid of them all.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And that’s kind of the model of pure genocide.

When the recent events of August the 8th in the Caucasus in Georgia, the Georgian Government opened fire, apparently, on the Town of Tskhinvali and 100 people died.

Supposedly, we don’t know the truth because they’d been firing on each other.

Different villages were firing on each other, so the Russian Government declared that to be a genocide.

Mark: Right.

Steve: In all their press and everything they talked about it being a genocide.

So 100 people in a skirmish where people had been fighting back and forth, now this is a genocide.

Then we have the issue with the Armenian genocide and I gather that the issue with the Armenian genocide is a much bigger issue in the Armenian Diaspora then it is in, let’s say, Armenia.

So all of these things assume sort of tremendous political importance and every time you can use an emotional word like “genocide”…people do nasty things to people.

Mark: Now let me stop you there for a second.

Steve: Alright.

Mark: Let’s just suppose that you’re not that familiar with the Armenian genocide.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I know I’ve seen it in the news and there was obviously some issue with the Armenian minority in Turkey, I’m assuming, but I really have never bothered to look into what exactly happened there.

Steve: Well what happened is this…

Mark: I assume that back in the day there was a lot of throat slitting on both sides in the region.

Steve: Well, let’s say this, that, historically, human beings have done very nasty things to other human beings.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And they have been particularly motivated to do nasty things to other human beings if they could identify them as belonging to a different group.

Mark: Right.

Steve: This was fun, you know, different religion, different area, different language, different ethnic group, look different, whatever.

It kinds of takes us back to our days before we were even humans, right, the pack, ‘dem and us.

So humans do nasty things to humans and have been doing that since the beginning of time.

Mark: Right.

Steve: What happened in 1915 was that the old Ottoman Empire collapsed.

It was, basically, sort of the death blow came during the First World War, but it was already on its last legs because various countries in the Balkans had revolted.

I mean the Arabs were in revolt, all the different groups that were under the Ottomans were wanting to get out from under.

And the Ottomans were on the wrong side in the First World War; in fact, a number of empires disappeared, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

Now there were different peoples within the Ottoman Empire and within Anatolia itself and so there was a lot of war going on.

At one point the Greeks invaded Anatolia because, after all, there were a lot of Greeks in Anatolia, Anatolia being the European…that part of…well yeah, Turkey, as we call it today.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so they invaded.

And I don’t know all the back and forth there, but eventually the Turks managed to…under Ataturk, who is the founder of the country, they decided we’re not going to try to hang on to everything that was part of the Ottoman Empire.

We’re going to try to consolidate Anatolia and Anatolia was under threat from the Greeks.

Mark: Right.

Steve: The Greeks invaded and then they were pushed back.

Now somewhere in all of that the Ottoman Empire and certain officials in the Ottoman Empire — and this has been documented in archives — took it upon themselves to basically eliminate the Armenians.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Now, whether the Armenians had been doing dirty stuff to the Turks and there are Kurds in there and there are Greeks and there are all kinds of different people beating up on each other.

Mark: Right.

Steve: What was the motivation for the Turks now to gang up on the Armenians, other than the fact that they were a small identifiable minority?

Mark: Right.

Steve: I presume the fact that the Armenians are Christian, the fact that the Armenians traditionally, like the Jews, have been very good at business and therefore tended to be, you know, envied by people who didn’t have as much as the Armenians or maybe they were perceived as being a clan that was foreign to the national Turkish, you know, body politic.

So, for whatever reason, there was this massive pogrom where they just massacred lots of Armenians.

Mark: Right.

Steve: From what I can tell it wasn’t as diabolically, you know, organized as the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

And so now there is, of course, certainly officially in Turkey, a national feeling very strongly against the idea of identifying this as a genocide, partly because genocide is normally identified with what the Nazis did.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So you have the gamut of genocide that the Nazis did, then you have that, then you have the Balkan War, all the way down to the 100 people who died in a skirmish between villages in Georgia.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Okay.

My only point in raising this is people love to bring out these words.

You’re a fascist.

You’re a racist.

You’re a bigot.

This is genocide, cultural genocide…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …you know, whatever kind of genocide.

These are all loaded words; that’s all.

Mark: Yeah and it’s a bit like…I mean lately this, what is it called, the International Tribunal in The Hague or whatever it was, ruled that Omar Bashir or whatever…

Steve: Whatever his name is, yes, the Sudanese…

Mark: …leader…

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: Charged him with war crimes for what’s happening in Darfur, which presumably is classified as genocide as well.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Again, I’m not exactly clear, but I think there’s a fair bit of that going on.

Whether you want to call it genocide or…I guess there’s a minority group there that’s maybe…

Steve: Well I think maybe that’s attempted genocide.

Mark: Maybe, I don’t know.

But certainly there’s always a group of people that wants to paint people with these terms like genocide, like you’re accused of war crimes.

What is the net affect of that?

I don’t know, I mean it certainly makes his regime a lot more hostile.

Steve: I mean he’s a pretty nasty guy.

Mark: For sure.

Steve: And what has been happening down there is that you have these groups — I can’t remember what they call themselves, Janjaweed, jalowalls, jalobal or something — that have been going around and massacring villages of this Christian, Animist or, you know, basically a minority who are different from the dominant Arab group and the government has either helped them or hasn’t tried to prevent them from doing this.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so I don’t know all the ins and outs of Sudan either.

But, you know, a war crime…like war, in a sense, is almost like a crime.

I mean how do you define who’s a war criminal and who isn’t?

Mark: Well and it just strikes me when I hear that.

You’ve got this group in The Hague pontificating and branding people and it just seems to me like…is that going to have a useful result?

What does that achieve?

Everybody knows the guy in Sudan is not a nice guy.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Everybody knows that there are things happening there that shouldn’t be happening.

Is accusing him or ruling or…

Steve: …condemning him or convicting him, yeah…

Mark: …convicting him of being a war criminal…I don’t see what…other than making all those people in The Hague feel good about themselves, what does that actually do for the people of Sudan?

Steve: I don’t know. And I think that, to some extent, it makes him a hero at home.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And I think that taking Milosevic to the court at The Hague had more or less the same effect.

And inevitably in these things we’re very selective, like who’s to say that there aren’t umpteen dictators in places around the world who would equally qualify to be convicted of war crimes?

Mark: Right.

Steve: I don’t know.

Mark: Yeah, I don’t know either.

Steve: You know it’s interesting, there was another item in the paper here on this issue and, of course, it’s alright for us to take pot shots and all.

I mean one of the things that annoys me in all of this is that there are armies of bureaucrats who make their living; they have a vested interest in these organizations and in hauling people to the Tribunal at The Hague and they have meetings.

First of all, they didn’t come up with this Tribunal at The Hague overnight…

Mark: No.

Steve: …that was 15 years in the making; meetings over cocktails and expensive hotels and traveling.

Mark: And lots of meetings and staff and all paid for by the taxpayer.

Steve: But here’s one, in Canada a certain Johnson Aziga was convicted of 10 counts of first degree murder for having sexual relations with 10 different women whom he didn’t tell that he had HIV/AIDS and two or three of them died.

Now, he’s not a nice guy.

Mark: No.

Steve: No.

I think that…I’m trying to picture, like if…how many…you know…I don’t think this is uncommon that these diseases like this are transmitted.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And probably, even, whether we’re talking homosexual or heterosexual situations, that there are people who die from it.

Mark: Right.

Steve: It’s not quite the same as murder.

It’s not quite the same as murder, but you probably…we should have more disagreements here.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean I don’t know.

I’m not familiar with the case, I’m just listening to you talk about it now, but…

Steve: Right.

Mark: I mean he knows beforehand that he has this deadly disease and it’s spread through sexual contact.

Steve: Right.

Mark: And yet he goes and follows through anyway.

Steve: Right.

Mark: So is that different than vehicular homicide, for instance?

Steve: Okay, but this is first degree murder.

Mark: Right. What does that consider?

Steve: Well vehicular homicide is not murder it’s manslaughter or something like that.

Mark: Right.

Steve: It’s considered an accident.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I mean to some extent…I don’t know.

Mark: I don’t know.

I guess maybe…I mean I don’t know the details of the case, but perhaps he deliberately set about trying to…

Steve: Maybe.

Mark: …kill people or spread his misfortune.

Steve: I mean people who share needles, drug addicts who share needles…I mean people do engage in destructive behavior, self-destructive behavior.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: To me, first degree murder is I’m going to kill you so that I can steal your wallet or your Adidas running shoes.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That’s first degree murder.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Anyway…

Mark: Yeah, that’s probably true.

Steve: …all of these things are difficult. I mean it’s the law…the law…

Mark: Yeah. I mean, fundamentally, that guy is probably not too concerned about the law.

Steve: No.

Mark: So, I mean, presumably, you have these punishments to dissuade people from engaging in those kinds of actions.

I don’t know this guy, but…

Steve: But I can’t imagine he’s the only person, male or female, who has had sexual relations knowing that they’re HIV positive.

Mark: Yeah, no, for sure not.

Steve: I’m sure not.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: So for him to be singled out and convicted of murder…I don’t know.

Mark: I don’t know.

Steve: I don’t know. By the way, I listened to Ezra Levant last week.

I went to hear him speak and he, of course, has generated a lot of interest in the abuse of these Human Rights Tribunals in Canada.

But one case that he mentioned, which I thought was absolutely amazing, was there was a woman employed by McDonald’s.

McDonald’s has a rule that you have to wash your hands like 100 times a day.

Mark: I don’t know about 100 times.

It’s not just McDonald’s, I don’t think, a lot of restaurants have similar rules.

Steve: But they have this rule that you’ve got to wash your hands every time you touch a doorknob…

Mark: But their standards of cleanliness are extremely high.

Steve: Extremely high.

Every time you touch a doorknob, every time you scratch your nose and, maybe not, but every time you, certainly, go to the bathroom, every time you do this.

There are 10 different situations where you have to wash your hands.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So she, this lady working for McDonald’s, got a skin rash, so she couldn’t wash her hands that often.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So they said, well, you can’t work here because those are our rules.

They put her on special sick leave, they consulted with all kinds of skin allergists and in the end they could find no way for her to abide by their rules and yet not have her skin rash.

Finally, after a year and a half, they gave her a settlement and they said she could no longer work there.

Mark: Right.

Steve: She took the case to the Human Rights Tribunal and the Human Rights Tribunal, of course, because it’s a large company, it’s McDonald’s, McDonald’s was forced to pay her $50,000.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I mean isn’t that just extraordinary?

Mark: That’s just unbelievable.

Steve: I mean she can go and work anywhere where she’s not required to wash her hands 10 times a day.

What possible right?

She doesn’t have a right.

Human rights, I have a right to work in a place where part of the job description is that I have to wash my hands 10 times a day for very sound hygienic reasons, for reasons that are not the fault of the employer, I can’t do that because I get a skin rash.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But I still have a right to work there.

Mark: Yeah, I mean it’s mindboggling.

What’s mind boggling is that it’s not just laughed off and, as you pointed out, the reason it’s not laughed off is (A) because McDonald’s is McDonald’s, the boogeyman, and (B) because this employee was a minority, a woman is what she was.

Had all those conditions not been there they would have been a lot less likely to take up the case.

But their whole reason for being is to supposedly fight for the…

Steve: No. Their reason for being is to prosper and to grow as an organization.

Mark: Well, absolutely.

Steve: Fundamentally that’s true of any organization.

Whether in the public sector or the private sector they’re primarily motivated to survive.

Mark: Right.

Steve: To survive and to grow.

And so these people are simply…that’s their bread and butter.

These are their pawns, this is their…

Mark: But there’s a lot of ideology involved in those Human Rights Tribunals.

Steve: Yeah. Well, that’s right.

Mark: I mean you don’t go to work for one without being motivated to fight big business and stand up for any perceived minority.

I mean the whole thing is a sham and good for Ezra Levant…

Steve: I know.

Mark: …exposing it.

I mean they should all just be shut down, completely shut down, gone.

Steve: Here’s another interesting one, which has to do with this issue of Afghanistan, where the government there decided to accept some law, which was proposed by one of the minority groups in the Parliament, which said that women basically had to stay at home and they had no rights and the men had all the rights and so forth and so on.

So, of course, this created a great amount of chest beating and indignation amongst western countries, you know, how can you do this and so forth and so on.

I think there are two points of view, but my view is that it’s really none of our business.

Here again, it’s because it has to do with women and so forth.

But I mean there are rules in countries — in Saudi Arabia, whatever, women can’t drive — rules that we don’t agree with and I’m sure that those countries find some of our laws and habits and customs abhorrent.

Mark: Right. I guess the difference is that we don’t have our soldiers in those countries.

Steve: Right.

Mark: We have our soldiers in Afghanistan, ostensibly, to protect the people there and to drive out the Taliban and obviously to protect security in the West.

And so if we’re there providing security I think we have justification in standing up and saying, no, that’s not on.

What’s more, that’s a minority in Parliament that’s pushing this through, but if we’re there protecting the people that includes the women there.

So, really, I mean maybe they are quite happy that we’re standing up for them.

I don’t know, maybe they’re not.

Steve: But what if we look at Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a threat to our security for two reasons, one, because it’s a source of all the heroin and, two, because that’s where Al-Qaida was camped out.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And, presumably, there’s the concern that there could be more sort of terrorist activity organized in Afghanistan.

Mark: Right.

Steve: What if it turns out that in order to secure the cooperation of people who are (A) against growing poppies and the heroin trade and (B) who are against the Taliban crazies, but if we allow them to make sure that all their women wear burkas and they’re not allowed outside the house, if we achieve the goals…because I don’t see that our troops are there to protect the Afghan people.

I wouldn’t have a Canadian go there and get shot at to protect one group of Afghans from another group of Afghans.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Our only concern is if they are a threat to us, if they’re undermining stability in the region.

So, from that perspective, if the law is that women can only scratch their ear with their right hand, you know.

Mark: Yeah, but those kind of laws were all the laws that the Taliban implemented when they were in power.

Steve: Right.

Mark: And so you’ve got to think that the people that are pushing for that again are more closely aligned with the Taliban than with the reformers in Afghanistan, I would imagine, I don’t know.

Steve: I don’t know.

Mark: But, I mean all that kind of stuff.

Certainly with the Taliban I mean the women were under their thumb, for sure.

Steve: Right. Oh yeah, I mean it’s pretty appalling.

Mark: It’s pretty strict, the Taliban were very strict Muslims.

Steve: We regularly see pictures of floggings and stonings from Pakistan, from Saudi Arabia and places like that.

Mark: Yeah, that’s true.

Steve: We did have anything very cheerful to talk about today.

Mark: No.

Steve: How much time do we have left?

Mark: Well, I think that’s going to do us.

Steve: Alright, listen, we have to have a happier discussion next week; otherwise, it’s just too depressing.

Mark: Okay, we’ll talk to you next week.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: Bye-bye.

Steve: Bye for now.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Ann: Our guest today in an author, his name is Steve Kaufmann and is coming to us from Vancouver, British Columbia.

He has written a book The Way of the Linguist: A Language Learning Odyssey.

He is proponent of not only speaking English, but whatever other language you can to immerse yourself in the cultures of the world and to move yourself forward, both personally and professionally.

Steve Kaufmann is fluent in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Swedish and, of course, English and maybe texting, I don’t know.

Let’s get Steve Kaufmann on the line.

Hi Steve, welcome to Your Inner Champion!

Steve: Hello, thank you.

It’s nice to be here.

Ann: My co-host, Jeff Minor, who’s here in the studio, wants to ask you if sign language is considered a foreign language.

Steve: It’s a language, it’s not necessarily foreign, but it’s another language many people do learn for a variety of reasons.

Ann: I am just so impressed with your book The Way of the Linguist; that you speak that many languages.

To me it seems impossible, but, yet, you do it.

Steve: Oh, yeah, I do it and in the last two years now I’ve learned Russian, so you can add Russian to the list.

Ann: Oh, and you have Korean and Portuguese, too.

Steve: Yeah, but I haven’t really brought them up to a level of say fluency.

I have some knowledge of those languages, but I don’t really say that I speak them.

Ann: I was one of these individuals who assumed that unless you’re exposed to a foreign language at a very early age, like within the household other than English or whatever your dominant language is, it’s rather difficult to learn it, but that may not necessarily be the case.

Steve: No.

I think it’s a lot easier when you’re a little child; you have no inhibitions, you listen, pick up what you hear and you just use it.

Adults, very often, try to learn a language at school where I think the traditional language teaching methods are very ineffective and often discourage learners, because they focus on grammar rules and try to get people to produce the language correctly, which is the wrong way to learn, so I think a lot of adults are discouraged.

I lived in Japan and I saw people coming from all kinds of countries who would have the right attitude for learning and they would learn a difficult language, like Japanese, pretty quickly.

Jeff: Hey, Steve, I’ve got a question for you, this is Jeff.

Steve: Yeah?

Jeff: One of the big questions I’ve been thinking about, mulling over in my head, why?

Why do you know so many languages?

What does it do for you?

Steve: Well, initially, it was a matter of circumstance; I got interested.

I grew up in Montreal where a person could learn French, if they wanted to.

In the 50s, of course, there were sort of two cities there, an English-speaking and a French-speaking and I was unilingual English.

I went to university and I had a professor who turned me on to French culture and civilization, so I became interested.

Obviously, the key in learning languages is that you have to be motivated and you have to want to do it.

Once I wanted to do it, I read and listened to radio in French and then I ended up going to France where I did my university training.

Subsequently, I was in situations where I wanted to learn the language.

What happens is, as you learn more languages, you become confident that you can learn another language.

Someone who only speaks one language just can’t visualize themselves speaking another language.

Once you can learn another language – like the last couple of years I’ve learned Russian – it has given me so much.

I can understand so much more about how they think, I can listen to radio programs in Russian, I can listen to audio books, I can read literature in Russian.

It just gives you a lot, so it becomes something you know you can do after a while.

Ann: I know on your Website, TheLinguist.com, you offer people the opportunity to select the language they would like to learn, what is the average length of time it would take for someone to become proficient in another language?

Steve: First of all, let me say that the Website we are using now for language learning is called LingQ (l-i-n-g-Q.com).

There is a Website called The Linguist, but that is not the place where you’d go to learn languages.

Ann: Okay.

Steve: LingQ (l-i-n-g-Q.com) is free; come and use it.

Jeff: Wow!

Steve: How long does it take?

It depends on how close the language is to your own language.

So, for me, Russian was difficult, Spanish is a lot easier, because in Spanish you have a lot of vocabulary that’s similar to English.

Ann: Right.

Steve: Obviously there are aspects of the grammar that you have to learn, but, in my experience, if you can accumulate the words, if you can do a lot of pleasant listening and reading, if you can build up your vocabulary, then the grammar, it doesn’t quite take care of itself, but it’s not the problem that it is if you start by trying to learn the grammar.

Jeff: Did I hear you say it’s free?

Steve: Let me qualify that, alright?

Most people use it free-of-charge.

Jeff: Okay.

Steve: Most of the resources, most of the audio and text content in our library in 10 languages, most of the functionality, which is rather unique and helps you to learn words and phrases, the ability to interact with our community of learners around the world, is essentially free.

If you want a tutor, if you want someone to talk to via the Internet on Skype, if you want to send in writing to be corrected, obviously, there you have to pay because we pay for the tutor.

Jeff: You bet.

Steve: There are some other elite services for which people pay, but I would say the overwhelming majority of people use it free; it’s this whole Web 2.0 experience.

A lot of our free members also contribute.

They may contribute content to our library, they help us build our sort of community dictionary in different languages and they help spread the word.

Ann: Now, in your opinion, which is the most difficult aspect of learning a language?

Is it the speaking aspect, the writing aspect or the reading aspect?

Steve: Well, I think you go through phases.

To me the language is a whole and in the initial phase you are mostly listening and reading and you’re listening and reading to content that’s easy and, as in the case of our Website, where the translation is available in your own language.

All you’re doing is getting used to the language which, at first, is just a lot of noise to you.

So, eventually, you start to separate the words and you start to learn more of these words, but you’re still just getting used to it.

As you become more and more familiar with the language then you start to want to speak, you want to start to use the words that you’ve acquired.

I don’t think there is any one particular aspect that is difficult; rather, I would say that the progression should be to begin by listening and reading and accumulating words.

If you spend six months without speaking it doesn’t matter, because when you start to speak you will pronounce better and you will speak better.

Karen: Steve, this is Karen Black, hi.

Steve: Hi.

Karen: I wanted to ask you, you made a point earlier about people needing to be motivated to learn a language, I’m wondering how you can encourage young people to really look at learning a different language.

Steve: When you say young, what age?

Karen: I’d say nine.

Steve: Well, in my experience, young children are quite interested in new things, so if someone is nine or eight then I think the way languages should be taught is that they should be given stories to listen to and read and a method like LingQ, our Website, where they can click on words and phrases that take these words and phrases to a database where they can review them in flashcards, where they have little statistics that show up, all of these things that are encouraging and stimulating, but mostly they listen on their iPod.

I mean the iPod is a wonderful development.

You can store, on this little iPod, more material and there’s a better quality of sound then used to be in the language labs that we went to.

What you need to do with young people is just not to discourage them and don’t force them to write something and correct them and tell them it’s wrong, all of that is quite unnecessary, the brain will learn it.

So my advice, if you’re talking about nine year old peoples, is find out what they’re interested in and let them simply listen and read.

Karen: Thank you.

Ann: You know I do have another question, but we have a caller on the line and I want to see what he has to ask.

His name’s Tom.

Steve: Okay.

Ann: Hi, Tom, welcome to Your Inner Champion.

Tom: Hi, how are you?

Ann: Do you have a question?

Tom: My daughter wants to quit Spanish in school; she’s finding it’s really hard.

She’s taken a lot of Spanish classes.

I’ve taken several Spanish classes and have gone down to Mexico and they wanted me to speak English.

So, I have two questions, how do you go to a foreign country and speak and how do you keep your child in class?

Steve: Well, I’ll answer them in the order you asked them.

It very often happens that you’re learning a language, you go to the country hoping to use it and people there want to speak English.

It’s happened to me when I was working on my Portuguese.

Don’t get discouraged, do what is easy for you to do, which is to listen and read and build up your vocabulary until you are more and more capable in the language and then, if you go to the country, yes, some people will want to speak to you in English, but there’ll be lots of other people who will be very happy to speak to you in the language you’re learning, in Spanish.

So, very often, it’s a matter of building up your capability to where you’re more confident.

You can’t control whether a person wants to speak to you, say in Spanish, but you can control the activities that you do, the listening and reading.

I mean in my case, at the age of 63, I learnt Russian, mostly by listening and reading and using LingQ, and I have no one here to speak to in Russian.

Yeah, now I do, I’ve found people and through our Website I talk to my Russian tutor in Russian; fine, but you can go a long way just building up your capability in the language.

This is proven by research on the brain, listening and reading.

Now insofar as your daughter is concerned, if she doesn’t like Spanish there’s not much you can do; however, if she likes it, but finds it difficult because of the way they teach it at school because and she can’t remember the subjunctive or the third person singular of the past tense, don’t worry about those things.

Now she may need it for her class work, but she’ll be better off if she likes to listen to songs in Spanish, if she likes to read about whatever it might be in Spanish or to listen in Spanish.

In other words, try to enjoy it in some way and don’t be discouraged by the way the language is taught.

Ann: So, Tom, “es esto bien?”

Tom: “Gracias.”

Ann: Well, you know what, we will get your information and you have won some treats from Dragonfly Boba Tea and Bakery, just for calling in.

We do have to go to break and we’ll be right back in just a few.

Thanks, Tom.

(STATION BREAK) Ann: We are back with Your Inner Champion and we are speaking with Steve Kaufmann, author of The Way of the Linguist.

He speaks more than nine languages and it’s just phenomenal what having that in your life can do for you.

I know, Steve, our other guest, Karen Black, has a question for you.

Karen: Steve, if you were going to sum up what you’ve said, what would be the top three to five things that would be critical for somebody learning a new language?

Steve: First of all, choose a language that you like, where you like someone or you like some aspect of the culture, because it’s very important to be emotionally involved to want to do it.

It helps your learning, so that’s number one; make sure you want to do it.

Number two, focus on things that you can control and that aren’t so difficult to do, like listening and reading and accumulating words.

Don’t worry about whether you can find someone to talk to or whether someone wants to talk to you; those things are outside your control.

Number three, let the language come in and don’t get hung up on theoretical explanations and rules.

The brain has a much tougher time dealing with these theoretical explanations than it has in naturally creating its own rules by doing a lot of listening and reading.

I guess the final one is when you do go to speak, don’t worry about how you sound, don’t worry about whether you make a good impression or not, just enjoy the fact that you can now communicate; however well you do it, that you can now communicate in another language.

That’s four.

Ann: Thank you.

Jeff: Great.

Karen: Great.

Jeff: Hey, Steve, does it happen to you, if you don’t use it you lose it?

Steve: No.

It’s another interesting thing, I find, in fact, that if you leave a language for a while, a language that you’ve been studying…our members at LingQ, again, tell us the same and I have a blog, as well, and I say this on my blog…there is a gestation of the language.

You learn it for a while and if you learn it the way we do it at LingQ, in other words, naturally, through a lot of listening and reading, we help the brain notice the language, identify words and phrases.

We don’t teach theoretical explanations, so if you learn this way, then you leave it for a few months, when you come back you are actually better.

Jeff: Oh, wow!

Steve: It’s like a big freight train, it just keeps moving, so if you learn it in a natural way these things take hold in your brain and, in fact, they continue to develop.

It’s amazing the number of people on my blog, when I mentioned this, who said they’ve had the exact same experience.

Ann: You know I want to ask — because I just enrolled my oldest son for high school and in looking at his options for foreign language requirements they offer three: German, Spanish and French — do you feel like the schools are being remiss in not offering more?

Steve: Well, you know the schools are in a bit of a bind.

Because they teach the traditional way, they can offer a language for which they have a teacher, a qualified teacher.

Ann: Right.

Steve: So, obviously, they’re limited.

I mean at the average school, how many people are they going to have on staff who are qualified to teach another language?

Now, in my view, in the day of the Internet, you could have a teacher who could learn the art of learning a language and then he or she, the teacher, could have a class and explain how you learn.

I would, of course, recommend that the way we do it at LingQ is the most effective way; it’s inline with how the brain learns.

Teach people how to learn and say here are these resources via the Internet.

You can find content at your level to listen to, you can save words and review the flashcards of the words that you’ve saved.

You can write and someone will correct it for you, you can speak with a native speaker, you can make friends in the language.

In other words, the teacher could direct the learner, the child, to learn whichever language they want to learn and they wouldn’t be limited, because there’s no way a school is going to have some one with the ability to teach Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese; it’s just not going to happen.

Ann: With a young person going into the world today and, obviously, our world is shrinking in terms of our communication abilities with people in other countries, is there any one, two or even three specific languages you think someone should know in order to, perhaps, increase their chances of success?

Steve: Not really.

I mean obviously in the United States Spanish is huge, in Canada, French and in terms of what’s happening in the world today, Chinese is important.

But I go back to that the main thing has to be the interest of the child.

The child may be interested in Japanese because of Japanese comics, that’s fine, go for Japanese.

Study the language that you are motivated to learn.

If you learn a language today you’ll be in a better position to learn another language later on.

So if the child at school is interested in Japanese, let the child learn Japanese and if for business reasons they have to learn Spanish later on they’ll learn it a lot more easily than if they had never learned another language.

Ann: Now what is your Website again where you offer these?

Steve: It’s called LingQ (l-i-n-g-Q.com).

Ann: L-i-n-g-Q.com.

Steve: Registration is free, so come and poke around and send us an email if you have any questions.

Jeff: Hey, Steve, I’ve got a question.

It just happens to be Valentine’s Day today…

Steve: Right.

Jeff: …and I really would like to impress my wife and be able to tell her Happy Valentine’s in a different language; give me one that sounds really romantic.

Ann: You didn’t buy her anything, did you?

Jeff: No.

Karen: There’s going to be conflict at his house!

Steve: Well, you know St.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t necessarily translate that well.

Jeff: Oh.

Steve: You could say…well, if in French, if we’re talking romance we’re talking French, so you could say “félicitations”, which is congratulations.

“Le jour de St.Valentin” is St.

Valentine’s Day.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Steve: Or “joyeux” is happy, “joyeux St. Valentin”

Jeff: Ooh, okay.

Steve: “Mon amour” and then you say, my love, okay?

Jeff: Spell that for me, will you?

Ann: What about Mandarin or Cantonese or one of those Asian languages?

Steve: Okay (in Chinese) St.

Valentine’s Day, well, I don’t know how you say that.

(In Chinese again) So today is the love day, so I wish you happiness.

Jeff: I love it.

Ann: That is so awesome and the way you segued in and out of those languages is amazing.

Jeff: It is and it almost sounded like you have dialect, actually.

Steve: No, again, the whole thing with language learning is you have to visualize yourself as a speaker of that language.

As I mention in my book, it’s your attitude and then to try and learn in a natural way and to have fun with it.

I think that’s what we miss in the language teaching that we do in schools.

Ann: So what do you do, Steve, if you’re cruising along, you’re learning a language you really enjoy, but you get really frustrated?

How do you get past that point of frustration to keep on learning?

Steve: You know people get burnout and then they should just leave it for a while.

The other thing and I shouldn’t really say this, but at the Website we often recommend that you tinker with another language, because at our Website you can open another language, so do Swedish, German or Portuguese.

Or if you just want to get away from language learning entirely and stop doing it, you won’t fall behind because what you are doing, as in the case of our Website, mostly you’re selecting an item of content and we have these huge libraries where our members are constantly contributing podcasts, talking with their husbands or wives; there’s all kinds of interesting stuff.

Ann: You know what? I hate to interrupt, but we’re out of time.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Ann: Just to make sure, listeners, go to LingQ.com.

We’ve been speaking with Steve Kaufmann, author of The Way of the Linguist.

Steve: Okay, thank you.

Ann: We just appreciate you being on our show.

Jeff: Thank you, Steve.

Karen: Thank you.

Ann: We just appreciate you being on our show and welcome back next week to Hot Talk 1510 AM and Your Inner Champion with Jeff Minor of Nothing by Chance Coaching and me, Ann Butenas of having-to-find-a-new-Website name.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Mary: Steve Kaufmann joins us, his book The Way of the Linguist: A Language Learning Odyssey.

Good morning, Steve.

Steve: Good morning.

Mary: First of all, let’s define what you mean by linguist and let’s talk about some of the obstacles most of us face in trying to learn a language.

Steve: Okay.

Well, first of all, I’ve used the word linguist to mean someone who speaks more than one language and the Oxford Dictionary does define it that way.

So, of some of us think a linguist is somebody who studies the theory of language; it can also mean someone who speaks more than one language.

I think lots of people are potential linguists and probably the biggest obstacle is the way languages are taught in schools.

Mary: Alright.

Then how do you not agree with that?

Steve: Well, because in order to learn a language you first have to listen to it, you have to read it, even if it’s not entirely clear to you; stories, simple stories.

Whereas, in school what we do is we ask the young learner to learn grammar, to produce the language correctly, which is not going to happen.

At least in Canada here, people in the English school system after 10 years of French and being marked on their tests and so forth, they can’t speak and, what’s more, they end up not liking the language.

They don’t like learning language, they don’t think it’s something they can do and they don’t do it.

Jon: Yeah, I can relate to that, too.

Especially, you feel like it’s torture after a while.

Like you’re just memorizing and you can’t really apply it in any meaningful way, you know?

Steve: Exactly and it’s contrary to the way the brain learns.

You see what should happen in schools is there should be simple stories for little eight-nine year olds to listen to, to read, a bit of help with the vocabulary, help to explain the story.

Make it fun for them, so it’s the story that motivates them not the desire to learn the past tense or the future or the conditional or any of that sort of stuff.

And they needn’t produce the language, because if they can’t produce the language at the end of 10 years why bother trying to get them to say something correctly when they’re just getting started.

Jon: Yeah.

Mary: Very true.

Whenever I travel, Steve, I always try to learn a few phrases and then it makes me think, ah, I’ve got to learn this language.

You talk in your book, though, about conviviality and that’s a huge part of it.

Explain that to us.

Steve: Well, yeah, you learn a language to communicate.

I mean that’s why you learn it and I can say that from my own personal experience, now that I speak nine and I’ve added Russian these last couple of years.

The ability to be with people in their language — I listen to Russian radio programs now to understand how they see the world — whether it be with Chinese people or Spanish speaking people, you just get a lot closer to people who speak another language and it’s a wonderful feeling and well worth the investment.

Jon: I was going to ask you about that Steve.

Steve Kaufmann, by the way, joining us this morning, his book called The Way of the Linguist.

The reward has to be that it makes your world smaller in some ways, doesn’t it?

Steve: Well, absolutely, the rewards are many.

First of all, I should point out that we have a website called LingQ (l-i-n-g-q.com) where we have content for 10 languages.

If you do it right it’s fun, so the first reward is that you learn in a way that is enjoyable.

Then, in my own case, professionally it has been a tremendous advantage; socially, as I said earlier; culturally, to be able to read books in different languages; listen to audio books.

One thing, Mary, I would point out, you know, I’m the same as you.

If I go to a country where I don’t speak the language, let’s say Indonesia or, I don’t know, Latvia, I pick up a phase book, but it really doesn’t get you anywhere, because even if you are able to say those phrases, the people come back at you with much more and you can’t understand them.

So, I think that it is possible to learn a language to the point where you can be fluent in it and that just picking up a few phrases is our first impulse, but, hopefully we take it further than that.

Mary: Very good.

I wish we had more time, Steve, but, definitely, your website is going to be worth checking out, because you have your own system.

Steve: It’s free, it’s the way I learn, it’s the way the brain learns and we welcome people to come and join us there.

It’s an international community at LingQ (l-i-n-g-q.com) and my book is available at Amazon.

Jon: Alright, The Way of the Linguist: A Language Learning Odyssey.

Steve Kaufmann, thanks for being with us.

Steve: Thank you.

Mary: Thanks so much, Steve.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark: Hello again for another EnglishLingQ installment; Mark here with Steve.

Steve: Hello.

Mark: How’s it going today?

Steve: Oh, not too bad.

You know what I thought we should talk about is children.

Mark: Okay.

Steve: It just seems to me that if I compare my childhood, which is a long time ago, to what goes on now, I think parents are much more sort of ambitious for their kids; organizing their kids, getting them into activities, whether it be sports or music.

It seems that parents spend half their time organizing or driving their children to events and that the children don’t do as much on their own as they used to.

I don’t know whether you feel this compared to your childhood.

Mark: I mean I think that’s definitely true; although, it’s not that much different than when I was a kid.

Yeah, we spent a lot of time going to different events; being taken to different events.

I remember you complaining when I was a kid that, you know, when I was your age I’d just show up at the field and all my friends were there and we’d play football all day; whereas, that really didn’t happen for me that much.

Steve: No. It’s true; there are lots of playgrounds here in Vancouver.

Either there’s an organized event there, kids in uniform playing soccer or baseball, or they’re empty.

You don’t just have people showing up; whereas, when I was young at all the fields there would be baseball games.

You’d go down there and we would organize something.

We would divide up into two teams…or football, we didn’t play soccer.

In the winter they would flood the skating rinks and if you went down there and I would go down there everyday after supper and on the weekends and we’d be there for hours.

There would three or four games going in different directions, different ages of kids, but there were always kids at the park.

Mark: I mean I think that still happens with hockey when you have an outdoor rink that just sits there when it’s not taken up by organized hockey.

Like when we’re at Big White skiing on vacations there is an outdoor rink and that’s what happens there; people show up and join in the game and I think it’s the same.

It’s not cold enough in Vancouver for outdoor ice like that, but I think where they do have rinks that still happens; although, probably not as much.

Steve: You know it’s interesting…I’m trying to sort of think of reasons; one might be that the families were much bigger when I was growing up.

Parents didn’t have so much time to spend on one or two children, because they had more children, so the children had to kind of look after themselves and create their own entertainment and their own activities.

Whereas, now, perhaps parents have children later, although, that wasn’t your case and it wasn’t my case, of course, so they are much more serious about their parenting activities, maybe.

Mark: Could be.

Also, maybe there are more things to do now, you know, between the computer, the TV, and the different entertainments that people can take part in.

Plus, maybe the fact that communication is easier, in a way, so it’s easier to organize events and once you have organized events then the unorganized kind maybe take a backseat because if it’s not organized all of a sudden people don’t show up anymore; whereas, before they would just show up.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I’m not really sure.

Steve: You know it’s interesting, it reminds me of the story that’s told about how these boys used to show up on this field and play football right near this old man’s home and they were very noisy, so the old man didn’t like them playing football there.

He said, boys, I really like you coming here to play football and if you keep coming I’ll give you each .25¢ every time you show up.

The boys thought that was great, so they showed up for a couple of weeks and played football and then the old man said, you know, I can’t afford .25¢ anymore, but I’ll give you each .10¢ if you show up.

They were happy with that and they came and played football.

Then, finally, the old man said, you know what, I can’t afford to pay you anymore, so I won’t be able to give you anything, but please keep coming out and then the kids stopped showing up.

Now whether that’s a true story or not, who knows, you know, who knows.

But, it is true, once you get organizing kids then they don’t necessarily organize themselves anymore, so that could be part of it.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean they’re happy to…on the other hand, on the playground…like if they’re all at school, if they’re all there, they organize their own activities at lunch hour and so on, but I guess they don’t all show up somewhere on the weekend.

I mean once you get the kids in one place they’re happy to play on their own; they don’t need supervision.

Steve: But this relates to another thing, too, and that is when I was growing up everybody walked or bicycled to school.

Whereas, now, people are driven or they take a school bus, so there seems to be this feeling that you can’t just let kids wander off on their own to do things.

Mark: I mean some people are a little more uptight about that kind of thing than others, but after a certain age a lot of kids wander around, just like they used to.

I don’t know that that’s…I mean that’s part of the story, for sure.

Some people their kids have to be driven everywhere.

But…I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now.

Steve: But, this whole business of organizing.

I mean even in the schools, you know, I don’t want to be always critical of the education system, but they’re always coming up with new ideas, new ways.

Here in Canada at least the teachers regularly get what are called “professional days” where they have meetings and talk about how they can do things better.

And I’m not convinced that educational standards are getting better; I’m not sure that kids read better now than they did before.

So, I don’t know, maybe it was always that way.

You know, apparently, if you go back to ancient Greece the older generation was always complaining about the younger generation, so it would seem to suggest that the older generation was pretty good.

Whereas, in fact, if you go back, they had some pretty awful things; life was short, they were pretty violent.

So, who knows?

Mark: Who knows; I mean I think that’s always a part of it.

The older generation thinks what goes on nowadays is no good, compared to when I was a kid.

I mean that’s, obviously, a pretty common theme.

Steve: Right.

Mark: But there are things that…I was reading an article in the newspaper today, or, online, actually, Google News, talking about how some researcher had come out with a study saying that all the efforts at preventing boys from engaging in violent acts or playing with violent toys or preventing them from playing violent computer games may, in fact, have a negative effect.

Because, as she claims, those are valuable outlets for natural tendencies in boys and if you stifle that then it leads to other problems; it leads to them not doing as well in school and so forth.

I mean I don’t know if that’s the reason, but, certainly, boys don’t do as well in school now as they used to.

There’s a variety of theories for that, but that was one I read today.

Steve: Well, you know then you hear the theory that violent TV programs and violent computer games contribute to violence and, yet, if you look at some of the most violent places in the world, like the wars they had in Yugoslavia or even in Rwandan and some of the examples of tremendously violent activities, I don’t think it was television violence that contributed…

Mark: No.

Steve: …to those activities, so, who knows.

Mark: What’s more, it mentioned in this study, as well, that over the last 10 years say or 15 years there’s been an explosion in the usage of violent computer games and it has not seen a corresponding increase in violent crime.

In fact, there’s been a decrease, so certainly that correlation can’t be drawn.

Steve: Although the decrease in violent crime might be related to the population getting older; I don’t know if they looked at that particular cohort, as they say, that age group.

Mark: I’m not sure, exactly, but they implied that, in fact, it had the reverse effect on violence with the increased usage of violent computer games.

Steve: Well all of these different subjects create very useful areas of study for sociologists and educators.

They can apply for funding and do in-depth studies that all contradict each other and get published and then you read about them in your newspaper.

Mark: That’s right; that’s essentially it.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: Although, I do think that there is some truth to the fact that you don’t want to drown kids in violent movies and violent video games.

But I’ve seen parents that won’t let their little boy play with a sword or a water gun; well, in my opinion, that’s just silly.

Obviously there’s some innate tendency to want to play with weapons of some kind…

Steve: Right.

Mark: …especially in boys and, you know, most people turnout just fine, so…

Steve: I think, too, that the emphasis should not be on what you can take away from boys or children, in general, it’s what can you do to stimulate their interest.

Stimulate their interest, you know, in things so that they can learn about things and discover things.

One of my hobbyhorses, when it comes to language training or anything, is to not have the teacher dictate too much.

You know, within a particular area, let the child explore, particularly when they’re very young, things that are of interest to them or put some choices in front of them.

Now, maybe some people don’t like choice, I don’t know…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …but a lot of what we learned at school is not very interesting.

You know I saw a video on YouTube the other day where a bunch of Americans, at random, were asked questions about world geography and they didn’t know much.

Mark: Right.

Steve: They were even asked the question, you know, how many sides to a triangle?

The person didn’t know, so this was used, of course, quite unfairly to say, oh, well, the Americans are all poorly educated.

Mark: Those movies always tend to be a little…

Steve: Yeah.

And then someone went out to say, well, we’ll do the same in Germany and England and people were just as stupid.

Mark: Yeah, exactly; for sure.

Steve: I mean you can always edit out the people who have a good answer and you can always find people in every country who probably didn’t focus on your question or whatever, so.

But, it is true that we can all learn more and the more interesting they make it at school the more likely kids are to learn.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So that, you know, whether it be…it’s a fine line between either parents or teachers imposing activities or what to do on children and allowing children to explore.

Whether they want to go and play on their own, whether they want to play with a sword and if you don’t give them a sword they’ll get a stick and they’ll do it, you know, you’ve got to let kids explore.

Mark: Right.

The other theory I know is that…especially the boys, again, because there is the issue of boys not doing as well in school… there’s less discipline in schools now than there used to be and if there was more discipline perhaps that might get those boys to pay attention more, I don’t know.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I mean you’re saying you want to let them explore.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I guess they can explore, but behave at the same time…

Steve: Oh, absolutely!

Mark: …is obviously a requirement.

Now, well, teachers don’t have much power to enforce discipline in their classrooms.

Steve: Yeah.

I mean the other thing is — and we said this before — I mean we used to have corporal punishment.

In other words, I used to get hit when I was in school and if ever a teacher, you know, criticized me my parents would always side with the teacher.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Whereas, now, parents tend to side with their child.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And I agree with you, much more discipline.

I think teachers should come properly dressed to school.

I mean I see teachers wearing jeans in the classroom; I just think that’s wrong.

I think the teacher should wear, you know, I don’t know, perhaps a jacket, maybe not a tie, but that there should be a certain uniform.

This is a teacher, a person that you respect and you don’t call him by his first name or her first name or any of this kind of stuff.

But I think you can still structure the learning activities in a way that allows the children to explore.

But I agree with you on discipline, absolutely.

It just destroys it for those…because it’s normally a small group who are disrupting it for the majority.

Mark: Well, exactly.

The teacher spends all their time trying to get this small group to pay attention or stop distracting the rest of the class and it is kind of silly.

Anyway, I’m sure there are lots of reasons…

Steve: Right.

Mark: …and lots of future studies for all the sociologists out there.

Steve: Right.

Mark: They’ll probably still be arguing about this generations from now.

Steve: For sure.

Mark: Well, with that…

Steve: Okay, yeah.

Mark: …I think we’ll sign off.

Steve: For all you parents out there and children…

Mark: …let us know what your thoughts are on education. Talk to you later.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark: Hello and welcome back to the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Mark here with Steve.

Steve: Hello, this is Steve here.

Mark: Today we thought we would talk a little bit about political correctness.

Well, I guess let’s begin with what happened to you yesterday morning.

Steve: Yes.

Mark: You were reading the local newspaper.

Steve: Political correctness is a term that comes up all the time and I guess we should perhaps begin by explaining what it is.

It refers to the fact that there’s sort of a prevailing understanding that certain points of view are considered acceptable and certain points of view are not and that what is acceptable in terms of political correctness is a certain…call it liberal, call it even left-wing, call it progressive…point of view of so-called intellectuals and people who consider themselves more advanced than the average beer drinking slob.

That they have determined that this is the correct view politically and any view that sort of departs from this is not correct and you’re not allowed to express it.

Now we’re exaggerating.

Mark: But not by much.

Steve: No, but certainly it depends on where you are.

In some circles, like in the university circles, that’s very strong.

One example is I was reading in the newspaper that I read, which is called the National Post, and it’s one of the two sort of more serious newspapers in Canada…

Mark: …national newspapers.

Steve: Even compared to the local newspapers, those are the two national papers and a bit more serious…

Mark: Oh, for sure.

Steve: …less advertising, more serious articles.

The National Post is a little more conservative.

The Globe and Mail, which is the other one, is perhaps a little more…they’re both very much in the center and they have a variety of opinion.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, if anything, the National Post is a little more conservative, The Globe and Mail is a little more liberal, so to speak.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so there was an article on this whole global warming debate and I confess that I don’t know what the story is on global warming; I know there’s a lot of excitement about it.

There was a lot of excitement about Y2K, so it’s very easy for newspapers to create a tremendous amount of hype over these things.

But, I’m prepared to accept that if, in fact, there’s even a possibility that human beings are causing what possibly could be a disastrous thing for the world then we should do something about it.

Mark: Although, it’s no longer called global warming because, in fact, this decade temperatures have been cooling, so it’s now climate change.

Steve: Climate change.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Whatever. I don’t know what the story is, but here there’s a debate.

I open my newspaper and this one gentleman is refuting an article written by another fellow whose name is Lawrence Solomon and who has a research organization called Energy Probe.

Lawrence Solomon has raised some questions about the famous Hockey Stick Graph, which was used to explain how all of a sudden the world is getting a lot hotter like the blade on a hockey stick.

So this person whose name was Mann…Thomas Mann, Lawrence Mann, I can’t remember his name…he attacks the position of Solomon.

So I’m quite anxious to read this because I want to know, what are these positions.

He begins with saying that Lawrence Solomon has been writing in that “tabloid” the National Post.

Now a tabloid refers to a newspaper…it used to be called the Yellow Press; sensationalist newspapers typically are tabloid newspapers.

It’s the kind of newspaper that you buy to read on the bus going in to work and then you throw it away.

Typically they have a picture of a pin-up girl in a bikini and the latest gossip about movie stars, that’s what a tabloid is; the National Post is not a tabloid.

So before he gets into his subject he slams the newspaper and calls it a tabloid, which it isn’t.

Then he says this person Lawrence Solomon is in the pay of the oil industry, which, of course, I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Of course Lawrence Solomon is going to deny it, but the point is, what are your arguments?

So my point in all of this is the politically correct side of the equation — and I’ve seen this in so many instances — they don’t feel under any obligation to defend their views because the correctness of their views is a given, so all they have to do is call you names.

Mark: Right.

What doesn’t surprise me…when you said the guy’s name was Mann it sort of rung a bell for me, so I just looked him up.

Steve: Right.

Mark: In fact, he’s one of the two guys that created the Hockey Stick Graph.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Mark: Which sort of explains a lot of the vitriol he directed at that guy…

Steve: Michael Mann is his name.

Mark: …in the paper.

What’s more, from what I know about the Hockey Stick Graph, he and whoever worked together with him came up with this graph using whatever models.

It was never corroborated by any other scientific team, body or anything and was grabbed by the people putting together the Kyoto Protocol and pointed out as being this is it.

Here it is the Hockey Stick Graph.

Michael Mann says so, so it’s true.

And, in fact, there’s any number of ways to crunch the data which he used, which was, I think, incomplete as well.

I can’t remember now, but there were two Canadian scientists that published a book totally disputing his findings and saying it was never corroborated.

How can public policy be based on something that was a one off?

Obviously this guy was motivated to show that climate change was human caused and he managed to do so.

It certainly doesn’t prove anything as far as I’m concerned.

Steve: No. It may still be caused by human activity; I’m not arguing either side.

Mark: Right. But if that’s the case…

Steve: Yes.

Mark: …then explain how you did it and have other people match your findings and corroborate and say, yeah, that’s exactly right, we have found the same thing and, okay, then we start to believe you.

But if it’s a one off and if you’re challenged your response is to attack the other party instead of explaining why your findings are correct, well then to my mind that totally discredits your argument.

Steve: See all this political correctness reminds me, more than anything else, of the kind of atmosphere that prevailed in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany.

Mark: Aha.

Steve: I’m serious.

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: You know when you were a scientist there you had to come up with Nazi science, Soviet science; objectivity was frowned upon.

Mark: Right.

Steve: It was the same in Europe, I mean Copernicus or…

Mark: …Galileo…

Steve: …Galileo…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …they were fighting the orthodoxy of the church.

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: So that there is an orthodoxy.

And human beings are the same, whether they’re human beings in the 15th century, 16th century, 20th century, 21st century, there is a tendency for this kind of orthodoxy to become established.

Especially if you’re in these sort of intellectual circles, that’s what you have to kowtow to.

Another good example is they talk about dialoging now.

We don’t argue anymore, we dialogue…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …which is so ridiculous.

The idea is that we shouldn’t present our views with the idea of trying to persuade the other person.

You know we don’t do that…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …we kind of want to slide closer and closer together so that we can share either other’s views and stuff.

The whole assumption is that you have to buy into the common orthodoxy.

Mark: Right.

Steve: If I challenge the orthodoxy…there is no dialoging.

Mark: No.

Steve: I think you’re wrong…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …for these reasons and I think I’m right for these reasons and I have no illusions that I can persuade people who believe differently and I’m quite skeptical as to the power of reason.

Like you start from a position and you try to defend it, but why shouldn’t I be free to defend it…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …to say what I want?

Mark: Because what you don’t understand is you’re wrong.

You don’t agree with me, so you’re wrong.

You don’t agree with the orthodoxy, so you’re wrong.

It’s so obvious that you’re wrong that we don’t even have to discuss it.

Steve: You know it reminds me, I was having this discussion on this List Serve, which is a community of people sending each other emails about language learning.

They were carrying on about literacy and how literacy, they said, was a social construct.

I don’t even understand what that word means.

What is a social construct?

Literacy is can you read, you know?

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, no, no, it’s a social construct and it’s connected with…this one lady, who was an American, wrote that literacy is…first of all, we have to make sure people realize that once they start to read they’re going to be inundated with propaganda in our society.

Consumerism, capitalism, it’s all bad – I’m serious – and, ultimately, literacy is connected with democracy and republicanism, she said.

Like not as in Republican Party, but republic not a monarchy, you know?

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so I wrote and I said well, no, that’s not really true.

To me, literacy is just the ability to read.

Mark: Right.

Steve: You can read the instructions on how to assemble furniture.

You can read a religious tract.

You can read the Communist Party Manifesto.

You can read whatever you want.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Reading is just the ability to read.

So she sends me a private email.

Really, you know, she says, I don’t understand.

You shouldn’t be so argumentative and you should be trying to get closer to my points of view.

So I just went back to her privately because, first of all, I have no interest in communicating with her privately and I went back and I was quite rude.

I sort of said, first of all, not everyone is an American, so whether you’re a republic or a monarchy or anything else is irrelevant to literacy.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Second of all, in fact in many cases, those countries which had very authoritarian regimes have been more successful at raising literacy levels, like in the Soviet Union, like in Cuba, like in China, more successful than in democratic countries.

There’s no relationship between democracy, being a republic and literacy; there is no necessary relationship.

I said the trouble with you is that you’re full of all the gibberish, sudo-academic nonsense that you absorb uncritically at university.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So her answer to me was, please don’t email me again.

Well, you’re the one who emailed me.

Mark: No, but that’s typical.

A lot of people, unfortunately, get brainwashed, more or less, at university by all this politically correct propaganda, for want of a better term.

I mean there is only one point of view, so it’s not surprising that university graduates come out with that point of view and if anyone disagrees then they are certainly not to be argued with or debated with, they’re to be stomped upon.

Steve: Again, on this website with all the English teachers, I mean 90% of them believe that literacy should be taught in conjunction with social change and should be taught with critical thinking, but they never say critical thinking might include the right to totally disagree with what you’re talking about and that social chance could be anything.

We can change in one direction, we can change in another and why is it the obligation of the English teacher to impose his or her social values on this poor Honduran refugee?

Mark: Fundamentally, I mean you’re to teach English.

You’re there to teach English, just teach English.

Who are you kidding?

You’re trying to brainwash people because you’re trying to protect them?

You know don’t mother these people, they’re adults, they can make their own opinions.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Just teach them the language, if that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

Steve: Right.

Mark: That whole attitude I just don’t understand.

Steve: But it’s pervasive.

Mark: It is.

Steve: It’s pervasive in our school systems.

Mark: It’s pervasive and what’s more is we are there to protect you against the propaganda of the big business and George Bush.

Steve: Right.

Mark: So, instead of that, we’re going to brainwash you with our slant on society.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Absolutely all sides should be presented all the time.

Steve: Exactly.

Mark: There should be no slant of any kind, but they think it’s wrong.

Theoretically, this right-wing propaganda is being pushed at people or consumerism or whatever it is and they’re going to defend these people by pushing their own propaganda.

Steve: Exactly. That’s their agenda in life.

Mark: It’s totally hypocritical.

Steve: I mean they’re quite and perfectly entitled to have those opinions.

Mark: Sure.

Steve: And, gosh, maybe their points of view, from a political perspective, make more sense than mine.

Because they have this hold over the people they’re teaching, if they present them with political opinion, social opinion, they should present them with a balanced perspective, even on environmental issues.

It is not their…you know nothing annoys me more than when I see six and seven year olds taken to a political rally.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I don’t care whether it’s the fascist league of whatever or save the whales, bomb the bombs, whatever it might be, you shouldn’t take six year olds or eight year olds.

Mark: Right. They’re not interested, really.

Steve: They don’t have an opinion of their own and if they have an opinion it’s the opinion that you fed them.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I don’t think that’s fair. Anyway, we’re rambling here.

Mark: I mean my kids are at school here and you know the universities are particularly bad for political correctness, but so are the elementary schools and high schools.

I mean the prevailing thought is certainly politically correct and it definitely annoys me when the kids come home and our teacher said this or that about this or that political situation.

And whether I agree with them or not, that’s not the teacher’s job.

The teacher’s job is to teach Math, Reading, whatever the case may be.

You teach them how to think not what to think.

Steve: Well, you can’t even teach them how to think.

Stimulate them; tell them about things, things that are interesting.

Give them a range of things.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And the other thing they try to do at school is the, well, you know, today is our nice day or we’re going to be respectful or we’re going to be kind or whatever.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: If the teacher is kind, if other people are kind, the kids pick up on this and, besides which, it’s really up to the parents to inculcate these values.

Mark: Well, for sure.

Come on, you mean that if we say this week we’re going to talk about respect that that’s going to make some kid who otherwise would walk around the playground beating other kids up is going to say, oh, this week is respect week and I’m just going to give out hugs?

I just don’t buy it.

Steve: No.

Mark: It probably doesn’t harm the kids, but, on the other hand, that’s time they could be spending doing something useful.

That’s the part that irritates me.

Steve: Exactly. They’re far better off, vis-à-vis their future lives, to learn the skills they need.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And we’re seeing a decline in the level of our skills.

Get them reading, get them discovering the world.

They’re going to discover more reading than they are from the teacher.

Mark: Right.

Steve: The teacher’s role should be to stimulate them to go out and learn more things, not to say…anyway, we’ve rambled on here.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

Steve: I think we’ve…

Mark: …covered this subject.

I guess the point we’re trying to make is that we wish that those who are politically correct – and that includes many in universities and schools and the media — would just be a little more open.

Be open to other points of view, debate other points of view because, unfortunately, a debate just gets stifled and the more and more a debate is stifled about…well, you name it.

It doesn’t matter which subject, the debates are stifled because if you don’t agree with the politically correct point of view not only are you obviously wrong, but you’re to be stamped out and quieted.

Steve: And you know the other thing is this sense that certain kinds of activity are morally good and others are morally bad.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So working for a nonprofit is good.

But, in fact, most of the people who work in nonprofits, who work there, who volunteer, are relatively well off in our society…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …and people who have benefited from society, in one way or another, and they’re interested in having their organization grow.

Many of the people at the senior levels of these organizations and government organizations involved with them, they’re flying off business class around the world to conferences.

They’ve got a vested interest in their little empire, which is no different from the vested interest of someone who’s peddling Coca-cola.

Mark: Or who is beating the drum for global warming.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Like I have a friend who is very much pro global warming or I don’t know if he’s pro global warming, but strongly supports it, but his livelihood depends on it.

Steve: Right.

Mark: He’s employed by the university to prepare communities in this province on how to best deal with the approaching climate change, so, yeah, he’s going to be a believer.

If climate change doesn’t happen he’s out of a job, so he’s not unbiased, not at all.

Famous environmentalists like Al Gore who made that movie…

Steve: …who won the Nobel Prize…

Mark: …he’s made a fortune off that.

Come on, I don’t believe a word he says.

Steve: Well, I don’t believe that he has any particular answers on that. Anyway…

Mark: Anyway, I think we’ve beaten this topic to death.

Steve: We’ve beat this subject to death here.

Mark: Yeah, to death.

Steve: Okay. We’re looking forward to hearing some angry response from our listeners.

Mark: Absolutely. We wish we had someone with us here who disagreed with us.

Steve: Right. We don’t let them in here.

Mark: No.

Steve: No, no, we listen.

Mark: Anyway, we’ll talk to you again next time.

Steve: Okay, bye-bye.