Searching for Accurate Maps

We're all pilgrims on the same journey – but some pilgrims have better road maps – Nelson DeMille

Posts Tagged society

Japanese society in 2011: part 1 of 3 | 世論 What Japan Thinks

Apr 26

Posted by sheffner in announcement, culture and communication | Comments off

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQqq3e03EBQ’]

Citizens of this collectivist nation think their fellow-citizens are not civic-minded enough and need to have more of it pushed on them.  The politicians just got handed a gift with this survey.

Note the false dichotomy of question 3, ” Given the two opinions “One should focus more on country and society” and “Satisfying one’s personal lifestyle is a more important view””, which assumes that these two options are mutually exclusive. Are they, I wonder?

Between the 20th of January and the 6th of February 2011 10,000 people aged 20 or older selected at random from residency registers from all over the country were approached for interview and 6,338 people agreed to a face-to-face interview. 53.8% of the sample were female, 7.9% in their twenties, 14.0% in their thirties, 16.6% in their forties, 17.2% in their fifties, 23.4% in their sixties, 15.7% in their seventies, and 5.4% aged eighty or older.

via Japanese society in 2011: part 1 of 3 | 世論 What Japan Thinks.

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British news: migration

Oct 18

Posted by sheffner in Uncategorized | Comments off

“It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder,”

said a UK immigration minister, according to this BBC news article. The article contains a link to an interesting map showing “total numbers of Eastern European migrants in each local authority who registered for work between May 2004 and December 2007.”

The issue seems to be getting a lot of play in various newspapers and media. I wonder what’s behind this? The obvious answer is the recession (digression: a recession is when your neighbour loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours). It could certainly not be that there are others at work behind the scenes, taking advantage of the present situation to further an agenda of increased border controls and more rigid surveillance of the population. No, siree!

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Japan news: over 100 teachers opt for demotion

Oct 18

Posted by sheffner in Uncategorized | Comments off

For one of the classes I teach, I need to find news items in English about Japan (especially items that look at Japanese society from an unusual or non-Japanese point of view), and Japan Probe is a good source of such news. Japan Probe is a Japan news blog in English that focusses on general-interest news items, and sometimes usefully includes embedded video taken from Japanese TV. An item I found today, and bookmarked for my class, is Foreign tourists feel the pain as dollar/euro weaken against yen

The news class I teach is at a university, and, naturally, behind a firewall. Previously, some videos have been inaccessible to these students. If YouTube were blocked, that would kinda cramp things.

Another Japan news blog I subscribe to is Japan Today, which led me to this news item about Japanese public school teachers choosing demotion over the presumably high stress-levels of managerial positions.  I was interested in the ministry official’s statement,

‘‘Teachers in these positions tend to be saddled with heavy workloads and we will urge (schools) to improve their working conditions so that they do not get too much work,’’

and in one of the commenters who thought that the Education ministry

should provide more money for more teachers and fewer students per class rather than ‘urge’ schools to improve their working conditions.

If the teachers don’t like it, why don’t they negotiate for better conditions (fewer classes, for instance), or quit? Why do they need some higher power to fix things for them? What do you think?

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Is evolution a fact or a theory?

Oct 8

Posted by sheffner in Uncategorized | Comments off

School Gate is a (UK) Times Online blog about schools and schooling in Britain. I read it to keep abreast of what is going on in British education. Today’s entry is
This Science expert says that children should be taught creationism at school

The comments are particularly interesting and mostly well informed, but even more interesting is the post and comments on the September 10th blog entry Sarah Palin, the creationist debate and what our children should be taught about the big bang…

This second one has received a flood of comments, many of which are intelligent, informed and informative. If you want a quick education about creationism and whether evolution is a fact or a theory, or the difference between macro- and micro-evolution, head on over there. Some are downright hilarious, like this one:

Can’t we just form two queues? Those from lineages that have never evolved over there. Those who wish to continue evolving over here.
It’s sad for the children of creationist parents, of course, but maybe that’s evolution at work.

My faith is that some people are credulous, superstitious fools that are a burden for the rest of us, and I expect my faith to be respected by anyone invoking faith-based arguments.

Perhaps the best one is by Meredith. I won’t reproduce it all here, just follow the link. Meredith points out the difference between a fact and a theory.

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