Humans do not only conform to arbitrary fashions but also to majority opinion even when they know better. This conformity plays a crucial role in the acquisition of one's group's behavioural repertoire. We learn group specific behaviour by observing other group members. When confronted with information that stands in conflict with our own beliefs or preferences, we often succumb to the point of view of the majority.
Nous like scouse or French -oui? We wee whee all the way ... to mind us a bunch of thunks. Too much information? How could that be?
25 October 2011
Peer pressure ... conform their public opinion to the majority
Naming animals artistically
13 October 2011
Pinyin in practice
many Chinese police cars and uniforms have written on them GONGAN ("public security") rather than "police", and sometimes not even 公安.
When I encounter such situations, I often wonder:
1. why they choose to use pinyin and NOT Chinese characters
2. why they choose to use Mandarin in pinyin instead of English
3. for whom the sign is intended
1. pinyin is unambiguously Mandarin the national language and not other Chinese languages
2. pinyin is China's legible 'face' to the world, as a lot more non-Chinese can read and ecognize 'Beijing' than would recognize the characters.I'll also develop Carl's idea. If it's true that school children learn pinyin before*characters then the argument might be made that more Chinese have a fuller awareness of pinyin than they do of characters. That is anyone who's spent a year or two at school and can more or less speak Mandarin can at least decypher pinyin while only those with a lot more schooling can decypher characters.
Those who have becomevery literate in characters might find it harder to read Mandarin in pinyin but average folks on the street probably find it easier, especially in short messages as in public signage.
It's the interplay of meaning-making, power, economics, perceptions ....
10 October 2011
Media habits of young people may make them drink more; What should be done?
09 October 2011
We're suffering a 'crisis of bigness'
Kohr's claim was that society's problems were not caused by particular forms of social or economic organisation, but by their size. Socialism, anarchism, capitalism, democracy, monarchy – all could work well on what he called "the human scale": a scale at which people could play a part in the systems that governed their lives. But once scaled up to the level of modern states, all systems became oppressors. Changing the system, or the ideology that it claimed inspiration from, would not prevent that oppression – as any number of revolutions have shown – because "the problem is not the thing that is big, but bigness itself"
I'm also considering how this relates to a Wink-derived take considering Principalities and Powers....
"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"
I got a response from my MP which got me kind of mad. You'll see why as I reproduce it here. Apologies for the strange changes in types...
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I've been watching the TV series 'Foundation'. I read the books about 50 years ago (I know!) but scarcely now remember anything...
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from: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/online/2012/5/22/1337672561216/Annular-solar-eclipse--008.jpg
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"'Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell yo...