erinja:I think that popular culture in general is not exactly so wonderful and refined, from any country. If we were to replace America with another country to spread their culture, can you honestly say that another country's popular movies and music are really so much better in quality and cultural content? Could you pick a country whose pop culture is so wonderful and refined that it should be spread all over? I can't think of one. I think that pop culture is a bit crass and all-show, no-content, almost by definition, from any country. I don't think it's a good thing that American stuff is so dominant, but if I had to choose another country's content to replace it with, I can't think of one.

You didn't catch my point. With English it is monoculture that is spread. And where is the diversity? I don't like to watch American movies or shows only - I would like to have them among many others to choose from (not all are bad). So are the world news in mass media - mostly American. Thanks God we have Internet where I can read Chinese news too.

If anyone is interested in this, there was a book:

Noreeny Hertz “The Silent Takeover. Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy”.

Red_Rat_Writer:I went to the school, and tried typing on the computer, and found out I could not switch to computer the DVORAK. Even DVORAK is faster, and more efficient, they do not use it.

That's just an urban myth. Dvorak isn't faster. It's faster to pick up but after a while (say, seventy hours of typing, or less) it doesn't show any improvement over the more familiar Qwerty layout.

As to efficiency, I am not aware of any studies that are in favour of Dvorak.

Here is a link to an article if you are interested. It investigates the whole controversy, produces evidence and comes to a startling conclusion: superiority of Dvorak is a popular myth.

Happy reading!

Demian:Now what is that supposed to mean?

From the day it first became apparent that he was going to run for President, Barack Obama's detractors have tried to make him out to be some kind of demonic figure. They have variously claimed he was a Muslim (he did after all spend several formative years in Indonesia), an atheist, a follower of a pastor who hates America, a socialist, not an American citizen and all manner of other things. None of these claims are true, and many are contradictory. And that's all I think is worth saying about the matter.

:

creedelambard:Schools in this country are starved for money and resources.

Anyway what I want to say is, not having money is a lame excuse. I am not impressed.

Sorry, I live here and I see it all the time. My wife is involved in the local education system and she can verify it. Governments are strapped for cash because citizens don't want to pay the taxes necessary to fund them, so it comes down to a choice of what to fund - schools, fire departments, police, prisons?

I don't know if other countries have this problem, and it's a bit hard to explain. Maybe you have to live here firsthand to see it. It would take more space than this post, or many more like it, would allow to explain the situation fully.

:

:94% of science fiction is crap, but then 94% of everything is crap

You sum it up very well! (But he said ninety per cent, not ninety-four.)

[/quote]Yeah, I first heard this from SF writer Harlan Ellison, and he said 94%, so that's the number I remember. Once you get to that level the extra 4% isn't much of a difference.

:That's just an urban myth. Dvorak isn't faster.

The people who use it would not agree with that statement. (You know, kind of like the people who use Esperanto wouldn't agree with many of the statements of its detractors.) The most vocal example I can think of is Randy Cassingham, who runs the dvorak-keyboard.com website. I guess it just goes to show you can find both sides of any position on the internet.

If we had Esperanto as a choice, people could actually learn a language, and not pretend to learn it.

This surely is the most powerful argument for Esperanto in the schools - assuming you believe that there is some educational value in foreign language learning.

The number of people who were taught a foreign national language at school but ended up not getting to point where they could actually make a sentence freely in that language (let alone get to a position where they could use that language knowledge to get to know another culture) must run in hundreds of thousands if not millions.

Demian:

Vestitor:Chinese is a huge language no doubt, but not many speak it as a second language, even some of its nearest neighbours.

That's a good argument. However, I wonder how many people in Germany and Spain speak French compared to English? Leave out the border areas and the ratio must not be very good. (Please correct me if I am wrong!)

The difference I'd say is that French - once a large scale language - is still actively taught in schools in Germany and Spain. It is rapidly being usurped by English. And that's the issue, even in Asia English is still more widely learned than Chinese, by China's neighbours.

Demian:I found a beautiful example that refutes this the other day. It goes something like this: a group of Italians learn English, go to Britain and spend the rest of their lives working for an English firm in Italy. In contrast, a group of Germans learn English, use it to read science journals, invent a drug and end up making billions.

For Italians it was an imposition, for Germans, an opportunity!

That sounds very much like an apocryphal myth. And it doesn't refute the fact that people around the world are forcibly encouraged to learn English if they want to take part in an English dominated world economy.

sudanglo:The number of people who were taught a foreign national language at school but ending up not getting to point where that could actually make a sentence freely in that language (let alone get to a position where they could use that language knowledge to get to know another culture) must run in hundreds of thousands if not millions.

Actually it is only 3% of all learners that can be put at almost equal footing with an English native after finishing English school course (with other languages odds are even bigger because of English monopoly in language teaching - most teaching hours are devoted for English lessons). All others are more or less language-handicapped. The problem is related to the number of hours required - a school can afford for about 2000 hours of language teaching, where at least 8000 of them would be needed for a student to reach the level of a native. Esperanto would be much better, but it lacks the power behind English.

There has been a pilot project in some English primary schools to use Esperanto as a tool to introduce foreign language learning. It can't do any harm: foreign language learning is in a poor way here. In English-speaking schools in Wales, the teaching of Welsh is compulsory until aged 16. My 15 yr old daughter has been learning since she was 4. She still isn't confident enough to have a simple conversation outside the classroom.

Demian, with due respect, the article about qwerty vs dvorak you linked to doesn't provide any evidence. It's an opinion piece.

I don't really care either way about this issue, but I do prefer to be linked to evidence rather than mere opinion when I'm given the impression that I'm being directed to evidence. A more accurate and honest description would be something like " The idea that dvorak is faster than qwerty may just be an urban myth - here is an article that explores this possibility"

Why do I care about this when, as I've already stated, the dvorak vs qwerty debate isn't really that important to me? Simply that I dream of a world where people can distinguish between an unsupported (though attractively presented opinion), a poorly supported opinion, a reasonably well supported opinion and a very well supported opinion (even in the case where the presentation of that opinion is a bit clunky). It's that old rhetoric vs reason thing.

More than dream about this, I really believe that in these exciting and dangerous times, in amongst the babble of a hyper-connected world facing multiple challenges and crises, we need to draw upon our most savvy and wise selves as a species. We need to make a habit of distinguishing the different degrees of rhetoric and of reason (even in cases where it doesn't matter very much) so we don't get caught out in cases where it really does matter. Motivated thus, on this night, I couldn't just let that one slide past the goalkeeper, even though the particular matter doesn't really matter very much at all. Peace.

JamieD:Demian, with due respect, the article about qwerty vs dvorak you linked to doesn't provide any evidence. It's an opinion piece.

Hi!

Here is the evidence against Dvorak in the article:

(1) They refer to the "General Services Administration commissioned Strong's study to confirm the earlier results. This study provides the most compelling evidence against the Dvorak keyboard." (here)
(2) Then there is a reference to two more studies carried out by Western Electric in 1973 and and a 1978 Oregon State University study, coming to the same conclusion. The first found it marginally better, while in the other typists were typing at 97.6% of their Qwerty speeds after 100 hours of training.
(3) As to the ergonomics, here is a quote from the work of two IBM researchers: "no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing."

* They also criticise the Navy Report (cornerstone of the layout's claims), pointing out the inaccuracies.

And here is their opinion/hypothesis/speculation:

(1) "As typing moved to countries outside the United States, any QWERTY momentum could have been only a minor influence..."
(2) "the advent of computer keyboards, which can easily be reprogrammed to any configuration, lowers the cost of converting to Dvorak to essentially zero (not counting retraining). Yet few computer users have adopted the Dvorak keyboard."

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I haven't had a course in Critical Reasoning. So kindly correct me if I am wrong. I am neither pro-Dvorak nor pro-Qwerty. Therefore it would be a great help. (show an example, or even a link.)

JamieD:Demian, with due respect, the article about qwerty vs dvorak you linked to doesn't provide any evidence. It's an opinion piece.

I don't really care either way about this issue, but I do prefer to be linked to evidence rather than mere opinion when I'm given the impression that I'm being directed to evidence. A more accurate and honest description would be something like " The idea that dvorak is faster than qwerty may just be an urban myth - here is an article that explores this possibility"

What I noticed about the piece is that it was written with two economists with an axe to grind—they wanted to discount the belief that Dvorak is superior because it contradicts their theory of ‘the free market can never cause a less-than-ideal outcome’. They approach it with that ideological bent; it's only natural that, given the lack of abundant evidence either way, they disagree with Dvorak's superiority.

Mi rimarkis, ke la verketon skribis du ekonomistoj, kiuj antaŭvolis pruvi ion: ili deziris montri, ke Dvorak ne necese estas pli bona ol Qwerty, ĉar ĝi kontraŭdiras sian teorion, ke “la libera merkato ĉiam kaj nepre igas la plej bonan rezulton”. Ili tuŝas la temon kun tiu menso, kaj estas tute nature, ke (ĉar ne ekzistas multaj datumoj por apogi iun vidpunkton) ili malsamopinias de la pliboneco de Dvorak.