Do no evil, lose no board games, pay no taxes －悪をなさず、ボードゲームで負けず、税を払わず－

In case you haven’t noticed for yourself, let me tell you that it is a tough, unforgiving world that we live in.  The tendency for the strong to survive by preying on the weak is sometimes called the Law of the Jungle.  All animals in the jungle have to fight for themselves and the weak can expect no sympathy.

Some aspects of human society operate differently.  In well run countries, you can go to hospital when you are sick and get help from the government if you can’t work.  But companies are expected to follow the Law of the Jungle.  If there is an advantage for your business, you had better take it – even if it will cause great harm to the rest of society.  If you manufacture goods in a more expensive way in order to protect the environment, then another business will come along and do it the cheap and dirty way, and probably kill you off.

Following this logic, businesses will naturally burn through all of the Earth’s resources, cut wages for their workers to the minimum allowable level, pollute and damage if it is cheaper, and try to kill any other businesses that attempt to behave responsibly.  So it is surprising and refreshing when a company comes along which argues that things can be done differently, that you can help the world and be successful at the same time.

When Google was getting started in the early 2000s, they adopted a company motto which sounded very refreshing.  It was, “Don’t be evil.”  The creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit, said he “wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out.”  Google later said in a letter to investors, “We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served... by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

What a lovely sentiment!  It’s like a tiger in the jungle seeing the last family of deer and deciding not to eat them.  He could satisfy his hunger now, but then there would be no deer to eat in the future.  A smart animal shouldn’t follow the Law of the Jungle all of the time.

So fifteen years on, have Google made good their promise not to be evil?  Well, you can make your own mind up.  I read two stories about Google in the news today which might help.

The first story was that Britain has signed a deal to collect taxes from Google that they should have been paying in the past.  Google has paid a big-sounding 130 million pounds, but the UK government has been heavily criticised by the EU for the deal.  They say it means Google has been paying a tax rate of only 3 per cent in Britain since 2005.  Normal sized companies that can’t make their own special deals pay a 20 per cent tax rate.

The other story about Google was that they have produced an artificial intelligence programme which has beaten the European champion of go.  Go is a strategy board game first played in China which uses lots of black and white stones on a large board.  It is harder for a computer to win at go than at chess because there are a far larger number of possible moves and outcomes.  Apparently, the number of potentially different games of go which can be played is larger than the number of atoms in the whole universe.  Well, it’s nice to know that UK taxpayers’ money is not being entirely wasted.  Who needs hospitals and schools when we could have a computer really good at board games instead?

Google has already changed its motto from “Don’t be evil.”  It is now “Do the right thing.”  I liked the first one better.  After all, do the right thing for whom?  I think they should change it again, to better reflect their values.  My suggestion is the title of this blog: “Do no evil, lose no board games, pay no taxes.”

 

Vocabulary:

a tendency – a trend

to prey on – of an animal, to attack and eat; to exploit

an aspect – a side; one part

to manufacture – to make or produce

to forgo – to do without

a sentiment – a feeling or thought

 

The razor wars get colourful －カミソリ戦争、色彩に富むー

There was a news story from Britain this week which got a fair amount of attention.  An MP who chairs a committee tasked with protecting women’s rights has complained that some shops charge more for products aimed at women than equivalent ones for men.

She cited an example of one supermarket which sells disposable razors in two colours – pink and blue.  They are identical in every way apart from the colour.  But the pink ones in the women’s toiletry section are double the price of the blue ones in the men’s toiletry section.

The MP said, “This research is astonishing.”  All of the commentators I heard talking about it agreed it was shocking and unacceptable.  I did too, but for a different reason.

Do MPs in Britain really have so much time on their hands?  I mean, if you find that men and women are doing the same job but women are getting paid less, then I expect the MP to investigate why that is happening, punish the companies responsible, and propose ways to stop the same thing from happening in the future.  If women are not being selected for top jobs in some industries, even though the same number of capable candidates are applying, then I expect the MP to investigate and try to improve the situation.

But razor blades?  I don’t think that the women’s liberation movement is going to stand or fall over this issue.

And if you want to investigate the sneaky ways companies make money in an unfair way from razors, I would rather the MP asked the manufacturers why they keep changing the size of their razor blades.  I try to protect the environment and I don’t like unnecessary wastage so, when I started shaving, I bought a good quality razor instead of disposable ones.  Then when the razor blades lost their sharp edge, I would buy new blades to fit into the body of the razor.  This sounds simple enough.  But the company would change the size of the blades very slightly every few months so that I had to buy a new razor anyway.  This got so frustrating that I gave up and started using disposable ones.

That is a crime I expect my MP to sort out!  The pink/blue price difference is just an inconvenience.  After all, there is nothing stopping women from saving 50 pence by walking into the men’s toiletry section and shaving their legs with a blue razor.

Or from shopping in a different supermarket.

Or from walking around with hairy legs.

 

Vocabulary:

an MP – a Member of Parliament; a politician in Britain who has been elected to sit in the House of Commons

to chair something – to lead or head something like a meeting or committee

to be tasked with doing something – to be given responsibility for doing something

equivalent – similar versions of the same thing in another area, field etc.

to cite – to quote ; refer to

disposable – designed to be used and then quickly thrown away

to have time on one’s hands – to have a lack of things to do; to have an excess of free time

the women’s liberation movement – a political campaign to promote women’s rights

sneaky – cunning

to sort something out – to fix, solve or deal with something such as a problem or mess

 

 

 

Curiosity killed the cat, boredom zapped the biped －好奇心が猫を殺し、退屈が人間を感電させたー

How good are you at putting up with boredom?  Well, you’re reading my blog, so perhaps not too bad.

Could you sit by yourself for 15 minutes quite comfortably, even though you had nothing to do?  Your smartphone has been taken off you, there is nothing to read, no pictures on the walls or windows to look out of.  Some of you are getting chills even imagining such a radical scenario.

The thing is, in modern life there is rarely any need to get bored.  If you’re stuck on a train or in a dentist’s waiting lounge or whatever, no problem.  Just whip out a little electronic device and you can compose a witty reply to your friend’s email, defeat an invasion force of electronic aliens, or listen to your favourite album.

Perhaps I’m just jealous, since I can’t use a smartphone, but it seems like there is something which has been lost as well as gained by the generation of youngsters who are never allowed to be bored.  A lack of instant entertainment forces you to be creative, imaginative, introspective.  I certainly wouldn’t want too much boredom in my life, but I probably wouldn’t have bothered to learn how to play the guitar, or have stuck at my Japanese lessons without it.  New hobbies tend to be boring at first.  The guitar is nothing but pain for your fingertips and unsatisfactory attempts to play F for ages until you get the hang of it.

What got me thinking about this topic was hearing recently about a bizarre experiment.  A number of people were placed in a bare room, with no entertainment available, for 15 minutes.  They were given a device which produces electric shocks and told that, if they got bored, they could use the device to give themselves a painful electric shock.

You’re probably now asking, “Well just how painful was the electric shock?”  Fair enough.  We’re all curious.  Everybody must have known that they wouldn’t be seriously injured.  I probably would have electrocuted myself just to see how painful it was.  But I think I would have stopped at one shock.

18 men and 24 women took part in the experiment.  Of the 18 men, 12 chose to electrocute themselves at least four times during the 15 minutes.  Of the 24 women, 6 chose to electrocute themselves at least four times.

Does this demonstrate that people nowadays have such a hard time putting up with boredom that they would rather feel pain than be left to their own thoughts for only 15 minutes?  Does it again demonstrate that men are bigger idiots than women?  Or were the electric shocks just not painful enough?

Perhaps it says something about human nature.  We’re too curious for our own good, and forget the pains of the past too quickly.  I imagine someone saying to Adolf Hitler, “Don’t invade Russia.  It’ll be terribly cold and might end in disaster exactly like it did for Napoleon.”  Hitler was just sitting there thinking, “I wonder how cold it really gets?”

 

Vocabulary:

to zap – This is a casual word, meaning to electrocute, shoot with a laser etc.

a biped – a two-legged animal; a human

to get chills – to shiver, especially in fear

to whip something out – to pull something out very quickly

introspective – inward-looking; thoughtful about oneself

 

 

One ticket from deepest, darkest Peru to Paddington Station, please －暗黒の地ペルーからパディントン駅まで、片道１枚－

I don’t watch films any more.  But that’s not going to stop me reviewing them.

A friend of mine gave me a DVD of the film “Paddington” recently, which I listened to over the holidays, with the audio description feature turned on.  That provides a running commentary of the action, so that the film can be enjoyed for the audio alone.

Paddington was great!  I like children’s movies which retain a sense of light-hearted comedy and fantasy without dumbing things down.  Children’s movies don’t have to provide the solutions to the world’s problems, but there is nothing wrong with bringing them into the story and giving you a different perspective on them.  In this case, the perspective is that of a cuddly bear with a battered hat and suitcase, and a serious marmalade addiction.

The light-hearted comedy often comes from the sense of British society poking fun at itself.  Paddington falls into the gap between a traditional stereotype of tea drinking, umbrella wielding gentlemen and a more down to earth and chaotic reality.  The bears were taught English by an eccentric gentleman-explorer some forty years ago, so they have a view of Britain which is rather old fashioned and idealised.  Paddington assumes that people will greet any strangers they pass in London with a polite greeting, a doff of the hat and a comment about the weather.  He finds that in modern, bustling London, this is no longer true (if indeed it ever was).  These kind of misunderstandings keep occurring with Paddington, whose optimism about human nature and Londoners is endearing.

The serious side of the story is the film’s stressing of Paddington’s status as an immigrant or refugee.  He comes to London as a stow-away on a cargo boat with a sign hung around his neck saying “Please look after this bear.  Thank you.”  No British adult could fail to find the parallels with asylum seekers and refugees who reach Britain by hiding in the back of lorries.  Immigrants get plenty of negative publicity so, if even a bear from “deepest, darkest Peru” can learn to fit in in London, perhaps there is hope for us all.

 

Vocabulary:

audio description – a feature on some films, which is designed to allow blind or visually impaired viewers to understand the action

to retain – to keep

to dumb something down – to make something excessively simple or easy

cuddly – cute; attractive so that you want to cuddle or hug it

battered – damaged; shabby

to poke fun at – to make fun of; to laugh at in a light-hearted way

to wield – to carry

down to earth – unsophisticated; unpretentious

idealised – unrealistically stressing the positive

a doff of the hat – an old fashioned motion of greeting, briefly removing one’s hat

bustling – of a place, lively and busy

endearing – likeable

a stow-away – a person who travels by hiding on a vehicle, boat etc. rather than paying

a parallel – a point in common

an asylum-seeker – a refugee who escapes to a new country to avoid persecution, war etc.

a lorry – a truck or heavy goods vehicle