Play Like a Penguin －ペンギンのようにプレイするー

I read an interesting comment from the football World Cup this week.  A former striker from England, Chris Sutton, commented on Portugal’s 1 – 0 loss to Spain.  He was irritated that the Portugal manager continued to play Cristiano Ronaldo even at the age of 41. 

He said, "He's waddling around the field like a grandad, that's why Portugal are out. Cristiano Ronaldo does nothing; he did nothing. What is Roberto Martinez doing? How can you pander to a player so much?" 

His comment contains a couple of good words to talk about. 

1 – to waddle 

To waddle means to walk with short, clumsy steps, swaying the body from side to side.  The word is often used to describe the way that a duck or penguin walks. 

I like the idea of a football team playing with 10 humans and one penguin, just to confuse the opposition.  At least if his contributions on the ball were substandard, he would be able to convincingly dive in the box to win penalties. 

Example sentence:

Late into her pregnancy, she began to waddle.

 

2 – to pander to someone or something 

Pander is used negatively.  To pander to someone means to let them have what they want or indulge their weaknesses, to keep them happy or avoid upsetting them. 

In the case of Chris Sutton’s comments, he believes that the manager let Cristiano Ronaldo play, even though he was not the best option for the team, in order to please or avoid annoying the player. 

Example sentence:

The prime minister is pandering to members of his own party, rather than doing what is best for the country as a whole. 

Information, Information, Information －情報、情報、情報－

Do you want to know a secret?  Do you want to have access to hidden knowledge that no one else in the universe has? 

Winston Churchill had toast for breakfast on the day he became prime minister.  That was it.  That was the secret. 

People say that knowledge is power, but it has to be useful knowledge.  And most knowledge is useless.  You have to try to find the useful knowledge within the great sea of useless information, like a fisherman patiently catching fish. 

That seems to be the message of a short story I read yesterday, anyway.  In a sci-fi story by Stanislaw Lem, two clever robots are captured by a pirate.  The robots offer the pirate gold, but he refuses. 

“I want knowledge, not gold,” says the pirate.  “I am a university educated pirate.  So I know that real power comes from information, not pretty metal.” 

The pirate demands that the robots tell him everything that they know before he will let them go.  The robots are worried.  They know a lot of things, and it would take a very long time to tell everything to the pirate.  So they come up with a plan. 

“If it is knowledge you seek, we can make for you a gift that will keep on giving.  We can summon a demon which will scribble down secrets and forgotten or hidden information as fast as you can read it.  Only you will have access to all this information.” 

The university educated pirate agrees, and the robots summon the demon.  Then they quickly run to their spaceship and escape before disaster strikes. 

The demon does start scribbling hidden information onto an ever growing pile of paper.  It rained in Amsterdam on the 1^st of July, 1187.  Mary Queen of Scots had three pairs of blue socks.  English teacher William’s grandmother was nicknamed “Gam” because his older brother couldn’t correctly say the word “Gran” when he was a child, and the name stuck… 

And so on.  Before the pirate realizes what is happening, he is suffocating in useless information.  Soon the paper is so thick around him that he is trapped and cannot escape.  He has to spend the rest of his days consuming pointless facts. 

If you ever find yourself scrolling social media “news” feeds and reading endless headlines of celebrity gossip, perhaps you will understand how the pirate feels.

 

Becoming Britaly －イギタリアになること－

“You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay, it's for the same two things."

"What?"

"Love and gelato.”

from “Love and Gelato” by Jenna Evans Welch

 

“You may have the universe if I may have Italy”

Giuseppe Verdi

 

I think that the U.K. is becoming Italy, and I don’t know how I feel about it. 

The news is reporting that yesterday saw a temperature of 36.7 degrees, and people in the south of Britain are currently experiencing the warmest June night ever. 

This is not the weather for traditional British cups of hot tea, and grumbling complaints about how cold it is.  It is also not good for our old houses, built to keep the heat in rather than the heat out. 

At the same time, Britain is about to get its seventh prime minister in the last ten years.  Since Brexit, we have become politically unstable and, according to many observers, ungovernable.  Britain was traditionally seen as politically conservative, boring and predictable.  It was always Italy in the past that changed prime minister almost every year. 

Are Scotland or England going to suddenly win the World Cup this year, instead of failing miserably as usual?  Will the quality of British food improve?  Will the people become more passionate and expressive of their emotions? 

I’m sure it won’t be all bad living in the new land of Britaly.

 

The Customer is Always Right? －お客さんはいつも正しい？－

I went to the supermarket this morning with a guide.  My guide helps me do my shopping, taking me around the aisles and looking for the items that I request. 

I wanted to buy some dried apricots, which I had bought before.  But this time my guide couldn’t find them in the dried fruits section. 

She turned round and said, “Hold on.  I’ll ask someone about the apricots.” 

I heard her asking someone behind me, and a young man answering. 

“I think they should be on this shelf here, if they are here at all,” he said.  “Let me see…  There are prunes, cherries, raisins.  But I don’t see any apricots.” 

My guide got a little impatient with the young man.  “Well, do you have the apricots or don’t you?  Have they been moved to another shelf?” 

The young man got a bit flustered at the criticism and then said, “You know, I don’t actually work here.  I’m just a customer.” 

It was quite embarrassing.  We had been pestering the man and getting him to search the shelves, somehow assuming that he was a staff member. 

I never did find those dried apricots.  I will have to make do with prunes instead.

 

A Shot at Glory －栄光への一撃－

“I could [have] had class.  I could [have] been a contender. I could [have] been somebody – instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

Spoken by Marlon Brando’s character in the 1954 film, “On the Waterfront”

 

What makes success?  Opportunity, certainly.  Hard work, generally.  And a little bit of luck, more often than people like to admit. 

My son’s elementary school was testing the physical prowess and endurance of its children recently.  In an endurance test, the children had to run between two points and back again before a certain time limit was reached.  The time limit got shorter and shorter as the test progressed, making the feat harder to achieve even as the kids got more tired.  As soon as the child failed to make the goal one time, the test was over and the number of completed runs the child had managed was counted up. 

From memory, my son completed only about 14 runs in the same test last year.  But he goes to a karate dojo, and they have been practicing a similar activity.  So my son was doing much better this year.  He got to twenty runs, then thirty.  He passed forty runs, then fifty.  Now he was approaching the best performers in his whole school year.  There were only two boys still ahead of him.  He tasted glory.  To be the top performer in his whole year! 

At 55 completed runs, one of my son’s shoes suddenly fell off.  We had bought him a new pair of gym shoes recently, and had bought a pair that were a little too big for him, so that he could grow into them.  The new shoes cost him his shot at glory.

There is always next year….

 

Stepping Out 一歩踏み出す

One advantage to watching a story on television, rather than watching a story being told at a theatre, is that the actors on television cannot step out of the screen and attack the viewer.  At least, as long as the character of Sadako in the Japanese horror film “Ring” is really only fictional. 

Just how different it is to watch a play was felt by an audience member in a London theatre this week.  After an emotional play about a serious topic finished, one of the actresses came back out onto the stage.  She then pointed into the front rows and complained that an audience member had been texting on his smartphone all through the play’s most dramatic and emotional scene.  The actress asked him to consider how difficult this was for the actors to see, given the effort they were putting into telling a powerful story. 

“I just hope you are a doctor and were texting something vital to save a patient’s life,” she said. 

The rest of the audience gasped and applauded the actresses criticism of the distracted texter. 

I think people should do this more often.  When my family and I had just finished our meal at a family restaurant, we went to a self service cash machine to pay the bill.  Several people were standing in front of the only machine, chatting to each other instead of putting their money in and letting the next person have access. 

We just stood quietly and waited for them to leisurely finish their conversation and eventually get round to paying.  What we should have done was step into their little bubble of reality like Sadako. 

“People… I think you will find that there is a queue forming behind you.  As much as we are all fascinated to hear about your nephew’s school grades, I think it is time for you to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING!” 

I’m not being too harsh, am I?  No, I didn’t think so.

 

A Lost Generation －失われた世代－

There was an interesting and worrying report published in the U.K. this week.  It is about how difficult it is for young people in Britain to get a job. 

Twenty years ago, the number of young people classified as “NEETs” – people not in employment, education or training – climbed to more than 100,000.  The government of the time warned that unless this changed, it might create a lost generation.  The number of young NEETs has just risen to more than 1,000,000, a massive increase.  Now 13.5 per cent of young people of working age in the U.K. are NEETs.  Six in ten of them have never had a job. 

The report says that there are many factors causing this, including a fall in the number of casual jobs, such as in bars, high street shops and restaurants which are suited to young people.  Another reason is an increase in mental illness in youngsters, which some people blame on smartphones.  Another reason given is the increase in the minimum wage that young people are entitled to, and increased rights for workers and taxes on business, making it less attractive for businesses to take a risk by hiring a young worker.  Then there is damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic and disruptions to education. 

It has always been difficult for young people to get a good and well paid job.  My older cousin told me that years ago he was given his first job by our uncle.  Our uncle owned several shops and a bar. 

“I can give you a job,” said our uncle.  “It will be tough work, but a good experience for you.” 

So my cousin took the job, working in the bar at night.  He took orders, cleaned glasses and learned how to pour drinks.  He was surprised to find that his uncle’s bar offered night entertainment to his gentleman customers, including a stripper. 

At the end of a hard first evening’s work, my cousin went to our uncle and asked for his wages.  Our uncle pointed to the lady entertainer who had taken her clothes off. 

“You got to see that for free didn’t you?  You don’t need any more wages than that.” 

My cousin quickly started looking for another job.

The Football Kid －フットボール・キッド－

Karate Sensei Kreese:

What do we study here?

Karate class (shouting):

The way of the fist, sir!

Kreese:

And what is that way?

Karate class (shouting):

Strike first; strike hard; no mercy, sir!

 

“Lesson not just karate only.  Lesson whole life.”

Mr. Miyagi

Both from the film, The Karate Kid

 

My nine year old son plays for his school football team.  They take part in competitions against teams from other schools, as well as private football clubs. 

The private clubs tend to have better players, and stricter coaches.  The school teams want to give a chance to all of the children to play, not just the best ones.  That is just as well for my son, since he is not one of the best players! 

Especially for young children, there has to be some balance between trying to win and trying to develop other life skills, such as confidence, friendship, and an appreciation of hard work.  At least that is how I see it. 

Not everyone agrees with my view, however. 

My son’s team were playing one of the strongest private club sides in the area recently.  My son’s team scored a goal against their better opponents.  Then the captain of the other team shouted, “Come on, guys!  We shouldn’t be losing goals to a team as bad as this!” 

This is where the coach of the club side should have said something like, “Hey, xx-kun!  You shouldn’t say things like that.  Don’t disrespect your opponents.” 

Instead, the coach just laughed.  I got the impression that the captain was repeating the same thing the coach had said to the team before the match.  It made me think of the coach as the nasty karate teacher, Mr. Kreese who taught the children in his dojo to compete with no mercy or sympathy for their opponent. 

I hope there is still room for teachers more like Mr. Miyagi, whose karate training methods included trying to catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks.

Ramen in Wonderland －不思議の国のラーメンー

 “Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make a respectable person!”

Alice in Alice in Wonderland, after she has shrunk

 

I recently went to a Kitakata Ramen restaurant with my family.  We hadn’t been there for quite a while. 

While we were waiting for our order to arrive, a young woman sat down at the table next to ours.  I heard her order her food. 

“One bowl of normal ramen, with an extra topping of flavoured egg, and a side dish of gyoza.” 

“What an appetite she has!” I thought.  The last time I had been to Kitakata Ramen, one bowl of ramen had been more than enough to make me full. 

Then my bowl of ramen arrived.  The portion size had shrunk considerably.  My nine year old son complained that he was still hungry after he ate an adult portion of ramen. 

This is shrinkflation: instead of companies and restaurants putting up prices, they cut costs by shrinking the size of their meals.  Perhaps this is a chance to try a new diet.  In the shrinkflation diet, you don’t have to do anything differently.  You order exactly the same meals that you used to, and you too will shrink.

 

The Wise Sayings of Famous Characters －有名人たちの名言－

I read a funny poem recently by Ian McMillan.  It is about the main character of the first novel written in the English language, Robinson Crusoe.  In the 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked on an island for 28 years.  For almost all of the time he lives by himself, until eventually he escapes back to England. 

McMillan’s poem imagines some of the wise sayings Crusoe has come up with after his adventure.  These are a few examples from his poem: 

“You can never have too many turtle’s eggs.”

“I’m the most interesting person in this room.”

“A beard is as long as I want it to be.” 

I wondered what some other fictional characters’ wise sayings would be. 

“Try not to slam doors.”

“Check with air traffic control before flying near La Guardia Airport.”

“If you are strong enough, people will not laugh at a man who wears his underwear on the outside of his pants.”

Some Wise Sayings of Superman 

“Sunrises are overrated.”

“It is hard to get a dentist’s appointment twice.”

“Enjoy yourself while you can: you are a long time dead!”

Some Wise Sayings of Count Dracula

 

Gremlins in the Cracks －隙間にいるグレムリンたちー

“Don’t ever feed him after midnight!” 

“If your air conditioner goes on the fritz, or your washing machine blows up, or your video recorder conks out; before you call the repair man, turn on all the lights, check all the closets and cupboards, look under all the beds, [because] you never can tell – there just might be a gremlin.”

Quotes from the 1984 movie, “Gremlin”

 

The more complicated that technology becomes, the more dark corners there are for bugs and flaws to hide in.  We should expect errors, and not blindly rely on complicated systems to work well without human supervision. 

A recent example is that Chat GPT’s developers have had to tweak its code in order to stop it slipping words such as “goblin” and “gremlin” into its answers.  Apparently, the makers tried to make the AI chatbot sound more nerdy, to make it more engaging.  This rewarded the chatbot for using quirky metaphors.  So it started talking about users avoiding goblins instead of avoiding difficulties, or removing gremlins instead of fixing problems.  Users complained and the company changed the code, to ban the use of monsters as metaphors. 

Another story I heard today about a naive over-reliance on AI algorithms came from Sweden.  A mother was shocked that her child was assigned a school that was very difficult to get to.  Talking with other parents, the mother found that the same thing had happened to many of their children.  Instead of being sent to the nearest school, they had to travel miles down river, cross a bridge, and come miles back up the other side of the river. 

Eventually, after hiring lawyers and fighting the local education board in court, they found that the board had started using an AI algorithm to assign students to the school nearest their house.  This improved efficiency for the education board, and let their staff work on other things.  But the algorithm didn’t take account of roads, rivers, bridges and so on.  It just assigned students to the nearest school as if the students were birds, and could fly over all roads and obstacles. 

We will have to get used to living with gremlins.  There are bound to be ever more of them living alongside us in the future.

 

Coffee on the Moon 月のコーヒー

NASA recently sent human astronauts around the moon.  They, and also China, plan to establish a base on the moon where humans can live for extended periods.  This made me wonder what kind of facilities will be built on the moon for the resident humans.  They will need oxygen and living quarters and so on.  There will be attempts to mine usable resources from the moon.  But even astronauts can’t spend all their time working.  I am sure that one of the first non-essential facilities for downtime will be a place which serves coffee. 

That got me thinking about names for the first coffee shop to open on the moon.  If I can get the name right, perhaps I can copyright it  and then sell it to Elon Musk.  So here are some ideas I came up with:

 

1 – Coffee Lunatic 

A lunatic is a crazy person.  So the name suggests something like, “Crazy for Coffee”.  And Luna is, of course, an alternative name for the moon.  The word lunatic comes from the folk belief that the full moon makes people crazy.  Think of werewolves who change by the light of the full moon.

 

2 – Need a Buzz? 

A buzz can mean a burst of energy or excitement.  You might say, “I get a buzz from playing music.”  Buzz was also the nickname of the astronaut who was the second person to walk on the surface of the moon.

 

3 – Bean Up Here Long? 

Have you been up here on the moon for a long time?  Would you like some coffee beans?  Okay, this was not my best effort.

 

4 – Fly Me to the Moon Café 

This refers to a song sung by, amongst others, Frank Sinatra.

 

5 – Blue Moonday 

“Blue Monday” is the phenomenon of feeling unhappy on Monday morning when you have to start the working week.  You might need a strong cup of coffee to fight the Monday blues on Earth.  Living on a cold, dead rock is probably going to be challenging for anyone living on a moon base too.  So if you’re feeling down, why not head over to Blue Moonday for a nice cup of coffee.

 

This really is how I spend my days – thinking of names for imaginary coffee shops.

Scribble or Tap? －カキカキ、それともカチカチ？－

 Tap – tap – tap – tap – tap! 

“What are you doing?” 

Tap – tap – tap – tap – tap! 

“I said – What are you doing?” 

Tap – tap – tap - tap! 

“I said…!” 

“Sorry, Daddy.  I am doing a typing game.  I just wanted to knock down this monster.” 

My son has been playing Typing Coliseum.  His school provided the game as a way for the students to learn how to type on a keyboard.  A word appears on the screen, along with a monster.  They have to type that word in quickly in order to knock down the monster. 

The trouble is, the game seems to be very addictive.  When my wife went to the school the other day, the library was full of elementary school kids, furiously tapping their keyboards in order to battle monsters.  Wasn’t there a time when libraries were for reading books? 

The Swedish government has just announced that it is moving away from the use of electronic screens in schools, and going back to paper and pencils.  Sweden had been pushing the use of technology in schools and pre-schools very hard.  But this coincided with a drop in students’ performance in some key areas, especially in literacy and maths.  The Swedish government acted when surveys revealed that 24 per cent of Swedish 15 and 16 year olds were unable to reach a basic level of literacy.  It is not that technology must never be used.  But it can certainly be used too much. 

I wonder if Japan’s schools will start to move in the same direction, and we will again hear the sound of scribbling pencils, instead of frantically tapping keys.

 

Issun-kyoshi (the Little Teacher) 一 ー寸教師 －

Because of his school’s spring vacation, my 9 year old son was at home during the day a lot over the last couple of weeks. 

I could go and talk to him between English lessons I was teaching. 

“Daddy, could I teach English, do you think?” he asked. 

“Yes, I guess so.  Maybe when you are a bit older, you could teach English,” I said. 

He watched me picking up the lesson fee I had just received from the table. 

“I could help you teach English soon, Daddy.  You can give me a test and tell me when my English is good enough to teach.” 

He wanted me to pay him as an assistant teacher. 

I told him his English would have to get better.  He answered, “Okay, can you teach me now?” 

So I sat him on the opposite side of the table to me, and started teaching him as if he was my student.  He did well answering questions such as, “Where do you live?” and “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” 

Then I got him to ask me questions.  I would say, “I am from Scotland,” and he would have to ask, “Where are you from?” 

I said, “I like to go to karaoke, and I like to play the guitar.” 

He thought for a moment, then asked, “What are your hobbits?” 

It might be a little early for my assistant English teacher to start teaching, unless his students are studying Lord of the Rings.

 

Pet Rock －ペットのロック－

I was listening to the BBC news this week, and there was an item about pets.  Apparently, the number of dogs and cats in the U.K. is very large – more than 13 million dogs and more than 12 million cats in a country of 69 million people. 

To give a bit of context, a news reporter went to a pet museum, where an expert talked about the history of pets.  That expert also talked about odd trends in pet ownership, such as the mummification of cats in ancient Egypt and the invention of Tamagotchi as virtual pets.  Then he mentioned “pet rock.” 

I had a sudden image of a rock band featuring pets.  The human drummer bangs his drums:  badda, badda, bing, bing, crash!  The human guitarist strikes his instrument: kerrang!  Then the spotlight shifts to the vocalist: miaow!!! 

I realized that this would be ridiculous and then had another thought.  The rocks are diamonds, emeralds and rubies.  Rich pet owners are dressing their dogs in jewellery for a walk in the park. 

But this thought was wrong too.  Apparently, in the 1970s, an American businessman picked up some stones and put them in a box with “breathing holes.”  He then sold these rocks as pets, and made a successful business out of his pet rocks. 

The real pet rock turned out to be the stupidest idea of the three.  I actually think a cat vocalist accompanying loud guitar and drum music would do well on Spotify.

 

Smarter than the Average Bear －平均的な熊より賢い－

“I’ll steal from the rich and give to a poor bear – me!”

Cartoon character, Yogi Bear

 

I have been reading an interesting book about the attempts of scientists to communicate with animals. 

There is a lot of scientific debate and disagreement about how intelligent different animals are, and whether animal communication can be called language. 

On the intelligence of bears, the writer mentioned a problem staff had at Yosemite national park in America.  Nobody could seem to design a bin that would allow human tourists to put their rubbish into, which the bears would not be able to also access. 

A frustrated staff member said, “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest human tourists.”

 

Three More Pizzas, and a Little More Gold, Please －ピザをあと3枚、それとゴールドをもう少しください－

The Oscar Awards will take place soon.  After the ceremony, there will be a celebratory dinner for 1,500 guests. 

The feast will be prepared by 75 chefs, who will cook a variety of foods, from sushi to vegan options, Austrian dishes to Mexican.  It sounds a bit like a buffet breakfast in a nice hotel, except probably better.  I wonder if they have those little sausages you usually get at a buffet? 

The guests will also receive a statue dusted with real gold.  That reminded me of comedian David Cross talking about his experience of being given a meal to eat with real gold on it. 

“Odorless, tasteless gold – to eat!” 

As he said, is there any reason to eat real gold except to laugh at poor people? 

The organizers are also preparing to serve 7,000 glasses of Champagne, 600 pizzas and 90kg of steak. 

Of all the delicacies you can imagine, from all over the world, and prepared by high class chefs, would you really order pizza?

 

Eyes, or an Eye, in the back of my Head －僕の頭の後ろにある目－

I remember wondering about eyes when I was a university student.  I understood the idea of evolution, and accepted that it was the best explanation for how life appeared and spread across the Earth.  But I couldn’t imagine how eyes could have evolved.  If each evolutionary change was a small step, how could something as complex as an eye appear?  How useful is half an eye, or a quarter of an eye? 

Luckily, there are scientists who study these things.  There are stages in the development of eyes, from more simple to more complex and effective (and sometimes back again, such as creatures that start to live underground).  We can feel sunlight on our skin.  Perhaps the eye started with a patch of skin that was just a little bit more sensitive at finding the sunlight. 

I heard about some new research about the evolution of eyes this week.  Scientists have found an ancient life form, which lived before the evolution of fish.  It had a worm-like body and one simple eye in the top of its head to help it detect sunlight.  The scientists believe that later animals such as fish evolved from these creatures.  So if you travel back far enough into our evolutionary past, there was a time when we were born with one eye, not two. 

The story also made me think of the English expression, “I have eyes in the back of my head.” 

Parents often say this to their naughty children.  It means, “I can see you, even when you think that you are out of my line of sight.” 

“Stop reading manga when you are supposed to be doing your homework!  I have eyes in the back of my head.”

 

Haven’t I Seen your Face Before? －あなたの顔を前に見たことがあるんじゃないか？－

I heard an interesting story on the radio this morning.  An elderly British man needed to buy some groceries.  So he went down to a local shop to pick up his bread, milk and so on. 

As he was walking through the aisles, selecting products, one of the shop staff came over to him. 

“I am sorry, but I am going to have to ask you to leave the shop, Sir.” 

The confused old man was led away towards the door.  At the door, he turned around and asked why he was being thrown out. 

“Our cameras have facial recognition software.  We have a contract with a company that registers the faces of suspected serial shoplifters.  The software has just set off an alarm, telling us that you are a serial shoplifter.” 

The old man had never stolen anything from a shop in his life.  He protested his innocence.  The shop staff gave the man the contact details of the company which had registered his face as that of a criminal. 

After some emails and discussion back and forth with this company, it was accepted that the man’s face had been added to the database in error.  He had visited a shop at around the same time that a shoplifter had.  The elderly man had to go through his banking details with the company to prove that he had paid for the items he had bought in the shop. 

So in the end the elderly man’s face was removed from the database of suspected shoplifters.  But he says he feels nervous when out shopping, and tries to avoid walking in front of surveillance cameras, in case the same thing happens again and he is shamed in public like a criminal. 

It seems like this is the future.  As more and more often we are being watched by technology, who is watching the technology?

Paperwork Problems －ペーパーワーク問題－

Governments love paperwork.  You need the correct visa, passport, form, permission slip, stamp or signature to get anything from the government.  And new governments love to change the paperwork.  The old stamp is no longer sufficient.  Now you need the new, and more expensive one. 

Now the stamps have been replaced with an online system.  But electronic permission is even worse than stamps, since there is never a real human being available for you to explain your problem to any more. 

“You will find all necessary information on our website.” 

Things get even worse when the government forgets to tell people that the process has changed. 

One such case of a sudden paperwork change has been making news this week in Britain.  The change affects people who hold dual nationality – that is, a British passport and also the passport of another country. 

Until this year, those dual nationals were able to enter the U.K. using either passport.  Now these people have to enter the U.K. only with their British passport. 

But the government did little to publicize the change.  Many dual nationals have let their British passport expire and made travel plans, not realizing that they would be unable to reenter Britain.  They are now scrambling to get their passports renewed, or are having to stay outside the U.K. longer than they had planned. 

The situation reminded me of the opening of Douglas Adams’ novel, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.  An alien fleet of ships suddenly appears above the Earth, ready to demolish the whole planet to make room for a kind of highway through space. 

The United Nations and the governments of Earth frantically complain that they hadn’t heard of these plans. 

The alien is entirely unsympathetic. 

“The plans have been available in the local planning office in Alpha Centauri for the last nine months.  Honestly, if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local government plans then that is your problem.”

 

Revenge of the Little People －小さい人たちの仕返し－

I recently listened to an audio version of an old book by a science fiction writer.  “The Cyberiad,” by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, was first published in 1965.  It is a kind of mixture of science fiction and fairy tales.  The idea is that robots in the far future tell their own series of fairy tales, partly explaining their morality and fears. 

The heroes of the stories are the constructor robots, Trurl and Klapaucius.  In one story, Trurl is travelling in deep space when he encounters another robot which is stuck on an asteroid.  Trurl lands on the asteroid and speaks to this other robot.  The robot explains that he was the king of one planet, but he was considered such a bad and cruel ruler that he was exiled to this asteroid and cannot now get off the lonely little world.  He begs Trurl to take him back to the planet which he once ruled. 

Trurl doesn’t want to upset the people of the planet by returning the exiled king.  But he feels sorry for the lonely robot.  So he promises to build a new world for the cruel king to rule over.  He builds a tiny little world full of microscopic creatures, who live and die on a world the size of a little box. 

The king is delighted with the gift and starts ruling over the world, threatening to shake the box and cause earthquakes if the inhabitants don’t follow his strict rules and build statues of him. 

Trurl flies away and meets his friend, Klapaucius.  When he tells Klapaucius what he has done, his friend is angry. 

“Why have you created this life and left it to be tortured by this awful king?  You have to go back to that asteroid and set the people of the box free.” 

Trurl realizes the cruelty he has inflicted on the microscopic creatures.  So he and Klapaucius return to the asteroid.  When they get there, there is initially no sign of the king, or the box.  The whole of the asteroid is covered in tiny cities.  Given their microscopic size, the created creatures live and develop much faster than fully sized creatures.  They have developed a high level of technology, and they have escaped their box and spread across the asteroid. 

Wondering what has happened to the bad king, Trurl eventually sees his frozen body, floating around the asteroid as a moon.  It seems that the creatures of the box rebelled against his rule and managed to expel him into space, where he will float above them forever, like a cold, dead god. 

All life that can think and feel pain is to be valued, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem, and no matter how humble or artificial its beginnings.