What is a lazy ant doing? - Writing newspaper articles and blogging 怠け者の蟻は何をしてるか？ －新聞記事を書いたり、ブログをしているよ

A Japanese friend of mine told me about an interesting item she saw on the news recently.  She told me that some Japanese researchers had studied the behaviour of worker ants and found that some of them are “lazy”.  They stay in their nest and don’t seem to do much while the rest of the worker ants are busy keeping the nest clean and foraging for food.

I thought it was a fascinating story.  You naturally hear about lazy ants and wonder whether there are any parallels in human society.  Am I one of the lazy 20 per cent? Am I one of the hard working 80 per cent?

So when I got home I searched the internet to try to find some news articles about the ants.  In the course of doing my research, I came up with my own theory to explain what the seemingly lazy ants are really doing.  They have tiny little smartphones, too small to be noticed by the researchers.  And they are sitting at home, posting angry comments on blogs.  How did I come up with this remarkable theory?  I will tell you.

Searching for a story about lazy ants, I quickly came across a Japan Times article on this research.  It told me some basic facts: that the study was done by researchers at the University of Hokkaido; that they found 20 per cent of the ants were doing no work; and that the other 80 per cent were having to work harder on their behalf.  The article also then said that even if the hardest workers were removed, the 20 per cent of “lazy” ants did not change their behaviour.

This last point confused me, since it seemed to say the exact opposite of what my Japanese friend had told me.  “Oh, well,” I thought.  She must have misunderstood the story.

Rather than relying on a single source for my information, I continued searching the internet to see if I could find any other articles talking about this study.  I next found a blog which had posted a link to the Japan Times article and had lots of comments from readers underneath the link.  Some of the comments were funny, some were defensive about the benefits of being lazy, some used the study to “prove” that people (yes, human beings) receiving welfare benefits were lazy and should have their benefits taken away from them.  It’s quite impressive to see what leaps in logic can be made from a short article about ants.

I still couldn’t rely on this as confirmation that the Japan Times article was accurate, since the blog was using the exact same article for its information.

So I then found another article discussing the research.  This was from Mainichi, another major Japanese newspaper.  It quoted some of the same facts, but was a longer article giving more details.  And the details it gave were rather surprising!  For example, it said that if the 20 to 30 per cent (not 20 per cent, you will notice) of “lazy” ants were all removed from the colony, leaving only “hard working” ants, then 20 or 30 per cent of the “hard working” ants stopped working and became inactive.  In other words, it seems that having a per centage of ants in the colony doing nothing is actually important for the survival of the colony.

The article then went on to say that the researchers had done computer models to show that if all of the ants worked hard, then they would all become tired at the same time.  This would prove disastrous for the colony as none of the ants would be able to look after the eggs for a time.

Someone reading only the Mainichi article would get the completely opposite impression from the research than someone who only read the Japan Times article.  All of the people who were writing their comments on another blog about removing “lazy” humans’ benefits were ironically too lazy themselves to check the information they were talking about.

Now you can see how obviously true my theory is.  The inactive ants are just sitting around, playing with their smartphones and submitting comments to blogs.  Rumours that one of the ants contributes articles to a major Japanese newspaper cannot be confirmed at this time. 

Vocabulary:

to forage – of a person or animal, to search widely for food or provisions

to come across – to find something by chance

welfare benefits – money paid by governments to people in need, such as the unemployed, disabled etc.

a leap – a large jump

 

 

Samurai in the Rain, Attack of the Giant Lizard!, and other classics －雨の中のサムライ、巨大トカゲの襲撃！、そしてその他の名作－

I wrote last week about one of my favourite movies, Groundhog Day.  There is a big problem, however, when talking to a Japanese audience about movies.  The titles of foreign movies in Japan bear little relation to the original title.

Groundhog Day became “Love is déjà vu in Japan (恋はデジャ・ブ).  Umm, what?

It seems to me that the Japanese distributors have a very low opinion of Japanese audiences.  They think that the original title is confusing, so everyone will just give up on it.  It also fails to treat the movie as a work of art worth preserving in as close to its original form as possible.  It’s just a source of money.  Throw the word “love” into the title and more people will watch it.

And English teachers like me have to learn never to talk about movies with their students.  It simply sparks confusion all around.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at some more examples below.  I’ll list the title in Japan first, followed by the original title.

If we were to encounter (めぐり逢えたら)　

Sleepless in Seattle

There is no tomorrow for us (俺たちに明日はない)　

Bonnie and Clyde 

Those days with Penny Lane (あの頃ペニー・レインと)

Almost famous 

A 17 year-old’s medical charts (17 歳のカルテ)
Girl, interrupted 

In the English language world, we have tended just to keep the original titles of Japanese films and books.  Audiences are just expected to deal with it.  But maybe we have missed a trick.  If someone were to re-release classic Japanese films and books with a catchy new title, they could make millions!

So I have come up with my own new, catchier titles for classic Japanese books and movies.  I’ll put my titles below.  See if you can guess what original work they represent.  I’ll then put the answers further down the page, after the vocabulary. 

1 – Attack of the Giant Lizard!

2 – Should I kill my baby?

3 - Sensei with the guilty heart

4 - The man in the well

5 - Samurai in the Rain

6 – Kids and parents these days

7 – The ghost girl in the tv

 

Vocabulary:

ｔo spark something – to create or cause something

ｔo miss a trick – to fail to use some helpful tactic or clever solution

 

Answers:

1 - Godzilla

2 - A personal matter (個人的な体験)

3 - Kokoro　

4 - The wind-up bird chronicles (ねじまき鳥クロニクル)

5 - Rashomon

6 – Tokyo story (東京物語)

7 – Ring

 

 

6 more weeks of winter, 33 more years without hayfever － あと6週間の冬、花粉症のないあと33年間 －

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray 

“I was in the Virgin Islands once.  I met a girl.  We ate lobster, drank pina coladas.  At sunset we made love like sea otters.  That was a pretty good day.  Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over...”
Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray

I noticed a couple of days ago that it was February 2^nd: Groundhog Day.  For those who haven’t heard of it, it is a day associated with a superstition about the change from winter to spring.  In a small town in America called Punxsutawney, there is a ceremony held every year on this date.  They pull out a small hibernating animal called a groundhog.  According to the legend, if the animal sees its shadow then that means that there will be six more weeks of winter.  If it doesn’t see a shadow, then there will be an early spring.

There are a lot of daft superstitions in the world.  What makes this one special is that it inspired one of the greatest films ever made...  Well, one of the greatest films I have ever seen, anyway.  I must have watched the 1993 film, “Groundhog Day”, at least 50 times.

I am occasionally asked what my favourite film is and, when I mention Groundhog Day, no Japanese person has ever seen it.  That is a terrible shame.  Because the film offers advice to anyone who feels stuck in life, unable to influence things around them.  As Japan drifts into a future of an ever increasing ratio of pensioners and ever declining opportunities for the young, a lot of people are going to need to get over a similar feeling of powerlessness.  Don’t worry, it is not a philosophical lecture.  The film is extremely funny.

The story is about an arrogant weatherman, who travels to Punxsutawney to cover the Groundhog Day festival.  He annoys everyone around him and tries to get out of the town as fast as he can.  But he is unable to leave because of a blizzard and has to stay the night in a local hotel.

He then becomes trapped in a time loop.  He can travel around the town, talk to the limited number of residents, watch the festival, and so on.  But whenever the time passes 6 am the following morning, he wakes up in the same hotel bed and it is February 2^nd again.  Only his memory remains of what he has done before.  Many years pass in this way.  According to one estimate made by fans of the film, he lives the same day for what he experiences as about 33 years.

Like a Buddhist living through a cycle of thousands and thousands of lives and seeking a way to escape, the weatherman , Phil Connors, goes through stages of ignorance, selfishness, self-indulgence, desperation and finally moves towards enlightenment.

This week in the real Groundhog Day, a sleepy little animal predicted an early spring.  For hayfever sufferers like myself, that’s worse than a long winter.  I’m still in my phase of desperation at my powerlessness in the face of unstoppable pollen.  Perhaps if I had a 33 year break from spring, I would reach enlightenment too.
 

Vocabulary:

a sea otter – a type of mammal that lives in the sea and which was once hunted for its fur

a superstition – an un-scientific belief involving luck, magic, the supernatural etc.

a hibernating animal – an animal which sleeps for a long period during winter

daft – silly; stupid

arrogant – having an excessive belief in one’s own importance

a blizzard – a snow storm

a time loop – especially in science-fiction or fantasy, a situation where time does not move forwards in a straight line, but repeats itself

ignorance – lack of knowledge or understanding

self-indulgence – being overly kind to oneself; following one’s own desires too much

enlightenment – in Buddhism, the state of proper understanding of the world which the Buddha achieved
 

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