America could learn some lessons from Australia.
Back when Ashcroft suggested that Americans spy on each other to protect themselves from terrorism, the American public somehow noticed, squawked, and the plan was dropped. But here in Australia, the Citizens’ Domestic Spying Squad is set to ‘operative’! Here’s the ad currently running on TV.
Even now, Australians can flood the hotline with nuisance calls, and turn in neighbours and friends for any behaviour that looks ‘unusual’.
In fact, this ad seems a bit more to the point.
8 November 2007 at 7:18 am
I didn’t even know that swarthy was a word until I read this post. Very amusing videos, haha.
8 November 2007 at 8:31 am
hahaha that second video is hilarious.
8 November 2007 at 8:32 am
Hey Daniel, someone linked me to your blog after I showed them a transcript of your ‘Science!’ rant. So I thought you might like a copy.
“Umm, now, I could be wrong on this. I, I, am certainly not the guy calling out Chomsky, I’m nobody, okay. Um, however if I have learned one thing it is that if I’m going to know anything, on this Earth, it is going to be because I have accepted ideas that are scientifically well grounded. Um, because science is the best thing that we have to figure out what’s really going on. And, if we don’t use it then we are at risk of accepting any philosophy or any idea that, you know, sounds good or feels good or is interesting.
There are lots of things that are interesting, the campus is full of them, check out the huge round things around there with notices plastered all over them and you’ll notice that there are lots of ideas that are interesting and that sound good and that sound right and that are useless because you can’t test ’em you can’t check ’em to see if they’re right or wrong. And they are not likely to be advancing our, um, our scientific knowledge in any way. And I don’t really want to do that, I would rather have ideas that are scientifically well grounded.
So, what does it all come down to? What I want to say is that if you, as you investigate linguistics, we need to keep coming back to the questions of, what kinds of claims are being made here and what evidence exists for those claims. Are these good ideas, can we actually investigate them? And if I ever slip up and don’t ask these kinds of questions I hope that you’ll call me out on it as well, ’cause I am not immune to this.” (Midgley, 2007)
Daniel Midgley 2007, Cognitive Linguistics, lecture notes distributed in the unit at the University of Western Australia, UWA 04/10/07.
I’m not sure if this ‘Google/Blogger identity’ will work.
– Danica Zuks
8 November 2007 at 10:23 am
See, I can be equally tiresome and didactic in class as I am on the blog. Who needs uni?