On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 17:06:12 -0800 (PST), Sanjiv Karmarkar
<s_karmarkar@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> tapped the keyboard and brought forth:
>On Dec 3, 6:36 pm, Mike Holmans wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the compliment. It's not quite illogical for an Aussie to
>> feel safer in England than India, though. The beer tastes a bit
>> different, you don't get beetroot on every damn plate in a restaurant
>> and it rains a lot more, but there's no great culture shock. Visitors
>> to India in peaceful times talk of the overwhelming nature of the
>> place, and should that turn dangerous, it's going to seem a lot more
>> frightening to someone who doesn't understand the culture.
>
>Well, that's hardly being logical, where do you see logic in that? As
>a matter of fact, it screams Jungian Collective unconscious; at least
>the Karmarkar interpretation of it!
In England, all the signs are in English, just like in Australia. All
the TV and radio channels are in English, apart from a few niche
channels aimed at minorities and expats, as are all the newspapers.
English may be a lingua franca in India, but there is plenty of
evidence of signs, newspapers and broadcast media unintelligible to a
monoglot English-speaker. If all the information about a disaster is
coming in your own language, it's less frightening than seeing
pictures without being able to make out what the commentary is saying
about it. If that's the collective unconscious at work, then it's a
pretty useless concept.
>> I admit to being rather suspicious of this line of argument. I prefer
>> the line that the two boards are mucking in together to muddle through
>> after a rather nasty upset to the arrangements than all this
>> heroes-of-the-Blitz stuff.
>
>Well, such things are so rare that one wants to attribute lofty
>motives to it. And why not? I may not get another chance for another
>decade.
I think what slightly bothers me is that the grandiose rhetoric might
just encourage some loon to take a potshot at a foreign cricketer who
is being made out to be something more emblematic than he really needs
to be. I doubt that many jihadis are sitting around cursing that there
will be a cricket match at Chennai, but hyping it up as a symbol of
defiance might just be the spark tnat lights some dimwit's fire.
Cheers,
Mike
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