Does Your Beer Taste Like Crap? That's Because It's Beer

"Everyone is special." This is a saying that bleeding hearts are fond of repeating to anyone who will listen. The truth is, it's not true. Some people are very normal and are not special at all, and this is alright. What's not alright is when people who are not special go around telling others that they are.

Molson Canadian (a popular Canadian beer company) made an advertisement some time ago that featured an angry Canadian named "Joe," standing on a stage in front of a movie screen, ranting about all the things that made him not-American. This seemingly innocuous attempt to sell beer was the start of a string of asinine ads that have since ruined Canadian television. Most notable to me was one particular ad which attempted to sum up what Canada was all aboot (I mean about) with a series of statements about Canada. One of the characteristics listed was that Canada is “a nation of beer drinkers.”

When I first heard this statement I was rather shocked. I was not shocked because we drink beer, but that drinking alcohol could be considered a characteristic of a country. To be a defining characteristic, capable of enabling others to find Canadians in a crowd of people at an airport or some other crowded place, you’d think that drinking a lot of alcohol would have to be something special and unique to people from Canada. But what about Germany? They have Oktoberfest. And Ireland? Are not the Irish known as heavy drinkers? When I visited Scotland this summer I was encouraged by the government to visit the famous whiskey distilleries, and a customs agent at the Amsterdam airport was shocked when I told him I had not drank any Scottish whiskey while I was there. The Aussies are always bragging about how much beer they can drink with one hand whilst fighting with the other, and don’t forget the Russians and their vodka. It seems that many countries claim to be heavy drinkers. Since it’s so common how can it be special?

More importantly, beer tastes like crap… literally. I’ve tasted crap before, and it doesn’t taste good. In fact, it tastes a lot like beer, but I’ve not heard anyone bragging lately about how much crap they eat. Nor have I seen anyone take a petrified piece of feces, swirl it around under his nose, nibble off a piece at the end and exclaim how great a year 1972 was for crap. So, why is everyone so excited to consume the foul tasting liver destroyer when it’s in liquid form? Since I can’t answer that question I’ll ignore the fact that alcohol in general makes me want to vomit at first smell, let alone taste. Instead, I will look more deeply into this claim of Canada as a great nation of beer drinkers.

In 2007 Forbes magazine ran an online article on the world’s heaviest alcohol consuming nations according to an independent study. Number one on the list was not Ireland, not Germany, not Canada. The hardest drinking nation on earth (defined by Litres of alcohol consumed per capita) was Luxembourg, which probably explains why you always hear about the nation of Luxembourg running its mouth and getting into fights at weddings. Second place went to those “cheese eating surrender monkeys,” the French. In fact neither Canada or America made the top-15. The only non-European nation to make the top-15 was Australia in 15th. Now I can hear what you’re thinking. You’re all thinking, “but the French drink wine, we drink beer.” Shall we look at the stats for beer then?

Before I list the results, make sure you place your final bets for the top beer drinking nation in the World. Will it be Ireland? Germany? Australia? America? Canada? The answer is… the Czech Republic. The people of the Czech Republic drink an average of 156.9 litres of beer a year! That is 25 Litres per person more than Ireland, 192% more beer than an American and 230% more beer per person than Canada. Interestingly enough, I recently watched a movie about rock climbing in the Czech Republic. One of the locals, when questioned about how much beer the Czech people consume, said “not a lot-a lot… 8 to 10 beers a day is normal.” There you have it, unlike pathetic Canadians, the people of the beer drinkingest nation on earth down play their alcohol consumption, because they know that drinking crap is nothing to be proud of.



(I Am Canadian! I just drink German beer to be ironic.)

Which Came First: The Dumb Kid Or The Dumb Teacher?

I know I've touched on this before, but I just can't let it go. I was reading a book entitled Math Wars by Carmen Latterell. This title is just another in a long list of books trying to figure out why American students are lagging behind the rest of the developed world in math? At the end of the book there is a study quoted that deals with the mathematics knowledge of American elementary math teachers and the knowledge of those from China. I feel that a summary of the results would be enlightening to many.

The researcher asked the two groups of teachers the same math questions. For subtraction questions 100% of American and Chinese math teachers could perform the problems, but only 17% of the American teachers could explain why subtraction worked, whereas 86% of Chinese teachers could. For multiplication questions, again both groups could solve the problems, but only 39% of American teachers could correctly identify why an incorrect algorithm (e.g., a formula for finding the "nth" term of a series) they were shown was indeed wrong, as opposed to 92% of Chinese teachers. With fractions, only 43% of American teachers could perform a computation involving fractions, while once again 100% of Chinese teachers could. Not one single American teacher could then create a word problem to represent the computation, while 100% of the Chinese teachers could. Apparently there were even more tests done, but Latterell decided not to include this data since the results were even more dismal for American teachers.

The interesting part of all this is not that the American teachers could not achieve at the same level, but rather that the American math teachers in the test had taken three times as many math courses in University as the Chinese teachers. The problem? Low standards. In grade five, my math teacher had us memorize up to and including our "10 times tables." He would not allow us to continue on in the unit until we could demonstrate to him that we knew every product off by heart. As a result I can still perform basic multiplication in my head. In contrast, my Language Arts (English to some of you) classes had us do a book report on Mice At Center Ice... twice (once in grade four and again in grade seven), and build "concrete poems." Is it then a coincidence that I did not know what a pronoun or preposition was until I was 22 when I bothered to search the definitions out on my own? How am I supposed to not end my sentences in prepositions if I don't know what a preposition is in the first place? How did I get Bs and As in English for 12 straight years yet not know that I was wanting in the most basic understanding of English grammar? How am I supposed to now teach my own students what was never taught to me?

I do not mean to attack American teachers. My preposition problem was the direct result of the ineffectiveness of the Alberta school system; a school system that is supposed to be one of the best in the world. My blame is directed squarely on the notion that to "keep kids in school" by passing them through and handing them degrees for just showing up is a good idea. As I was explaining to a friend the other day: students usually achieve up to but no higher than their expectations for themselves. I expect great things from myself, and so I will work hard to make my reality match my expectations even when I initially am achieving well below standard. However, a person who only feels he or she is a 50% student will only work hard enough to get a 50%. Teachers can dumb the curriculum down until we are handing out As for twelve-year-olds who can tie their shoes, but it won't matter. The weak students will only tie their shoes correctly 50% of the time. But, raise all the standards and the students will work harder to achieve the 50% they feel they deserve, and in the process will end up knowing more.

I'm not advocating that we make teachers responsible for teaching more information, we've done that already and our graduates are as dumb as ever. I'm advocating for more stringent standards on the information already being taught. Streamline the curriculum and cut out the concrete poetry and other garbage like learning to tell time on a 24 hour clock. Then, demand more perfection on the remaining concepts.

For example, in high school math in Alberta, the students are required at the beginning of grade ten to buy $100+ calculators that have the ability to graph functions. Then, in their final year of high school math, these same students are told that by using the "log" button present on a $9 Wal-Mart special calculator they could have solved any complex problem (ex. 2^x = 83.5, solve for 'x') that they were using their graphing calculators for. What a joke!

I'll end this now before I go ranting all night. My final point is that a great majority of teachers' educational woes could be solved if all teachers would demand more perfection from their students. 70% is not good enough. Little Sally and all of her classmates coast along through the elementary grades thinking they're doing alright at math because they aren't "failing." The teacher seems fine with this because Sally isn't as bad as Little Jimmy, who for some reason seems incapable of grasping even the simplest concepts. So, Little Sally sails on through elementary school and then is punched in the face with algebra, trigonometry and statistics in high school. She fails miserably and wonders what happened? "I used to be good at math" she says to herself. No you didn't Sally, you were actually pretty bad, but your teacher couldn't bother to tell you that you lacked the basic skills necessary to succeed at more advanced math since you were achieving more than 50% on his arbitrary grading scale. Don't let Sally get punched in the face anymore. Demand perfection.

Gunner Palace

I recently watched the movie Gunner Palace. It's sort of a documentary by a Seattle-based journalist who spent a year in Iraq with a company of American soldiers. I won't bore you with philosophical talk about whether or not America should have entered Iraq, and I won't insult the soldiers or the Iraqis by saying "it opened my eyes." I'll just give it my strongest recommendation - 5 DFMs - and suggest strongly that you see this movie. Check out the website here.

Violence Solves Everything

It seems today that there's a lot of discussion around bullying in schools. The government of Canada even has a website about how to prevent it. The thing is, bullying has been around as long as prostitution so you'd think that we'd have mastered it by now. Our schools haven't, but do not fear because DFM has.

The solution is to teach children how to fight, although the actual act of fighting is not what is important. What really matters is that the child thinks he/she can fight. I was bullied as a nine year old. My dad taught me some kung-fu moves he had learned. I was never bullied again. In fact I never even had to use the moves, my bully just magically disappeared. When I was ten and eleven I used to lose every fight I got myself into. When I was twelve I started watching WWF wrestling. I was ready to sharp shooter the next kid who looked at me wrong. Never got in another fight again. My brother was being bullied recently. I taught him how to box. Problem solved. Notice a trend?

In all three of these situations there was never a punch thrown. The reason it works is that when you feel you can fight, you become more confident. When you're more confident you don't get as bothered by minor issues and you walk a little taller. Bullies stop picking on you because you don't get riled up anymore and you don't look like you're about to cry, so there's no point in wasting their precious bullying time. Furthermore, you look like you wouldn't take it if they did try, so the bullies will go pick on someone who will.

The reason bullying seems so bad now is that there are not enough males teaching. Males tend to understand that a punch to the face isn't a life threatening situation. Most of the females I've known don't even know how to throw a punch let alone what one feels like. If schools really want to stop bullying they just need to set up a "fight club." Every Friday after school, anyone who wants to fight goes to fight club and has it out with giant, over sized gloves and head gear. Nobody gets seriously hurt, everyone gets really tired, and the problem is solved. I used to be an amateur boxer. Boxing is probably the most fun sport in the world, but I don't want to do it every week. Three times a year is fine for me. Plus, the school could charge admission from the other students and really boost its budget.

My dad said that there was a shop teacher in his school who actually did this (the boxing, not the ticket sales). My dad's recollection was that bullying went way down. In my school, a teacher threatened to bring gloves to school so that we could fight out our aggression. She never did. Bullying went up.



(These boys must be well adjusted young adults by now.)

Pass Me My Giant "We're #1" Foam Finger, Please

The ATP tennis season starts on January 3rd and does not end until December 6th this year. Presumably the 2010 season will start the first week of January again, giving the players all of one month off between seasons. While this is may be longest professional sports season in terms of total number of weeks from start to finish, at least the players get to choose which tournaments they enter (to some extent). The professional hockey season starts its preseason in September and does not end its playoffs until early June. Hockey in June? Are you kidding me? I have failed to find a professional sport which does not have a season that is far too long, but why?

The simple answer is that it allows the owners to make more from advertising revenue, but I'm not entirely satisfied with that answer. An old instructor I had once told me that when Gorbachev banned vodka he predicted it would be the end of the Soviet Union. His reasoning was that once the proletariat were no longer in a state of constant drunkenness they would start to take an interest in politics. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the idea of a distracted voting class may explain why democracy rarely feels as though it is.

My theory is that without an excessively long professional sports season, the average voter might start wondering why he's 40 years old, living in the middle of nowhere and working himself into the ground with nothing to show for it. Said voter may start questioning his current situation and perhaps stop mindlessly filling out ballots for the incumbent candidate or, even worse, start voting. Governments in a "democracy" tend to be fairly ineffectual at creating any meaningful change for the better, and the less people think about this fact the better off the government is. Hence, you can see that the government has a large incentive to keep the voters from thinking about their lives.

All joking aside, I don't understand the value of having thousands of people sit on their asses eating popcorn and drinking beer as they watch others run around for them, while North Americans are fatter than they've ever been. Instead of using tax payer's money to build new professional sports arenas (as they are used in some cities), why not use that same money to build more outdoor, public sporting facilities that everyone can enjoy? I guess that's why I'm not a politician.



("Whoo-ee, I love my government!")

Do Women Actually Nurture?

Today I heard reports in the news that the Canadian military has selected a small group of women to be some of the first females to pilot helicopters in combat missions in Afghanistan. Considering the year it made me wonder what could have taken the military so long? The first answer that came to my mind was that perhaps the age old stereotype that women can't drive or that a woman will crack under pressure was a factor. I have personally known young women learning to drive, that when faced with turning left at a busy intersection have resorted to taking their hands off the wheel and covering their eyes. However, I can also name some women who are as skilled or more skilled at high performance driving than almost any man (do yourself a favour and 'Google' "Sabine Schmitz"). Furthermore, I know far more males who are downright awful at driving and make me scared to even enter vehicles with them. What's the point of all this? Nothing. I cannot come to a conclusion that is not already obvious (e.g., stereotypes are often wrong), but the whole exercise has reminded me of something else that happened today.

A friend and I were discussing the issue of why a judge would grant custody of children to the mother, even if she did not have a job (it has happened). The obvious answer would seem to be that mothers are assumed to be naturally more nurturing and that this will ultimately prove to be more valuable for the children (men are only viewed as dollar signs by the courts anyways). It's hard to argue that on average women seem far more practiced and capable of coddling children (or at least my personal experience tells me so), but does all this "nurturing" produce a desired result? My personal experience working with children alongside teenaged girls tells me "no" (and the process of said "nurturing" was also very annoying for me to witness).

In a speech to the Yale University Child Development Center in 1988, Fred Rogers (yes, that Fred Rogers) described how it was in fact the men in his life who were the most memorable nurturers. One of his stories involved him walking along on a stone fence at his grandfather's farm. His mother and grandmother would frequently try to "rescue" him from certain death, but his grandfather would stop them saying "Let the kid walk on the wall. He’s got to learn to do things for himself.” Mr. Rogers goes on to infer that this response helped him develop trust in his own abilities. Is this result not a favourable one?

It has also been suggested that on average fathers are less likely to accept excuses from their children and are more firm disciplinarians (i.e., they can say "no"). I can recount numerous occasions when, as a youngster, I was able to argue my way into having my mother buy me a chocolate bar at the grocery store or some small toy. The result was that I developed a body shape that took sixteen years to make "fit," and that I we had a basement full of plastic, broken cars and army men I played with only once. One time I even managed to whine my way into having my mother give me all of my birthday presents on the day before my birthday. Needless to say, it was the worst birthday ever. I don't mean to attack my mother, but her weakness in the face of my crying did nothing to develop my personal discipline. Personal discipline in my opinion is the single most important character trait known to man. The results of the famous "marshmallow test" showed that children who were able to resist temptation grew up to be more well adjusted, successful and popular teenagers and young adults. If a parent cannot raise a child to act with personal discipline, can they really be described as truly nurturing?

In conclusion, I would like to point out that I understand there are probably many situations in which custody of the children should rightfully be given to the mother. However, decisions of a custodial nature should be based on a rational review of the two parents involved. When child custody suits are settled on the basis of a myopic, sex-based view of "nurturing" ability this ultimately ends up hurting the children and hurting the country. I urge you to do your civic duty and critically think about what it means to "nurture." The children will thank you.

How To Understand Engrish And Other Incomprehensible Dialects

I recently overheard a woman telling her friends about an all too common situation. The gist of it was that three groups of people from three English speaking countries were all together for some sports tournament. Apparently there was a debate about how best to say a particular word. The debate digressed into the three groups of women yelling at each other to "speak English." To the woman telling the story this seemed very funny, but to me it was very tiresome.

I spend a rather large percentage of my time talking to people with accents. I have Korean friends, English friends, Taiwanese friends, Australian friends, etc. I also spend a great deal of time talking to children and watching British television. All of this has helped me develop an above-average ear for words. This does not mean that I can understand every word perfectly, in fact quite the opposite. I hear the words just as jumbled up as you do, but I have a secret trick. Perhaps because I have forgotten what it was like to not have "the trick" I become annoyed with people who cannot understand the English of people with accents. The secret to understanding "Engrish," or any other form of unclear English, is to guess what the person is going to say before he or she says it. This may sound ridiculous, but it's easier and more effective than you think. I will demonstrate with an example:

The other day I was standing in line at a local Subway fast food restaurant and the "sandwich artists" all happened to be Chinese. The poor exchange students would take the opened sub bun with the meat and cheese on it already, and position it in front of the vegetable containers. Then s/he would look up at the customer and ask "which veggies?" I watched the employees do this over and over again, and each time the response from the customer was always the same. "What?" What do you mean "what?" The bun is in front of the veggies. Veggies go in a submarine sandwich after the meat and cheese. What else could the employee possibly want to know? I thought at first "perhaps it is that customers first time buying a submarine sandwich?" But this became hard to believe after the eighth time I heard someone ask "what?"

This was a basic example but it gives insight into my method of proactive listening. After you master a basic proactive listening exercise like ordering a sandwich, you can gradually move on to more advanced levels of Engrish comprehension. For example, let's say you see a Chinese person on the bus. You hear her speaking to the bus driver and you think "wow, that is some poor English!" She comes over and sits next to you. You decide that you want to be polite and talk to her but don't know how. Try the following:

Think: she can barely get on the bus, but she looks 25, so she's definitely not a grandmother who stayed at home and never left the house for forty years because she couldn't cope in a non-Chinese world. Therefore, she probably has recently moved to whatever city you're in. Ask (after exchanging pleasantries): "are you new to Canada/Seattle/Vancouver, etc.?" The answer is going to be either yes or no, so there's no need to be surprised. You know she's probably new, so guess yes. Now listen for "yes." If the answer sounds remotely close to yes, then take it as yes. If it does not sound like yes, assume she said "no." Let's assume the answer was yes.

Next you notice that she has a backpack on and is getting on the bus near the university. Think: She's probably a student at the university. Ask: "do you go to school at the university?" Listen: "yes" or "no." You suspect yes because she has a bag and is near the school, so listen for "yes." If the answer sounds like yes, assume yes (notice a pattern?)

Think: at university students study subjects usually related to degrees/graduation. Said student is foreign and cannot speak English fluently. She's probably not a Classics major. Math is a subject that involves limited English comprehension. (4X-5)/3 = 19 is the same in Tokyo as it is in Dallas. Hence, foreign students are likely to take courses that are heavy in math, like engineering or business. Ask: "what are you studying?" or "what is your major?" (students for whom English is a not a first language absolutely love the later phrase up for some reason) Listen: "business" or "engineering." If the answer sounds like... you get the picture.

I can go on and on, but the point is that listening requires some thinking. With a bit of effort it is possible to comprehend just about any accent and English speaking person may have. Take stock of your surroundings. Make inferences. Listen for discrepancies in answers. Adjust accordingly.

There is one caveat though. If it is your first time at a Subway restaurant and you get a Chinese student serving you, you will never be prepared for the question "cheese or toasted?" It comes out something like "chi or toad?" and it will always throw you off unless you have been prepared for it by past experience. The difficulty of all other Engrish-like compression situations is only proportional to the lack of proactive thinking in which you are willing to invest. Happy listening.