European Learning

Educational Issues

A pair of odd educational concepts from our European cousins across the pond.

Adopt the Dead
So President Sarkozy in France has been searching for issues to soften his image, after the country has gotten tired of him breaking off his marriage to sleep around with a supermodel instead of accomplishing anything in office.

You know you're doing a bad job when the French get picky about your mistresses; traditionally, the more the merrier, in Gallic politics.

At any rate, after tepid plans to curb urban poverty, improve mass transit and the like, Sarkozy has decided to move on to educational issues.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes".

In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France's Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust".

The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.

More than 11,100 French Jewish children were deported from France to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in eastern Europe during the German World War Two occupation.

Hmm. Yeah.

Interesting idea, and it's certainly worth noting that so much of France bowed to Nazi rule with barely suppressed glee.

On the other hand, it's also worth noting that two separate resistance movements fought the Nazis to the bloody death, one in each half of divided France. It's particularly worth remembering in light of the 'Terrorism is Bad and an Enemy We can Beat' rhetoric in the recent past. You know, as the Resistance in the north of France used every sneaky terrorist trick in the book to spill fascist blood.

A cause heartily endorsed by yours truly, for what little that matters.

Anyway, I dunno. The idea isn't as whacko as it sounds, but I think 10 is a bit young. This is more of a junior-high thing at the least.

You could also have them adopt a resistance fighter, and give a report on how their subject killed German occupiers with bombs or what not. That'd be nice. Broaden horizons and all that.

Source: Reuters

Imagine
So there's this guy, Luc Bernard, who's got a slate of independent games coming out for Nintendo consoles. He does what can be called Dark Fantasy, usually with a platforming game element.

His first game, Eternity's Child, concerns an 11 year old orphan, genocide, global warming, the near-extinction of humankind, transgender issues for children, etc. Another game he's working on is about a cellist who kills anything she touches, and her traveling companion, a robotic bunny/children's entertainer who, failing at showbiz, had to turn to cross-dressing prostitution.

So the guy is already going to a pretty dark place with his games. Which is fine by me.

The next one is likely to offend quite a few people though.

Luc Bernard, the mind behind the upcoming Wii-Ware title Eternity's Child is already hard at work on a new and what is sure to be a very controversial game or the DS. Imagination Is The Only Escape is the story of a young Jewish boy living in France during the occupation by the Nazis in World War II. In order to escape the horrors around him, he imagines a fantasy land that becomes the basis of the game's world. The adventure platformer will attempt to educate players on the atrocities experienced by many children during the time of the Holocaust.
"The sad thing is that videogames are still considered toys and not art, I hope that this game can show that games can be just as important as films."

Sounds like a darker version of Pan's Labyrinth perhaps.

To be honest, all three of his games sound like "Dark" reimaginings of previous works; Eternity's Child is A.I. (which was already pretty heavy), the Cellist story reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, and this latest one, as I said, Pan's Labyrinth.

The art is all his and all original though. I'm willing to give EC a try when it hits the Wii.

That being said, I do hope he can get his project mostly intact onto a console. It's a daring concept; I'd like to see if he can make a good game out of it as well.

Source: Kotaku

Funny News (Also, Entertaining)

Because We All Need A Laugh

Tokyo Frogs
So there's been a bit of a kerfluffle in Japan, where the nationalist governor made some.. humorous?... remarks about French that weren't taken too well.

Tokyo's outspoken governor, who was taken to court for a jibe against the French language, insists that he in fact loves France -- and even once had a French girlfriend.

Governor Shintaro Ishihara, known for his nationalist views, said in 2004 that French was disqualified as an international language as it was impossible to count in it.

Twenty-one scholars, teachers and translators, including seven French people who live in Japan, sued Ishihara for damages, saying they were defamed and their careers hurt. A judge threw out the suit.

Ishihara, 75, an acclaimed novelist who majored in French in university, stood by his remarks in an interview with AFP.

"Even the French ambassador told me he couldn't count in French," he said with a laugh.

But he added: "I love France. I was really good at French back in the day."

The man's really not kidding; he *is* good at French, and even worked as a translator for bringing French works into Japanese at one point.

Ishihara said he was friends with French writer Andre Malraux and philosopher Raymond Aron. He was also the first to translate into Japanese some of the "Contes Cruels," or "Cruel Tales," by 19th-century author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.

Meanwhile, it seems that the French system for counting really is pretty retarded.

The French numbers 0 through 19 are easy enough, right?

For 20 through 69, counting is almost just like in English: the tens word (vingt, trente, quarante, etc.) followed by the ones word (un, deux, trois). The only difference is that for 21, 31, etc., the word et is introduced between the tens word and one: vingt-et-un, trente-et-un, quarante-et-un, etc.

70 to 79 is trickier. In French, 70 is soixante-dix, literally "sixty-ten." 71 is soixante et onze (sixty and eleven), 72 is soixante-douze (sixty-twelve), and so on, up to 79.

80 is quatre-vingts, literally four-twenties (think "four-score"). 81 is quatre-vingt-un (four-twenty-one), 82 is quatre-vingt-deux (four-twenty-two), and so on, all the way up to ninety. 90 is quatre-vingt-dix (four-twenty-ten), 91 is quatre-vingt-onze (four-twenty-eleven), etc.

100 to 999 work just like in English, except that when you have cent at the end of the number, it takes an s, but when cent is followed by another number, the s is dropped. Also, note that you cannot pause after the word cent.
200 = deux cents
500 = cinq cents
350 = trois cent cinquante
872 = huit cent soixante-douze

1,000+ are similar to English, except that the separator is a period or space, rather than a comma (learn more). When reciting a number, you can pause to take a breath at the separator (after mille, million, or milliard). Note that mille never takes an s.

So French has at least sex separate ways to organize their numbers, including four under 100.

I have to say, I'm with the Governor on this one.

Sources: Raw Story
About.com

HULK SING
SONG MAKE HULK HAPPY

HULK TURN INTO BANNER

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY MAKE BANNER ANGRY

BANNER TURN INTO HULK

HULK SING

SONG MAKE HULK HAPPY

ERROR: RECURSION DETECTED

Source: Progressive Ruin

Schlussel Part Two
So, I tore Debbie Schlussel up a bit in the last post. Something about her being a colossal retard, I dunno. Just to be fair to the, ahem, lady, let's take a bit of a biographical look at her work, shall we?

Debbie Schlussel, 37 years old, supports her pundit habit by practicing commercial law in suburban Detroit. She is among the most proactive B-list pundits. Almost daily, she emails her appearance schedule, availability or sharp-elbowed conservative commentaries to 5,000 people in media and politics.

In the wake of North Korea's recent nuclear test, a hawkish Ms. Schlussel hit the radio circuit, saying U.S. officials responded too mildly in calling the test "a provocative act." "A Paris Hilton video is a provocative act," she said. "What North Korea did was an act of war." To get noticed, Ms. Schlussel says, "I've become the master of the confrontational sound bite."

...

Ask her to survey the punditry landscape, from the A-list on down, and she gets contemplative. "Who is good who does what I do?" she says out loud as she thinks. Soon enough, the answer comes to her. "Me!"

Ahh I see. She's a useless fame whore.

That explains a lot really.

Source: The Wall Street Journal (how's THAT for making my blog 'fair and balanced'?)

Half-Baked Reasoning
Sometimes you can make the right legal decision for the completely wrong reason.

Case in point, a Canadian court considering a traffic stop and drug search.

A Saskatchewan appeal's court upheld a decision that the smell of burnt marijuana is not evidence of illegal drug possession since by definition the proof has gone up in smoke, it said Wednesday.

"The smell of burnt marijuana does not reasonably support the inference that additional marijuana is present," the three-judge panel said in newly-released court filings.

Ok, ok, that sounds logical. We don't want a world where any cop can search any person on the basis of 'odors' that could be entirely in their minds, or better yet, fictitious.

Surely that's the logical reason that the Court used to reject this search, right? That the 'cause' for the search was a completely subjective 'I think it smelled like pot' excuse from a cop?

Wrong.

Archibald's lawyer Ronald Piche successfully argued the warrantless search and seizure were "unreasonable" because the aroma of burnt marijuana -- as opposed to raw marijuana -- infers that the drug has dissipated.

"How can you say you're in possession of something that doesn't exist," Piche told the daily Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Interesting perspective. If you test positive for cocaine in a blood test after a traffic accident, can you then argue that the cocaine no longer exists, as it's been assimilated into your blood?

Probably not. Marijuana smoke is still marijuana, pointdexter.

Except in Canada.

Source: Raw Story

They Were 11
They Were 11 sounds good. A psychodrama about 10 people who are supposed to spend 50something days alone on a survival expedition in space as a final exam for school entry... only 11 people show up on the ship, and then things start to go terribly wrong.

Duh duh DUH

Ok, this isn't so much funny. It's more entertaining.

Source: Anime News Network