A couple links via Neatorama:
A Japanese company has adopted a radical strategy for success in a world where Japan is rapidly disappearing, as an economic force and as a culture. They do business exclusively in English:
The country has both a dread of English and an understandable attachment to its own ornate business customs. Those idiosyncrasies made Japan a bewildering but envied powerhouse during its economic boom. They now make Japan a poor match, experts say, for global business.
Mikitani took a step few other companies here have dared because, he said, he thought it would help his company expand and thrive. He also wanted to prove a point — that the Japanese, counter to the stereotype, could embrace the risks and embarrassment that come with learning a foreign language.
In another part of the world, a group of masked bandits in armor robbed a French/German Renaissance Faire:
A bunch of people dressed as knights and armed with a sword and an axe forgot to look up the definition of knight. They robbed the organizers of a medieval festival and stole $25,000. Yeah, they’ve apparently been learning knighthood from the likes of Jaime Lannister.
They needed this Englishman (not from Neatorama)–a man who has lived out the not-so-secret fantasy of every historical reenactor:
A Civil War re-enactment enthusiast used the battle skills he learned playing a Cavalier to disarm a knife-wielding robber.
Alf Thompson, 60, sprang into action when the thug threatened to slash a shop assistant’s throat.
Mr Thompson, a member of the Sealed Knot, grabbed the robber’s hand and dragged him over the shop counter.
The grandfather wrenched the knife from the man’s hand and then pinned him to the counter while the shopkeeper dialled 999.
During the brawl, the masked robber drew a second knife – but Mr Thompson disarmed him again before pinning him to the floor and waiting for police.
Someday you’ll read about me doing something similar.
The story will be accompanied by my death notice, of course.
It will be worth it.
Hey, we posted at the same time.
Wholly worth it, especially if you get off a good action-movie line before you buy the farm. Maybe you can think up some Viking-specific ones.
‘I don’t answer questions. I axe them.’
1]The fine historian Thomas Kidd has been doing some excellent reporting work on the controversy surrounding David Barton’s book-length attempt to expose the “lies” and “myths” about Jefferson, his faith, his infidelity, and his view of slaves. The book has been promoted by Glenn Beck (who wrote the foreword), and Kirk Cameron featured Barton in his documentary Monumental.
Kidd reports [2] that philosopher Jay Richards—who found the book to contain “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims”—asked some conservative evangelical historians to examine the book’s claims.
Glenn Moots of Northwood University wrote that Barton in The Jefferson Lies is so eager to portray Jefferson as sympathetic to Christianity that he misses or omits obvious signs that Jefferson stood outside “orthodox, creedal, confessional Christianity.”
A second professor, Glenn Sunshine of Central Connecticut State University, said that Barton’s characterization of Jefferson’s religious views is “unsupportable.”
A third, Gregg Frazer of The Master’s College, evaluated Barton’s video America’s Godly Heritage and found many of its factual claims dubious, such as a statement that “52 of the 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention were ‘orthodox, evangelical Christians.’” Barton told me he found that number in M.E. Bradford’s A Worthy Company.
There is even a book-length response just published:
A full-scale, newly published critique of Barton is coming from Professors Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter of Grove City College, a largely conservative Christian school in Pennsylvania. Their book Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President [3] (Salem Grove Press), argues that Barton “is guilty of taking statements and actions out of context and simplifying historical circumstances.” For example, they charge that Barton, in explaining why Jefferson did not free his slaves, “seriously misrepresents or misunderstands (or both) the legal environment related to slavery.”
Today Kidd reports that Thomas Nelson has decided to pull the book [4] from publication.
The problems are not limited to a single book.
Political philosopher Greg Forster, an expert on John Locke, decided to take a look at one of Barton’s essays on Locke and found it to be filled with errors [5].
As historian John Fea points out, it appears [6] that virtually no Christian colleges—conservative or otherwise—teach or endorse Barton’s revisionist views, though he is still very popular in some conservative Christian circles (especially in some, though of course not all, homeschooling networks).
This is actually a very interesting test case for those who have bought in to Barton’s historiography, methodology, and conclusions. Do we care about the truth, or do the conclusions we want to hear justify the means used to obtain them?
Article printed from Justin Taylor: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor
Sorry-wrong blog entry. Barton’s stuff does this to me.
A polite disagreement. The Japanese have had a long interest in the English Language and its cultural foundations. Japan studied and patterned itself after the British as a maritime power at the turn of the 19th/20th century and became almost fixated on American English and its culture after World War Two as the language and culture of the victors. They studied and copied American capitalism and free enterprise and for a time put American rivals out of business. I can still remember American unions complaining and calling for boycotts of Japanese manufactured products much like they do today against the Chinese manufacturers. When I was a TESOL instructor and tutor in Southern California I worked with Japanese students fresh out of their high school and they are uniquely different than other cultural groups in their view of the English language and culture. My TESOL colleagues shared their experiences living and working in Japan. It is very easy to find a career in TESOL in Japan. It is one of the few countries where restaurant owners will offer you a free meal and a some compensation if you would be willing to let some customers come to your table(after you finish your meal and are having some tea)to practice their English skill with you for awhile. I was offered a teaching job, a plane ticket, and subsidized housing in Japan and I never applied for it (someone recommended me). The Japanese have(for better or for worse)been the leader of cross-cultural synchronization of Far Eastern and Western cultures. I think this is the reason for a small revival of traditional Japanese cultural traditions. However, the traditionalists concede that Western culture has permanently changed Japan much to their lamentation. That is part of the reason that Corporate Japan and its government has been very resistant to foreign ownership and control over its industries while it allows foreign investment and partial ownership in them. I was at one time very interested and studied this subject, but that led to my personal decision that I really didn’t want to live and work in Modern Japan.