I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch

Danke Schön Bitte Schön Wiedersehn........I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch.

This is an extract from the lyrics of a song released by Eddie Wilson in 1961. It is a song about the desire and difficulty to learn German. Maybe I should compose a similar piece based on my current struggle to gain proficiency with the Turkish language. It's very difficult - çok zor - perhaps because it is hard to get an old brain to adapt to an entirely new set of linguistic 'rules'. The main problem being whatever 'rules' appear to exist, they are invariably broken. I'm getting there albeit very slowly - çok yavaş - but I will persevere.

As I navigate my way through the maze of ambiguities and inconsistencies of the Turkish language, I realise that there are far more imperfections in English and how my command of English is perhaps not as good as I thought it was! This is particularly apparent when I participate in Internet discussion forums, which attract an international audience. It has been said that Britain and America are "two nations divided by a common language", a quote attributed to Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde! Whoever said it, I can empathise with the sentiment as many of my discussion points have been misinterpreted by American participants, so what chance do non-English speakers have?

There have been attempts to introduce more logical languages. Esperanto was created by Dr Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof in the late nineteenth century, his aim being to foster harmony between people from different countries. Although it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world, the current estimate of Esperanto speakers is between one and two million people, which equates to less than 0.03% of the world's population. I would suggest this is insufficient to help improve relations between different nationalities. A more recently introduced constructed language is Loglan, which was developed in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown. It was the first among a number of languages known as logical languages. But Loglan has fewer followers than Esperanto and despite it's 'scientific' origin, there are no native speakers.

So in spite of attempts to introduce perfect languages, the old idiosyncratic languages survive and evolve. The evolution is, compared with other evolutionary timescales, quite rapid. For example, grandparents often have difficulty communicating with their grandchildren and vice versa. Keeping abreast of linguistic changes is difficult, particularly given most humans' natural resistance to change. The idiosyncrasies and lack of stability of human languages means that trying to learn a language by using an existing language as a 'reference' and developing translation 'rules' is fraught with problems. But that's exactly how I have been approaching my Turkish learning process, aided and abetted by my technical and analytical bent. One-to-one correlations between English and Turkish simply don't work, which is not surprising when you look at how the two languages have developed, almost independently of each other.

My teacher is very good and extremely patient, which he needs to be because my memory retention is sorely lacking. Beyond the basics he has taught me a considerable amount (but certainly not all) of Turkish grammar, which he believes will provide me with the 'foundation' and 'building blocks' of language construction. I agree with this approach but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Between lessons my Turkish is limited to a few short conversations each day interspersed with continuing to use my mother tongue. I now believe the next stage needs to be total immersion! I am not yet sure how I will immerse myself but I do know swimming is much more fun in the water!!

Watch this space and you will know I have cracked it when I publish a blog in Turkish........İnşallah........Hopefully!

On Probation

Probation
1. The release of an offender from prison on condition of good behaviour under supervision.
2. A period of training and testing a new employee.

So says the Little Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, which I sometimes refer to, perhaps nostalgically, rather than resorting to Google. The second definition can be loosely applied to the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK. When the two political parties came together after the General Election of 2010, no political party had a clear majority and the coalition was seen as breaking the mould of British politics. Will it work? Well to a certain extent it's on probation. It is, of course, an anathema to the political ideologists who see clear distinctions between left, right and middle-of-the-road politics and believe a fudged combination of two or more competing political philosophies will never work. The counter to that argument is that societies are best managed by the people with the requisite skills and experience, regardless of the colours of their political rosettes.

The coalition government took the reins of power at a time when the UK, in common with many other parts of the world, was suffering from debt-driven economic woes to which the newly-formed government's response was a menu of austerity measures. In simple terms, the country is spending more than it earns and therefore has to tighten its belt particularly in the area of public expenditure. The latest target is privatising probation (definition '1' from the dictionary) through outsourcing many of the existing services. Although reduction in re-offending rates has been cited as the reason for change, cost savings will probably be high on the priority list and if the truth be known, could well be the real motivation for change. Now I am not an expert on probation services but I have a good friend who is, having spent much of his working career as a probation professional. So over the years I have gleaned an appreciation of some of the salient features of the organisation. My current interest is the business model that the 'probationary' government is intending to implement for its probation services, because my long commercial career has been largely responsible for my avid interest in business models - sad isn't it?!

I am strongly of the opinion that any business is a complex system with inputs, outputs and relationships between them that are not always easy to understand. Indeed organisations evolve and do not always behave in ways that were originally intended. Stafford Beer is credited with introducing the acronym POSIWID - the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. As an example, the UK's Probation Service's 'purpose' is what it does and if that is not in accord with what society expects of it, then it will have to change. But let's take a step back because the Probation Service is a system within a much bigger system, i.e. society and its role in the community would be totally redundant if there weren't criminals! So isn't the government focussing on the symptom rather than the underlying problem? If there were no offenders then re-offending rates, would no longer be a consideration. Clearly my utopian fantasy is unlikely to become a reality but the point I am making is that only by considering the totality of the problem can we visualise a model that is likely to have a purpose which is more closely aligned to what we would desire in a perfect society. So if the 'probationary' government believes that carving up the Probation Service into a large outsourced entity and a much smaller insourced bit, is a step towards solving the nation's criminality problems, so be it. Personally I believe the 'probationary' government is perpetuating outdated business models that have failed miserably in other areas of the public sector. Someone once suggested to me that one sign of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different result! By repeating the 'offences' of previous governments, surely the 'probationary' (it's moved from definition '2' to definition '1') government is re-offending..........return to jail or plead insanity?!

You know........

The use of language has always fascinated me. We are born without it but relatively quickly we start communicating with those who speak the same language and what's amazing is the vast number of languages, dialects and accents that exist and show little sign of becoming obsolete despite the 'shrinking' of the world through the access to technology. Languages get modified and through shared words, eg 'iPad', do show some signs of convergence but attempts to introduce universal languages , like Esperanto, have failed miserably.

My early experimentation with language, or rather accent, came at the age of thirteen when I moved with my parents from London, UK, where I was born, to Manchester, UK, which was where my father had taken on a new job. Changing schools at that age is never easy for any child and isn't helped if you don't speak the same as your peers. I tolerated the jibes about my southern accent for a while but gradually, over a period of a couple of years, I changed my accent to an almost perfect Mancunian drawl. If I'd chosen an acting career, I might have got a part in Coronation Street! At the age of eighteen, higher education took me to the south of England. I retained my accent for a while, which some members of the opposite sex seemed to find attractive! But gradually I reverted to my native tongue. To this day, I don't have difficulty mimicking any UK regional accent and I am usually able to determine which part of the UK someone comes from by listening to his or her accent.

So what my early years taught me was just how easy it is to modify the way we speak. In fact children who move to a different country at a young age usually have no difficulty speaking a completely different language very quickly. If only it was that easy when you get older. I now live in Turkey and I soon realised that I wouldn't learn Turkish just by exchanging pleasantries with the local shopkeepers, so I decided to embark on one-to-one lessons. It's hard! I console myself by assuming it is difficult to teach a new language to an old brain but I am not sure that's true, particularly when I see old brains learning new languages and many more picking up trendy lingo - which brings me on to 'You know....'

Throughout the ages there have been trendy words and phrases. 'No way', 'look' and 'huge' are examples and most recently 'you know'. I am not going to name names but 'you know' is prevalent amongst UK and US politicians although certainly not exclusive to political circles. Here's how it might be used:

"You know society needs strong leadership at times like this and you know a good leader needs a vision. You know visions don't grow on trees and the electorate deserves better........"

As illustrated, 'you knows' can sometimes be used more frequently than full stops! The Urban Dictionary has a rather graphic way of defining 'you know':

"Something that jackasses say EVERY FUCKING OTHER WORD! You know! You know! You know! No I don't know cocksucker, why don't you fucking tell me!"

Picking up trendy words and phrases by mature people shows how adaptable the brain is at ages when you might think it would be more set in its ways. So there's hope for me yet with my aspiration to learn Turkish! But YOU KNOW as my Turkish improves there is a danger YOU KNOW that I might YOU KNOW get out of touch with trendy English lingo and thus lose a source of knowledge for future blogs....... YOU KNOW!! :-)

Farewell little friend

As well as our resident two dogs and a cat, we have many non-human visitors to our home and some are from my point of view, more welcome than others. My wife's caring and compassionate attitude to all creatures great and small, is to be commended and as an example, when we discovered a massive hornets nest in the loft last year, she was insistent it was removed without harming the hornets, which we managed to do. I did, however, have to wait until the winter months when the insects were no longer active!

Other creatures that have literally become part of our home are the geckos. These reptiles are part of the lizard family and the ones that co-inhabit our residence are mediterranean house geckos. They are frequent visitors and the picture is of one in our living room that is eyeing up a tasty morsel! Unfortunately some are not so lucky, which leads me into my main story.

In the region where we live in Turkey, the summers are long and hot. For several months the temperatures are in the mid 30s and can exceed 40 degrees C. So air conditioning is highly desirable. The winter temperatures, whilst somewhat higher than central and northern Europe, can nevertheless be in single figures particularly at night. So the air conditioners are often used 'in reverse' to provide room heating. A couple of weeks ago when I found it necessary to warm the bedroom, I was disappointed to discover the air conditioner didn't work. I contacted the local service centre who promptly sent a technician to our home. He diagnosed the problem to be a faulty fan motor and later returned with a new unit. He connected it up, only to find it wasn't the solution to the problem. He then decided it must be the control card, a sub unit that takes in the mains power, as well as the command signals from the remote controller, and generates all the necessary outputs to the heating and cooling units. He returned a couple of days later with a new control card, installed it and we now have a working air conditioner. But what was interesting and sad was why the old card had given up the ghost. When the technician removed the old card he noticed that part of it was badly burnt and connecting two contacts that shouldn't be connected, was a stiff and lifeless gecko!

My wife's reaction to the incident was predictable. She felt very sorry for the gecko. I have to admit that my own immediate reaction was less compassionate as I was presented with the financial consequences of the gecko's action - a bill for 140 Turkish Lira. Upon reflection, however, I do believe the tragedy might have been avoided as I will now explain. There are two parts to an air conditioner, one inside the house and the other mounted externally. Between the two units there is a hole in the wall for the interconnecting cables and pipes. The technician pointed out to me that the geckos were using the hole as the entry point to our home, via the internal unit. I have since siliconed the holes for the unit that was repaired and the other units in our property so hopefully the geckos' hazardous entry points have been blocked, although I am sure they will find other ways in, which hopefully will be less risky.

So farewell little friend, you will not be remembered as a martyr but your tragic end has perhaps removed one man-made risk to your species' future survival in our home.

Beyond Borders

"Nature (and that includes us) is not made of parts within wholes. It is made up of wholes within wholes. All boundaries, national boundaries included, are fundamentally arbitrary. We invent them and then, ironically, we find ourselves trapped within them."

These are the profound words of Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and a senior lecturer at MIT. Here's another pearl of wisdom:

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."

That came from John Muir, the naturalist. The point I wish to extract from these two quotes is that we live in a world of interconnections and interdependencies. It's nice to think we can break down problems into small chunks and deal with them individually but it doesn't always work. And yet it feels natural to think in 'straight lines' of cause - effect - cause - effect - ........ It's called linear thinking. Whereas in reality things tend to happen in circles rather than linearly. In short we live in a non-linear world where the results of well-intended actions, although seemingly successful at the time, can come back to bite us!

To make things more difficult for ourselves, we add constraints in the form of man-made boundaries. These occur in every aspect of life, the obvious one being territorial. But religion, race, politics, personal mindsets, organisations........ are all subject to artificial boundaries. There are always conflicts on this planet and at the time of writing these include, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Syria, the economies of the Euro zone, UK and US, rising levels of poverty, ........ to name but a few. On each of these issues, so called 'experts' appear on the media and announce quick-fix solutions. Let's take as an example the UK economy and I will try not to portray myself as a quick-fix expert! The Chancellor's (not very) quick- fix solution to the country's malaise is 'austerity'. Drive down the debt by increased taxation and reduced public expenditure and if that doesn't work blame factors beyond your control! But the factors beyond the Chancellor's control are a fundamental and integral part or the UK's fiscal problem. So by trying to separate the UK as a 'chunk' and dealing with its income and expenditure in isolation, is tackling the symptom of the problem rather than the fundamental problem.

There are those who would go further with the 'chunk theory' and separate the UK from the rest of the world, starting by severing the link with Europe. As well as those who would separate Scotland from the UK. But why stop there? Most of the UK's wealth is generated in the south east of England so perhaps the citizens of the home counties should be pushing for independence!

I would suggest the logic for such reductionist thinking is flawed. We need to think beyond the boundaries we have created and succeeded in trapping ourselves. Despite numerous man-made boundaries, we are ONE species, homo sapien. Our ingenuity, compared with other species on the planet, has been unrivalled. Bur our naivety, in terms of survivability, is scary. To believe in perpetual growth on a finite planet, one must be mad or an economist! That is what we are doing and continue to do. What's more, through the creation of artificial divisions within our species, some parts of the planet have benefited from growth, whilst other parts haven't. The developing (another word for 'poor') part of the world now, unsurprisingly, wants to catch up. But this can only happen if the developed (another word for 'rich') part of the world gives something up because the world's resources are limited and some commodities, like fossil fuels, are fast running out. In my humble opinion, that is the fundamental problem facing the planet and other 'parochial' problems are symptoms of this underlying malaise.

So we need to think beyond borders, which means remembering we are but one species as part of many, co-existing on one planet. We need to think about DEVELOPMENT, which means getting better, rather than GROWTH, which means getting bigger, because the latter is unsustainable. If we agree with the previous two sentences then traditional boundaries - territorial, religious, racial, and so on - become less relevant and therefore more manageable.

This blog isn't going to change the world but I am convinced radical change will happen although regrettably it will probably take a few more disasters - climatic, political, economic, social - before common sense will prevail. Sad isn't it?!

THEY SAY........

I have met many THEY SAYers from different walks of life - relatives, friends, social acquaintances, business associates, broadcasters, newspapers - in fact a THEY SAYer can be any conveyor of knowledge. Here are some examples from the THEY SAYers' knowledge base:

* THEY SAY the winters will get colder and the summers will get hotter.

* THEY SAY tsunamis and earthquakes will become more frequent.

* THEY SAY eating carrots helps you see in the dark.

* THEY SAY you should eat five vegetables a day to keep fit and healthy.

* THEY SAY alternative treatments such as special diets, herbal potions and faith healing can cure apparently terminal illness.

* THEY SAY (or rather SAID thirty years ago) North Sea oil would run out within thirty years........and it didn't!

The examples are endless and the last example of thirty years ago is when I started following and getting thoroughly pxxxxd off with THEY SAYers! The punch lines are usually employed to support an argument, so a mother trying to encourage her child to eat his carrots might quote the benefit of being able to see in the dark. As the child gets older and plucks up courage to challenge his mother, perhaps by asking "Who are THEY?", a typical response is "It's a well known fact!".

Well who the fxxk are THEY? A very good question! Newspapers can be a source of THEY particularly the 'popular press' that creates news rather than just reporting it. TV all-day news programmes often flash up one-liners between programmes to whet the appetite with headlines such as "Researchers believe that drinking alcohol in moderation can reduce the risk of heart disease" or conversely, "Studies show a strong link between alcohol consumption and cancer".

As I grow older, I like to think I am getting wiser. In my view wisdom includes looking at things objectively. Purists would say that's impossible because any opinion, by definition, is subjective. OK, we'll my response to the purist is that we should form opinions on as much evidence as possible, rather like a court of law does before arriving at a verdict. So when a THEY SAYer fires a shot across your bow, the counter attack could be "Where's the evidence?". If the evidence is "I read it in the newspaper" or "I saw it on TV", well sorry but that's not good enough. Francis Bacon said "It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than negatives." In other words, we believe what we want to believe and we have a tendency to find evidence that supports our pet theories. So if the THEY SAYers' 'evidence' cannot be supported by well documented and validated research programmes then it should be dismissed out of court! Maybe the mother's statement to the child who won't eat his carrots should be "There are those who believe eating carrots can improve night vision but I know of no reputable evidence to support this theory". The trouble is that such a statement is unlikely to affect the child's dislike of the taste of carrots, so if mum doesn't want the child to grow up into a faddy eater, maybe a better tactic is "Take it or leave it, there's nothing else on offer!".

Well as I write, the sun is setting and THEY SAY a blog written in daylight hours attracts a greater readership than dusk-to-dawn material........BULLSHIT!

In all probability........

We live in a world of information overload. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff is never easy particularly when so many of the 'facts' cannot be specified precisely. It is often difficult to make judgements from any set of data but when the information is known to be imprecise, drawing conclusions can be fraught with problems. Let's take the world of statistics and probabilities, starting with the former.

Benjamin Disraeli is attributed by many to have originated the phrase: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics". Well perhaps before before exploring this statement further, it is worth drawing the distinction between statistics and probabilities. Statistics are numbers that represent facts and as such, deal with certainties, as long as good counting methods are employed. Probabilities, on the other hand, deal with the unknown. So Disraeli's statement is false if the implication is that statistics are a higher form of untruths than 'damned lies'. It is the misuse of statistics, very often linked with probabilities, that can result, intentionally or unintentionally, in something worse than 'damned lies'.

If the residents of a town, who are aged ten or over, are asked to report to a medical centre to have their heights and weights measured, then these measurements can be compared with the criteria for obesity and a statistic of the obesity of the population can be assessed. Let's assume the result was 34% of the population aged ten or over were, at the time the measurements were taken, technically obese. That measurement of 34% is a statistic. Now, if a government bureaucrat decides to use that statistic for other means, for example assessing the probability of obesity in the nation as a whole and publishes a statement to the effect: "it is likely that one in three of the nation's inhabitants over the age of ten, is obese", then the 34% is now a probability rather than a statistic. It would only become a statistic if it was supported by measurements taken of the entire nation's population. An assessment of probability based on the results of one town can be very misleading if the sample that was measured was not truly representative of the country as a whole.

One of the websites that I use for local weather forecasts, provides 'probability of precipitation' information, which is another way of saying the likelihood of rain. There is no indication of how that figure has been computed but there is likely to be a computer algorithm that might use current and historic data to assess the likelihood of rain. Note the last sentence used the words 'likely to be' and 'might use'; that sentence, therefore, has a probability of being correct and likewise a probability of being incorrect - just what can you believe these days?! Returning to the weather forecast, if the probability of rain is 70%, then the probability of no rain is 30%. This means that if I plan my day on the assumption that it is going to rain, then I might be (I've used the word 'might' again!!) very disappointed if it doesn't rain but I can't complain to the forecaster because he or she would point out that there was always a 30% probability of the rain not materialising. So what use is the forecast?!

I suppose our conversations would be very limited if all we communicated were certainties. There are very few certainties and none if we are talking about the future. Also the high probability, low impact events might be interesting but don't change our lives significantly. So if it doesn't rain tomorrow and I planned on it being wet, because the forecaster told me there was a 70% probability of precipitation, then my change of plan might be to do some gardening rather than work in the house. So what?! The real life-changers are the low probability, high impact events, very often not even considered. So if my house was hit and destroyed by a meteorite, oh boy that would be a life changer.

The more I think about probabilities, the more convinced I am that detailed long-term planning of our lives is a waste of time. We should live for the present, trying to improve our actions by learning from the past (positive and negative experiences) and attempt to use the present to make some positive impact on the future. In all probability you will agree with that........but then again, you might not! :-)