English IListening Script ➁

— PDF version —

all-todai.com

January 26, 2004

CONTENTS

1 Why Do We Laugh? 1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 On Jabberwocky 2Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3 The Light of Common Day 4Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

4 Natural Selection 5Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

5 Agriculture’s Mixed Blessing 6Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

6 Against Focused Attention 7Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

7 The Flesh of Language 8Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

8 The Fabrication of Race 10Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

9 Multiple Personality 11Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

10 The Pleasure of Music 13Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

12 The Imam and the Indian 15Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

13 Sarajevo: Survival Guide 1993 16Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

14 The Birth of Fractal Geometry 17Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

15 The Return of Depression Economics 19Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

16 Time in Medieval Europe 20Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

17 Arresting the Flux of Life 22Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

18 Our Myriad-Dressed Shakespeare 23Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

19 The Jurassic According to Hollywood 25Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

20 The New Age of Man 26Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

21 The Thrill of Fear 27Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Listening Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Copyright 2000–2004 by Department of English, The University of Tokyo, Komaba.The original listening tape unofficially transcribed into text by Les Alyscamps.

That text edited, proofread and converted into PDF by all-todai.com .

SESSION 1 WHY DO WE LAUGH?

· · · · · SESSION 1 · · · · ·

➣ Why Do We Laugh? ➢

➤ Introduction

T HIS is a scene from an old American situation comedy, I Love Lucy. Here, in a Japanese stylehotel in Tokyo, as Americans in the early sixties imagined it, Lucy and her friend Ethel findout that a famous movie star is staying in the next room, just on the other side of the paper

wall.

“Hi.”“Hi.”“I’m Lucy Ricardo.”“And I’m Ethel Mertz.”“Umm . . . ”“You’re Bob Cummings!”“Yes, why, we know you anywhere.”“Forgive me . . . for not getting up!”“Oh, that’s all right.”

Well, the movie star is only apologizing, and politely too. So why does everybody laugh?And here comes another joke. See if you can get the punch line.

“You know, we’re, we’re big fans of yours.”“Oh, that’s nice. I could use a big fan right now.”

The Brady Bunch is another all-time favorite sitcom. The first episode features a wedding scene.The minister marries Mike and Carol, who both have three kids and a pet.

“Carol Anne, Michael Paul, will you join hands, please? Do you, Carol Anne, take thisman to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, to honor and obey, tolove and cherish, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”

“I do.”“Do you, Michael Paul, take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, to have andto hold, to honor and obey, to love and cherish, till death do you part?”

“I do.”“I now pronounce you man and wife. They whom God has joined together. Let noman put asunder. . . Well, aren’t you going to kiss the bride?”

“You bet I am!”

Now we know that something disastrous is going to happen.

“Bow, wow!!”“I told you, boys. Put that dog back in the car! Well, put him back!”“Mike! Thank goodness you saved the cake! Oh, Mike!”

Let’s think. Why does the bride laugh when her wedding ceremony has turned into a slapstickcatastrophe and her new husband is covered all over with cream? Wouldn’t many people in thatsituation take it seriously, and think their married life is cursed from the beginning? But everybodyis laughing heartily. It looks as if they just can’t stop.

When you come to think of it, laughing is a very mysterious piece of human behavior. What dowe laugh for? Are they using humor to turn bad luck into good? Why do we laugh?

– 1 –

SESSION 2 ON JABBERWOCKY

➤ Listening Practice

Y OU have to carry a weight for God knows how long. That’s what life is all about. Notonly do you have to be tough, you have to pay close attention to everything around you,because if you don’t watch out, just when you think you’re getting your work done, you’re

reminded life is not a roller coaster, it’s just a drag.When you’re young, you set out to accomplish something. You aim high. But you are bound

to encounter troubles. They swarm around you, annoying you at the very moment when youabsolutely need concentration. If you allow it, you can easily get caught in a net of troubles.Sometimes you wish you hadn’t started. You regret that you were more ambitious than you werecapable. But people are merciless. They cheer for you, and push you on.

The worst thing that can happen does happen. This has a way of coming about at the worstmoment. Sometimes, you just have to grab at anything within reach. But you can’t stop time thatway. Life must go on as demanding as ever. What you thought was a life line turns out to be aloose rope. Sure, people will offer help, but all too often, they only make things worse.

It’s as if it’s the whole world is against you, as if you live in a hostile universe intent ondestroying you. To survive, you must be strong, smart, and single-minded. You must be alert andattentive. But alas, it’s impossible to be all that all the time.

After all, you’re just a pendulum swaying this way and that in a world prone to disasters.Maybe in the end, everything will come out fine. But whether a happy ending awaits you or notultimately depends on luck. Even so, while you are in the middle of it, you must struggle, ready tomeet misfortunes that are sure to hit you.

· · · · · SESSION 2 · · · · ·

➣ On Jabberwocky ➢

➤ Introduction

F OR more than a century, Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories have been loved by millions of childrenand adults throughout the world.

Alice’s adventures are indeed fascinating. She enters a rabbit hole, and begins to falldown, down, down. She imagines herself falling toward the center of the earth. And then, she hasa series of strange wondrous experiences.

Things begin to turn peculiar as she moves through her wonderland. Her size, for one thing, isnever stable. She becomes huge, and then smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until shealmost drowns in a pool of her own tears.

She encounters many memorable characters like the twin brothers, Tweedledee and Tweedle-dum; the Eggman, Humpty Dumpty, who sat on a wall and had a great fall; and the famousCheshire Cat whose grin still remains even after his face has disappeared.

Another source of pleasure is Carroll’s language, which is full of playful puns and parodies.In one scene, Alice comes across what looks like an old poem. But actually, it’s composed ofmeaningless words that almost sound as if they mean something.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

– 2 –

SESSION 2 ON JABBERWOCKY

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes.Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over your head . . .

Carroll’s word play has had many famous admirers including the rock’n’roll visionary, JohnLennon. In the 1960s, when it was fashionable for musicians to sing about their psychedelicexperiences, they often turned to Alice’s adventures for inspiration.

Carroll’s thought-provoking episodes have also been a source of inspiration for various 20thcentury figures such as novelist James Joyce, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and ecologist Gre-gory Bateson.

Lewis Carroll’s real name was actually Charles Dodgson. He was a mathematician, but hisprivate life, like his writing, appears to have been filled with riddles.

➤ Listening Practice

L EWIS Carroll’s stories are intellectually very stimulating. That’s for sure. But in anothersense they are, well, simply funny. The way Carroll bends and twists language is justirresistible.

In one episode, Alice meets two strange-looking creatures: the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon.The Mock Turtle is a verbal joke in itself. In England, there is a dish called “mock-turtle soup”.It looks like green turtle soup, only it uses beef instead of turtle meat. So, it’s an imitation ofturtle soup. But Carroll invites us to imagine that there is such a creature as the(?) Mock Turtle. InTenniel’s drawing, the creature has a calf’s head and calf’s feet sticking out of a turtle shell.

Not only is the Mock Turtle created out of word play, but it looks as if word play is all he does.Like some friends of yours, he is addicted to puns. “A pun” is what you get when you deliberatelysay something that can be interpreted in two ways. For example, when I really want ice cream, “Iscream for ice cream.”

The Mock Turtle says that he went to school in the sea, and was taught by an old turtle, but thatthey called the Turtle a Tortoise. “Why did you call him Tortoise if he wasn’t one,” asks Alice. “Wecalled him tortoise, because he taught us,” replies the Mock Turtle.

Then he goes on to list the courses he took at school. First, “reeling and writhing”. Did you get it?It’s amazing how much difference a little sound change can make, for reeling means being thrownoff balance, and writhing means twisting your body as if you are in pain. It must have been a reallyweird class.

In Carroll’s day, Greek and Latin were important subjects at school, but the classics master inthe Mock Turtle’s school taught “Grief and Laughing”. We are left to wonder what that class waslike. Maybe the children learned how to cry properly in one moment, and how to laugh heartilythe next.

And when Alice asks, “How many hours a day did you do lessons?” The Mock Turtle says,“Ten hours the first day, nine the next, and so on.” “That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” addsthe Gryphon, “because they lessen from day to day.”

Puns are sometimes thought to be a low form of humor. They are often considered tasteless.Many people seem to believe that puns lower the literary quality of children’s books. But the fact is,children find puns fairly funny. Alice Liddell, too, must have been charmed by Carroll’s non-stopword play. By the way, he sprinkled his fantastic stories with puns and nonsense words.

After all, the Alice books are based on Carroll’s actual performances, and the atmosphere oflive performance is one thing that explains the books’ lasting popularity.

– 3 –

SESSION 3 THE LIGHT OF COMMON DAY

· · · · · SESSION 3 · · · · ·

➣ The Light of Common Day ➢

➤ Introduction

T HE universe shines with light. Each star emits enormous amounts of energy in the form ofelectromagnetic waves. What we see as starlight is only a small band of the whole spectrum.

This is perhaps the most familiar constellation: Orion. The bluish star at the lower rightcorner is called Rigel. The diameter of this supergiant is estimated to be 50 times that of the Sun.It’s 900 light years from the earth, which means that the light we see now actually left the star 900years ago.

But Rigel is one of our Sun’s closest neighbors. Most stars are much farther away. And beyondthe reaches of our galaxy, there are other galaxies which are millions, and sometimes billions oflight years away from us. The light from the farthest galaxies began its journey through space evenbefore our own planet was formed.

What does it mean for light to be there without being seen by any creatures? We see lightbecause we have eyes. And as far as we know, there wouldn’t be eyes if life hadn’t happened onthis planet. And of course, life wouldn’t have happened without the energy supplied by the Sun,which is light.

We see the world the way we do because evolution has given us eyes that only see what arevisible rays to us. The world would certainly look very different if evolution had taken a differentcourse and we had eyes that see infrared rays, for instance.

This fascinating relationship between the seer and the seen is among the topics that we aregoing to read about for next week.

➤ Listening Practice

S UPPOSE you are riding a bicycle at 20 km/h. A train comes from behind at the speed of 60km/h. Now, how fast would the train appear to you when it passes you by? This is simple.60 minus 20 is 40 km/h. If you pedal really hard and reach the speed of the train, the train

will appear to you as not moving at all.Now imagine that you were chasing light. Of course, light travels much too fast for chasing,

but just imagine you were moving fast enough. Would light then become any slower? What if youreached the speed of light? How would light then appear? Not moving at all?

When Einstein was 16 years old, he had a strange dream. He was on a paper airplane chasinglight. In his dream, light appeared to slow down as he flew faster. But when he woke up, he toldhimself, “That couldn’t be true!” This was just an instinct, but later experiments proved that hewas right: The speed of light is absolute. It remains constant, no matter how fast you move towardit, or away from it.

How could this be so? In 1905, some ten years after his strange dream, Einstein completed atheory that explained it. “Special relativity” is what it came to be called. It was a really bold theory.It demands us to change our notion of time and space completely.

You’ve probably heard that time runs slower as you move faster, or that the distance of tenmeters to one person can be one meter to another. You may have decided that it’s too weird, thatit takes a special kind of brain to understand it. But the fact is, it’s not. At least some aspects ofspecial relativity can be understood by anyone with basic mathematics.

– 4 –

SESSION 4 NATURAL SELECTION

· · · · · SESSION 4 · · · · ·

➣ Natural Selection ➢

➤ Introduction

T HIS is a crab’s claw. Let’s compare it with one of its legs. They’re made of the same parts.The difference is just in the size and proportion of the parts. The similarity between clawand leg makes it natural to think that one developed out of the other, or that both appeared

from the same root. But how?One way to settle this question is to think of some supernatural intelligent being, like the

Christian God, who designed a crab using the same blueprint for both claw and leg. Anotherway is to imagine that crabs somehow made their front legs more and more claw-like throughgeneration after generation of use and effort.

Charles Darwin’s view is different from both of these. Let’s review his theory of naturalselection. Suppose a million crabs are born each year. Some will be bigger, some smaller. Some willhave thicker shells, some thinner. This is just a matter of accidental variation. It is not the result ofintelligent choice or individual effort. In the same way, some will have slightly claw-like front legs.

Suppose that claw-like front legs are an advantage. Perhaps they make it easier to capture food.Then crabs with claw-like front legs will tend to live longer than crabs with normal front legs, andhave a better chance of producing offspring.

Now, these offspring will also have variations. Some of them may have front legs which are moreclaw-like than their parents. These will be the ones that will survive and produce more offspring,and so on, until finally crabs with very claw-like front legs will be the majority. Eventually, all crabswill have claws.

But this is all very mechanistic. Survival seems to depend not on intelligence or effort, but onaccidental variation on mere chance. Look at nature at work. Every organ of every creature seemsso full of purpose that it’s very tempting to imagine some kind of intelligent order working secretlyin nature. Is it simply wrong to look at nature that way, or is there any scientific case to be madefor a force of intelligence in nature?

➤ Listening Practice

T HE eye is so important to us that we can hardly imagine any highly developed organism notneeding eyesight to survive. Of course, there are eyeless creatures like bats, but they live inan environment where there is no use for the eye, and they have a very sophisticated sonar

system to make up for the lost eyesight.But what about ants? Ants move about in daylight, but they can’t see well. Their eyes have

become much weaker. In other words, they have evolved into a simpler creature. And the strategyhas worked so well that for millions of years ants have remained one of the most prosperousorganisms on earth.

Look at these hard workers. They cut leaves neatly, carry them home in orderly procession, laythem out with care. And . . . look at this: they are planting fungus! That’s right. They’re raising a“crop”. Agriculture is what’s going on here.

When we hear the word “evolution”, we usually think of something becoming more complexand sophisticated. But in natural history, evolution may occur in the direction of organismsbecoming simpler and more compact.

There are human engineers who are learning from the insect’s way of life. One such engineerhas built interesting ant-robots. And ant-robot operates by a very simple set of commands. It picks

– 5 –

SESSION 5 AGRICULTURE’S MIXED BLESSING

up a block when it comes in front of one, and lays it down when it hits another block. But the resultis marvelous. If we put several of them on a messy floor, they really work like ants to create order.

In this age of computer technology, perhaps we are re-discovering the old wisdom. That’s“simpler can sometimes be a lot better.”

· · · · · SESSION 5 · · · · ·

➣ Agriculture’s Mixed Blessing ➢

➤ Introduction

O UR ancestors made a series of discoveries on their way to civilization, like inventinglanguage or discovering tools and weapons, learning to use fire.

The beginning of hunting was also a big jump. For hundreds of thousands of years,humans depended on hunting and gathering for survival. But this is not how we imagine “civilizedpeople”. At best, we think, these hunter-gatherers lived at an intermediate stage, halfway betweensavagery and civilization.

The shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, many believe, was a crucial step to civi-lization. But why are we so sure that this shift was really progress? How do we know we are betteroff now than we were as hunter-gatherers? That’s the question Jared Diamond raises in his book,The (Rise and Fall of the) Third Chimpanzee.

Maybe you’re wondering why the question is worth bothering about. The answer seems prettyobvious. With the arrival of agriculture, we became able to grow food, and store food, instead ofdepending on blind luck as our ancestors did. Unlike us, they had to start anew each day to securefood.

Besides, once the agricultural revolution occurred about 10,000 years ago, it gradually spreadover almost all the world until there were very few remaining groups of hunter-gatherers. Isn’tthat a clear sign of agriculture’s superiority?

OK, so much for the progressivists’ view. Read your assignment and get the other side of theargument.

➤ Listening Practice

IMAGINE. You are a visitor from another planet. The earth people show you these photos,and explain that they are advertisements for cigarettes. You have a hard time understandingwhat advertisements are. And it’s still harder to figure out what cigarettes are for. Eventually,

though, you get the idea more or less.Still, these particular ads don’t really make sense to you. They would, if they were ads for

cowboy hats or for horses. But why do they serve as advertisements for cigarettes? And why dothe Earth’s people smoke anyway when they know biologically it does them nothing but harm?

This doesn’t seem to be a biologists’ concern, but Jared Diamond, the author of our readingmaterial today, invites us to relate this puzzle to another puzzling behavior of a different animal.

As you see, the gazelle is jumping in a funny way even though there’s a lion nearby. It’s asif the gazelle was deliberately inviting trouble. This mysterious jumping is known as “stotting”among animal experts. Smoking and stotting: there’s a common element here. You deliberately dosomething that is biologically harmful, something that can only be risky in terms of survival.

Some of you might say smoking is an addiction. Everyone knows that once you start smoking,it’s very hard to quit. But that doesn’t explain all: why starts smoking at all? Addiction doesn’texplain that, and of course, it doesn’t explain stotting, either.

– 6 –

SESSION 6 AGAINST FOCUSED ATTENTION

Professor Diamond explains stotting this way. The gazelle wants to tell the lion that it’s uselessfor the lion to chase him. He needs to tell the lion that he is too quick. Of course, this can be done byrunning away as fast as possible, but it would be better if it could be done in a quicker, short-handway. Stotting is exactly this. The message is, “I am so fast that I can outrun you even after I giveyou a head start like this!”

But just to make the message believable, the gazelle must put himself in some real danger. Justwinking at the lion won’t do any good, for the(?) lion may simply ignore it. Stotting becomes abelievable advertisement for speed precisely because there is real risk involved in it.

According to Diamond, smoking can be explained in the same way. It is a human male’s wayto send a message to females: “I am so strong that I can survive even if I smoke this terrible thing!”It’s a male’s self-advertisement for manliness. That’s why photos of a man riding a horse in thewilderness serve as ads for cigarettes. Through these images, smoking is associated with manliness.

But what about female smokers? Are they trying to advertise their feminine quality by smoking?Or, are they trying to show off their masculine quality? Unfortunately, Professor Diamond doesn’tsay anything about this question. You, have to work out the solution for yourself.

· · · · · SESSION 6 · · · · ·

➣ Against Focused Attention ➢

➤ Introduction

G LEAMING eye, raised chin, fast breathing; men are magnificent when they are fighting.They are beautiful, because they are determined to do their very best. Their attention isfocused on what is immediately in front of them. They are intent on knocking down any

obstacle that may stand in their way.Life is a race, a continuing series of combats for survival. To be a winner, you must always look

straight ahead to your goal. If you allow yourself to relax, even for a moment, your opponents willtake advantage of you, and that will cost you dearly.

You have to think of the right thing to do at each moment, and do it right. Be precise and prompt.You need a tremendous amount of concentration. Never relax. Never let anything weaken yourdetermination.

Don’t listen to those who say “life is for giving,” or “love is the thing.” They are only temptingyou to live an easier, idler life. Is life for giving? That’s rubbish. Do lions give? No. For the kingof beasts, the world is there for taking.

The greatest satisfaction lies in devoting yourself to the one great purpose, whether that bechampionship, conquest, material wealth, political power, or social status. But, you must bestrong. Only those who have perfected the severest self-discipline can hope for the glory thatawaits them after the long and painful struggle.

So, keep your eyes intensely focused on the one thing that ultimately matters. Like diamonds,you will shine most beautifully when you are most hard. Don’t ever listen to the voices oftemptation. Never loosen up. Never, ever! . . . and what will you achieve?

. . . Well, such a discourse is probably familiar to you. But what we are going to read next isAgainst Focused Attention. What do we lose when we are concentrated? What would we gain fromunfocusing our attention?

– 7 –

SESSION 7 THE FLESH OF LANGUAGE

➤ Listening Practice

T HE topic of today’s session is “attention”. We learn at an early age how important it is to payattention to what is around us. All animals, at least higher organisms, have to be watchfulin order to survive in dangerous environments. But there are different sorts of attention.

When you are walking in the dark, your attention is distributed almost equally all around you. Butwhen you are, say, solving a mathematical problem, your attention becomes focused on a rathernarrow area. Suppose you are to solve this equation.

Some of you may be able to arrive at the value of x instantly, but most of us need to carry outone step at a time. First, you concentrate on the integer 58. You move it to the right side of theequation. And to do this subtraction correctly, you again divide it into parts and attend to onething at a time. First, you take 8 from 17, which is 9. Then, you do 11 minus 5. And the outcome is69. And so on, until you get to the value of x.

To intellectual animals like us, this concentrated one-thing-at-a-time approach is often reward-ing. We spend a lot of time in our waking hours focusing our attention on one little thing afteranother.

But there is an interesting phenomenon. As we become more skilled, we gradually learn to“unfocus” our attention. So, we can take a broader view. A skilled mathematician would be ableto solve a simple equation all at once without breaking it up into parts.

A skillful guitar player; is he consciously thinking about where each of his fingers is going tobe? No. He’s just doing what comes to him naturally. A beginner would have to attend to theposition of his fingers, but that’s not how you play the instrument gracefully.

Graceful performances require something other than focused attention. It is not enough toknow what to do at each separate moment. As long as you are consciously thinking about yourspeed or the angle of the blade, you remain a clumsy skater. A skillful skater is someone who haslearned to broaden her attention to the whole performance.

And this is also true of verbal communication. When you are listening to somebody speakEnglish at a natural speed, there’s simply not enough time for you to attend to one word at a time.You must respond to the overall patterns of English as you must be doing right now.

· · · · · SESSION 7 · · · · ·

➣ The Flesh of Language ➢

➤ Introduction

W HAT is language? Many people will argue that the capacity for language is unique tohuman beings, or that language is precisely the very thing which makes us human. Butothers will say that animals must also be using some kind of language to communicate

among themselves.It’s a question of where to draw the line. Where, within all of communication, can we mark

the dividing line between language and non-language? Is sign language really language? Is bodylanguage really language? How about the crying of Tarzan, or the expressions on Jane’s face, orcheetah’s face?

Helen Keller didn’t know any words, but yes, she was still able to communicate something, ifonly in a very beastly manner. But then, the miracle. The moment she learns that everything hasa name, she becomes a new being. The savage girl is now becoming a civilized young lady. Inthis story, there is the world of language and reason on the one hand, and dark, wordless chaos onthe other. The climax comes when the girl finally struggles out of the beastly state into the human

– 8 –

SESSION 7 THE FLESH OF LANGUAGE

world of reason.The Miracle Worker is indeed a dramatic statement about what language is and what humanity is.

But in this movie made in the 1970s, the emphasis is not on the difference, but the similarity betweenthe human and the beast’s mind. Kong’s intelligence is emphatically shown by its expressive eyes.We don’t care if it doesn’t speak vocally. We think we get the message from its eyes, face, and itswhole body.

Of course, this is only a movie. But in fact, many linguists today have crossed the boundarybetween verbal and bodily communication, and are looking at communication as a whole. Are wealone in our ability to speak, or has the world around us always been speaking?

➤ Listening Practice

N ON-verbal communication is direct and very powerful. You can tell a man that you arein love with him by simply being in love with him. In the same way, it’s easy to tellnon-verbally that you hate him. But what if you wanted to tell him that you used to

love him, or that tomorrow you might regain affection toward him? Would you be able to do thatwithout using words?

For a long time, we have believed that only human language is capable of conveying ideas andfeelings about past or future events, but we are gradually learning that we may have been ratheranthropocentric.

This is Kanzi, the bonobo. And this is his younger sister Panbanisha. They were both broughtup in the Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. They understand what people say tothem, and can express themselves through a keyboard.

The keyboard is made up of 256 keys with different symbols. These symbols are abstract signs.They don’t look like the things they stand for.

Now the question is, can humans and bonobos communicate about what will be happeningtomorrow? Let’s watch the video.

“Were you, were you good while we were gone? Were you good? You were good!You were, you were really good? Well, can I see your mirror? Where’s your mirror?Where’s your mirror?”

Reluctantly, Panbanisha goes and gets the broken mirror.

“Is that your mirror? Well, Panbanisha, your mirror is broken. Panbanisha, that’s notgood. You broke two mirrors one mirror today and one mirror yesterday. I, I wantedto go get blueberries. I wanted to go get good eggs. But you were bad.”

“Well, I guess we’re just gonna have to go without you that’s so sad, we’re just gonnahave to go without Panbanisha. Well, but it is too late. It’s too late to be good. Youshould have been good earlier. You were bad.”

Panbanisha is miserable. She is so sad that Sue won’t take her to the woods.

“But tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is a new day! Tomorrow, you can be good!You can be good!”

See how delighted Panbanisha is at what Sue promises for tomorrow. Her face and her voicestrongly suggest that Panbanisha is able to communicate not only about now but about an imaginedtime when she will be so good that she won’t break the mirror, and so, will go to the woods withSue to get blueberries and eggs.

“I don’t guess it’s broken. It looks like you were good! We’re gonna get eggs! Yes, wecan do that! We can go get eggs!”

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SESSION 8 THE FABRICATION OF RACE

Panbanisha has clearly remembered yesterday’s promise that if she were good today, she couldgo to the woods to get some eggs.

“And anything else? Just, just eggs?”

And blueberries.

· · · · · SESSION 8 · · · · ·

➣ The Fabrication of Race ➢

➤ Introduction

T AKE a good look at this woman. Her face was created by computer from a mix of severalraces. According to Time Magazine, this is the face of the future in America(?). Can you tellwhat race or ethnicity she is? Look carefully at the color of her skin, eyes, and hair. Look at

the shape of her nose. Do you think she is “white”? Or is(?) she “black”? “Asian”?Take a look at another set of photographs. You see a baby and his parents. Can you identify the

race or ethnicity of these three people? Look at the father. Is he “white”? Is he “black”? In fact, heidentifies himself as a Jew, whose father is a “white” Jew and whose mother a “black” Baptist. Hiswife, according to the article in Time, is a white Lutheran from rural Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. Inthis case, what is the baby? Is he “black”? Is he “white”? Is he a Jew?

How useful is racial and ethnic categorization? Many people simply take it for granted that“white” or “black” or “Asian” people exist, but what makes people “white”, “black”, or “Asian”?

This is becoming an ever more difficult question to answer in the United States because of theincrease in so-called interracial marriages. Over 65 % of Japanese-Americans, for example, marrypartners who have no Japanese heritage. With Native Americans, the figure for “out marriage” ismore than 70 %. Gradually, Americans are becoming more and more aware that race and ethnicityare very problematic concepts.

In your next reading, Matthew Jacobson argues that our familiar categories of race and ethnicityare not based on obvious natural differences between people, but are the products of particular waysof looking at people. This is why, Jacobson says, that race and ethnicity are socially constructed.According to Jacobson, race is just one relatively arbitrary method of dividing people into differentgroups.

Read the next chapter and decide. Do you agree with Jacobson?

➤ Listening Practice

I N 1936, the Hollywood movie studio, Universal Pictures, made a new version of the famousmusical, Showboat. The hugely popular story had first appeared in 1926 as a novel, and waslater turned into an equally popular musical drama.Showboat tells a story that covers half a century from the late 1870s until the 1920s. The story is

about a group of people all associated with the travelling theater, a showboat, that moved up anddown the Mississippi River, stopping at riverside towns to give performances.

In the dramatic scene, that we are going to watch now, the singer, Julie, is revealed to be ofmixed race. Her father was white, and her mother black. Her husband is white. This kind ofmarriage was illegal in some American states for a long time.

The travelling showboat has brought Julie and her husband Steve into danger by crossing thestate line into Mississippi where so-called “mixed marriages” were against the law. Steve learnsthat the local sheriff, Mike Vallon, is coming to arrest them. He takes desperate action.

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SESSION 9 MULTIPLE PERSONALITY

“Steve, what are you doing with that knife!”“I’m not going to hurt, you fool! Leave me be! I know what I’m doing. It won’t hurtmuch, darling. . . ”

“Steve. . . ”“Hello, Windy. Captain Hawks, do you acknowledge to be owner of the showboat?”“Why? Of course I do. What do you want?”“Well, Captain, I have an unpleasant duty. I understand that you have a miscegenationcase on board.”

“How’s that?”“Case of a negro woman married to a white man, a criminal offence in this state.”“No . . . no such thing on board this boat.”“The name of the white man is Steve Baker. The name of the negress, name of thenegress is Julie Dozier. Which one’s them?”

“I’m Steve Baker. This is my wife.”“Julie Dozier, my information says you were born in Mississippi. Your pop was white,your mammy black. That’s right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”“You two(’d) better get your things and come along with me.”“You wouldn’t call a man a white man that had negro blood in him, would you?”“No, I wouldn’t. Not in Mississippi. One drop of negro blood makes you a negro inthese parts.”

“Well, I got more’n a(?) drop of negro blood in me, and that’s a fact.”

In this scene from Showboat, the drama turns on the fact that even one drop of negro bloodmakes a person legally black in Mississippi at this time. Of course, in this case, the “one drop” hascome from Julie’s hand. Steve’s desperate plan does not work. Steve and Julie lose their jobs onthe showboat and have to leave.

In this next scene, from another film version of the story, we see Steve and Julie leaving theshowboat. The song, Old Man River, is sung by the famous singer, Paul Robeson.

There’s an old man called the Mississippi.That’s an/the old man that I don’t want to be.What does he care if the world’s got troubles?What does he care if the land’s not free?

· · · · · SESSION 9 · · · · ·

➣ Multiple Personality ➢

➤ Introduction

T HIS is Rachel, a twenty-three-year-old woman. Doesn’t look so different from any otheryoung woman.

You can see she’s someone else now, Arianna, the seven-year-old child. Arianna isleft-handed whereas Rachel is right-handed. Her writing is full of the kind of mistakes any seven-year-old child would make.

“I wish I could have my own body little as it’s supposed to be, a body that’s sevenyears old just like me. And a soccer ball!”

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SESSION 9 MULTIPLE PERSONALITY

“People were telling me you know these things were happening to me that, that I wasacting like a little kid, and I was just sitting there, saying, ‘No, I wasn’t. I was justhaving conversation with you.’ And I forgot in the space of time in between and thatmade me feel crazy. That just — that felt horrible.”

Arianna and Rachel are not the only persons who are sharing this body. There are more than adozen characters who appear by turns. In some cases in multiple personality, more than a hundredpersons can compete with one another.

This is Haley, acting these days as a kind of manager of all the personalities in Rachel.

“I’m not sure that adults in the system know what kids are doing, and I need somehelp about what’s going on.”

“Is, is there any possibility that anyone on the inside wants to respond right now? Hi,Arianna.”

“Hi. I can, I can help it. The problem is that she doesn’t want to listen very good.”“I know it may seem like she’s not listening to you or she doesn’t hear it, but keepletting her know. Thanks, Arianna.”

“You’re welcome.”“Is . . . Can I talk to Rachel? Is Rachel . . . around . . . ?”“Yeah, hold on and talk to Haley while I go get her.”“Ok.”“She’s gone to get her.”“Ok.”“I wanted to see if Rachel heard what you said . . . ”

Only fifteen years ago, cases of multiple personality were so rare that most doctors thoughtthere wasn’t any such a thing. Now cases are being found everywhere, and almost all the patientsare female.

“I’m so . . . really overwhelmed by being co-conscious with, with these people.”

What causes multiple personality? Why are so many cases appearing all of a sudden? Whyare the victims always female? Does the phenomenon tell us anything about today’s society ingeneral? And, can we be really sure that there is such a thing as multiple personality?

So, many questions remain unanswered. (British) philosopher Ian Hacking gives you a goodstarting point to think about them.

➤ Listening Practice

M ULTIPLE Personality. Advocates say it’s real. Sceptics say it’s no more than fiction madeup by therapists and mass media. Which should we believe? Let’s get some historicalperspective.

Multiple personality is not a new phenomenon in the U. S. Dozens of cases were reportedaround the turn of the century. A Boston doctor, Morton Prince, for example, reports the caseof one Sally(?) Beauchamp, who seems to have had four different personalities. Dr. Prince was awell-respective man at that time and people took him seriously.

But later, psychologists were suspicious. They pointed out that, when Miss Beauchamp cameto him, the doctor was already known for his interest in multiple personality. They also pointedout that the young woman seemed to have been a little in love with the doctor: maybe she producedsyndromes of multiple personality, they argued, just to please the doctor.

After his death, Dr. Prince wasn’t taken very seriously except in books dealing with crystalgazing, telepathy, and other dubious subjects. In one such book, the doctor appears side by sidewith Mr. Hyde under a section called “Monsters Within” as if he himself were a monster.

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SESSION 10 THE PLEASURE OF MUSIC

But advocates today have the numbers on their side. It’s not mere dozens, they claim, it’s tens ofthousands that have been diagnosed as multiples today, and according to them, Dr. Prince missedone crucial thing: the cause of multiple personality. Everyone knows now that most multiples werevictims of child abuse. Monsters were not within. They were outside. In the eye of the advocates,therefore, the astonishing increase of multiple patients is a sign of progress. We finally know thepainful truth that we have been hiding from ourselves.

For the sceptics, though, the number doesn’t count. Patients come to therapists’ wanting to getbetter. And one way to get better is to locate the cause of their emotional problem. They needa scenario that leads to their present problem. And that’s exactly what their therapists can givethem. So they follow the therapists’ suggestions, eventually, discover numerous characters withinthemselves, and remember painful childhood experiences. Once the idea catches on, this can easilybecome a mass delusion. So, in the sceptics’ eye, the present vogue is Prince-and-Beauchamp allover again, magnified nationwide.

Not everything can be true about reports of multiple personality. Not everything can be madeup. Perhaps the best way is to maintain healthy scepticism, avoiding generalization, trying to seeeach case for what it is. So, you realize there can be no clear-cut answer to the question: “Is it real?”

· · · · · SESSION 10 · · · · ·

➣ The Pleasure of Music ➢

➤ Listening Practice

T HIS is what American pop music was like in the early 1950s. These songs were designed tobe as innocent and inoffensive as possible. They reflected the tastes of middle-class peoplewho were enjoying the fruits of postwar prosperity and progress.

But now, a new social class was forming: teen-agers with more leisure time and money to spendthan ever before. Bored with the current hit parade, young people began tuning into radio stationsthat played a more exciting kind of music, black rhythm & blues.

There were a few DJs who played rhythm & blues records for white teen-agers. These DJs wereas important as any musicians as pioneers of rock’n’roll music.

Some white performers began to blend elements of rhythm & blues into their own music. Thebiggest hit of the year 1955 was Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets. The enormoussuccess of this song brought rock’n’roll music to national attention. For teen-agers, this was thekind of music that spoke their language.

“That was crazy music. That thing’s crazy, Jack.”“That music sends me, man. It sends me. You gotta stick to that music all the way.”

In Memphis, a nineteen-year-old truck driver named Elvis Presley recorded his first song, That’sAlright. His performances weren’t like anything people had ever seen or heard. Sweet, wild andirresistible all at once. “The white man with a Negro feel” soon rose to national stardom as the kingof rock’n’roll.

It was like an explosion as if everything that had been despised as vulgar and indecent suddenlyburst out and began to hop to the 8-beat rhythm of youthful excitement. Everywhere, teen-agerswent rock’n’roll crazy.

Of course, not everybody was happy. Voices of fear and opposition began to be heard all acrossthe country.

“Why, I believe that is because I know how it feels when you sing it. I know what itdoes to you. I know the evil feeling that you feel when you sing it.”

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SESSION 10 THE PLEASURE OF MUSIC

“The obscenity and vulgarity of the rock’n’roll music is obviously a means by whichthe whiteman . . . his children to be driven to the level of Negro.”

Gradually, the craze began to cool off. Little Richard quit performing to become a preacher.Elvis Presley went to Germany to serve in the military. Buddy Holly was killed in a plane clash.The decade ended just as it had begun with clean-cut respectable white performers offering politeentertainment. The so-called teen idols, like Fabian, pretended to sing rock’n’roll, but the spiritwas no longer there.

By 1959, the power of rock’n’roll seemed to have died out. But actually, it was only taking ashort rest. A few years later, it erupted for the second time with the emergence of four fabulousyoung men from Liverpool, England.

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SESSION 12 THE IMAM AND THE INDIAN

· · · · · SESSION 12 · · · · ·

➣ The Imam and the Indian ➢

➤ Introduction

M ECCA is a city of about 6 hundred thousand people. But once a year, the city is floodedwith millions of pilgrims arriving from a hundred different countries. These travelershave long dreamed of coming to Mecca, the sacred birthplace of Muhammad.

At the center of the court of the great mosque is the Kaaba, a cubic stone structure coveredwith black cloth. The pilgrims work counterclockwise around the Kaaba seven and a half times,saying various prayers at the right moments. Wherever they are, when the time comes, Muslimswill kneel down to give prayers. And this should always be done facing toward the Kaaba.

Muslims believe that people are born clean and innocent, but they can’t help getting stainedas they grow up. Therefore the Koran says they should go to Mecca at least once in a lifetime tocleanse themselves of all their sins.

Now an Imam appears and says the words that praise Allah. The people who have gatheredhere from every corner of the world are united as brothers (and sisters) sharing the same faith inthe one and only god. An Imam is the person who leads prayers in the mosque, but not necessarilyin a great mosque like this. In a small Islamic town, an Imam can be a regular shopkeeper. All thesame, he is respected. He knows the teachings of the Koran by heart. So people will turn to himfor advice. Whenever they face problems in life.

This woman is in trouble. She had a quarrel with her husband and during the heated exchangeher husband said the word “Divorce” three times. According to the Koran, if a man says divorcethree times, his wife must simply leave the house; or if he doesn’t really mean it, he is guilty of anirresponsible act; and, according to the Koran, must give free meals to ten poor people.

An Imam is supposed to solve such problems in the way that will best benefit their community.In this case, he tells the woman that her husband must buy ten meals for the poor. Since the lives ofMuslims are guided by rather strict rules, an Imam has a lot of advice to give. Understandably, hetends to hold conservative worldviews and in today’s changing environments this could sometimescause friction.

In the story we are going to read next, a graduate student who originally came from India entersthe village in a Nile delta and has an interesting exchange with the local Imam.

➤ Listening Practice

W HAT is your image of Manhattan, New York? Skyscrapers? Broadway musicals? Fancyshops? Energetic business people hustling and bustling across the streets? Images maydiffer, but it seems safe to say that most people think of the city as the capital of western

culture.In our image, the city is populated by people whose families come from European countries,

if not from the African continent. We know that there are many Jewish people in New York, butsurely the great majority of New Yorkers whether white or black are Christians, aren’t they?

Well done, take a look at these people. As of the year 2000, 80% of New York taxi driversare (said to be) Muslims. There has been a rapid increase of immigrants coming from the Islamiccountries, especially after the Persian Gulf War. And, they are known to be pious. When it comesto their religion, they never compromise, no matter what, no matter where. And great many ofthem are now moving into various parts of the United States.

In September 1999, Madison Avenue was filled with Muslims from all over the country, cele-

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SESSION 13 SARAJEVO: SURVIVAL GUIDE 1993

brating their strong bond based on their Islamic faith. Not all of them are Arabs and Asians. Wesee Caucasians and African Americans.

The Muslim populations of the United States are estimated to be over 8 million. This meansthat there are more Muslims than Jews. And the surprising thing is that a lot of Americans with noIslamic background are being converted.

“Are we right or wrong?” — “We’re right!”“Are we weak or strong?” — “We’re strong!”“How many gods?” — “One God!”“How many gods?” — “One God!”“And we call him . . . ” — “Allah!”“And we call him . . . ” — “Allah!”

This Caucasian Woman, too, has decided to adopt the strict Islamic rules. No alcohol, no pigmeat, she fasts, she kneels down and performs five salutes a day.

And the same thing seems to be happening in other countries, too. Today, close to 20% of theworld population are believers in Allah. That comes up to 1,300,000,000 people. This is surprising,at least to me. I thought that strict religious rules were irrelevant for life in the 21st century. I thoughtthat the people of the world were gradually outgrowing the need for a supernatural existence toguide them and protect them. Have I been wrong?

· · · · · SESSION 13 · · · · ·

➣ Sarajevo: Survival Guide 1993 ➢

➤ Introduction

T HE Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo, in 1984. The athletes from the host country wereall Yugoslavians, so were the audience. No distinction was necessary between Serbians,Croatians, and Muslims. Who would have thought at that time that in less than ten years

they’d be killing each other? The city of Sarajevo went under siege in 1992 and for four years thecity suffered countless bombs, gunfire, attacks by tanks. It was a nightmare beyond imagining.

You may think that this would be the least likely place where humor and laughter would prevail.But no, look at this. It’s called Sarajevo: Survival Guide. Just like any other tourist guide, it hassections on eating, shopping, and so on. This is published during the siege by Sarajevo artists whocall themselves FAMA. It was translated into various languages and it became a minor best sellerin Japan back in 1994. Readers praised the great sense of humor that managed to survive underthe worst imaginable circumstances.

Yet, Suada Kapic, the leader of FAMA, claims that humar was no more than a necessary partof their practical struggle to survive. Look at this bycicle-turned-electric-generator, for example. Itwas used by people when there was no electricity supply for reading at night. Some people mightbe amused, but for Sarajevo citizens it was just something that help them stay sane.

“And then one month later I discovered that it would be very useful if I made . . .mades, make some, let’s say, Michelin’s tourist guide book.”

“(I tried) all four years to discover something very positive and very useful for otherpeople. I think that I succeeded in that. That’s my personal . . . victory.”

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SESSION 14 THE BIRTH OF FRACTAL GEOMETRY

➤ Listening Practice

“T HESE are the last things,” she wrote. “One by one they disappear, and never comeback. I can tell you of the one such scene of the ones that are no more, but I doubt therewill be time. It’s all happening too fast now, and I cannot keep up. I don’t expect you

to understand. You have seen none of this. And even if you tried, you could not imagine it. Theseare the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone. A street you walked downyesterday is no longer there today.”

This is the beginning of In the Country of Last Things, a novel by an American author, Paul Auster.It is written in the form of a long letter, written by a young woman, Anna Blume. Anna, is in anunnamed country that has closed itself to the outside world. She describes a world crumbling topieces, where people are living in constant terror and hunger, where things are disappearing oneafter another.

When the novel was first published in 1987, most of the readers thought that the book describeda nightmarish future, a world that might become reality if we didn’t watch out. Today, we knowbetter. After the siege of Sarajevo, Auster’s world seems too real to be just a possible future. Italmost reads like an imaginative representation of what it was like to live in Sarajevo during thesiege.

And Sarajevo citizens felt exactly the same way. Artists in Sarejevo read In the Countly of LastThings, and saw an image of their reality. Like Anna in Auster’s country, they were trapped in acity where escape was nearly impossible. Like Anna and her friends, they were living in constantterror, and as in Anna’s country, things were quickly disappearing around them. Theirs was alsothe country of last things. They were moved, and they wrote a play based on Auster’s novel. Theplay was performed first in Sarajevo, and eventually in Paris.

Should we praise Paul Auster for capturing a terrible reality through his imagination? Or,should we deplore the fact that an imagined nightmare was so quickly overtaken by reality? It’shard to say. One thing that’s certain is that the play did help people survive the terror that theywere experiencing every day.

And perhaps we can say the same thing about the Sarajevo: Survival Guide, a part of which weread. The Guide didn’t play any part in actually putting the siege to an end, but it did help them tolive through it all. Just like Anna Blume’s letter, we can say that the Survival Guide was also a letterfrom a country of last things: a dark, but finally hopeful, letter.

· · · · · SESSION 14 · · · · ·

➣ The Birth of Fractal Geometry ➢

➤ Introduction

H OW long is the coastline of Britain? To answer it is impossible. For the more closely youlook at it, the longer it appears to be. Every small bay has inlets, and every inlet hassubinlets. If you look through a magnifying glass, the shape of each grain of sand will

appear as complex as a coastline.We can simulate the problem in this way. First, draw a segment of, say, 10 centimeters. Divide

it into four equal parts, and rotate the two central segments by 60 degrees. Then, connect thetwo open ends. The total length of this zigzag pattern is 15 centimeters, because it consists of sixsegments each with the length of 2.5 centimeters.

Now, repeat the same procedure on each of the six segments. You can repeat this procedure asmany times as you like, at least in your mind, creating ever more minute zigzags. Now, imagine

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SESSION 14 THE BIRTH OF FRACTAL GEOMETRY

we have repeated this procedure 50 times over. What is the total length of the simulated coastlinenow? Several hundred meters? Try again. Several kilometers? Not even close.

The natural world is rarely smooth. The craggy surface of a mountain peak. The complexbranching of trees. There are patterns and symmetries there, but the classical Euclidean geometrycannot describe precisely what those patterns are.

In 1970s, the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot developed a new geometry more suitable fordealing with natural objects. He coined the word “fractal” to name his new geometry. It derivesfrom a Latin word fructus, meaning broken or fracture.

One of the central notions in fractal geometry is what is called “self-similarity.” This is a clearexample of self-similar patterns. Its parts look exactly like the whole at every level. The basicpattern is repeated at ever decreasing sizes. A fractal object may have a highly irregular shape, butirregularity remains the same at every level.

The pattern you are looking at is drawn by computer, but its strange beauty is familiar, for natureis full of such self-similar shapes, like these ferns, or like the delicate shapes of these snowflakes.Fractal geometry describes these complex regularities in precise mathematical terms. It is, in short,a geometry of nature.

➤ Listening Practice

L ET’S think about a simple darts and balloons game. In this game, the point is to burst youropponents’ balloons. You lose if somebody bursts your balloon, and you win if your balloonis the last survivor.

Three players draw lots and then they take it in turns to throw one dart at a time. Al is a verygood shot. He can hit the target 80 percent of the time. Ben is fairly good, too, and he can pop aballoon 60 percent of the time. Charlie is not so good, only a 40 percent success rate. Now, thequestion is, who has the best chance of winning? Do you think the answer is obvious? Well, let’sthink about it.

Suppose you were Ben, and your turn came first, whose balloon would you aim at? Al’s?Because he’s a bigger threat to you? This sounds sensible. After all, if you can eliminate Al, youonly have to face Charlie, who’s not as good at darts as you are. But, if the three contestants, allfollowed the strategy of trying to eliminate the stronger opponent, a strange thing happens. Theyfinish in reverse order of skill. Probability calculations show that Charlie has the highest chance ofwinning, 37 percent. Ben’s chance of winning is 33 percent, well, Al, the best shot, has the smallestchance, only 30 percent. This happens because if you are one of the more skillful players, you are abigger threat to your opponents, and for that reason you’re more likely to be attacked. Charlie, onthe other hand, is quite safe at first while the two superior players are trying to beat each other.

So, if you are Al, you may want to finish Charlie first. But, for that you’d need Ben’s cooperation.You tell Ben, “don’t let Charlie win, let’s make sure he’s out of the game before we face each otherone on one.” But actually, it turns out that in the end it’s not Al but Ben who benefits from thisstrategy. In this case, Charlie’s chance of winning drops dramatically, of course, to 9.1 percent. Al’schance does increase to 44.4 percent, but, Ben ends up with the highest, 46.5 percentage chance.This is because Al is still a bigger threat to Charlie, so Charlie always aims for Al’s balloon whenit’s his turn.

Actually, it would be a smarter move for Al to make a deal with Charlie, saying that as longas Charlie doesn’t attack him, he won’t attack Charlie. He also has to make it clear that if Charliedoes fire at him, he will fire back. Charlie is more worried about Al than he is about Ben, so thisplan will look good to him. If this secret deal works, and Charlie fires only at Ben while Ben stillattacks Al first, the resulting chances of winning are 44.4 percent for Al, 20 percent for Ben, and35.6 percent for Charlie.

Well, naturally, Ben doesn’t want to lose like this, so he may go for the same tactics as Al, and

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SESSION 15 THE RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS

try to make his own agreement with Charlie. . . . But let’s stop here before it all gets too confusing.

We can see already from this balloon game example how things become increasingly compli-cated when you have three players all perfectly intelligent and all trying to increase their winningprobabilities. And if you go on to think about game theory in general, you will see how a seeminglyendless pattern of strategies and counter-strategies can develop out of a very simple set of rules.

Doesn’t this remind us of what we learned today? Games move along with new layers ofcomplexity constantly unfolding out of a rather simple original equation. And in this sense, theyare really quite a bit like fractal patterns.

· · · · · SESSION 15 · · · · ·

➣ The Return of Depression Economics ➢

➤ Introduction

I N the 1920s, Americans were enjoying the fruits of their new prosperity. For those who hadmoney it was a time to get rich quick. Believing that they could only win, a million Americanshad their money in the stock exchange. In just four years, their money grew 400 percent.Then, on the morning of October 24th, 1929, the unthinkable happened. All of a sudden, prices

dropped as more and more investors tried to sell. By the end of the day, the New York StockExchange had lost 4,000,000,000 dollars. When people realized what had happened, a nationwidepanic followed. Banks collapsed. Factories closed. Companies went out of business. And millionsof workers lost their jobs.

The chain reaction extended overseas, dragging the world economy into the Great Depression.All over the world, governments said the same thing that there was little they could do to easetheir people’s suffering. In Britain, the government’s policy was to cut public spending and waitfor what they called “natural recovery.”

President Herbert Hoover told the Americans that they just had to let prices run their course.Most economists of the time would have said the same thing. They thought that the cycle of boomand bust was part of the capitalist system and that individual governments had no power over it.

Roosevelt ran for the presidency saying, “the Depression could be beaten.” When he waselected, he worked energetically to tackle unemployment. He was equipped with the theoryproposed by John Maynard Keynes that government controls are necessary for a healthy economy.The Works Progress Administration was one of many new government agencies. There were jobsbuilding roads and public facilities including huge dams.

The economy is never totally controllable, but economic policies backed up by the science ofeconomics can make a big difference. In the year 2000, Japan is still struggling with the “GreatRecession” as the auther of our next session calls it. Let’s read what Paul Krugman, an Americaneconomist, has to say about Asian and world economies today.

➤ Listening Practice

G OOD evening. This is NHK’s 7 o’clock News for Friday, August 11th.The Bank of Japan has decided to terminate its zero interest policy after 18 months.

At the meeting today, the Central Bank Policy Board agreed that there is little risk of theJapanese economy plunging into deflation. The Board also agreed that the economy is now on asustainable recovery track.

At the meeting, the governor of the Bank, Masaru Hayami, and eight other members of the

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SESSION 16 TIME IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Policy Board decided to guide overnight interbanking borrowing rates from the current near zerorate to 0.25 percent a year. It is the first time in ten years that the Central Bank has taken actionto raise interest rates. However, the Central Bank says, “it will maintain its extremely easy moneypolicy.”

During the bubble economy, interest rates exceeded 8 percent, but fell sharply with the dete-rioration of economy conditions. And ever since the zero interest-rate policy was introduced lastyear, rates have been kept near zero that ended today.

Our economics reporter is Brendan Wilson. Brendan, why does the Bank of Japan want to liftits zero interest rate policy in the face of opposition from the coalition parties of the government?

“A zero interest rate policy means, in effect, that people can borrow money freeof charge. The Bank of Japan has described this as an unusual situation and has saidrepeatedly that it would end the policy as soon as the economy starts to recover.

The government sees the situation differently, however. Regarding the zero interestrate policy as a kind of symbol that Japan has placed the highest priority on economicrecovery, it appears to be worried that if the policy is lifted, other countries might thinkJapan had abandoned that position.

The Government has made clear its view that it’s too early to raise interest ratesand has confronted the Bank of Japan over the issue. There’s a danger here that toomuch government pressure on the Central Bank could undermine its independence.And a rift between the Bank of Japan and the government over interest rates could alsodestabilize financial markets and undermine international confidence in the way Japanis managing its economy.

Although the worst of the recession is now thought to be over, there’s still a longway to go and the present improvement can’t yet be called a full recovery.”

Well, the lifting of the zero interest rate policy have any impact on people’s daily lives?

“Returns on savings are likely to increase, although only slightly. Some majorcommercial banks have already announced they will double their interest rates onordinary deposit accounts starting next month from 0.05 percent to 0.1 percent. Thismeans that interest on a one million yen bank deposit will increase from 500 yen perannum to 1000 yen per annum. Banks are also expected to raise their interest rates onfixed deposits later on.”

Thank you, Brendan. That was Brendan Wilson, our special reporter on economic matters. Andnow, the rest of the news . . .

· · · · · SESSION 16 · · · · ·

➣ Time in Medieval Europe ➢

➤ Introduction

I N Europe, printing techniques were invented and developed in the late fifteenth century. Untilthen, the recording of events and the spreading of ideas were almost entirely dependent onmanuscripts. Texts were written by hand on carefully prepared animal skins. It was a costly

business and the writing required a great deal of skill and hard work.Copying a book often done in sections by different writers could take months or even years.

When the writing was done, the pages of the manuscript were then brought to artists, who drew

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SESSION 16 TIME IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

decorations and paintings in spaces left blank for that purpose. In luxurious manuscripts like this,paintings functioned not only as illustrations of the written text. They also showed the wealth andpower of the people who commissioned them.

Let’s take a look at one such manuscript. The Book of Hours, made for the Duke of Berry inFrance in the early fifteenth century. The Book of Hours is a kind of religious manual containingprayers to be said at fixed hours of the day. In the Middle Ages, such manuals were widely usedby noble families for their private devotion.

In this manuscript owned by the Duke of Berry’s family, we find twelve finely drawn paintings.Each painting corresponds to a month of the year, and describes typical activities for that season.The painting of March, for example, shows a farmer turning over the soil by using a heavy woodenplow/plough pulled by a team of oxen. Behind him, there are people working in the vineyard anda shepherd tending a flock of sheep. Above the white castle, where the Duke of Berry himself issupposed to live, the blue sky stretches toward a heavenly king holding the sun. Beyond the spacein which a calendar is depicted, we see the heavens divided into sections of the zodiac with theFishes on the left and the Ram on the right.

From these paintings, we can see that people in the Middle Ages lived in a continuous cycle ofdaily prayers and seasonal activities. But this is not all there is to know about the view of time inmedieval Europe. We wonder, for instance, how medieval people measured and signaled hours ofthe day. Or, we may ask how past and future were conceived in the Middle Ages. These are thetopics of our next reading assignment.

➤ Listening Practice

I T might be true that the invention of bells was the first important step toward mechanicalclocks that would later change people’s lives. Bells told the exact time to everybody in town,summoned them to church for a mass, and so on. But, as Robert Duncan himself admits, bells

didn’t have much impact on the average person at that time. The ringing of church bells wasnothing compared to the shrill sirens that later signaled the beginning and the end of workinghours for modern factory workers.

It can be argued that the dramatic change in the quality of time occurred when the majorityof people began to “go to work” instead of working at home. Self-employed people have alwaysworked at home, but it used to be that many people who worked for others did that work in theirown homes too, and were paid by the amount of work they completed, not by the total workinghours. So, going to work is a rather modern phenomenon. It wasn’t until the 1860s that the Englishword commuter which means a person who regularly travels to work first appeared in print.

The French historian, Antoine Prost, says that as late as 1900 more than half, perhaps two thirdsof Frenchmen worked at home. In general, domestic workers lived very poorly then, and they hadto work extremely hard just to survive. Prost gives us an example of how one such family had towork fifteen hours every day, even on Sundays after going to church, and even on their daughter’swedding day. As a rule, work outside the home in factories, shops and so on, was better paid thanwork at home. Prost argues that this is one reason why domestic workers gradually declined innumber.

But the economic factor wasn’t everything. When you worked in a factory, you knew whenthe day was over. The time you didn’t owe to your boss was completely your own and that timeincreased steadily as the twenties century progressed.

The worker who worked outside the home could be truly “at home” during off hours. Inother words, your own time began when the work was over, which means you now had a newrelationship with time. Time became something you either had or didn’t have. Time was yourswhen it wasn’t taken up by work for others. And when you had time for yourself, you could makeit more enjoyable by spending the bit of money that you earned during your work hours. Beforethe rise of the monetary economy and the Industrial Revolution, time was something completely

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SESSION 17 ARRESTING THE FLUX OF LIFE

different.

· · · · · SESSION 17 · · · · ·

➣ Arresting the Flux of Life ➢

➤ Introduction

W HY do we still take photographs? Video cameras are getting smaller and cheaper allthe time. They’re not difficult to use. These days, almost anyone can make their ownmovies. But somehow, we still take photographs. We keep them in albums, put them

in frames, add them to websites, and share them with friends. We take pictures of people, pets,weddings, parties, holidays, snowstorms, and sunsets. Just as fascinated by the snapshot as werethe early users of the first Kodak camera, we love to take pictures.

True, we rarely take black and white pictures anymore, but we haven’t given up on stillphotography. Why not? Perhaps, it’s because a photograph gives us the wonderful feeling that wecan grab hold of a moment of time and keep it forever. The whole point about a still photographis that it’s still, it doesn’t move. So, when we take a picture, we feel as if we’ve captured a passingmoment—frozen that smile, that laugh, that great feeling— and made it last forever.

Something about this combination of stillness and movement has always been fascinating tophotographers. Here’s a view of a frozen moment of urban energy and movement, A New York StreetScene, captured by Edward Anthony. Here’s a similar view of Paris, taken in 1860 by HippolyteJouvin. These early photographs kept a passing moment of city life intact for us to experience acentury and a half later.

The feeling of spontaneity and informality that we find in these city shots also works wonder-fully with action photographs and portraits. Here’s a photograph by Heinrich Zille from 1900.The picture’s moment of hilarious upside-down fun has already lasted a hundred years. But, as inmany successful photographs, this frozen moment does not feel random or off balance. Here, forexample, this 1911 photograph of a woman taking a walk with her dog in Paris by Jacques HenriLartigue is as beautifully composed as any painting.

Is it silly to compare snapshot photographs with carefully composed paintings? You can thinkabout this as you take a second look at some of these photographs in the chapter for next week’ssession.

➤ Listening Practice

K AMISHIBAI, or the picture-card show, was very popular among children before televisionsets were introduced into most Japanese households. These two photographs were bothtaken in the mid-fifties in the downtown districts of Tokyo. They are both portraying

kamishibai, but see how different the two photographers’ approaches are.This picture was taken by Kimura Ihei, arguably one of the greatest Japanese photographers

ever. Perhaps the show is over. We see two boys and a girl walking or running to the foreground.A group of children linger on around the showman. On the far left, a housewife is perhaps takingher son to a public bath. Long shadows of late afternoon are cast over the ground. It’s almost as ifwe can see the orange light of sunset.

This one, taken by another well-known photographer, Domon Ken, captures a moment whenall the children are absorbed by the show. The gazes are all directed at the picture card. You cansee their excitement. Their great anticipation of what will happen in the next moment.

Technically, one obvious difference is the angle of the camera. Domon’s photo was taken from

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SESSION 18 OUR MYRIAD-DRESSED SHAKESPEARE

a high position, whereas Kimura’s camera was set at his own eye level. The eye level camera inthis photo strengthens the impression that the photographer is a mere bystander, interested not inthe people before him, but only in capturing a passing moment.

Domon, on the other hand, is actively involved in what’s happening before his eyes. He movesaround and chooses the right position, the precise position that allows him to grasp his subject inthe most convincing way. These other examples of Domon’s work clearly show that his interest isin people, especially the rich and colorful expressions that emerge on the faces of children at play.He is empathetic with them. He is an observer, yet he is also a participant. He seems unable not toproject himself onto his subjects.

In contrast, Kimura is a distant observer. He is more interested in the scene as a whole thanthe individuals in it. For his kind of art, spatial composition is essential. See how each element inthese photographs is carefully laid out in the frame. His keen concern with space can be seen inmany of his works. For instance, in this scene taken in Hongo in the mid-fifties, you can say thathe captured the everyday life of ordinary people with the extraordinary eye of an artist.

Both Kimura’s and Domon’s photographs can be used as a record of the historical period bylater social historians. They certainly evoke the feeling of the time in which they were taken. Yet,that’s not the only reason why their photos engage us. Like all works of art, their value lies insomething greater than that. They show us for one thing one way of looking at life or one way ofreading from it. Later in life, Domon became fascinated by statues of Buddha.

In a conversation with Kimura, he once said, “when I gaze at a statue of Buddha, I see its manyexpressions.” Kimura’s reply to this was also revealing. “Buddha’s statues are made of stone orwood. They never move.”

· · · · · SESSION 18 · · · · ·

➣ Our Myriad-Dressed Shakespeare ➢

➤ Introduction

I N the famous film of Romeo and Juliet by the director, Franco Zeffirelli, Olivia Hussey playsa lively Juliet. Take a close look at her costume. She’s wearing a loose red dress with richlydecorated sleeves. This design is a faithful reproduction of the costume worn in fifteenth

century Venice. Compare it with Durer’s portrait of a Venetian lady of the same period. You’ll seehow true to history Olivia Hussey’s costume is.

But how about this one? This is Much Ado About Nothing, a film version of another famousShakespeare play directed by Kenneth Branagh. The women’s dresses are all white and very loose,which would have been unthinkable in Shakespeare’s England. Compare it with the dresses offashionable Elizabethan ladies like this one. It has a ruff around the neck, and the sleeves are richlyembroidered. Kenneth Branagh ignored all of this and set the play in a time more like our own.He made the play more accessible to a modern audience at the cost of faithfulness to the originalperiod.

But we should think twice before we criticize Branagh, for Shakespeare himself didn’t seem tocare much about such details. For example, Hamlet is a prince of Denmark, but in Shakespeare’sown production, the actor wore an English costume of his times. This picture portrays a scenefrom one of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s a historical play staged in ancient Rome, but the soldiersare wearing Elizabethan costumes. This might suggest that it wouldn’t be against Shakespeare’sapproach to produce his plays in whatever costume we find appropriate, or that it reflects a creativeimagination. If Shakespeare were alive today, he might even produce Hamlet in a suit and a tie!

In this production of Romeo and Juliet, one of the actors is waring jeans and a leather jacket. This

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SESSION 18 OUR MYRIAD-DRESSED SHAKESPEARE

production of Comedy of Errors is set in a circus. And this one, Timons of Athens is set in Japan’s Edoperiod. Here, Shakespeare’s characters are transformed into samurai and they are trying hard touse chopsticks. Mind you, this was not a special production aimed at a Japanese audience. It wascreated by the Royal Shakespeare Company, a world authority on Shakespeare production.

In the reading material for next week, you’ll learn how differently Shakespeare’s plays havebeen staged over the centuries. If you have some fixed image about them, it might be best to forgetit. A work of art has a flexible nature. It can go through tremendous changes without losing muchof its essence.

➤ Listening Practice

T HE Merchant of Venice, you all know the story. Shylock lends money to Antonio. If Antoniocan’t pay it back in time, he has to give Shylock a pound of his own flesh. And of course,he can’t pay it back. A trial follows. Portia, Antonio’s friend’s new wife, appears in court

disguised and acts as judge. “All right,” she says to Shylock, “you can cut off a pound of Antonio’sflesh as is stated in the bond.” Shylock happily begins to go about his business. “But wait aminute,” says Portia, “the bond allows you to take Antonio’s flesh, but not his blood. Not a drop.OK?” . . . Poor Shylock. There’s nothing he can do about it.

People tend to see this story as a warning against greed and hatred. Shylock is rightly punished,they think, for being so vicious. But this doesn’t really make sense. A promise is a promise. Andit’s Antonio’s fault if he makes a foolish promise and can’t keep it.

One economist proposes that we see in this play the opposition of two communities. One thingnoticeable about Antonio and his friends is that they are constantly calling each other “friend.”The Christian community they belong to acts on the principle of friendship. Naturally, it’s not agood idea in this community to lend money to each other. But there are times when you simplyhave to borrow. What can you do? Go to somebody you don’t have to be friends with. And for theChristian Antonio, Shylock the Jew was exactly that somebody.

The Jews in the play don’t talk so much about friendship. Not that they are unfriendly. Theyjust don’t talk about it all the time. Their community acts on the principle of business and law.The Jewish moneylenders were not exactly loved by Christians, but their presence was necessaryto them as long as they acted on the principle of friendship.

At the trial, Portia appeals to Shylock to have mercy. But mercy is powerless before the logic ofbusiness and law. The cleverness of Portia lies in the fact that she then ignores mercy and appealsto the language Shylock understands. In Shakespeare’s own words, she says,

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood:The words expressly are ’a pound of flesh.’Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shedOne drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goodsAre, by the laws of Venice, confiscateUnto the state of Venice.

What she does is to outdo Shylock in following the logic of business and law. By followingShylock’s principle further than Shylock himself, Portia defeats him. Therefore, even thoughAntonio wins, thanks to her, and the Christians do show mercy to the defeated Shylock, theChristian principle never really wins. Friendship and mercy have no power in this play. Perhapswe can see here a sign of decline of the old principle of friendship. In fact, we might even be ableto say that The Merchant of Venice predicts the arrival of capitalism.

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SESSION 19 THE JURASSIC ACCORDING TO HOLLYWOOD

· · · · · SESSION 19 · · · · ·

➣ The Jurassic According to Hollywood ➢

➤ Introduction

T HIS is not an actual disaster. It’s not even a movie scene. Well, in a way I guess it is, this iswhere movie scenes are created. You pay 29 dollars to enter, and once inside, a guided tourtakes you around Hollywood’s most famous blockbusters. Universal City is a big tourist

spot in Hollywood, California. Over the years, it has transformed itself into a theme park whichrivals even the incredibly popular, Disneyland.

Here, you meet Frankenstein. And King Kong with his fearful roar. You see lightening hit thefamous clock tower in Back to the Future. This place is a lot more action-oriented than Disneyland.You’re attacked by Jaws. Find yourself in the middle of a raging fire. And then experience an 8.3magnitude earthquake. A new addition to Universal Studios is Jurassik Park: The Ride. Universalspent over a hundred million dollars to build this roller coaster. The thrill of the coaster ride andthe roaring dinosaurs come all at once. And at the end, you get a big splash. You’re all wet, but ofcourse you’ll love it.

Since its early days, Hollywood has been called the dream factory. Projected on the big screen,we were shared fantasies. People dreamed of becoming millionaires or winning the heart of abeautiful blond. But do we still go to the movies to drift through such sweet dreams?

Today’s biggest blockbusters are the likes of Speed and Die Hard 3. These movies make uswonder that the movie theater hasn’t turned into a kind of roller-coaster ride itself. And talkingabout amusement parks, just look at this. These dinosaurs are so real that we can hardly believethey’re actually computer-animated. Director, Steven Spielberg, did a wonderful job. He broughtthe beasts of the Jurassic era convincingly back to life.

These movies are really mind-blowing. Your eyes are glued to the screen with your mouthshalf open. You are stunned, amazed, awe-struck. Your sensations are all aroused, your intellectalmost silenced. You do only the basic thinking necessary to follow the plot, which of course isn’tvery complicated. You hear a lot of half-truths and unscientific theories, but you’re so absorbed inthe audio-visual ride that you just don’t care.

“Virtual-reality displays show our geneticists the gaps in a DNA sequence. We use thecomplete DNA of a frog to fill in the holes and complete the code. And now, we canmake a baby dinosaur.”

A dinosaur is born with the help of a frog’s DNA? I don’t think so. But why bother trying toanalyze it? It’s just a fantasy created by Hollywood. What’s wrong with that? . . . Well, in our nextsession, scientist Stephen Jay Gould will tell us exactly what is wrong with that.

➤ Listening Practice

“H ELLO, Dimitri. You know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of some-thing going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb. ???what happened is, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well, he went a

little funny in the head. You know, it’s a little funny and he went and did a silly thing! Well, I’ll tellyou what it is. He ordered his planes to attack your country.”

A scene in the 1963 film, Dr. Strangelove. The American president talks to the Soviet PrimeMinister over the hot line. He is telling him that, by a terrible mistake, American bombers are on

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SESSION 20 THE NEW AGE OF MAN

their way to the Soviet Union for a wholesale nuclear attack. And the Prime Minister is drunk. It’sa scene both frightening and comic.

You’d think this kind of absurdity only belongs to the movies, but at one time a year before thisfilm was released, fiction very nearly became reality. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when thewhole world was terrified by the possibility of nuclear war between the U. S. and the Soviet Union.America’s top leaders received a long and not very coherent message from the Soviet leader, NikitaKhrushchev.

Basically, he seemed to be saying that Russia would dismantle their missiles in Cuba if the U. S.promised not to invade Cuba. The next day, though, the Americans got another message fromMoscow, this time saying something about American missiles in Turkey. Fortunately, the crisis wasavoided after all. But for a maddening two days, reality was as absurd as Dr. Strangelove.

Details in Dr. Strangelove are of course fictional. No American bombers have actually attackedthe Soviet Land. Yet the film does capture the fear of nuclear war felt by many in the early 60s. Itwas accurate, perhaps not in details, but in reflecting the atmosphere of the time.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.”

The world comes to an end in Dr. Strangelove. The song you hear over the mushroom cloudsis, “We’ll meet again.” It’s certainly an ironic choice, for clearly no one will ever meet again anymore. Moreover, as a historical fact, this 1939 song was a great morale boost for British soldiersduring World War II. Nothing can be more out of place. This is one of the many terrifying jokes inthis movie.

· · · · · SESSION 20 · · · · ·

➣ The New Age of Man ➢

➤ Introduction

H UMAN beings are mortals. We all have to die. Some live longer than others, but it’ssafe to say that nobody ever live to be two hundred years old. Still, people have alwayshad fantasies about outrageous longevity. In the Old Testament, there is a Hebrew called

Methuselah who is supposed to have lived for 969 years.Among the optimists in modern times is the Irish writer, George Bernard Shaw, who wrote

the play called Back to Methuselah. It is about the future world where people live longer thanMethuselah thanks to the advanced civilization.

In the year 2000, an average man in a civilized country still dies at eighty something. A seventyyear old man is an old man. Twentieth century science didn’t bring us eternal youth. It onlybrought an understanding of why we must become old and senile.

You know that the human body is made up of cells, and that cells go on dividing themselves toform new cells. If there were no end to this process, our body can stay young forever. But, there isa limit to the number of times a cell can divide itself. After some fifty times, it’s all over. The cellcannot renew itself. It has to die. And as cells die massively, we age inevitably.

But what causes cells to stop dividing? Is there any timing device? Yes. Recent research hasidentified the strip of DNA called the telomere that plays the trick. You learned about chromosomes.Human beings have 23 pairs of them within the nucleus of a cell. They become visible at celldivisions. Now, at the end of a chromosome, there is a telomere which as I said is a strip of DNA.

At its end, a telomere has a unique sequence of bases. The same set such as TTAGGG is repeateda number of times. At each cell division, one such unit is lost making the telomere just a little bit

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SESSION 21 THE THRILL OF FEAR

shorter. And after losing some fifty units, the cell stops dividing.Now that we found out the mechanism of aging, it’s hard not to ask this question. If aging

results from the shortening of the telomere, what will happen if we somehow manage to make itlonger again? Can’t we be younger that way? This is really an exciting possibility. Do you want toknow more about it? Well, read the passage for our next session.

➤ Listening Practice

W HAT do you think this is? Something connected with photography? Yes, but it’s alsosomething you would find in a hospital. In fact, it’s an endoscope.

An endoscope can be used together with this electronic equipment to take videopictures inside the human body. These endoscopes have a large lens for the image, two smalllenses to provide light, and an empty channel through which various kinds of instruments can bepassed.

Notice how the light flickers. Why is this? The tip of the endoscope contains a tiny videocamera, and this can be kept small if it only has to detect one color at a time. On the other hand, anaccurate color image is important to help doctors find damaged or cancerous tissue.

The solution is to use a sequence of red, green, and blue light created by a rotating filter whichcan be reconstructed into a normal color image. Producing pictures like these inside the lung. Andhard copies for a detailed study.

Now back to those instruments, the doctor puts the instrument in here, and it comes out here.While watching the video screen, the doctor can use his forceps, like this, to remove a little piece oftissue for analysis; or a needle to go through the wall of the organ and take a sample of tissue fromthe other side; or scrape some tissue off the wall with a brush, like this.

· · · · · SESSION 21 · · · · ·

➣ The Thrill of Fear ➢

➤ Introduction

T HIS is Hans Holbein’s famous painting from the sixteenth century, The Ambassadors. In frontof two important-looking men, you see a strange shape. If you look at it from a particularangle, however, you can see it for what it is. A human skull. The message is clear. Even if

you are rich and powerful like these two men, death is always there, hidden perhaps, but alwayspresent.

Or look at this drawing also from the sixteenth century. Drawings and paintings like thesewere common during medieval times. It’s a Danse Macabre or dance of death. To people of thattime, again the massage was clear. It was a reminder that death was universal and inevitable. So,in medieval times, death in paintings and drawings was there to instruct. You were supposed todraw a moral from representations of death.

But in the twentieth century, people no longer want to be reminded of the universality of death.We all act as if death were not really an inevitable part of life. Strangely, though, most of us arethrilled by death in movies and novels. It’s as if by playing with death in a make-believe world,we can somehow make ourselves immune to death. And we especially love it when the dead . . .aren’t, really dead.

“I am Dracula.”“Oh, it’s really good to see you. I don’t know what happened to the driver and myluggage and . . . well, and, with all this I thought I was in the wrong place.”

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SESSION 21 THE THRILL OF FEAR

“I bid you welcome.”

The real Count Dracula was a tyrant who actually lived in fifteenth century Romania. This locallegend turned into a world celebrity when Bram Stoker re-created him as the greatest vampire ofall time. Being undead, vampires obscure the boundary between life and death. They remind usthat we may be closer to death than we might like to think. That’s why they frighten us so much.Or do they?

“When it’s my birthday, I never will fail to count all the cards that I get in the mail. Icount the cake and candles upon the shelf, and count all the gifts that I give to myself.One present! Two present! Three present! Four Present! Five! You people present!. . . ”

Nowadays, Dracula is sometimes that counting Count in Sesame Street who teaches childrenhow to count. But it’s not just as lovable puppet. We are even amused by the more serious versionsof Dracula. Some people actually laugh at far more grotesque zombies and monsters that havereturned from the world of the dead.

First, death instructed us. Then, it frightened us. Now, it makes us laugh. Does this revealanything about our view of death? Think about it with Walter Kendrick.

➤ Listening Practice

D EATH is a certainty that none of us can escape. Sooner or later, we all must die. But mostwould like it to be later rather than sooner. Some people tried to delay the final momentby taking a lot of pills every day. Others are quite serious about exercising, so their bodies

will be tough enough to resist death, at least for a few more years.In California, there is a company which freeze-dries the newly dead. Business is apparently

prospering supported by “customers” who hope to be revived by the advanced medical technologyof the future. It could be said that we all want to die a good death; that is, we want the last minutesof life to be “meaningful”, whatever that means.

But this wish is sometimes difficult to grant today. This man donated his body to medicalscience, but doctors found no use for it, so it was handed on to morticians. Morticians are a kind ofbeautician for the dead. They do what is called embalming. Six out of ten Americans are embalmedbefore they are placed in the casket. There, they receive a final farewell from family and friends.

At this American funeral home, the dead body is placed in a special drive-through window sothat visitors don’t have to leave their cars to say goodbye to loved ones. Here, sorrow is not a thingto be shared.

But in Ghana, West Africa, when an important person dies, grieving can be quite spectacular.This funeral is like a big communal festival lasting several days. People gather from all over to takepart in the ritual. There is singing, dancing, and presentations of gifts.

In Japan, a technology-oriented country, a funeral sometimes looks like an electric light show.But at the same time, traces of Japanese tradition can also be felt.

“Hallelujah . . . that last night, she walked with God.I can imagine Him in my own mind.”

Each culture has its own way of facing death. But the basic problem is the same. Death is themost fundamental fact of life. And in their various ways of dealing with it, no society is moreadvanced or primitive than any other.

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