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When US President Barack Obama met Japanese Emperor Akihito in Tokyo last week, he both shook hands and bowed.
It was a deep bow in the Japanese style, and immediately had wags calling it “stoop-id” and others questioning such an obsequious gesture by a US president to anyone, let alone the son of Japanese war-time Emperor Hirohito.
It was an opportunity for newspaper headline writers and anyone with a political agenda against President Obama.
It is a regrettable, and boring, fact of political life that anything you do will have its critics. To hold your handkerchief in one hand while blowing your nose is to instantly insult, wound and disenfranchise the majority of honest citizens who use two hands. Or so someone will claim.
Obama’s bow to the 65-year-old Emperor was a gracious, graceful and dignified gesture. It was as appropriate as it was civilised.
It is telling that it went almost unnoticed in Japan, where the bow is as ubiquitous as the handshake in the US. Indeed, the Japanese would only have had cause for comment if Obama had not bowed, or not bowed deeply enough.
In a way, it was an unremarkable thing that the President did, no more or less than most thinking people would have expected. But it didn’t stop negative knee-jerks from self-serving knockers who wouldn’t recognize a gracious act if it bit them on the nose.
JRR Tolkien
JRR Tolkien was once asked if he would write further episodes of Lord of the Rings. His response was extraordinary.
"I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the downfall of Mordor," Tolkien said, "but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice, and prosperity, would be become discontented and restless, while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors, like Denethor or worse. Not worth doing."
The words come from a letter by Tolkien written to Colin Bailey in 1964, and show both his humanity and insight. I like the comment on the livestrong.com blog: "Tolkien was a great man. To realise the worth of a story even before it was written and then abort the project speaks volumes to me. He was a story teller and not a mercenary."
The words in the Tolkien quote I find most interesting, however, are "... the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good".
Gondor in the Lord of the Rings is the land of men, and so Tolkien is saying that the worst thing about human nature is an inability to cope with the very things we seek. Tolkien thinks that the more we get what we want, the less content we are.
This is something of a conundrum. How can good be bad?
Father James V Schall, Professor of Government at the Jesuit Georgetown University in Washington DC, says in a fascinating commentary that Tolkien's idea is related to earlier philosophical ideas. GK Chesterton, for example, said we are more likely to lose our souls if we are rich than we are poor.
From a less religious point of view, Fr Schall brings together ideas by Plato and St Augustine. The first said the desires of man are unlimited. The second said all finite things are good.
It all makes a strong case for what most of us suspect, and what becomes slowly clearer as we get older: neither money nor material possessions guarantee happiness.
Peter Jackson's wonderful portrayal of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy begins and ends in the village of Hobbiton, the idyllic home of Bilbo, Frodo, Sam and their fellow hobbits. The hobbits have their foibles and their squabbles, but they are generally content in such serene surroundings in a way man, it seems, can not be.
If Tolkien could have seen Jackson's pictures, I think he would have nodded in recognition and appreciation.
English is simple, right? Where French and Italian makes things difficult with two forms of the definite article, masculine and feminine, and German makes things even tougher by throwing in neuter, English uses just one word. The. Isn't that easy?
Unfortunately, no. Which, for example, is correct: "She is in hospital" or "She is in the hospital". The answer depends if you are British or American.
Spare a thought for anyone who has had to learn such nuances as a second language. An interesting example is a German learning English. The German sentence, "Da er Gärtner ist, liebt er die Natur" translates to, "Being a gardener, he is fond of nature". Note that the German construction uses no article before the noun Gärtner while English requires an indefinite article, and German requires a definite article before Natur while English requires no article.
Dig a bit further and it becomes apparent that the rules governing English articles are not simple at all.
One of the least understood dark corners of the language is the use of indefinite articles. A versus an. Is it correct, for example, to say a history or an history?
The issue causes considerable debate, and it is possible in an internet search to find persuasive opinion claiming both are correct. The real answer is "a history", but the reason is a little surprising. Most of us know the rule that an is used before a vowel and a is used before a consonant. What is not always clearly understood is that this applies to the way language is spoken, not written.
Take, for example, an East Londoner who speaks with a Cockney accent. This person would never pronounce the h at the start of the word history. They would say "an 'istory". They would also say an 'ospital and an 'orse etc. And they would be grammatically correct in doing so!
For those who do pronounce the h in history, on the other hand, a rather than an is correct.
It is for the same reason that it is right to use an before words that are spelled with an initial consonant but which are pronounced with an initial vowel sound: an honour, an heir etc. And it is for the same reason that it is correct to use a before a word spelled with an initial vowel but pronounced with an initial consonant sound: a ewe, a university etc.
And the deepest, darkest corner of all surrounds the word historical. "A historical period" is technically correct, and it is easy enough to write it like that. But who amongst us thinks to say it that way? Not me.
research: owl.english.purdue.edu, davidappleyard.com, encarta.msn.com
I'm exhausted! The Little Boss must have slept really, really well last night because instead of going for the usual walk to the park and back this morning, she took us on a guided tour of the suburb.
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Hong Kong, I once heard someone say, is the only city in the world with the same energy as New York. Hong Kong is a thriving, busy metropolis and Hong Kong people live their lives at speed.
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President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, for whom freedom of the press has become politically inconvenient
There are two reasons for a national government to introduce legislation establishing ownership and other regulatory controls over the media. The first reason is to prevent monopolies — nobody wants Rupert Murdoch owning everything. The second reason is to muzzle critics of the government.
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Greyhounds are part of the sight hound group of dogs which have particularly acute senses. Sight hounds include wolfhounds, deerhounds and the Hubble telescope.
Greyhounds sleep long and deeply. Mine sleep on a pair of sofas in the living room and you can hold a party, set off fireworks or put the house on the back of a truck and move it to another state, and they won't move
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When I was about 10, my favourite number was 10. My favourite football team was Sturt and my favourite player was Rick Schoff. I called him Ricky. He wore number 10.
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US President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".
We look forward to SL Bradish's refutation.
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Comment by Chris Champion
on Asylum seekers named People's 'sexiest man alive'
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Is this the real Norm? It's always hard to tell unless I'm stoned.