Does this seem strange to you?
Because it sure seems strange to me:
they're acting like the won the lottery.
But shouldn't they feel terror for the task that lies ahead:
to feed and house the people that this system's left for dead.
It's profit before lives.
They are motivated by greed.
First they taught us to depend
on their nation-states to mend
our tired minds,
our broken bones,
our bleeding limbs.
But now they've sold off all the splints
and contracted out the tourniquets
and if we jump through hoops then we might just survive.
Is this what we deserve?
To scrub the palace floors?
To fight amongst ourselves?
As we scrumble for the crumbs they spit off,
frothing at the mouth
for the scapegoats that they've chosen for us.
With every self-indulgent pointed finger
I hear the goose-steps getting closer.
They no longer represent us,
so is it not our obligation
to confront this tyranny?
lunedì 14 aprile 2008
venerdì 11 aprile 2008
Immigration and more
I'm writing my post a bit early this week, even if it's not due until Sunday, because I know already that Sunday I won't be in the mood for writing anything and I'll just feel like Winston Smith in the dungeons of the Ministry of Love...
But anyways, let's focus.
I didn't know that immigrants in Italy are about the 4,5% of the population. And I surely did not know that the demogrphic growth of the population in Italy is due to immigrants in as much as 10%. This are quite big numbers I felt I should mention just to get a realistic idea of the situation, but I guess the cultural issues are what we are talkiing about here.
When it comes to immigration and intercultural issues, I think Italy is culturally just an 'adolescent' country (England, for instance, being a more 'adult' country in this sense). Racism is still sort of a problem, not only in the sense of isolated incidents of nazi-skinheads beating up immigrants of setting fire to Rom settlements. The average guy is likely to say he/she has nothing in particular against immigrants, but he'll never let his daughte marry a guy from Morrocco. And why should we be surprised? After all, there are still politician like Daniela Santanchè who call themselves 'heir of fascism if that means not belonging to the swamp that Italian left-wing is'.
Personally, I only know immigrants from Eastern Europe. They are female, mostly, and very well educated but their degrees are not o.k. for Italian standards and so they have to take jobs which in Ukraina or Moldova they'd never have had to do. But yet they came here, because Italy to them is still 'a better place'. Of course it's not, but I guess that's relative too. When I think about these sort of immigrants, I feel that immigration is totally a good thing, at it really is.
The real problem is not immigration per se but illegal immigration. An illegal immigrant doesn't have a choice to do anything legal obviously, so all he can do is basically committing crimes. Obviously there's a difference between selling fake Prada bags or stopping passer-bys to try and sell them a lighter and deciding to be a pusher of heroin or breaking into houses etc. But I guess it's unavoidable, because the laws about immigration are complex and involve European legislation as well.
Another side issue is one that due to my family's history I care about a lot. I'm talking about the importance of distinguishing cultural identity and nationality. I am Italian, but my family name is Yugoslavian (Slovenian). My family has been Italian for generations, living on the Eastern border and being an accepted ethnical minority but still being 'legally' Italian. The legal identity is one thing, the cultural identity is something different. My grandparents, for instance, spoke Italian only with us kids, because my parents and uncle and aunts did not teach us their 'native' language. But they still prayed in Slovenian at night and talked to each other in the one language they felt was theirs.
I read the forums, and the most interesting entry to me is still the one Artem wrote about American politics. It's brilliant. He got exactly to the core of the issue, that is there's no real issue, in the sense that in politics you have to be a white male! I think he saw the truth in many ways, both about Obama being sort of 'Orio' and about Hilllary's un-feminine coldness.
Which leads us to another disquieting point, that is the manipulation of minority/feminist issues in a campaign. To sum it up in a sentence: Why do they act like blacks or women even if they know they can't really be neither the one nor the other if they are elected?
I won't push myself further from here, because the whole point of this post was not letting myself start a tantrum about electoral stuff, but still...
Man, it's really an obsession, uh?
But anyways, let's focus.
I didn't know that immigrants in Italy are about the 4,5% of the population. And I surely did not know that the demogrphic growth of the population in Italy is due to immigrants in as much as 10%. This are quite big numbers I felt I should mention just to get a realistic idea of the situation, but I guess the cultural issues are what we are talkiing about here.
When it comes to immigration and intercultural issues, I think Italy is culturally just an 'adolescent' country (England, for instance, being a more 'adult' country in this sense). Racism is still sort of a problem, not only in the sense of isolated incidents of nazi-skinheads beating up immigrants of setting fire to Rom settlements. The average guy is likely to say he/she has nothing in particular against immigrants, but he'll never let his daughte marry a guy from Morrocco. And why should we be surprised? After all, there are still politician like Daniela Santanchè who call themselves 'heir of fascism if that means not belonging to the swamp that Italian left-wing is'.
Personally, I only know immigrants from Eastern Europe. They are female, mostly, and very well educated but their degrees are not o.k. for Italian standards and so they have to take jobs which in Ukraina or Moldova they'd never have had to do. But yet they came here, because Italy to them is still 'a better place'. Of course it's not, but I guess that's relative too. When I think about these sort of immigrants, I feel that immigration is totally a good thing, at it really is.
The real problem is not immigration per se but illegal immigration. An illegal immigrant doesn't have a choice to do anything legal obviously, so all he can do is basically committing crimes. Obviously there's a difference between selling fake Prada bags or stopping passer-bys to try and sell them a lighter and deciding to be a pusher of heroin or breaking into houses etc. But I guess it's unavoidable, because the laws about immigration are complex and involve European legislation as well.
Another side issue is one that due to my family's history I care about a lot. I'm talking about the importance of distinguishing cultural identity and nationality. I am Italian, but my family name is Yugoslavian (Slovenian). My family has been Italian for generations, living on the Eastern border and being an accepted ethnical minority but still being 'legally' Italian. The legal identity is one thing, the cultural identity is something different. My grandparents, for instance, spoke Italian only with us kids, because my parents and uncle and aunts did not teach us their 'native' language. But they still prayed in Slovenian at night and talked to each other in the one language they felt was theirs.
I read the forums, and the most interesting entry to me is still the one Artem wrote about American politics. It's brilliant. He got exactly to the core of the issue, that is there's no real issue, in the sense that in politics you have to be a white male! I think he saw the truth in many ways, both about Obama being sort of 'Orio' and about Hilllary's un-feminine coldness.
Which leads us to another disquieting point, that is the manipulation of minority/feminist issues in a campaign. To sum it up in a sentence: Why do they act like blacks or women even if they know they can't really be neither the one nor the other if they are elected?
I won't push myself further from here, because the whole point of this post was not letting myself start a tantrum about electoral stuff, but still...
Man, it's really an obsession, uh?
lunedì 7 aprile 2008
Skypeing & reflecting
Well, last week the Skype session was mainly about politics, eòections opinions about the candidates etc, and my reflections are more or less about that topic too.
One thing I noticed while talking with Anne is that she appeared to be honestly interested in what the candidates in the American elections said. The programs and ideas they expresses seemed to be really important to her in order to form an opinion. She actually compared Obama's and Hillary's programs! To me as an Italian it sounded quite surprising!! I mean, let's face it: almost nobody here votes Veltroni o Berlusconi because he believes they are going to stick to their programs. We all know that a program is not much more than an electoral commercial, a declaration of good intentions.
Mind you, I'm not saying people here in Italy are not gonna vote: I just think (and Anne's point of view seemed to somehow confirm this impression) that most voters in Italy tend to just go along with their family tradition of voting right-wing or left-wing. The average Italian voter tends to pick the candidate based on his/her own political preference (usually based on an idealised opinion of what 'politics' are) rather then checking what the candidates really propose. It's something about the voter and his/her dreams of what politics should be in a better world, not a choice between real programs here and now. Here voting is a habit and not a choice, as far as I can see.
Another thing that surprised me a lot was Anne's attitude toward the 'women and politics' issue, that is her distrust of Hillary as a capable president. I was shocked when she said she disapproved of the tendency of many women to support Hillary 'just because she's a woman'. This somehow confirmed what we talked about in class, that is the fact that in America many women don't like Hillary exactly because she's a woman too!!! Apparently feminism didn't quite work right is in 2008 many women still believe that a only a man can do a 'man's job'... It's weird, I thought women would be happy about Hillary and would support her like crazy and insteas it' the other way around...
One thing I noticed while talking with Anne is that she appeared to be honestly interested in what the candidates in the American elections said. The programs and ideas they expresses seemed to be really important to her in order to form an opinion. She actually compared Obama's and Hillary's programs! To me as an Italian it sounded quite surprising!! I mean, let's face it: almost nobody here votes Veltroni o Berlusconi because he believes they are going to stick to their programs. We all know that a program is not much more than an electoral commercial, a declaration of good intentions.
Mind you, I'm not saying people here in Italy are not gonna vote: I just think (and Anne's point of view seemed to somehow confirm this impression) that most voters in Italy tend to just go along with their family tradition of voting right-wing or left-wing. The average Italian voter tends to pick the candidate based on his/her own political preference (usually based on an idealised opinion of what 'politics' are) rather then checking what the candidates really propose. It's something about the voter and his/her dreams of what politics should be in a better world, not a choice between real programs here and now. Here voting is a habit and not a choice, as far as I can see.
Another thing that surprised me a lot was Anne's attitude toward the 'women and politics' issue, that is her distrust of Hillary as a capable president. I was shocked when she said she disapproved of the tendency of many women to support Hillary 'just because she's a woman'. This somehow confirmed what we talked about in class, that is the fact that in America many women don't like Hillary exactly because she's a woman too!!! Apparently feminism didn't quite work right is in 2008 many women still believe that a only a man can do a 'man's job'... It's weird, I thought women would be happy about Hillary and would support her like crazy and insteas it' the other way around...
mercoledì 26 marzo 2008
...and now for some YOGA
Reflecting on the YOGA form, I think a distinction should be made betweem the YOGA form itself and the introduction about intercultural competence.
The introduction is quite interesting, though it is not so new to me somehow. Maybe it's because I'm attending Cultural Anthropology this semester, but the general ideas about ICC and the 'looking out looking in' effect are not really that surprising. But that's good: I mean, it would bad news if we discovered only now that we never heard about intercultural issues. After all we study foreign languages/cultures, right?
But still, it is well organized and seems to be going somewhere. I was actually expecting some challenging (or at least thought-provoking) test, but I was quite disappointed when I got to it. It was really not very in-depth, and the 4 levels were structured in a very similar way. I found myself wondering 'Is this it?'. My Objective Guidelines and Assessment are supposed to be so dull?
I guess I had just too many expectation, but it's easy to be carried away by a catchy phrase such as Your Objectives Guidelines and Assessment, isn't it?
The real problem, I guess, is the inherent difficulty of the subject under discussion. It is sort of impossible to grade ICC, let alone teaching it!
Yet if you want to create a form for self-assessment in ICC you have to set some criteria in order to subdivide the people who are taking the test. And that's exactly, in my opinion, the central problem with this form. It is based on the actual quantity of time you spend within a foreign culture and based on that gives a higher or lower level. It doesn't really matter because then all levels get asked pretty much the same sort of questions, but still I feel that they might find a different way to set the various level within ICC competence, based more on personal involvement with intercultural issues (i.e. quality vs quantity of one's experiences).
Well, at least I got the thrill of the expectation... And as questionnaires go, any fun you get out of 'hem will do!...
The introduction is quite interesting, though it is not so new to me somehow. Maybe it's because I'm attending Cultural Anthropology this semester, but the general ideas about ICC and the 'looking out looking in' effect are not really that surprising. But that's good: I mean, it would bad news if we discovered only now that we never heard about intercultural issues. After all we study foreign languages/cultures, right?
But still, it is well organized and seems to be going somewhere. I was actually expecting some challenging (or at least thought-provoking) test, but I was quite disappointed when I got to it. It was really not very in-depth, and the 4 levels were structured in a very similar way. I found myself wondering 'Is this it?'. My Objective Guidelines and Assessment are supposed to be so dull?
I guess I had just too many expectation, but it's easy to be carried away by a catchy phrase such as Your Objectives Guidelines and Assessment, isn't it?
The real problem, I guess, is the inherent difficulty of the subject under discussion. It is sort of impossible to grade ICC, let alone teaching it!
Yet if you want to create a form for self-assessment in ICC you have to set some criteria in order to subdivide the people who are taking the test. And that's exactly, in my opinion, the central problem with this form. It is based on the actual quantity of time you spend within a foreign culture and based on that gives a higher or lower level. It doesn't really matter because then all levels get asked pretty much the same sort of questions, but still I feel that they might find a different way to set the various level within ICC competence, based more on personal involvement with intercultural issues (i.e. quality vs quantity of one's experiences).
Well, at least I got the thrill of the expectation... And as questionnaires go, any fun you get out of 'hem will do!...
martedì 25 marzo 2008
Skype exchange n.2
Well, well, well: I'm back! It's been a pretty long time, but let's get to work now!
The first thing to say is that, despite the title, I'm actually relating on my very first Skype session, as I was not in class the week before last.
My general impression about Skype (which I had never used before) was good. It's totally easy to use and very useful: pretty much like the good ol' telephone plus it's free! I expected it to be kind of weird to talk to a total stranger, I thought I'd be embarassed and that my linguistic skills (!!) might plummet to the level of speaking some sort of anglo-spaghetti gibberish, but it turned out a very easy-going session.
The funny thing was that I (and Anna as well, since we're in a 'conference') was to talk to a guy who had just woke up (it was 8:00 in the U.S.) and he sounded surprisingly groggy. After some cautious questions he simply said he was badly hungover, that he was tired out and that he had gone to sleep at about 5:00 because he'd been partying and drinking celebrating St. Paddy's day!
This was not really a major problem. In fact, it compelled me (and Anna too) to find a way around his inherent 'difficulties'. Even in normal the 'lead years' or Moro's kidnapping and death are definitely not easy topics to discuss. In our case we had to strecht both our linguistic and social/psychological skills to somehow get something out of the chat. It sounds hard and frustrating, but it was pretty stimulating too: it really 'seemed real', there was no touch of artifical pre-acting during the session.
In the end we actually got all the answers we wanted to get: Ugo told us about fire arms-related violence in the U.S. and in campuses too, he gave us a perfect example of how a normal guy might feel knowing his dorm-mates might hid a rifle under their beds.
I guess it was a fruitful chat and I'm looking forward to the next!
The first thing to say is that, despite the title, I'm actually relating on my very first Skype session, as I was not in class the week before last.
My general impression about Skype (which I had never used before) was good. It's totally easy to use and very useful: pretty much like the good ol' telephone plus it's free! I expected it to be kind of weird to talk to a total stranger, I thought I'd be embarassed and that my linguistic skills (!!) might plummet to the level of speaking some sort of anglo-spaghetti gibberish, but it turned out a very easy-going session.
The funny thing was that I (and Anna as well, since we're in a 'conference') was to talk to a guy who had just woke up (it was 8:00 in the U.S.) and he sounded surprisingly groggy. After some cautious questions he simply said he was badly hungover, that he was tired out and that he had gone to sleep at about 5:00 because he'd been partying and drinking celebrating St. Paddy's day!
This was not really a major problem. In fact, it compelled me (and Anna too) to find a way around his inherent 'difficulties'. Even in normal the 'lead years' or Moro's kidnapping and death are definitely not easy topics to discuss. In our case we had to strecht both our linguistic and social/psychological skills to somehow get something out of the chat. It sounds hard and frustrating, but it was pretty stimulating too: it really 'seemed real', there was no touch of artifical pre-acting during the session.
In the end we actually got all the answers we wanted to get: Ugo told us about fire arms-related violence in the U.S. and in campuses too, he gave us a perfect example of how a normal guy might feel knowing his dorm-mates might hid a rifle under their beds.
I guess it was a fruitful chat and I'm looking forward to the next!
domenica 9 dicembre 2007
On my Personal Learning Environment
Ok, if I got it right you should fond my mindmap right here.
It's funny how I had never really thought about the fact that I'm deep in P.L.E. until Sarah mentioned it...! But after reading her post and them reflecting on the ideas od 'mindmap' and Personal Learning Environment, I realised it all sort of makes sense.
Informal education always had a major importance in my life as a student, it always hepled me learn new things and English language in particular. Though I got my educational basis from school, I never really felt that once I got home I was through with learning. As a kid a was a bit nerdy (still am...) so I read a lot and asked grownups lots of dorky questions.
If you ask me, formal and informal education tend to overlap: one completes the other. If I hadn't had a strict English teacher in high school I'd have never understood I word of my crappy records, and without those r'n'r junkies I listened to all the time I wouldn't have been so fluent when it came to speaking English in class.
In my mindmap I tried to give some order to all the tools and experiences that contibute to the whole of my P.L.E. and I guess I included most of them. Of course the importance of the single 'nodes' differs somehow, but they all play a part.
When it's all said and done, I think most of my P.L.E. relates to the written word. Books are definitely my n.1 way to improve my English. Undubbed movies and shows come right after that, and serve the very opposite purpose allowing me to listen to spoken, 'real' English/American. But still, I read a lot more than I watch movies/clips.
Oh, yeah, there's the Net: it feels so natural to be using the web that I often forget that I do most of my searching in English. And the results I get are 90% in English too: again, my formal education allowed me to do this, but doing it strengthens what I learned 'formally' through real practice!
It's funny how I had never really thought about the fact that I'm deep in P.L.E. until Sarah mentioned it...! But after reading her post and them reflecting on the ideas od 'mindmap' and Personal Learning Environment, I realised it all sort of makes sense.
Informal education always had a major importance in my life as a student, it always hepled me learn new things and English language in particular. Though I got my educational basis from school, I never really felt that once I got home I was through with learning. As a kid a was a bit nerdy (still am...) so I read a lot and asked grownups lots of dorky questions.
If you ask me, formal and informal education tend to overlap: one completes the other. If I hadn't had a strict English teacher in high school I'd have never understood I word of my crappy records, and without those r'n'r junkies I listened to all the time I wouldn't have been so fluent when it came to speaking English in class.
In my mindmap I tried to give some order to all the tools and experiences that contibute to the whole of my P.L.E. and I guess I included most of them. Of course the importance of the single 'nodes' differs somehow, but they all play a part.
When it's all said and done, I think most of my P.L.E. relates to the written word. Books are definitely my n.1 way to improve my English. Undubbed movies and shows come right after that, and serve the very opposite purpose allowing me to listen to spoken, 'real' English/American. But still, I read a lot more than I watch movies/clips.
Oh, yeah, there's the Net: it feels so natural to be using the web that I often forget that I do most of my searching in English. And the results I get are 90% in English too: again, my formal education allowed me to do this, but doing it strengthens what I learned 'formally' through real practice!
venerdì 30 novembre 2007
Online sources and whatnots
Reflecting on my personal criteria about how to judge web material and checking the links Sarah gave us, I realise that most of my filtering when searching for authoritative webpages basically boils down to my blind faith in good ol' Wikipedia...!
Its trustworthiness is not questionable, I guess. (I certainly hope so...)
The problem of finding out authoritative online sources among the magmatic bunch of information in the net is crucial. As a general criteria I rely more on books, therefore most of my searching takes place on the online catalogue of UniPd libraries and then in the libraries themselves.
When searching the net I tend to stick to these broad guidelines:
-use Wikipedia: it's a good point to start from, as it gives you basic info about pretty much anything no matter how obscure (provided that you go for the English version, of course) and it gives good links, both internal and external
-prefer sites marked with .edu or .ac urls, because they are university/college sources
-when having to pick some article or page out of a general search out of the blue, be very careful: before relying on it verify who wrote it, when it was written, if it's being updated, and most important check its bibliography/sources.
The links to UE, SFSU, OWL pretty much confirm the general idea that every web-surfer has about authoritative online sources: there's not many o them and you have to sweat to find them out. When starting an online research you have to focus on a lot of quality issues and ask yourself many questions just to be in the right frame of mind not to be fooled by the first page you run into. I guess it really is pretty true!...
Paradoxically enough, the moral of the story seems to be that you have to know what is 'authoritative' beforehand: the layman simple can't just go searching around for good stuff, or better yet he does so at his/her own risk!...
It really is a tough wwworld...
Its trustworthiness is not questionable, I guess. (I certainly hope so...)
The problem of finding out authoritative online sources among the magmatic bunch of information in the net is crucial. As a general criteria I rely more on books, therefore most of my searching takes place on the online catalogue of UniPd libraries and then in the libraries themselves.
When searching the net I tend to stick to these broad guidelines:
-use Wikipedia: it's a good point to start from, as it gives you basic info about pretty much anything no matter how obscure (provided that you go for the English version, of course) and it gives good links, both internal and external
-prefer sites marked with .edu or .ac urls, because they are university/college sources
-when having to pick some article or page out of a general search out of the blue, be very careful: before relying on it verify who wrote it, when it was written, if it's being updated, and most important check its bibliography/sources.
The links to UE, SFSU, OWL pretty much confirm the general idea that every web-surfer has about authoritative online sources: there's not many o them and you have to sweat to find them out. When starting an online research you have to focus on a lot of quality issues and ask yourself many questions just to be in the right frame of mind not to be fooled by the first page you run into. I guess it really is pretty true!...
Paradoxically enough, the moral of the story seems to be that you have to know what is 'authoritative' beforehand: the layman simple can't just go searching around for good stuff, or better yet he does so at his/her own risk!...
It really is a tough wwworld...
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