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Nostalgia of Monkeys past…

I listened to Lily Allen’s Debut album recently, and noticed an interesting dissonance in how she sings. She sings with a very pronounced Cockney accent (if you’re not familiar with it, think Ali G). Her family background, however, is very upper-class/private school, which would really be more of an Estuary or received pronunciation English.

I do have some fascination about accents, primarily out of curiosity as to my accent. My curious upbringing and dependence on movies for vocabulary and diction certainly makes my accent sort of neutral. I’ve had people say that my accent is that of a “Midwest News Anchor”, or very neutral. It’s weird though, because even though most people can’t pick up my accent, I can. I catch myself consciously making generalizations, watching my Rs and glottal stops. I’ve met people of similar background as me who can immediately snap into any accent they please, or people who were “raised” British, but have a completely American accent. My own sister has no accent in the three languages she speaks (and is rapidly working on beating me to a fourth). I’ve also met people with fascinating and charming accents (including a college admission official who spoke with simultaneous British and Texan accents), which made the following site just a treasure trove:

The site contains a collection of audio files of people from around the world reading aloud the same passage of text, followed by an IPA description of the differences between each accent. It’s interesting to see that yes, California does have an accent, while the Brooklyn accent is just stereotypically hilarious.

It’s said that the two issues which are absolute taboos on a first date are politics and religion. Perhaps because both are based on opinion. I often say that an exception applied to journalists, who make a living out of presenting a neutral point-of-view. So when I saw the following CNN round-table, I was shocked at the lack of balance and professionalism displayed by CNN:

It’s made the Digg rounds and apparently resulted in CNN calling in the shock troops (pun intended) by having Richard Dawkins appear tonight. Then I found the following discussion show which took place after a screening of Richard Dawkins’ “The Root of All Evil?”. It’s 41 minutes long and worth every single minute:

Unbelievable! I cannot fathom this type of discussion occurring in the US. The audience was by far the best thermometer of the rationality and dispassion of Canadians. They did not let a single cheap remark go unpunished. Why is it that this type of discussion happens everywhere else but the US? (Even in Brazil we had something similar, remember “Programa Livre” with Serginho Groisman?) Why is the US reduced to programs like Crossfire and talking heads who are vitriolic, intolerant and, case in point with the CNN piece, ignorant? I hate to say it, but I doubt we would’ve heard those same moans and groans from an American audience. I sincerely hope the American audience would’ve disagreed just as strongly or vocally with the gentleman from the Canadian Christian College. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, I sincerely hope so, otherwise we’re all screwed.

BTW, how about Avi Lewis, huh? The guy was on point and pressed hard–makes Anderson Cooper look like a ballerina.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man. ”

–George Bernard Shaw, Revolutionist’s Handbook

I would not call Ralph Nader an unreasonable man. A more apt description is principled to a fault.

I just finished watching this documentary, which thanks to IFC’s brilliance in humility, recognized its distribution will always be limited and provided their movies concurrently on both on-demand and theaters (The theater closest to me playing this is, ironically enough, Coolidge Corner). It was a very well done documentary, which reminded me in style of the American Experience episode on Alfred Kinsey. I knew a bit about Nader and his advocacy and certainly remembered him in the 2000 election and the subsequent 2004 election. I’ll never forget Bill Maher bringing Nader on his show so Maher and Michael Moore could beg on their knees for Nader to run. I had never really heard anyone describe Nader personally, or even him talking about his rationale for things, my impression of him being no more than a recollection of his talking points.

It was a certainly interesting picture, since unlike Errol Morris’ The Fog of War, (which I also reviewed here) there was no real mystery as to the character of Nader. Thirty minutes into the movie, you see Nader as the epitome of an man of principles, who will not compromise with his own conscience. Two parallels immediately follow for me: one with Robert McNamara and the other with (yes) George W. Bush. (more…)