Going back in time

Ok, so let me sit down and think what I would change in the past if I had the ability to go back in time. (well, according to the string theory, time is non-linear... but I digress)

Generally speaking, history is a complicated... thing. It's composed of thousands of factors which interact with one another, which means that changing even one thing in history may have extremely complicated consequences.

For example, a lot of people, if given the chance to go back in time and change something, would kill Adolf Hitler, and thus prevent the outbreak of World War 2. I mean, come on, that's a no-brainer, right? Kill Hitler, millions of lives saved. Well, as it turns out, even such a seemingly obvious choice is... well, let's just say that it's far more complex than it looks at first glance.

So what if World War 2 never had happened? Let's see...

* No Holocaust. Well, most likely, because anti-Semitic sentiments were quite popular in the early 20th century in Europe, so lynchings, persecutions etc. would still take place. Furthermore, no Holocaust = no Jewish migration after WW2 = the state of Israel would not have been created.

* small conflicts would erupt across Europe anyway, most likely due to the fact that nationalism was on the rise and the badly damaged European countries desperately needed something to boost their economy (i.e., a military conflict). The American economy would take much more time to recover to its pre-Great Depression levels (assuming it would manage to recover at all).

* the grand irony: if not for WW 2, it would take much more time for the general public to completely reject the idea of racism and start considering it as something evil. The atrocities of the second World War were an example: they showed how much damage can nationalism and racism cause. Think of it as of a tragic even that shocked people so much that they opened their eyes to see what racism really is.

* Britain would, most likely, still be a colonial empire. Alternatively, the process of decolonisation would start much later and take much more time.

The battle of Stalingrad

* before and during WW2 a lot of nuclear physicists fled from Germany to the US, usually because of persecutions or on ideological grounds. These scientists later helped to create the American nuclear bomb. So, if the Nazi party hadn't taken over Germany, these scientists would not have had any reasons to left their country, and they wouldn't help Americans develop the nuclear bomb. Therefore, there is a chance that the Soviets would have completed the nuclear bomb first, before the Americans. Having this advantage, the Soviet Union could have started a war with the West - and win it.

* Finally, there is technology. During war time, scientists focus on branches of science that can be used in warfare, paying less attention to less combat-oriented disciplines. Therefore, if WW 2 had never occurred, modern technology would look completely different. The development of, for example, jet engine helicopter and, most importantly, electronics, would take much more time. However, it is quite possible that scientists would invent other things, ones more useful in times not dominated by a total war. So, to sum up: we would have less efficient computers (if we would have any at all), but we would get some... other... unspecified inventions.

And another example: a lot of people may think of preventing the sinking of the RMS Titanic. But then, the sinking of the Titanic lead to positive changes in safety practices. Most notably, the sinking of the Titanic was the direct reason for the creation of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (which, for example, regulates how many lifeboats ships need to have). More info can be found Here.

So, as you may see, each change in history may have far-reaching consequences. Change one factor, and you change a lot of other things. Furthermore, if we add the butterfly effect into the equation, we may come to a conclusion that it is impossible to predict how history will behave if we change one single thing.

But, from a more personal point of view, one good idea would be to go back in time and prevent the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (the one that killed the dinosaurs), simply because I find the idea of having sentient reptiles to be quite awesome. But on the other hand... It may be a bit difficult to prevent the extinction of thousands of species using only a universal screwdriver.

Also, about the Doctor Who TV show... I heard a lot about it, I even wanted to watch some episodes, but somehow I never got round to it. Anyway, when I hear "Doctor Who", the first thing that comes to my mind is this:

Yes, there is a ponified version of everything.

Inspiring people

After a brief consideration of the topic I came up with a rather long list of people who have, at least to some extent, influenced me. However, due to the fact that I'm supposed to write a blog entry, not an entire book, I decided to limit my scope to one person, with a small mention of several other people.

So I decided to focus mainly on this lady:

Lauren Faust's photo. Source: Wikipedia.

Lauren Faust. The person behind several extremely successful animated shows and movies. What I find most fascinating about her is the fact that she's an artistic powerhouse: she's an artist, animator and a writer. She worked as a supervising producer, story supervisor and executive on several shows. Furthermore, back in 1994 she even worked as a voice actor in "Home, Honey, I'm High."

The first big movie she worked on (as an animator) was Iron Giant, released in 1999. Although the movie turned out to be a box office bomb, it received universal critical acclaim. Furthermore, in the early 2000s, the movie managed to attract a cult following among adult audience, largely because of the fact that it touches the subject of Cold War. The ability to attract adult audiences would be characteristic for all other projects involving Faust.

The Iron Giant" poster. Notice the 50s stylization.

She has also worked as a storyboard artist, writer, director and supervising director on Th Powerpuff Girls. Just like the Iron Giant, this show also managed to get the attention of adult audiences. The exact same thing can be said about Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. It's worth mentioning that both of these shows were created by her husband, Craig McCracken.

Even though Faust put a considerable amount of effort into these shows, her true magnum opus is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (also known as MLP: FiM) She created the show almost from scratch, using not only her artistic skills, but also drawing from her own childhood memories. What is most amazing is the fact that Faust managed to change a mediocre (or sometimes terrible) show into something more. Although seemingly colorful and childish at first glance, the show is actually much deeper and not nearly as infantile as the previous generations of My Little Pony shows. It even has a lot of character developement; for instance, in some episodes the main characters experience a mental breakdown, which sometimes reveals their deeply hidden fears. And this is not something you wouldn't expect from this kind of show. All thanks to Faust who decided to do something new with the show and break the cliches surrounding the franchise.

Traditionally for Faust, the show has managed to create a cult following among adult audiences. Adult fans of FiM call themselves "bronies" and are a quite large Internet subculture. Proof? For example, Equestria Daily, the most popular site related to the show, is about to hit 150.000.000 pageviews, and one can find literally thousands of fan-made movies and music on YouTube, such as this remix of the songs from the show. Not to even mention countless, often high-quality, drawings.

Finally, Faust is a social liberal which I, due to my world view, welcome with open arms.

So, to sum up (at least this part of the text). Why do I admire Faust? Skill, passion, and the fact that she's an artistic jack-of-all-trades. She has her heart in the right place and can make shows which are entertaining for both kids and adults.

Now, for the forementioned "small mention"...

I find Carl Sagan to be a truly fascinating person. He managed to popularize science, being able to explain even the most complex concepts in layman's terms. Furthermore, he had a sense of mission: he felt that what he was doing was not only his job, but also a way of changing the world for the better.

The next person (out of many) on my "awesome" list is the recently-late Christopher Hitchens. I could elaborate for a long time explaining the reasons why, but perhaps Richard Dawkins expressed them in the best manner possible:
"He's a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusions bigger than anybody I know. And I live in Oxford. (...) He's a reader, whose breadth of reading is simultaneously so deep and comprehensive so as to deserve the slightly stuffy word: learned. Except that Christopher is the least stuffy person you will ever meet."

Finally, I left what I like the most for the end. In this case, a bit of a more personal touch: I adore some artists who create reptile-related works and publish it on the Internet, such as HidesHisFace  I'm always astonished by how much self-taught artists can achieve. Plus, in my opinion, reptiles are characterized by extremely high levels of awesomeness.

On language learning

This entry was inspired by an article in 'The observer".

Generally speaking, the article is about the downsides of not learning a foreign language. But before I'll move on to the article itself, I'll try to look at it from a more personal perspective, by answering a question: "imagine what your life would be like if you didn't know any foreign language"

To say that its quality would decrease is  an understatement, as not knowing English would quite severely limit... pretty much everything that I experience.

To begin with, no English would mean that I would be unable read practically any Internet website that I regularly access. No BBC, no forums, no English Wikipedia, no gaming news sites, no Equestria Daily, no YouTube. Sure, most of these sites have their Polish equivalents. But Polish Wikipedia is not only underdeveloped, but also biased beyond all recognition (example: article about homosexuality written by homophobes); a significant portion of Polish media tend to support one political party or the other; and Polish gaming news sites... well, they take their news from  the English-speaking sites, so basically it's second-hand information. And, as far as YT is concerned: all my favourite video blogs are in English, and all the videos that I like to browse are also in English. And I seriously doubt that there are Polish equivalents of users such as Thunderf00t, TheraminTrees or all these fan-made Pony-related videos.

And then there are the movies and TV shows and all that other similar... products. For me it's simply necessary to watch them in English for several reasons. One: Polish translations are often terrible: they can't even get the title translation right ("Prison Break" was translated as "Skazany na śmierć", which in Polish means... "Sentenced to death."). Two: Polish movies in TV often use the voice-over (Gavrilov's) technique, which basically kills all the voice acting and gives all the characters the same voice. And if they use dubbing... then it's even worse. Polish voice actors can suck the life out of a character, making a very well-fitting voice something terrible to listen to. And while there are exceptions to this rule... well, it's just the minority of voice acting.

And now to the point, which is related the arguments used in aforementioned article to support the idea that it is absolutely necessary to learn foreign languages.

First of all, for a significant number of people the pragmatic argument behind learning a foreign language is more than enough. The knowledge of foreign languages makes it easier to find a job in virtually any field. Furthermore, learning a language that is a lingua franca (be it local or global) provides a lot of benefits, such as the ability to become friends with people living abroad and being able to use more sources of knowledge.

Second of all, there's the question of using language learning to combat xenophobia. This, however, may prove to be problematic. The amount of evidence against racism is simply overwhelming: this means that if someone is racist, their racism is based not on reason and evidence, but on some deeply rooted, subconscious convictions, or rather: issues. It may, therefore, prove to be almost impossible to root out their racism without dealing with the issues that are the true reason of their hatemongering attitude. And learning language, and thus learning, at least to some extent, about different cultures, may be counted as rational evidence. Therefore, the conclusion is that a racist person does not need education (as it has already been provided), but rather a therapy.

The third argument supporting FLL is the fact that a lot of foreign literature should be read in the original. Translations, as good as the sometimes may be, usually are not able to convey the exact same impression in a way the original does.

And, finally, you may find it interesting that being bilingual actually decreases the chances of several degenerative neurological diseases, such as Alzcheimer's or multiple sclerosis.

By the way, I'm quite surprised by the fact that it was the Labour party that removed foreign languages from "core curriculum". Cutting education budget and removing something that, is supposed to strengthen multiculturalism isn't what I would expect after the political left.

Smile smile smile

Originally this entry was supposed to be about how Daniel Ingram's "At the Gala" had been inspired by "Ever after" from "Into The Woods".

But that idea came to my head over a week ago, and before I managed to execute it I saw this:

And nothing remained untouched. 

What I find most surprising about this video is the fact that not only do  the song and the video fit perfectly together, but also the fact that the song is MUCH better when combined with the video. Don't get me wrong, the song itself was leaked like 3 or 4 months ago and I really liked it, but after I heard the song and saw the video the level of awesomeness shot through the roof and ended up as a double rainbow on the sky.

And YES, one day I will use this song to teach listening comprehension.