Thor's Blogs - thormay.net

Australia is a spacious place. Take an evening flight from the scurrying ant heap of some city in East Asia, settle down for a fitful sleep in cattle class, then lift the porthole shutter at dawn and gaze from 10,000 meters upon a continent in blazing creation. You are an avatar, a messenger come for strange messages from other gods in a strange land. The sun rises like a meteor, the night chill upon the land below shrinks like plastic wrap on an oven plate, and in a trice you are hovering above a terrifying, trackless waste of shimmering browns and reds and yellows, bony ridges of old rocks, sometimes a scar where a river might have been a million years ago. It goes on and on for hours. It is Australia, and it isn’t home.... more

- Carbon Footprint

I live on a quiet street. The traffic might be three cars a day. Outside of my window now though, a huge white truck has just arrived. It must be worth as least $150,000. Three hefty men climb down from the cab. One folds his arm and watches. One picks up a rake from the back of the truck, and one picks up a scoop. I’m a bit mystified because this is the kind of street that has nicely trimmed lawns, definitely a short-back-and-sides street where people tidily roll out their council bin once a week and dust their letter boxes. The swat team in their fluorescent jackets has seen something though that eluded my careless gaze. In the gutter is a small collection of leaves. Heck, there must be twenty leaves. So the man with the rake swats the leaves into the scoop man’s scoop, and the scoop man solemnly tips the leaves into the back of the truck. The supervisor unfolds his arms and they climb back into their monster truck. The machinery rumbles off with an enormous roar, enough power to generate electricity for a small town.

The Peoples Republic of China has many faces, and its inhabitants come in every imaginable shade of character. The seven deadly sins are richly represented, and a healthy bouquet of virtues can be found as well. There are however some constants in public life. Whoever the PRC belongs to, it is not Joe Wang and Molly Liu on Jiefang Lu in any of the 700 cities or countless thousands of villages. It probably isn’t the old men in Zhongnan Hai either, or even the Black Hands that shadow every lucrative trade. Perhaps, in the tradition captured so well by Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the place is really owned by some prissy field mice wheeling a UFO above the Yellow River plains. In any case, it is totally predictable in every imaginable situation that in China nobody traceable is responsible for anything, ever.

1.1. Ducks _ _ _ _ [add one word / add one word / add one word …. complete this sentence ] (class game)

1.1.3 Would Australians choose the same words as Americans? .... continue reading

4. Unwise Ideas (most content still remains here at http://thormay.net. All writings will take quite a while to transfer)

Imagine meeting a man who, without asking, gave you gifts of great value. At first you might be pleased, though a little embarrassed since you had nothing of obvious value to offer him in return. However, this man had no interest in whatever humble things you might proffer anyway, but each day insisted on giving you new gifts. Shortly you would probably begin to resent the fellow, and wonder if you were merely a vehicle for promoting his glory (yes, there are echoes with religion in this business too). The sullen students that I meet have had the gift of education shoved down their throats for most of their short lives. They are held captive to receive this gift, and are considered ingrates if they question it at all. The human spirit would be entirely dead if they were not simmering with revolt...

If some people don't break the rules sometimes, then a normal society will cease to function. Breaking the wrong rules for the wrong reasons is like breaking legs though. And if everyone breaks the rules, then a society will disintegrate. A paradox? Yes. See how this cake is baked... more.

This is a small collection of short biographical videos, a teaching demonstration, and some recitations of my own verse, together with several well-known verse ballads (for the benefit of learners of English). The blog duplicates material already on thormay.net at http://thormay.net/video/videondx.html