Virtually Home

Yesterday I went to see The Box with Anthony, which, by the way, was pretty confusing and not at all what I expected. But beforehand, during the inevitable pre-preview commercials, I saw something I've never seen before. A commercial soliciting volunteers for the French Army! And I was struck by all the differences in the advertising campaigns. Lately, the US Army ads I've seen have been all electric guitars and montages of guys doing things like scaling cliffs alone, or drilling with rifles in the rain. The French ad, on the other hand, was all about interspersing images of soldier life and personal life -- I guess kind of like the ads for the Reserves at home. The guy would be on a motorcycle with his girlfriend, and then he'd be leading a troop of uniformed soldiers out of a helicopter, and making hand signs. There was always lots of technology in the picture, and no silly feats of strength. The shots never focused on the guns. There were no swords, and there were no...

This post is going to be kind of schizophrenic, as I have a lot of very short things to say. Every day I am increasingly embarrassed by the American reputation abroad inspired by the Bush era and the Iraq war -- and also about our culture's relative disregard for other cultures. Every exchange student I meet speaks at least three languages -- one of their native country and two others. Some of them speak more. A lot of the exchange students who are studying here will go on to spend another year or another semester in another country to practice their third language. By contrast, our two "mandatory" years of language in high school seem to pale, and a lot majors don't even require college-level language courses if the high school requirement has been completed (Engineers, mainly). It's silly. When I was in the exchange students meeting today, the auditorium was empty of Americans -- mostly because they're all in French as a second language classes already. ...