While reading Noe’s article, I couldn’t help but be skeptical of the explanation given behind the reason for writing down play by plays. Historically, baseball games were broadcast via the radio. I’ve always thought that scorekeeping came out of the need for a visual stimulant while listening to the audio feed. Not everyone is an audio learner. Having a visual key to the game keeps you physically in contact with the game, both tangibly and visually. Personally, I find watching baseball boring enough. I cannot imagine being riveted and alert for hours upon hours listening to it on the radio. Maybe this is just me ...
On an unrelated note, I recently had a conversation with a friend. We were discussing Islamophobia, and how overrepresented crimes perpetrated by Muslims are in the media. We came across this eyeopening article:
I highly recommend quizzing people/self-quizzing! It’s shocking and eye-opening. I was quite wrong with some of my statistical guesses. How did you fare?
I really liked reading through all of these statistics. In particular I liked the immigration question, and the number of Canadians listed as immigrants. I would have guessed a much higher number, but then I think that I think of most people as immigrants because almost everyone here can trace their roots to somewhere that isn't Canada. It made me wonder if coming from a country where immigration has been so important in recent (or fairly recent) history had an impact on the average guess. It looks like Canada, the United States, and Australia all guessed similar numbers - but then so did Italy, Belgium, and France.
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ReplyDeleteMargot, I think you brought up a very good point that most Canadians can trace their roots back to other countries around the world. In fact, I believe the only people who can consider themselves truly Canadian are those who are native to Canada, for example, Aboriginal and Inuit Peoples. Still, there is often an "us vs. them" mentality that Canadians (as well as many other residents of other countries) feel towards new(er) immigrants and refugees. It is a sad truth that muany of these mentalities stem from the media, which Maggie mentioned above. The media often portrays people in a certain way and makes it easy for the general public to overgeneralize small pieces of information (or statistics) to large groups of people. For example, just because the media has stated that ISIS, an Islamic extremist group, has made X amount of terrorist attacks within the last year does not mean that every person who practices the Islamic faith is a terrorist too. It definitely doesn't help that potential political leaders like Donald Trump, who is running for President of the United States, puts forth ideas such as registering mandatory ID cards to all Muslims.
ReplyDeleteA few months ago I came across this YouTube video titled, "I'm Muslim, But I'm Not..." It's a wonderful two minute video that helps destroy stereotypes of what it means to be Muslim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMQjyRc7eiY