What have we learned about the Indian Culture from the novel "The White Tiger"?

In the White Tiger, a guy named Balram is writing a letter to the Chinese premier Jiabao. Balram tells the Chinese premier about his life in India. As far as we have read (the first thirty pages), we didn't learn very much about the Indian Culture. It’s not very clear yet what is really a characteristic and what is not. Balram tells a story to Jiabao with two different points of views. The view of the media and foreigners, and his own point of view. For example, Indian people like to jump in the (holy) river Ganges, which is -according to Balram- a very dirty river. And many people in India are under-educated people, they're 'half-baked'. You can also make up of the first 30 pages that some kids go to school without having a name. This, however, is not immediately a characteristic of the Indian culture. When we're reading through the novel, we'll find more characteristics of the Indian culture I think.

TED Mark Pagel - How language transformed our humanity

I'm going to answer the question "What do you think about the fact that there's a dilemma in our modern globalized world. Whether to keep our 7,000 or 8,000 different languages or make the world as one world with one language.'

Well, I think that has some negative and positive sides. When everyone is going to change their language in the same one, teachers which teach people foreign language, will lose their job. Everybody is going to be the 'same' , there is no challenge anymore to learn how to speak another language with which you can communicate to foreign people. On the other hand, it'll make it easier to trade with eachother. When people speak the same language, there will be less of a barrier to understand eachother. Plus the fact that, like Mark Pagel said during his speech, the European Union will have to spend less/no money on translating all the reports into 23 different languages. This will save them billions of dollars! The money used for the translations could be used for Greece right now (for example).  I'm not supporter of the idea to make one world with only one language. It's hard to let all people adapt the new language. Besides, I think different languages are pretty much interesting!

There will be people who think: "YEAH! This is an amazing idea!". How will you change the language of people who live in the bush bush? Mark Pagel's speech was quite interesting, I'm wondering how different people think about this dilemma.

From metaphors we live by

Lakoff and Johnson have written a book about metaphors. Below you will read a short summary about the first seven chapters.

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, we can use metaphorical linguistic expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities.

A case of how a metaphorical concept can hide an aspect of our experience  can be seen in what Michael Reddy has called “conduit metaphor”.  The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers.

The linguistic expressions are containers for meanings aspect of the conduit metaphor entails that words and sentences have meanings in themselves, independent of any context or speaker. The meanings are objects part of the metaphor, entails that meanings have an existence independent of people and contexts. The part of the metaphor that says linguistic expressions are containers for meaning entails that words (and sentences) have meanings, again independent of context and speakers.
There are sentences that have no meaning without context, but there are cases where a single sentence will mean different things to different people.  The conduit metaphor does not fit cases where context is required to determine whether the sentence has many meanings at all and what meaning it has. 

Once we can identify our experiences as entities or substances, we can refer to them, categorize them , group them, and quantify them = REASON ABOUT THEM.
Ontological Metaphors are so natural, we don't notice them being a metaphor.



Different types of metaphors:
Structural Metaphors: one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another concept
Oriental Metaphors: have to do with spatial orientation (happy is up, sad is down)
Ontological Metaphors: entity and substance metaphor (Inflation: view it as an entitiy, refer to it, quantify and identify it)
Container Metaphors:
Land Areas: moving out, into another - we set boundaries for physical things, we define where the forest stops, we define when we're in or out a room.
Visual Field: we describe what we can or can not see.
Events, Actions, Activities, and States: Events are often viewed as a container object, Activities as substances. Activities are viewed as containers for the actions and other activities that make them up.
Personification: on-human objects or concepts are given human traits or described as if they were human.
Good things are UP, bad things are DOWN, fundamental concepts contain more or one spatialization metaphors. It is hard to distinguish the physical from the cultural basis of a metaphor, since the choice of one physical basis from among many possible ones has to do with cultural coherence.
Many of our values cohere with the metaphorical structure. Which values get priority depends on culture, subculture and your personal values.

School should start selling chips

We all love chips, especially when we have a period in school when we don't have class. This is why school should start selling chips. It's healthier than a sandwich because they fry it in natural fats. School will earn lots of money but, for us, a portion of chips will only cost €1! Besides the ridiculous cheap price, it is a perfect lunch for like once a week! Mayonnaise, JoppieSaus or the Macdonalds sauce will be included in the €1. Enough variation for everyone and it can make your day! Who does not want this?

Displace that place

This place, that place (Kiran Chandra) can be written with different words and letters and still sound the same. We had to analyse the following picture:

Analysis
My first impression was that it looked cool, interesting, challenging, strange but appealing. A lot of first impressions, haha. I think it is appealing because I find it interesting to look at such a pictures with text which creates different meanings while the sound stays the same. It is challenging to find out what they really mean by this.
Because of the white background, the black letters stand out. The basic colors make it very clear what is written in the picture. It's funny how different words can sound the same and how you can play with letters. I keep the meaning 'this place that place' in mind and for me while Kiran has used different words, I don't see another meaning. The same for when I keep the meaning 'displace that place' in mind.
I still can't figure out whether she's meant to say 'displace that place' or 'this place, that place', and to be honest, I don't even care about that. It's just cool for me how she shows that you can create different 3 sentences, which sound the same with different meanings.
After knowing the fact that Kiran was born in India, I think the right part of the upper picture must be a big city in India. Everything is a bit dirty and poor-ish.