HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-06-19, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1996 PAGE 5.
The truly
dangerous species
If you had to choose the most maligned
species of the 20th century, would you pick:
(a) cockroaches
(b) sharks
(c) lawyers
Cockroaches arc out. They're just doing
their job, cleaning up the messes we slob
humans leave behind. Lawyers don't qualify
either. They deserve all the malignity we can
heap on their weaselly little heads.
I would give the nod to sharks. They have
never enjoyed a good press. Ever since man
figured out how to put a barb on a hook,
sharks have been hauled out of the sea and
killed — sometimes for their livers,
sometimes for their oil. Mostly just because
they were sharks.
Not just hooks either. Sharks are routinely
shot, netted, poisoned — even dynamited. In
an average week, American "sportsmen"
haul close to half a million pounds of sharks
from the sea.
And it's a one-sided battle. In that same
average week, fewer than two people are
attacked by sharks anywhere in the world.
We still hate 'em with a passion.
A lot of the blame for this rampant
Misery has
company
Shortly after Mike Harris was elected as
premier of Ontario, I wrote that his position
was remarkably similar to that of President
Jacques Chirac of France. Both men were
prepared to cut back on the social, welfare
payments as well as reduce the level of the
government sector in order to come to grips
with an unsustainable budgetary deficit.
Of the two, Chirac has fared the worse. He
had to face a nationwide general strike that
all but shut the country down. There were
numerous cases of destruction and violence
and the end result was a partial scaling back
of the cuts which were scheduled to be
made.
The French strike was far more intense
than the recent one by Ontario public service
workers.
As for the one-day strikes on selected
cities put on by the Ontario labour
movement, the French would consider them
to be nothing more than some form of
entertainment.
Mr. Harris now has some more company,
in the person of German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl. Mr. Kohl, who may be considered the
dean of European politicians, has come to
the conclusion that France and Canada are
not the only places where some scaling back
has to be done; it must be carried out in
Germany as well.
The Germans are certainly very generous
when it comes to social welfare benefits;
they are just as generous when you look at
sharkophobia can be laid at the feet of Peter
Benchley. He's the guy who wrote Jaws, the
book about the monster Great White Shark
that was subsequently made into a monster
movie.
What did we learn from Jaws? That sharks
are malevolent, almost indestructible killers
with an insatiable appetite for human flesh.
"An eating machine" in Richard Dreyfus'
memorable words.
Well, hardly. Ninety per cent of the shark
species in the sea wouldn't bite you if you
lathered your foot in mayonnaise and
dangled it in front of their snouts.
As for the other 10 per cent, well they --
might take a chomp out of you, but you
might win next week's 649 and/or get hit on
the head by a meteorite. The chances are
about the same.
Mind you, when they do get a fit of the
munchies, many sharks aren't fussy.
Biologists dissecting the gut of one large
Great White found the hindquarters of a pig,
the front half of a dog, about 300 pounds of
horse meat, eight legs of mutton — and one
car battery.
Poor old sharks. They don't even get any
respect under the waves. A few years back
there was a story from one of the American
Marine World aquariums about a group of
dolphins that shared a tank with a 12-foot
shark.
They co-existed peacefully for many
months, until one of the female dolphins was
pay levels in the private sector. Labour costs
in that country are the highest in the
industrialized world, an average of Can
$43.30 an hour (Canada's is $24.30).
However, what is noticeable about the
German level is that close to $20 of that
hourly wage mentioned above, is for such
things as paid holidays and social security
contributions. (Canada's is about $6).
At any rate the German government has
decided it can no longer afford such
generous' benefits. Every so often the
government, business executives and trade
unionists sit down to discuss what, if
anything, ails the country and at the latest
chit-chat Chancellor Kohl suggested that
there should be cuts in the country's sick pay
which seemingly encourages a high rate of
absenteeism. The unionists did not buy the
argument at all and left in an angry frame of
mind.
Is there anything to this connection
between sick pay and absenteeism? It is
interesting to note that the country with the
three highest rates, Holland, Germany and
Sweden, all have very generous sick pay
benefits and, with the pronouncement of
Chancellor Kohl, all three countries are
trying to do something about it. They are
discovering, just as Mike Harris has, that
once you give people a certain level of
benefits, it is like pulling teeth to reduce
them. Recipients consider it a right rather
than a privilege.
What is the German government looking
at? It is not a very pretty picture to be sure
and includes anaemic growth, record levels
of unemployment, an unsustainable cost of
social security and a budgetary deficit this
year and next that could hold up German
participation in the development of the
European Economic Community. This is
about to give birth. Whereupon the rest of
the dolphins lined up at one end of the tank,
then raced through the water, one at a time,
smashing into the shark with their beaks.
The shark lasted about five minutes. When
the keepers hauled its carcass out of the tank,
they could find no marks at all on the outside
of the shark.
An autopsy revealed all the sharks internal
organs had been mashed to pulp.
But dolphin gangs are the least of a shark's
problems. It's humans who really do a job on
them. Fishermen kill them because they're
competition. Resort owners kill them
because they frighten tourists. Sports
fishermen kill them because it makes them
feel macho, I suppose.
You'll hear lots of kind words about
humpback whales and bottlenose(' porpoises
and harp seals, but not sharks. The irony is,
sharks aren't even close to being the
bitingest animal on the planet. You've got a
better chance of getting bitten by a Pekinese
than a shark.
Or by a rat. Rats bite lots more humans
than sharks do. Why, each year more than
300 people are bitten by rates in New York
City alone.
Mind you, each year more than 1,500 New
Yorkers suffer bites from an even more
exotic species.
Other New Yorkers. Two-legged ones.
Which tells you which species on this
planet is truly the most dangerous one.
nothing less than embarrassing to Mr. Kohl
since Germany has traditionally been an
exemplary leader.
It is to be hoped that leaders on both sides
of the ocean will have learned a very
important lesson. Using deficit financing to
provide voters with all sorts of goodies that
cannot be afforded in the long run is
tantamount to playing with fire. Trying to
put out the fire is fast becoming a job that is
going to stretch into the next century.
Mr. Harris and Mr. Chretien, move over
for Herr Kohl.
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The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Planning to study,
not best study plan
Studying.
It's not something that for many comes
naturally. It requires focus and a plan. It's a
difficult task to begin, a challenge to stick
with and a practice that when done well can
determine the type of student you'll be.
I, unfortunately, was someone who didn't
do it well. Easing through elementary
school, I managed passable grades with little
reflection on the work to date during my
early high school years. However, by Grade
11, I had learned two valuable lessons, the
first being that to succeed I must study and
the second being that I didn't know how.
Determined to make the grade, I.
sequestered myself in my bedroom, alone
with my books. Amazingly, I discovered that
the silence was more conducive to
distraction than concentration as my dreamy
intellect wandered fancifully in this chamber
of solitude.
My loves, my interests are literature,
music, drama. In these I could find my
focus. But when the analytical subjects
required my attention they were an
unwelcome intrusion, invaders that I was
neither comfortable with nor with whom
could converse.
While English, French and the arts were
absorbed in the classroom, maths and
sciences were foreign languages to me.
Though I could memorize the dates and
events of history, the names and places in
geography, I found there was no help for me
with algebra. What I may have had a passing
understanding of in September was clearly
past understanding in June. 3x2y + 8y2 -9
was, for a young person so unenthused by
the mathematical equation, useless
information.
This was part of the difficulty in studying.
I knew my limitations so obviously I was not
interested in any career that was going to
require me to do much beyond the basics.
However, as a five-year Arts and Science
student (Now there's an oxymoron) it was
mandatory that my mind be dizzied by a
subject that ovewhelmed me. Let me add,
subtract, multiply and divide. Teach me
fractions and percentages, measurements and
weight. That made sense and I knew it
would come in handy. I am 41 years old and
I have never missed what I could not learn.
Sunday, I was helping my daughter study
for her science exam. As we developed ways
to remember the symbols for elements, I
couldn't help wondering when she would
actually ever need to know these things.
Like her mother, her interests lie in the
artistic, so I rather doubt she will use much
of the information she acquires in science.
But, while the usefulness of what she was
learning may have been lost on me, the
value of mentally cataloguing it in
preparation for an exam, may have been the
best lesson of all. It is building that muscle
we refer to as the brain, exercising that mass
of grey matter and cells that will improve
your ability to learn and remember. As a
daily fitness regimen will improve body and
spirit, reviewing the day's schoolwork will
improve the mind. While having a study
plan may not have brought me an A in math,
it might have made learning it less a failure.
International Scene
By Raymond Canon