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"Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@ntlworld.com> writes:
> Of course we all often take a local perspective. But then we don't draw a
> node on the diagram that's labelled "Root".
When I was a grad student in Edinburgh, I used to hear a lot of jokes
about how uneducated and self-centered Americans were: they knew no
history and no geography; their knowledge only went as far as their
backyard. I had no side in this debate, being neither American nor
European, but I enjoyed asking the jokers how much they knew outside
of /their/ European backyard, like how many US state capitals they
could enumerate. I eventually dropped that question, hard enough for
many Americans, and started asking how many /states/ they could
name. In two years, the most I got from any one person was 15.
I should add that most subjects were grad students and recent PhDs,
both British and from the Continent. The number of people who thought
NY, LA and Miami were capitals was embarrassing.
Ari.
--
Elections only count as free and trials as fair if you can lose money
betting on the outcome.
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