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One of the funnier pieces airing last year on the weekly CBC (Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation) comedy show, "This Hours Has 22 Minutes", was a
ongoing sketch titled "Talking to Americans". In each segment, a so-called
"reporter" would travel to various American venues, talking to people and
getting their feedback on various bogus news items on Canadian current
affairs.
The results were typically hilarious and were intended to point a satirical
finger at American ignorance of all things Canadian, their northerly
neighbour. Segments featured interviews in which people were told that the
Canadian National Igloo was melting and asked for advice on what to do,
asked whether they supported the U.S. bombing of Saskatchewan, how they felt
about Canada finally adopting the 24-hour day, and an honest-to-goodness
on-the-air interview with the then newly elected George W. Bush in which
Bush was asked whether he was looking forward to working with the Canadian
Prime Minister, Jean Poutine? Bush diplomatically replied he felt it would
be an honour. (Canada's Prime Minister at the time was Jean Chretien;
poutine is a French-Canadian dish of french fries with gravy and melted
cheese that tops out at well over 6,000 calories per serving.)
It was fun, but after a while it started feeling like the pickings were just
too easy, and the show began to lose some of its appeal.
Howard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ari@fdra.lib.aero [mailto:ari@fdra.lib.aero]On Behalf Of K. Ari
> Krupnikov
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 3:26 PM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Designing XML to Support Information Evolution
>
>
> "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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