Flat Earth

[AndyID]

17 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

That's correct. But, it's a term that has been used in Britain for all Americans for well over 200 years. 

 

Yankee Doodle Dandy and YANKS GO HOME! as people were known to say around these parts. 

 

Even the film was called Yanks. Worth watching for the locos.

 

 

 

As an aside my cousin lived in America during the 1970s and early 1980s as his American dad was in the USAF. He was a massive Everton fan but couldn't get the merchandise so we used to send him parcels of it. By return me and my brother used to get sent the US sports merchandise which was much better. Red Sox, Patriots, Green Bay Packers, NY Yankees, etc. Hardly anyone in the UK had that sort of stuff. 

 

Because of that I ended up being a Yankees fan for some strange reason.

 

 

Jason

 

Look at it this way. If you went into a pub and addressed some Americans who were there, "You Yanks need to etc etc", how do you think that would go?

[steve1]

An American film:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yanks_Are_Coming_(1942_film)

 

steve

[Talltim]

On 24/11/2020 at 14:45, Steamport Southport said:

 

 

 

As an aside my cousin lived in America during the 1970s and early 1980s as his American dad was in the USAF. He was a massive Everton fan but couldn't get the merchandise so we used to send him parcels of it. By return me and my brother used to get sent the US sports merchandise which was much better. Red Sox, Patriots, Green Bay Packers, NY Yankees, etc. Hardly anyone in the UK had that sort of stuff. 

 

Because of that I ended up being a Yankees fan for some strange reason.

 

 

Jason

More or less rare in the UK than Everton stuff in the US☹️?

Edited November 25, 2020 by Talltim

[Ray Von]

I'll just leave this here...

[The Johnster]

Alfred Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift well illustrated...

[57xx]

On 12/11/2020 at 20:58, maico said:

 

Walter Bislin has had extended arguements with flatards over the last few years so came up with this brilliant interactive simulation of Atmospheric Refraction for both Globe Earth and Flat Earth models.

 

 

 

Flatards... haha I bet you have an oven glove ready for facepalming....

 

Edit: Seen your later post now, knew you were a CHL fan. That is a great channel.

Edited November 25, 2020 by 57xx

[Steamport Southport]

13 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Look at it this way. If you went into a pub and addressed some Americans who were there, "You Yanks need to etc etc", how do you think that would go?

 

 

Do all Americans take everything literally? 

 

I was pointing out a common phrase used in WWII FFS.

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

On 23/11/2020 at 19:41, AndyID said:

"Yanks" are Yankees, meaning they come from New England. That's a bit like calling everyone in the UK "Scousers".

 

On 24/11/2020 at 06:45, Steamport Southport said:

That's correct. But, it's a term that has been used in Britain for all Americans for well over 200 years. 

While the term has ben used self-referentially "over here*" by the likes of George M. Cohan a century ago, it's been a long time since anyone other than north easterners would identify as "Yankees" - other than fans of the baseball team.

 

* pun intended.

 

While Australians are usually willing to be called Aussies / Ozzies, with which slang expression would Britons prefer to be addressed?

 

Poms (used in Australia, usually with a couple of adjectives or as the adjective - pommy), Limeys (used occasionally in the US), or something else? 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Do all Americans take everything literally? 

To a surprising degree many do.

 

I'm not sure why exactly. Perhaps it's a manifestation of a couple of centuries of immigration with many people learning English as a second language and all the confusion that can bring.

[AndyID]

7 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

 

Do all Americans take everything literally? 

 

I was pointing out a common phrase used in WWII FFS.

 

 

 

I'm not taking it literally and while I am a US citizen I can also carry a UK passport. All I'm pointing out is that most Americans would object to be called Yanks to their faces. Particularly by winging .........OK. That's enough of that

[TheQ]

My Dear Chap,

British, or Welsh or Irish or English or Scots is quite appropriate. But what ever you do don't assume everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is English, as some Americans seem to do. There are of course those who live in Scotland who are not Scots but Gaels, and those in Kernow who say they are not English..

Those here in Norfolk are Angles with a bit of Viking in them, beyond that I could take several pages and still not cover everything.

 

But this being Norfolk everyone from out side the village is just a furriner

Edited November 26, 2020 by TheQ

[AndyID]

33 minutes ago, TheQ said:

My Dear Chap,

British, or Welsh or Irish or English or Scots is quite appropriate. But what ever you do don't assume everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is English, as some Americans seem to do. There are of course those who live in Scotland who are not Scots but Gaels, and those in Kernow who say they are not English..

Those here in Norfolk are Angles with a bit of Viking in them, beyond that I could take several pages and still not cover everything.

 

But this being Norfolk everyone from out side the village is just a furriner

 

Nonetheless are we not "All Jock Tamson's Bairns"?

[TheQ]

23 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Nonetheless are we not "All Jock Tamson's Bairns"?

To many in the Highlands that would be deeply offensive, Jock being a minister of the Church of Scotland, many being either Catholic or members of the Free Church of Scotland which broke away from the Church of Scotland in1843..

[Allegheny1600]

13 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

While Australians are usually willing to be called Aussies / Ozzies, with which slang expression would Britons prefer to be addressed?

 

Brits, I always thought that’s what most North American’s tend to address us by anyway!

[The Johnster]

Brit seems to be the common epiphet, used even by Britishers. 

 

The tendency of Americans to take everything literally may be part of their deep cultural history.  The 'Pilgrim Fathers' were what we would nowadays describe as fundmamentalist christians, who took scripture as literal fact and as an absolute guidance for how to live one's life, and based their society on that of the earliest christian chuches, the reason they left England and then Hollad in the first place.  These people were at the heart of what would come to be the dominant culture when the new nation formed and their influence can, I believe, still be easily detected in the dichotomous and puzzling (to Europeans, who have a generally more sophisticated and cynical approach) co-existence of a very repressive and strict christian morality alongside overtly liberal culture, the result of the desire to live according to scriptural rules and at the same time achieve freedom from the political class system of Europe after 400 years or so of modification by the mass immigration of people usually considered inferior by the status quo. 

 

The Declaration of Independences' first line after the semicolon asserts the equality of all members of society that was at the core of the Plymouth colony, and is a reaction to the system of nobles and royals that governed England at the time, and still do to some extent.  US legislation, morality, and societal structure is based on a) fundamentalist beliefs that take everything literally, then b) later racism and the aftermath of slavery, which the Plymouth colonists would have been horrified at but was at the core of the other English colony, Philadelphia.  The simplicity and to some extent naivety of their early records are both inspirational and highly descriptive; their leader writes with a keen eye and illuminates a world seen through the distorting lens of fundamentalist belief.  It is this that was at the core of the concept of 'Manifest Destiny', the racist belief that god had given the new land to the WASP race and sect.  This would also have been anathematic to the Plymouth settlers, who happily allied themselves with a native tribe that they descibed as savages, to the considerable benefit of both sides.  One of these 'savages' greeted them in English!

 

One can see how a fundamentalist mindset could develop the idea that the new land had been given to them, specifically them, by god as a reward for the sufferings they were undergoing in Europe.  The later settlers were, many of them, escaping untenable situatios in Europe, riven by the 30 years war (which if it was about anything was about religious fundamentalism), and civil war in Great Britain, an allegedly 'united' kingdom.  Clearances in Scotland and Ireland, and then in the 19th century the Great Famine, which affected Poland and the Ukraine terribly as well as Ireland, drove the next wave, and all the time the slave ships brought more and more Africans.  The thing was becoming a melting pot ruled by a WASP elite, a mockery of it's founding principles that pushed relentlessly west, but out of it came a powerful, free thinking, adaptive, and highly inventive nation better equipped than those of the old world to develop technology and innovation.  It still needs to rid itself of racism and religious intolerance, but who are we to take a moral high ground in these matters?

[Dagworth]

9 hours ago, TheQ said:

But this being Norfolk everyone from out side the village is just a furriner

Flipping Turnips! As they say "Norfolk an' good"

 

I grew up as a Suffolk Swede!

 

Please take this with the silliness meant and no offence intended.

 

Andi

[The Johnster]

National  Treasure Stephen Fry is from Norfolk, and told the story once on QI about a visit to Norwich hospital in which he observed the comment 'NFN' on the clipboard notice at the end of some patients' beds, where you might put 'DNR' or similar.  Apparently it stood for 'Normal, For Norfolk'...

[steve1]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Brit seems to be the common epiphet, used even by Britishers. 

 

The tendency of Americans to take everything literally may be part of their deep cultural history.  The 'Pilgrim Fathers' were what we would nowadays describe as fundmamentalist christians, who took scripture as literal fact and as an absolute guidance for how to live one's life, and based their society on that of the earliest christian chuches, the reason they left England and then Hollad in the first place.  These people were at the heart of what would come to be the dominant culture when the new nation formed and their influence can, I believe, still be easily detected in the dichotomous and puzzling (to Europeans, who have a generally more sophisticated and cynical approach) co-existence of a very repressive and strict christian morality alongside overtly liberal culture, the result of the desire to live according to scriptural rules and at the same time achieve freedom from the political class system of Europe after 400 years or so of modification by the mass immigration of people usually considered inferior by the status quo. 

 

The Declaration of Independences' first line after the semicolon asserts the equality of all members of society that was at the core of the Plymouth colony, and is a reaction to the system of nobles and royals that governed England at the time, and still do to some extent.  US legislation, morality, and societal structure is based on a) fundamentalist beliefs that take everything literally, then b) later racism and the aftermath of slavery, which the Plymouth colonists would have been horrified at but was at the core of the other English colony, Philadelphia.  The simplicity and to some extent naivety of their early records are both inspirational and highly descriptive; their leader writes with a keen eye and illuminates a world seen through the distorting lens of fundamentalist belief.  It is this that was at the core of the concept of 'Manifest Destiny', the racist belief that god had given the new land to the WASP race and sect.  This would also have been anathematic to the Plymouth settlers, who happily allied themselves with a native tribe that they descibed as savages, to the considerable benefit of both sides.  One of these 'savages' greeted them in English!

 

One can see how a fundamentalist mindset could develop the idea that the new land had been given to them, specifically them, by god as a reward for the sufferings they were undergoing in Europe.  The later settlers were, many of them, escaping untenable situatios in Europe, riven by the 30 years war (which if it was about anything was about religious fundamentalism), and civil war in Great Britain, an allegedly 'united' kingdom.  Clearances in Scotland and Ireland, and then in the 19th century the Great Famine, which affected Poland and the Ukraine terribly as well as Ireland, drove the next wave, and all the time the slave ships brought more and more Africans.  The thing was becoming a melting pot ruled by a WASP elite, a mockery of it's founding principles that pushed relentlessly west, but out of it came a powerful, free thinking, adaptive, and highly inventive nation better equipped than those of the old world to develop technology and innovation.  It still needs to rid itself of racism and religious intolerance, but who are we to take a moral high ground in these matters?

 

It is to hoped that the murderous grip that WASPs and similar white elites have on the USA (and other Western Democracies) is at last coming to an end. With the rise of the BLM movement, LGBT+ groups and the increasingly high profile of powerful women, a more equitable society could, I dearly hope for my grandchildren's sake, be on the horizon .

 

steve

[Joseph_Pestell]

18 minutes ago, steve1 said:

 

It is to hoped that the murderous grip that WASPs and similar white elites have on the USA (and other Western Democracies) is at last coming to an end. With the rise of the BLM movement, LGBT+ groups and the increasingly high profile of powerful women, a more equitable society could, I dearly hope for my grandchildren's sake, be on the horizon .

 

steve

 

I was surprised to learn that Biden will be only the second POTUS to be a Catholic.

[Allegheny1600]

We can but hope! (Ref: Steve1’s comment above)

I have read that the outgoing incumbent of the White House was merely a symptom of the USA rather than the cause of it’s present ills. In other words, the aggressive and racist undercurrent has been building for a long time. 

PS I used to have a very good American pen pal but it appears that we fell out after I mentioned just how well thought of, the White House fart is, on this side of the pond! I’m certainly not against a guy purely because of him being red or blue (I quite liked Reagan for example!), but my friend would hear nothing against the orange headed oaf!

 I think that when otherwise sensible and level headed people close their minds to someone’s character, it shows how insidious brainwashing due to the mejia can be.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Allegheny1600
Add post script

[Classsix T]

48 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

We can but hope! (Ref: Steve1’s comment above)

I have read that the outgoing incumbent of the White House was merely a symptom of the USA rather than the cause of it’s present ills. In other words, the aggressive and racist undercurrent has been building for a long time. 

Well quite. The Donald saw the potential of rhetoric spouted by Sarah Palin and her ilk and turned it up to eleven.

 

C6T. 

[Edwin_m]

1 hour ago, Allegheny1600 said:

We can but hope! (Ref: Steve1’s comment above)

I have read that the outgoing incumbent of the White House was merely a symptom of the USA rather than the cause of it’s present ills. In other words, the aggressive and racist undercurrent has been building for a long time. 

In some cases, since the Civil War.  

[Ozexpatriate]

9 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

In some cases, since the Civil War.  

Long before that. Controversially, "the 1619 project".

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I was surprised to learn that Biden will be only the second POTUS to be a Catholic.

 

Worrying, when you recall what happened to the last one...

[NorthBrit]

3 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Long before that. Controversially, "the 1619 project".

  Why?  What happened at nearly twenty past four in the afternoon?