[QUOTE=brianjedi]
So in your mind, the Cards would have to beat the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters to be called “World Champions,” despite the Central and Pacific Leagues being considered somewhere between AAA and MLB in terms of quality?[\QUOTE]Nope. But there would need to be some means by which the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters could qualify to compete for the championship for the winners to be eligible to call themselves “Wolrd Champions”.
Nope. But there would need to be some means by which the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters could qualify to compete for the championship for the winners to be eligible to call themselves “Wolrd Champions”.
I think where you fail (and spectacularly at that) is believing that there is one universal American Dream. I don’t think that’s correct at all.
Everyone has their personal dream, and if you look at them all together, they may make up The American Dream ™.
Example: I was born, essentially, poor. Very poor. I often refer to my upbringing as being Poor White Trash. That’s what I was. However, through hard work and an understanding of the way the world works, I’ve managed to pull myself up to middle class. My Dream comes in two parts… one part I’ve succeeded in already. I’ve pulled myself up. Now comes My Dream, part 2, and that’s making sure my children not only never have to think of themselves as Poor White Trash, but also that they have the opportunity to move just a bit higher up that ol’ ladder.
And, before you call your version of the dream (making it to the Upper Class), would you be so kind as to define what makes someone Upper Class?
I agree completely.
You see, I didn’t really want to be a law student… I wanted to be a Lumberjack, leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Colombia! 
I’ll get my coat…
I’ve found that too, but it also applies to the British (who don’t bother with the name of the country on their coins because there is nowhere else). As a postal worker, I find that a rather large amount of mail going to the US and the UK does not have the name of the country on it. We’re supposed to know.
Very true. We also have “The Open”, not “The British Open” golf championship. And it is The Times, not The London Times.
Back in the dark days of the internet, before I discovered message boards, I used to go to chat rooms. Now admittedly the following person might have been very young, but the conversation went like this:
Where ya from?
Sydney, Australia.
Haha. No, where you from really?
Sydney, Australia.
No, no. I mean, like CA, NY, FL and stuff.
Sydney. Australia.
That’s not cool man. Don’t like to me.
Okay… where do you want me to be from? Tell me, and I’ll say I’m from there…
user has left the room
Well actually the reason our stamps don’t have a name on is simple.
We were the first country to issue stamps and figured that it wasn’t neccessary to have GB on them because of this.
Dunno about coins tho’
We stick the queen’s head on everything - doesn’t everyone recognise her?
Doesn’t surprise me. One question though. Did you get the impression that the other person (a) had never heard of Sydney (or Australia); or (b) assumed that no one outside the US could possibly be connected to “our” internet?
College athletics (Division I, especially) in the US really is strange. It’s the product of over 100 years of evolution. Originally, a college football team was a collection of college students who enjoyed playing football. It was an athletic club like sculling or boxing (in a Hollywood movie that takes place in the late 19th or early 20th Century, any character who is identified as being a varsity boxer for an Ivy League school will get his ass beat by a workingman). There were plenty of amateur football clubs that were not part of a university, too. Some were affiliated with a neighborhood, or a place of employment, or an ethnic group, or a small town.
The intercollegiate games drew the largest crowds, though, because the rest of the student body had an obvious rooting interest. The large land-grant and state universities also developed followers who were not students, because they represented their state. The newspapers started following the teams, because it was had a built-in dramatic story that was easy to get (although some were easier than others). When the professional leagues formed, colleges servedas minor league, and gradually the “college” part of college athletics got less and less important.
The “Valiant cheer-leader,” as one article from the time put it, was originally a male, and a leader among his peers. I’m not sure when it changed to chicks in short skirts, but it was long before George Bush did it.
This is a bit of a hijack (sorry), but I have a question for any Irish or UK dopers.
I have several cousins who live in your neck of the woods. One of them has just announced that she is surprising her new husband with a quick vacation trip to the US (as a Christmas present). They’ll be staying with my parents.
In January. To Chicago. For 5 days.
She’s mentioned that she hopes to see my sister when she’s here. My sister lives in Richmond, Virginia.
This cousin isn’t stupid or anything, and although she hasn’t travelled much, most of her immediate family has visited the US at least once. Also, she and her family have often hosted American visitors. Can she be completely unaware that (a) the US is a very big country and (b) it can get very, very cold in the northern US in January, and isn’t the best time for a tourist to visit?
Don’t get me wrong. My mother is looking forward to the visit, and my cousin is welcome to visit at any time. I’m just sorry that she won’t be able to enjoy Chicago at its best. Oh well. She and my mother can look at family photos in front of the fireplace, I suppose. I feel sorry for the husband, though.
“The American Dream” has changed a lot through the years. It started with the Horatio Alger myths and grew from there. In some cases (I’d say they’re rare cases) the American Dream lives on as it was originally written. These days, you’ll find people that gain fame playing video games or posting videos on YouTube. It’s not textbook Alger, but it’s the version we’re running right now.
Dead? Not quite. Looking more bleak as time passes by? I don’t see how anyone can argue that it’s not.
It’s funny you say that. Sometimes it irrates me that I have to put the country in on a website asking for an address. Also, why do I have to scroll all the way to the “U’s” to find the United States. It should be at the top.
Possibly, possibly not. Some people certainly wouldn’t realise the scale of the country. However, even those of us who do still can struggle to start thinking on those terms - while planning a holiday in Canada last year, I had a big map spread across a dining table, and ended up cutting a piece of card to the same scale for the distance of London-Edinburgh, to keep a sense of proportion.
She’s quite possibly not aware of this. Bear in mind how winter in Chicago/Boston/wherever tends to be portrayed in films and TV (for example ER), all Richard Curtis-style romantic breath-mist-and-mittens.
We’ve (historically) got a problem with race and culture. We’ve got people moving here from other countries that want to keep their culture alive, and feel the need to hyphenate their status. Then you have people that have lived here that wish to do the same. Then you have political correctness and the need to be part of a group and support circles from that. It’s a very interesting and big question that has no real tidy answer.
A lot of people are obsessed with their backgrounds, but they’re raised that way. The reasoning for that upbringing can change from hosuehold to household in some cases, or it can simply be one of the reasons I named before.
Personally, there shouldn’t be any Irish or African or Italian in “American”. “American” is good enough, as far as I’m concerned. Then again, I don’t have some rich cultural heritage and the desire to have such baggage carried to my next of kin.
This reminds me of my British relatives, who, when they came over to visit us in the Toronto area, wanted to see Niagara Falls and the Rocky Mountains on the same weekend. Just a couple of day trips in the car, right?
Quite likely she does not know just how big. Atlanta looks to be near the east coast, relatively speaking, but my relatives were astonished to hear it is a five hour drive to the beach. You can’t drive that far in England without falling off the edge (or, worse, ending up in Scotland).
It’s not only Brits with comprehension problems, though. I know a well-educated American who was planning a vacation in Alaska. He thought it would be fun to drive there from his home in North Carolina. On trying to plan the journey, he worked out he would get as far as Minnesota before having to turn around and come hime again.
Chicago is at about the same latitude as balmy Mediterranean places like Rome and Madrid.
Many Brits, while possibly constrained by school holidays, also do not realize that July/August is a terrible time to visit Orlando and stand outside in long lines of people. We do not understand the concept of “too hot and humid”. Summer is when you go places on yer 'olidays, so off we jolly well go.
Well it’s a national newspaper so they don’t really need to specify one particular city.
Oh that annoys me immensely. I think it’s made worse by the fact that people will say they are from Smalltown, KY. Which is great if you understand that Usians typically abbreviate their state names to two letters and don’t generally bother to mention which country they are from. Of course then you’d have to know which two particular letters are used for which state - I started working out some of them before I caught myself and wondered why I was bothering.
In general I’d say it’s only reasonable to not state your country if you are from a major city/capital. So New York, Johannesburg, Berlin, London etc would be fine as is. But if it’s a smaller place or a ‘second city’ e.g. a place called London in America then people should really say!