From tchur@bigpond.com Sun Aug 15 13:17:59 1999 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id NAA29062 for ; Sun, 15 Aug 1999 13:17:58 -0700 Received: from teapot16.domain4.bigpond.com (teapot16.domain4.bigpond.com [139.134.5.164]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.06) with SMTP id NAA08984 for ; Sun, 15 Aug 1999 13:17:57 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by teapot16.domain4.bigpond.com (NTMail 3.02.13) with ESMTP id da411349 for ; Mon, 16 Aug 1999 06:16:19 +1000 Received: from CWIP-T-002-p-222-195.tmns.net.au ([139.134.222.195]) by mail4.bigpond.com (Claudes-Off-Shore-MailRouter V2.4d 7/681292); 16 Aug 1999 06:16:17 Sender: root@mxu4.u.washington.edu Message-ID: <37B71F98.D8FFB843@bigpond.com> Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 06:14:16 +1000 From: Tim Churches X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.7 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: waphgis@u.washington.edu CC: Marvin Cornell Subject: Re: WAPHGIS: only in the USA References: <001f01bee753$21ade960$7b790518@olmpi1.wa.home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Richard E. Hoskins" wrote: > > OK, folks (see below) ... here are some summer laughs. Time to lighten up. > Likely you are sick of the kids and can't wait for school to start, these > will ease the passage until September. (apologies to those in the S > hemisphere - you can send them back to us in February) non-Americans may > like these more than Americans. Could we have some "Only in Australia" > jokes? etc... non-Americans may find it hard to believe that every one of > these is true. > Richard, Americans don't have a monopoly on stupidity, affluence, greed, wastefulness or other ills caused by unrestrained capitalism, but they probably lead the world on parochialism! I suspect that the "ironic" nature of these observations is predicated on the illusion that many Americans seem to have that America is the best, most advanced, most sophisticated and most righteous country on earth. To non-Americans, these examples of stupidity just serve to illustrate how ignorant many (but not all, by any means) Americans are of the rest of the world, since most of the conditions described can be found elsewhere in the developed world - they either originated there and came to North America as part of its Anglo-European heritage, or in some cases were exported there from North America as part of the burgeoning US cultural hegemony. Ah, the joys of running an international listserver! There is always some damp squid lurking in some other time zone ready to start a flame war! Tim Churches Sydney, Australia Still slightly chilly but getting warmer already and the first signs of spring are already visible. > _______________________________________________ > > Only in America can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance > > Only in America are there handicap parking places in front of a skating > rink. > > Only in America do we award someone $3,000,000 for spilling hot coffee > in their own lap. > > Only in America do we have labels on baby strollers to remind people to > remove the baby before folding up the stroller. > > Only in America do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back > of the store to get their prescriptions. > > Only in America do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a > diet coke > > Only in America do banks leave all the doors open and then chain the > pens to the counters. > > Only in America do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the > driveway and leave useless junk in the garage. > > Only in America do we use answering machines to screen calls and then > have call waiting so we don't miss a call from someone we didn't want to > talk to in the first place. > > Only in America do we buy hot dogs in packages of 10 and buns in > packages of eight. > > Only in America do we use the word "politics" to describe the process so > well: "Poli" in Latin meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "bloodsucking > creatures." > > Only in America do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille > lettering. .