Most of the things you mention would be on my list of negative items,rather than positive,Arcer which goes to show just how different people can be. 

Am I breaking my new year's resolution already?! I must try harder.

Pixel Pirate wrote: Most of the things you mention would be on my list of negative items,rather than positive,Arcer which goes to show just how different people can be.  Am I breaking my new year's resolution already?! I must try harder.

Are you related in any way to the Uni-Bomber Pixie?-just curious.

gdub411 wrote: Pixel Pirate wrote: Most of the things you mention would be on my list of negative items,rather than positive,Arcer which goes to show just how different people can be.  Am I breaking my new year's resolution already?! I must try harder. Are you related in any way to the Uni-Bomber Pixie?-just curious.

I thought no one knew that! No,no I stop way short of violence to anyone,and actually I'm not as anti America as some,well,all of my America bashing posts may indicate. It's just that being very much a European classicist,someone who actually loves Shakespeare,Ibsen,Haydn,Shelley blah,blah,blah,you get the picture,it's downright painful to see my beloved classical European culture being thrown on the scrap heap of history by Britney Spears,Ricki Lake,Disney,McDonalds and all of the others of the most reprehensible parts of American junk culture. I shouldn't be upset with the US really because you haven't forced any of this on us,you have simply offered them to us and most of my fellow Europeans have said: Yes please!! It's them I'm pissed off at actually for wanting this garbage,it's not your fault,you haven't put a shotgun to anyone's head and forced them to watch Jim Carrey movies,people have made the choice to do so. And that's the terrible thing,since by doing so they're slowly killing European culture. And believe me,this is not delusional rantings. Classical music is dying in the concert halls over here and so is classical theater. No one under 30 seems remotely interested in our European cultural heritage anymore,even Financial Times had an article about it a couple of years ago and The Spectator writes of further signs of the decline of classical European culture constantly. It seems that Shakespeare might be removed from the curriculum of the University here in Oslo because students just aren't interested anymore.Hamlet replaced by Donald Duck . It's not really America's fault,and I guess it was probably inevitable but it's still very sad.

Pertinent now:  The American Red Cross/ Doctors Without Borders and all other American help organizations that are the leaders when natural disasters happen worldwide

Here's 10 other things...

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dsouza070203.asp - http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dsouza070203.a sp

threefates wrote: Pertinent now:  The American Red Cross/ Doctors Without Borders and all other American help organizations that are the leaders when natural disasters happen worldwide Here's 10 other things... http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dsouza070203.asp - http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dsouza070203.a sp

I agree with all those points,America has many great qualities,probably mostly great qualities,actually. But all those points are socio/economic/political,not cultural and that's the area I care about. We have tv channels over here now that broadcast 90% American programs,and if you walk into a video/dvd store 90% of the selection is American,switch on the radio and 90% of the music is American and that's just in Norway with a puny 4 million inhabitants,even big countries like France and Germany are getting worried about this,so what chance does a tiny place like Norway have to stem this tide? You Americans really have no idea what this feels like from the perspective of a small country. I couldn't care less about what a great place the US is to live in,it's probably true,but what does that matter when every day I walk down the street I see advertising billboards without a single Norwegian word on them? We have Hollywood movies about baseball on tv here now. Baseball movies?! We don't even have baseball in this country! A few years ago we didn't have Halloween,now we do. A typical American tradition like prom night was completely unknown here until a few years ago,now we have it, complete with limousines and awkard teenage boys in ill fitting tuxedos. American football has just started here,so I guess baseball is probably just around the corner. And I have no doubt thanksgiving will be next. It has absolutely no place in Norwegian culture or history,but what the hell?,it's American so we must have it. You see,that's the attitude of so many people over here now: If it's American,we must have it,no matter what it is. This only extends as far as culture,but unfortunately that's the area I care about.,and it could be the thin edge of the wedge.

But please,lets' just leave this,shall we? There's nothing anyone can do about this anyway,a language professor even said recently that in a hundred years all the Scandinavian languages will have disappeared entirely,and I guess it's no great secret what language will have taken over. I accept the overtaking of European culture by the American as something inevitable,but it's just such an impotently helpless feeling for someone in love with European culture and history and who was probably born in the wrong century.

Pixel Pirate wrote: Impotently helpless? What the hell does that mean?!

see your doctor for your helpless impotency!

Reed Lover wrote: Pixel Pirate wrote: Impotently helpless? What the hell does that mean?! see your doctor for your helpless impotency!

So that's what it was. A Freudian slip!

Good one,Velvet. In fact,I think I'll join you:

FAEN!!

Oh so paranoid!!

I don't know about the Swedish or Norwegian language.. but I've seen the Finnish language written.. and I think it needs some English influence... When each word is 20 characters long... and half of those are the letter a - its just a time saver to have some influence on shortning those words...

Thanks to our schools and political leadership,
the U.S. has acquired an international reputation
as the home of 250 million people dumb enough to
buy 'The Wacky Wall-Walker.'

F Zappa

threefates wrote: Oh so paranoid!! I don't know about the Swedish or Norwegian language.. but I've seen the Finnish language written.. and I think it needs some English influence... When each word is 20 characters long... and half of those are the letter a - its just a time saver to have some influence on shortning those words...

The Finnish language belongs to an entirely different family of languages actually,it has it's roots among the Slavic languages and Sweden and Norway among the Indo-European ones. Don't they? Yes,I think so. Swedish and Norwegian have much in common with German,also a simple,straightforward language.

Three Fates....

When i spoke about the good things about the US, I didn't mean the trumpeting of America's wonderful record of pitching in when things go wrong or the country's superiority at, apparently, everything.

I have many, many friends who work both for the IRC and IFRC as well as several other NGOs working in humanitarian not just in tsunami struck areas but all over the globe. These people come from all over the globe - the US, UK, Ireland, Afghanistan, Iceland, Japan wherever.

None of them counts the amount of aid flowing their way in terms of nationality of personnel or nationality of cash. They - Americans, South Americans, Europeans, Africans, Asians - just get on with the job of helping people.

I may be wrong, but the inference from your post, seems yet again to be - America is the best at....

It's just this kind of thing that makes me so tired about the US. I absolutely love a whole helluva lot about the US and I was merely trying to point out some amusing things the US had given us - in response to the endless yank-bashing that had been going on. For a reply I get a sermonising article from an obviously right-wing US publication which just tells me about the triumph of US capitalism and undisguised cheerleading exercise for Doctors without Border (which I believe is also known as Medecins sans Frontiers to those who invented it).

All I wanted was Tom and Jerry.