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Post by Black Cat on Jun 29, 2005 23:18:47 GMT
MPD? I'm missing something here. My guess: Multiple Personnality Disorder.
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Post by North Star on Jun 29, 2005 23:20:20 GMT
Wow. That was fast - and it fits too! *rants about his treble life as a failed evil Kai Lord, a powerful Lyrian Sage and a dead Archmaster*
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Post by Dusk Fox on Jun 29, 2005 23:57:00 GMT
Black Cat is correct--multiple personality disorder. Of course, it's actually DID now (dissociative identity disorder), but fewer people would get that abbreviation. And let's not even start with the juveniles who still think schizophrenia is MPD....
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Post by North Star on Jun 30, 2005 8:12:06 GMT
Are you a data entry assistant for a medical centre, Dusk Fox?
NS.
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Post by Al on Jun 30, 2005 12:06:41 GMT
I think he needs another title to his byline.. "Moking Jester, Thresher of Wheat, Holder of Obscure Information and Cheatinest...." what do you think? Al
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Post by Dusk Fox on Jun 30, 2005 16:15:04 GMT
Are you a data entry assistant for a medical centre, Dusk Fox? No, but I could be. I'm just a pedantic pundit. I am full of useless information, have some minor OCD tendencies (that's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, yet another psychological three-letter-sounds-better), and admire precision of language. I'm an English major (someday English Professor), so these things actually matter to me, even if they matter to no one else. I think he needs another title to his byline.. "Moking Jester, Thresher of Wheat, Holder of Obscure Information and Cheatinest...." what do you think? Al Another one? Huy. I suppose it'll have to go on there.
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Post by North Star on Jun 30, 2005 22:03:56 GMT
Oh I know about OCD. Some of my behaviours are distinctly borderline OCD. Comes of being Aspergic after all!
NS.
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Post by Zipp on Jul 6, 2005 22:28:46 GMT
My family has a history of OCD, so I too am more than acquainted with it.
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Post by Wolfus on Jul 7, 2005 7:12:07 GMT
Believe it or not, I have some OCD (Original CD-s) too
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Post by artichu on Jul 14, 2005 9:05:53 GMT
It's because the USA has a stupid country name. Naming a country the United States of America is as silly as naming a child Third Son of the Parsons Family. "United Statesmen" sounds stupid as a nationality, so for brevity's sake, "Americans" just flows better. Unfortunately, everyone else who inhabits a continent with "America" in its name (also a stupid decision--North and South anything as a name is just a lack of imagination) takes exception to this. In Spanish-speaking countries to the south, some people actually go to the length of correcting the term “Americanos” with “Norte Americanos,” as if that’s somehow better (after all, that includes Canadians, Mexicans, and under strict geographical terms the entirety of Central America and the Antilles. In other words, most of the people in Central America who make this distinction are just changing “Americans” (generally accepted to refer to people from the USA) to “North Americans” (which actually includes them). If only our founding fathers could have had the foresight to name the company something original and less technically descriptive. Oh, and for the Canadians who call the USA “the United States” instead of “America”--Homer Simpson calls you guys “America, Junior.” To be fair, the USA was the first major independent nation-state to come into being in the Americas, IIRC, not counting various tiny maroon states of escaped slaves and whatnot. Canada was still part of the British Empire, and Mexico and most of South America part of the Spanish Empire (with Brazil part of the Portugese Empire, such as it was). "United States of America" was a perfectly reasonable name for the only independent country in America, when no one really expected that declaring independence would become the rage and all the monstrous European empires would collapse in the future. Besides, what else were they really gonna call it? The only thing any of the Thirteen Colonies had in common was that they were British colonies in America, and the name "New England" was already taken for a particular region (and, besides, it would've been really un-PC after all that stuff in the Revolution about how we weren't really English and didn't like the English). And, hey, for a long time they expected (in a sort of reasonable way) that when they became independent all the other parts of the Americas would join the existing United States of America because it was free and democratic and a wonderful place to live; that was the whole Manifest Destiny deal. When the other countries disagreed with us we ended up having the Mexican-American and Spanish-American wars. (Sigh.) Anyway, I don't see why, if the country Ireland only takes up the southern part of the island called Ireland, we can't be the country America even though we're only part of the continent(s) America. But the name "America" has lots of resonance for lots of Latin American revolutionary movements and stuff and they're the ones who get all especially huffy about it -- there's actually a whole ideology around the mestizo (European mixed with Indian) race being the true "American" race (_La Raza_) and the nortenos or northerners being foreign invaders. They're the ones, by the way, who claim that there's no such thing as "North" or "South" America, just one big continent of "America" that should by rights belong to the American race. Heady stuff. I sat through a course on it in college and was glaring at the professor with my arms disapprovingly folded the whole time -- I don't think she noticed. (As far as Canadians go, if you don't want to declare independence after a bloody war like the rest of the continent but just stay loyal subjects of the Crown, you deserve to not be "Americans". )
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Post by artichu on Jul 14, 2005 9:21:15 GMT
Yeah, but there is no other place in the world with the geographic name "Mexico" (New Mexico doesn't count and is an incredibly stupid state name trumped only by anything with a direction in it or Rhode Island, and Baja Mexico is part of the larger 'Mexico' country). America applies to both the continent that the USA is on and the continent directly south of it, as well as being attached to a number of islands. That's just stupid. Heh. It should be noted that the state of New Mexico is called that because it used to be part of the New Mexico colony,which was a territory of -- you guessed it -- Mexico. Until we came and conquered it from them in 1848. So now we've got the "new" part of their country in *our* country, and we call ourselves after the continent as though we're the most important country on the continent, and so on. No wonder they seem to be mad at us all the time. Another fun fact: Mexico the country is named after Mexico the city (or, as we call it, Mexico City). They picked that name because Mexico City has always been the capital of the region Mexico -- going way back when the city was called Mexico-Tenochtitlan and the country was the Aztec Empire. The Thirteen Colonies didn't really have that advantage, seeing as how our Native Americans had no unified empire and we killed them all off pretty fast anyway. All our cities were *new* cities that all resented the implication that one of them was more important than the other -- imagine how mad New Yorkers would get if Boston got to be the capital, never mind if you named the whole country "Greater Boston" or something. We solved the capital city problem by making a whole new city, Washington, D.C., but while naming a *city* after George Washington is okay naming the whole country after him is a little much, especially when he's still alive. And the C. in D.C. is "Columbia", which actually *has* been proposed as an alternate name for the USA -- except that Columbia was really just a synonym for "America" back then and would run into the exact same problems. (Which, in fact, is the reason that there's a South American country called Colombia today that'd get upset at us ganking the name.) Frankly it's tough coming up with a totally original name for a country. People who'd thought of themselves first and foremost as living in, say, "Pennsylvania" and only thought of Pennsylvania vaguely as a place in America would get mad if a bunch of old guys in wigs suddenly told them they were living in some *new* place with some random name. Always better to go with the old, established names when naming countries -- they stick. I'd point out that this is the exact same logic that the "European Union" uses when calling themselves the EU. I mean, hell, it's as much of a burn to tell Turkey they're not really in Europe as it is to tell Mexico they're not in America -- but who's giving the EU a hard time about it, huh? Well, yeah, the Turks. But clearly no one's listening to them.
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Post by North Star on Jul 14, 2005 11:39:41 GMT
Well, Ireland always was Ireland. Northern Ireland was formed when the island was partitioned!
NS.
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Post by Dusk Fox on Jul 14, 2005 15:26:13 GMT
We solved the capital city problem by making a whole new city, Washington, D.C., but while naming a *city* after George Washington is okay naming the whole country after him is a little much, especially when he's still alive. We did end up naming a state after him, however (my state), and that's just as confusing. When people ask me where I'm from and I say "Washington," I always get the same question: "DC or State?" I just say Seattle now to save myself the trouble. And for the record, I knew pretty much all of the history info, and I still think "the United States of America" is a dumb name for a country, "New Mexico" is a dumb name for a state, and I have no sympathy for the difficulty in naming a country. Canada didn't seem to have any trouble, and we were able to name fifty states (badly), so we had it in us to do. Columbia would have worked if we'd chosen the name at that time (Colombia would have just had to choose another name--it's not like there's a really high standard in Central America, considering they named a country El Salvador). There's no excuse for not choosing a unique country name.
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Post by Al on Jul 14, 2005 17:13:24 GMT
To say that the United States was a nation state upon idependance would be stretching the meaning of both nation and state. At independance it was a collection of independant states with no real national identity. Only with the signing of the constitution did it become a state and I believe there is a good arguement that the US nation did not come into being until after the Civil War (although elements of it certainly existed in all states)
Canada did come into being because of war, the War of Independance, we are the loyal colonies. Remember, one mans here is anothers criminal and as much as the Fathers of the US are revered as heros in the US, when all is said and done Washington was a British General who betrayed his oaths to the crown. In my opinion as a monarchist and a loyalist, he, along with the revolutionary army, where the bad guys. But that is neither here no there.
As for "monstrous european empires"... last time I checked the US is just as much a colonial power as France, the UK, Russia etc... how else do you explain Manifest Destiny, all those pacific Islands and quite a few US states if not colonial expansion? And as for a monstrous state, last time I checked the Republic that was created in 1776 was a Republic that had both slavery and established religion (of course, it was at the state and not federal level that these existed, which allows for US creation myth to overlook them.) The question becomes does a state have to brand itself an Empire to be an empire? Is denying that the US has an Imperial legacy not playing a semantic game?
Of course, this is starting to sound like an anti-US rant, of which I want no part of, because I truely believe that the US is a force for good in the world. I just believe in truth in all matters, both pretty and ugly, should be revealed, and I think that Artichu overlooks these facts.
And not being American is the basic founding principle of Canada, it is why the Loyalist refugees fled the US amid the raping and the pillaging of the Washingtons troops and the illegal land swizures by the new US government. And it was why we confederated in 1867 with threats of American expansionism was rampant after the US civil war (which was another example of US Imperialism because the US de facto recognized the independance of the Confederate states, how else could it have managed to ammend the US Constitution after the war without their signatures? The US is the only country to have invaded Canada (there was also an IRA Army raised that invaded from the US, but the leader of that Army fled back accross the border in a womans dress).
Al
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Post by Black Cat on Jul 14, 2005 18:57:35 GMT
The US is the only country to have invaded Canada (there was also an IRA Army raised that invaded from the US, but the leader of that Army fled back accross the border in a womans dress). Well said Al. Not a lot of people know that fact and that we kicked their a** during that war (1812-1814). And Artichu, I'm glad to not being called "American".
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