In my never ceasing efforts to educated Americans, first aircraft flight ....

kyrgyz said:
Judging from comments to articles on Yahoo, there is a new normal that only Dante's Hell can match.
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I do think it is a negative unless it is done in the true spirit of fun. We are all people no matter where we come from and I think we unfortunately tend to see things through our regional eyes and via the information that is filtered to us.

People to me are both very much alike and very different by region at the same time. The steryotypes that are applied sometimes might have a element of truth to them but I think often get distorted to give off an image other than reality at times.
 
To add to this. I think it is very easy to mistakenly judge a group based on the actions of a small number from a group and that can be the way we see the whole groups. We are different in our environments and the things we encounter as well as our individuality and sometimes differences are misunderstood.
 
jonsidneyb said:
The steryotypes that are applied sometimes might have a element of truth to them but I think often get distorted to give off an image other than reality at times.
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The real problem is hypocrisy; and it goes downhill from here.

I like what Forsaken said in another thread:
Forsaken said:
I'm far from politically correct :rolleyes:, I just have a pet peeve where people find one thing to be acceptable to say, when they'll say something similarly, which is just as unacceptable if you are going for being appropriate.

I just view it as another form of hypocrisy and :rolleyes:.
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Examples of some misunderstandings.

A friend of mine that used to work at Yellowstone, he rightly said that most of the areas people visit are not really as wild and all natural anymore.
In his first day meeting the public someone from the East Coast asked him "What time do you put the animals way?" The longer he was there the more really dumb questions he got. It turns out that in the minds of many that worked there everyone from the East Coast was an idiot. I am pretty positive that the overwhelming vast majority of people visiting from the East Coast knew better but that opinion about the East Coast stuck anyway.

In some very very rural areas people from cities will wander in to for a weekend to live the wild life and play mountain man while others will come in to see a different world. It seems a couple of the outsiders come in with an all knowing attitude and try and show the locals how much they know about living in the wilds. By listening to some of these people you start to realize they don't have the slightest idea of what they are doing and their ideas come from something they read or from their fantasies. The truth is most of the people that wander into these non-tourist remote areas are respectful. The couple that blowhards that come in cast a big negative on the majority that would and should be welcome. The 1 % ers get the visitors tagged with the label City + Idiot= Citiot.

On the other side of this same coin people often assume they are going to find rednecks in all these places. Many who look a little deeper find that there is a bit more to these people than that and the stereotypes do not hold so well.

I sometimes think many of our prejudices are the product of a handful of people causing a group label.
 
Back to the original topic of claims of flight. I have often heard that Americans were not first and that may well be true. Was this flight given certain parameters that make it true if all these conditions are met or are we guilty of a complete fabrication. I can accept it no matter what the truth is.
 
jonsidneyb said:
I have often heard that Americans were not first and that may well be true. [...] are we guilty of a complete fabrication. I can accept it no matter what the truth is.
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Don't worry about it man, Americans invented everything. That's why you see all these people from lesser countries trying to lay claim to our stuff. When you run into delusions such as these, just smile and nod and say, "Well isn't that interesting!" We know the truth.
 
mjp said:
Don't worry about it man, Americans invented everything. That's why you see all these people from lesser countries trying to lay claim to our stuff. When you run into delusions such as these, just smile and nod and say, "Well isn't that interesting!" We know the truth.
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I don't think for a second we invented everything. I do think that many of the things the United States has been able to do in the past was a matter of circumstance. We had a buffer of two large oceans as protection and were able to exploit that. We became in some ways came to benefit from the conflicts related to Napoleon I actions.

I feel that the USA gained some advantages that we happened to be resource rich, the oceans made it much more recourse intensive to interfere with development here, and the conflicts of Europe were not infrustructure destructive to us. All these things allowed us to have some people that were better able to devote time and energy to certain developmental pursuits. This environment attracted people from other lands come to the USA bring their talents with them.

I think the past miracle of the USA was built on some enterprising people combined with the luck of the actions of others, the two oceans, and the resources once available, as well as the brilliance that this attracted from other lands.

These statements do not lead me to think that everything came from the USA, we just had an advantage for awhile and that advantage may be over.
 
mjp said:
Don't worry about it man, Americans invented everything. That's why you see all these people from lesser countries trying to lay claim to our stuff. When you run into delusions such as these, just smile and nod and say, "Well isn't that interesting!" We know the truth.
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Are we more deluded than all other places? I thought this tendency for some people to blow the nationalistic horn was widespread?
 
Moses said:
Russ was born in Wellington and is the cousin of two former NZ cricket captains Martin and Jeff. Sounds like a kiwi to me.


Probably a regional little brother thing. Infer a Scotsman is from England or a Canadian from America and the reaction is the same.
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Russ was a kiwi till he mixed in with the wrong crowd .... Aussies, then he became an Ocker and everything went wrong :(

Pfft to DF and the pav thing, everyone knows it's as kiwi as Crowded House ...... ;)
 
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