h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The 'Stupid American' stereotype isn't helped by the fact that even the American media and entertainment industry thinks Americans are stupid...

Madness of King George (changed from The Madness of George III so American audiences wouldn't think it was a sequal), anyone?
Or maybe Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone (changed from ...Philosopher's Stone in case people didn't know what a Philosoper was and didn't go to see it as a result)?

I wouldn't lay the blame on either some sort of actual demographic stupidity, nor necessarily directly at the door of the media. It strikes me that in many parts of the US there is a surprisingly strong neo-Luddite (now there's an oxymoron and a half <winkeye) movement, going far beyond normal public distaste for academics and intellectuals.

>>It strikes me that in many parts of the US there is a surprisingly strong neo-Luddite (now there's an oxymoron and a half <winkeye) movement, going far beyond normal public distaste for academics and intellectuals.

Isn't that also the case in Britain? In some places (take Hastings, no, please do) you're virtually asking for a fight just by reading a book in public.

OK, let's take this geographical extremes thing to its absolute and final limit. There is one country in the world where the extremes are so great, they are having different *seasons* at same time!

That country? France.

Whilst it's winter in Paris it is summer time in Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and vice versa.

Why does this count?

Because Réunion (along with Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana in the Caribbean) are all départements d'outre-mer. They vote in French elections - Regional, Presidential and European. Their currency is the Euro. They even have football teams competing in the French equivalent of the FA Cup. They are considered French territory, indivisible to that say of Île-de-France or Provence.

Just to let you know, Fargo, North Dakota, USA has on average the second highest SEASONAL hot/cold climate difference on Earth.

For those of you who are curious, Siberia is #1.

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for bothering to answer the post on travel.

The discussion had moved on to the point where it was implied that just *anyone* could go abroad for a vacation, and yet it was a shameful thing that most Americans don't even have passports, so obviously aren't even interested in travelling abroad, because they're so insular, etc, etc, etc. My only point was that the average American has neither the time nor funding for such extensive travel.

Doesn't mean that none of us have an interest in the world or what goes on in it though.

>>If you spend some time dealing with Americans, you come to realise that the majority of US citizens are the same as the majority of people anywhere else. They're as smart, as funny, as concerned, as empathic.

That's pretty much my experience, and I would agree with this wholeheartedly. It's even a pity it has to be spelled out - why would we expect people to be so different?

>>However, their news and entertainment media firmly believes that the average American is still living in a shack in the middle of a Kansas wheatfield in the 19th century. They therefore broadcast accordingly.

I'm not sure however if I would agree with this. The media provide what the majority of people want. That's what they have marketing departments for. If there was a demand for world travel and highly sophisticated programming, I think you would see plenty of this on US TV. For decades, most media outlets tended to follow the doctrine of "this is what they should be watching so this is what we are going to show them" - thus the clipped BBC accents of former years and programming that was often high on educational value, but low on entertainment value. I suspect it was also like this in the US before the science of marketing kicked in.

(You do see some extremely high quality dramas coming from the US at the moment, so its not all bad).

People aren't much differnt - we all need pretty much the same basics, after all - but cultures are and that's where the misunderstandings begin.

Marketing is dark art. A con game on a massive scale. We should put it to fire and sword as soon as we can find something not evil to replace it with.

I think part of the issue is the US Education system, which I am definitely not a fan of, and its guiding philosophy. Forget "No Child Left Behind", we need to look much deeper than that at why it is the way it is and what it does to the people who are processed by it.

I do feel like there's a certain amount more knowledge, if not necessarily intelligence, among Euroepans than Americans. I was listening to some radio programme or other the other day (I think it might have been the News Quiz repeat on BBC7) and one of the panellists made a joke about Samuel Pepys in connection with famous diaries. The audience laughed. How many Americans would know who Pepys was? How many would care?

Probably no more than the proportion of British people who would know much about Ben Franklin or Walt Whitman or James Madison. Unless they're scholars of a particular country's history, most people are likely to know far more about historical figures from their own country than than from another.

And I'd have to hazard a guess that far fewer British kids in school now, know who Samuel Pepys is than kids from previous generations. Just a feeling in me water.

Try playing an online version of trivial pursuit. It'll probably be a US version. I tried it and got about 10% right.

By contrast, our family reunion last year with 8 Colonials attending: we all played Trivial Pursuit (UK Version), and our former subjects did quite well

We can't make sweeping assertions. I would guess that the proportion of knowledgeable Americans is the same as knowledgeable Brits.

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Is this to suggest that Americans know about them? Even my quizbowl team, supposedly the best and brightest in the school, doesn't.

Ben Franklin and James Madison were both founders of this country, Madison was fourth president and the $100 bill is sometimes called a 'Franklin' (for the same reason that the old £5 note was sometimes called a 'Wellington'). Franklin also invented lightning conductors and bifocals. Walt Whitman is possibly America's most well-known poet.

I'd be surprised if older most Americans don't know who they are, but the fact that members your quizbowl team don't might be an indication of the same lack of knowledge about historical figures that I hinted at in my previous post with respect to Pepys.

And since you, as a member of the team, know who they are, then 'the team' as an entity also knows

Good points, all of them.

Fivers were called Wellingtons? Oh, I didn't know that...

Yeah, Wellington. As in Duke of, whose boat was on the back you see

That's boat, as in race btw

I know boat, as in VDB

VDB... okay, clue me in - what has the Duke of Wellington and/or boatsand or £5 notes got to do with video databases?

Why the hell would Americans know who Samuel Pepys is? How many French or Germans know who he is, or would care unless they are historians?

I used to work on a helpdesk, where there was both Danish, UK and US users. And I must admit whenever you spoke to US users, everything would have to be bend in neon for them. But again I'm sure this would be different from state to state.