Re: CHAT: Ability of Americans & Europeans to locate each others cities (was Re: The [+foreign] attribute)

Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>  --- Thomas R. Wier skrzypszy:
>
> > My friend once put it this way, teasingly: for Europeans, there
> > are really only three, perhaps four, U.S. States with salient,
> > individual cultures and characteristics:  New York (cultured
> > and worldly), California (innovative and laid-back), Texas
> > (ignorant, gun-toting, with fascist tendencies), and perhaps
> > Florida ("sunny" dispositions and problems with voting systems).
> > All others fall into the "Here Be Dragons" category.
>
>I think you might - hesitantly - add Massachusetts to the list, known here
>for
>being a relatively European (and therefore relatively civilized) state.
>Chicago is very renowned for being the world's mafia capital, but nobody
>here
>has every heard of Illinois. And rest is mainly the territory of cowboys
>and
>injuns - you better won't go there unless you don't mind being scalped!
Alaska, the land of ludicrous chill and huge bears, surely belongs to the
list too.

>
>I guess our image of America has been influenced a bit too much by shows
>like
>Miami Vice, the A-Team, and the Dukes of Hazzard.
>
Well, I think it's entirely sufficient to read Newsweek reg'larly to get a
mental image of the US as a place orbiting Beta Lyrae. Not that I've seen
any of those shows so that I can compare.

                                               Andreas

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