New Testingstan

I started reading, got through points 1 and 2, was thinking "what's the problem?", then hit point 3 and went instantly to


How similar are the US and Canada, really? (I'd trust just about anyone here for a more credible opinion than what I just read there)

I've heard more than a few people say Australia and Canada are quite similar...

I wouldn't know anything about Australia, but if stark and zhak are anything to go by its full of dicks. Sorta like phant's mom.

More seriously, I've been to some parts of the US. New York seemed pretty similar, except people were more likely to talk to you. That was the countryside though.

Ohio was almost creepy. So many fat people. Good god. People would hear my dad and I were from Canada and try to console us about our healthcare system. Seriously.

Losonti Tokash wrote:that isn't the impression i got from that book at all, which seemed pretty dead set against the concept of "europeans are inherently better because their climate encourages people to be smart"

Fair enough, I haven't read it. I was basing myself on some third-hand infos there.

RyanThunder wrote:I wouldn't know anything about Australia, but if stark and zhak are anything to go by its full of dicks.

LOL you forgot to mention me

You really should read GG&S, rabid, it's pretty good. The arguments are mostly to do with trade routes and what useful animals are around, and then that stuff snowballed into technological advantages for Europe and Asia.

RyanThunder wrote:I wouldn't know anything about Australia, but if stark and zhak are anything to go by its full of dicks. Sorta like phant's mom.

More seriously, I've been to some parts of the US. New York seemed pretty similar, except people were more likely to talk to you. That was the countryside though.

Ohio was almost creepy. So many fat people. Good god. People would hear my dad and I were from Canada and try to console us about our healthcare system. Seriously.

New York City has a ton of fat people. As much of a workout that you get just using the subway or walking from point a to point b in that city, I don't see how anyone living there can gain weight.

Zod wrote:As much of a workout that you get just using the subway or walking from point a to point b in that city, I don't see how anyone living there can gain weight.

Exhibit A :

Give people the opportunity to lose weight, and they'll just use it to eat more shit/nastier shit.

evilsoup wrote:You really should read GG&S, rabid, it's pretty good. The arguments are mostly to do with trade routes and what useful animals are around, and then that stuff snowballed into technological advantages for Europe and Asia.

Thanks for the recommendation, though I have to finish reading "The Third Industrial Revolution" by Jeremy Rifkin first - expect a brief summary once I'll have finished and digested it.

evilsoup wrote:You really should read GG&S, rabid, it's pretty good. The arguments are mostly to do with trade routes and what useful animals are around, and then that stuff snowballed into technological advantages for Europe and Asia.

yeah it's essentially about how europeans were really fortunate in the distribution of resources, domesticatable animals and so on found there

not "cold climates encourage brain growth/cooperation/genetic superiority" since it's basically intended as a rebuttal to that

i once read somewhere that another piece of luck the europeans had was the north star. the person who said it was speculating that if not for that they wouldn't have been able to reliably sail as far out (cuz they'd just get lost at sea) and probably wouldn't have been able to form and maintain the overseas empires

idk if its true but i found it interesting enough to remember

Wouldn't they just have been able to choose another arbitrary star?

you could but it'd be more error prone. clocks didn't work well out to sea until like the later 1700's and the other stars will move with time so there's a lot that can go wrong there

Yeah, latitude's no prob, but working out your longitude without a good clock is fucked.

Hey Aaron.

I'm talking to a kid right now, who apparently has already attemptep suicide (serious mental issues)

and who want to join the army to "give a little structure to his life and do his country proud".

What do ?

if he's already attempted suicide there's basically no way they'd take him anyway

Only if there's a medical record to prove it, I suppose.

If he didn't go to the hospital or seek medical attention, how would they know ?

Oxymoron wrote:Point 4, finally, is an appeal to a subset of theories that in geography are regrouped under the label "Environmental Determinism", which even if they form part of the basis of "Gun, Germs and Steel" (the book), have been disproved by the scientific community since the first half of the 20th century.

Oxymoron wrote:Why he is trying to explain historical, societal and cultural differences through environmental causes, instead of basing his analysis on historical, societal and cultural causes, is beyond my comprehension.

I realize environmental determinism may lend itself to a lot of questionable and dodgy ideas, and it comes off as a bit silly to try to explain everything by environment (much like it comes off as silly to try to explain everything by culture or Great Men), but honestly the idea that you could explain history and culture without taking into account the environment and geography as a big factor also seems pretty silly to me.

I mean, you agree that the culture of Arabia is prolly influenced by the fact it's a hot desert and the culture of Scandanavia is prolly influenced by that its cold and not a desert, right? Or consider how Britain's history might look if there was an isthmus connecting it to France so it didn't have the English Channel as a water barrier, and, just offhand, in WWII the Nazis could have just driven/walked into England. Environment and geography has impacts on the challenges ppl and societies face especially in preindustrial times when it was harder to do stuff like brute-forcing your way out of a water shortage by building a hundred mile pipeline to a giant river.

Dooey Jo wrote:something that might have a part to play in the climate thing is that "cold" countries are like 20% canada, 10% scandinavia and one million percent RUSSIA

I kind of pointed this out over there. If you look at the world map the countries above 40 N are mostly either Europe or European diaspora iow more-or-less cultural and demographic extensions of Europe, so no wonder these countries might have certain common cultural features distinct from the rest of the world (there's little inhabited land south of 40 S to make a comparison).

Oxy, they might do some kind of psych assessment (pretty sure they do for military stuffs). If he's got serious issues, he'd have a hard time concealing them.

So they wouldn't need to know that he tried to do himself in.


BTW it's Suicide Prevention Week, apparently.

BTW, he's Canadian. And has asperger.

Oh.

Maybe suggest an alternative career choice?

Oxymoron wrote:Hey Aaron.

I'm talking to a kid right now, who apparently has already attemptep suicide (serious mental issues)

and who want to join the army to "give a little structure to his life and do his country proud".

What do ?

I dunno but I'm gonna make the I'm guessing Captain Obvious observation that joining the military to self-medicate psych issues sounds like it might not be exactly an optimal strategy to me and like something that might backfire, if that's what he's doing.

Encourage him not to, rather to get some help for his issues. The military heavily encourages drinking, so that won't help him.

The problem is that I'm blunt as a mace, so trying to get my message across without alienating him... is hard. For now I'm circling around the issues, talking about his motivations to join, if he know what he's going in for, that kind of things...

bE BLUNT THEN. sERIOUS MENTAL ISSUES THAT WON'T BE HELPED BY THE ARMY'S CULTURE. Probably won't take him anyways if it's documented.

Whoops someone left the caps on.

Currently encouraging him to talk to veterans...