CDR: Weather [was: RE: Well, that's over. Heads up, America!]

[Templeton, Stuart]

i think the weather thing has more to do with the agricultural background of
the country, and how this influenced the development of American Society at
an early stage. Most Americans i've spoken with don't actually "MEAN IT"...
perhaps there's some selfish concern about being comfortable in the weather
at hand while doing some inane activity. Tennis (or whatever) in the snow?
does this really seem so bizarre?

-----Original Message-----
X-Loop: openpgp.net
From: owner-cypherpunks at Algebra.COM
[mailto:owner-cypherpunks at Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Trei, Peter
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 10:29 AM
To: cypherpunks Mailing List; 'Ken Brown'
Subject: Weather [was: RE: Well, that's over. Heads up, America!]





> Ken Brown[SMTP:k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk] wrote:
> 
> OK you folks on the downwind side of the Atlantic, now your election is
> over (even if you won't know the result for 3 weeks yet), can you take
> your weather back?  We've had a month of egregious  rain and floods over
> here and I'm sure it has to be your fault somehow. 5 tornadoes in Sussex
> (my home county) one of them even killed people. These things just don't
> happen in England. It must be the Americans fault. Somehow. It wasn't
> like this in my day...
[...]
> Ken Brown 
[...]

I once heard a European pundit observe that Americans seem 
normal most of the time, but every now and then something surfaces
to make it clear just how alien they actually are.

The example he gave was the American obsession with weather. In
Europe,  talk about the weather is just conversational padding; 
noise of no serious consequence to fill an otherwise awkward
silences.

Americans, on the other hand, MEAN IT when they talk about the
weather. They sit up and pay attention when forecasts appear. 
All US cable systems carry a channel which broadcasts
nothing except weather reports, 24x7 - a notion which seems as
bizarre to Europeans as would a channel for watching the grass
grow. 

He surmised that this is due to the fact that in the US, unlike
Europe, bad weather can kill you. 

[And even if it doesn't kill you, it can sure as hell play havoc
with your day. I've had over 2 feet of snow overnight at my house,
while 10 miles away there was just rain. 

Mark Twain once gave a speech about the New England weather:
http://marktwain.about.com/arts/marktwain/library/speeches/bl_weather.htm
It's worth a look.
]

Peter Trei