(November 13, 2013 at 6:23 pm)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: It's a bit like in mib. A person is intelligent. People are dumb panicy animals. An American is lovely. Americans are scary as shit.It's not just you. I think the USA has a unique situation in that it gets considerable press and attention abroad, but our own attention is also focused inward, and so we suffer from a form of social myopia (it's no accident that people feel as if Americans think they're the center of the universe; our environment encourages just that attitude). That, combined with good things like a lot of freedom and a lot of diversity, guarantees that the crazier/dumber/sadder elements will stand out. And we are not short of crazy, dumb, and sad elements in a nation of 300 million+ people.
Sorry. Probably just me.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
