Re: Olli Lounela's tournament report from IGS's early years (1993)

Jeff,

You sure sound it to me. You seem obsessed with identifying any posts
you don't like as coming from American posters. What's the point? Do
you tally the non-offensive posts by nationality as well? Are you only
focused on Americans, or other nationalities? Have you got some
estimates yet? Are 80% of Americans bad people? What should you do
about it? Treat any you meet badly? Provide aid to Al Qaeda?

You're leaping to conclusions. Let's look at things from each of our
positions. At your end a bit of text comes onto your screen. Ostensibly it
comes from a guy called Harry Sigerson; in this medium that may or may not
be true. All that I can write on your monitor is that it is true.
If instead of you looking at the text and assuming obsession, if I was
talking to you in person, you'd conclude from my accent, my knobbly knees,
my ankle length kilt and long shoulder plaid and luxuriant red hair that I
was a Scot and then you might say, 'So that's what a Scotsman sounds
like'. Well, the accent and the knees would be accurate enough but none of
the rest.
As I think I said in the earlier post, accents and the different ways
that we use our mostly-held-in-common language are of interest to me. One
of my favourite television programs is 'The Simpsons'. I don't know for
sure who it is who does the voice of the Scottish Janitor at Bart and
Lisa's school but he's great (yes, it's Dan Castellaneta's voice, it's
stagey and its location here, not exactly placeable; then there's Hank
Azaria's Apu that's funny too, when I try that accent it comes out Welsh;
oh yes and the Janitor is called 'Groundkeeper Willie' but it should be
'Wullie').
Well, the way people write has a sort of 'accent' or style. The BBC
shows on its terrestrial channels lots of American show series (you have
to fill time and perhaps they're old shows going cheap). They don't put on
lots of European series because so few people in this country can speak
any other language than one sort of English or other. Yet in each of those
countries they'll have as many regional variations in accent and style as
any other.
For example they broadcast a show here called 'Orange County Chopper'.
I don't know if you know it but it's about a family motorbike builders.
The bikes are glamorously finished custom built machines. I'd not want to
go very fast on one of them. I don't think the show's object is to sell
such bikes in Europe; there are already some manufacturers of fairly quick
bikes here. No. what it sells is a look and a listen to the style and the
use of language among these bike builders and that could only be done by
Americans. I much prefer to watch Valentino Rossi show just how quickly he
can pedal his bike.
I worked for an American firm, Daniels, in Saudi Arabia in the
eighties. It had Americans in its staff from all over the Union. I
windsurfed with a couple of Californians, one quiet laid-back, ex
helicopter pilot with a family at home in that Citrus State, as mine was
home here. One of their Project Engineers came from Colorado a little lad
my height, he wore high-heeled cowboy boots a tall-crowned Stetson-type
hat, large square-buckled belt with a firms logo on it and 41 handguns in
his collection at home, a very pleasant man; he had spent a lot of years
working away from home. Then there were the Daniels' staff that came from
parts local to the firm's head quarters in Greenville, South Carolina;
then there was one man from New York, he played pretty good Jazz trumpet.
The South Carolingians were not too good at mixing in with the foreigners
of whichever political or racial persuasion, whereas the Californians were
easy and windsurfed and joined in with the Brits or the 'TCNs' as they
were called, 'Third Country Nationals'. The Filipinos as TCN were in the
range of lower numbered racial categories. The next highest numbers were
the Europeans and the American passport holders were the highest.
I can honestly say that I enjoyed that time and was intrigued by the
variety. In fact the few, 'Brit Bashers' as they were called came from
among the Greenville area; men of long standing in the company and
curiously enough often third of fourth generation Scots background and
proud of it. It takes a long time for that ancestry to wear off.
Coming back to your para. People react to a direct question in so many
different ways. Over the years I've noticed, though this may be changing
that if you asked a Brit and in particular an English Brit if he is a Tory
you'd get the run around, rarely they'd offer a simple yes or no. Ask the
same of a Labour voter and more often than not you'd get a yes; whether
true or not is another question <s>. It seems to me that if you ask any
right-winger from anywhere, the same sort of question you'll again get the
run around. I am re-starting the reading of a marvellous book by a great
man, recently dead, Arthur Miller. It is called 'Timebends' and is an
autobiography. Well that should make it about the author and it is but
much of it is a biography; if a country can have a 'biography' written
about it.
There is no black and white in this matter, shades of grey yes. Then
that's true about most things that get gauged on small discrete sampling.
It's the old Bell Curve. The only thing is no one wants to 'hear' shades
of grey; they're so difficult to deal with.
I'm told that it's quite common in the USA to be asked direct
questions about religion and such like subjects, whether this is true or
not I don't know - personally. Though I'd say that is much more 'personal'
than asking someone's nationality.
You ask what's the point in my asking; and if I keep a tally; and if I
think that the majority of Americans are 'bad' people? The interesting
thing for me is how different people use and react to what is the
'produce' of a, comparatively speaking, new medium - internet newsgroups.
Mail, that's not as immediate as face-to-face conversation and is not as
remote as snail-mail; which both are between folk who may know each other
quite well. Email, it's more like quick penpal mail where again neither
correspondent knows the other; but this is further complicated by the
dissemination you get on a newsgroup - the new and should be great
addition to communication.
What it does tend to is leaps to things such as my having to *do*
things; treat 'Americans' I meet, badly; contribute to Al Qaeda.
They say that it was Churchill who said the British and Americans are
separated by a common language? Well, that's not so difficult to accept.
The south east of England's English is different in use and sound from
that of Scotland's. You could say that all of the small 'countries' that
make up the American Union have differences in the use of and reaction to
their own *local* 'American' brand of English - I don't know. I've never
lived there.
A relative through marriage, married a French man from the South of
France. They both lived and worked in Paris. In the limited times of
contact, such as going to their South of France wedding, even my almost
non-existent French was enough for me to make out the different regional
reactions.

What do people in Northern Ireland think of the British?
Now there's a question that would need a much wider ranging set of
parameters than the simple language used hear to get anywhere near an
answer. What I will say is that the people of Northern Ireland will agree
that it has been a good thing for the individual, through all of NI
troubles from 1969 till today, that so many of the folk on the 'mainland'
kept paying taxes to fund the damage-repairs to bodies and properties.

Keeping to the language. In '63 I worked for a Consulting Engineering
firm in London, a fellow Engineer's full name in that firm was Aloysi
Kozlowski (or Koslowski). I think Aloysi is Polish for Aloysius. But
though he was then a man in at least his mid thirties and had lived in
England for many years he spoke English with a strong accent; and on the
phone sometimes franticly as he experienced the inability of South Eastern
English to deal with any except a heavily dipthonged English .
He was called Alex, not Aloysi, whether by default because he had
chosen this or by default because some English man had so named him and he
let it go at that, I don't know. The last part of his name was pronounced
'-ovski' or perhaps the slightly softer '-ofski'; no one ever had any
trouble with this or tried to have it, '-aaowski' as to would have been
said if that part of England had tried for the simple 'ooh dubbya'
dipthong. So here was this, at least bi-lingual competent Engineer who
*nearly* got all of his name pronounced 'correctly'; given that correctly
is as it would have been pronounced in Poland.
Back in Saudi a little earlier than the Daniels job I worked for a
firm in Al Khobar, owned and run, by the big British contractor, Balfour
Beattie Ltd., which in turn was then owned by BICC (British Insulated
Callender's Cables). They were out there out in Saudi set up as 'Design
Contractors' doing work mainly for ARAMCO. All of the head staff were
Brits, mainly Englishmen from all over England and a few Scots; the whole
crew had been Thatchered-to-Saudi.
There was the usual office support staff, all men - no women allowed
by Saudi decree. So our typists, office accountants, were 'TCNs' and our
Mr FixIt was a Saudi Arab. The typists were Indian. Now which of those
TCNs, the Saudi or the Indian. took home the bigger paycheck?
One of the typists was introduced to me as 'George' after a bit you
get to know folk and I asked him, "George what?", and got the 'just
George' treatment. In the event he said that his name was not George. That
on arrival the Architect in charge of that department of the 4-discipline
design practice (Architecture; Civil Engineering; Electrical Engineering;
Mechanical Engineering) and a friend of mine had simply decided that he
would not use the man's given name and that from then on he'd be called
George.
The man's name was Radakrishnan; I asked what his pals at home called
him. It was Rada. That's what I called him from then on; right through the
usual welter of 'Who?', but he got his name back. He, may not have cared
one way or the other and like all of us was only there for the money.
There was quite a bit of that 'colonialist' 'imperial' treatment by
both the Brit and the American 'management'. It diminished as they climbed
through the Saudi Arabs that were even then learning to run their
country's oil industry.
====
So I'll infer from your reply that Jeff Nowakowski is American; and
my guess from your writing that you were, as Mr Springsteen has it, 'Born
in the USA'.

Harry.

P.S. I read the Robert McNamara quotes from the link you gave, thanks
for that. I was and am a fan of the man. His Wikipedia entry is worth a
read...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara

I don't know if that movie has been released in the UK. The name 'Fog of
War' doesn't ring any bells. Not that that means anything, I live in a fog
of work when I'm not skiving off on the internet.
Robert McNamara: [General Curtis] LeMay said, "Won hell... we lost... we
should go in and... wipe 'em out today."
[McNamara laughs]
Shot fades to the finish of 'Dr Strangelove' and Vera Lynn singing
'We'll meet again, don't know where don't know when' -- to the gentle
puffs of A-bombs doing, what A-bombs do.

.

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