Hatred Against America

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Surely you must have some thought on the llama situation.By the way, thank you, that was mercifully brief.

Steve, I think you're addicted to this site. Probably no real news to you, but I've said it anyway. :/

That's because I love America.

I'm british. I don't hate America at all.

It just pisses me off how patriotic some Americans can be... To the point of making themselves look like their licking their own arses. Fair enough, you should like your country... But it's got just as many problems as anywhere else, so I certainly wouldn't call it THAT great.

My dad on the other hand doesn't like America that much. He follows the popular perception that most Americans are fat and stupid - Which I guess to a degree is true. A lot of Americans are very fat, and some are very stupid. Some on the other hand arn't. However, we've been on holiday in the US before and all agreed it was one of the best holidays we'd had. Infact, when I'm older I'm planning to have a house in America if I ever do any work there.

Ack... Perhaps one of the things I dislike most about America is the appauling television. Cheap, nasty and badly formatted. Everything is overdramatized. People make fun of it in England because everythings explained three times, just incase you miss something... Maybe this helps contribute to the belief that Americans are stupid.

I think what influenced my dads opinion most was all those "friendly fire" incidents that we kept hearing about on the news.

I've known both in person, and over the internet, quite a few Americans. Most are ok.

And I have nothing against y'all Brits. Got to go there some years ago, Nice folks. Yeah, our television is largely mind numbing drivel. Sweet, sticky synoptic-rotting candy for the sloppy lazy mind and corpulent populace. A siren song to render us all incompetent and juvenile. The little black box-like alter at which we sacrifice soul and will........I get carried away sometimes.

Fat and stupid. Such a wonderful combination. Blame McDonalds!! lol no I'm kidding. But you're right. It really does kinda stink. Sadly enough.

Don't worry, the Europeans are getting fat like us, and they're not getting any smarter.Except the Irish. They will soon be Europe's economic engine.

Are you assuring that I am fat and stupid? I think I'm hurt.

I don't know whether to be touched or offended! I'm just gonna pretend that you aren't being sarcastic.

In reply to: There are a great many things leading to the decline of American education, and it is less than useful to blame the teaching of scientific creationsism in some schools as the cause. You're right about the fact that there are many causes but I have to take issue with the term 'Scientific Creationism'. While I would never dream of mocking other people's religious practices (I'm not religious myself) I have to say there is nothing 'scientific' about creationism and the people who try to use science to justify creationism ALWAYS get it wrong and apply their science inconsistently and inappropriately. They also misapply scientific principles in order to belittle those who refuse to believe that creationism must be a true explanation of the universe for no reason other than that a flower is purple instead of green???Creationism is a belief. It offers absolutely no theories that can be tested, it makes no predictions that can be studied. Therefore it is not a science. By contrast, evolution, even though it is still only a theory that has not been proven conclusively, has been observed in action amongst some species in Madagascar and South America and its study has provided predictions which have later been shown to be true. While this still doesn't mean that creationism is wrong and evolution is right, it means that it's far more likely to be the case and personally, I happen to think that evolution ticks all the boxes.Debating creationism in schools is fine in my opinion as long as one party is not telling another party that it's based around scientific fact and as long as the scientific alternative(s) is/are explored. Unfortunately one can't argue with committed creationists. When I was told that the universe only came into existence in about 4500BC (Christian calendar), I pointed out that we have strong scientific procedures which allow us to identify aspects of the universe which are apparently older than this. I was told "No, God just makes them look older in order to test your faith."And please don't think I'm slagging off the US education system because I feel superior...our system in the UK is just as screwed and for most of the same reasons, excluding creationism.

"scientific creationsism" = "sensible fantasy"

In reply to:As far as education is concerned, while Kentuckians are learning Creationism, foreigners are learning science, math, reading, and writing. The South Koreans totally kick America's but in publice education, as do probably two dozen other countries. >> Romania In reply to: Well the english language is one of the hardest languages to learn. Total BS In reply to: It's like greeting someone when you enter their house. O_o ... how do you enter the house if no one opens the door ?Maybe you were talking about breaking into theyr house, and say "Good Night" to them before you hit them in the head with sone hard thingy and start 'cleaning' the house

"Well the english language is one of the hardest languages to learn. Total BS"Why is this "total BS"?

Sorry Ghost but the English language most definitely IS one of the hardest languages to learn. Most people will need at least 3 years of study to become conversationally adept in English (though a conscientious student with a good memory for language can achieve this in 3-6 months) whereas (perfect pronunciation aside) many people can achieve reasonable spoken French or Spanish in a year or so because the languages are far more consistent. Mind you, if you're living in a country, you tend to pick up the language faster than if learning it in a country where it isn't commonly spoken. Some reasons for its difficulty are:1. We have more irregular verbs than any other language, partly because our language is a mish-mash of many others built up over the past 2000 years or so.2. We have more grammatical exceptions than any other language, covering contraction, pluralisation and use of pronouns/articles in spoken English and capitalisation, hyphenation and punctuation in written English.3. The 'common use' of English changes faster than any other language on the planet because there are so many different inputs to the language. 4. There are many 'contradictory' uses of English which can easily confuse people learning the language. A great one crops up when a native-English speaker is giving directions to someone who speaks English less than perfectly, e.g. "Well, you go down here, right? And then you turn left, right? At the end of the road, you go right, right? Then left, right? 5. English probably has more words than any other language. As an absolute minimum, there are 250,000 words (not names/trademarks etc.) in current use around the world. The vocabulary of the average adult with English as his/her mother tongue is estimated at about 23,000 words currently (it's generally accepted that most people who've gone on to further education have a fractionally larger vocab), down from about 25,000 words 30 years ago and of those, it's estimated that 2000 of them are words which didn't exist 30 years ago.In addition to all those, many British and American people speak English with strong regional accents which are often hard to understand if you haven't encountered them before. This can make it harder for people to learn the language since one of the most important steps in learning is testing your use of the language.

Everyone should speak Irish, there are only 11 irregular verbs.

That's certainly fewer than English, French or Spanish. Mind you, Mandarin Chinese has NO irregular verbs being a single-wordform language

How about Esperanto or Klingon? Learning English is like learning guitar: it's not hard to learn it in a rudimentary way, but it's hard to be fluent.

Silly fact: It's believed by linguists that there are now more Klingon speakers than there are Esperanto speakers.

Well, here in Romania you dont see people on the street speaking english. Basic english as in to be able to have a civilised conversation can be learned faster than the same thing in french. And btw , french is almost like romanian. Why ? Because even if you know all the words in french , they just dont seem to add up :S

I don't speak Romanian and have never studied it but I've heard that it's quite similar to Italian. Is this true?