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stuneville Administrator
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 Total posts: 10230 Location: FTMB HQ Age: 46 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 30-05-2005 21:23 Post subject: Let's trash Europe! |
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Following Shadow's appeal for even-handedness here, in which he said: | Shadow wrote: | | No, really, get right back to the USA bashing, please. I mean, that is what this thread was made for, as its originator stated. Interesting -- I DO wonder how a similar "Lets Trash Europe" thread would be handled by the Mods. |
...this mod is happy to start that very thread  .
Now then, Europe.. where to start? |
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| minordrag still a drag
Great Old One Joined: 21 Jan 2002 Total posts: 1136 Location: Hovering just above the roof. Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 30-05-2005 22:20 Post subject: |
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How 'bout them Frenchies? Stop striking long enough to vote non.
What's the reaction to that over there? |
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| Guest |
| Posted: 30-05-2005 22:28 Post subject: |
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I think the Dutch are probably going to say, 'Nee!' on Wednesday. They're well pissed off over the devaluation that resulted from the Gulder being pegged to the Deutschmark at the wrong rate, when they entered into the Euro.
The main trouble with this new constitution is that there's plenty to satisfy policy makers and business interests, but there seems to be really bugger all in it for the ordinary European citizen. For whom the future looks shakier and shakier. Brussels has been going its own merry way for the last thirty years, or more, telling the voters that they know what's good for them.
Now, we'll see if the Eurocrats are ready to start listening, at last. |
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| theyithian Keeping the British end up
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Total posts: 11704 Location: Vermilion Sands Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 30-05-2005 23:40 Post subject: |
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| Minor Drag wrote: | How 'bout them Frenchies? Stop striking long enough to vote non.
What's the reaction to that over there? |
From some quarters: good, scuppers this silly euro-plan.
From others (slightly more informed): a little mystified that thier 'No' campaign focused on the intensely Anglo-Saxon nature of the constitution, whilst we Anglo-Saxons have complain of lack of influence over a ruling cabal of Germans and French. I sense it was an oppotunistic strategy. |
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| ShadowPrime Great Old One Joined: 21 Aug 2001 Total posts: 693 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 30-05-2005 23:43 Post subject: |
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No, no, no -- sorry, but this won't do at all. You guys are clearly out of practice, if you can go three posts without comparing any European leader to Hitler, nary a mention of European Imprerialism and intolerance, and nary a reference to any of a vast catalog of historical wrongs over which current leadership should continue to be excoriated, regardless of when these past wrongs occured! Please, do take a look at ..oh, well, just about any political thread here, read comments re USA, and then get back to it!
Shadow |
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| andy_just_andy Great Old One Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Total posts: 286 Location: Upper Canada Gender: Male |
| Posted: 30-05-2005 23:48 Post subject: |
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You mean verbally. Darn, I thought we were going on a road trip.  |
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| ogopogo3 Just a CabbageHead Joined: 25 Oct 2001 Total posts: 1684 Location: Minnesota Age: 41 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 30-05-2005 23:51 Post subject: Re: Let's trash Europe! |
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| stu neville wrote: |
Now then, Europe.. where to start? |
Well, first of all, it's NOT a continent. Get over it. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 00:11 Post subject: Re: Let's trash Europe! |
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| Ogopogo wrote: | | stu neville wrote: |
Now then, Europe.. where to start? |
Well, first of all, it's NOT a continent. Get over it. |
Yes. It is a continent. Big too. |
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| fluffle9 Great Old One Joined: 01 May 2004 Total posts: 979 Location: somewhere over the rainbow Age: 30 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 00:46 Post subject: Re: Let's trash Europe! |
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| Ogopogo wrote: | | Well, first of all, it's NOT a continent. Get over it. |
How's Europe not a continent? |
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| theyithian Keeping the British end up
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Total posts: 11704 Location: Vermilion Sands Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 00:52 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The Myth of Continemnt
How many continents are there? It seems like a simple enough question, and most of us who grew up in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century come prepared with a pat answer to which we give little thought: "There are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Next question, please." The official flag of the Olympic games, however, displays a famous symbol of interlocking rings, each ring intended to represent one of the five continents of the world, the two Americas treated as one and Antarctica simply forgotten. Rather than some sort of geographic maverick, this lineup of five continents, not seven, is a standard one taught throughout much of Europe. So what is the answer to our question? Is it five, or is it seven?
Well, the most thoughtful answer might actually be none of the above, or better yet, "it depends." There are few terms in geography that are more loaded with implied meanings and biased world views than continent. As a common-sense concept, the idea is simple enough: pick up a globe and one can readily observe a half-dozen distinctive (if barely connected) land masses. The exact number is debatable, depending on one's size threshold for when an "island" becomes a "continent". Is Australia large enough to be a continent? How about Greenland? Madagascar? Personally, I'm inclined to answer these questions Yes, No, and No, giving me a list of six: North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. To my eyes at least, this half-dozen represents the world's primary distinctive land masses, as opposed to islands.
While this list is debatable, one thing clearly isn't: Europe is not a continent--at least as long as we continue to see "continent" as more or less a synonym for land mass. Without question, Europe is a distinctive world region, both in social-cultural terms and as an environmental subcontinent of Eurasia. If we insist on calling Europe a continent, though, then consistency demands we do so for other, analogous regions around the world, such as South Asia (India and its neighbors) and Mesoamerica (Mexico and its neighbors). Our original list of five, six, or seven continents now expands to a dozen or more.
The bigger lesson, though, is not that there are really six continents, rather than the usual list of five or seven. Instead, this whole subjective exercise in continental definition teaches us how fruitless the idea of dividing the world into continents really is. As a type of region, continents are intended to provide a classification scheme by which we make some sense of the world. But closer inspection reveals that continents provide us with, at best, only a limited and rather distorted sense of world geography.
There are two primary problems with the concept. First, the history of the continental idea is closely tied to ideas of European superiority. As geographers Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen discuss in their wonderful book, The Myth of Continents, Europeans defined Asia as a catch-all concept to hold the various non-Christian, non-"Western" peoples who didn't live up to their notions of what modern civilization should be. Not only did the idea of Asia, or "Orientalism," hide from view the great diversity of places, peoples, environments, landscapes, and cultures that occupy the eastern three-quarters of Eurasia, but it served to simplify Europe's conception of itself. The idea of a continental divide between Europe and Asia became a tool for those seeking to excise Islam, Communism, Judaism, and any other ideologies and cultures that conflicted with their personal visions of what Europe was and should be.
The second problem with using continents, or even a more innocent notion of land masses free of the eurocentrism described above, as an organizational framework for understanding the world, is its implied environmental determinism. A major theme of geography is how physical environments help shape the cultures and societies that inhabit them--how climate and soil and topography and natural avenues of transportation influence agricultural and other economic activity and the location of cities and other human settlements. But one of the biggest geographic fallacies is to take such thinking to the extreme, to say that environmental conditions are the single, dominant determinant of human activity--the ultimate explanation for all the cultures, landscapes, and geographies of wealth and poverty that we see today. Such simplistic thinking geographers reject as "environmental determinism".
What does this have to do with continents? It is all well and good to recognize that land and water on earth is grouped into a pattern we might identify as a geography of oceans and land masses. Even better, we might relate that geography both to the geologic process of continental drift which created it, as well as to its influence on the global-scale circulation of currents of hot and cold air and water in our oceans and skies. But that is about as far as the continental or land-mass idea can take us. There is no good reason why our attempts to understand world geography in general, particularly in its human dimensions, should be based on a framework of continents. Thus, it is no accident that college textbooks use an alternative, "world regions" scheme, identifying three or more Asias, two or more Europes, two or more Africas, and two or more Americas.
Even more importantly, the best world geography recognizes that world regions can be more than simply subcontinental units of a single land mass. Defining a mostly-Islamic realm that covers parts of both Africa and Eurasia is common practice. Somewhat less common, but just as instructive, are regions that bridge major bodies of water; the North Atlantic World, the Pacific Rim, and the greater Mediterranean are all concepts that make sense, even though they overlap with alternative classification schemes for regionalizing the world.
The bottom line: No scheme is perfect, and there is no single best way to broadly group the peoples and places of the world into geographic units. We therefore need to recognize multiple ways to group the world. Continents do make some sense as land masses, providing a visually-obvious physical ordering of land and water on earth which helps us understand processes of geomorphology and climate. Otherwise, dividing the world into continents is a meaningless and potentially distorting exercise.
Further Reading
* Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997)
* Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978)
http://homepage.smc.edu/morris_pete/continents.html |
Ogopogo: I love the idea of atacking us geologically! |
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| Guest |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 01:06 Post subject: |
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| The Yithian wrote: | | Quote: | The Myth of Continemnt
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Ogopogo: I love the idea of atacking us geologically! |
I'd agree to the more accurate concept of the continent of Eurasia. I'm almost certain that including the rest of the countries on the continental landmass was also Brussel's long term plan for the greater EU.
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| Leaferne Defrost indoors
Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Total posts: 4785 Location: Graceland, mama Age: 43 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 02:01 Post subject: Re: Let's trash Europe! |
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| AndroMan wrote: | | Ogopogo wrote: | | stu neville wrote: |
Now then, Europe.. where to start? |
Well, first of all, it's NOT a continent. Get over it. |
Yes. It is a continent. Big too. |
*coughing and laughing uncontrollably* |
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| ted_bloody_maul Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2003 Total posts: 4877 Location: Quester's Psykick Dancehall Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 07:52 Post subject: |
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it would seem foolhardy not to include the thoughts of the great jim hacker on this issue.
"Brussels is a shambles. You know what they say about the average Common Market official: he has the organizing ability of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans, and the modesty of the French. And that's topped up by the imagination of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch and the intelligence of the Irish." |
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| ENTIANONMULTI Great Old One Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Total posts: 592 Location: Miskatonic University Engineering Department Age: 36 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 08:25 Post subject: |
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| i strongly suspect that the levels of vitriol etc will be less than in the USA biggest Bully thread as very few people on this side of the Atlantic really care about Europe, every country has it's idiot neighbour / long term enemy and any prejudice can simply be shifted to the suitable foreign country. |
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| stuneville Administrator
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 Total posts: 10230 Location: FTMB HQ Age: 46 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 31-05-2005 09:04 Post subject: |
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Well, this isn't going the way most of us probably expected  .. | The Yithian wrote: | | Quote: | The Myth of Continemnt
How many continents are there? It seems like a simple enough question, and most of us who grew up in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century come prepared with a pat answer to which we give little thought: "There are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Next question, please." The official flag of the Olympic games, however, displays a famous symbol of interlocking rings, each ring intended to represent one of the five continents of the world, the two Americas treated as one and Antarctica simply forgotten....The exact number is debatable, depending on one's size threshold for when an "island" becomes a "continent". Is Australia large enough to be a continent? How about Greenland? Madagascar? Personally, I'm inclined to answer these questions Yes, No, and No, giving me a list of six: North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. To my eyes at least, this half-dozen represents the world's primary distinctive land masses, as opposed to islands. |
Ogopogo: I love the idea of atacking us geologically! |
Point of pedantry - surely that would be Australasia?
Anyway, if you're going to take the tack that Europe isn't a discrete continnt on the basis that it's attached to Asia, then surely North America doesn't count as one either (unless you count the Panama canal as a continental divide). |
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