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#19523 02/21/01 07:58 PM
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Well, Bean, This Hour Has 22 Minutes will continue to have fodder for at least the next four years. I trust that Mr Mercer has already booked a flight to the District of Columbia, for another display of abomniable ignorance. Please be sure to tell your friends that we aren't all like that! Thanks.


#19524 02/21/01 08:07 PM
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wow Offline
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I wonder what answers we would get if Canadians were asked about USA ? That's not meant as a zinger, but aside from the folk in cities along the Cannada-US border, friends who have visited "inland" Canada have been surprised by misinformation and misplacing concerning US cities and states!
Meanwhile, do they sell tapes of the 22 Minute Hour shows? Have they a web site? I'd love to see a sampling.
wow


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And one that maybe isn't apocryphal:

The family name was Toyoda* but a numerologist convinced them the car would sell better as Toyota.

*Even Ænigma prefers Toyota.


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Verizon's a good one. I parsed it as Vertical Horizon. I later got the real word but Vertical Horizon won't let it in.


#19527 02/21/01 08:35 PM
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When I went to Japan, one of the funniest (and I don't speak japanese) shows i saw was a "pronounciation" game show.

Roving cameras asked tourist to "pronounce" a common phrase. the phrase was writen in "western/roman" alphabet, and no guide was given. the contestants (celebraties) had to guess what was being said--

The text was something one the order of "give me liberty or give me death" "We are not amused" -- classical/cliches type phrases. They have 5 or 6 tourist-- and start with the worst-- It could be very un PC-- but it was funny to watch and even i could "hear" the differences between the worst pronounced phrases and the best--

if you ever watched "archie bunker" hear him use the very old, very low class "turlet" for toilet- oh what pronounciation!..Image how such a pronounciation would sound to someone from an other country! Some "english films" and BBC shows-- featuring speakers for the "North" (Yorkshire or Northumbria) have been broadcast in US with sub-titles. and there are so many simple words that change pronounciation just in US.water or roof, and then from england to US- there is a change of vocabulary as well as pronounciation.

and I'm with Wow-- for the most part, Jay Leno is on too late for me to watch and still get to work on time-- but when they set a promo for "jay walking" as the segment is called-- i always stay up. Questions include "how many states in USA? How many planets? During the olympics-- What language is spoken in Austalia? (one answer "austrian") During the elections-- photo's of candidates-- and question "who is this?" the answers Jay gets are scary!



#19528 02/21/01 08:56 PM
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jmh Offline
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I have a small amount of sympathy for people from the USA when it comes to world "trivia". Whilst it is hugely amusing to see people from the USA given maps of Europe and asked to put a pin on major cities like Paris, Madrid and Rome, our own knowledge of the capitals of US states, South American countries and some of those little places in the Caribbean is distinctly hazy.

Schools (here anyway) decided years ago that geography was more about knowing about land masses, rock formations and politics rather than knowing answers to pub quizzes. It gets left to the more trivia-minded students to research those "facts at your fingertips" that we all prize so highly.

The US is a huge country and very few ordinary working people get to travel the world so that they have a specific reason to learn about other countries. I was told that if you live in Florida, an event in California is treated like world news, it is so far away. I think of this as "big country syndrome". There is so much news from war zones, that there are few column inches left to cover the news from the rest of the world. I noticed on this morning's news that two of the top three news items here were about the US (item one was the brouhaha following Clinton's activities during his last days in office). It is hard to imagine a news story from, say New Zealand, making into the top three headlines in the US. The converse is much more likely.

#19529 02/21/01 09:10 PM
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As the story would have it the name Exxon® was the result of an exhaustive computer program and search. Rejected names included Enco® which was a previously used name of Standard Oil® but was found to mean broken car in Japanese (shades of Nova®). Common rumor had it that Exxon was a combination of Esso and Nixon.


#19530 02/22/01 12:21 AM
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Geoff Offline OP
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Although I suppose putting that cow on bottles of Elmer's glue is no better...

Actually, FB, if you were to look at the other end of Elmer, you'd discover that HE wasn't a cow, but a bull. The same people who gave us Elsie, the Borden's cow, gave her a boyfriend, Elmer!


#19531 02/22/01 12:37 AM
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Dear Geoff: and which bovine's glandular productions are contained in the glue?


#19532 02/22/01 08:01 AM
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jmh Offline
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We still have Esso (and probably) Mobil petrol stations. I hadn't realised that ExxonMobil was the parent company.

Did they run the "Put a tiger in your tank" campaign, or the "Esso sign means happy motoring" in other parts of the world. The name Esso seems to be linked with mainly positive images here, whereas we only ever hear the world Exxon linked to Valdez [wince], so I don't suppose that they are keen to change the name.

Ferries operating the Channel suddenly became "P&O Ferries" after the parent company, after the "Herald of Free Enterprise", a "Townsend Thoresen" ferry went down with its bow doors open, losing many lives.


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