On 11/1/2011 11:27 PM, Warp wrote:
> Kevin Wampler<wam### [at] uwashingtonedu>  wrote:
>> In order to get replies, it seems best to post something incorrect in an
>> area where plenty of people have enough knowledge to point out your mistake.
>
>    But that would derail the conversation.

Heh, indeed it often seems to.  I most assuredly wasn't making a 
recommendation -- I much prefer well researched and thought-out posts 
(within reason, this isn't Wikipedia so more conversational stuff is 
nice too).  I was just making an observation.

Thanks again for the Finnish culture posts, I quite liked them!

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Kevin Wampler <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> Thanks again for the Finnish culture posts, I quite liked them!

  Now in return you'll have to tell me something I didn't know about the
culture of your country. :)

  (From your sender address I'm assuming that would be the US. That
probably makes the task a bit difficult, given how much Americans have
spread knowledge of your culture through Hollywood and TV... :) But I'm
sure there's something I didn't know already.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 2-11-2011 2:55, Darren New wrote:
> On 10/31/2011 13:21, andrel wrote:
>> we don't have one either and I am pretty sure many countries on the
>> equator
>> won't have one too.
>
> Well, that's a fair point, yes. But given that Warp said in Finland
> anything above freezing is short-sleeve weather, I rather think if
> Finland lacks a harvest festival, it's not because it's always a warm
> and prosperous growing season. ;-)
>

I think we had one (and still have remnants in some forms, e.g. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloemencorso ) and most probably Finland 
did also, it is just that the tradition died out. Using my thumb as a 
reliable source of hypotheses, it might have been that the focus shifted 
to the cities and it became outdated and considered backwards.

-- 
Darren, please put your examples on the counter

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Doesn't Finland have a harvest celebration, tho? Like Thanksgiving and 
> Mid-Autumn Festival and stuff like that? That's really all Halloween is, 
> except some Christians went and dressed it up in evil icons because it was 
> the pagan version of the holiday.

  Btw, now that you mention it and I looked it up, All Saints Day actually
*is* an official holiday in Finland. De jure, at least. It's in the saturday
between october 31 and november 6.

  However, it's a purely Christian holiday with its origin in Catholicism,
rather than being a traditional harvest festival.

  In practice nobody celebrates this. Not that I know of. (Perhaps some
churches might.) IIRC you don't even get a day off work (iow. it's not
*that* official).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 11/2/2011 7:50 AM, Warp wrote:
>    Now in return you'll have to tell me something I didn't know about the
> culture of your country. :)
>
>    (From your sender address I'm assuming that would be the US. That
> probably makes the task a bit difficult, given how much Americans have
> spread knowledge of your culture through Hollywood and TV... :) But I'm
> sure there's something I didn't know already.)

As you expected, I'm having quite a bit of trouble thinking of anything. 
  Not only because you already seem to know a fair bit about America, 
but because much of American culture (particularly on the west coast 
where I live) is so young.  It's seems odd to talk about something 
that's only been going on for 10 years as "culture".  Of course there 
are very old Native American cultural traditions, but they're not really 
something I caa speak to with authority.  To further complicate matters, 
US culture varies a great deal depending on where in the US you are.

I guess the best thing I can think of is that in many areas in America 
seem to delight in other cultures.  I'd estimate that 1/2 to 2/3 of the 
restaurants within a few miles of where I live are based on food from 
somewhere else (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Russian, 
Mexican, Italian, German, Ecuadorian, Malay, Ethiopian, etc.).  In the 
summer I'll also expect to see several festivals or parades celebrating 
other countries/cultures.  In some semi-paradoxical sense, I tend to one 
of the most "American" cultural traits to be the way in which other 
cultures are brought together and combined.  I assume you were already 
aware of this though, but it's the main thing that came to mind.

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On 11/1/2011 14:32, Warp wrote:
>    Just joking, of course. Was expecting *some* comments, though. :)

Now you know how Andrew feels after writing a five page essay on Haskell? :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 11/1/2011 23:32, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> On 10/31/2011 23:41, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> in the end, *any* harvest festival pretty much "is" Halloween, we just ended
>>> up with the version that included costumes and candy.
>
>> Actually, we got American Thanksgiving, too. So double-plus there.
>
>    What do you need two harvest festivals for?

One came with the europeans, one is (essentially) left over from the native 
americans.

The one called "Thanksgiving" is traditionally represented by a bunch of 
pilgrims and a bunch of indians (i.e., native americans) sitting down and 
eating native american food like turkeys and pumpkins, and smoking tobacco. 
The folklore is that it was the immigrant settlers making peace with the 
natives, being helped through the bad winter by the more worldly native 
americans because they hadn't harvested enough on their own.

Halloween might have come from the spanish immigrants or something? 
day-of-the-dead sort of thing, or as you say from the irish immigrants many 
years later.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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Kevin Wampler <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> I assume you were already 
> aware of this though, but it's the main thing that came to mind.

  One thing I have noticed is that Americans seem to be good at inventing
unhealthy food... For example I saw this video where they were trying
different foods at a State Fair, and they had things like corn dogs
covered in liquid chocolate. :P

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 11/3/2011 12:00 AM, Warp wrote:
>    One thing I have noticed is that Americans seem to be good at inventing
> unhealthy food... For example I saw this video where they were trying
> different foods at a State Fair, and they had things like corn dogs
> covered in liquid chocolate. :P

It sort of depends on where you are.  Where I live the food is actually 
pretty healthy.  For instance there's quite a bit of vegetarian food and 
the most common meat is probably fish.  Southern cooking (by which I 
mean the south-east US) is quite another story though.  Do a youtube 
search for "Paula Deen" to see what I mean.  State fairs are also sort 
of known as a place where you can expect to get the unhealthiest food 
imaginable, particularly deep fried things and food-on-a-stick.  For 
instance, I've heard of fried Coca-Cola, fried ice cream, fried 
Twinkies, and probably the worst, fried butter on a stick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUJjW3I65e4

Really though, this sort of food in pretty rare and you'll only find it 
at a few state fairs.

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On 03/11/2011 07:00 AM, Warp wrote:

>    One thing I have noticed is that Americans seem to be good at inventing
> unhealthy food...

Chocolate-coated lard, anyone? ;-)

I remember our GM telling us they went out to eat and were given chips 
that were first fried in lard, and then second-fried in duck-fat for 
"extra flavour"...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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