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Quote Chris:
If I see a man wearing a kilt, I don't think "that man is identifying himself first and foremost as a Scotsman." I think "Oh, there's a man in a kilt.
C.D. wrote:
But if a radical group of Scots men, who wore kilts, had been blowing up things and killing alot of people over the past 10 years would you think
"oh, theres a man in a kilt." or would you think "Uh-oh, there's a man in a kilt." Be honest.
Post 9/11 I think that it doesn't hurt to be aware of anyone behaving strangely on a plane and to not hesitate to take action during an eventual highjacking. I took a flight from Paris to Berlin on September 13, 2001, and I was still quite a bit in shock, as most of the other passengers. An old Arab couple were supposed to sit beside me during the flight, and I saw them exchange a short talk and take another seat, out of discretion. I thought that was most decent of them. They must have thought I was American by the way I was dressed and reading the N.Y. Times with tears in my eyes. On that particular day I TRULY did not feel keen on taking a sit next to Arabs on a plane, the image of Palestinians ululating in triumph while the second tower collapsed still too vivid on my mind. Today I wouldn't mind at all taking a seat next to any kind of citizen of the world on a plane, although I must confess I prefer getting all 2/3 seats to myself (when flying alone).
Johns wrote:
You peer up the road and see a group of people hanging around on each road.
Road A has a group of sweet looking elderly ladies, chatting, drinking tea and exchanging knitting patterns.
Road B however has a group of youths doing what some youths do... pushing each other around, texting constantly, swearing their heads off and so on...
Which road do you take?
I would definitely take road B, in the possibility of a sexed-up exchange with the teenies, which is always cute. Some people might not quite believe this, but I completely agree with Kate Bradshaw about the reality of very evident aggression generating from elderly ladies to the younger generations. Particularly in Berlin, this is a real plague. I've had SO enough of old ladies keep yaking about “how horrible youth is today“ and “how wonderful everything was before we lost the war“, each time I helped when they (invariably) dropped their groceries in the middle of the street, that nowadays I let them deal with their minor accidents by themselves. This is typical behaviour for a specific, very old (80-90) generation of uneducated women in Berlin. I've noticed that educated/artistic old women are very chatty too, but they tend to complain less, and to focus on their love-life experiences instead... I've also noticed that French old ladies are even less focused on complaining, and more keen to talk about their past escapades, which can be truly educational. Might it be that the hippies got it right?
If I see a man wearing a kilt, I don't think "that man is identifying himself first and foremost as a Scotsman." I think "Oh, there's a man in a kilt.
C.D. wrote:
But if a radical group of Scots men, who wore kilts, had been blowing up things and killing alot of people over the past 10 years would you think
"oh, theres a man in a kilt." or would you think "Uh-oh, there's a man in a kilt." Be honest.
Post 9/11 I think that it doesn't hurt to be aware of anyone behaving strangely on a plane and to not hesitate to take action during an eventual highjacking. I took a flight from Paris to Berlin on September 13, 2001, and I was still quite a bit in shock, as most of the other passengers. An old Arab couple were supposed to sit beside me during the flight, and I saw them exchange a short talk and take another seat, out of discretion. I thought that was most decent of them. They must have thought I was American by the way I was dressed and reading the N.Y. Times with tears in my eyes. On that particular day I TRULY did not feel keen on taking a sit next to Arabs on a plane, the image of Palestinians ululating in triumph while the second tower collapsed still too vivid on my mind. Today I wouldn't mind at all taking a seat next to any kind of citizen of the world on a plane, although I must confess I prefer getting all 2/3 seats to myself (when flying alone).
Johns wrote:
You peer up the road and see a group of people hanging around on each road.
Road A has a group of sweet looking elderly ladies, chatting, drinking tea and exchanging knitting patterns.
Road B however has a group of youths doing what some youths do... pushing each other around, texting constantly, swearing their heads off and so on...
Which road do you take?
I would definitely take road B, in the possibility of a sexed-up exchange with the teenies, which is always cute. Some people might not quite believe this, but I completely agree with Kate Bradshaw about the reality of very evident aggression generating from elderly ladies to the younger generations. Particularly in Berlin, this is a real plague. I've had SO enough of old ladies keep yaking about “how horrible youth is today“ and “how wonderful everything was before we lost the war“, each time I helped when they (invariably) dropped their groceries in the middle of the street, that nowadays I let them deal with their minor accidents by themselves. This is typical behaviour for a specific, very old (80-90) generation of uneducated women in Berlin. I've noticed that educated/artistic old women are very chatty too, but they tend to complain less, and to focus on their love-life experiences instead... I've also noticed that French old ladies are even less focused on complaining, and more keen to talk about their past escapades, which can be truly educational. Might it be that the hippies got it right?
But we'd still have the racial, socio-economic, and gender (yawn
) issues to deal with. 
carries potential for the Nobel Peace price. (Although there already have been people who've came up with the same idea, Tom. Wonder why it invariably ended up with a 
genocide...)
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