Hands Across America

After last night’s college football final, I should mention a weird discovery I made during Bowl Month. Over the holidays, I saw a bowl game involving Texas State University. Yeah, can you believe Texas has a State university? Lyndon Johnson even went there. Anyway, I noticed the coach was wearing a hat with this odd hand sign on it. It looked like this:

 

It's the coach of a large university, so I'm assuming it's not offensive. I figured it was just some obscure clothing brand or something. But then they showed some Texas State fans in the crowd, and they were giving the same sign (and always with the left hand.) Fearing this was some sort of cult, I googled "Texas State hand gesture," and was relieved to see that it was much more innocent than I'd imagined.

Yes, it's the map of Texas. 

So that got me wondering what other states could have their own hand map. Obviously, there's Michigan. 

But don’t forget the Upper Peninsula…

I couldn’t think of any provinces that could be represented with hand signals, but there were quite a few states:

Idaho

The Future Names Of London

Here in Canada, there are a lot of places named after other places. London, Ontario, is probably the most famous, but also within a short drive of my home, you can visit Paris, Stratford, New Hamburg, Vienna, Cambridge, and Delhi. I’ve always found these weird. First, from a standpoint of culture: a borrowed name means that the identity of your place is tangled up in some other place. And secondly, from a standpoint of convenience: you’re forever saying, “I’m from London…no, not that London.”

But of course, that’s looking at it from my perspective in a country where many people live in settlements named for other, much older and more famous settlements elsewhere. It occurred to me recently to wonder at the mentality of those people who gave these sites their names in the first place. For each of those places, somebody thought it was a good idea to give it an already-used, already-famous name. I can’t really imagine what would make a person think that’s a good idea.

First of all, what inspired the names? Some British settler came across a small encampment in the middle of a forest and said, “You know what this reminds me of? London!” I suppose you could say that the name is more of an inspiration: they’re not saying it’s like London, but that it aspires to be like London. But still, that’s kind of setting it up for disappointment. Surely they’d give it a more attainable goal. I don't know, Sheffield? 

It seems a little odd today to call a city of half-a-million by the name of one of Europe’s largest cities, but how did folks in the early years call this collection of houses, “London,” with a straight face? As an early English settler in southern Ontario, you know London as this huge city, and now you’re using the name to refer to a little hamlet. “I will journey to London on the morrow. By Jove, I would that there existed some manor of hand-gesture to indicate that one uses a name of such ridiculousness with a sense of reluctance, as if it were in quotes.”

Secondly, why do they reuse the name exactly, without any changes? I mean, I can understand calling it “New” something. You know, don't confuse us with York; this is New York. Then you’re paying tribute while giving it individuality, and you’re explicitly saying it’s a new version of that old place. The Americans have plenty of “New” places, but Canada doesn’t have many, we prefer just reusing names. So in addition to not understanding why that old explorer decided to associate the rudimentary settlement with the grandest city of his homeland, I also don’t understand why he felt no need to distinguish it from its namesake. 

I guess there's a parallel with people's names: we often name people with the same name as a parent. But then we invented the word, “junior” to avoid confusion. Reusing place names is like naming a kid after his father but insisting that you not call him junior. Who would do that? 

“I’m Frank, and this is my son, Frank.”

“Ah! Frank Junior.”

“No! Frank!”

Then, years later, the kid introduces himself, "I'm Frank, no, not that Frank."

But here's another way of looking at this: To better get inside the head of those early place-namers, let’s say we Canadians were exploring space. We’re colonizing a new planet, and we’ve just established a settlement. It’s only three habitation pods and a greenhouse, but we then say, “And we’ll call it, Toronto.” Okay, that’s a bad example, Canadians wouldn’t feel right naming things after ourselves — we’d probably just name that settlement, “London.” 

So let’s say it’s the Americans establishing a space colony, and they have to come up with a name. They wouldn’t use New York, since that’s already a borrowed name. But would they call their new settlement something like, “Los Angeles” or, “Chicago?” I can’t imagine that, since those names have — for both good and bad — a lot of emotional connotations. They wouldn't feel right calling a place “Chicago” when it doesn’t have L trains, disappointing baseball teams and ketchup-less hot dogs. They’d either fall back on generic American names (Columbia, Freedom, Liberty) or name it after a person. Which brings up the question: how could you journey across the Atlantic and half of North America — in the eighteenth century — without anyone in your party doing something that deserved getting a small town named after them?

"So I'm from London...No, not that London. How about you? "

"I'm from Pickles The Ship's Cat. It's a long story."

There's A Swingin' Town I Know Called... Capital City

Looking back at some of my old posts, I came across one from 2015 about how Egypt was planning to build a new capital to replace Cairo. Well, to replace it as capital: I mean, Cairo would still be there, it just wouldn't be capital anymore. I was curious what became of that idea; the whole thing had seemed like a pipe dream, so I was kind of assuming that I'd find the project had been canceled years ago, or pushed to the back burner.

Nope, it's still happening. In fact, it's under construction as we speak. You can even see it on Google Earth.  It still doesn't have a name yet, so it's just the New Administrative Capital. It's also not really far from Cairo. When combined with some other new developments going on, they're going to end up with a really big continuous urban area. Egypt already looks pretty unusual from the aerial perspective, with the contrast between the desert and the irrigated area around the Nile, and now it’s also going to have a huge urban smear across it.

The other surprising thing I learned is that it's not even the only replacement capital under construction. Both Indonesia and South Korea have new capitals on the go.

South Korea has been moving government institutions from Seoul to the planned city of Sejong for years. It was only founded in 2007, but already has 350,000 people. It seems the idea of officially moving the capital is still controversial and may never completely happen, but even as it is, they've put a lot of work into it. 

Indonesia is building Nusantara to replace Jakarta. It's still early in the process, having only started last year. But they're being bolder, building it on a totally different island from current capital and largest city, Jakarta. 

So what's the reason behind these new capitals? In my previous post, I assumed that if a country is going to build an entirely new city to be the capital, it must be a case of vanity, or some kind of national mid-life-crisis. There may be some of that, but in each of these cases, there is a practical purpose too: a very large and over-crowded capital. Moving the government out will drag some of the people out and into another part of the country. I - the resident of a country where the capital is not the largest city - didn't think of that. Oh, and Jakarta is slowly sinking. And Seoul is uncomfortably close to North Korea. 

So maybe we'll see more of them in the future. There are plenty of over-stuffed capital cities in the world; starting over on cheap land somewhere else must be pretty tempting. Even if it does make geography quizzes harder worldwide.

Check Republic

So Croatia has made it to the World Cup semi-finals. Good for them; I don’t have a connection to them, other than a Croatian community in KW, but it’s always good to see a country punch above their weight.

But watching them today, I found myself wondering: how did they come to own the checkerboard? They’ve kind of made it their thing. It’s on their uniforms — however subtly — and their flag, and their crest. They’ve decided that it is their symbol. Talk about punching above your weight: there are only so many patterns in the world, and they’ve decided to claim one of the basic ones.

I know, every country has its symbols. But a lot of the time, it’s something rare or unique. Here in Canada, we put the maple leaf on everything, but that’s something that you only get here or in the northern United States. There’s no one off in Burkina Faso who’s feeling cheated because they wanted to use it as their symbol.

It’s a wonder more countries don’t try this. Like why hasn’t anyone claimed polka dots? That might look weird, but you’d be distinctive. Surely that would be worth it to someone who doesn’t get a lot of the world’s attention. If you’re, say, Paraguay, you might figure it would be worth it to look a little ridiculous if it means that people think of you when they see polka dots.

I guess a few countries have just grabbed basic things as their symbol. Like Japan has taken the sun. Yes, there are lots of other countries that have the sun on their flag, but Japan just took it as their whole national identity. We’re the land of the rising sun. Yes, we know the sun rises everywhere, but we’re just going to put in on our flag and make it our nickname.

Now that I think about this, it could work. There are about 200 independent countries in the world, so I’m sure you could find 200 basic patterns and common elements that everyone could find one. Sure, Croatia acted first and grabbed checkerboards, but someone else can have lines. Okay, that’s too much like stripes, and everyone has stripes. How about wavy lines? Laos, do you want wavy lines? Papua New Guinea, you can have dotted-lines.

And someone could take clouds. They don’t have the life-giving worship-inspiring importance of the sun, but they are pretty universal. They could be like, we’re Estonia, and we’re the land of clouds. We re-drew the flag with a cloud on it, so now, when you look into the sky, you’ll think of us. Or Japan, depends what kind of day it is.

RSA By Any Other Name

Watching the Olympics is a bit of a geography lesson. It's a reminder that there are lots of countries out there, including a lot of countries that are too well-behaved to get noticed most of the time.

It also comes up that a lot of countries have official names that are longer than the names we normally call them. You see an abreiviation like "RSA" and try to figure out what that is by sounding it out. Rosesia? Rasalla? No, it's "Republic of South Africa."

Sometimes the long form is well known. For instance, most people know that China is officially the "People's Republic of China." Fortunately most of them don't use the entire name, even in the Olympics. So we don't have to remember that Venezuela is really the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela."

Unlike most countries, Canada doesn't have a flowery full name - it really is just called "Canada."  In older media you sometimes hear people call it "The Dominion of Canada," but that name was never made into the official name. And since "dominion" is a name for part of the British Empire, its use has disappeared as Canada has come to view itself as more independent.

Maybe we should get a nice long impressive ceremonial name. I don't think we'd want to go with "Dominion of Canada," since most of us associate that word with either grocery stores or the bad guys from Deep Space Nine. I'll just peruse the list of countries at Wikipedia. Australia is the "Commonwealth of Australia." That's pretty good, but it's confusing with the British Commonwealth. I see Bolivia is the "Plurinational State of Bolivia." I'm not even sure what that means; they probably just invented the word, "plurinational" to excuse a lack of national unity. I can't believe we didn't think of that. So how about it: The Optionational Multicountry of Canada.

Preparing For The Trump Influx

Okay Canada, we've got a problem. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, and people are getting nervous. A President Trump would be a problem for a lot of people, but it's especially bad for us: see, the election's months away, and already Americans are talking about fleeing to Canada. Yeah, it may seem like idle joking now, but some people are taking it seriously. And just wait until Trump and Vice President-elect Palin are musing about which religions to ban; then the floodgates will open.

We've gone and set the precedent that we'll welcome refugees. That seemed like a good idea when we had an ocean between us and all the countries producing refugees. But if there's a despotic leader right next door, it could be a disaster. What are we going to do with all these people? there are 2.6 million Muslims in the U.S. and 50 million Latinos. Then you have to add in a fair portion of liberals who just want to leave, and then all the people dodging the draft to avoid the new war against France. Face it, we're going to have to use some more radical approaches to fit everyone in. Here are some ideas:

Accelerate Global Warming

The easiest way for us to get more usable space is to use more of the land we already have. For that, all we need are a few more degrees and the extinction of the blackfly. Of course, we've always had the capacity to pump out the greenhouse gases, and now we have the incentive. And when Trump mandates maximum mileage standards, that'll help too.

Once the ice is gone, we start building condos and subdivisions in the Arctic. Hey, we've created real estate bubbles pretty much everywhere else in the country, why not the North? Once developers run out of room on Toronto's waterfront, they'll be glad to have new land to work with.

Annex Everything We Can

I've mentioned the possibility of adding the Turks and Caicos before; well, there are plenty of other ex-colonies of Britain in the Americas that we could adopt. I know, the Falklands aren't that big, but I'm sure they'll be a fine place for Bernie Sanders to spend his exile.

Also, we could probably talk Trump into just giving us Puerto Rico. It's nearly bankrupt, and full of Latinos, so he'll want nothing to do with it.

Fill In Some Places

Saskatchewan, Labrador, Northern Ontario: you're going to have to make room.  Sure, we can hide some more cities deep in the forest and you'll never even know they're there, but you on the prairies are just going to have to live with a New Chicago that you can see for miles around.

New Provinces

Every province has land they're really not using. We could slice-off big parts of them so that refugees could build their own Provinces from scratch. Honestly, we could just redefine Ontario as "everything within a hundred miles of the 401, and most of us wouldn't notice the difference. Why not take everything between Stratford and Tobermory and give it to American ex-pats to establish New Connecticut.

Since a lot of the Trumpugees™ will be fleeing due to their religion or ethnicity, we could create homelands for Muslims, Hispanics, homosexuals etc. I'm sure putting all the people with one culture in the same province couldn't possibly come back to haunt us. But seriously, that's just the decent thing to do, letting people with their own culture govern themselves. What's that, Native Canadians? Well, um, you know...

Expanding Cities

We don't really want Toronto to balloon into a sprawling megalopolis surrounded by American shantytowns. So let's think about how we can fit more people into other cities. For instance, if we in Kitchener-Waterloo want to squeeze in more people without changing the community's character, we'd have to build a few more conjoined communities. There's enough room between KW, Cambridge, and Guelph for another city. We can just make it one big mass of cities that can't agree on a merger.

Making New Cities

There are plenty of parts of Canada that don't have a big urbanized centre, but could probably benefit from one. For instance, the Maritimes. Wouldn't we all like to see what happens when we squeeze a million Nova Scotians into a mega city to create the worlds friendliest metropolis? Bonus: they could finally get their CFL team. And how about a big city for Newfoundland? That would be beautiful with all those wooden, brightly-coloured skyscrapers.

And since some American cities will probably move wholesale to Canada, we might as well just rebuild them in their entirety. So let's start looking for places we can put replicas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston.

Learn Spanish

All the Spanish speakers are going to mean some big changes. for one thing, we'll have to find a way to put grocery items in three-sided containers so we can print the label in three different languages. But I also figure Quebec would be willing to house them. Sure, they might overwhelm the French-Canadian culture, but at this point, I'm sure they no longer care which language wins, as long as it's not English.

More Hockey Teams

If the blue states start to empty out, they might as well bring their hockey teams with them. But keep in mind that a sudden increase in Canada's population would mean and an explosion in the number of hockey players a generation from now.

Steal Parts Of The U.S.

He may claim otherwise, but Trump isn't really a detail guy. So we could easily sneak in and take a few parts of America without him noticing or caring, as long as we take parts he's not real fond of. For instance, Detroit has no money, cheap real estate, and a big Muslim community. He'd probably be glad if we took it off his hands. Same for Buffalo.

As I've mentioned before, there are plenty of empty states bordering Canada that America wouldn't really miss. Unfortunately, they're mostly places that would support Trump: As soon as he wins the election, you know North Dakota will be out building a fence on the Canadian border, then leaving us a bill. Really, the only state we could annex wholesale without trouble would be Vermont. That doesn't really give us much extra space, but at least then we wouldn't have to send Bernie Sanders to the Falklands.

Nulcear Weapons

At this point, we'll have a small empire, most of America's scientists, control of the world's media, and about a hundred million people, many of which are the people Trump has taught his followers to demonize. The point is, we'll be next in the crosshairs of Trump and his government propagandists at the new PBS (which will actually just be rebranded Fox News.) So no more of that undefended border crap; it's time for a cold war. Oh, and we still have to protect the Falklands from Argentina.

Again, I'm hoping that some of the fleeing Americans can bring some military equipment with them. And maybe Justin Trudeau knows where his dad put those Cruise missiles we tested for the Americans in the eighties. And I'm sure we've still got the plans for the Avro Arrow around here somewhere. Yes, it's obsolete now, but remember, it will just have to beat the new F-35. That shouldn't be too hard.

Sub(stantial Con)fusion

Many people have observed that whenever someone starts a sentence with, "This isn't racist, but..." then you know that the rest of the sentence is going to be totally racist. But I'm hoping to be the first person to start a sentence that way and not be racist. Here it goes:

This isn't racist, but I've noticed that a lot of Subway® franchises are run by people of Indian heritage, or elsewhere in Southern Asia. What's up with that? Again, to emphasize: not racist, since I have no problem with anyone running a Subway. I'm just curious, since it seems surprising.

Of course, it's common for immigrants to set up a restaurant; it makes sense, since you come to a new land, and you don't know much about the customs and traditions. So you take advantage of what you do know, which is your own culture. That's a win-win, because they get established in their new home, and everyone around them gets to experience a new culture. But subs? Don't get me wrong; I enjoy both Subway and Indian food. But you've got to admit that on the spectrum of human food, they're at opposite ends. So I'm wondering how people say, "Let's introduce people to our marvelous culinary culture, with its elaborate language of spices... Nah, on second thought, let's make sandwiches with cold cuts."

I had always hoped this would lead to Indian influence in the subs, and at last, we have a butter chicken sub. So I rushed out and bought one. But I hadn't considered that of course this means I'm likely ordering it from someone intimately familiar with Indian culture, so I'm going to look like the Ignorant White Cultural Appropriator. Or at the very least, I'm going to break her heart when she realizes my sandwich will be such a mangled version of her culture. I mean, what appropriate toppings can you choose for a butter chicken sub out of what's available at Subway? You can't just put mayo on it. Raita isn't available as a sauce, so I chose Ranch dressing as the closest thing, and then felt very guilty over it (though it did go surprisingly well; I recommend it.) So it was weird, but we survived, both I and the Indian Subcontinent. I'll now feel confident ordering the butter chicken sub in the future, whoever makes it.
 
However it's become obvious that this is the direction that popular food is taking, where each culture is represented by one dish which becomes internationally famous. Then we think of that food as being the representative of its entire culinary culture. Don't sample all of Thai food, just try Pad Thai. And then we pick and choose combinations of those things and create new cosmopolitan abominations. For India, the dish is butter chicken. Sorry vindaloo, you're out of luck. For Canada, poutine is emerging as our representative. Want to put them together? Bam! There you go.

Hey Fern!

How influential is this blog? Well, I complained about the design of New Zealand's flag, and a mere three years later, they are changing it.

Good for them.  Canada was once in the same position, with an undistinctive flag containing the Union Jack and we changed it. But, if it hadn't been changed back in the sixties, I honestly don't think we would have the courage to do it now.

As I observed last time, the other similarity between Kiwis and Canucks is that we seem to have chosen leaves as our symbols. A lot of the designs use the Silver Fern, and many others use the "koru," which is apparently an indigenous symbol based on a curled up silver fern leaf.  But whatever symbol they go with, it looks like they will get a distinctive flag, since most of the designs go heavy on either curved lines or black, neither of which appears on many national flags. I'd go with one of the black-and-white designs divided by the fern.  It's simple but breaks the rules.

But overall, they're pretty good designs. As usual, some people are being predictably critical and dismissive, while others are making a big deal of some of the more amateur or humourous rejected designs, even though they really aren't that funny. After all, we've already had years to pour over our own rejected designs.

If New Zealand manages to dump it's old flag, there's a few more countries that should consider it:

Angola

A machete and a broken gear?  What kind of message is that supposed to send?

Georgia

If you're going to have a repeating design, why not go full fractal and have crosses in crosses in crosses in...

Mozambique

You have an AK-47 in your flag?  And you're surprised no one wants to invest in the country?

Cyprus and Kosovo

If the main thing you have on the country's flag is the country itself, it reminds everyone that you can't agree on anything.

Fire In The As-Yet-Unnamed New Capital Of Egypt

A few weeks ago, the Egyptian government announced plans to build a new city to serve as it's capital. That's ambitious, but not unusual, since a number of countries have planned, purpose-built capitals. Brasilia, Brazil is perhaps the most famous, since it was only built in the 50's. But history buffs may know that both Washington, D.C. and Canberra, Australia were originally planned to be capitals. There's also New Delhi, India and Islamabad, Pakistan, though they were both extensions of existing cities. And the new country of South Sudan proposed using its new oil wealth to rebuild its capital, Juba, in the shape of a giraffe.

It's easy to see why a country (particularly a new or growing one) might want a new capital: you can avoid the rivalry between existing cities and regions when choosing who gets to be capital. And since the capital is a sort of global face of the country, it's impressive if you have a nice shiny new one. Though it does reflect poorly on your country if you look at your existing cities, then decide you'd rather just start from scratch.

And that's the big downside of a planned capital: it costs a fortune. They're talking about $45 billion for the new Egyptian capital. And their economy isn't doing too well. No one wants to invest in a country that pauses every couple of years to change dictators. And the usually-lucrative tourism industry has been hurt because no one feels comfortable visiting the country where the religious party seems like the voice of reason. So people are taking a believe-it-when-we-see-it attitude.

But this issue does raise an interesting question: it’s hard enough to design a city from scratch, but if it’s going to be a national capital, how would that affect the design? You’d want it to be impressive and awe-inspiring, and you’d have to leave plenty of room for government offices and international embassies. You’d also want lots of nice, friendly places for photo-ops. But I don’t think the planners could put in all that work without yielding to the temptation to make sarcastic little touches, like having all the bureaucrats’ buildings be featureless grey cubes. It would also be nice if you could arrange it so that the poorest neighbourhood is between the nicest neighbourhood and the government offices, forcing the politicians to have an educational commute everyday.

St. Andy Talking

So the Scotts said no. It seems like a very British near-separation, with everyone being polite and putting a positive face on it. It also seemed to be surprisingly rational. Of course, I’m watching from an ocean away, but the discussion I saw had surprisingly little delusion and dirty tricks, despite what I talked about earlier in the campaign.

People really emphasized that the no vote doesn't mean business as usual, and there has to be further devolution of power. I hope that works. Partly because it could end up with my own dear Birmingham becoming the capital of the province of West Midlands. But also because with the closer cultures, lack of language differences, and vaguer desires, Britain may actually come up with a long-term solution. No, I'm not saying that no one will want independence ever again - there'll always be hardcore separatists - but they have a chance at satisfying enough people to sap the movement of its softer support. That's if the federal government acts decisively. Prime Minister Cameron, though, doesn't seem like the grand-gesture type, so I’m guessing that reforms are headed for committee hell. And yes, I know the British don't call it the federal government; but if they're serious about devolution, they soon will, so let me be the first.

This could be interesting to watch in the future: The nations of Britain will be reassessing their role vs. the federal government. At the same time, Britain (and likely a few others) will be reassessing their membership in Europe. And Europe will be, um, trying to make things work. There’s potential for this to be a much-needed re-examination of what countries and nations are and what we want them to do. But I suspect it will be business as usual within Britain, while it caves to staunch conservatives and leaves Europe, and the EU will continue living off of Angela Merkel’s credit card.

Words Like Violence

So we're going to war, but who is this that we're fighting? We started off calling them ISIS, for Islamic State Iraq and Syria. But then some people decided it should be ISIL, for Islamic State Iraq and Levant. And others drop the place altogether and just call it Islamic State. And then they also have the nickname “Daesh.”

The problem is that they aren't really thinking of themselves as limited to Iraq and Syria, and no one knows what Levant means (apparently just “middle east.”) “Islamic State” perpetuates the idea that Islam is all about terrorism (and probably leads to some hilarious mixups with the Nation of Islam.)

I'm assuming this is one of those cases where there isn't going to be a truly correct translation. So let's just choose our own. Supposedly they hate “Daesh,” so we could go with that, if “Those Bastards” is too unsubtle. Or we could poke fun at ourselves, calling them "This Week's Enemy."  Let them try portraying this as ultimate Armageddon with a name like that.

And one of their enemies is the Kurdish force known as the Peshmerga. But, in the grand tradition of TV reporters showing off how good they are at pronouncing local names, they spit it out quickly as Thepeshmerga. Which I always mis-hear as “Depeche Merga” and that leads to some very strange imaginings.

You Gonna Use That State?

The Economist has an article about the economic success of South Dakota.  The article isn't that interesting; here, I'll sum it up for you: taxes, regulation and unions, all bad.

What I found interesting was their referring to South Dakota as "a neglected state."  That's an accurate way of describing it, and it's the sort of subtlety of American culture that often escapes foreign journalists.  Really, there's four levels of state fame:

• The superstar states (California, New York, Texas, maybe Florida) where everything happens
• The popular states (Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, etc.) where people are from
• The but-of-joke states (Iowa, Oklahoma, Utah, etc.) which enter the public consciousness only as caricatures
• States that just fill out the flag (Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Vermont, Delaware, New Mexico, Wyoming, Maine & Rhode Island)

A fair number of people do live there; several of those states have over a million people. But it's pretty surprising how seldom they get mentioned. Even I mentioned a while back that I had trouble coming up with Idaho stereotypes.

Of course, we in Canada can relate to the problem of getting ignored by the United States.  So I was thinking, you remember that map that was passed around a few years ago, where they created the United States of Canada (Canada plus the Blue States) and Jesusland (the Red States)?  Well maybe that was misguided.  After all, If Canada has a defining attribute, it is not liberalism, it is being invisible to the U.S.  So we should adopt some of those neglected states.  New Mexico would be better of with Mexico, and they can keep Delaware and Rhode Island since they'd be off on their own.  But we'll also take upstate Michigan and New York, since they're as ignored as any state.

Obviously, for this to work, we'd have to reciprocate and give the Americans everything in Canada that Americans don't ignore.  That would be just Rob Ford and Justin Bieber.  Sounds good to me, what do you think?

Running This Up The Flagpole

You often see these flags or banners hanging outside houses that have some seasonal or holiday theme, like they have a jack-o'-lantern flag for Halloween. Recently I walked past a house that had a flag celebrating summer.  It had a colourful design with sunlight and flowers, and prominently featuring a ladybug.  Somehow, I thought it would be funny if someone made one of these flags to look like a national flag.  Like the summer flag could feature a simpler, more stylized lady bug, like this:

So I was going to do a big production where I would come up with national flag-style designs for each of the seasons.  But I only got as far as fall, and was thinking what would be on that flag.  A leaf turning colour - say, red - would be appropriate.  Of course, you could just use the Canadian flag for that.  So here's my proposals for flags you can use to celebrate the seasons, using actual national flags:

Fall: Canada

Winter: Israel

Several countries have wintry colours, but Israel has the bonus that lots of people will mistake the Star of David for a snowflake.

Spring: Mauritius

The island nation in the Indian Ocean is full of Easter Egg colours.

Summer: Palau

The sweltering sun in a cloudless sky is a great sign of summer.  And Palau's 18,000 people could use the income.

California Cleavin'

There's campaign to split California into six smaller states. I'm sure I'm like a lot of people in that I only heard about it last week when it received The Colbert Bump. There have been a number of proposals over the years to split up states. It might be a big and diverse state like California, Texas, or New York. Or it might be a geographically separate part of a state, like Long Island or Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

As a geography nerd, this sort of thing really interests me. It's obvious that the subdivisions of countries often make no sense. Does it really make sense for Vermont and New Hampshire to be separate? And a number of people have tried to sort things out.  Here's a particularly detailed proposal for the U.S.

Here in Canada, I'd say our provinces make even less sense. Ontario and Quebec are not only much bigger than the others, they also have very different northern and southern parts. Manitoba and Saskatchewan don't game many differences, despite what they may say about each other. And P.E.I.? Really?

Buy much as of love to redraw the borders of North America, I have to point out that we should first decide what we want to accomplish with this layer of government. Should a state/province be a single, largely autonomous entity? That is, they are part of a unified country, but you could say that help from the central government should be avoided as much as possible. Or should it be a representative of a group of people with a lot in common?

The two approaches are kind of mutually exclusive. If you orient states around people with commonality, it will be economically weak. For instance: if a state is all rural farmland, it will be able to create policies that are great for farmers, and the state's presidential vote will be an undiluted voice of rural America. But, whenever times are tough for farmers, the state will be serious financial trouble.

Something that will really impact the direction to go, is how strong an ability the country has to transfer money around to mitigate localized economic problems. Right now, there's not a lot of appetite for equalization measures, so you'd be better off with states that have diversified economies.

So California - as it is now - is relatively well laid out due to its diversity. It's current financial problems ate mostly the fault of its overly-indulgent referendum system. Bit under the split plan, it would be split into a bunch of homogenous states. Some - particularly Silicon Valley - would be healthy, others not so much.  Overall, the state is better off together.  Though the San Andreas Fault may have other ideas.

Uncommon Wealth

It's time for the Commonwealth Games again!  The Commonwealth Games are in that second tier of international sporting events.  In the first tier, you've got your Summer and Winter Olympics, and the World Cup.  Then in the second tier you've got your continental games like the Pan Am Games and a few types of Youth and University Games, the Gay Games (in Cleveland this year?) and so on.

The Commonwealth Games are pleasant enough; who doesn't like an excuse for international sports, especially if it's going to be less pushy than the Olympics.  But then you stop and think about what it is: A pleasant sports event open to places that have nothing in common other than being colonized by the same country. 

I can understand the existence of the Commonwealth: these countries do end up with some political and cultural commonalities.  It's just hard to believe we celebrate this history.  Well, we in Canada would; we love any excuse to revel in our British origins.  But India?  Didn't they go through a lot to get rid of British rule?  Why don't we just invite the Americans while we're at it?

The Games are a great example of the weird way we look at Britain in the world today.  There are plenty of countries that still have resentment and anger at them, and with good reason.  And at the same time, the British have achieved a reputation for being calm and civilized.  It's hard to imagine any other former empire having a sports event ("Former Subjects Of The Mongol Hordes Games.")  So the British really know how to craft an imperial legacy - Americans, take note.

One-Man's Land

Ever have an idea, then see someone beat you to it? That happened to me with North Sudan.

I read about this situation a few months ago: Egypt and Sudan have a border dispute. There were two different treaties marking out the border between them, and each country recognizes a different border. And surprise! They each wasn't the border that gives them the best land. Egypt says the border is a straight line, while Sudan says it has a kind of S-curve in it near the coast. Thus, there's a little bit of land on the Red Sea that they both claim.

Buy here's the weird part: there's another area further inland that neither country claims. According to Sudan’s border, it’s in Egypt, and according to Egypt’s border, it’s in Sudan. As far as I know, it's one of the few places on earth (outside Antarctica) that's not claimed by anyone. Of course, it’s not really surprising that no one wants it, since it's just desert. No people live there, and there are no resources. But still, you'd think someone would want it. And now someone does.  I thought someone should try claiming the unwanted land and declare their own country.

Someone in Virginia has done exactly that. He's claimed the land and declared independence. I have to admit, he has far more commitment than I do. I would have just issued a press release claiming the land. He actually went there and planned a flag, in spite of Sudan being nearly at war with South Sudan, and Egypt in a state of permanent revolution.  He's declared it "North Sudan," and installed his family as the royal family. (Though they rule from Virginia.)

This is far from the first oddball country to be created. Lots of people have tried declaring their own property to be a sovereign country, in varying degrees of seriousness. Sealand has become semi-famous.  There are a number of small places in Europe that cling to claims of independence. In many war-torn regions, there are de facto governments set up that rule small areas, such as Somaliland. And then there is Taiwan, which had existed in legal limbo for decades.

I'm actually surprised it doesn't happen more often, given the huge number of out-of the way islands there are. I suppose part of the reason we don't see it is that strange aspect of human nature whereby the people least satisfied with their own government are usually the ones who take greatest ownership of their country. For instance, The Tea Party may be angry with the American government, but they are the ones least likely to abandon their country and start again somewhere else.

But you would think rich people would get in on it too. Consider: Britain and France are both deep in debt, and have a huge number of small territories around the world. Don't you think that if you offered France $20 billion for the Marquesas they'd at least think about it?  They're on the opposite side of the planet; they won't miss them. And Britain had an island called Inaccessible Island. Why would they want to keep that?

Some wealthy Libertarians have proposed building their own floating cities, where they can craft a government (or lack thereof) to their liking.  This has been especially pushed by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. He seems to share the ingenuous spirit of fellow founder Elon Musk, but not the politics.  A floating city with few rules would be entertaining to watch, but that's an awful lot of expense and technology, even for the people involved.  So I doubt that will happen.  Though you could make the whole thing into a reality show and it would pay for itself.

The fact that rich people rarely try creating their own countries would seem to betray the fact that they aren't as offended by their demonization at the hands of the Occupy types as they would have us believe. Or maybe it's because the sort of person who becomes super-rich has to be enough of a people-person that they don't want the solitude of their own country. Not even the quieter techie sidekicks like Paul Allen or Steve Wozniak feel the need for their own private nation.

Do You Like American Music

There are days when I don't know what to blog about, and then there are days when someone names the favourite musician for each U.S. state.  Okay, it's not the favourite artist, but the most distinctive artist.  That is, the artist who's popularity in the state most exceeds their national popularity (for instance, Alan Jackson is the distinctive artist for New Mexico, since he is the 45th most popular artist there, but only 425th nationally.

There's a few oddities about it:

• There aren't that many obvious selections.  I mean, Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey is the only "No, Really?" choice.
• Indie props to Alaska, whose artist is Ginger Kwan, 33rd in the state but 12,062nd nationally, and so obscure that she doesn't even have her a Wikipedia entry.
• Rush in Delaware?  Of course, Delaware has so few people that it could be thrown off by only a few big fans.  And I'm betting Joe Biden is one of them.
• Sufjan Stevens is famous for his tongue-in-cheek attempt to make an album dedicated to each of the fifty states.  He's only done two of them, but one was for Illinois, and apparently that meant a lot to the state.
• Tegan and Sara in Idaho?  Okay, I guess I don't really know what I should expect from that state.  The only mental picture I have of them is people farming potatoes while dreaming up trick football plays.  But from now on, I will also assume they are singing "Closer" to themselves as they go.
• The Virginias went with Matchbox 20 and the Dave Matthews Band.  I didn't see them as being the laid-back states.
• Rhode Island is America's enclave of grunge.  Wouldn't have called that one.
• Looking up some of the names I wasn't familiar with, I find that many of the musicians that are popular in their own state are folk or hip-hop artists.  So apparently those are the most regional genres.

Keep Calm and Reuse Memes

I have more Keep Calm spoofs for more countries.  The last time I tried this, it fell victim to my problems getting graphics to work on this blog, but those are fixed now.  So if you want to finally see topical humour about the U.S. 2012 election, go ahead.  But here's some new stuff:

Egypt:

Ukraine:

Russia:

Redefining Canada

Last week I made a map of Canada based on Google searches of province names.  That was inspired by a similar map of the U.S.  Well I've seen another American map going around the Internet.  In this one, they searched Google for "Why is <state name> so" and put Google's top autocomplete suggestion on the map.

So I did the same thing for Canadian provinces.  I've included all the suggestions I was given.  Unfortunately, there was no suggestion for, "Why are the Northwest Territories so" regardless of how I played with the awkward pluralism in that phrase.  Once again, the title is the suggestions for "Why is Canada so":

Notes:

1. Somehow, for B.C. it suggested the rather formal, "Why is B.C. so named?"
2. For Manitoba, it left a blank, suggesting the koan, "Why is Manitoba so?"
3. That is, the only suggestion for P.E.I. was, "Why is P.E.I. soil red."

Power To (A Lot Of) The People!

There seems to be an ongoing problem where countries are hugely divided.  In both Ukraine and Thailand, there are mass protests against the government. But the catch in both cases is that the governments also have support from many in the country, and would likely win any new elections.

It's a new paradigm for protesters vs. governments. Those of us who came of age in the eighties are used to the idea of people standing up against oppressors. But this is half the people rising up against the government of the other half. Also, we've all heard of elected governments that go on to abuse their power, but not governments that could get re-elected.

There are less dramatic examples elsewhere. The U.S. famously has its red state/blue state divide, and Toronto has its bewildering love/hate relationship with Rob Ford.

It makes one wonder if there can be compromises made to please both sides. Certainly in the American situation, people have proposed - tongue in cheek - splitting the country up along ideological lines. I don't really expect that to happen any time soon, but one wonders what else can bridge the divide.

Maybe countries should be organized by ideologies, not culture. Ironically, all this is happening at a time when Scotland and Catalonia are pushing for separation. In both those cases (and Quebec, too) the culture looking to separate isn't that ideologically different. That is, Quebec does have political differences with the rest of Canada, but they're small compared with the differences between America's two political solitudes. What do you think, fellow citizens of Healthcaria?