Thursday, December 30, 2010

Unistatian with apologies

According to Wikiworld there are only two remaining "United States", USA and Mexico. Not so many countries to apologize to for stealing "Unistatians" as to the Americans living in the 35 countries of the two America continents.

Current
The United Mexican States is the official name of Mexico

Historical
United States of Belgium, a confederation that existed during the year 1790
Republic of the United States of Brazil (Portuguese: República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil) was the name of Brazil between 1889 and 1968
United States of Central America (informal name), more properly known as the United Provinces of Central America and the Federal Republic of Central America (through several name changes), a defunct 19th century federation of the nations of Central America
United States of Colombia, name held by Colombia between 1863 and 1886
United States of Indonesia, name of the country from 1949 to 1950
United States of the Ionian Islands, former British protectorate from 1815 to 1864
United States of Stellaland, a short-lived political union of Goshen and Stellaland proper in southern Africa
United States of Venezuela from 1864 to April 15, 1953

Sunday, December 5, 2010

LAPTOPISTAN


By DAVID SAX
Published by New York Times on December 3, 2010 Photo by Piotr Redlinski

It may not look like much goes on in the laptop brigade at Atlas Café in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but the room is a hive of entrepreneurial and creative energy. JUST after 4 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, as a dozen people clicked away on their laptops at the Atlas Café in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, half of a tree broke off without warning less than a block away. It crashed into the middle of Havemeyer Street, crushing a parked car, setting off alarms and blocking the street. A deafening chorus of horns rose outside Atlas’s window as traffic halted. An 18-wheeler executed a sketchy 10-point turn in the middle of a crowded intersection before a pair of fire trucks made their way through the traffic jam in a blaze of red. Chain saws roared, sawdust flew and the horns built to a peak. It was New York urban pandemonium at its finest.

Inside the warm confines of Atlas separated from the chaos by only a thin wall of glass, not a soul stirred. A quiet mention was made of the falling tree, a few heads rose for a second, and then, just as quickly, they ducked back down. They all returned to whatever was on the other side of their glowing, partly eaten apples. On a day when the cafe Internet connection had already been down for four hours, and the toilet had been blocked for even longer, I thought I had seen these worker bees pushed to their limit. But I had underestimated them. Nothing could stir these people. They were not in New York; they were citizens of Laptopistan.

I was an interloper among them, an anthropologist of sorts, sent to untangle their odd society, to understand their mores and unwritten rules. How did the natives interact? How did the government function? What was the economy like in this land of bottomless cups and table hoggers? And what, oh what, were they all writing? I was, admittedly, a profoundly skeptical observer. Though I had been a freelance writer for the last eight years, I had always worked at home, clad in pajamas and brewing my own fuel rather than paying $3 for someone to make pretty designs in my caffeinated foam. Whenever my wife suggested that I get out of the house, maybe take my laptop to a cafe, I shot back: “Real freelancers don’t work in coffee shops. It’s just unemployed hipsters and their unpublished novels, or screenplays, or Facebook. My disdain for the coffee shop writing scene only grew this June, when I met a friend at the Red Horse Cafe in Park Slope. I had previously been there only on weekends, when it was filled with couples sharing the Sunday paper and parents wiping brownie residue off their toddlers. That weekday afternoon it was a place transformed. Gone were the newspapers and the strollers. Laptops had colonized every flat surface. No one uttered a word; people just stared into screens, expressionless. It felt like that moment in a horror movie when the innocent couple stumbles into a house filled with hibernating zombies, and they listen, in terror, as the floorboard creaks.

My friend and I ordered our coffee, and began to discuss whatever it was we were there to discuss. Within seconds of opening my mouth, I felt a change in the room. Eyes rose from their screens and landed on us — the zombies were awake, and they weren’t happy. One of them passed our table on the way to the washroom and let loose what can only be described as a snicker. We downed our coffee and beat a quick retreat. “To hell with those laptop-wielding fundamentalists,” I said.
So what was I doing in Laptopistan? I moved from New York to Toronto in September, but had come back to the city for a week and was sleeping on a friend’s couch. I needed a place to work. Someone suggested Atlas. I swallowed my skepticism and got my passport ready.

SET on the corner of Havemeyer and Grand Streets, and flooded with light from two walls of windows, Atlas Café, which opened in 2003, looks like a combination of worn trattoria and late 1990s Seattle coffeehouse. The name reflects its wall-sized map of the world (there are also a mobile of hanging globes, and flourishes of décor inspired by someone’s travel to the Far East). The soundtrack is a mix of old country and folk (Dylan, Willy, Cohen and Cash), classical, bebop and French ballads.

Balance of the New York Times article "Laptopistan".

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Unistatians Unite!

Already, the Unistatians of every ilk are marching across Unistatia!  At left, early denizens of the North American country of Unistatia, circa 1893.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Unistatianism - it could happen

Google "Unistatian" - apparently a fin-de-siècle term for those living in the United States given to us by other English speaking countries, specifically Australia ("Australians") and Canada ("Canadians") who hoped we might give up our arrogance at robbing the population of the two continental Americas of their claim to fame. Good luck. Or maybe there is still hope.

Friday, August 6, 2010

What WikiWorld Thinks of the "American" Demonym

Discussion on Wikipedia regarding the demonyn "American" - full entry here.

English usage
American is a self-referential term for many people living in the Americas. However, much of the English-speaking world uses the word principally to refer to a citizen, resident, or national of the United States of America, due to the lack of another widespread demonym. For that reason, many Canadians resent being referred to as Americans when people—particularly those overseas—mistakenly assume them to be U.S. citizens or fail to distinguish Canadian Englishand American English accents.

Spanish usage
In Spanish, América is the name of a region considered a single continent composed of thesubcontinents of Sudamérica and Norteamérica, the land bridge of Centroamérica, and the islands of the Antillas. Americano/a in Spanish refers to a person from América in a similar way thateuropeo or europea refers to a person from Europa. The terms sudamericano,centroamericano, antillano and norteamericano can be used to more specifically refer to the location where a person may live.

Citizens of the United States of America are normally referred to by the term estadounidense(rough literal translation: "United-Statesian") instead of americano or americana, and the country's name itself is often translated as Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. Also, the term norteamericano may refer to a citizen of the United States. This term is primarily used to refer to citizens of the United States, rarely those of other North American countries.[71]

Portuguese usage
In Portuguese, the word americano refers to the whole of the Americas. But, in Brazil and Portugal, it is widely used to refer to the citizens of the United States. The least ambiguous term,estadunidense (used in Brazil, something like "United Statesian" or "estadounidense" in Spanish), and "ianque"—the Portuguese version of "Yankee"—are rarely used. América, however, is rarely used as synonym to the country, and almost never in print and in more formal environments, where the US is called either Estados Unidos da América (i.e. United States of America) or simply Estados Unidos (i.e. United States). There is some difference between the usage of these words in Portugal and in Brazil, with the Portuguese being more prone to apply the term América to the country.

French usage
In French, as in English, the word américain can be confusing as it can be used to refer either to the United States, or to the American continents.

The noun Amérique sometimes refers to the whole as one continent, and sometimes two continents, southern and northern; the United States is generally referred to as les États-Unis d'Amérique, les États-Unis, or les USA. However, the use of Amérique to refer to the United States, while technically not correct, does still have some currency in France.

The adjective américain is most often used for things relating to the United States; however, it may also be used for things relating to the American continents. Books by United States authors translated from English are often described as "traduit de l'américain".

Things relating to the United States can be referred to without ambiguity by the words états-unien, étasunien, or étatsunien, although this usage is rare.

Dutch usage
In Dutch, the word Amerika mostly refers to the United States. Although the United States is equally often referred to as de Verenigde Statenor de VS, Amerika relatively rarely refers to the Americas, but it is the only commonly used Dutch word for the Americas. This often leads to ambiguity and to stress that something concerns the Americas as a whole, Dutch uses a combination, namely Noord- en Zuid Amerika(North and South America).

Latin America is generally referred to as Latijns Amerika or, less frequently, Zuid Amerika (South America).

The adjective amerikaans is most often used for things or people relating to the United States. There are no alternative words to distinguish between things relating to the United States or to the Americas. Dutch uses the local alternative for things relating to elsewhere in the Americas, such as Argentijns for Argentine, etc.

Russian usage
In the 19th century in Russia the word "America" was used for a traditional continent such as Europe and Asia. In the 20th century these traditional continents are known as "parts of the world". Now the term "continent" means any of six large continuous landmasses (Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Australia). Now the word Ameriсa refers to the United States more often than to America as a "part of the world". There is no term equivalent to "Americas" in Russian.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

"Jesuchristolandians" to replace the demonym "American"


The Jesusland map was created shortly after the 2004  re-election of George W. Bush as President of the former United States which, following the red/blue states scheme of the electoral college, divide the United States and Canada into the "The United States of Canada" and "Jesusland". The original image was created on November 3, 2004 by G. Webb, as a poster on yakyak.org. It quickly became what The New York Times described as an "instant Internet classic".  Many, who previously proudly called themselves "Americans" are equally pleased to be refered to as "Jesuchristolandians".