I’d heard of people who don’t believe in Belgium before, but not believing in Canada was new to me. This blog entry at Crooked Timber was stunningly hilarious.
The author writes how he doesn’t believe in Canada. It’s great writing and great satire.
Even many of the comments, following, were brilliant. I laughed a lot at the joke that goes:
Q: How do tell the difference between a Canadian and an American?
A: Ask him a question about American history. If he knows the answer, he’s a Canadian.
And, I especially liked the fractal theory of Canada, by a commenter who goes by the handle of Don Cates. It goes something like this (I will quote from the comment at length, hopefully I will be forgiven, it is sheer brilliance – note that it’s not just Canada-humor, but math-humor, which may be lost on some readers):
Given a community A and an adjacent community C, such that A is prosperous and populous, and C is less populous and prosperous, and nonreciprocal interest of C in the internal affairs of A, often C will need ego compensation by occaisional noisy and noisome display of its superiority over A. In this case C is said to be the _canada_ of A, C = canada(A).
For example, it has been previously established that
canada(California) = Oregon
canada(New York) = New Hampshire
canada(Australia) = New Zealand
canada(England) = ScotlandThe Fractal Theory of Canada.
For all A there exists C such that
C = canada(A)
For example,
canada(USA) = Canada
canada(Canada) = Quebec
canada(Quebec) = Celine DionIt would appear that the hierarchy would bottom out an individual.
However, an individual is actually a community of tissues, tissues of cells, cells of
molecules, and so forth down into the quantuum froth.canada(brain) = pineal gland
canada(intestines) = colon
…
canada(electron) = neutrino
Speculation: what is x, if x = canada(South Korea)?
I’m not sure. But I will suggest canada(Seoul) = Ilsan.
Meanwhile, this photo:
I took the photo at Morris, Manitoba, November, 2009.
