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Poll

Votes: 49

Feature: Flags

Author:

Chuck Flynn

Topic:

Constitution

Posted:

Oct 13, 2001

Comments:

They hang from firehouses and fly over courthouse steps. They adorn taxis' antennas and flutter upon graves. Flags are everywhere in the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy and have been fast selling out of stores, to the tune of 250,000 last week at Walmart stores alone. So fast, in fact, that they can hardly be found for purchase at all.

More stories by

Chuck Flynn

	Memoirs of an Ex-Southpaw: a Report from the Trenches
	One More Mouth to Feed
	It's Time We Rounded Up Rich White Males
	The Death of the Channel
	Media Responsibility in the Modern Era
	Reasserting America's Manhood
	Caytie, My Porsch? Cayenne

Newspapers have stepped up to the plate and offered large printed flags in editions of their dailies; simply trim the surrounding newsprint and tape to your livingroom window and you're on your way to proclaiming your patriotic solidarity with fellow citizens.

An informal survey of local retail chains proves what is common knowledge: none have any Nepalese flags in stock. Because not everyone has the time or money to seek out a printed newspaper edition, Adequacy.org is making this printable version available as a public service. Simply click for an enlarged copy.

[editor's note, by em] Mr. Flynn is quite the eccentric individual, so our excuses for this silly outburst of his. In particular, he has quite a questionable past practicing a so-called "alternative lifestyle," one which our society used to discourage until the advent of the 20th century with it's "liberalization" (and don't get me started on that).

Here's the flag that you want:

The flag of the United States of America. The greatest symbol of our nation. With its bars and stripes symbolizing not just the original 13 colonies, but above all, the vision of our great farmlands, pillars upon which was built this great Union, itself symbolized by the navy blue square with its careful, precise, unmistakeable pattern of stars strewn through it. How could this great image, so sadly subject to the attack of fire and jackboots from within and without our Union, harbor any deceit? It belongs to all of us Americans, and unites us in the greatness of its design, its simplicity and honesty, its great symbolic power. How could such a great unifying symbol encode within itself any history of partisan squabbles? It does nothing but unite us, I declare once more.

I salute the flag of the United States of America as here shown. Do you?

	No... (none / 0) (#3)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 11:07:55 AM PST

	Your flag has 51 stars, not that I would salute it even if it was correct. :P "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	What? You oppose annexing Canada? (none / 0) (#4)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 11:11:41 AM PST

	It is part of the Manifest Destiny of the United States of America to extend to every shore of the North American Continent, be it the Gulf Bay of the Hudson Bay. Who are you to oppose this mighty project?

	Well... (none / 0) (#5)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 11:14:36 AM PST

	obviously not a huge fan of the US. "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	hey.... (none / 0) (#6)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 12:59:22 PM PST

	YOU AREN'T BRITISH! GET OVER IT!! You're from TEXASSS, Houston, Texassss.

	I prefer not to overly concern myself (none / 0) (#8)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 01:25:28 PM PST

	with the past, and concentrate on where it is I am going. Furthermore, being an anarchosocialist, I do not morally support/agree with the ideas of government and/or nationality, so the only statement you could possibly make that I might agree with would be to say "I am from North America." I do believe up North it is common for people to use the sorts of spelling that I do; as a matter of fact I know my spelling is more in line with that of the North North American continent than that of the British Isles. Finally, I can't recall ever denying that I live in Houston. I personally don't see what the fact has to do with anything at all. There are people here that think that "Texas" never legally joined the USA; does that mean I should support them just because I happened to have been born here? "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	er (none / 0) (#18)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 07:12:43 PM PST

	Furthermore, being an anarchosocialist, I do not morally support/agree with the ideas of government and/or nationality, so the only statement you could possibly make that I might agree with would be to say "I am from North America." I think a requirement for being a credible "anarchosocialist" (whatever that may be) is to be able to distinguish politics from geography. That said, you ARE from Houston, Texas. Unless you wish to further apply the brand of logic you show in this sentence, in which case we may as well conclude you are from the moon, and thus a lunatic.

	Borders are just lines on a bit of paper. (none / 0) (#21)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 07:38:08 PM PST

	Show me a big line naturally occuring on the ground around "Texas" and then I'll acknowledge it. "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	Of course they aren't. (none / 0) (#27)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:34:44 PM PST

	Borders are social facts-- they are conventions enforced by institutions. The statement that they are "lines on a bit of paper" is as absurd as the one that they are "bigs lines naturally occuring on the ground". Simple proof: I can draw as many lines as my means allow me, both on bits of paper and on the ground, and that does not a border make. OTOH, an institutional transaction of the right sort will create a border, with no need to draw any actual physical lines anywhere.

	the South line (5.00 / 1) (#44)
	by johnny ambiguous on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 10:53:10 AM PST

	Gee Jin, as a land surveyor may I suggest that you go take a glance at the South line of that awful state in which you have the misfortune to live? It is not merely an arbitrary line, a cartographer's abstraction, like those which separate Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. There's something tangible there! Hint: it's wet. Yours WD "thalweg" K - WKiernan@concentric.net Getting into my Chevrolet Magic Fire, I drove slowly back to the office. - L. Rosen

	You're 1/3 there... maybe (none / 0) (#54)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Oct 15th, 2001 at 12:31:20 PM PST

	Gee johny, as someone who is sentient may I suggest you look up the word 'around'.

	"Jin" "Wicked" (none / 0) (#33)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 09:31:39 PM PST

	Furthermore, being an anarchosocialist, I do not morally support/agree with the ideas of government and/or nationality I was an anarcho-socialist too, until an unruly mob voted me out of the collective for wearing an unsightly hat. This is what college kids with too much free time looks like Your friend, Handless Joe Jackson

	treachery... (1.00 / 1) (#7)
	by nathan on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 01:12:08 PM PST

	You support limiting the borders of the USA to the continental borders of North America? You, sir, are worse than Benedict Arnold. This would involve relinquishing overseas territories such as Hawaii, not to mention giving up on our soon-to-be established hegemony over the foul and hobgoblinish French. -- Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

	Wow (none / 0) (#9)
	by fluffy grue on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 01:27:22 PM PST

	I'd not have even thought of counting the stars, myself. Do you not have enough to do, Jin? -- meep

	Not exactly... (none / 0) (#10)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 01:32:07 PM PST

	I salute the flag of the United States of America as here shown. Do you? That, along with the poll, made it pretty obvious there was some sort of juvenile catch. "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	And yet... (none / 0) (#11)
	by fluffy grue on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 02:28:55 PM PST

	You're the one who counted the stars. :) -- meep

	Jin's mad (none / 0) (#13)
	by Frithiof on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 03:09:59 PM PST

	I counted 50 stars. -Frith

	Yes, of course (none / 0) (#53)
	by fluffy grue on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 09:39:38 PM PST

	It is inconceivable that, if you were to count through a brute-force approach, you would hit 50 stars before hitting 51. However, your error was (presumably) in stopping at 50 - surely you had one left over when you were done. -- meep

	Debased INTP that I am. (5.00 / 1) (#15)
	by elenchos on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 04:45:44 PM PST

	I observed three long rows and three short rows. The long ones were of 9 stars and the short ones had 8. I multiplied and then added: ( + * 3 9 * 3 8 ) = 51. Yet the g**ks call me an ignorant idiot who is not qualified to have an opinion on software engineering?! How come there is so little talk of eliminating states? Eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and all of Idaho should be made a new state (called Airstream, or maybe Mudflap) and the the remaing western halves of Oregon and Washington should be another state, called Wintel, or perhaps just Better Than All the Rest of You. This would remove two reactionary redneck senators from congress who over-represent a sparse and inbred population of government-subsidy-depenednt idle farmers and meth lab operators. This obviously implies that a whole passel of underpopulated midwestern and western states should be consolidated as well, such as Wyoming + Colorado + Nevada, etc. Something like real democracy is just around the corner, I tell you. And we should end up with a nice managable 25 or so states, including Canada. I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	Yes, of course (5.00 / 1) (#23)
	by fluffy grue on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:18:50 PM PST

	Also as an INTP (and therefore doomed to always be perennially bored in the mundane lower ranks of life when I'd much rather be continuing with my PhD research), I was able to quickly calculate the number of stars in the exact same manner. However, Jin is certainly not an INTP (at least, given her opinions on programming as an art form), and so it leads me to believe that she had manually counted each and every one, rather than using simple mathematical tricks. I might point out, however, that polish notation is fairly ambiguous, and you are not taking into account the distributive law of multiplication (which will save many precious clock cycles on many processors, as well as shortening the expression). I'd have either written it in pure LISP notation, `(* 3 (+9 8))`, or as reverse Polish, `3 9 8 + ` (or `9 8 + 3 `, if you will). Unfortunately, I am cursed with being more comfortable with classic infix notation, and so I wrote it as `(9+8)3` when I put it into `bc(1)` (as a PhD student in Computer Science, I do not have much desire for wasting precious neurons on simple matters of arithmetic which computers are much* better-suited to handle). Fortunately, infix notation has the distinct advantage of not requiring whitespace in order to be parsed properly, which neither LISP, PN, nor RPN can claim, and so in terms of sheer human-readable code size, the infix notation wins by a rather wide margin. Furthermore, as mathematical expressions are a context-free language, writing a recursive-descent parser for mathematical expressions is a fairly trivial task, and the code "bloat" of having an expression parser is quite trivial. As far as consolidation goes, as long as New Mexico and Texas are kept within separate entities, it's fine (though I must admit, the name "New Texico" does hold a certain morbid appeal). Preferrably Texas would simply be ejected from the United States anyway; they're like the very large mole on the buttocks of the nation. Perhaps the Four Corners states (New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona) could be combined into a single state, called simply Square. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), this would disrupt the people who make their living by selling "I walked through fo ur states today" T-shirts at the Fourr Corners monument. -- meep

	I too am INTP (none / 0) (#36)
	by egg troll on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 09:52:51 PM PST

	And I also lived in Oregon for a long time. I agree that the eastern halves of Oregon and Washington should be pawned off onto Idaho, and never spoken of again, like the gay uncle. Then the rest of Washington and Oregon can go back to sipping our lattes. Posting for the love of the baby Jesus....

	You forgot about Canada (5.00 / 1) (#26)
	by CorporateRepublic on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:31:27 PM PST

	You forgot about Canada, the 51st state.

	Actually the United Kingdom is the 51st state (5.00 / 2) (#32)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 09:16:21 PM PST

	Canadians have a long way to go before the USA will accept them as a state. The UK is (in all but name) the 51st state of the USA. It is a pity that we Americans cannot change our constitution to allow them to join us as a full member of the USA. Their constitution is the only thing preventing them (they cannot get rid of their old Royal family). I am sure both countries would gain tremendously from such an alliance.

	Yeah... (none / 0) (#34)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 09:40:17 PM PST

	Like I could move there. :( "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	viva Puerto Rico (5.00 / 1) (#12)
	by perdida on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 02:49:58 PM PST

	Fuck this statehood shit, independence forever baby. :) This is what democracy looks like

	Er... are you sure this is about Puerto Rico? (none / 0) (#14)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 03:47:07 PM PST

	Remember, it is Adequacy.org policy that Puerto Rico should be given to the Palestinians. I think the reference is obviously to statehood for Quebec.

	Error! (none / 0) (#16)
	by Slobodan Milosevic on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 06:14:25 PM PST

	There is an error of the gramatical variety in the above article. The author states: "An informal survey of local retail chains proves what is common knowledge: none has any Nepalese flags in stock." This should, of course, have read: "An informal survey of local retail chains proves what is common knowledge: none have any Nepalese flags in stock. The author of the above article refers to a plurality of retail chains, but uses the word has. A word that is clearly a singularity. As I have pointed out above, the correct word to use would have been have. Thank you for your time. PS: Jin: You are welcome to move to Canada at anytime. We speak the Queen's english, and the French are trying to leave. Yours, Slobodan

	Bah, amateur grammarian. (none / 0) (#17)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 06:59:29 PM PST

	The author of the above article refers to a plurality of retail chains, but uses the word has. A word that is clearly a singularity. As I have pointed out above, the correct word to use would have been have. I am afraid you are confusing the concept of "number", which is grammatical, with that which we may call "numerosity", which is semantic. This kind of confusion, mistaking form for content and content for form, is extremely common for those uninitiated to the study of grammar. To put it quite simply: the negative polarity quantifier "none" is unmarked for grammatical number. And the concept of "numerosity" doesn't really come to play in it's semantics-- while it does presuppose an aggregate entity as its domain of quantification, it does not refer to any entity in the world! In simpler terms: both forms are correct, and each might carry a slight difference in how they conceptualize the situation being described: None has any might conceptualize the quantification as "each store, considered in succession, has any" None have any might be rendered as: "all the stores taken together as a whole have no flags." Jin: You are welcome to move to Canada at anytime. We speak the Queen's english, and the French are trying to leave. Mais vous autres, les c�liss, veut pas laisser qu'on sacre le camp de la federation. Tabarnak.

	Re:Bah, amateur grammarian. (none / 0) (#19)
	by Slobodan Milosevic on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 07:34:42 PM PST

	I accept your correction on my spelling of the word grammatical. However, will not refrain from pointing out a glaring mistake that you have made. "And the concept of "numerosity" doesn't really come to play in it's semantics-- while it does presuppose an aggregate entity as its domain of quantification, it does not refer to any entity in the world!" In the above sentence you made use of the contraction it's. It's is a contraction of two words. Specifically, It, and the word is. Let me present to you your above sentence again. However, this time I will replace the contracted form it's with the uncontracted form it is. "And the concept of "numerosity" doesn't really come to play in it is semantics-- while it does presuppose an aggregate entity as its domain of quantification, it does not refer to any entity in the world!" The above sentence clearly does not work! --- "Mais vous autres, les c�liss, veut pas laisser qu'on sacre le camp de la federation. Tabarnak." Tete de merde! Thank you again for your time. Yours, Slobodan

	given that... (none / 0) (#25)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:29:57 PM PST

	...it makes one look much more of an ass when one "corrects" somebody else but turns out to be wrong in precisely the point one "corrected", I think I stand vindicated here. BTW the fact that English is not my first language makes you look even more like an ass.

	How misguided are you? (none / 0) (#29)
	by Slobodan Milosevic on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:37:59 PM PST

	Please click on the following link to see how misguided you really are. The fact that English is not your native tongue can be seen quite clearly from your ignorance. Click here for more information. Thank you again for your time, Slobodan

	Eh... (none / 0) (#30)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:47:10 PM PST

	I never denied your argument. I just said that my mistake didn't make me look anywhere near as stupid as you looked after your "correction" to Mr. Flynn's perfectly good subject-verb agreement.

	Please provide a source that backs up your claims (none / 0) (#31)
	by Slobodan Milosevic on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:58:04 PM PST

	...as stated in your original reply to my post.

	Oh please. (none / 0) (#35)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 09:46:50 PM PST

	This is elementary grammatical analysis, at which you are making elementary mistakes. Let's repeat your argument: The author of the above article refers to a plurality of retail chains, but uses the word has. It is a gross mistake of yours to say that in the relevant clause the subject ("none") refers to anything. Which entity in the world is referred to by the word "none"? Given that Mr. Flynn writes none has any Nepalese flags in stock then your mistake commits you to claiming that there is some entity, which that use of "none" refers to, of which Mr. Flynn has predicated the possession of Nepalese flags in stock. Which is absurd-- clearly he has made no such assertion. As for references on this point, the ancient greeks already knew this. In modern times, a good, readable source for the argument would be Bertrand Russell's arguments about the difference between the grammatical form and the logical form of natural languages statements (though ignore his BS about natural language being unsystematic and such). As for my suggestion about a difference in conceptualization underlying the choice between "has" and "have" in the sentence in question, I was thinking of Ronald Langacker's recent work on quantification in English. He has treated mostly universal quantification so far, though, but he does suggest differences between English universal quantifier terms along the lines of my suggestion (well, rather, I lifted the whole idea of my analysis from him). In any case, the question of what the verb is agreeing which in such sentences is a controversial one, which touches precisely on the nature of verb agreement. Google searches for "none has" and "none have" show slightly more cases of the latter (40% "has" and 60% "have"), but of course, this excludes all cases where you have an "of" prepositional phrase complement to "none". The usage of both forms is thus well attested. A study of the examples that turn up and the context in which they appear could very well suggest some variables that might condition the variation, which in turn could be investigated in experiments with subjects of the sort "fill in the blank here with the appropriate words". Hell, I think I just found myself a research topic. One final point to notice: many languages don't give you a choice at all in this kind of sentence. French as far as I know requires the verb to agree in singular. Spanish essentially does the same, but there do exist very rare examples of plural agreement-- still, the verb is always accompanied by "ningunos" or "ningunas", which are PLURAL versions of the word for "none" (which in English just can't inflect for numer). What you denounce as wrong is in fact the rule for many languages.

	Oh merci! (none / 0) (#20)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 07:35:17 PM PST

	I will be up there on Wednesday, actually. :D Not sure yet if we're going to go to Quebec, though... I always have such a hard time coming back, that's for sure. "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	I'll let you in on a little secret: (none / 0) (#22)
	by Slobodan Milosevic on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 07:45:57 PM PST

	If you move to Alberta, it'll be like you never left Texas.

	Maybe... (none / 0) (#24)
	by jin wicked on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:21:31 PM PST

	but I'm not moving to New Foundland. :) "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	Why not? (none / 0) (#28)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 08:35:59 PM PST

	They have great Acadian fiddlers in Newfoundland.

	No, you dumb fuck. (none / 0) (#42)
	by legolas on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 07:38:54 AM PST

	The Acadian fiddlers are from Nova Scotia, PEI, and New Brunswick. There is nothing in Newfoundland but rocks and a few fishing people. And a little bit of oil exploration. (The Acadians were farmers.) -legolas

	�mile Benoit (none / 0) (#43)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 10:51:34 AM PST

	�mile Benoit is an Acadian fiddler from Newfoundland. Oh, and he was a fisher before he started his musical career. So some Acadians are not farmers, you see.

	From your reference (none / 0) (#49)
	by legolas on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 12:06:50 PM PST

	One does not have to go back very far in �mile's lineage to reach his connection to France. Although his father, Am�d�e, and grandfather, Henri, were born in Newfoundland, �mile's great-grandfather was a native of France, probably having arrived in Newfoundland from St. Malo, in Brittany. His mother, Ad�line Duffenais, was, on the other hand, an Acadian whose ancestors came from Cape Breton Island. The marriage produced eight children, including two girls who died. (Cape Breton Island = Nova Scotia) Having an ascendant who is Acadian does not an Acadian make. -legolas

	Yes, those are Acadians (none / 0) (#50)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 12:42:15 PM PST

	Having an ascendant who is Acadian does not an Acadian make. Living in a place where the culture is Acadian does an Acadian make. Also, being a fiddler brought up in a specifically Acadian musical tradition makes you an Acadian fiddler, no matter where you may be from. I've heard Benoit albums. He speaks a variety of Acadian French. Anyway, from here: Although the most intense wave of Acadian migration to the west coast of Newfoundland came from Cape Breton Island took place in the 1840s, it is believed that the first Acadians arrived on Newfoundland's west coast between 1760 and 1780 (Butler 28). It is known that as early as 1770 there were at least two families living in the Stephenville-St. George's area (Thomas 1983 29), and that by 1830 the same area was home to 2000 individuals, of which 1200 were Acadian (de La Morandi�re 1179). Between 1850 and 1868 nearly 68% of all 750 Catholic births in the Bay St. George region were of Acadian paternity, while another 12% were of French paternity (Mannion 237). This is an Acadian community which assimilated French immigrants.

	Wait (none / 0) (#45)
	by zikzak on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 11:16:22 AM PST

	You forgot moose.

	That's good, (none / 0) (#46)
	by zikzak on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 11:17:27 AM PST

	because you can't even spell it. I'd hate to hear you try to pronounce it.

	Another thing (none / 0) (#47)
	by zikzak on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 11:26:58 AM PST

	You might like it there. They talk real funny.

	According to Fowler... (none / 0) (#52)
	by Greg on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 05:59:39 PM PST

	... the negative always takes the singular number. Greg

	this is sick (none / 0) (#37)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Oct 13th, 2001 at 10:09:37 PM PST

	barely more than half of the people vote that they salute the flag..what the fuck kind of unpatriotic people are you

	what the fuck kind of unpatriotic people are you (5.00 / 2) (#39)
	by dmg on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 03:34:03 AM PST

	what the fuck kind of unpatriotic people are you As you are probably already aware - adequacy.org is the Internet's premier site for controversial news and discussion. As you can imagine, we do not just attract the cream of America's intelligensia. Extremely bright people from Europe, and incredibly smart people from the United Kingdom also post their insightful commentry here, which helps give adequacy.org our 'international' flavor, and differentiates it from other so-called news and discussion sites. Having the cultured and well educated voice of Europeans and Englishmen on this board to counterbalance the somewhat impulsive and over-exuberant Americans is what makes us the discussion area of choice for the discerning internet user. Surely you would not expect a patriot to salute the flag of another country ? time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	International (5.00 / 1) (#41)
	by jin wicked on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 05:15:38 AM PST

	flavour. "Ars longa, vita brevis...Art is long, life is short."

	sick, eh? (none / 0) (#55)
	by fat and ugly on Wed Oct 17th, 2001 at 07:45:22 PM PST

	How exactly is that sick? It is a nothing more than different colored cloths. If the flag were changed to a peach instead of a flag, then would you salute that peach? I hate america

	Bunch of idiots... (none / 0) (#38)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 03:05:27 AM PST

	you all are, niggling about grammar and semantics when there are larger issues in the original post. Sheesh, I'm not going to waste my time here again.

	Don't use racist language at adequacy. (5.00 / 4) (#40)
	by dmg on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 03:38:29 AM PST

	ni**ng about grammar and semantics Look, we are an intelligent discussion board. Controversial yes, offensive - never. I would appreciate you not coming back if you are going to persist in using insulting racist language. time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	Niggling at the wrong word... (none / 0) (#56)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Oct 25th, 2001 at 04:29:56 AM PST

	Niggle is not the same as n***. Niggle vs. N* (if you are offended by seeing a definition of the word n***, don't click that second link)

	It's a TRICK Question !!!! (4.00 / 1) (#48)
	by Inden on Sun Oct 14th, 2001 at 11:34:32 AM PST

	The point of this "do you salute the flag or not" yes or no question is to trap everyone into no longer thinking critically. If you salute the flag but still consider it your patriotic duty to criticize our policies, you are labelled a hypocrite. If you don't salute, you are worse. The only option is to shut up and salute. To wit my poem (written on a Palm Pilot so that's what some of the weird spelling is about): Shut up n wave yer flag boy, shut up n wave yer flag this aint no time to think boy so shut up n wave yer flag. Aint no time to talk boy this aint no time to talk $hut yer yap n hoist that wrap, shut up n wave yer flag. Our country needs our hands boys, our country needs our backs, so get a grip n button those lips cz we wont take no flack. This homeland's number 1 boy, this homeland's #1. It's time to attack n hold ngthing back so plug yer gob with some ; Apple pie or McD fries - as long as you consume. All will be okay n u can tlk all day, soon as everyone's left the room.

	No... (none / 0) (#57)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Oct 25th, 2001 at 04:58:16 AM PST

	...it's a trick question because it has 51 stars. So, even if you are the most patriotic person in the world, unless you blindly salute the flag, you would not salute this flag, because it is not US. Sure, it may look like it, but the one extra star makes it not the same flag.

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