STATIC DISCLAIMER: All the stuff in here is purely my opinions, and they tend to change depending on what mood I'm in. If you're going to get bitter if I say something about you that you don't like, then maybe don't read. I avoid using names as much as possible, and would request that people who know me do the same in their comments. Basically, I often vent my frustrations on here, so if you happen to be someone who frustrates me, expect to read a description of someone very much like you in here!

Monday, March 07, 2005

The American Way

Something short: There is nothing more irritating to me as a non-American citizen of the world, then when I am forced to apply American standards to my stuff. For example, DVD manufacturers couldn't be bothered reauthoring their DVDs from NTSC to PAL, so I have to buy a TV that supports NTSC. I hate that.
What brings this to my mind is the fact that the date on my blog setting page threw an error because I entered it as day/month/year when it wants it entered as month/day/year. Now the question I need to ask here is: WHAT IDIOT THOUGHT UP THAT IDEA??? Month then day then year??? Could you be any more mixed up? Why don't you just reorder the place values of numbers so that 123 is actually 2 hundreds, 1 ten, and 3 ones. That would make as much sense, wouldn't it? And yet, everyone can see that to do that would be the most stupid idea ever. I would like to apply that logic then, to the American date format. It is, officially, the most stupid idea ever.

1 comment:

Monkeytree said...

I agree with the annoyiness of the American way :)

It's the chicken and egg principle, in most instances - people are well established in doing something in the inferior way, and you can't make everyone switch at once. As a broader society we are all perpetrators of perpetuating things that should be changed. My biggest gripe is the qwerty keyboard - its layout was designed specifically to make it hard to find the keys you want. (Early typewriters just had the keys alphabetically, but then typists started typing too fast and causing the hammers to jam - so they jumbled everything up. (Or I'm believing a big fat urban legend)).
Anyway, we could all be using a much better keyboard layout, except we'd all have to change over and relearn it simultaneously for it to work.

But there's just no excuse for daytime talk shows like Jerry Springer, which just goes to prove once again that Australians are better than Americans, ner. ;-)