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[OM] Re: Vivitar 2x macro focusing teleconverter

Subject: [OM] Re: Vivitar 2x macro focusing teleconverter
From: Garth Wood <garth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:33:58 -0700
Dharma Singh wrote:

[snip]

> Somewhere I read you can't use Canadian$ in the USA? And I don't know
> whether you can use US$ in Canada.
> Please enlighten me.

They happen to have the same name ("dollar"), but depending on where you 
go, they're not negotiable.  Border states will often take them, and 
when the Canbuck was "in the tank" compared to the U.S. dollar, some 
U.S. businesses would even take them at par to encourage tourist traffic 
from Canada.  And of course, Las Vegas, DisneyLand/World, and other 
major tourist attractions always ran huge ad campaigns in Canada 
offering exchange at par for their package deals.  Now that the 
Canbuck's achieved parity, most of that's gone the way of the dodo.  On 
the flip side, in most *major* cities in Canada, you can use U.S. money, 
though when the exchange rates were different, you'd take a hit on the 
conversion rate; it was always better to go to a bank or currency 
exchange and get some walking-around money there.


Chris Crawford wrote:

[snip]

 > Didn't know Scotland and England had different money...I though the 
UK  had
 > the same money everywhere in the UK.

It's the same name for the currency (just like Canada), but in the 
U.K.'s case, there are reciprocal binding agreements which set the value 
such that one Scot pound is equal to 1 English pound.  They're 
practically used interchangeably (or at least they were when I was last 
there in the spring/summer of '07).  You know they're fine to use 
interchangeably when you ask a waitress whether your Scots pounds are 
good in London and she says "Well, if you don't want them, luv, I'll 
take them off your hands for you."  ;-)  She was right, of course -- we 
used the two currencies in London and Cambridge without a hitch.  Nobody 
even blinked.


Moose wrote:

[snip]

 > Unfortunately, it was the US$ that slid down, rather than the C$ that
 > climbed.

Bit of both, actually, at least according to the analyses of the 
financial houses my wife and I use.  Canada's dollar is being seen more 
and more worldwide as a "petrodollar," and petroleum's a hot commodity 
these days.  If you wanna buy Canadian petroleum or natural gas, you 
gotta have Canadian bucks.  (11% of U.S. supply actually comes almost 
exclusively from Alberta, the province in which I live.)  Said demand 
drives up the price in whatever index currency you use, which of course 
happens to be mostly the U.S. dollar.  And China and India have been 
*very* interested in our petroleum, too -- we're a stable supply.


Wayne Harridge (in response to Moose) wrote:

 >> They are completely separate currencies of separate countries that
 >> happen to share a long border and a language. Eh?
 >>
 >
 > Yeah the accent is often similar, but I've noticed Canadians hate being
 > mistaken for Yanks, dunno if the opposite applies.

Depends on the circumstances, I think.  When I was in Crete in early 
summer this year ('07), there were quite a few U.S. servicepeople at the 
NATO base in Chania, and they were occasionally mistaken for Canadians 
(or other English-speaking people, particularly Brits -- the Cretans are 
like everybody else, and have a hard time picking out accents when the 
language is *so* very different from their own).  This caused the 
Americans much mirth, far as I could tell.

On the other hand, in a bar I was in at Cambridge, the proprietor, a 
nice woman, made the faux pas of referring to several patrons 
offhandedly as Americans when they were in fact Canucks.  When 
corrected, she said "What's the difference?  You're all the same, aren't 
you?"  The gent she was talking to simply said, "You're right, of 
course.  By the way, it's *lovely* here in East Ireland this time of year."

Touché, and ouch.  The proprietor turned a gorgeous shade of red and 
slinked away.  ;-)

As for the similarity of accents, it's got a lot to do with sharing a 
common border, similar geographic situations regionally amongst North 
America, and our mass media.  A little-known fact is that many U.S. 
newscast "talking heads" are in fact from Canada.  It turns out that 
focus group after focus group in the States identified the "average" 
Canadian accent as being very "average" American (something referred to 
as "mid-continental English," and considered very desireable), so Canuck 
newscasters have predominated in certain segments of the U.S. (and 
international English-speaking) news markets.  This in turn leads many 
people to identify the accent as "American" when outside of North 
America, though it's more like the default accent of most of 
English-speaking Canada.

And "Eh" is largely an affectation we put on when Yanks are present, 
'cause they expect it.  ;-)


Bob Whitmire wrote:

[snip]

 > A college professor slapped me on
 > the back and said something like "What's a full-blooded Canadian,
 > 'ay?" I accepted the role of well-meaning fool with style and
 > dignity, I thought. And they did have a good time with it. But to
 > this day I still don't really understand why they all thought the
 > concept of a "full-blooded Canadian" was so amusing. I guess we
 > really are different.

He didn't say "Eh"?  Ye gods.  No wonder he couldn't ID a "full-blooded 
Canadian" -- he weren't one!  ;-)

More seriously, Canada's been built more on immigration by proportion 
than even the 'States, and most of it has been much more recent (within 
the last generation or two), so other than the indigenous peoples, it is 
notoriously difficult to pinpoint a "full-blooded Canadian."  I am of 
French and Welsh ancestry, and I'm third generation but still tend to 
identify more with my French side (but not Quebecois, eh!).  I can't 
think of many people I know who are fourth generation (though you'd find 
more and more of those the further east in the country you travel -- 
here in Calgary, over 10% of the population is actually expat American, 
so it's even more confusing here, but we nevertheless accept it with a 
certain amount of aplomb, I b'lieve).  It also has to do with the 
difference between the American value of "melting pot" (i.e., complete 
assimilation into the dominant society) and the Canadian value of 
"cultural mosaic" (where the incoming group is encouraged to remain 
somewhat "different" rather than to assimilate more-or-less completely). 
  There is an ongoing, heated discussion in Canada about whether we've 
chosen the correct model.


Garth

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