Learned more about Canadian history today.

Like, the AVRO Arrow thing. The real story is that the things were crazy fucking expensive. And nobody wanted a general purpose jet in the first place. The NATO powers wanted specialized aircraft for specific missions, especially bomber intercept (remember, this is before ICBMs) and so the Arrow was a crazy expensive plan nobody wanted.

So that is why is failed commercially. It’s not like without Dief the Chief mothballing it, it would have gone on to be a huge success story. That’s the problem with being so far ahead of your time. There isn’t even a market for your product yet.

However, it is true that the reason the whole thing was erased was because Diefenbaker didn’t stand up to the USA. The US said “Well we can’t let such an advanced plane fall into Soviet hands! You’d better just burn all the plans and schematics and such, just to be safe. ”

And Dief said “Um yeah, okay. ”

Oh, speaking of the good ol US of A, peep this : The British invented the International Phonetic Alphabet. A brilliant invention that allows researchers to record language exactly as it is spoken and is a great help to people learning new languages who want to get the pronunciation right.

But the Americans said “Ew, that’s British! That’s downright unAmerican! We have to prove our independence from the UK by doing exactly what everyone expects us to do, and that is to declare that the existing one sucks and we will make our own!”

So they did. But this is the United States here, so they are incapable of agreeing with anyone including themselves, so they didn’t invent one.

They invented five.

So there are actually six different International Phonetic Alphabets now, and you have to know which one you are reading before anything makes sense.

I am pretty sure the same thing happened with sign language, too.

Now let’s see, what else did I learn. Oh right…. Lester Pearson, our Nobel Peace Prize winning PM, invented peacekeeping.

See, Egypt wanted to nationalize the Suez Canal. Traditionally, England and France had controlled the canal, and profited from it. Which is only fair, because they built it.

But at some point, that excuse runs out of gas. To most people, there is an expiration date on “I built it so I own it and get to make money from it forever”, and I don’t consider it too greedy for Egypt to decide that because it was on their land, they owned it.

It was, however, stupid. Britain, France, and mortal enemy of Egypt Israel immediately invaded Egypt and seized the canal. And they were like, great! We did it! Everyone is backing us up on this, right? Right? Hey, where is everybody?

That’s when they realized that there was not a single chance they could pull this off. Without the support of the rest of NATO, they were surrounded by hostile powers. But they couldn’t just pull out right away without losing a lot of face.

Our glorious PM Lester Pearson found the solution : Canadian troops dedicated to peacekeeping would sandwich themselves between the Trilateral Dumbasses and the Egyptian military, and that way both sides could slowly withdraw without actually fleeing from the enemy.

It seems hilariously primitive to me, like taking the mirror out of your aquarium to keep your Japanese fighting fish from attacking his own reflection, but it worked. And just like that, Canada invented the UN peacekeeping model. Get between fighting powers and keep them separated until everyone can cool down and peace can be negotiated.

As we Canadians know very well, it is not always that simple. Sometimes the two sides never cool down, and us being there arguably keeps a situation from resolving itself. The two sides are isolated from one another and therefore the ground is quite fertile for demonizing the enemy and transforming them, quite irrationally, into the source of all your problems.

Boy, if these fucking Canadians weren’t in the way, we could wipe out those demons and everything would be wonderful forever!

But still, we have kept the peace all over the world with little thanks. Lester Pearson may well have saved the world from war a hundred times over with his invention of peacekeeping Canadian style, and gave Canada a unique role in the world that all Canadian could feel good about.

And we Canadians knew how important that role can be, because we were more or less in the room when Douglas MacArthur, that embodiment of everything that people don’t like about the USA, wanted Harry Truman to drop an atomic bomb on North Korea to end the Korean war.

Seriously. That’s what that man wanted. Truman was like “Fuck no!” and they feuded quite publicly about it. It ended with Truman relieving MacArthur of his command, which was inevitable.

But it was a real eye opener for us. It showed that some Americans were actually crazy enough to think they should do something like that. I think this must have been when we realized we had to watch the USA like they were a dangerous mental patient who might do something crazy at any moment, no matter how sane they seem.

Switching to personal history, today was a fine day at school. History class was groovy as usual. I think the fact that I have my Canadian History Since 1867 the day after Linguistics makes me appreciate it all the more, because in History, all I have to do is know things.

And I am so good at that!

I am also quite good at thinking, so Philosophy classes are no big deal for me. Well, unless I have to participate in a group exam like I did Monday. That was stressful for all of us.

I wonder if it’s less stressful for the girls in the class because they are more used to cooperating and have less hormonal weirdness going on between them to get in the way of cooperating?

Because for most guys, doing something cooperatively with unknown dudes does not come naturally.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.