Yeah. The guy who wrote it sort-of improvised it but he did mean American women as distinct from Canadian ones.
“What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous. When I said ‘American woman, stay away from me,’ I really meant ‘Canadian woman, I prefer you.’ It was all a happy accident.”
Now what he means by “get older quicker” and “made them, well, dangerous” I don’t know. Another member said, “we came from a very strait-laced, conservative, laid-back country”. (Canada was different then.) And that they were touring some big cities in America. (The two quoted were from Winnipeg which is a city but smaller than many of the ones they were touring.) I gather they found America of 1970 way more tumultuous than Canada or at least than Manitoba. So maybe he was thinking American women were a bit more extreme in their behavior than Manitoban women of that time. And the 1970s did have the two cases I know of where a woman drew a gun on a US President.
I sometimes see things from the last panel early, but I did think the way Pig was speaking seemed odd and that clipper ships look to have lost importance, except as imagery, after the Suez Canal. And that he was a bit overly invested in John Coltrane. (Coltrane is very important but ever since “Whiplash” I’ve gotten more tired of this idea jazz musicians all die young or becoming boring elders. Dave Brubeck, Sonny Rollins, and Yusef Lateef all continued into old age. And Kenny Barron looks to have a new album at 80.)
Thank you. It’s a notion or phrase inspired by a cultural geography class of all things.
Cultures based in say high mountains will have certain similarities caused by adapting to a mountainous environment. However they are not identical. The Swiss and the Swazi, the Tibetans and the Incas, etc have some pretty important differences. The environment does impact what is possible for them to, but within what is possible they still have a great deal of freedom to vary.
Somehow I was very smitten with this idea of “possibilism”, the technical name, even if it just sounds like common sense. I actually don’t see it mentioned much in the real world.
Yeah. Nature of the criminal and the victim can effect sentencing. Generally affluent college educated women get the lightest sentences. Poor men who didn’t complete High School get the worse. Than there can be a racial factor in some cases. (As well as, I gather, other appearance issues.)
His uncle is presumably white, but there’s a good chance he could be from a disreputable background, uneducated, and physically unattractive. Going by a relatives ex-husband if you’re single mother was a hooker and you’re uneducated you can get pretty tough sentencing for a relatively minor theft. And maybe the bank robbery hurt a sweet-looking and educated person. Still 80 years for bank robbery is a bit much even factoring that in.
Also my Dad’s birthday. Plus Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick. (My Dad was into science fiction so had both in his collection.)