Sports Presenters

America has a black president and has had a black foreign minister (Colin Powell). It has black senators and congressmen, and there are blacks at every level of society in both the private and the public sector.

It is therefore rather strange that in basketball, a sport in which about 98% of the best players are black (everyone knows that White Boys Can't Jump), all the TV presenters are white, while blacks are merely invited expert guests or commentators.

It is not as if blacks weren't good presenters. There are plenty of excellent black talk show hosts and news anchors. So why, I wonder, is there this glaring anomaly in sport?

Cars

We've all heard about the woes of the American car industry, brought on largely by the fact that Ford, General Motors, Chrysler et al continued to focus on making ugly, gas-guzzling SUVs long after consumers had  begun migrating in droves to sleeker, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

Noting the steep decline in the fortunes of the "Detroit Three" (which it helped trigger by its own divorce from Chrysler), Mercedes clearly thought that it could corner a greater share of the American market. After all, Mercedes is known for making good-looking yet powerful cars.

So what did it do? It created this:

a 3.5-litre SUV every bit as ugly as anything the Americans could conceive, and with fuel consumption of 23 miles to the gallon.

A case of "Rücksprung durch Technik"?

Netflix

Netflix is another great New-World idea that should be exported to the Old World, and just like many other convenience or labour-saving services developed on this side of the Atlantic, Netflix follows the Mohamed-and-the-Mountain principle that can best be summed up as "Why go out for something when it can be brought to me?"

In all fairness to my hosts, there are good grounds for starting up a DVD home-delivery service. In Europe, where space is a scarce commodity, your local video shop is usually right round the corner, i.e. within walking distance. By contrast, in spacious North America the nearest video rental store is several miles away at best. And I'm all in favour of any idea that prevents people getting into their car.

But Netflix is far more than simply a virtual video shop with a huge catalogue. Rather than renting DVDs one at a time, you create an online wishlist of the films you want to see, and these are sent to you in the order that you determine. Once you have watched a film, you just replace it in the envelope it came in, and pop this in your mailbox. The moment Netflix receives it - usually the next day - they send the next one. As such you could get a new film every two days (in fact, many films can be viewed online, so you don't even have to wait for them to be sent to you).

Another difference to the conventional video-rental model is that you do not pay by the day. Because you take out a monthly subscription to Netflix, you can keep each film as long as you like - although that also means that you won't be able to get a new one either.

Having said that, subscriptions are also available for two or three DVDs at a time, a particular godsend if you have children or, as is also our case, your wife prefers love stories and you prefer science fiction.

Misrepresentation

Undoubtedly true: contents are jumbo size, sweet and tangy.
Undoubtedly false: contains pickle lovers, bread, butter and/or chips.

Tax

I'm gutted: had I only lived in Iowa, I could have claimed a calf-cow refund on my tax declaration!

Middle Names

Middle names are used completely differently in America - or rather, they are used on a daily basis rather than merely adorning your birth certificate. As a result, my daughter is routinely called "Anna Marie" by her teachers, and regularly has to explain that she only ever uses her first name. 

Things get more complicated if you have more than one middle name. In this case, the second and subsequent middle names are usually abbreviated for "daily" use, although bearers of just one middle name may abbreviate it anyway (e.g. George W. Bush) for clarity's sake.

Because people use either their middle names or abbreviations thereof whenever referring to themselves, they also do so on application forms. However, being New World newbies, we did not know this, so when we opened a bank account, my wife duly listed her three middle names as directed. Unfortunately, this meant that she was issued with the following card, on which the first and middle names took up so much space that there wasn't enough room for them all - let alone the surname!

Needless to say, as someone with a three-letter first name and no middle name whatsoever, I did not have the same problem.

Odd Products

Sounds tasty!

I hope this means something different in America