From Gordon Davie:
"Stuf4" wrote in message

...

There's a very informative YouTube video I first watched a while ago
that explains the distinctions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&t=44s

"While you can call them all British, it's not recommended as the four
countries generally don't like each other."

Not really. The Scots, Irish and Welsh all get on fine. But we all hate the
English!

Right after that quote, the narrator elaborates to describe pretty
much the situation as you are saying. You always have the option to
bail out like we Yanks did back in the 18th century. Of course
Gandhi's method was a lot less bloody. But if I were to peer into a
crystal ball, I'd expect that the trend we're currently in is drawing
us in the other direction. Like those Liverpool blokes sang about:
Come Together... I believe we are now living the age of the Walrus.
And events like landing on the Moon and even tragedies like 9-11 can
serve as catalyzing effects toward that end. Maybe even Lindbergh had
glimpses of how his feat was going to draw the world closer together
into a much tighter community. Today we regularly call the Atlantic
Ocean "The Pond". I'm certain Columbus's crews didn't think of it
that way. They must have fretted the Atlantic in the way that Apollo
crews wondered if they would ever return from cis-lunar space.

Kansas could do an excellent reprise with a Space Age version of their
classic 'Point of Know Return':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRtgr9n7V9w

....to be played daily at the Kansas Cosmosphere of course. Maybe
someone here would like to post a video for that song with
interspersed clips of great explorers - Lindbergh, Borman-Lovell-
Anders, Columbus... and can include the one's who didn't make it back,
like Shackleton, Mallory, Magellan, Volkov-Dobrovolski-Patsayev, etc.


~ CT