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United Statian

 A United Statian (or Statian for short) is a person from the United States of America. An American, on the other hand, is any person in the western hemisphere: Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, and United Statians are all Americans. Similarly, Russians are Europeans just like the Germans or the French, even though Russians are not citizens of the European Union. Which leads me to the question: how do you call EU residents, then? Eurotrash?

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t5829.htm

Filed under: America English Europe Language USA United Statian
 

The Fragile Empire

Great powers are complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized. They operate somewhere between order and disorder. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems "go critical." A very small trigger can set off a "phase transition" from a benign equilibrium to a crisis.

Historians often misunderstand complexity; they are trained to explain calamity in terms of long-term causes. In reality, most of the "fat-tail" phenomena that historians study are not the climaxes of prolonged and deterministic story lines; instead, they represent perturbations, and sometimes the complete breakdowns, of complex systems. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes -- what scientists call "the amplifier effect."

When things go wrong in a complex system, the scale of disruption is nearly impossible to anticipate. One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news will make the headlines. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry but the public at large. This shift is crucial: A complex system is in big trouble when its component parts lose faith in its viability. Empires function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ferguson28-2010feb28,0,7706980.story

Filed under: America Crisis Empire History Imperialism USA
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