Netscape Communications and m$ Corp. deny an Internet browser war is looming as the September 30 launch of Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0, nears. Today, Netscape announced the strongest retail distribution of Netscape products in the history of the company.
That's what was news on sezam these days.
On UA I asked, yesterday, why are there no villages in the US, it's always "our little town". Today, I got an email from Burt:
don't know how much you wanted to hear about it, but I'm pretty sure the rest of them don't need me to go on, so I moved it here:The word "town" can mean almost anything. Some states divide all land into municipal divisions called "towns", "townships", "burroughs" or whatever. Such areas may not have any concentration of population that looks like a town, and, even if they do, the town may be so small and the area so large that many of the people can't really be said to live in the town. Maryland, where I grew up, doesn't do that. Most towns in Maryland are unincorporated, including some of the larger ones. They have no local government and exist legally as voting districts or school districts, but not really as towns. When the owner of the Washington football team decided to build a new stadium in Maryland, he somehow got his own ZIP code (postal code). He named his "town" after his two sons. As far as I know, the town is only a postal address, but if an apartment block gets built nearby, it might use the name.
Since most Americans outside of New York and a few other big cities own cars, they can locate themselves largely at random. It is true that not many Americans live in really small towns anymore. I expect that the growth of industry and services throughout the world has had that effect everywhere. In America this trend has reached the point where only a few percent of the population are employed in farming. Out west, a single family employing only a few people may farm 10000 acres or run a 100000 acre ranch. These sort of people may live around the smallest towns, but they don't add up to a lot of people.
Much of all this no doubt applies elsewhere in the world, but what little time I spent in Europe was not in the remote parts, so I don't know how much a European might benefit from my Social Studies lecture.
I have seen so many movies that I'm getting tired of the usual Hollywood stuff. I look for independent films and foreign films. I have never seen a Yugoslav film, but I did see a movie called "Montenegro"* several years ago. Its director was a slav who described his movie as a celebration of southern Europeans migrating to Northern Europe, bringing with them, as he said, "filthy habits, bad manners, and the smell of garlic." The movie took place in Stockholm and may have been a Swedish production. It was about a bored housewife who meets up with some slavs, including a zookeeper nicknamed Montenegro, who I suppose was from there. It was wickedly funny.
Sorry for the sheet, or something.
Over the years, this snowballed into a long series of emails. Few months later we added Beatrice to the conversation.
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* The movie is „Mr. Montenegro“ by Dušan Makavejev. I remember we went to a movie to see it, but can't remember when. It was made in 1981, and while it's possible that it came here fast enough, I think we saw it only next year.