{"id":1469,"date":"2007-01-23T08:54:38","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T08:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/23\/telling-national-differences\/"},"modified":"2008-02-12T15:22:04","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T15:22:04","slug":"telling-national-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/telling-national-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling national differences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the UK, for the last couple of weeks it&#8217;s been all but impossible to avoid discussing the brain-dead actions of a small group of social outcasts locked in a garish TV studio that&#8217;s been converted into a televised zoo. You don&#8217;t need to have watched the thing to have an opinion, and mine has largely been to rivise my previous dislike of clusterbombing unarmed civilians<\/p>\n<p>In Germany, meanwhile, they&#8217;ve been getting all excited about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/0,1518,461338,00.html\">a dog who can balance a glass of water on its head<\/a>. Again, there&#8217;s no need to see it to know that that&#8217;s bloody brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>But as I&#8217;m so nice, I done gone tracked it down on You Tube for your delectation. Watch this, and tell me the world wouldn&#8217;t be a better place if Channel 4 was forced to replace Big Brother with rolling footage of abnormally trained animals.<\/p>\n<p><center><object width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/f_YB0SXhOXo\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/f_YB0SXhOXo\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><\/embed><\/object><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Hideous screeching harpies launching entirely unjustified attacks on their betters, or dogs with low-key party tricks? No contest, is there? Germany here I come &#8211; to take the talented mutt across the border and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.expatica.com\/actual\/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&#038;story_id=35720\">buy that pooch a pint<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the UK, for the last couple of weeks it&#8217;s been all but impossible to avoid discussing the brain-dead actions of a small group of social outcasts locked in a garish TV studio that&#8217;s been converted into a televised zoo. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/telling-national-differences\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15],"tags":[180,184],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-germany","tag-germany","tag-the-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}