That's quite a funny milk ad, very creative! Makes me want to play the Neverhood :)

In similar fashion, we once had a people vote here in Switzerland and the initiative was about introducing laws that would allow for criminal foreigners to be kicked out (not kicking out all foreigners, just the violently criminal ones). To illustrate how the proverbial black sheep will be kicked out, the conservative party put white and black sheep on the poster. Now in this case I can understand how someone could interpret that as racism, but even here it's just riffing off the universally used "black sheep" idiom which technically has nothing to do with black or dark skinned people. Objections like "come on dude it's sooo obviously racist!" are logically invalid because you can't prove it, seems like projection to me. If you want to see it as "kick out the dark skinned people", you can certainly interpret it that way but that's not the way I saw it, I made the proverbial connection black sheep of the flock = criminals. Due to the constitution, we can't kick out criminals with Swiss passports (regardless of skin color or heritage) because there would be no specific country to send them back to. If I could vote for kicking out -all- criminals of course that would be dandy but given the constitutional framework that isn't possible, hence an initiative that says kick out criminal foreigners is obviously going to be seen as racist because people will automatically focus on the "foreigner" part instead of focusing on the "criminal" part . As for "this is bad because of human rights"... imho human rights only apply if you behave like one, your call!
There was a heavy debate around this poster even outside the country, all the politically correct people had a field day with it and went into hyperventilation mode and of course had to loudly make it known that they were 100% against it. Because nothing is as horrid to a politically correct person as the notion that someone out there could even think they might be a racist. That's their number one fear. They want to be seen as cool and tolerant, at any cost. And that's why when they have nothing else to do, they'll even start pointing their fingers at TV ads like the one with the white cow you linked above.

Since I'm of 50% foreign descent and don't look ethnically Swiss, I'm particularly interested in foreigners behaving at least as well as everyone else. If all criminal foreigners are being kicked out then the remaining law abiding ones (which is the majority) will not give anyone a reason to be xenophobic because they won't be able to conveniently blame the remaining criminality on foreigners anymore. And if anyone is still xenophobic after you've kicked out all the criminal foreigners then you can call that person a true xenophobe. As of now, you can't tell whether someone is a genuinely and rightfully concerned citizen or a xenophobe. So in order to see who is a real xenophobe, one has to kick out all the bad foreigners and keep the good ones. It sounds crude but makes sense and is humane to the law abiding majority, both foreign and domestic.

EDIT: sorry for going a bit off-topic in not quite so Christmas-y ways, though I did write about sheep and sheep are very very Christmas-y as little baby Jesus was born in a stable surrounded by sheep. I've derailed quite a few threads lately, (by Tarnicus, Ragnar and more) so as a New Years resolutions I should try to derail less. I just can't help connecting one topic to another topic in my mind but at the same time I don't want to desecrate anyone's threads. But its' so damn hard not to!

The black sheep analogy proves my point, as you said. It has nothing to do with race, after all, if I were to come to Switzerland and beat you to death, all in the name of our boxing giveaway ;-), I would be a foreigner who committed a crime. Because I'm white, would I be allowed to stay if such a law was in place? Nope. It referred to the whole odd-one-out, not to be racist. I have a friend who works for the government, and there is a list of phrases she can't say any more, just in case it causes offence. None of the phrases (like the back sheep phrase) are mean to be offensive in any way, people just like to play the race/minority card and others like the attention.


I completely agree. This whole system of human rights we have today only seems to want to protect criminals, often at the expense of the victims. Sadly too many people are now scared to challenge things now, just in case they are branded racist, or prejudice.


I always knew there was something odd about you ;-). You see, I'm hoping you will take this as a joke, some light hearted banter, but I know some would take it as something offensive, even racist. Funny how things can be twisted. If you don't mind me asking, what is the 50% foreign decent made up of?


When have I ever minded going off-topic :-). I enjoy it, it often leads to very interesting discussions. Feel free to do it any time.

Hey! Awesome! Thanks ddickinson for this nice giveaway and also thanks for the interesting contributions, trentonlf's support (+1) and congrats to babark!

Thanks indeed! And congrats to you too, DeMignon! Was a wonderful surprise to come home to.

It's a simple mix, 50% Swiss and 50% ....wait, if you can figure it out in 5 guesses, I'll make a giveaway! I bet you can't figure it out just like that because no one ever can, with even 50/50 mixes is can be hard! Seriously, I can't remember anyone ever figuring it out, anywhere. In case you do somehow get lucky, it will have to be a small giveaway though as I'm currently pretty much broke. If I had money, I wouldn't be sitting on this forum and would travel somewhere instead but alas, the chips are not facing up so I'm here.
I'm a bit of a blabbermouth (except for when I'm being asked to keep things in confidence), so unfortunately I've already mentioned the answer to the riddle elsewhere on this forum more than once but that must have been a while ago and I can't remember you being part of the threads in question. Anyway, fire away if you're game! (as usual, you have nothing to lose)

Okay. I don't recall you mention it to me, so maybe it was indeed a conversation/thread that did not include me. So here are my guesses, no real thought (as it could be anything) but lets see if I'm lucky.

1. American (US)?
2. Some Middle Eastern/Arab country, erm, israel?
3. German?
4. Italian?
5. Welsh? ;-)

I bet none are correct, but who knows.

American? Eh, I mean my older brother and younger sister were born in the USA because we happened to live there at the given time while as I was born here so my siblings are Americans but neither of my parents is actually American.
Welsh? Haha, no way do I look Welsh. But I'd love to go to Wales, they have some of the best castles in the world and a super high concentration of them, too. Very interesting history, too. Wales is one of my top destinations on the bucket list.
Guess number 2 is a bit vague, there are many countries in that region. But I'm not Israeli, though with the right clothing I could very easily blend into the population there.
Guess number 4 is something I get often, the only people who don't guess me as Italian are Italians themselves, but maybe that's because I wear a backpack when I go to Italy and therefor I'm totally identifiable as a tourist :)

I mercifully extend another 5 guesses

PS: You can't bet on yourself not figuring it out because then you could just pick the 5 tiniest countries like Tuvalu and minimize risks of accidentally figuring it out :)

The castles there are nice, King Edward I built some lovely castles. The last time I was in Wales I visited Conwy Castle and Flint Castle, which has a very unique design for an English castle (an isolated keep). Sorry, no pictures, sadly. North East England has some stunning castles as well. They are often over looked in favour of the castles further south.

So five more guesses. I knew I should have paid more attention in geography. :-)

1. Egyptian?
2. Danish?
3. Lebanon?
4. Yeoman?
5. Romanian?

I love me some good castles, and the entire UK is a prime destination for that. If only the pound wasn't so darn high, and train travel is offensively priced, not quite as bad as here but still very expensive. I remember taking a train from London (the Harry Potter station iirc) to Brookwood Cemetery and it seemed awfully overpriced given the near distance, can't remember how much I paid though. One of my favorite painters was buried there, I just wanted to verify that he had a grave and was in fact a mortal man because with those skills, I had my doubts.

In Egypt, it was quite funny: Soon as I take off my backpack people will ask me for directions in Arabic, thinking I'm from Alexandria up North where people are not quite as dark skinned and I could blend in with ease as long as I keep my mouth shut. But as soon as I wear my backpack, not one person thought I was local. In order to get the cheaper local prices, I sometimes entered shops without a backpack, said hello in Arabic (most words are easy to pronounce accent-free for Swiss German speakers) and placed whatever I wanted to buy on the counter without saying another word. But if they saw my backpack, I'd get the insane foreigner prices and had to waste a lot of time haggling prices down, it's something I hate to do but when in Rome, do as the Romans...there is no way around it. You can't accept their initial prices under any circumstances, they won't respect you unless you haggle with them. You have to kinda roleplay a passive aggressive stingy person, that's the way to do business there, some people even enjoy this but it's not for everybody, takes a lot of getting used to. What in the West is considered to be straight out lying is considered part of normal business conduct there, one has to change mindsets when you go there.

Danish? I'm not a Danish roll :) Danes are vikings, do I look like a viking to you?

Yemen: I'm acquainted with 2 Yemeni people who live here, they do look a bit similar to me indeed. But it's not the correct answer :) Same for Lebanon btw.

EDIT: I'll give you 5 more guesses but then that's it, finito! :)

The trains here are overpriced, sadly they keep going up in price (yet the service never improves, the joys of capitalism). Castles in England tend to be more practical than fancy (like many continental castles), although we sadly lost many castles, with many more being irreversibly damaged, during the English Civil War.

So it seem you have bested my guesses (unless one of my new 5 guesses is correct). Do I get to know? Or do you prefer to keep it a secret, keeping that air of mystery about the mighty awalterj. :-)

1. Crete?
2. Rhodes?
3. Cyprus?
4. Greece?
5. Chicken (Turkey)? :-)

Well, with non-capitalist systems it's not any better, there the bribes just go up in price. Ultimately, you get ripped off everywhere under any system :)

That's the unfortunate thing about castles: They get destroyed in wars but if it wasn't for wars between humans, there wouldn't be any castles to begin with. I've found solace in the fact that there are still plenty of historical treasures left for me to explore but I do get worried about irreplaceable world heritage sites. For instance, I'm glad I painted the castles of Syria already because some of them have been damaged by the tragic war down there and who knows when that will end and what the total damage will be - both to the population and to the historic treasures :(

Oi oi, you wasted 4 guesses on what you could have summarized with one, if it was any of the 4 I'd have let a Greek guess count for all these, I'm not that evil! Now as I said, no one has ever guessed right not even when I'm standing right in front of them in 3D RL.

Chicken? Yes, that is a good guess. I like chicken, in fact I can eat a whole chicken when I'm hungry! But now I'm confused, do you mean turkey the animal or the country? The country it is not, although I've been to Istanbul and was (as per usual) only recognized as a foreigner due to the backpack.

Why would I want to create mystery? There's enough mystery to the human soul that even if you would tell everyone everything, there would always be enough mystery left. So the correct answer was: Indian. My dad is from the North of India (not Cherokee or something :D)
I rather enjoy playing the ethno-guessing game because it's super hard and yet when you look at people you sometimes think, hm that person surely is from this or that country. When I draw strangers, I often ask them where they are from originally, sort of builds a data base in my brain and over time one starts to recognize subtle similarities, it's very intriguing.
For instance, I've drawn quite a lot of Kosovarians and because most of them traditionally marry their own kind even when they live here, I feel like I can identify a Kosovarian face vs e.g. a Serbian face or an Italian face but when the person if of mixed heritage all bets are off, it can get impossibly hard to make anything more than a general guess. I've also drawn quite a number of Somalis and Eritreans, most of them are refugees. I still haven't got it down to a science but sometimes I get these flashes of intuition and my mind tells me this person surely is Eritrean. Or maybe it's just luck when I guess right as the chance that an East African black person is from either Somalia or Eritrea is so high here that it's like a 50/50 chance of guessing right. For West Africans, I don't even try to guess as I probably will guess wrong, there's too many ethnic groups and I'm not familiar enough with any one group. Of course I can gamble and throw out guesses like Ivory Coast based on statistical chances of probability but that's sort of cheating :)

Maltese

Didn't read the thread, sorry if already suggested.

I was actually going to say India or Pakistan (honest). But with you mentioning Alexandria, I thought maybe more Mediterranean, hence all the Greece area guesses. The strange thing is, I have seen you in a few pictures, buy I never really paid much attention to your skin colour. I guess I could have gone back and looked more closely to make my guesses, but I didn't. I guess I see you as awalterj the Swissman™, not awalterj the mixed raced. I don't tend to really register race that much with people, it's never something that has bothered me, I don't care what race, religion, or nationality people are (except those darn French, the evil Germans, and those traitorous Scots (I'm only joking)). But I guess it could also be down to me not paying attention, who knows. :-)

I did indeed mean Turkey the country, it was my sad attempt at humour, saying chicken instead.

I like that you said not Cherokee, it made me smile. Maybe one day I will play the guess my first name game with you. No one has ever been able to guess it, unless someone told them first - I think only three people on here know it. Perhaps after Christmas I will challenge you to guess it, if you can (without someone telling you and spoiling the fun), then I will be the one to host a giveaway. It's not as good as shooting an apple off your head with a longbow, but it might still be fun. I might even give you a few clues if you get really stuck. :-)

I found this picture (the link below) online a while ago, I think during the Swiss giveaway. I thought it might give you an idea of the possible outcome of us trying the apple on the head thing for real. Not that I am a bad shot, it's possible I could do it, but I would never like to try it for real. :-)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EfElR3XlaBk/UTkEyntC7jI/AAAAAAAAAFo/ewQpoj6xkOc/s1600/broken-heroes-william-tell.jpg

I find race very interesting, I'm always trying to figure out what ethnic makeup people have because it's fun. I do the same thing with dogs and other animals too, so not just with humans. All the possible varieties, very fascinating! I don't care much for what someone's citizenship or religion is but ethnicity is interesting because it manifests itself physically in terms of facial structure etc and for drawing that is certainly an important factor.

Cool idea, let's play this! Your turn to be the riddle. Instead of maybe one day, why not just guess away now and get it over with. It's not like your name will change or anything, right? If I figure it out, you can always "punish" yourself later with having to make a giveaway or baking a cake for the homeless in your town or whatever, no pressure :)
(unless you want to be like Rumpelstiltskin)

So...does your first name start with a 'd' ?


I'd let you punch me but I'd never ever hold still for an arrow shot. No way, even if you were an Olympic archery champion or professional circus/variété archer! Even if we'd use a giant pumpkin instead of an apple.

Well it would have to be a giveaway, there are no homeless in my village, nor any of the surrounding villages, I think. But I do help out sometimes with some different charities in the nearby towns, so I guess I could always bake a cake for them. :-)

So lets do it now then, but if you guess it correctly, I will let you know via PM, just so that the forum wont know. Why? Because it is full of some strange people :-). But also because it lets me play this game with someone else in the future. Is it a deal?

My first name does indeed begin with D. Guess away.


I have never been a fan of modern Olympic archery. All those pulleys and counter-weights take away much of the fun, not that it is easy, bit I still prefer how they did it up until recently, with a traditional bow. This left much of the skill to the archer, not technology. But good decision about not reliving William Tell, especially when there is no real proof it happened. Who know, maybe he missed and kill his son.