What has that to do with riding a high horse, pray?

I know that North- and South America are considered by some as two continents, Autralia as an island, Europe and Asia as one continent really, and the Antarctis as a continent as well. Yeah, and what does this mean or matter? That Earth has three, four, five, six or seven continents? that the number of continents is undefined? Even if it was common notion that North- and South America were two continents, the term America designates both of them.

Saying America and meaning the USA is, as not only my south american friends will affirm, riding a high horse and ursupating a common name, and diametral to the wishes of many people, like e.g. Victor Jara, chilean singer and poet (and huh! a communist!) (which, btw, are also my wishes referring to any continent)

Yo que soy americano,
No importa de qué pais -
Quiero que mi continente
Viva algun dia feliz.

I, which am an American,
No matter of which country,
I want that my continent
may one day live in peace.

and referring as Americans to the populace of the USA only is also utterly mistaken and wrong. To wit:

• there's no country called America
• there's no state called America
• there's no such thing as an American Citizenship
• there's no american except if the term means any native of America, of both hemispheres.

That has nothing to do with riding a high horse. Note that I also use the term 'American' on my home node in that wrong way, with purpose (read the link target there and, as Procol Harum sang 0.000008 seconds ago - in relation to the half life of uranium-238 scaled to a millenium - draw your own conclusions).

Throwing in that the word America designates other things in other contexts (e.g. the Simon & Garfunkel and Yes songs with that name) doesn't change a jota of the right usage of the term 'America' in the context of delimiting land masses - country, state and continent. If stating such is riding a high horse, I'll gladly go on riding it.

I hold to my statement that the common-place meaning of Operating System designates the functional unit of a kernel and system software (there being exceptions to that rule, as ikegami points out), which is what my post was all really about; and done.

--shmem

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