You don`t need RFID

David Coursey, an eWeek columnist, has the following to say about RFID passports, which all US citizens are being issued with: "What do you suppose our enemies would pay for a device capable of identifying all the Americans walking down the street in a foreign city? And why might the US Department of State be making such a weapon possible?"

The chip is intended to speed US citizens through border crossings, and will reportedly include all printed passport information and an enhanced photograph.

While ordinary Americans, as they like to call themselves, will only get the new passports once their old ones expire, the US diplomatic corps is already fair game, Coursey says. His fear is that the passports could become "electronic beacons, allowing terrorists to more easily separate Americans from a group of potential victims".

He obviously hasn`t thought this through. Surely one doesn`t need an RFID tag to identify an American? For fun, and because it`s less trouble than writing a column all by myself, I conducted a snap poll among my fellow ITWebbers, asking them what they think separates Americans from others in a crowd.

I liked the one sent by the next colleague, which is that you can tell an American by their habit of starting every sentence with "Oh my God!" repeated several times.

Carel Alberts, special editions editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

At first I thought the surest way to spot an American would be to find the guy who is able to ask for the closest McDonald`s in any language. "Nonsense," said a colleague. "They only speak 'American`. 'Another language` for them just means English spoken louder and slower."

A frenzied mob-ridicule of Americans followed. The next colleague said Yanks are the big, loud ones. So I guess this means if you see a big, loud person who asks, at the top of his or her voice, really slowly, "Beg pardon, but do ya know where I can find a McDonald`s?", then you know you`ve snagged one, and can proceed to the next action on your agenda.

A person of Egyptian extraction at my office, who paradoxically is quite down with American inner-city ghetto-speak, offered the following (slightly censored) declamation about Americans: "%$^&*(@#$!!" The bearing of his missive is, more or less, that Americans are arrogant and lack culture, but know enough about it to recognise it and bomb it. There was something about sheep too.

A good point someone else made about America is that they forget their roots. They disregard the origins of their language, and are apt to ask: "Do you speak American?" Or maybe they only do that in movies made by Canadians and glossed over by censors. The fact that baseball is a true American invention and is in no way, shape or form related to cricket, is another instance of this tunnel vision, even ignorance, as many journos here pointed out. As is the fact that you can play a world series with one country as the participant.

I liked the one sent by the next colleague, which is that you can tell an American by their habit of starting every sentence with "Oh my God!" repeated several times, depending on the level of amazement, and that they tend to get amazed a lot.

Loudness in Americans, amusingly, extends to their clothes. One journalist remarked that they`re the ones that insist on wearing shorts with sandals and socks and "those terribly loud Hawaiian-style shirts".

Another thinks "Yanks in Africa are always the ones wearing the 'out of Africa` khaki shirt and shorts", while the aforementioned censored individual reckons it`s the ones who think they`re "real bushwhackers".

Sometimes it`s subtler. You have to stare into the abyss deep and long enough and flirt with your own vertigo to note that Americans, one and all, suffer from irony deficiency. This means if you answer the McDonald`s guy by warning him that terrorists have set up RFID readers in all American establishments in Johannesburg south, and that our courts can`t very well forbid it, given all the amendments to our Constitution, which we got from THEM in the first place, he would believe you.

Another colleague says bad eating habits distinguish Americans from all other nations. I take it by other nations he means people who eat with their left hands and others who eat blood sausage and haggis.

Which I suppose means you shouldn`t practise irony on an American when all he wants is a McDonald`s, because if you show him where to go, you can observe his eating habits at leisure.

Another subtle observation is the one that says Americans are the ones who loudly proclaim that the rules don`t apply, because of their nationality.

For example: "Visa? I don`t need one - I`m American." Or: "You can`t search me - I`m an American." Or "I wouldn`t carry drugs - I`m an American." Or "You can`t arrest me - I`m an American."

Please note: This column is a team effort cooked up by people with nothing better to do than make fun of other people. It shouldn`t be taken seriously or read out loud in Atlanta`s Hartfield Airport, for instance.