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Comment by Brozilean | Hacker News Reader

Hahaha I love how the title of this post implies the idea that the idea of a Canadian being a good mathematician is a shocker. In my head I read it the same as "John, an octopus, is the world's greatest mathematician".

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The Star is a Canadian publication. The clear interpretation is of national pride.

Still somewhat over the top. They mention he’s a Canadian three times in the first half of the article. In case you missed it, he’s a Canadian. Although looking him up it seems he’s also an American.

Yes, it's a little over the top. But as a Canadian, I can say that Canadian publications (especially left-of-center ones like the Star) tend to be a little nationalistic whenever a local does well. It's a natural response to the brain drain of many talented Canadians to our neighbor to the south.

Welcome to the other side. It's common place here to see the same sort of nationalism for the US, but no one ever comments on it. For those of us outside of the US, it's extremely obnoxious though.

Right in line with that, the minute any comment or article even slightly nationalistic about another country, you get tons of comments about how untrue it is and how it's still the US that is amazing, not the other country.

I’m not from the US and don’t really notice this.

It's kinda like Alexander Graham Bell, claimed by the Scots (in England they call him British) the Canadians and the Americans.

>It's kinda like Alexander Graham Bell, claimed by the Scots (in England they call him British) the Canadians and the Americans.

... and "universally" (i.e. by the British, the Canadians and the US people) attributed the invention of the telephone, which was invented by an Italian, instead ...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.int...

Though the Canadians are still not convinced:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci#2002_U.S._Congr...

I have no idea why you were downvoted. As a Canadian whenever I see a news article that writes like this I cringe so hard. Being a Canadian had nothing to do with this guy's success. That's just how it is here sometimes.

Canadian media treat the word "Canadian" as an honorific and optimize for the number of times they can use it. It has been that way for as long as I can remember.

We changed the title to use a representative phrase from the article, and added the year.

With respect - you are both being overly general about Canadian media, and showing an American bias. The Star is not representative of all Canadian media, and there are many American publications that trumpet American exceptionalism at every opportunity.

I should hope it shows Canadian bias since that's where most of my experience has been! I mean it affectionately and with no implied comparison.

I know it's dodgy to post occasional personal comments with a moderator account, but it's also dodgy if the moderators aren't community members too. And we were community members long before we became moderators. So I make a point of doing it sometimes.

And it's not particularly rare. To take one example, Curtis McMullen is both a Fields Medal winner and the thesis supervisor of another Fields Medal winner. He also happens to be Canadian (at least by birth).

The headline of the article, which was the original title of the submission, is less ridiculous. But for some reason it has been changed.

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