65% wissen nicht wer Pol Pot war und 64% wissen nicht was ein Gulag ist. 75% konnten Mao Zedong nicht erkennen und die selbe Anzahl wusste nicht was der "Großer Sprung nach vorn" ist.
Ok, das mit Mao ist schon fragwürdig, aber Pol Pot kennt doch kein Schwein, ein Gulag ist bei uns (und den Norwegern evtl. auch) als KZ bekannt, und wie sollte sich ein Schüler an einen Propagandasatz und die dadurch ausgelöste Hungersnot aus den frühen 60ern erinnern?

Die Aftenposten geht sogar noch weiter: "Die Umfrage ergab auch das ein drittel der Schüler glauben, dass der Kommunismus das Leben der Menschen in manchen Teilen der Erde verbessert hat." Wo hat der Autor denn bitte den Gegenbeweis? Nicht das ich Fan der Kommunismus wäre, aber den Kubanern ging es unter Batista auch nicht besser.

In einer Umfrage der 10. und 11. Klasse in Brandenburg wussten nur die Hälfte wann die Berliner Mauer gebaut wurde. Könnte ich jetzt auf Anhieb auch nicht sagen. Begründen könnte ich mein Unwissen aber: DAS WAR 24 JAHRE VOR MEINER GEBURT!

Detailwissen ist doch für Schüler vollkommen unnötig. Alles wichtige über die Mauer: Nach dem 2. Weltkrieg gebaut - Kennedy: "Ich bin ein Berliner" - ca. 1990 abgerissen.

Wenn man das Spiel andersherum spielt merk man wie dumm alle Nicht-Schüler sind. Heute kann ja mal jeder losgehen und seine Eltern folgende Dinge fragen:

In welchem Jahr ist Lenin gestorben? (1924)
Wer ist Steve Jobs? (Mitgründer von Apple)
Wie heißt der letzte Pixar-Film? (Ratatouille bzw. Lifted)
Was ist die Utah-Teekanne? (gehört zu den ältesten und bekanntesten Objekten der 3D-Computergrafik)

Das weiß garantiert auch kein sozial-normalveranlagter Erwachsener (sprich 40+). Es ist Detailwissen und sollte in Büchern stehen. Um so etwas als Allgemeinbildung zu verkaufen muss man schon ziemlich lange keinen interessanten Menschen getroffen haben.

Quelle


PS: KZ und Gular ist nicht das Selbe, aber wer sich über sowas aufreg, liest bestimmt nicht den ganzen Beitrag... ;-)

When we watch a movie, we're usually not conscious of the cuts made by the editor. The camera angle may change dozens of times during a scene, and we follow along as if the flashing from one viewpoint to another wasn't at all unusual. You might think this is just because we've been accustomed to watching TV and movies, but researchers have found that even people who've never seen a motion picture have no difficulty following along with the cuts and different camera angles in a video.

There was no significant difference in the results for a static camera versus a moving camera, but viewers were significantly less accurate when they saw an abrupt cut in the movie. This decrease in accuracy was almost entirely found at the point in the movie immediately following the cut, suggesting quite strongly that the cut itself momentarily disoriented viewers. So although the perceptual system can handle cuts in a movie presentation, those cuts do have some cost.

I do wonder if the costs would be as evident in a longer scene. One reason movie editors like to make a lot of cuts is because it maintains visual interest. Perhaps at some point viewers would lose interest in a scene without cuts, and their memory for such a scene would actually be worse than a scene with cuts.

Link

The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".

From the Information Operation Roadmap:
"Enhanced IO [information operations] capabilities for the warfighter, including: ... A robust offensive suite of capabilities to include full-range electronic and computer network attack..." [emphasis mine] - 7

It should come as no surprise that the Pentagon would aggressively attack the "information highway" in their attempt to achieve dominance in information warfare. Donald Rumsfeld's involvement in the Project for a New American Century sheds more light on the need and desire to control information.

[...]

"It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies... are creating a dynamic that may threaten America's ability to exercise its dominant military power."

Das denkt, das "Project for a New American Century" also über das Internet.

Link

Spurius Carvilius Ruga (possibly 230 BC) was a freedman living in Rome who allegedly invented the letter G. His invention would have been quickly adopted in the Roman Republic because the letter C was, at the time, confusingly used both for the /k/ and /g/ sounds. Ruga was also the first man in recorded history to open a private elementary school.

Plutarch is our only source for the second invention, and Quintus Terentius Scaurus confirms the first one in De Orthographia. The letter G was already in use before 230 BC; Wilhelm Paul Corssen theorized in Über Aussprache that what Plutarch really meant was that Ruga's elementary school was the first place to assign the C and G to their current phonemes of /k/ and /g/. G was imported from the Greek zeta, which stood for quite a different sound, and usually confused with C and Z. This is the reason G is in the middle of the alphabet rather than at the end; at whatever point the confusion was stamped out, probably Ruga's doing, it replaced the Z used in the Old Italic alphabet.


Ohne Spurius Carvilius Ruga würde nichts grooven oder geil sein! Zu diesem Mann gibt es ausserdem keinen deutschen Wikipedia-Artikel.

Quelle

The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday.

The band gained fame with its free-form psychedelic music when the counterculture movement flourished in San Francisco in the 1960s, and they attracted many loyal fans who came to be known as "Deadheads."

Link

In Cheney’s mind, breaking the law and engaging in illegal conduct apparently aren’t violations of civil liberties.

Mehr gibts da wohl nicht zu sagen.

Quelle

Eigentlich sagt Jimmy Massey nur was wir alle über US-Marines denken. Trotzdem nicht sonderlich beruhigend.

"I'm 32 and I am a trained psychopathic murderer. The only things I can do are to sell youths the idea of joining the marines and kill. I am not able to keep a job. For me civilians are despicable people, mentally retarded and weak persons, a flock of sheep. I am their sheepdog. I am a predator."

He has his hair cut in the military style and wears sun glasses; he walks with martial air and he has his arms covered with tattoos. He looks just like what he used to be: a marine. But when he speaks he looks different: he is someone marked by a horrifying experience from which he tries to keep other unwary youths away.

The United States only has two ways of using the marines: to undertake humanitarian missions and to kill. Over the 12 years I was with them, I never took part in humanitarian missions.

During three years I recruited 74 youths who never told me that they wanted to join the armed forces because they wanted to defend their country or due to any patriotic reason. They wanted to get money to go to university or get a health insurance. So, I would first tell them about all those advantages and only in the end I would tell them that they will serve our homeland. I never happened to recruit the son of a rich person.

Der Link für zur "Cuban News Agency" insofern kann man wohl nicht sagen ob es Propaganda ist, aber sein Buch scheint es wirklich zu geben.

Die USA erringen in ihrer Niederlage im Irak wirklich Sieg für Sieg. Ich frage mich manchmal wie viele Top-Leute Al Qaeda überhaupt hat.

A top Al Qaeda commander who trained and led foreign militants assisting the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan has been killed in neighboring Pakistan, officials said Thursday in what appeared to be a significant victory for U.S.-led forces hunting members of the terrorist network.

Link

Also für mich wirkt das so, als hätten die USA Bin Laden mal eben aus dem Hut gezaubert, um ihm die Schuld für katastrophale Finanzlage zu geben. Da die Quelle CNN ist, finde ich meine Theorie gar nicht so bizarr.

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

"Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs," he said. "As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.

Link

Hier ein Artikel vom 22. September 2001:

Siebzehn Jahre später als erwartet ist es endlich soweit: 1984 ist da.

Am Dienstag erklärte George Bush erfolgreich den permanenten Krieg - Krieg ohne zeitliche oder geografische Grenzen; ohne klares Ziel; Krieg gegen einen vage definierten und ständige wechselnden Gegner. Heute ist es Al-Qaida [sic]; morgen ist es vielleicht Afghanistan; nächstes Jahr könnte es Irak, Kuba oder Tschetschenien sein.

Link [Englisch]


Von mit gibts dazu nur ein Zitat:

We declared war on terror — it’s not even a noun, so, good luck.
Jon Stewart