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Old 2010-03-12, 05:28   Link #6501
JMvS
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Originally Posted by JMvS View Post
China to build fast railway network around Eurasia within 10 years



Gosh, a Pan-Eurasian modern railway system... Now I've got a good reason to root for China.



Chances are that Somali Coast piracy played quite a role here...
A better overview, with some crispy maps included.
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Old 2010-03-12, 16:06   Link #6502
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Suspected homegrown Al Qaeda terrorist worked at five nuclear plants around US
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Old 2010-03-12, 17:17   Link #6503
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Behold yet another reason American K-12 educational system is marching ever downward in quality or content -- idiots at the helm in textbook decisions.

Yes, they happen to be conservative idiots -- but the emphasis is simply that they're idiots with an agenda.

(note: the Texas board on textbooks is a dominant factor in textbook availability to the rest of the country - influence out of proportion)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/ed...er=rss&emc=rss
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Old 2010-03-12, 17:36   Link #6504
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didn't they vote out the creationist who was trying to force publishers to discount darwinism and the theory of evolution?
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Old 2010-03-12, 18:08   Link #6505
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Originally Posted by Vexx View Post
-- idiots at the helm in textbook decisions.
lol that Board is like for hobbyists.

For example, Don McLeroy (former member of the Board) makes no bones about the fact that his professional qualifications have nothing to do with education.
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Old 2010-03-12, 18:26   Link #6506
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Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle officially end relationship and engagement

I'm surprised nobody brought this up, it's been circulating news headlines for weeks. A whole lot of things happened, a nude photo of someone named Lara Bingle surfaces in a newspaper allegedly by football star Brendan Fevola, her fiancee Michael Clarke finds out, quits the Ashes tour, breaks up with her over the affair, and they're all making a killing in publicity.
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Old 2010-03-12, 19:19   Link #6507
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Clinton/BIden is not pleased with Israel...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-a...14,print.story

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62B3QN20100312

Israel might be trying to sink US-mediated peace talks before they even begin.
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Old 2010-03-12, 20:11   Link #6508
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx View Post
idiots at the helm in textbook decisions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by from the article
In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.
That is the best news I have heard on this topic in a while. The blatant political manipulation of history by that board in Texas is like something out of Soviet Russia. If one or two school districts, or even a state or two, want to hide their heads in the sand, fine. But the impact they were having on education all around the country was a very bad thing.
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Old 2010-03-13, 12:52   Link #6509
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Though not from any official news channels (sankaku), it is rather interesting to see the rare absolutes of life smacking us in our faces wholesale once in a while :

Fury at Truthful MMORPG Adverts

I have to take my hat off to RO's advertisers. There goes judging a book by its cover.
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Old 2010-03-13, 12:59   Link #6510
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mg1942 View Post
Clinton/BIden is not pleased with Israel...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-a...14,print.story

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62B3QN20100312

Israel might be trying to sink US-mediated peace talks before they even begin.
this was the work of a stupid-ass right-wing israeli politician named eli isahy who really should be fired for his shameful behavior of sneaking around like a fucking 5-year-old and approving a construction project that he knows would be controversial right at a point in time when Biden is visiting in order to take a cheap shot at the american administration and make them look bad (at the cost of making israel look even worse)
the guy deserves to be fired, preferably from a cannon

that said, its irrelevant to the peace process, because there isn't one anymore
the peace process is dead, and it would take a full decade of rebuilding and cooling down before another can legitimately be started
as it stands, repeated efforts to restart talks, is only preventing the start of this cool down period of time between the two sides
obama/clinton/Biden are just beating a dead horse at this point
they should just bury it already, and go look for another one
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Old 2010-03-13, 13:02   Link #6511
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On/Off: Can South Koreans survive without the web?

I would love to try this challenge since i feel my family is addicted to the internet.
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Old 2010-03-13, 15:50   Link #6512
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Damn, there's whole lotta stupid right there. Makes me feel glad that I live in Finland.

It takes a lot for the children to filter all that bullshit. Of course, they don't even know they're reading bullshit, and if someone tells them not to trust school books, the authority of teachers / school books might be questioned to the point of not simply believing in them.

I mean, it's a fundamental question: who to believe and why ? Actually, it's a question of evidence: focus on the evidence and not on the person presenting it. Educators / policy makers should be more concerned about teaching critical thinking from a young age. It's a fundamental skill in today's society.

All this talk about religion and politics affecting education makes me appreciate my parents' decision not to indoctrinate any particular faith in to me.
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Old 2010-03-13, 16:15   Link #6513
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look... the only way to guarantee no-indoctrination takes place is to not teach the kids anything. All of written history is bias. One side is always going to accuse the other team of indoctrination. And they will always be correct. It's just a matter of who's holding the power. The blinding liberal panic seen here is the fact that in this instance, they don't hold the power. It has been a long time since this has been true.
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Old 2010-03-13, 16:38   Link #6514
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Driver killed taking recalled car to get tests

Quote:
A BRITISH pensioner driving his recalled Peugeot to a dealer for checks was killed when it shot into a busy road.

Frank Beer's semi-automatic 107 was one of 6000 due to have its accelerator pedals checked, The Sun reported.

The cars were made in a joint venture with Toyota — which is recalling millions of cars with faulty pedals.

Frank hit an oncoming Land Rover as he lurched on to the A30 in Launceston, Cornwall, on Wednesday.

The 83-year-old — town crier of the nearby town of Liskeard — died at the scene.

A 44-year-old woman in the other car had minor injuries.

Police are now checking the Peugeot's accelerator.

Frank's son Tim, a former cop, said: "While he was waiting to cross a fast road, his car moved forward twice.

"We want some answers. I want to know if the car my father was driving was faulty. The next fatal accident could involve a family."

All semi-automatic 107s — made alongside Toyotas at a factory in the Czech Republic — were recalled in February.

A Peugeot Citroen spokesman said none of the 3000 cars checked so far had faults.

He added: "We can't comment because we are awaiting police reports."
*gulp* and I liked the 107....
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Old 2010-03-13, 16:46   Link #6515
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I wonder how that works out from a legal perspective? If the accelerator was faulty and caused the accident then is the family entitled to compensation? Does the fact they recalled the car create any kind of immunities for them? Or should it never have come to that stage?

I guess even if it did protect them from liability, it would be pretty bad PR if they refused to compensate. :/
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Old 2010-03-13, 16:52   Link #6516
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Originally Posted by mg1942 View Post
look... the only way to guarantee no-indoctrination takes place is to not teach the kids anything.
Granted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mg1942 View Post
The blinding liberal panic seen here is the fact that in this instance, they don't hold the power.
No. There has never been a case in America when leftists openly took over a textbook editing committee and removed the teaching of the impact of an American president from the curriculum because that president didn't say that the country was intended to be Socialist. (Here Thomas Jefferson was removed because he didn't say America was founded to be a Christian nation).

What if some lefties did take over the committee that in effect shapes the curriculum for the nation, and they decided to change all references from "capitalism" to "greed" or "baby-killing" because they thought that would make people like it less? (Here references were changed from "capitalism" to "free market" because they wanted people to like it more).

Source


From what I have seen, the comments here were essentially that these political activists that hijacked the curriculum committee were pushing their political opinions at the expense of educating the children. In fact, Vexx's original post emphasized that the political orientation was irrelevant compared to the subordination of the goal of educating students to any political agenda.

Last edited by Joojoobees; 2010-03-13 at 16:56. Reason: added link
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Old 2010-03-13, 17:04   Link #6517
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This is old news. The public education system is already filled with this kind of misinformation to steer children down a certain path believing in certain ideals so they continue to propagate the system in place. These people just decided they'd be a little more blatant and moronic about it.
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Old 2010-03-13, 18:07   Link #6518
Nosauz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mg1942 View Post
look... the only way to guarantee no-indoctrination takes place is to not teach the kids anything. All of written history is bias. One side is always going to accuse the other team of indoctrination. And they will always be correct. It's just a matter of who's holding the power. The blinding liberal panic seen here is the fact that in this instance, they don't hold the power. It has been a long time since this has been true.
apparently science has a liberal bias /s

The fact that science is less important than a political message and history is subjected to revisionist histories of those in power to promote an agenda not based on fact or reason but on some higher being is just asinine, let's just teach the kids that christ will save them from all the sins they commit and just switch over to the theocracy the religious right desperately wants to make America into. The fact was most of the founding fathers weren't christian, there's a reason there is a separation of church and state. Facts tend to have a liberal bias it's sad but true, guess what that says about these self righteous text book buyers who are trying to warp the youth of this nation away from reason and logic and toward ideology.
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Old 2010-03-13, 18:26   Link #6519
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Originally Posted by MrTerrorist View Post
On/Off: Can South Koreans survive without the web?

I would love to try this challenge since i feel my family is addicted to the internet.
Sounds like something you'd see in a new reality TV series.
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Old 2010-03-13, 18:35   Link #6520
Irenicus
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mg1942 View Post
look... the only way to guarantee no-indoctrination takes place is to not teach the kids anything. All of written history is bias. One side is always going to accuse the other team of indoctrination. And they will always be correct. It's just a matter of who's holding the power. The blinding liberal panic seen here is the fact that in this instance, they don't hold the power. It has been a long time since this has been true.
As a History student, let me just say that you're full of it. This kind of "cynicism" does no one any good.

We -- historians -- are not some sort of crusaders on an agenda like these pathetic ideologues who are on a quest to destroy our very profession. Like doctors and other self-respecting professionals, we consider the goal of objectivity, unattainable as it may be, as absolutely central to our profession. It is the primary lesson to every half-decent college student in the history department that Primary Sources Are Everything. Historians struggle with themselves far more than what the public expects them to do on the delicate questions of historical bias, omissions, etc. The high school history textbook represents the end product of a long line of dumbing-down, filtering, political correctness, ideological warfare (the culturally damaging "Culture Wars," thanks a bunch, and fuck you, Reagan), with the end result that every high school kid hates history.

And if you think the narrative we've managed to develop is more "left wing" than these scums want, then guess what, we don't care. Our task is to study and explain history, not to rewrite it to suit our agenda. I and other historians will not let America be -- literally -- white-washed. Not after so much struggle to establish the scientific basis of our profession ("historically," before the rise of academia which give the profession the freedom and professionalism it needed, historians often served as propagandists), so much work done to reveal that there's even other people out there in the first place, so much difficult research to tell the difficult stories of peoples with only oral traditions and archaeological evidences to rely on, and so much delicate thinking to explain the subtler trends of history beyond, "FUCK YES, WE AMERICA WE AWESOME SCREW THE YELLOW JAPS!"

Moreover, if that means assaulting certain tenets of what remains of the leftist institutions in America, then that's fine with us too. As an example, our treatment of the "New Deal" is far more complicated than what the far right ideologues would expect, and much controversy and energy went in to the subject that still lacks a truly dominant narrative around it.

The travesty in Texas is a direct, vicious assault on the sanctity of our very profession and ideals. I'd like to at least assure our non-American members that, at least, the very "top" of the hierarchy -- the people who do the drudge work of study history at its primary level -- have not gone mad just yet. If a student survives the horrific destruction of selfhood and meaning at the secondary education level and still somehow retain an interest in history still, (s)he will find a far subtler, far more wide-ranging treatment of the complexities of history than (s)he could expect out of high school. And we don't give a shit about far right ideologues.

~2 cents
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