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Foreign Policy: Europe’s Philosophy of Failure

Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries. They study from textbooks filled with a doctrine of dissent, which they learn to recite as they prepare to attend many of the better universities in the world. Extracting these children from the jaws of bias could mean the difference between world prosperity and menacing global rifts. And doing so will not be easy. But not because these children are found in the madrasas of Pakistan or the state-controlled schools of Saudi Arabia. They are not. Rather, they live in two of the world’s great democracies—France and Germany.

What a country teaches its young people reflects its bedrock national beliefs. Schools hand down a society’s historical narrative to the next generation. There has been a great deal of debate over the ways in which this historical ideology is passed on—over Japanese textbooks that downplay the Nanjing Massacre, Palestinian textbooks that feature maps without Israel, and new Russian guidelines that require teachers to portray Stalinism more favorably. Yet there has been almost no analysis of how countries teach economics, even though the subject is equally crucial in shaping the collective identity that drives foreign and domestic policies.

Great article from Foreign Policy Magazine.

Playpumps Water System
It’s not something sexual , you pervert! Rather it’s a clever idea to create a merry-go-round that pumps water as it spins.
Watch the video.

Math Trek: The Grammy in Mathematics, Science News Online, Feb. 9, 2008

Shortly after September 11, 2001, a small, heavy package wrapped in brown paper arrived in the mail at the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City. Inside was a mess of wires.

Guthrie’s daughter Nora eventually figured out that the suspicious package wasn’t a bomb, but rather a recording of her father on a device that predated magnetic tape. After a year of searching, she managed to track down someone with the equipment to play it.

Corporate Knights :: Canada’s Most Sustainable Cities Ranking

Calgary came in last in the large city category. Boo! C’mon people!

The full article (PDF) is a good read.

Silly Rabbit! Jews are for kids.

Makes your Linux or Mac OS X system run super fast. Actually no, don’t do it!

Now I’m kind of curious if Edmonton had a good turnout for their Anonymous vs. Scientology thing. Had I been there I would watched on the sidelines.

The are few things worse than Scientology but these protesters are certainly up there. If you’re using a shitty Hollywood adaptation of a good comic book as your inspiration to protest then you make the Scientologists look good.

Yes, I know about Lisa McPherson. Yes, I know about Xenu and OT III and the whole bit. I say let the Scientologists be douchebags in peace. Besides, Tom Cruise is doing more to make them less credible than any Guy Fawkes mask wearing dummy can ever do.

How to make a baby stop crying: the non-violent method.

Bottom Line for (Red) – New York Times

In its March 2007 issue, Advertising Age magazine reported that Red companies had collectively spent as much as $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million. Officials of the campaign said then that the companies had spent $50 million on advertising and that the amount raised was $25 million. Advertising Age stood by its article.

But the iPods were cool.

Auto-Tune Abuse in Pop Music – 10 Examples – Hometracked

If you’re unfamiliar with Auto-tune, and especially if you listen to much pop and rock, you might not hear it initially. When overdone, the effect yields an unnatural yodel or warble in a singer’s voice. But the sound is so commonplace in modern mainstream music that your ears may have tuned out the auto-tune!