California lawmakers pass bill to teach gay history

[MadImmortalMan]

I dunno, lots of kids liked Captain Planet.

Only kids wouldn't question the logic of a villain spending all kinds of money to create a factory with the sole purpose of producing sludge to dump in the ocean. 

[Oexmelin]

A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

[katmai]

A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

[The Brain]

A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Well for one thing it's a science that is building a body of understanding that is based on a scientific method, a body which therefore tends to grow and only experience minor rewriting. Physics is an example of a mature science.

History today is roughly where physics was in the Middle Ages. You have a bunch of people who have opinions, but you have no working scientific procedure in place for establishing which opinions belong in the body of understanding and which do not.

[The Brain]

A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

Pick on someone your own size.

[katmai]

A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

Pick on someone your own size.

I am,


you fatty.

[The Brain]

A major problem with history as a school subject is that history isn't a mature science. It's not even close.

What's a mature science?

Brainiac is last person to ask about mature.

Pick on someone your own size.

I am,


you fatty.

WTF I'm gorgeous.

[katmai]

Big and Beautiful!

[The Brain]

When did you see my cock?

[Ideologue]

I dunno, lots of kids liked Captain Planet.

Only kids wouldn't question the logic of a villain spending all kinds of money to create a factory with the sole purpose of producing sludge to dump in the ocean. 

I want to see the Captain Planet episode where he warms up by straight-up murdering some Japanese whalers, before reducing Riyadh to a big smoking pile of debris.

[katmai]

When did you see my cock?

I told you stop drunk skyping, but noooooooo!

[dps]

I think you vastly over-estimate the historical knowledge of most americans.  And I consider myself a history buff and I've never heard of the Tariff of Abominations.

I would be disappointed if college bound students were unaware of the tariff. It was not only a pivotal economic event but also a critical moment in the increasing sectionalism of American politics.

Spend any time talking to incoming freshmen, and I think you'll be badly disappointed.

It is probably safe to assume that every American college freshman knows the following:*

1.  At some point in the distant past the United States fought a war of independence against a major European or Asian power.  An extraordinary Tea Party was a factor.

2.  George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon served as presidents of the United States.  Washington was the first president and Lincoln also lived a long time ago, while the latter two were in the twentieth century.  Ronald Reagan and George Bush were more recent occupants of the Oval Office.

3.  The United States still suffers from the horrors of its slaveholding past, whenever that was.  The Civil War, which took place some time between 1750 and 1930, was mixed up in this.

4.  Adolf Hitler (a foreigner of some kind) was a very bad man.

5.  There was at least one World War, but absolutely not more than three.

*I didn't make this up--it's from a book about errors that college history students have made on exams and assignments, compiled by a history professor.  The above was his summation of what he's learned to expect to be the limits of the historical knowledge of his freshment students.

[Ideologue]

Like all such public displays of errors, it's no doubt edited to make people sound dumber than they are, like those goofy interview-the-public sketches people do for cheap laughs.  Vanishly few Americans could be really be unaware that we're English.

[Ed Anger]

Like all such public displays of errors, it's no doubt edited to make people sound dumber than they are, like those goofy interview-the-public sketches people do for cheap laughs.  Vanishly few Americans could be really be unaware that we're English.

Don't call me English, you poophead.

That is an insult. You might as well call me a geordie bastard.

[grumbler]

Like all such public displays of errors, it's no doubt edited to make people sound dumber than they are, like those goofy interview-the-public sketches people do for cheap laughs.  Vanishly few Americans could be really be unaware that we're English.

  No one would buy a book that showed that freshmen were not silly and stupid.

I am sure someone has written another book showing how silly and stupid history professors are.