The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but from what I've heard talking to elderly Germans who fought as Wehrmacht in WWII and got picked up by us (or their grandchildren), they were indeed pretty well-treated. They do not seem to be bitter about their time as POWs. Most importantly, once returned to Germany, they had no desire to take up arms against the occupying US forces, much less attack the US elsewhere - they just wanted to get on with their lives.
The SCOTUS just said, "Fine, you don't want to call them POWs, so now you have to go with the rules we use for people accused of crimes. Your choice, but you must choose one."
For everyone who makes fun of trying suspected terrorists in "ordinary" criminal courts, if it's sufficient for bringing murderers with less grandiose motives to justice, it'll do for ones who think they're doing it for some great cause. Heck, it's possibly more insulting to treat them like common criminals, if that's what makes you happy.
I'd rather have a 1/2 carat (diamond-size equivalent) moissanite ring completely manufactured somewhere with enforced labor laws than the standard 1+ ct diamond all the girls in my home region (Central Texas) are raised to expect. Do not spend more on a piece of jewelry than a roundtrip to the US from Germany would cost!
But that might be a little bit of why Central Texas is my "home" region and not a place I've lived since I've had the choice (age 18).
I'm trying to lay the groundwork now (like mocking DeBeer's 60 year multinational marketing campaign) to avoid an expensive surprise later without sounding like I'm begging for a ring...
Yep, user IDs are assigned in order, so you're identifiable as having signed up a few years ago, but not during the first three or four.
For reference, I started reading it on and off in '97 while, like half the Slashdot oldtimers, working tech support at my town's ISP, but think I signed up in summer '99, working at the same ISP. 1500 customers, and we treated them like they were our own children.
Our own dull-witted, accident-prone, occasionally-irritating children.
I made a gorgeous tree from the innards of discarded CAT 3 cable that summer, too.
Unlike most other Slashdot oldtimers, though, I was a socially-awkward teenage GIRL working tech support at the local ISP. Oh, the memories...
In this thread, I feel like a kid again with an ID of 69148!
How many Americans have a spouse or partner who happens to be a non-US citizen who likes living in or visiting the US just fine, but does not want to give up his/her current citizenship?
My boyfriend is German. We live in Germany. I'm trying to convince him to come meet my family and friends back home. He got a masters in the US in the late 90's and had a good time, but is unenthusiastic about dealing with our new security stuff. However, he was starting to come around, since it would mean so much to me.
This will absolutely thrill him. What if something happens back in Germany while he's visiting the US, and he had to wait two days instead of taking the next flight back?
If Germany was half as stupid to visiting Americans as we are to visiting Germans, I'd discourage my family and friends from visiting me here. As it is, they're amazed at how nice the German border and customs police are, and how quickly everything moves. A scan of your passport, a few quick questions about what you're planning on doing here and when you plan to leave, a discreet look at the screen (probably to make sure that matches up), and off you go to hit the Biergarten.
Someone has a rather weak grasp on church history, as do many "Bible-believing" Christians - I saw it growing up in Texas.
Christ ascended into heaven somewhere around 30 AD. Constantine legalized Christianity for the Roman Empire in 313 AD. Constantine was, therefore, not alive for any portion of the Disciples' or Paul's lives.
And anyway, how did our nifty Bible get itself together in the first place, and then stay maintained for 1000+ years between the final booklist coming out and the invention of the printing press. Much of the reason Martin Luther nailed that note up in the right place, at the right time, and your form of Christianity managed to really get started was due to Gutenberg's work 60 years previous. Have you thanked God for Gutenberg lately?
Also, as far as "pagan" goes, any knowledgable Catholic will cheerfully tell you that there's plenty of old "pagan" stuff that was "baptized" - put into the service of Christianity. If you have ever hunted Easter eggs, decorated a Christmas tree, or worn a wedding ring on your ring finger, congratulations - you've engaged in "pagan" traditions!
By the by, I was raised Southern Baptist, and currently divide my time between an English-speaking Episcopalian/Anglican congregation and a local (German) Lutheran one. I'm a proud Protestant, but don't take kindly to others casting aspersions on their fellow Christians for finding God through the Roman tradition.
Ironically, it's quite secure. Bank account numbers are absolutely no secret here in the DE - they're printed on every business' letterhead.
How I pay my rent (or any other bill):
1) Get payee's data (account number, bank routing number, my account number with payee or other data that indicates what this bill was for, amount of bill) 2) Fill out "Uberweising" (transfer) slip, possibly online 3) My bank processes said slip, transferring money into payee's account
If I decided to engage in some mischief and write an Uberweising from my landlady's account to mine, I'd be caught the minute she saw her bank statement. The bank knows exactly where the money went, and is very interested in getting it back.
It is the responsibility of the paying account's bank to verify that this is a legitimate transaction. Mine does it by signature on paper forms or by a one-time transaction code for online transactions. My German boyfriend explained that banks check more carefully on large transactions, and that I'm ultimately responsible for checking my account statements regularly to make sure nothing unauthorized went through.
As for larger merchants like Amazon.de, they can trace by address if someone misuses my account number. Airline tickets are issued to named individuals, so unless there's some more serious sort of fraud (fake passports) going on, that's also easy to trace. Actually, it'd be a great way to catch bad guys - airline ticket purchased with stolen bank account number, passengers get nabbed at the airport.
It's a system that avoids large-scale fraud because there was never any pretense that this was confidential information.
I'm pretty sure it works similarly in other continental European countries.
Before I heard the term "cybersquatters," I thought of them as the "white trash of the Internet".
"Cybersquatters" sounds much more polite.
(but I also have a poor opinion of the "flippers" who, with the help of a mortgage industry gone wild, have thoroughly screwed up a good deal of the American housing market)
MacOffice, at least as of 2001, cost MS far less to produce than the main Windows version.
I was a MacBU intern (ah, the red-headed stepchildren...) in summer 2001. Yes, they really had considered calling it "Office X," but wisely tried saying it out loud before committing themselves. We swore Apple was using us for their OS X beta testing. I saw it core dump more those three months than I have in the four years I've owned an iBook, so they've sorted lots of stuff out since then.
There were as many test engineers for WinWord as there were for all of MacOffice, and I think the ratios for developers and program managers were similar.
MacBU cost MS $50 million a year (150 employees, all the advertising and production costs), and brought in well over $100 million, in the same year that MS was poised to spend $500 million on advertising for Windows XP. So it was/is tiny in comparison with the rest of the company, but quite profitable.
We re-used a fair amount of code from WinOffice, and focused heavily on ensuring compatability with it. Just about all new feature development was in WinOffice. Though there were a few things that were cooler in MacOffice (and MS probably was using it to test out features before putting them in the "real" version).
There was a sense that our continued existence was mostly to keep MS out of hot water, but most of my co-workers were genuinely enthusiastic about Macs, even if they weren't when they first got to MS. Imagine, a little corner of MS that produces Mac fans...
Oh, XP was finally allowed on regular unclassified US Army computers in Europe with Internet access around 2004, and didn't become required on all regular desktops until summer 2005 (I think).
I think it's gonna be awhile till you see Vista on very many production DoD systems...
Ballmer and Jobs seem to be less egotistical than Ellison, as well. And that's saying something, because no one ever accused either of a lack of self-worth.
That's what I've seen here in Germany. I looked up the abortion rates; MUCH lower than the US, as are the teen pregnancy rates. German kids know precisely how further German kids come about and how they can avoid this happening ahead of schedule.
Young Germans are also far less religious than their American peers, so I doubt the majority think premarital sex is wrong.
There is, and it's actually pretty good for most non-savvy, authority-trusting adults. When I go back to Texas for Christmas, I'm going to have my mom play it and have her tell all her friends who like to forward stupid crap. She's pretty good about deleting just about any forward (they annoy her) and asking forward-happy friends to please just send her personal emails. She is also paranoid about any sort of financial transaction online - except for sending me her credit card details PLAINTEXT to my Gmail account so I could buy a plane ticket for her!
That sounds plausable to me. I didn't watch much TV growing up (I'm 26) and virtually none from the time I went off to college at 18 till I moved into my current apartment that has basic cable - in Bavaria, with only one English language channel, CNN. I watch very little now.
I find TV back in the States to be almost painful to watch due to the quick shots and quick shifts in subject. Cable news is way more annoying than it was when I was in high school - Fox News might be the most visually annoying - the logo constantly spins in front of a waving flag graphic. (to say nothing of the content and delivery!)
More interesting than this, though, is my boyfriend, a 33 year old mechanical engineer who has never lived in a house with a TV. His parents are quite well-educated and well-off; they chose back when they were first married not to have a TV in the house with their kids. It seems like my boyfriend has an extremely long attention span, shockingly little knowledge of popular culture but knows plenty of things that have nothing to do with mechanical engineering to talk about. I also take a far greater interest in the Bundesliga and the German national soccer team than this particular German male does:) ("Dear, could we not watch so much football?" - comment he made when I insisted on watching Germany's matches this summer. He booked OPERA TICKETS during the semi-final with Italy!)
His parents bought a TV two years ago. It is fairly small and put up on a random shelf in their living room. The room is set up more like what we'd think of as a parlor, with the chairs and couch positioned around the coffee table, and most of them do not afford a good view of the little TV. They finally agreed to buy one because his mom, a retired German high school English teacher, wanted to watch the BBC to keep her understanding up and his dad wanted to see a certain long-running astronomy show.
My boyfriend seems to barely be able to tolerate any sort of TV. He'll watch movies and documentaries on DVD, but that's it. He put up with my interest in Germany's World Cup games when he was over.
Based on this experience and my own ambivalence towards TV, I'm pretty sure that I won't let my theoretical children watch broadcast TV or anything much like it until they're around 10, if then. My boyfriend and his little sister seem to be able to focus better and carry on bigger hobbies than most people in our general age group.
My little brother watched WAY more TV than I did. When my grandparents gave us a TV for Christmas, it went into his room because I had my uncle's hand-me-down TRS-80 Model 4. He might have spent too much time in front of the TV even if he hadn't gotten his own, but I don't think he would have spent as much.
And that's the saddest thing about how we treat even our "best friends" (Brits, Germans, other NATO pals).
My mom visited me over here in Germany this summer and was delighted to meet my boyfriend (a German). She invited him to come with me at Christmas.
He spent 1.5 years at U of Wisconsin back in the mid-90's and had a great time in the US.
He refuses to go back right now, in great measure for how he's going to be treated coming into my country.
German border patrol scans my passport, looks at my residence permit, asks me a few questions about where I was and what I'm planning to do back in Germany, and that's that. No fingerprinting, no questions about my personal history. Sometimes they just stamp the passport as if I were a short-term tourist.
If Germany treated me the same way we treat foreigners each time I came back from visiting my family, I'd be upset and would seriously consider working somewhere else.
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The way it works in Germany is that, generally speaking, the stricter of the two sets of laws (American Uniform Code of Military Justice and German law) prevails.
For example, the drinking age on post for both soldiers and civilians is 21, even though by German law, one may buy and consume beer or wine at 16, hard liquor at 18. However, having a blood alcohol level of more than 0.05% is grounds for a DUI and loss of your US Army in Europe driver's license, because 0.05% is the German standard for drunk driving, not the more lenient 0.08%-0.10% that you find in most American states. And something they really have to impress upon these eager but often unwise 18-20 year old guys is that age of consent for German girls is 18 as far as they're concerned, even though it's 14 or 16 (depending on the situation) by German law.
What sets us apart is WHEN we freely chose not to have our churches directly involved with our government, and crucially, not to have our government involved with our churches.
Modern Turkey was formed from the remains of the distinctly Muslim Ottoman Empire by Ataturk in the early 1920's. He despotically forced his new country to be secular (looking around the region, this was a relatively benign, perhaps benefical, action).
Modern France went back and forth on this several times between 1789 and beginning of the 20th century (the appalling behavior of right-wing Catholic agitators during Dreyfus Affair sealed the deal for separation in 1905).
Australia and New Zealand were British colonies, which of course, had the Church of England and its non-trivial influence.
The US is special because we eschewed official religious involvement in our government from the get-go, and did so in an age when no other nation seems to have thought of it (France started on the project a decade later, I'll grant) We had the first intentionally secular government. Sure, many of the individuals in it were personally religious, but one of our early treaties, during the Barbary Wars, assured the "Mussulmen" (Muslims) of Tunis that our government was "not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" and didn't have anything against any "Mahometan" (Islamic) nation.
Amazingly, we Americans are far more religious in our private lives than most other free countries with established (officially acknowledged by the government) churches. My German friends tolerated their Catholic or Lutheran classes at school once a week as kids, but have gone on to very secular adult lives. I, on the other hand, have chosen to be as active an Episcopalian as one can be in rural Bavaria. There are a few countries with established religions and devout populations, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in any of them (think Saudi Arabia). The one possible exception I can think of is Ireland, and even they're personally secular compared with us.
I know what I believe and I don't need the government to force me to observe what someone thinks is "Christianity". And anyway, Episcopalians tend to be slightly more interested in what people are doing to our environment or not doing for the poor than what they're voluntarily doing to each other at home.
Actually, I'm a native Texan. Maybe that makes it even more of a miracle that my written English is perfect;)
The German education system, to my American eyes, is somewhat brutal. It divides students somewhere between ages 10 and 12 (depending on the state) into three groups: Gymnasium (university/technical college track), Realschule (trade/commercial school after) and Hauptschule (vocational). Upon first learning this, I thought it was a great idea. Why make students who are going to be plumbers, bakers and mechanics sit through academic high school if they are totally uninterested? Get them doing something satisfying and productive ASAP! They'll be happier!
Sadly, good intentions can have unfortunate results. Hauptschule has become something of a dumping ground for troublesome students, along with kids who really do want to learn a trade. Unfortunately, non-German students are more likely than average to end up in Hauptschule due to a lack of German proficiency or insufficient help or encouragement at home. I can't quite tell if it's more that making it into Gymnasium is a positive thing (which would make sense, as Germans put far more weight on university diplomas than we do), or if being in Hauptschule carries something of a stigma.
Also, Germans go through whatever school route they were set on before puberty and that's that. My boyfriend, a German who finished his PhD in mechanical engineering at the not-too-unusual age of 32, is still trying to wrap his mind around my wanting to "maybe" go back part-time for an MBA or masters in finance, once I've gotten a little more work experience (I'm 26 and have been out of college for four years, which REALLY throws Germans for a loop). Germans go to the equivalent of community college to learn a foreign language (English is by far the most popular) or how to cook foreign food (usually Asian) - not to change their careers. It is virtually unheard-of for a German housewife to go back to school to start a career after her children are a bit older; not at all unusual back in the US.
My boyfriend is, in many ways, to my left, but he thinks the strongly-tiered education system is a good thing. I think our chaotic system that allows academic redemption or renewal at any point in one's life is in many ways better for both individuals and our society.
If there were ways to allow students to go a vocational route for secondary school without it being a stigma and provisions to re-train them as the economy changed around them, I'd love to see it in the US.
Your German girl, though, was the creme de la creme of the German education system. For starters, she was most likely a Gymnasium (university prep) student, which puts her in the top 20-25% of German students. To be sent on a full academic year exchange to the States so close to Abitur (the rigorous tests required to get into university or technical college), she was probably near the top of her Gymnasium class, as well - either that, or she and her school felt that she needed to get her English into shape for the exam. Gymnasium students generally start studying English in their first year of secondary school, which in some states is 5th grade but others, 7th grade. Of course, I took four years of high school Spanish, got good grades and read it fairly well, but can barely speak or understand it.
A student who does not work reasonably hard in Gymnasium can cease to be a Gymnasium student, especially if the academic problems start in their first or second year of it. One of my friends here credits his staying on track with his mother being home after school each day (a schoolday which ends at lunchtime) to make him do his homework at a time when he did not care about school at all. Today, he's a PhD-candidate researcher at the University of Erlangen's electrical engineering department. I hate to think about how it would have turned out for him if his mother had needed to work or didn't care how he did in school.
Trust me, there are plenty of lazy German students with apathetic parents. The difference is here, they get put into the vocational track very early in their careers. In some ways, a German's future is determined by age 10. Academics are more valued here, and they think we're strange for having youth sports so closely associated with schools.
My summer interning at MacBU (2001) is what turned me from a mere admirer of Macs into someone who absolutely, positively HAD to own one. When I was there, MacBU was full of people who perhaps came in as non-Mac fans, but had certainly grown attached.
When the first "new" iBook came in for testing, there were more arguments over who got to play with it first than there were over who got to use the "sweet, sweet" Cinema Screen.
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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but from what I've heard talking to elderly Germans who fought as Wehrmacht in WWII and got picked up by us (or their grandchildren), they were indeed pretty well-treated. They do not seem to be bitter about their time as POWs. Most importantly, once returned to Germany, they had no desire to take up arms against the occupying US forces, much less attack the US elsewhere - they just wanted to get on with their lives.
The SCOTUS just said, "Fine, you don't want to call them POWs, so now you have to go with the rules we use for people accused of crimes. Your choice, but you must choose one."
For everyone who makes fun of trying suspected terrorists in "ordinary" criminal courts, if it's sufficient for bringing murderers with less grandiose motives to justice, it'll do for ones who think they're doing it for some great cause. Heck, it's possibly more insulting to treat them like common criminals, if that's what makes you happy.
It's a great day to be an American.
Yeah, I signed up during Summer 1999 while I was on the helpdesk at my town's ISP.
Wow - the phrase "my town's ISP" is archaic.
I'd rather have a 1/2 carat (diamond-size equivalent) moissanite ring completely manufactured somewhere with enforced labor laws than the standard 1+ ct diamond all the girls in my home region (Central Texas) are raised to expect. Do not spend more on a piece of jewelry than a roundtrip to the US from Germany would cost!
But that might be a little bit of why Central Texas is my "home" region and not a place I've lived since I've had the choice (age 18).
I'm trying to lay the groundwork now (like mocking DeBeer's 60 year multinational marketing campaign) to avoid an expensive surprise later without sounding like I'm begging for a ring...
Yep, user IDs are assigned in order, so you're identifiable as having signed up a few years ago, but not during the first three or four.
For reference, I started reading it on and off in '97 while, like half the Slashdot oldtimers, working tech support at my town's ISP, but think I signed up in summer '99, working at the same ISP. 1500 customers, and we treated them like they were our own children.
Our own dull-witted, accident-prone, occasionally-irritating children.
I made a gorgeous tree from the innards of discarded CAT 3 cable that summer, too.
Unlike most other Slashdot oldtimers, though, I was a socially-awkward teenage GIRL working tech support at the local ISP. Oh, the memories...
In this thread, I feel like a kid again with an ID of 69148!
From what I gather, Computer Science and Information Technology both go under the name "Informatik" in the German-speaking countries.
Anyone from any of the above places able to set me straight on this?
How many Americans have a spouse or partner who happens to be a non-US citizen who likes living in or visiting the US just fine, but does not want to give up his/her current citizenship?
My boyfriend is German. We live in Germany. I'm trying to convince him to come meet my family and friends back home. He got a masters in the US in the late 90's and had a good time, but is unenthusiastic about dealing with our new security stuff. However, he was starting to come around, since it would mean so much to me.
This will absolutely thrill him. What if something happens back in Germany while he's visiting the US, and he had to wait two days instead of taking the next flight back?
If Germany was half as stupid to visiting Americans as we are to visiting Germans, I'd discourage my family and friends from visiting me here. As it is, they're amazed at how nice the German border and customs police are, and how quickly everything moves. A scan of your passport, a few quick questions about what you're planning on doing here and when you plan to leave, a discreet look at the screen (probably to make sure that matches up), and off you go to hit the Biergarten.
Someone has a rather weak grasp on church history, as do many "Bible-believing" Christians - I saw it growing up in Texas.
Christ ascended into heaven somewhere around 30 AD. Constantine legalized Christianity for the Roman Empire in 313 AD. Constantine was, therefore, not alive for any portion of the Disciples' or Paul's lives.
And anyway, how did our nifty Bible get itself together in the first place, and then stay maintained for 1000+ years between the final booklist coming out and the invention of the printing press. Much of the reason Martin Luther nailed that note up in the right place, at the right time, and your form of Christianity managed to really get started was due to Gutenberg's work 60 years previous. Have you thanked God for Gutenberg lately?
Also, as far as "pagan" goes, any knowledgable Catholic will cheerfully tell you that there's plenty of old "pagan" stuff that was "baptized" - put into the service of Christianity. If you have ever hunted Easter eggs, decorated a Christmas tree, or worn a wedding ring on your ring finger, congratulations - you've engaged in "pagan" traditions!
By the by, I was raised Southern Baptist, and currently divide my time between an English-speaking Episcopalian/Anglican congregation and a local (German) Lutheran one. I'm a proud Protestant, but don't take kindly to others casting aspersions on their fellow Christians for finding God through the Roman tradition.
Call up the BSA and ask what the penalties would be if a small company were found with about X unlicensed copies of Office.
Sit your controller down for story-time. If he doesn't seem moved, invite the company lawyer.
Ironically, it's quite secure. Bank account numbers are absolutely no secret here in the DE - they're printed on every business' letterhead.
How I pay my rent (or any other bill):
1) Get payee's data (account number, bank routing number, my account number with payee or other data that indicates what this bill was for, amount of bill)
2) Fill out "Uberweising" (transfer) slip, possibly online
3) My bank processes said slip, transferring money into payee's account
If I decided to engage in some mischief and write an Uberweising from my landlady's account to mine, I'd be caught the minute she saw her bank statement. The bank knows exactly where the money went, and is very interested in getting it back.
It is the responsibility of the paying account's bank to verify that this is a legitimate transaction. Mine does it by signature on paper forms or by a one-time transaction code for online transactions. My German boyfriend explained that banks check more carefully on large transactions, and that I'm ultimately responsible for checking my account statements regularly to make sure nothing unauthorized went through.
As for larger merchants like Amazon.de, they can trace by address if someone misuses my account number. Airline tickets are issued to named individuals, so unless there's some more serious sort of fraud (fake passports) going on, that's also easy to trace. Actually, it'd be a great way to catch bad guys - airline ticket purchased with stolen bank account number, passengers get nabbed at the airport.
It's a system that avoids large-scale fraud because there was never any pretense that this was confidential information.
I'm pretty sure it works similarly in other continental European countries.
Ahhh, not the Washington Times. The Washington Post.
Interesting to think what would have happened had he sent this letter to the Washington Times, instead.
What would you translate that to in Hochdeutsch?
"Du kannst nicht die fuenf Cent und das Brotchen haben"
(learning standard German in Bavaria, but briefly exposed to Swiss German at Silvester and understood NOTHING)
In my German boyfriend's Marco Polo guide to Zuerich: do not attempt to speak Swiss German. You will sound like you're mocking them.
Before I heard the term "cybersquatters," I thought of them as the "white trash of the Internet".
"Cybersquatters" sounds much more polite.
(but I also have a poor opinion of the "flippers" who, with the help of a mortgage industry gone wild, have thoroughly screwed up a good deal of the American housing market)
MacOffice, at least as of 2001, cost MS far less to produce than the main Windows version.
I was a MacBU intern (ah, the red-headed stepchildren...) in summer 2001. Yes, they really had considered calling it "Office X," but wisely tried saying it out loud before committing themselves. We swore Apple was using us for their OS X beta testing. I saw it core dump more those three months than I have in the four years I've owned an iBook, so they've sorted lots of stuff out since then.
There were as many test engineers for WinWord as there were for all of MacOffice, and I think the ratios for developers and program managers were similar.
MacBU cost MS $50 million a year (150 employees, all the advertising and production costs), and brought in well over $100 million, in the same year that MS was poised to spend $500 million on advertising for Windows XP. So it was/is tiny in comparison with the rest of the company, but quite profitable.
We re-used a fair amount of code from WinOffice, and focused heavily on ensuring compatability with it. Just about all new feature development was in WinOffice. Though there were a few things that were cooler in MacOffice (and MS probably was using it to test out features before putting them in the "real" version).
There was a sense that our continued existence was mostly to keep MS out of hot water, but most of my co-workers were genuinely enthusiastic about Macs, even if they weren't when they first got to MS. Imagine, a little corner of MS that produces Mac fans...
Oh, XP was finally allowed on regular unclassified US Army computers in Europe with Internet access around 2004, and didn't become required on all regular desktops until summer 2005 (I think).
I think it's gonna be awhile till you see Vista on very many production DoD systems...
Ballmer and Jobs seem to be less egotistical than Ellison, as well. And that's saying something, because no one ever accused either of a lack of self-worth.
That's what I've seen here in Germany. I looked up the abortion rates; MUCH lower than the US, as are the teen pregnancy rates. German kids know precisely how further German kids come about and how they can avoid this happening ahead of schedule.
Young Germans are also far less religious than their American peers, so I doubt the majority think premarital sex is wrong.
There is, and it's actually pretty good for most non-savvy, authority-trusting adults. When I go back to Texas for Christmas, I'm going to have my mom play it and have her tell all her friends who like to forward stupid crap. She's pretty good about deleting just about any forward (they annoy her) and asking forward-happy friends to please just send her personal emails. She is also paranoid about any sort of financial transaction online - except for sending me her credit card details PLAINTEXT to my Gmail account so I could buy a plane ticket for her!
That sounds plausable to me. I didn't watch much TV growing up (I'm 26) and virtually none from the time I went off to college at 18 till I moved into my current apartment that has basic cable - in Bavaria, with only one English language channel, CNN. I watch very little now.
:) ("Dear, could we not watch so much football?" - comment he made when I insisted on watching Germany's matches this summer. He booked OPERA TICKETS during the semi-final with Italy!)
I find TV back in the States to be almost painful to watch due to the quick shots and quick shifts in subject. Cable news is way more annoying than it was when I was in high school - Fox News might be the most visually annoying - the logo constantly spins in front of a waving flag graphic. (to say nothing of the content and delivery!)
More interesting than this, though, is my boyfriend, a 33 year old mechanical engineer who has never lived in a house with a TV. His parents are quite well-educated and well-off; they chose back when they were first married not to have a TV in the house with their kids. It seems like my boyfriend has an extremely long attention span, shockingly little knowledge of popular culture but knows plenty of things that have nothing to do with mechanical engineering to talk about. I also take a far greater interest in the Bundesliga and the German national soccer team than this particular German male does
His parents bought a TV two years ago. It is fairly small and put up on a random shelf in their living room. The room is set up more like what we'd think of as a parlor, with the chairs and couch positioned around the coffee table, and most of them do not afford a good view of the little TV. They finally agreed to buy one because his mom, a retired German high school English teacher, wanted to watch the BBC to keep her understanding up and his dad wanted to see a certain long-running astronomy show.
My boyfriend seems to barely be able to tolerate any sort of TV. He'll watch movies and documentaries on DVD, but that's it. He put up with my interest in Germany's World Cup games when he was over.
Based on this experience and my own ambivalence towards TV, I'm pretty sure that I won't let my theoretical children watch broadcast TV or anything much like it until they're around 10, if then. My boyfriend and his little sister seem to be able to focus better and carry on bigger hobbies than most people in our general age group.
My little brother watched WAY more TV than I did. When my grandparents gave us a TV for Christmas, it went into his room because I had my uncle's hand-me-down TRS-80 Model 4. He might have spent too much time in front of the TV even if he hadn't gotten his own, but I don't think he would have spent as much.
And that's the saddest thing about how we treat even our "best friends" (Brits, Germans, other NATO pals).
My mom visited me over here in Germany this summer and was delighted to meet my boyfriend (a German). She invited him to come with me at Christmas.
He spent 1.5 years at U of Wisconsin back in the mid-90's and had a great time in the US.
He refuses to go back right now, in great measure for how he's going to be treated coming into my country.
German border patrol scans my passport, looks at my residence permit, asks me a few questions about where I was and what I'm planning to do back in Germany, and that's that. No fingerprinting, no questions about my personal history. Sometimes they just stamp the passport as if I were a short-term tourist.
If Germany treated me the same way we treat foreigners each time I came back from visiting my family, I'd be upset and would seriously consider working somewhere else.
The way it works in Germany is that, generally speaking, the stricter of the two sets of laws (American Uniform Code of Military Justice and German law) prevails.
For example, the drinking age on post for both soldiers and civilians is 21, even though by German law, one may buy and consume beer or wine at 16, hard liquor at 18. However, having a blood alcohol level of more than 0.05% is grounds for a DUI and loss of your US Army in Europe driver's license, because 0.05% is the German standard for drunk driving, not the more lenient 0.08%-0.10% that you find in most American states. And something they really have to impress upon these eager but often unwise 18-20 year old guys is that age of consent for German girls is 18 as far as they're concerned, even though it's 14 or 16 (depending on the situation) by German law.
What sets us apart is WHEN we freely chose not to have our churches directly involved with our government, and crucially, not to have our government involved with our churches.
Modern Turkey was formed from the remains of the distinctly Muslim Ottoman Empire by Ataturk in the early 1920's. He despotically forced his new country to be secular (looking around the region, this was a relatively benign, perhaps benefical, action).
Modern France went back and forth on this several times between 1789 and beginning of the 20th century (the appalling behavior of right-wing Catholic agitators during Dreyfus Affair sealed the deal for separation in 1905).
Australia and New Zealand were British colonies, which of course, had the Church of England and its non-trivial influence.
The US is special because we eschewed official religious involvement in our government from the get-go, and did so in an age when no other nation seems to have thought of it (France started on the project a decade later, I'll grant) We had the first intentionally secular government. Sure, many of the individuals in it were personally religious, but one of our early treaties, during the Barbary Wars, assured the "Mussulmen" (Muslims) of Tunis that our government was "not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" and didn't have anything against any "Mahometan" (Islamic) nation.
Amazingly, we Americans are far more religious in our private lives than most other free countries with established (officially acknowledged by the government) churches. My German friends tolerated their Catholic or Lutheran classes at school once a week as kids, but have gone on to very secular adult lives. I, on the other hand, have chosen to be as active an Episcopalian as one can be in rural Bavaria. There are a few countries with established religions and devout populations, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in any of them (think Saudi Arabia). The one possible exception I can think of is Ireland, and even they're personally secular compared with us.
I know what I believe and I don't need the government to force me to observe what someone thinks is "Christianity". And anyway, Episcopalians tend to be slightly more interested in what people are doing to our environment or not doing for the poor than what they're voluntarily doing to each other at home.
Actually, I'm a native Texan. Maybe that makes it even more of a miracle that my written English is perfect ;)
The German education system, to my American eyes, is somewhat brutal. It divides students somewhere between ages 10 and 12 (depending on the state) into three groups: Gymnasium (university/technical college track), Realschule (trade/commercial school after) and Hauptschule (vocational). Upon first learning this, I thought it was a great idea. Why make students who are going to be plumbers, bakers and mechanics sit through academic high school if they are totally uninterested? Get them doing something satisfying and productive ASAP! They'll be happier!
Sadly, good intentions can have unfortunate results. Hauptschule has become something of a dumping ground for troublesome students, along with kids who really do want to learn a trade. Unfortunately, non-German students are more likely than average to end up in Hauptschule due to a lack of German proficiency or insufficient help or encouragement at home. I can't quite tell if it's more that making it into Gymnasium is a positive thing (which would make sense, as Germans put far more weight on university diplomas than we do), or if being in Hauptschule carries something of a stigma.
Also, Germans go through whatever school route they were set on before puberty and that's that. My boyfriend, a German who finished his PhD in mechanical engineering at the not-too-unusual age of 32, is still trying to wrap his mind around my wanting to "maybe" go back part-time for an MBA or masters in finance, once I've gotten a little more work experience (I'm 26 and have been out of college for four years, which REALLY throws Germans for a loop). Germans go to the equivalent of community college to learn a foreign language (English is by far the most popular) or how to cook foreign food (usually Asian) - not to change their careers. It is virtually unheard-of for a German housewife to go back to school to start a career after her children are a bit older; not at all unusual back in the US.
My boyfriend is, in many ways, to my left, but he thinks the strongly-tiered education system is a good thing. I think our chaotic system that allows academic redemption or renewal at any point in one's life is in many ways better for both individuals and our society.
If there were ways to allow students to go a vocational route for secondary school without it being a stigma and provisions to re-train them as the economy changed around them, I'd love to see it in the US.
Your German girl, though, was the creme de la creme of the German education system. For starters, she was most likely a Gymnasium (university prep) student, which puts her in the top 20-25% of German students. To be sent on a full academic year exchange to the States so close to Abitur (the rigorous tests required to get into university or technical college), she was probably near the top of her Gymnasium class, as well - either that, or she and her school felt that she needed to get her English into shape for the exam. Gymnasium students generally start studying English in their first year of secondary school, which in some states is 5th grade but others, 7th grade. Of course, I took four years of high school Spanish, got good grades and read it fairly well, but can barely speak or understand it.
A student who does not work reasonably hard in Gymnasium can cease to be a Gymnasium student, especially if the academic problems start in their first or second year of it. One of my friends here credits his staying on track with his mother being home after school each day (a schoolday which ends at lunchtime) to make him do his homework at a time when he did not care about school at all. Today, he's a PhD-candidate researcher at the University of Erlangen's electrical engineering department. I hate to think about how it would have turned out for him if his mother had needed to work or didn't care how he did in school.
Trust me, there are plenty of lazy German students with apathetic parents. The difference is here, they get put into the vocational track very early in their careers. In some ways, a German's future is determined by age 10. Academics are more valued here, and they think we're strange for having youth sports so closely associated with schools.
I have no idea about how it works in Brazil.
My summer interning at MacBU (2001) is what turned me from a mere admirer of Macs into someone who absolutely, positively HAD to own one. When I was there, MacBU was full of people who perhaps came in as non-Mac fans, but had certainly grown attached.
When the first "new" iBook came in for testing, there were more arguments over who got to play with it first than there were over who got to use the "sweet, sweet" Cinema Screen.