Never said Americans didnt invent ANYTHING. Of course they did, now, what about all the shit that WASNT invented by Americans? Seriously, what a fucking retarded argument. The post I quoted, and then corrected, was wrong. Simple as that. My post was a correction and now you want to get into a pissing match? Also, you'll have noted that I differentiated between the first programmable computer and the first MODERN computer. Don't cherry pick.

Also, Dylan Lehrke is dead fucking wrong. America vs the entire WORLD? are you serious? you'd be wiped off the map in seconds. Unfortunately so would much of the rest of the world, but the USA would be a smoking hole in the ground. Dylan is fucking kidding himself.

Lastly, Robbbie is spot on. There is a perception in most of the Western World of Americans as being trigger happy, gung ho idiots. The first two parts are spot on but the idiots bit I wouldnt agree with. Uneducated about the rest of the world, definitely. But not idiots. Its just part of the culture and the education system that you guys are very inward focused. From what I can see you guys are taught TONS about your own history, something which Australia, for one, lacks. We do not do anywhere near the amount of Australian history as you guys do American history. But we do spend a lot more time on the history and geography of the rest of the world. I spent some time in the US several years ago and was shocked by how little international stuff was on the news. Unless you guys are bombing it, or something amusing happened it seemed like nothing at all was going on anywhere else.

LOL, you are just making yourself look silly! I knew you was on a hiding to nothing when you though that the car was an American invention (I mean, really??!!!) but please, look up on what you are saying before you post. at least half of those inventions you mentioned are NOT American discoveries.

I'll help him with one. The Liquid Fuel Rocket:
"The idea of liquid rocket as understood in the modern context first appears in the book The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, by the Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. This seminal treatise on astronautics was published in 1903, but was not distributed outside of Russia until years later, and Russian scientists paid little attention to it.

During the 19th century, the only known developer of liquid propellant rocket engine experiments was Peruvian scientist Pedro Paulet, who is considered one of the "fathers of aeronautics.". However, he did not publish his work. In 1927 he wrote a letter to a newspaper in Lima, claiming he had experimented with a liquid rocket engine while he was a student in Paris three decades earlier. Historians of early rocketry experiments, among them Max Valier and Willy Ley, have given differing amounts of credence to Paulet's report. Paulet described laboratory tests of, but did not claim to have launched a liquid rocket.

The first flight of a liquid-propellant rocket took place on March 16, 1926 at Auburn, Massachusetts, when American professor Dr. Robert H. Goddard launched a vehicle using liquid oxygen and gasoline as propellants. The rocket, which was dubbed "Nell", rose just 41 feet during a 2.5-second flight that ended in a cabbage field, but it was an important demonstration that liquid-fueled rockets were possible. Goddard proposed liquid propellants about fifteen years earlier and began to seriously experiment with them in 1921.

After Goddard's success, German engineers and scientists became enthralled with liquid fuel rockets and designed and built rockets, testing them in the early 1930s in a field near Berlin. This amateur rocket group, the VfR, included Wernher von Braun who became the head of the army research station that secretly built the V-2 rocket weapon for the Nazis. The German-Romanian Hermann Oberth published a book in 1922 suggesting the use of liquid propellants.

After World War II the American government and military finally seriously considered liquid-propellant rockets as weapons and began to fund work on them. The Soviet Union did likewise, and thus began the Space Race."

The education system in this country needs a full reboot. I agree, all kids should learn other languages. Whether we want it or not, today's kids are citizens of the world. With the internet and travel as modernized as it is many companies are now multi-national so knowing a second or third language will better prepare people to be competitive in today's marketplace.

Like you say, our leaders are hellbent on keeping us in the past. During the last election Rick Santorum was actually calling people with a college degree stuck up and praising those who chose to work hard instead of going to school (of course both he and his wife have law degrees). I have a friend who is completely pissed off about ATM machines offering multiple languages. I mock him about that being the thing he thinks is the major problem with this country. When you go to many other countries you see tons of signs in multiple languages and menus in multiple languages. It is just part of the culture yet here we freak out about it.

To me one of the dumb things we do in America is that we are often proud of our ignorance and that is sad.

Turn off your televisions and handpick your news sources.

Abraham lincoln wasn't multi-lingual, Teddy Roosevelt was and also orchestrated a revolution in panama to get control of the panama canal zone, primarily due to his hinging his presidential campaign on it and money, 10s of millions of dollars of money.

Points: being multi-lingual doesn't endear americans abroad, is no real validation of being dumb or not and even if someone does speak a foreign language America has been doing wtfever it wants to abroad for generations now. That's no secret.

Man, I'm impressed that the semi-coherent OP topic could generate so many rambling generalizations and guys pulling opinions out their ass depending on their preconceived stereotypes and agendas.

Innate ability, learned knowledge, educational infrastructure, education as a value in mass media & culture, etc, these are all different things and you can't just mash them all together like a lot of these posts are doing.

Regardless of silly terms like "dumbest", I do think ON AVERAGE in America relative to the rest of the developed world at least in the West:

1. There's far less coverage and interest in news & events abroad, and honestly a bit less curiosity about travel abroad too.

2. Less emphasis on learning foreign languages.

3. There's always been a sort of implied anti-intellectual streak, I think this is sort of a holdover from the colonial and Old West era - many of the original settlers were fringe groups & highly religious, suspicious about institutional learning, etc. This has kinda remained in the fabric of American society.

4. The rise of the Religious Right has seriously increased #3 here. As kane points out above, many on the right proudly point out their anti-intellectual credentials and certainly move to de-fund and de-emphasize education when possible. It's a real real ugly trend.

5. Mass culture all over the world is gradually dumbing down. This isn't unique to the USA, it's happening everywhere.

But America's a very large country and there are huge regional differences. The city I live in (same one as kane) I'd say *does* value education and travel and generally being aware of the rest of the world, and does have a more European sort of mindset. You could say the same thing about most cities in our region. Head down to Alabama though, and you'll see the points I made above out in full force.

Still, if the USA does continue down this path education-wise in a few generations we are going to be a very different spot on the world stage. And deservedly so.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I'm just not getting the foreign language requirement thing, if any language beyond english should be included as required curriculum it should be a programming language,
not some random foreign language just for the sake of it.

I mean, what, I'm supposed to learn french or italian or portuguese or arabic or japanese because why? I've traveled through a handful of non-english speaking countries so if I knew 1 extra language that means I would get to use it in 1 country for the 2 days I'm there.

I think it's needed so you can communicate with other people on their level.

I don't know about you...but I don't like feeling like a dumbass when the person I'm talking to is from another country and yet can speak fluent English. And there I stand unable to speak anything BUT English.

Maybe you don't give a shit. But to me, it made me realize that other countries have a more world view. Where we are more self-absorbed.

What are you talking about Limes? That was my first post - put down the gin! I didn't say the car. And which ones exactly above were of un-american provenance?

and just because some starved lunatic wrote some ramblings about it doesn't mean he invented it - look up "execution" the hardest pat of the idea chain. Plenty of lunatics jumped off cliffs because they thought they had invented flight. It took the Wright Bros (american) to actually get it going.

Imagining a thing or drawing it does not equal invention.

The Jade Rabbit is dead: Chinese mission controllers give up on Moon rover following mechanical problems


And this comes from your own newspaper .... Amigo.

Well, Spanish is the primary language in probably 20+ countries including most of the Western Hemisphere outside of USA & Canada. It's extremely helpful for me, YMMV depending on lifestyle & travels.

Others are going to become more & more important for business as the East becomes the new economic powerhouse - Mandarin, Hindi, etc.

But aside from "most bang for your buck" language-wise, learning a new language usually means you've gotten your brain out of its comfort zone. It actually helps you understand your *own* language better. You gain more knowledge about the culture you're studying, I'd argue you even get an understanding of the nuances of how that culture thinks. When taught to kids at a young age, a second language can help spark curiosity about other places that wouldn't be there otherwise.

In my experience, Americans who are multi-lingual are almost without exception more well-rounded & knowledgeable about the world outside their USA bubble than those who only speak English.

English isn't our language, it's England's. English is the most common spoken and used language in the Western world, that's why so many people know it. I'd wager if Americans had invented our own language, not near as many people would be able to communicate with it.

It's not a matter of not giving a shit. Maybe learning Spanish makes sense.

I can see how Spanish could provide value. If it were up to me and a language was required to get one's brain out of their comfort zoen and to evolve culture, then learning to read and write music would accomplish that in spades, combined with learning a musical instrument would very much accomplish expanding brain power and culturalization without having to specify a niche language/culture that one may never come across.

If you think about it, there are, what, maybe 4 primary languages- english, spanish, mandarin, arabic or hindu.

To learn all of those is too much, to pick 1 more than native English is too refined. most will never ever use it enough to maintain it. Again, maybe spanish makes sense as the 2nd language. But that's only due to our proximity to Mexico and the number of Mexicans in the USA.

Not quite sure where your reply is going. :)

Anyway, I wish I had learned at least 3 other languages as a child. I don't like what the American education system left me with.

I'd have rather been learning Spanish, Russian, French, etc. than being taught every word of every branch of the military's "fight song" as a kid. :( (and I can STILL remember every word over 45 years later...what a waste that was)

You're off base on that. Go to Amsterdam. All the Dutch webmasters on GFY can speak Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, etc.

They not only learned it...but they use it. It's not impossible. It's not even hard IF we had been taught as children.
Now? No way. Too old with too much going on.

But maybe you and I could split the cost and get that "Rosetta Stone" software and try it anyway? lol

No where in particular. Just trying to understand your view of needing to know a foreign language. I don't graspt the reason of "because foreigners know English." I learned french in high school, took 3 full years of it. Many years later I finally got to go to France and none of my education helped me converse in french. Because I didn't continue to practice/learn the language in-between those times.

I also hopscotched across Europe, hitting a handfull of countries, all using their own languages.

Woot! My state is Ireland. . . I have good beer and good whiskey!

Perhaps I am off on that, I would bet they know those languages due to their proximity to people and places where those are used frequently. I dont' see how someone can maintain a foreign language comprehension if it's not used.

I'd be up for learning Czech and Russian!

I see what you did there. :1orglaugh

kane, for the record your sig GIF is simply awesome.

Oh, you'll get no argument from me there - expanded music education would be awesome. But if you're complaining about the "practical" uses of learning languages, I'm afraid that applies to musical education tenfold.

That's what I'm saying, I don't see the practicality of it but I do see how learning a language expands the mind, which led me to think learning music and an instrument would be a fantastic way to accomplish that and *maybe* have more universal benefit. I understand that playing guitar won't get me on the right bus in Amsterdam! :1orglaugh

Unfortunately music & the arts in general are being gutted right now in the American school system. Now it's just about teaching students to perform well on the standardized tests at the cost of most else, so the various school districts can get a leg up fighting for the budget crumbs. Like I said earlier, I think in a generation or two we're gonna see the large-scale results of this, and it won't be pretty.

Yep. We are spending a fortune per child in public education. But the money is all going to administrative bureaucrats, union benefits, etc. instead of being used for the kids.

It's all about the testing and how your school stacks up against others in the overall scoring to get money for your school...which then goes to bureaucrats and NOT the kids.

So at my daughters school, they no longer have Chorus. :(

She is in theater, but we have to pay through the nose for everything. Costumes, etc. And then we STILL have to buy a ticket to see them perform their plays. :(

I'm only now understanding and appreciating the value of learning music instead of simply appreciating it. Learning it was not stressed to me growing up and I wish it was.

I haven't read this thread - Should I bother?..

Where I live I could use Spanish on a regular basis. Actually, there is a good amount of opportunity here for people who speak Spanish to open businesses that cater to Mexicans and other Spanish speakers. If I learned any other language it would be something that I would rarely use.

My girlfriend is half Japanese and have English (British dad and Japanese mom). Her parents raised her speaking English and Japanese so she can speak both fluently and often uses Japanese when talking to her mom and sister just to stay in practice, but she has told me there are a lot of words she has forgotten since she doesn't use it all day every day.

Terrible. What a joyless existence these kids today will lead. My nephew's homework bag weighs like 40 pounds, basically 60% of his weight.