06/01/2002 - 12:57 a.m.

The Complete History of Everything (abridged)

Know what's funny about Einstein? He really wasn't all that bad in school. I've read that the school he went to changed their marking system while Einstein was in attendence which only made it appear afterwards that he got bad grades.

Take it this way. For marks out of ten (I don't know if it was done with these numbers, but this is a good similarity), Einstein started school getting 8's and 9's. Well, when Einstein started the school a 1 or 2 was really really bad, so he was doing really well. They switched the scale his second year, so a 1 or 2 was suddenly really really good, and so Eintein got 1's and 2's after that. Apparently that method didn't last very long and it soon switched back again some time after his graduation. So, to read his mark sheets today and see 8's and 9's his first year, and then a dramatic switch to 1's and 2's, but all the time believe that the system meant 1's and 2's were bad, you'd think he'd managed to fail everything after his first year, when if you knew they'd changed things, he didn't.

Plus our Mr. Einstein was sick all the time when he was younger and sat home in bed. Like most invalids, he did a lot of reading. Well, when this happens to a child with a literary turn of mind, they become an author (I can name loads of them), but Einstein had a curious turn of mind and became a physicist. There really isn't much of a "stupid little kid going on and doing really well for himself" story here at all.

I hate historical fairy tales. Seriously, all that Captain Columbus discovered America crap makes me want to start doing extremely desperate things. Everybody made it there before he did! The Vikings had been here, they like to say they didn't, but I mean, they could make it from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland, but they couldn't make it that tiny little ways further to America? I doubt it very much. Once you make it to Greenland it's a tiny little jog compared to the trip from Iceland.

All of that Abraham Lincoln believed in the equality of people and so signed the Emancipation Proclamation but the Civil War was about state's rights- that's bull.

The Civil War was about slavery and everybody said so at the time, it's just 'cause the South lost that they came up with that state's rights stuff. Lincoln said in numerous speeches and letters that it was not his desire to free the slaves, he just wanted to keep from splitting up the country, and signed the Emancipation Proclamation simply to avoid the British siding with the South. Britain had already outlawed slavery, and by proving that the South had slaves Britain was put in a difficult situation with their people if they continued to support the South simply so they could keep getting cotton. (Not that they hadn't started building their Empire, but it was cheaper and better cotton coming from the South.)

Lastly, I would like to add that America was bombed in World War Two, by the Japanese. Yes, we were bombed even if you don't count Pearl Harbour and Alaska. Ever heard of Japanese Fugos? Check out this Japanese Balloon Bombs site and learn about it for yourself. They made it all the way to Iowa (the jet stream's an amazing thing)- killed a schoolteacher and some children on a picnic. For that matter, the Germans were able to get U-boats into harbours on the Eastern coast.

Also at some point in WWII, and it's really difficult to find anything about this (if anybody knows, write to me), a bomber hit the Empire State Building. Now, at that point in time, that was the biggest building in the world, and a bomber is a really huge-ass piece of aircraft, and there is practically nothing to be found about the incident. All I know is it was a bomber, and WWII, and Empire State Building, and my dad found it in some ancient encyclopaedia.

With all the lies we get told, it's no surprise that they have nothing more to say about the anthrax cases in this country. They found out it was some ex-military guy with a dishonourable discharge or something and don't want to say anything about it now they can't blame it on foreigners.

It just drives me nuts when there's so much to get wrong that nobody is willing to look in on things. History teachers shrug at you and tell you they didn't know that when you bring it up, other grown ups don't care, and try and tell people your own age, they sure don't want to listen. I know none of you care either, but history is so important.

Last year I wrote an English paper on The Great Gatsby to the effect that the world in the 20's was very sound and very carefree and wonderful, and then the stock market crashed. Well, the past decade has been pretty fantastic, and so I told about how history repeats itself- ending the paper with the sentence "It seems America is lounging in its pool on its air mattress, and has yet to notice George Wilson with his finger on the trigger." It is so eerie to read that now. I hit it, I said, "something bad's waiting to happen and we're not paying attention- we're not gonna know". We didn't, did we?