h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

being a borderline kraut it does my heart good to hear foreigners speak well of german soldiers. they were not all bad, you know. some of them were in fact danes, forced to fight for a system they loathed deeply. deserting was not an option, as it could have cost the lives of their family members, among other things.

(some danes joined the nazi forces voluntarily, but that is another story)

i thank you, ivan, and if you ever need help finding the valuables you mention i would gladly lend a hand

Exactly, Pierce. My grandfather was (probably) a German soldier. (My grandmother remained mostly silent on the subject for the rest of her life. She was a bit of a rebel in her youth; there may have been other candidates.)

There's no black and white in wartime; everything's a shade of grey. In the instance of a small country, caught between Hitler and Stalin - well, people had to make decisions when neither choice was particularly nice or completely right. Now I'm thinking of Mum's stepfather, a Latvian - he started the war in the Latvian army, got absorbed into the Red Army in 1940, then when the Germans drove out the Russians, he joined the Germans. Then the Russians came back, so he ran for his life. I'm unlikely ever to find out his original name; he took another name at the end of the war.

As for those valuables - they'd be buried in what's now Russian territory, if they haven't been found yet. I think they can stay there. I think the old girl thought of them as part of the price she paid to get away.

If it ever turns out that I have to pick up my bag and go, and I lose my house and everything in it - well, that will be the price I pay for my life. So be it.

OK - who yikesed post 21? There was nothing offensive in it. In fact, it had a subtext of tolerance and understanding and acceptance. The act of yikesing it is offensive.

I think the k-word for Germans may have been picked up by the Filther.

I thought it was ok to insult Germans, according to the Beeb.

Oh, for crying out loud.

Sorry, just being flippant

Let's hope it was just auto-yikesed.

Yes, let's hope so. I'd hate to think someone was objecting to a bit of balance being introduced into historical memory.

Now I really want to post something about pickled cabbage....

It's excellent fried with egg noodles.

And egg noodles are excellent without it too.

The anti-German thing really gets to me, especially since i live with a german guy, who is the most actively pacifist person i ever met.

He does have a strong sense of angst about the war, which affects him, he feels guilt for atrocities he could't possibly have known about 'cos he was way off being born. His father was conscripted into the army; he had no choice about it; he lost his leg & was discharged, thank goodness.

The family have Polish/Scandinavian/probably Eastern European ancestry; it was just a geographical accident they lived in Germany at the time.

He doesn't mind 'K' or Bosch, Attila the Hun type jokes, or ones involving towels on sunloungers or Ja wohl Mein hare etc; for goodness sake, why has that post been yikesed?

I have a great recipe for Sauerkraut by the way., maybe i should write a Guide Entry about it?

zdt...oops, sorry, are we not allowed to say 'cross' in case it upsets non Christians?

*Awaits yikesing*

The whole business about the k-word and the similar w-word and the p-word... it's all a bit silly, really.

The paranoia about these words seems peculiarly British, from where I'm sitting. They're all in reasonably common use in Australia, not as insults, just as careless labels. A fair percentage of me qualifies for the use of the k-word as a descriptor. The w-word has also been applied to me in the past. The honest truth is, I don't give a stuff. Most people here don't. The most active users of the w-word are w-words themselves.

It's this looseness of language that sends some of our more infantile British visitors home denouncing us all as inveterate racists. Personally, I see it as indicating a more free society; the words aren't a sign of racism, they're a sign that we're past all that and trying to do something *about* racism. Defuse the words and the racists have lost a weapon. (Ask any of us queer types how true that is. )

Meanwhile, there's some genuine racism going on here at the moment, against Indians. It's deeply unpleasant and steps are being taken to address it. The Indian media isn't helping by calling us all the scum of the earth; when challenged, they say they're not being racist because ony white people can be racist. What a load of crap. (Besides, not all of us are white, as any fule kno.)

Goodness, how hard it is to have any sort of sane adult discussion on this subject while that stupid filther is in place.

Here's a news item about another attack on Indians. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/26/2801170.htm Note the reported ethnicity of the perpetrators.

(Also note that the term 'Asian' is generally applied to Cminese/Malay/Vietnamese/Thai/Khmer/Lao/Filipino people here, not to Indians, who are referred to as, um, 'Indian'.)

*thinks to self - what a lovely lot of topic drift we have on this thread, but it's all good*

what puzzles me is i used said k-word about myself

How naughty of you, talking about yourself like that. You might end up humiliating yourself. Or something. Blimey.

Here, have one of these.

Anyway, post 21 is back, in all it's original glory. There must have been an outbreak of common sense.

With regards to the w-word, any bloke who says he isn't a wofftopic is a liar, as a mate at school pointed out. We all do it.

I've noticed it's only really the British and Irish who call Indians and Pakistanis 'Asian' - most of the rest of the world uses Asian to describe someone who comes from East Asia or the Indonesian islands.

Not that w-word, Iago, the other w-word. The one which is used to indicate a mild illness, among other things. Not that it matters as such for this discussion. In fact, it proves a point - the filther is a barrier to grown-up discourse.

We tend not to lump in Indonesians with the other 'Asians', probably because they're our next-door neighbours and they loom large in the consciousness. Sometimes we even break them down further into Javanese, Balinese, Acehnese and so forth. It's a curious relationship we have with them - lots of mistrust on both sides, but it's getting better I think. (There was a time when it couldn't have gotten worse.)

I'd consider "Asian" to be Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese - I'd never think of the term as applying to Indians and Pakistanis

But that reminds me. For my first two years of Uni, I did nearly every project together with a girl from Beijing. (It got easier as she learned German. ) She was bright and reasonable and all that - unless she met someone from Japan. She once had a magazine with some Japanese children in it, and was symbolically "shooting" them with her fingers And she'd insult them unreasonably and totally randomly. Looks like historical hate is still firmly entrenched there...

The thing that really annoys me is how Americans stereotype the French, though, as cowards who never bathe. Where did that come from?

Ach, the political correctness... something I don't suffer of

Anyhow, in this absurd sheltered habitat as the Uni is, it's more or less automatically considered as offensive/homophobic/racist/misogynous etc. if you dare to criticise, even mildly, the work of a student unless the student is (assumed to be) male, straight and (white) ethnic Swede!!!

I'm usually very tolerant to my students and try to figure out what they want to express in stead of demanding them to learn long lists by heart. But there are stuff a needs to know and understand, and I demand my students to do that! If they don't - well try again. Well at least a few times more, I think a student can demand a re-exam up to four times within two years if they fail.

Needless to say I don't participate in the examinations of the students anymore. I give the occasional lecture and have group tutoring but that's it. I don't mind really, exams are boring.