Can you pass the US Citizenship test?

I was just kidding. :)

I'll be glad to question your knowledge, err, I mean... to ask a couple of questions, gheh.  :D

How much different would it be from the trivia topic (apart from that it has to be historical of course)?
And should the one who asks the question know the answer himself already or is the purpose to learn something that can't be found on the internet? This could get philosophical as well. :)
 
Foro, it would be for people who have honest questions, not so we can show off, but to help people answer things.  Like, "I always wondered about X."

And Prune?  I can also do Russian history and Japanese history.
 
LooseCannon said:
Foro, it would be for people who have honest questions, not so we can show off, but to help people answer things.  Like, "I always wondered about X."
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Alright, I am not sure if this is something for me then. I can find out about most things I always wondered about. If I don't know something then I never wondered about it that often (or have forgotten it).

But when the oracle is set up, I'll see what happens.

edit:
60% - I knew it wouldn't be good, but it's not as bad as I expected.
 
Yeah, but many people don't care to read a book on a subject.  They just want to know X.
 
The thing is, there are subjects that I may want to know info on, but I'd like to find other peoples take on it.  You dig?  Sometimes I'll interpret things in one way, from all the source material I have available, but someone else may see it differently and shine a different light on it.  Interesting enough, LC and I had a discussion on the end of slavery and the true nature of the Civil War last fall.  Interesting the different views between people taught in the States and outside of the States.
 
LooseCannon said:
Well, I'm not up to a professor at law school level, but I'm no slouch either.  With preparation, I could probably write about it at a high end level.  Not...Nobel Prize in Econ level (I presume your prof was Robert Fogel?), but high end.
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Indeed it was Fogel.  In case others are wondering, the short version:  Fogel argued that, by and large, slavery was economically efficient.  This met with some criticism, but his point was not that slavery was good -- to the contrary, he said that slavery was abolished notwithstanding its efficiency because people eventually became convinced that slavery is evil.  He was rebutting theories that said slavery failed only because it had become economically inefficient, and that morality had nothing to do with it.  Note, Fogel's theory is by no means universally accepted, even though he won the Nobel.  For those who want to read further, his book is called Time on the Cross, and there have been many subsequent articles about it. 

Veering slightly back on topic -- interesting that there are no questions on the citizenship test about slavery or the Civil War.  It's a big part of U.S. history, yet not surprising it is not emphasized. 
 
Well, when you look at it with the hard, cold numbers of profit, there's no way slavery isn't efficient, excepting for when limitations were placed on it.  You don't pay to get work done, and you can use negative reinforcement, which is much cheaper than positive reinforcement.
 
LooseCannon said:
Well, when you look at it with the hard, cold numbers of profit, there's no way slavery isn't efficient, excepting for when limitations were placed on it.  You don't pay to get work done, and you can use negative reinforcement, which is much cheaper than positive reinforcement.
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I believe Fogel said that, even when you applied traditional labor economics, it was efficient.  He argued that slaves got to keep a similar, if not greater, percentage of their individual output than workers in other industries.  They didn't get a wage per se, but they got food, shelter, clothing and other things on which they would have spent money.  The idea was that the life of a slave wasn't much different, from an economic (not moral or philosophical) point of view, from that of a free agricultural laborer. 
 
Especially when you compare feudal lifestyles in England, Europe, and Russia - some of which, the feudal lifestyles lasted way into the 1900s.
 
Wasted CLV said:
Interesting enough, LC and I had a discussion on the end of slavery ... Interesting the different views between people taught in the States and outside of the States.
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So, how different is LC's view from what is taught in the States? And have you changed opinion on the subject yourself?

cornfedhick said:
back on topic -- interesting that there are no questions on the citizenship test about slavery or the Civil War.  It's a big part of U.S. history, yet not surprising it is not emphasized. 
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I noticed that too, but maybe those questions are too easy for foreigners?

And questions about amendments are more important?
 
Knowledge of the Constitution is indeed important, as it is what grants people their rights in the USA.
 
Forostar said:
So, how different is LC's view from what is taught in the States? And have you changed opinion on the subject yourself?

I noticed that too, but maybe those questions are too easy for foreigners?

And questions about amendments are more important?
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Funny, I could have sworn that post said something completely different when I last checked ten minutes ago...
 
It did, I realize that it was pretty cynical, so I changed it. However, it was not completely different.
 
Forostar said:
So, how different is LC's view from what is taught in the States? And have you changed opinion on the subject yourself?
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Well, it's been a while. If I recall correctly, it was a debat of states rights vs. slavery.  most of my teachers have stated that the war was more about states rights, where as LC said his (US) prof said that no matter what the teachers in the states said, slavery was really the key issue.  --ring true, LC? 
 
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