Canada is failing history

Marc Chalifoux and J.D.M. Stewart could via the Globe and Mail this morning report that "Canada is failing history." They precede by stating " Four in 10 Canadians cannot name our first prime minister or identify the year of Confederation." And herein lies the problem, it's not relevant to today's society who was the first prime minister, nor is the year of the Confederation. What is relevant is what's the consequence of the first prime minister and the establishment of the confederation.

So in addition to fewer hours of history in school, the problem also is how history is taught. When something happen is not really all that important. What happened, what was/is the consequence of the event, and what was the precursor is much more relevant to understanding history and understanding today.

SEO BOOK learn.rank.dominate - usability fail

By reading Sitepoint blog I was adviced to use SEO Book's SEO for Firefox. Visiting their website I've been sent in an endless loop that leads me back to the "sign up for free" web page, even though I have both signed up and signed in already.

They may be good at SEO but I'm sure Jacob Nielsen would have fun tearing their site apart when it comes to usability and if a site is not easy to navigate it does not matter that you are number one on Google, people won't spend time looking for the information, particularly when they think they have already found it (such as Download now, really should lead to the download rather than the sign up for free). Never mind the fact that their navigation menu and site structure is all over the place. Oh well, I did find the download eventually, in the welcome email....