Hey, I know this is pretty damned far from my self-imposed techie remit but I just read a story about the Auschwitz camp and plans to preserve or rebuild it (see TImes Online).

I’ve never been into history having always found it to be stuffy and boring, I tire easily of reading pointless times in history like when King Charles and King David united their mighty armies with Queen Joanna to fight the evil Prince Jamie Oliver using only Cheeky Cockney songs. The aforemention made-up history just proves the point that I just don’t care. But there are exceptions…

Some history can be useful, events in the past that directly affect today’s culture and society (such as the reformation which I was explaining to some colleagues of mine the other day) are important, but I think too much time at school is spent learning rubbish history like arable crop farming methods - stuff that’s so boring it wouldn’t even win you a pub quiz.

My general disdain for history probably comes from being taught a bad syllabus by apathetic teachers, anyone with an even mild interest in the past ought to check out The Mark Steel Lectures, even from my cynical viewpoint I found it fascinating and a million times more engaging than stuffy classrooms or textbooks.

Back to the main (off) topic, I visited Auschwitz earlier this year and was blown away, I always knew roughly what happened there and none of the facts or figures suprised me in the slightest but by visiting the place I got to FEEL what the place was like. Being able to see and feel the place really gave me a sense of the place and the scale of what happened, something so horrible we should never forget - that’s what they should be teaching in schools and it’s something we should never lose.