but nevertheless - claiming to be victim of censorship is such a common trope nowadays, so maybe the author even reported himself to get some publicity. he is actually a pretty crappy - or let's say controversial - historian and is not really interesting enough for anyone to purposefully discredit him.

A town’s electricity generator failed and various engineers were unable to fix it, so an elderly electrician was summoned. He examined the generator carefully, then tapped it lightly once with a hammer, and power was instantly restored. He submitted his bill for $1,000 and as he was asked for the explanation, answered: “Tapping — $1. Knowing where to tap — $999.”

First of all - most people also in the US obviously don't know that there are exceptions from the First Amendment, excluding certain categories of speech from protection. Second, the First Amendment at the time it was created had a much more limiting interpretation of this freedom - e.g. insults were actually punishable.

Additionally - freedom of speech has never been absolute - it was limited in Ancient Greece, where it originated, it was limited as it was declared in the French Revolution (which was used as the template for the First Amendment), and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - which provides the internationally valid definition of freedom of speech, its scope is also limited.

As opposed to the US, in Germany, the legal system is built consistently from the most generally valid principles to the most specific ones. The most universally valid principle is the one of the human dignity - this is why it's prominently placed in the first sentence of the German Basic/Fundamental Law. Everything else is more or less directly derived from the First Law, making them subordinate to it - thus if freedom of speech violates someone's dignity, the dignity is more important and has to take precedence, limiting the freedom of speech.

And this is consistent and concordant with the international definition.

by every definition of democracy, Iran is very close to the worst end of the scale - just as an example https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy...

> We chemists get annoyed at things like that.

> Now, about aluminum foil.

Actually, most chemists are profoundly annoyed at the Americans' inability to spell aluminium properly...

on the other hand, the situation in so-called palestinian territories is completely different. Gaza strip was officially annexed by Egypt, West Bank was officially annexed by Jordan - so the official government would be these countries, and if we're talking about Apartheid, then it would be committed by these countries.

Or would you rather prefer to discuss it in the context of 1300-year-long Arab occupation of the lands they absolutely do not belong to?

Or maybe you want to know why even using the word "Palestine" contributes to a 2000-year-long genocide on the jewish population of Israel?

PISA is just testing if you learned some set of information at specific point in time. It has basically nothing to do with intelligence - it's a test of standard compliance.

> You probably mean to say some specific interpretation of IQ scores is unscientific.

No - I mean that IQ is NOT MEASURING HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AT ALL. It may have some correlation with some aspects of intelligence, or maybe rather have some correlation with human's performance in specific situations which some other people may consider as "acting intelligently", but it's not guaranteed to be the case. So maybe it's rather some kind of an indicator of the current mental and body fitness (oxygen level, nutrition, sleep / exhaustion, focus, or whatsoever), but no more.

> You can't, e.g., claim that IQ is bullshit, and also that Jews are overrepresented in influential positions because of their high IQ.

which i never did in my entire life.