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Saturday, September 04, 2004

3rd experiment in information retrieval.

I learned from Sam Rosenfeld via Brad Delong that Chris Matthews said
"“You know, Joe, let‘s talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Forget Laura for a minute, OK? What struck me about Arnold -- and I know him a bit. I like him. What struck me about him is his personal history, the history of so many international conflicts. Here‘s a guy who lived firsthand through the Cold War. He was under Soviet rule."

In fact Schwarzenegger grew to the age of 8 in the British zone of occupation. Soviet troops left the Soviet occupied zone by the time he was 8 years and 61 days old. I just learned that. I decided to check how long it would take me to prove Matthews wrong using google and a very very slow dialup connection. It took me between 4 and 5 minutes to find

"Arnold Schwarzenegger
Date of birth (location)
30 July 1947 Thal, Styria, Austria
Mini biography
Growing up in a small, isolated village in Austria, "

and this

"The final treaty, signed on 15th May 1955 [snip] 40,000 Soviet troops in Austria were withdrawn by late September and the small number of Western troops that remained were withdrawn by late October 1955.
The British Zone of OccupationThe British zone of occupation was mainly the southern part of Austria including Eastern Tirol, Carinthia and Styria. "

Why can't the hardball staff spare 5 minutes of someone's time to get a fact which Matthews considers important right ?

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