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Krieger22 Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018 from Malaysia Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
#6426: May 31st 2016 at 12:10:59 AM

There's a remarkable amount of detail there and I find it quite informative.

I fixed some typos and Wiki Words that weren't supposed to be while I was there, as I usually do.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Rosvo1 Since: Aug, 2009
#6427: May 31st 2016 at 7:53:34 AM

Question: Could a version of the Battle of Monte Cassino work in a scifi setting?

Demetrios Lucky Seven from Des Plaines, Illinois (unfortunately) Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Lucky Seven
#6429: May 31st 2016 at 8:19:47 AM

As I watch Demetrius and the Gladiators, there's something I remembered. How did the misconception that the Roman gladiators killed each other come about?

Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!
SantosLHalper Since: Aug, 2009
#6430: Jun 1st 2016 at 9:35:14 PM

Does anyone have any academic sources about Galileo, Kepler and Astrology? I've found a few sources, but they're all from astrologers who point to them while saying, "see? See? They were astrologers too and therefore astrology is right!"

TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#6431: Jun 1st 2016 at 10:17:02 PM

[up]

Only found references to a lecture from wikipedia. I do know that plenty of scientists were also occultists, John Dee being one of my favourites. It was normal.

edited 1st Jun '16 10:18:51 PM by TerminusEst

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
Show an affirming flame
#6432: Jun 1st 2016 at 10:42:27 PM

The distinction between what we'd now call mysticism from science proper wasn't nearly as sharp yet; I don't think astrology as opposed to astronomy was separated out until after Newton, a century later.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#6433: Jun 4th 2016 at 1:07:16 PM

Reading Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation and it talks about how our view of history and its figures changes as our own societies move on into the next day.

In the United States at least, Jefferson and what he stood for were popular in the Antebellum period, while Hamilton grew in prominence after the Civil War and the booming of American industrialization. Disillusionment during the Gilded Age and the advent of Socialism brought Jefferson back into popularity with the working man. Other reformists in the vein of Theodore Roosevelt, however, continued to take up Hamilton as their political sage. During the Coolidge Administration, Hamilton began appearing on the modern $10 bill.

Jefferson eclipsed Hamilton during the Great Depression however, as FDR wrapped himself in the Jeffersonian mantle and his New Deal followers were virtually the same class of people that had supported Jefferson a century prior. Opposing them the business elites an moneyed interests that Hamilton had drawn his supporters from. At FDR's behest, the Jefferson Memorial began construction in 1938.

The Cold War and coinciding Civil Rights Movement brought about a reversal, as Hamilton's wisdom about maintain a strong military and championship of market economy served as a bulwark against the Communist regimes that had become hostile rivals to the United States. As blacks and other minorities fought for equal rights, Jefferson's life as a slave owner finally caught up with him and he became the target of many neglected Americans who castrated him as a hypocrite. JFK still spoke highly of Jefferson, but from then on his reputation has been on the decline.

With the recent awesome musical Hamilton and the even more recent Epic Rap Battle of History being a deliberate curbstomp against Jefferson, it seems that the two have certainly settled into a greater and lesser role in the popular conscience for some time. Moreover, plenty of recent history books have begun championing Hamilton, directly or indirectly by their praise of George Washington, with corresponding disdain for Jefferson. The book I mentioned at the start of this post is one of the few that I've come across that has a Jefferson tilt, which to the author's credit, is acknowledged, along with an admittance that Hamilton had started to grow on him nonetheless.

As for myself, I am happy to say I am an great admirer of Hamilton and will indulge in some hipsterism by saying I liked him before it was cool. I do have to wonder if there will ever be a reversal again though.

edited 4th Jun '16 1:08:57 PM by Parable

FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
#6434: Jun 5th 2016 at 8:12:06 PM

[up] I always found myself fascinated at how Jefferson, currently popular with conservative and right-wing types, actually openly displayed quirks and characteristics that would be looked fondly upon by liberals today and jarringly progressive for his period. The best example I can give is his proposal - honest or sarcastic - that interracial relationships be encouraged so that future Americans would have less reasons to hate one another for racial or ethnic reasons.

Demetrios Lucky Seven from Des Plaines, Illinois (unfortunately) Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Lucky Seven
#6435: Jun 5th 2016 at 8:33:13 PM

Speaking of Jefferson, what was it that gave him the idea that the Constitution should be changed every 19 years? What made him choose that number in particular?

Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!
Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#6436: Jun 5th 2016 at 8:39:55 PM

"The world belongs to the living."

According to his math, that was how long it took for one generation to replace the last in leadership positions. Jefferson felt that the next generation shouldn't be burdened with the ideas and laws of their predecessors and should start afresh with a government tailored to their own ideas.

edited 5th Jun '16 8:59:14 PM by Parable

SantosLHalper Since: Aug, 2009
#6437: Jun 6th 2016 at 9:56:21 PM

And then the Cult of the Constitution happened.

TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#6438: Jun 6th 2016 at 10:36:08 PM

You mean the same cult that allowed 27 different amendments to the constitution?

Who watches the watchmen?
JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#6439: Jun 7th 2016 at 6:03:57 PM

[up] That's a pretty low number by global standards. The fact we still have the thing is something of a miracle. As for Hamilton vs Jefferson, I came over to the Hamilton side just before the musical came out, around the time I realized that just abut all of America's ills are due to our federated state. And from a more cynical angle his skeptiscism about the abilities of the American people to pick good leaders has been proven numerous times. Let us not forget that the first thing they did when the land owning voter restrictions were lifted was elect Andrew Jackson.

Also, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I heard Jefferson helped torpedo a resolution that would end Slavery in Virginia. And of course their's the possibility that Slavery would have ended far earlier had he been able to keep it out of the Luisiana territories. As for his reputation, as long as race is a major issue in the US I do not see it recovering, especially with minorities, who are less likely to be forgiving over the whole slavery thing, becoming a majority.

In fact I expect the entire era to be looked at as something of an embarrassment, hit musical or no.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#6440: Jun 7th 2016 at 6:17:58 PM

Jack: That would also ignore the times we have elected good leaders and done good things with document. It isn't written in stone and was built to be changed.

Who watches the watchmen?
JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#6441: Jun 7th 2016 at 6:24:09 PM

[up] Only if we have the immense will to change it, which we don't. Anyway it might just be I've been hanging around left wing circles, where it's fashionable to complain about not having the Westminster system, for to long.

Also to be fairer to Thomas Jefferson he did propose banning Slaver in all the territories acquired after the War of independence in 1784, slaver was banned in only the Northern half, while Mississippi and Alabama became the racist shitholes we know today. This marked the highpoint in his anti slaver activities.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#6442: Jun 7th 2016 at 6:47:06 PM

The need of will to change is both a good and bad thing. It is good thing because keeps changes from being made too easily by those in power or on a whim. It is bad thing because as you noted it takes a good of will to draft a change.

I don't think the Westminster system does anything all that much betters and has its own array of problems and abuses. Which if we are being honest is true of every single political system out there. The human element causes too much unpredictability for it to be otherwise.

Who watches the watchmen?
FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
#6443: Jun 8th 2016 at 7:27:33 AM

To mentioning something related to the topic of the early US, I recently had this mind-blowing dream where I was playing some sort of video game that was a delicious marriage of Batman Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed III.

The plot was basically a DC Elseworld set in a Gotham City of colonial America. Said Gotham seemed by all means to be an expy of Charleston, since Lord Bruce Wayne here is the heir to a slaveowning plantation clan. When his parents are killed during a slave revolt, young Bruce cannot bring himself to enact lethal retribution - establishing his no-killing code - and exiles himself to travel the world in search of reexamining his views on society. After being shipwrecked en route to China, Bruce is rescued by and lives amongst a society of ninjas in feudal Japan. After a while, he encounters a British sailor who informs him of worsening relations between the Crown and its 13 colonies, persuading him to return to use his newfound skills in restoring order. Bruce returns to a Gotham City put under the martial law of the Coercive Acts. Donning the Batman cowl on a tricorn hat, Bruce proceeds to secretly aid the city's British Army garrison in fighting crime under general James Gordon.

However, Batman soon finds the spectrum of morality blurred as open rebellion spreads across the colonies, and the line between political dissidents and criminals increasingly becomes more hazy. During the day, he finds it difficult maintain his civil facade of a southern cotton lord without being slowly forced to pick a side in the intensifying war. With the American Revolution in full swing, General Gordon finds himself requiring the aid of Batman in adventures such as combating a Sons of Liberty-like organization known as the Joker Clan, trailing a notorious Patriot spy called Catwoman, and securing an experimental "Fearpox" from a reclusive scientist in the countryside named Jonathan Crane. . .

RandomWriter413 Since: Feb, 2016
#6444: Jun 8th 2016 at 7:29:23 AM

Got the 3 Cartoon History of the Universe books today.

Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#6445: Jun 8th 2016 at 10:30:06 AM

Also, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I heard Jefferson helped torpedo a resolution that would end Slavery in Virginia.

Dunno about that. I do know that he tried to block the importation of more slaves to Virginia when it was still a colony. Britain vetoed that plan though.

HallowHawk Since: Feb, 2013
#6446: Jun 8th 2016 at 10:39:37 AM

When it comes to the history of Germany, is a period of their history named "Reich", with the First Reich being the Holy Roman Empire, and the Second Reich being Imperial Germany, or is it a Nazi thing, given that point of German history is called the Third Reich?

edited 8th Jun '16 10:45:02 AM by HallowHawk

RatherRandomRachel "Just as planned." from Somewhere underground. Since: Sep, 2013
"Just as planned."
#6447: Jun 8th 2016 at 10:54:31 AM

[up]It basically just means 'Realm', and in the context of Nazi Germany is used in the context of 'Realm of all Germanic peoples', hence the Holy Roman Empire being first is largely about how the realm was largely a realm of all German states with others thrown in, and how one of the titles used from the 11th Century was 'King of the Germans' or 'Teutonic King'.

"Did you expect somebody else?"
FalKoopa Colourful Linguist from India Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Colourful Linguist
#6448: Jun 8th 2016 at 12:12:38 PM

I'm pretty sure 'Reich' was in use before Nazi Germany. The Weimar Republic's parliament was called the Reichstag.

The word 'Reich' was first officially used by the German Empire ( Deutsches Reich).

"Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." ~ Omar Khayyam​
SantosLHalper Since: Aug, 2009
#6449: Jun 8th 2016 at 3:18:01 PM

The official name of Weimar Germany was the German Reich.

SantosLHalper Since: Aug, 2009
#6450: Jun 10th 2016 at 2:19:26 PM

If I were starving frozen half to death in Stalingrad, I'm certain I'd appreciate the goulash the Wehrmacht served very much.


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