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!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!"
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 PerkeleThe 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.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
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.
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!"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
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.
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.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?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. . .
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
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'.

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