Posts tagged history
Paintings Without Fish
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad.
Political rambling
It makes me sad how many people don’t realize that Socialism and Communism are different, and that every western, industrialized country would be properly defined as a “socialist democracy”. The USA is less socialist than most of our contemporaries in some ways, but universal education, unions, entitlements (Social security, medicaid) progressive taxation and other staples of our society are all socialist. Pure capitalism hasn’t been part of our history for literally hundreds of years.
If you don’t like a proposed policy, argue against the actual proposal, don’t label it “socialist” and stop there.
On this spot stood...
This project does make you think, which was its goal. I’m not a big fan of an artist putting up signs that pretend to be sponsored by the government (it gets confusing and can distract people from the issue at hand) but it does evoke powerful emotions to do so.
I wonder what people 200 years from now will think of our society.
21 scathingly witty insults by famous people
My favorite has to be the exchange between Shaw and Churchill - two of my favorite people.
I officially approve of this ad campaign.
A modern Renaissance Man
When Erez Lieberman Aiden’s most advanced degree was a Master’s in History, he solved the mystery of the shape of the human genome. Now, with several advanced degrees from institutions such as Harvard and MIT, he is creating his own interdisciplinary fields such as “Culturonomics” and drawing on a wide range of skills to create data sets which have never been seen before.
Basically, I want to be him.
The Playboy Bunny Manual (from 1968)
This is actually really interesting - the manual given to playboy bunnies in 1968 explaining the rules and expected conduct associated with the job. The dance examples are wonderfully anachronistic, and the rules on smoking harken back to a different time…
This link definitely provides some insight into a tightly controlled and unique culture, and I think it worth taking a look. Plus, the pictures are pretty amusing when you realize they’re only meant to be viewed by bunnies themselves.
Purdue students create world's most complex Rube Goldberg Machine
And it chronicles all of history from the Big Bang to today! Check it out~
Setting precedent - the woman with two fathers
From the NY Times: Nina Viola Montepagani is fighting to erase the man listed as her father from her birth certificate. At stake: her identity, $50 million and legal precedent.
“IT is a small case, really, easily lost among the thousands in New York City’s courts.
A retired schoolteacher named Nina Viola Montepagani, born in a hospital in Brooklyn in 1952, files a lawsuit to change her birth certificate.
She wants to remove the name of her father.
Or, at least, the man who said he was her father. Who acted like her father. Who treated her, until the day he died, with complete, selfless love. “
Just a thought
Anyone who thinks homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed in the military should take a gander at the Sacred Band of Thebes - 300 gay Greek men who managed to defeat *Spartans* who outnumbered them 3:1.
Granted, the circumstances and demographics of the unit don’t directly apply to today’s “gays in the military” debate - but come on!
The enduring Roman influence is reflected pervasively in contemporary language, literature, legal codes, government, architecture, engineering, medicine, sports, arts, etc. Much of it is so deeply inbedded that we barely notice our debt to ancient Rome. Consider language, for example. Fewer and fewer people today claim to know Latin—and yet, go back to the first sentence in this paragraph. If we removed all the words drawn directly from Latin, that sentence would read; “The.
