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You've got so many concepts all mixed up that I'm not sure where to begin... you seem to think that somehow democracy is going to prevent a government from abusing a monetary policy.

A democracy has never prevented this - if anything, a democracy has sped decline due to the people (demos) voting power (kratia) into their own pockets - welfare and social programs. The first and best example of this was Athens violating treaties with neighboring cities by stealing money and resources that were intended for the defense of all the Greek world, and instead spending it all on local fortifications and public works project - i.e. - the Parthenon. That pissed off many, especially the Spartans, and after a little skirmish of 30 years, Athens fell, Sparta was weakened, and the Greek world never recovered. The Macedonian punk named Alex wasn't Greek, but that is another matter...

Lets fast forward a bit to an empire established as a representative democracy - Rome. Due to years of over spending and failed social and foreign policy, they went broke and tried to solve their fiscal problems with regulation.. That didn't work out too well for them, resulting in every last vestige of their economy running off to the far corners of their empire to escape regulation . Byzantium didn't get the memo and lingered in relative isolation while contemplating their navels for a thousand years. The best and brightest of the eastern half of the Roman empire fled to Persia when their ruler tried to regulate religion, which led to all sort of abominations like algebra and medicine.

Regulation, while starting off as well meaning, generally ends up pissing off more people than it helps.

Fast forward to a time a little more recent, but probably still distant history to most of you, and you may discover that the savings and loan crisis and quantitative easing were, in part, catalysts for the Great Recession, all of which can be trace back to more regulating regulations in the name of social justice

So if you really think regulation and some fanboy cryptocurrency of the month is going to save the economy, or the world, then don't be surprised to meet me while I'm looting the wood from the walls of your house to heat mine, when the economy falls flat on it's face and the empire is overrun by barbarian hoards.

Let the banks assess risk as they see fit. If they don't want to lend you money for some purchase, then get your money some other way, plain and simple. You are even welcome to come try and take my money. Go ahead. I'll be waiting.

The best antidote to banks controlling a cashless future is government regulation. Somebody has to be in charge of the money supply or it'll become unstable and wreck the economy. But giving somebody that power inevitably results in a strong concentrations of power. The only effective counter balance to that is Democracy. This is one of the reasons the left has been pushing for mandatory (and anonymous) voting. It really is a civic duty at that point.

After the Dark Ages, where the Church basically did their best to wipe out human knowledge and sanitize everything...

I was under the impression that it was rather the opposite. In reality the "dark ages" were neither literally nor figuratively dark. The name was given by Italians who were butthurt about not ruling the world anymore.

It also seems that Christianity (Catholic monks in particular) was responsible for preserving western culture, civilization, and knowledge during the "dark ages" not destroying it.

Even a gutter press site like Cracked seems to disagree with you on this matter.

Contrariwise, there's a lot of evidence that certain modern, "scientific", and atheistic governments have destroyed and censored knowledge (I've linked only a few obvious and famous examples but there are others).

Somewhere in the last few hundred years, the myth was started that people back in the day thought the Earth was flat. It was designed to make religious people appear ignorant.

http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm

Dude, it's not easy to go into a fruitful conversation with you when you're accusing every opinion you don't accept with "Islamofacism", Saudi lobbying and so on.

And bringing an unrelated edit from wikipedia doesn't prove that the article I referred to is wrong, especially that my referenced article cites several sources including books by Alfred J. Butler and Lewis Bernard, who are hardly the victims of influence by Muslims.

I concede that the Milligazette might not have been the best source to cite. Here's another article from a Christian web site stating, again, that the story of Muslims burning the library is dismissed as a legend.

and erased all records of pre-Islamic Arab culture (regarded by Muslims as "Jahillya")

It's funny thay you mentioned "Jahillya". I'm an Arab and I learned a lot of Jahilia poetry at school including the Mu'allaqat, for example, which were collections of some of the best Arabic poetry before Islam. And their full text was preserved, along with much of the Arabic culture of the time.

I can receite to you some lines of them if you want :)

(yeah, I know, I linked to wikipedia again but their text references a public domain edition of Encyclopedia Britannica this time, you can check it yourself).

"largely settled matters"... in 1404, a flat Earth was a "largely settled matter"

orly?

I guess if Rove & Co were living in ancient ages, they would have made sure that any reference to catapults were removed from Library of Alexandria?

No, I'm sure that burning the library down would have been good enough.

Historians of science typically believe that the conflict between religion and science was created and politicized relatively recently by Andrew Dickson White.

I wrote a paper for a university class about 10 years ago that largely reached the same conclusions as this linked article.

Notable scientists throughout history such as Galileo, Darwin, and Bacon were all Christians of some variety and never had a crisis of faith brought on by their work.

If the Antikythera Mechanism is indeed what the investigators believe it is, then there are further suggestions that it may be based on a heliocentric view of the solar system - highly unusual at a time when most Greeks accepted Aristotle's view that the universe revolved around the Earth.

And what makes us think that most Greeks believed in a geocentric universe? We know precious little about what they knew back then, since we have only a handful of their writings. To insinuate that we have anything like a complete map of the intellectual landscape of the time is sheerest puffery.

A minute's thought might convince us that a heliocentric model was available to them: They knew the earth was a sphere; they knew its size; they knew the sun was far enough away that its rays arrived parallel for all intents and purposes. Add to that that as soon as someone tried to build something like the Antikythera Mechanism they must perforce have noticed (as did Kepler a millennium and a half later) that it's far easier to model the heavens if you place the sun in the center rather than the earth.

Even this mechanism itself cannot be unique, as some articles about it have hinted. An automaton/clockwork/astronomical model this complex cannot have leapt full-formed from the mind of a single inventor. There must be an entire lineage of similar devices. That we have only a single example is simply a hint that there was much more to their technology than we're currently aware of. It's also an indication of how easy it is for a cultural calamity to erase collective memories of high tech; a warning for our times if nothing is. Not to mention that the correct ideas are not necessarily those which survive such a calamity. After all, when the Roman Empire fell, Medieval Europe inherited the Ptolemaic model. Of course, by then Ptolemy was writing (ca. 150) he probably had to work without the benefit of the bulk of the Royal Library at Alexandria so he may have been left to his own devices when considering a model of planetary motion.

http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm -- This is one myth that really needs to die! Even more so than that Betsy Ross was involved with the American Flag.

If a statement isn't falsifiable, it is impossible for it to be true.

Some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet.

There is no conceivable statement (true or false) I can make that can disprove the above statement. Therefore it is not falsifiable. It is not a statement of fact, but rather of subjective opinion.

This is a great article on the subject of Critical Thinking. Here is another.

Actually, it's disputed. It all depends on who the historian disliked the most... Plutarch disliked Caesar, Gibbons disliked Christianity (and blamed Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria), and Hebraeus hated the Moslems (and so blamed Omar). I was unaware of the dispute, having only heard the story of Caesar, so I thank you for your attempt at correcting me. From the reading I did writing this reply, I think it's most likely that none of these culprits single-handedly destroyed the Library, and that they all had a hand in the crime.

Check here, here, and here for three different perspectives on who did it.

But my actual point stands... the Christian Church and the Moslems owe us just as great a debt for what they saved of the ancients' wisdom as they are responsible for what they destroyed.

In the 1500s neither scientists nor other educated people believed the Earth was flat. This is a myth. It had been proven long before that the earth was round. Here are some links to get you started or do a search yourself.

Remember, when the Christains took over in 346 AD, they closed the Universities in Greece, burned the Great Library at Alexandria (and viciously murder the priestess Hypatia) and actively banned an persecuted all thinking that did not agree with Church dogma for over 1000 years (and they are still trying it).

Funny, if the Christians burned it down to the ground, how come it was recently discovered beneath the sea off the Egyptian coast? Go here for some interesting studies on the subject. Personally, I'm inclined to believe it landed in the Mediterranean as the result of an earthquake, several of which were reported during the Middle Ages.

Furthermore, many of the works of Classical writers which reached us today were compiled by Isidore, the Catholic Bishop of Seville in the late 500s into an anthology which was used to teach in the Medieval Universities for one thousand years. So much for actively banning and persecuting all thinking that did not agree with Church dogma for over 1000 years...

That's why it was called the Dark Ages. Meanwhile civilisations in America, China and Muslim countries were literally flowering with art and science.

They were called the Dark Ages by Illuminist scholars who had an axe to grind with the previous status quo, the same way "ogival" architectural style of the St. Dennis Abbey was called "Gothic" to link it to barbarism.

Meanwhile, in Muslim countries culture thrived, but so did political strife. The Abbasids chased the Umayyads from Baghdad all the way to Seville, the old animistic religions of the Near East were stamped out, and the old Babylonian faith finally failed after four thousand years.

In America, the "innocent" Incas and Aztecs were in fact powerful conquerors rivalling Rome in its heyday, standing proud over the remains of several civilizations they conquered and subjugated in the name of their kings.

And in India, of course, people were relegated to a life of social ostracism due to having been born in the wrong family, and still do to this day. Look up "pariah" in the dictionary.

(and who cares about Augustine - just another apologist for a corrupt institution).

Ad hominem attack -- you don't bother to refute any of his work, preferring to instead attack him for being a Christian. How is this different from the Reich scientists attacking Relativity for being "Jewish science"?

I wonder how many brilliant minds and discoveries we will never hear about because the Church and its various inquisitions put the people to the torch?

Here are some brilliant discoveries made during the Dark Ages: several chemical elements (Albertus Magnus et al.), the underpinnings of Musical Theory (Guido d'Arezzo, among others), the water wheel, crop rotation, the "Gothic" architectural style, the magnetic compass...

But evidently, it's the evil Christians who deserve our scorn and hatred most of all. How dare they come out on top in the cultural food-chain? Frankly, the one who comes across sounding like a bigot is you. Isn't mercy a virtue in Buddhism, too?

Except in this case it probably was accidental. Caeser got into a major fight in Alexandria and the docks where much of the library material was stored caught fire. Here is one scholars attempt to uncover who was guilty of destroying the library.

Although you are right that many conquerers did deliberately destroy the writings of the conquered (e.g. the Spanish in Mesoamerica), I suspect that more often such libraries were destroyed because the conquerers didn't know or care what a library was (e.g. the Mongol destruction of Baghdad's library or, more recently, Rumsfeld's neglect in Baghdad -- I wonder what librarian Laura Bush thought about the untidiness of U.S. forces standing by while an ancient library burned?).

Well, it is my home town. I was born and raised there many moons ago.

Anyway, to give some perspective and background:

• Here is a Map of Alexandria.
• The Brucheion would be on the promontary that is just east of where "Raml Station" is marked, facing West.
• Where it says, Qaitbay Fort still stands today, and is said to be on the site of the famous Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the world, and build using the stones from its ruins.
• Just at the base of the promontary, the new library of Alexandria recently opened.
• The original library was most probably burned during the Roman attack of the city.
• The story of the Arabs buring the library is inaccurate and discredited by most historians.
• There was another daughter library at Pompey's pillar (which was not built by Pompey by the way). This one survived for 4 more centuries, but was plundered by Christian fanatic mobs. The same mob dragged the philosopher/mathematician/priestess Hypatia
• Here is another map of underwater artifacts
• Yet another older map from 1855 depicting the battle of Alexandria on 1801 between the French and the British.
• Franck Goddio has done extensive marine archology excavations in the eastern harbor and other places in Egypt (Abu Qir for example). Interesting photos there, including this map of underwater buildings and artifacts, and an artist view of the same.

Egypt is floating on archeology, literally. It is very common to find amphorae and stuff when digging foundations for buildings.

Oh, and by the way, here are some pictures from the city today, focusing on the electric tramways, two types, narrow carriage for downtown, and a wider one for the eastern parts.

I miss it!

Actually, one of the popular theories was that the library was burned down by Caliph Omar around 640AD. The modern verdict is that this is probably just Christian propaganda. See here for more info.

The real joke is that 500 years from now, someone will look back in an archive, find this website or a print of it and decide it is representative of the views of the people of our time. Just like we have done. If the people of the middle ages or renaissance believed the earth was flat, then please explain Atlas holding the globe on his shoulders.

At one time, the Earth was substantially flat.

Actually, the idea that most people believed the earth was flat is a true "willful suspension of disbelief". Some quick sources I found googling are here here and here

Obviously the 'who started the myth' question does not have a clear answer, and there have been groups that have believed the Earth to be flat (such as the Hebrews, apparently). But there are so many things that give evidence of the earth's roundness (easy example: stand on a tall hill and look towards the horizon) that of course most people have never believed the Earth to be flat. Saying otherwise is usually just standard "Isn't (Western) modern man so clever and civilized!" propoganda.

Just a little bit of time with Google and you'll find the most likely answer is it could never have been the Christians, as it was gone before 20 B.C., and since Christ was born around 4 B.C., well, it's obviously not the Christians nor is it the muslims, since they were later in history than the Christians.

For a good summary, see here. Basically Plutarch and Livy both wrote that Caesar was responsible, and they wrote long before the Catholic destruction in 391 of the satellite library.

Religious ferver. It was burned to the ground by followers of Christ.

You can believe that if you like, but there's very scant evidence for it no matter what Gibbon might say. There was not, and has ever been, any religious reason for Christians to have burned the Library of Alexandria. If you know of one, please cite a contemporary source. Julius Caesar is just as likely a suspect, as some ancient sources claim he set fire to the part of the city the Library occupied. So is Caliph Omar -- if you think Christians are intolerant, we've got nothing on Islam. (We should know; we've been living with them in the Middle East for about 1200 years now.)

I say "just as likely" above, but that really should be "just as unlikely". All suspects in the burning have good alibis. Fact is, no one knows what happened to the Library. The best online summary I've found of the various legends concerning its fate is here.

Maybe not, but that's Islam's fault, with the whole "if it agrees with the Koran it's redundant and if not it's heretical" attitude which caused Omar(?) to burn down the library at Alexandria and has kept them in the stone age ever since.

No one really knows for certain what happened. There's some evidence that the above story isn't correct. See, for example, this link.

And the 'stone age' comment -- are you really that ignorant, or do you just play one on slashdot? Where do you think the knowledge that sparked the European Renaissance came from?

The Great Library in Alexandria was a wonder of the ancient world until it got burned down as part of a domestic dispute between Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

Uh... what? For centuries people have blamed the burning of Alexandria's Great Library on the Romans, the Christians, or the Muslims, depending on which ones they disliked. But Mark Antony? Cleopatra? That's a new one. Maybe you're thinking of Julius Caesar, who gets the blame according to this fellow (a self-proclaimed Christian apologist).

No argument there, but evidence suggests that neither a Christian nor a Muslim (as is elsewhere alleged) was responsible for the burning of the library at Alexandria:

http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm
http://www.ehistory.com/world/articles/ArticleView .cfm?AID=9
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandri a

1) The library wasn't burned by an angry mob, it was burned accidently, by Caeser's army, when some of their missiles (launched from boats) went astray.

Very interesting. I hadn't heard that before but a quick web search led me to this page where the authors agree with you. I had only heard the mob-burning-library-after-killing-Hypatia story.

2) Most written documentation on the "great library" suggests it wasn't a library like LoC, but more like a collection of erotic art and poems.

This statement I find no evidence for in my web search. Most everything I find (such as this) seems to suggest it was the center of learning in the ancient world as I originally posted. It's possible that the scholarly works were in the minority in the library. However it should be noted that this link does describe Alexandrian literature as erotic.

It would have been nice if you had posted some links but I thank you for the clarifications in any case.

GMD

This site has a more historically accurate analysis of the burning of the royal library. There is no possible basis to the claim that the planet was set back hundreds or thousands of years by this event, as Mediterranean civilization at the time was not much more advanced than it was 100 years later, if it was more advanced at all (in either of the three possible dates suggested - it seems most likely the crazy guy was Julius Caesar). Also, there were several other relatively advanced civilizations in existence at the time (e.g. China, India) which were completely unaffected. We have already surpassed the achievement of the library several times over: the most inflated accounts of the Alexandria holdings number 700,000 scrolls, which is orders of magnitude less information than contained in say, the Library of Congress. When we lose an information store like a library or an internet archive, the greatest loss is not to the advancement of industrialization, which tends to work on human expertise, but to the knowledge of later historians and anthropologists. The lesson we should be learning is that a single repository of information presents a single point of failure, and the wayback machine presents a means to keep our history from disappearing.