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One philosphical thought I had that may not have been covered in the 19th century western thinking (because its an Eastern concept) is the fact that in a competitive market, what helps the perceived interest of one entity will often harm the perceived interest of another. Help and harm here being entirely subjective, unless you apply the crude metric of next quarter's short-term profits.

If we accept the fact that any action or communication with potency will help some and harm others, then forbid harmful communication, we have to forbid all communication that has any potency or effect of any kind.

Actually, during the middle ages, pulling out was considered THE biggest sin you could do. The punishment was even worse than the punishment for murder.

Actually, that's bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.

Do you people actually believe any random nonsense you're told about the middle ages by people who know nothing about the period in question? And have you ever actually bothered to study any history or literature from that period? No? Then kindly refrain from spouting nonsense about it. People like you do more harm to human knowledge and understanding than any medieval churchman.

In passing, let's look at some real medieval laws, shall we?

Here, for example, you can find the full text (translated into modern English) of various Anglo-Saxon legal codes. These are from the so-called "dark ages". Observe that the only sexual practices which are forbidden are incest, adultery, and fornication with nuns, and the punishment for those is generally just a fine.

Here you can find an English translation of the 13th century treatise De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae. The section on homicide is long and interesting. Though this is a very detailed description of the English laws of the time (to the extent that it describes matters such as how to determine whether a hermaphrodite should be considered legally male or female), I can find nothing on the subject of sexual perversion, let alone punishments for it.

So, where is your source for this claim that extravaginal ejaculation was punished more harshly than murder? Do pray enlighten us.

Second, name them, please. To the best of my knowledge only Jefferson did that, although most of the founders would be very out of place in most christian churches today.

I don't know as I can name all but I can name another besides Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine:
Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion

Ah, here's more:

Many of the leaders of the French and American revolutions followed Deism, including John Quincy Adams, Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and George Washington, many others.

Here's another page that lists more:
The Christian Nation Myth. That's nine listed here but I do believe if I spend more tyme I could get more names.

Sorry folks, but that's just plainly stupid. All IP issues with recipe for beer should be settled with Hildegard of Bingen. This German Benedictine nun was the first author to suggest that adding hops to the disgusting fluid hitherto known as beer will be generally a good idea. Since the age of Hildegard (12 century), no significant progress has been made in this topic - she has described the beer as we know it today. And as it was with many medieval philospophers, Hildegard created her "intellectual property" just "ad maiorem Dei gloriam", feel free to copy for the greater God's glory. So there is no need to make "open source beer" today - it was open source since last eight centuries.

Personally, I think the idea of adding guarana to beer is just plainly insane. Beer is meant to relax people. If I want to stay alert and awake I can drink coffee or energy drinks. Beer is something to drink when the work is over and you can relax. Guarana beer is like coffee with sleeping pills.

most people [...] are much more content sitting in the comfort of their low crime cookie-cutter suburb watching network television than worrying about all hte really terrible things that are happening to people all over the globe.

People used to feel that there was a duty of the comfortable, rich societies to help those people in terrible conditions. Kipling called this The White Man's Burden. Nowadays it's more politically correct to just let people suffer under whatever situation they are in. It's called self-determination.

In other words, if terrible things are happening to people all over the globe, then it's their own damn business. Let them sort it out. It may seem harsh, but currently it's the moral position to take. Natural Phenomena (like the Tsunami in SE Asia), of course, are considered an exception.

I mean Sudetenland. Neville Chamberlain made his "Peace in our Time" speech regarding the Munich Conference.

Are you saying that the Middle Ages lasted into the 19th Century? No, the Church has been responsible for very little science and is well known for its persecution of real scientists like Galileo. Check out the list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read (which included works by Francis Bacon, the father of the modern scientific method) until Pope Paul VI finally dropped it in 1966.

Not all of pre-Columbus America was equally primitive.

For example, the Iroquois Confederation had been enjoying a working democracy for 500 years when the Europeans "discovered" them. In fact, large parts of the Constitution of the United States were consciously based on the Iroquois model, because that had been proven to work.

See The Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. It's all there: the voting, the rule of law, and the separation of the government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

I bet you didn't know that. The U.S. today is desperately and deliberately amnesiac on many topics, probably out of embarrassment and guilt. (And I include Iraq in this.) The greatest genius in American history was not Jefferson, Franklin, or anyone else you have probably heard of, but Dekanawidah of the Iroquois, who invented the laws of the Iroquois Confederacy so long ago (around 1100 AD).

I for one enjoyed reading Juvenal's Satire Against Women.

"Whenever a cinaedus is kept he taints the household. Folks let these fellows eat and drink with them, and merely have the vessels washed, not shivered to atoms as they should be when such lips have touched them. So even the lanista's establishment is better ordered than yours, for he separates the vile from the decent, and sequesters even from their fellow-retiarii the wearers of the ill-famed tunic; in the training-school, and even in gaol, such creatures herd apart; but your wife condemns you to drink out of the same cup as these gentry, with whom the poorest trull would refuse to sip the choicest wine. Them do women consult about marriage and divorce, with their society do they relieve boredom or business, from them do they learn lascivious motions and whatever else the teacher knows. But beware! that teacher is not always true, he darkens his eyes and dresses like a woman, but adultery is his design. Mistrust him the more for his show of effeminacy; he is a valiant mattress-knight; there Triphallus drops the mask of Thais. Whom are you fooling? not me; play this farce to those who cannot pierce the masquerade. I wager you are every inch a man; do you own it, or must we wring the truth out of the maid servants?"

I know well the advice and warnings of my old friends--"Put on a lock and keep your wife indoors." Yes, but who is to ward the warders? They get paid in kind for holding their tongues as to their young lady's escapades; participation seals their lips. The wily wife arranges accordingly and begins with them. . . . "

Things are getting a lot better as a result of those decisions. Amazing how treating foreign nations like children actually works.

The US is acting like a parent to the world, not because she desires domination, but because no one else will act like a grown up. Ignoring the unruly children doesn't turn them into good children. The US has made mistakes, but so has every other parent on this planet.


Exactly!

Go forth, my son, and take up the White Man's Burden!

Funny how the important things never change, eh?

Oh, BTW, *sarcasm*

Copernicus "De revolutionibus" got papal dedication, which was really a requirement to get published (unless you did not care that you, your editor and everybody in the vicinity of the printing house be burned) as opposed to a distintion granted on the papal favorites, only after his book was `corrected'---in particular, and apart from the corrections in the content, a note had to be added saying basically that nothing in the book was being claimed to the a description of actual fact. Before that, his work was `heretic', and in those times that was a big thing.

Regarding Galileo...

The fact that Galileo, after looking through his newly invented telescope, changed his views regarding the organization of the universe can hardly be taken as a point against him. Indeed, this is science at its best. The fact that others did not do the same is what should make us think (specially since humanity has looked through many other `telescopes' since)

The fact that he did not want to suffer ridicule (and it is reasonable to think that he had fears of more concrete problems... remember: Giordano Bruno had been burned not long ago) only shows he was human. Honestly, I would not burn for my beliefs about the orbits of the planets, and I have real trouble in understanding any position which demands the acceptance to be burned as a validation criterion for a scientific explanation.

Finally, if you read what Galileo actually wrote (which is actually a very nice read, since it is very lively, smartly written, with a respect for the reader which is nowadays rather hard to find, and replete with intellectual brilliance and honesty), specially his letter to the Duchess Christina which deal with the matter in detail, he very much objected to the use of authority and revelations to support any scientific theory, let alone used them to support his. A typical quote (from the letter to Christina):

I do not wish to place in the number of such lay writers some theologians whom I consider men of profound learning and devout behavior, and who are therefore held by me in great esteem and veneration Yet I cannot deny that I feel some discomfort which I should like to have removed, when I hear them pretend to the power of constraining others by scriptural authority to follow in a physical dispute that opinion which they think best agrees with the Bible, and then believe themselves not bound to answer the opposing reasons and experiences

(You can find the complete text here)

Note he does indulge in various recourses to authority, but specifically not in defending his theory; he was a man of his age, and he wrote for the public that read him...

You say "other fundamentalists [...] were [...] using the bible [...] to disprove his theories". In fact, the whole case against him by the Inquisition was based on the bible. In fact, was based on the single passage in Joshua X 12-13: "Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the mudst of heaven, and hasted not go down about a whole day" (from the King James version) The problem was that if Joshua had had to ask god to stop the sun, it had to be moving in the first place.

Actually, I thought the whole science and religion are incompatable BS started back in the day when saying the earth orbited the sun instead of the other way around was declared heresy, and punishable by torture and death. This probably happened even earlier since I vaguely remember some pre-science greek philosephers getting the knife for expessing views that disagreed with the views of the fundies of that culture.

From Mussolini:

"...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of...Marxian Socialism"

taken from: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fasci sm.html

So, the USSR strived for a communist ideal (like the US strived for some democratic ideal), which is on the *opposite* end of the political spectrum from fascism.

In other words, no, the USSR was not only not fascist, it was about as far from fascism as you can get.

Put another (simplistic) way communism == extreme left wing, fascism == extreme right wing.

Or yet another simplification: in communism the state manufactures everything in lieu of companies, in fascism companies *are* the government.

They're both totalitarian.

BTW, your example is a figure of speech and perhaps appropriate for a dictionary, but it's not a political definition nor relevant here.

In fact, nearly all the stories in I, Robot are parables about the dangers of blind adherence to dogma, using the three laws as an allegory.

Somewhere I read an essay by Asimov where he said that he came to avoid writing about aliens because his main editor, John Campbell could only think about human-alien relations in a white man's burden" model. This problem also motivated some of his stories about robots, since it allowed him to slip an anti-racism message beneath Campbell's radar.

My favorite robot story has always been "Reason", in which a robot on a space station "proves" that humans are inferior, delusional beings, and that their fabulous stories about a planet called Earth with billions of ihabitants are pure mythology. The Second Law is not mentioned in this story, probably because Asimov hadn't invented it yet. There is a statement that robots are supposed to be obedient, but this robot is able to transfer his obedience to the deity of the religion he invents.

When I read this story as a teenager, I thought it was the most ground-breaking bits of philosophizing in human history. Since then, I've read some more thoughtful writers on similar topics, and the story seems rather less insighful. Which is not to say that I'm not grateful to Asimov for giving me some thought-provoking entertainment. But I've outgrown my hero-worship of the dude, and it pains me to see how people continue to treat his every idea as gospel.

You know Kipling's famous poem was basically a romanticization of imperialism and oppression, right?

"It refers to the fact that, in India, back in the days of the british empire, not matter how you help the natives or what you do for them, they will hate you for being their master."

See Kipling's problem was that he really believed that the British were a positive force in India, bringing them Christianity and Civilization.

Also it's worth noting the parrellels between his view and the view of many Iraq war supporters... we're "bringing Democracy!"! Why can't they be more appreciative of all the good things they're doing for us! White man's burden...

Is that most games don't encompass enough to function as more than a sidebar to a chapter. Or even a subchapter.

Strategy games might teach ancient history students that the Romans faced peoples named the Vandals, Goths, Allemanni, etc. But the games probably wouldn't teach much *about* these people.

They'd learn more by reading Tacitus' Germania which isn't very long at all.

There's a place for games, but it's primarily one of emphasizing and illustrating specific points. In some cases, they might raise students' interest. But they aren't good for conveying the density of information that text is good at.

Well there's Jewish Zionist/Fundamentalist (which is what I'm referring to), Jewish (like a lot of Christians) and Jewish well that's what I sign on the dotted line.

The communist ways I was referring to where things like kibbutz and Zionism.

I didn't stereotype, I just made a generalisation just like the word Jewish is a generalisation.

Kibbutz are described as ....

'The kibbutz (Hebrew word for "communal settlement") is a unique rural community; a society dedicated to mutual aid and social justice; a socioeconomic system based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality and cooperation of production, consumption and education; the fulfilment of the idea "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"; a home for those who have chosen it.'

Sounds communist to me.

'throughout the middle ages in Europe'

It should also be noted that the Jews more or less 'invented' interest, and in the Magna Carta it states,
"10. If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan can be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt fall into our hands, we will not take anything except the principal sum contained in the bond"

I'm not Jewish and don't have a Jewish upbringing but I have been told on a number of occasions that Jews aren't expected to charge each other interest and such like. Were they just paranoid?

It is possible to be communal within a community but capitalist and 'wanting to take over the world' outside, did your mum charge you minimum wage to help you out as school?

Two words for you: French Revolution.

The dragon in the Saint George legend is described as and 'poisonous', not fire-breathing. (the Legenda Aurea is where it was written down in the 13th century). The original latin describes it as draco pestifer (= "destructive snake").

The 11th century Beowulf story mentions dragons and fire, but the dragon isn't breathing it: there's a stream of fire from the burial mound the dragon defends, and the dragon is apparently enveloped in flame.

I'm not sure what you mean by the Revelation of St Peter - theres an Apocalypse of Peter (which doesnt mention a dragon) and the Revelation of St John? In that, the dragon and the beast are separate things, and the dragon breathes a river, not fire (chapter 12). There's horses that breathe fire though (9:17). In any case in its original greek 'drakon' meant snake.

BTW I don't really know all this stuff - when I read your reply I vaguely remembered that Beowulf's dragon was fire-breathing and George's wasn't - I was just curious enough to check.

-Baz

Wrong ... I would link to additional documents but you would just poo-poo those too

Hopefully you will not disagree that Saddam had a history (smoking guns ... qty 2) of using WMD (i.e. chemical weapons) against the Kurds (#1) & Iranians (#2) ... see quantity 2. Thus it might (just might) be logical to conclude that he might be doing some nuclear stuff ... of course Mao said " The atomic bomb is a paper tiger" ... I doubt Saddam reads Mao. Do you?

I have many points ... everyone has a point or two ... the real point you might be making (if I may be so bold as to put words on your monitor) is that "you disagree with my points"

Wrong again ... if you watch C-SPAN more frequently then you might self-discover this also ... it is very interesting watching and occaisionally screaming at the Congressional hearings on CSPAN. Likewise listening to the viewer call-ins & shout-outs. BTW, why would C-SPAN provide links to the documents if "Joe Citizen" does not read them

Watch your definitions, the term FCC approved link has nothing to do with the rights and limitations of a public institution's network access. As a student there are implied and implicit agreements and use of univerisity facilities falls within such.

The First Amendement only reads "Congress shall make no law" it does not prohibit limitations within private or semi-private spheres. You can be tossed out and arrested for making abusive use of your free speech rights in a movie theatre for example.

I would strongly suggest that anyone who intends to make a serious case on First Amendment rights do some real boning up on the legal issues. Check out the writings of some real experts like the late Ed Bloustein, onetime President of Rutgers University, like this http://www.bnet.fordham.edu/public/comm/pnapoli/fi rst.htmpaper he wrote for Fordham Univiersity

I went to a Jesuit University in New York. Sex in a dorm was a violation of Residential Life policy. If you were caught, you could be written up - and it's happened.

According to the wireless policy of the school I attend:

Wireless networks use a finite and shared part of the radio spectrum. To ensure that all members of the community have fair access to this system, the university will regulate this airspace. The University reserves the rights to limit and restrict access to the wireless airspace on campus. No one may install their own wireless access point on the campus as it may interfere with the university-installed units. Because the wireless infrastructure differs from the wired network, certain limits on bandwidth will have to be maintained.

In order to insure reliable access to the wireless network, air space must be free of devices that could cause interference. The airspace on the university campus will be monitored for interfering devices. Should any such device be found, we will notify the party of the issues concerned with the use of that device.

link is here.

Let's not, because they're so indescribably different that it's quite useless to see something like the Normandy landings compared with ancient battles. Either way, The Longest Day is a movie, not a documentary.

If even a war as recent as WW2 still turns up new facts that shed a different light on events then how the hell do you suspect accurate facts in a re-enactment of something that happened hundreds if not thousands of years ago?

Aside from agreement of primary sources on both sides written at the time, archaeological evidence, and consistent recollections of what had happened spanning not just decades but centuries after? Cannae was a Roman bugbear into the fourth century CE, and was remembered as it was in the first place. We're talking six hundred years there, and writings spanning that entire time are often very well-preserved.

Someone who says that people can't have a decent understanding of some of the ancient battles is someone who has totally failed to study them to even the smallest extent. Between some of the descriptions of the battles and the fact that many of the battlefields have actually been found and picked over, it's quite possible to understand what's going on.

And once again, comparing something like the campaigns of World War II, with their scope, technology and duration, with the ancient campaigns is wholly, totally inappropriate.

Simple example, there are certain programs that try to rebuilt ancient war weapons. Sometimes they succeed but just often they don't. Because we lost the technology. How the hell are you supposed to decice how effective a certain weapon was for real if you don't even know how it worked.

Actually, just about everything has been successfully recovered or rebuilt. People have this tendency, for some reason, to think that the ancients always used superweapons like the Helepolis, Hellenistic battleships, Greek fire, etc. They didn't. These people generally used chunks of wood with sharp metal bits on them, to really oversimplify it.

Many of the more complex things have been quite well checked out, up to and including the couple of uses of polished shields to ignite sails of ships, and so on, but things like the spears, shields, armor and other weapons? Those are known, for all practical purposes, perfectly, both because of relatively intact finds and of reconstructions made by people with a hell of a lot more talent and education than either you or I. It's not difficult to know how a gladius or a spear worked, especially when you've got literary and graphic evidence for how they were used dating from the time.

-PS

One thing you will not find in Japanese schoolbooks is an historical account of the massacre at Nanking. In 1937, the Japanese attacked China and killed thousands of innocents in Nanking. Today, it's as if it never happened. In fact, I have never learned of this myself until very recently.

This kind of censorship is what we need to be aware of today. Historical records must not be skewed so that they may not tell all sides of the story - always make sure you know where your sources are coming from. This is one of the many reasons why history repeats itself.

Our entire school was brought down because of the network card theft (Fordham University). It was incredibly fustrating, especially with finals next week, because many students were unable to browse the internet or do online research for their various papers / projects. The total length of time for the outage was about 24 hours starting at around 4-5 pm that day.

I'm not sure cultural factors are primary here. Yes, there is a long heritage of collective responsibility, deference to elders and clan leaders, the paternalist state, etc. But do recall that the current regime has engaged in widespread, politically-motivated murder and torture.

The Party regards a form of collective spiritual and physical exercise as a political threat and have imprisoned and tortured its followers. It is within the living memory of most Chinese that the universities were emptied and intellectuals, professors and students forced to undergo *political re-education* on collective farms and forced-labor camps. Millions of Chinese have died for their political views (even the mere potential for dissenting views) in the last sixty years.

Which is why the current appropriation of the slogan *Let a thousand flowers bloom* sticks in my craw so. Besides being a mis-translation, this slogan of the early days of the cultural revolution was not an invitation to voice new ideas or question established norms, but bait to lure dissenting elements into the open. It is like saying *arbeit macht frei.* It may or may not be so, but to use the phrase in any but a historical context would be deeply offensive to many, even today. That such a reaction is not invited by the Chinese phrase is a testament to Western cultural astigmatism.

I will be the first to admit that I haven't done the historical research myself. I was taught the general story in like the 6th grade (I think)... I believe the story went that some colonialists (military or otherwise) sent blankets to the Indians as "gifts". These blankets were supposedly infected with smallpox (and known to be). This may have been what triggered a widely know epidemic of smallpox (which had not been on the American continent prior to the Western colonial period).

Here are some weblinks I just found:
Modern History Sourcebook
Smallpox and the American Indians

These politicians, pundits, and analysts are lying through their teeth.

Of course jobs will be created if we enter a time of sustained economic growth. But your job? No, your job that went to India or China or Russia is not coming.

Yes, that job. The job in the field which you and your parents invested life savings to prepare you for.

That job. The job that you have taken on in 4-6 years debt that you will be burdened with for the next 10 to 30 years regardless of your economic status.

That education. The one that you were owed. And don't let them tell you it was only a privilege. You point them to multi-million dollar CEO sallaries, pop stars, and Paris Hilton, and say that we are raped and pillaged - your fathers, you, your children, and your children's children - by the elite.

Oh, what a great injustice has befallen us! These elite - arrogant masters - should daily sing our praises that we permit them to exist; that we permit them to keep that wealth which is not according to their need when they utterly fail even to give according to their ability; that these coporations - privileged entities with no legitimate moral status - are permitted to exist at all.

We the people are powerful. We are mighty. Woe to the elitists on that day when justice shall rain down from the heavens! Woe to them on that day when we the people will unite with one voice and take this country back for the working man and woman!

We will drive them from their temples - the defiled shells of what once were our proud institutions!

We will drive them from our land - squatters every one!

Oh glorious day! The inevitable culmination and natural end of all history!

Workers of the world unite!

My brothers! My sisters! Join you with one another and let us sing the Internationale

From every mountain top; let freedom ring!

Thank you for that total moment of clarity. I only care enough to point out to YOU that it is Americans and English.

Also the next time you feel the need to blast someone over their use of English; please stop. Its akin to "I can not think of a good argument to refute what you say so I will just make fun of you instead". In other words, are you still 2? Please grow up.

English is a living growing language. It is not the rules they taught you in school. Those are "close" but not quite there. Those rules make mistakes "i before e except after c". Such as the word "their" instead of "thier" is a exception of that rule. If it didn't grow and change we would still point at things and go 'unnnnh' or 'uuunggghuna'.

Also since your such a perfectionist try this on for size. It USED to be English Ye ol English. In fact that is not even that 'old' of English. It has punctuation. I am sure you could spend HOURS pooring over the bad grammer there. Then you can flame the writer of that! What FUN for a weekend!

Of course the left wing in academia got to write the history books after WW II. So "Fascism" is now defined as "extreme right-wing-ism".

Well, you could also look into works written by Fascists before the end of WW2. Benito Mussolini has some interesting things to say about the term which he coined. In many ways, Fascism as a philosophy was a denial of Socialism. The American Heritage dictionary defines Fascism as "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Another point for the right-wing is the complicity of many German companies in the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany. As Hitler sold it to the conspirators, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality." In other words, Hitler was of the opinion like Mussolini that democracy led inevitably to socialism and the two must be stopped together.

Similarly the militarists in Japan were heavily in bed with the nation's major monopolies, the zaibatsu. No contract was exclusive, though, and many of the companies had to compete with each other including fending off or losing to newcomers who weren't owned by family dynasties like Nissan. The militarists behind Showa Japan were virulently anti-Communist and rejected international law as a European/American invention. The late '20s and early '30s saw waves of arrests of leftist thinkers in Japan.

Actually, the fact that the Middle East was an economic player was the reason it was a barrier in reaching the spice countries. That region is smack dab in the centre of almost all the major trade lines of Afroeurasia; its economic life was something similar to Italian economic life during the medieval and renaissance period, writ very, very large. Europe wanted a short cut around the rich, powerful, and very well-located Islamic states, which was the main thing driving overseas expansion and maritime development.

To put it into more modern terms.. Imagine that North and South America each had stuff the other wanted a great deal, but neither had much in the way of overseas travel, not knowing much of the geography quite yet. Now, imagine you've got a powerful kingdom with a strong navy sitting right on the land running from Mexico to Columbia. Think of what that would do to the trade methods in the area, especially with regards to things like tariffs. The middleman would - and in the case of the caliphates, did - make a fortune!

You might just want, BTW, wanna check something other than fiction for evidence and stuff. Baen in particular has a liking of historical fiction that can at times be rather shoddy to say the least. I did a few minutes' looking around, and this looks like a decent collection of sources on Islamic history if you're bored enough to take a looksee.

And so history marches onward to its natural end!

Brothers, bear out these death throes of the old order, for know that the final end can not rise but out of the ashes of these arrogant corporate pigs!

We do not know when the time will come, but these are surely the signs of its approaching!

Join arms now as we sing the Interationale .

Arise ye starvelings [or workers] from your slumbers
Arise ye criminals of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
and at last ends the age of cant.
Now away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise!
We'll change forthwith [or henceforth] the old conditions
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

CHORUS

Then come comrades rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race. (repeat).

We peasants, artisans and others,
Enrolled amongst the sons of toil
Let's claim the earth henceforth for brothers
Drive the indolent from the soil.
On our flesh for too long has fed the raven
We've too long been the vultures prey.
But now farewell to spirit craven
The dawn brings in a brighter day.

CHORUS

No saviour from on high delivers
No trust we have in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
Ere the thieves will out with their booty
And to all give a happier lot.
Each at his forge must do his duty
And strike the iron while its hot.

CHORUS

My arts elective in University required all students have a *purple* crayon in all classes and gave 15% of your course mark based on attendance. After the TAs passed out the course outlines and I saw that, it was pretty hard to take the course seriously.

Most (if not all) engineering/science/math/economics people can get their heads around the basic requirements and contents of any arts course - literature, composition, history, group dynamics, etc. On the other hand, I frequently looked at my timetable for the next term, looked up the course description, and was immediately lost after the title. Few arts students could even begin to imagine what "Engineering Mechanics 101: An Introduction to Force and Moment Vectors, Couple Moments, Static Equilibrium and Frames and Machines" was going to be all about. When I walked into that class, I knew what a force vector was, but everything else in that course description was Greek to me. (Note: Couple Moments, Frames and Machines aren't what you probably think they are.)

Strawmen? Like from The Wizard of Oz?

Heh. I like your tone of sarcasm. Very cute.

Engineering is difficult. Not so much the material as the quantity of material - most three-month-long terms involved 5 textbooks, at 500 pages each, on highly technical subjects (3 months = 90 days to cover 2,500 pages before the exams; about 30 pages of Gaussian flux or Adaptive Quadrature Techniques of Numerical Integration every day). Note that 30 pages of technical documentation - where every second or third line is an equation, function or relationship which must be understood if not memorized - takes a lot longer to read than 30 pages of Beowulf (not the computer cluster!) or a history textbook. It's continuously overwhelming.

No one cares if you go to class. No one cares if you write your tests on triple integrals or microwave theory using a purple crayon or (my personal favorite) a 2B 0.5mm mechanical pencil. You can't bullshit your way through an essay that you forgot to study for - you either know the material or you don't, and it's quantifiable and easy to prove in the marking scheme.

Unless it's a multiple choice test, in which case *all* your profs are well-schooled in the rules of probability and set tests where the correct answer is surrounded by seven to eleven other results you would have been likely to find if you forgot to use the product rule while differentiating for a gradient vector or some other equally stupid error. When you have a 1:8 to a 1:12 chance of guessing the correct answer - and often a penalty for an incorrect answer - you will not be able to bullshit your way through.

In short, Engineering - like all sciences, theoretical or applied - requires you to know what you're doing, not just to drag your hung-over ass and a purple crayon to class. Work ethic is the most important thing you can bring to the table.

So forgive me if I have a hard time taking an arts degree seriously. They simply haven't looked into Hell's gaping maw.

Pixie

Not sure of your source - can you post a reference?

I find referces to smallpox blankets ... none of which involve Franklin. And it seems by most accounts, he championed Native American Rights as well as a key figure with negotiations ending the French-Indian war.

What? How does Flamebait like this get marked positive?

It's funny that the Democratic party is historically more pro-Slavery compared to the Republican party... but I guess that if you don't like history, you get the schools and mass media to revise it until "history" is in your party's favor...

And I agree, I'd love to ban soft money. Let's all bitch about the party of "big business"... So what if Democrats are more dependant on (unregulated) Soft Money contributions than Republicans (Democrats: 61% of their overall funds in soft money, up from 47 percent two years ago. Republicans: 43% of their funds in soft money, increase of 8%).

Since the start of our american congress in 1789, congress has always been paid for participating. You will also find that even the Ancient Democracies had salaries ... the example you are thinking of is the Carthaginian model, which was an oligarchy... the rich became senators, because only they could afford to serve for no pay, which shut out the poor from serving in government. Even Aristotle recognized the flaw in this method of governing. I would say then that paying our congressment is definitely the correct method in equalizing who can participate in government.

I would argue that it is not the money that is the problem in our governments, instead the problem is with (1) the philosophies and (2) the beaurocracies of those involved. I have a problem with people who have no regard for other people's money, and do not have the personal restraint when it comes to spending it. This philosophy of socialism has morphed our government into asset reallocation, something the creators of the system never approved of. On top of that, there is so much redundancy, waste, and unaccountability... but we know that already.

Islamists call the people of Israel and all countries that support Israel (esp. the U.S.) 'Zionists', referring I'm sure to Mt. Zion...

To be precise, they are referring to Zionism, a racist ideology very popular in Israel.

Based on the rest of the comments throughout this entire topic, I can only conclude that the average /. reader slept through their history classes.

To wit: yes, the Egyptian censorship is about Zion (in the movie) and Zionism. The fact that most people missed this implies they don't know what Zionism is.

Zionism refers to a Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.. To dismiss it as "a racist ideology very popular in Israel," as above, is to ignore the roots of the mideast conflict.

Put simply, Zionism was a movement based on the belief that as long as the Jews lived as ethnic minorities in other countries, they were going to be discriminated against ("discriminated" meaning "killed and robbed whenever public tension needed an outlet" - read up on the Pogroms sometime). The Dreyfus Affair convinced a reporter named Theodor Herzl that the only solution was for a Jewish homeland. He founded the Zionism movement, with the goal of creating a Jewish state. This movement slowly fought for progress over the next 50 years (see also the Balfour Declaration)

Fast-forward to 1948. After 6 million or so Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the survivors got serious about a homeland. With lots of leftover guns lying around from World War II, they founded Israel. In doing so, they resorted to terrorism, and displaced much of the non-Jewish palestinian population.

None of the neighboring countries wanted to absorb the Palestinians, and something like 6 wars have been fought since then. So, for the Egyptians, Zionism represents a massive local disruption which they've lost wars over.

So-called "Modern Zionism" is the "racist ideology" referred to above, which basically boils down to "Jewish Israel - love it or leave it." To focus on it and ignore over 100 years of history is short-sighted.

There is an assumption that people who are anti-Zionist are anti-semitic. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the creation of the state of Israel as a homeland for Jewish people. Anti-semitism is a hatred for people of the Jewish faith. Indeed there are Jews and Jewish groups who are anti-Zionist.

It is also interesting to note that there were Jewish minorities in most (if not all) the countries of the middle-east before the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent creation of the Israeli state.

Here is a quote from Benito Mussolini


Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....

here you can read some more of Mussolini's thoughts on fascism including such tidbits as


BTW. More then one person has been rounded up and taken away to concentration camps for reasons you and I know nothing about. Just because Bush has not yet made you disappear for posting here that does not mean he can't or won't. He has killed lots of people in texas, he has "disappeared" hundreds of people in the US. What makes you think you are immune?

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....

Read more here.

If you live in the US, please think about how your government tramples on every idea of freedom, peace and democracy and then adds insult to injury by trying to convince you that, indeed you enjoy the freedom to say and do whatever you want.

A democratic regime would never have its president utter the words "with us or against us".

Nobody stays on top forever. In fact, the really big dogs who like to abuse their power are the ones who tend to fall apart the fastest.

Microsoft is a big, inflexible company. I'm not saying they're going to go chapter 11 or anything, but I do believe that they might become startlingly irrelevant in a very short amount of time like IBM did in the 80's-90's. Ironically, for IBM, it was an inability to see the OS as the real market; for MS, it'll be an inability to see that the OS is no longer the real market...

Have we won ANY of these wars?

How about a war on those who would call a war for anything.

The 'war on piracy' (wait for the MassMedia catchphrase) will be another failure, brought to you by those who would profit by its existence. Just like all the other 'War on' groups.

Hey Ashcroft, how about a war on puritanical Fundamentalists who see art as pornography, and symbols of fair Justice as dirty, masturabatory 'distractions' that should be covered up. Loser.

The American people want to see some titty.

That the events here are similar to some of the similar events in Germany's early wars of conquest is not a smoking gun indicating that Bush is (or is going going to be) as evil as Hitler. It is simply an 'interesting event'. Analogous to something that, in a forensic investigation, would flagged by a little paper evidence-tent. It is something that is possibly worth further investigation.

When Hitler was first elected, he seemed a fine enough fellow. At the time Hitler invaded his first couple of countries, the people of Germany did not know what he was about to do. He had convinced them that those first invasions were completely necessary and appropriate. By the time the invasions had gotten more questionable, dissent had been pretty much expunged under cover of war fervor. The first to go were the Jews, followed by the Gypsies, Communists, Homosexuals, anybody complaining about the extinction of the former groups and then pretty much anybody who didn't just shut up and do what the government told them to do. Examining the situation in hindsight, it's pretty obvious that Hitler was an evil crazed despot. In 1938, however, the only real hints available to most people would have been strange anomalies of word and action.. Being dismissive of transgressions by one group, but going ballistic at similar (or milder) transgressions by another (read: target) group.

Ignore, for a moment, the infamous nastiness of Hitler's actions subsequent to the invasions of Poland, etc. Consider, instead the process by which he took over Germany by feeding on their fears.

If the invasion of Afghanistan had stood on it's own -- If The US had worked to install a full democracy in the country and had quietly walked out afterwards, I would have thought little more about it. Instead, the precognitive rumblings about invading Afghanistan, the pending invasion of Iraq and the contextually anomalous treatment of N. Korea gnaw at me and worry me.

I doubt that the world could ever grow another short, dark-haired, mustached, swastika-saluting, Jew-hating warmonger, but we could easily grow a well-disguised analogy. Hitler was an echo of Napoleon. Napoleon was the echo of Robspierre and the terror of the French revolution. The echoes go back a long way, each one variably more or less evil than the previous. Each one variously both different and similar to the others. No incarnation of evil will be precisely like the other, but if you listen carefully, you may hear the echoes of it's predecessors.

• Tradition
• Election system that people understand

• Unelected buracracy
• Our elected representatives being over-ruled
• Ending up getting dragged into a european super-state
• Plus the Euro has a stupid name

Three words: Fugitive Slave Act.

"Olde English," technically, has absolutely nothing to do with the examples you give. Those are merely now-obscure (or cute, depending on your perspective) variations on the English that modern speakers know.

If you'd like to see what Old English really looks like, you could have a gander at Beowulf . As I'm sure you'll realize very quickly, fluency in Modern English doesn't really help much when trying to read Old English. It may as well be a different language.

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales , written in Middle English, is usually considered to be one of the earliest English works still available that untrained modern readers have a chance at understanding. It's a bit closer to your "Olde English," but it's still a far cry from the minor spelling variations that you cited. (Did you know that "ye" is merely a pre-18th century spelling of "the," and was pronounced more or less the same way it is today?)

This poor academic dude tryed to cite his paper "Vagabonds and Little Women: The Medieval Netherlandish Dramatic Fragment De Truwanten," Modern Philology, 65 (1968), 301-306" in his curriculum vitae (i.e. academic resume) and it shows up instead as "Medireview Netherlandish..."! There are a couple other instances of the word in the same CV--so much for the slick (heh) PDF presentation. Poor shmoe. Somebody ought to email him. I can't bring myself to.

"Medireview" has even made it into someone's resume (PDF); that must seriously reduce his chances of getting hired. Other references seem to have gotten into scholarly works. This is just the latest in a long string of stories about automatic (or semi-automatic) computer correction having serious consequences.

When I was at college, one student ran his doctoral thesis through the spellchecker one last time before submitting it to the binders, and thence to the Board of Graduate Studies. Unfortunately, he inadvertantly selected the "silently accept all suggestions" option, and failed to check the results. The manuscript he submitted was almost incomprehensible. After that, the University added a one-page warning to the spellchecker output (yes, it was in the days of mainframes).

Unfortunately, it appears that the well-known story about "in the black" becoming "in the African American" is only partly true; it was a deliberate practical joke in the newsroom.

Think of the it. Some day China may be taking M$ to court for monopolistic tactics. I kind of doubt anyone at M$ will be standing in front of any communist fact finding mission about poor software design or trade tactics. Here you can plead the 5th, their they can do some unsavory sort of punishment