Absolutely right. Norway and Sweden are not "a few miles apart", because they're right next to each other. In a very real sense (borders being imaginary and hence infinitely narrow), there is no distance between Norway and Sweden.
Besides what else would you call the sole ruler of a kingdom
Gee, I dunno... "regent"?:-P
There's a big difference between "queen" and "regent". A "regent" (for example Crown Prince Frederik, the later Frederik VI) rules in the name of the titular monarch (e.g. Christian VII). That doesn't make him/her a monarch. Margrethe I's authority derived initially from her position as guardian of the king in his minority, and from her position as head of the aristocratic council (Rigsraadet).
- - - - -
Yes Erik of Pommerania was a bad king giving rise to the danish expresion "at ga ad Pommern til" meaning that something is going badly.
I'd dearly love to see your source for this claim, since I am fairly certain that "gaa ad Pommern til" is a more recent (19th century) expression, unrelated to Erik of Pomerania's indisputably poor record as king.
Or did you just link the two concepts because they sounded like they were related?:-P
- - - - -
Frederick the III did not introduce absolutism in Denmark what he introduced was "Eenevold" maybe absolutism is closer than despotism.I did this off the top of my head and I am not a native speaker of the English language, so I do not know the discerning features of those two words.
"Eenevold" (Da., 17th century spelling) = "enevaelde" (Da., modern spelling) = absolutism. The etymology is the same, too, implying rule by personal authority, not derived from others.
"Despotism", on the other hand is "despoti" in Danish, and carries similar negative connotations in both languages.
Ask any historian or poli-sci geek for the name for the system of government enjoyed by Denmark from 1660/65 to 1848/49, and you'll get the same response: "(oplyst) enevaelde" in Danish, or "absolutism" in English.
By the way, it is bad form to quote extensively from the Royal Law of 1665 without having the courtesy to translate it for the non-Danish speakers in the readership. Allow me to assist:
I. The best beginning for everything is to begin with God. The first, therefore, that We by any means would in this our Royal Law strictly command, is: that Our descendants, children and grandchildren for a thousand generations both on the Paternal and the Maternal [i.e. in both male and female lineages], Hereditary Absolute Monarchs of Denmark and Norway, do honour, serve and worship the one right and true God in the way and manner, which He in his Holy and True Word has revealed, and Our Christian faith and confession clearly thereof report, in the form and method, whereby it has been purely and genuinely presented and disclosed in the Confession of Augsburg in the year one thousand five hundred and thirty, and by the same pure and genuine Christian Faith keep the inhabitants of the land and mightily uphold and defend them in these lands and kingdoms [i.e. Denmark and Norway and their possessions] against all heretics, deceivers and blasphemers.
There... note that apart from the brief mention of absolutism en passant, your "impressive" little quote really has nothing to do with the subject - it's all about the requirement (really almost the only requirement imposed upon the absolute monarchs of Denmark) that the monarch be of the Confession of Augsburg, viz., a Protestant of the Lutheran persuasion.
This still applies today, by the way.
- - - - -
Norway was without rigths as a sovereign nation it was ruled as a part of the danish kingdom, but the people were treated as equal (in fact they were treated as the people of one nation).
Not true. Norway was not without sovereign rights - but since Denmark and Norway were in a personal union (since I know you're to lazy to look this up, I'll give it to you: a "personal union" is when the same person is the titular head of state of two countries) and had been so since the middle ages, the apparatus of state had nec
A small correction: the Danish navy was lost in 1801 (not 1806), following the Battle of the Roadstead of Copenhagen (Slaget pa Reden).
This naval battle, in the Sound and the harbour of Copenhagen, showcases an aspect of British behaviour (in the past, at least) that I mentioned in my previous post. To wit, the historical tendency of the British to completely disregard the "proper" way to conduct "civilised" warfare, when it suits them. Now, naturally, there was no Geneva Convention in 1801 - but can anyone doubt that it was a war crime when Admiral Horatio Nelson threatened to burn the captured Danish prize ships, with their captured crews aboard, in order to force the Prince Regent of Denmark to accept defeat? If a military commander were put before a war crimes tribunal today with clear evidence of such an act (and we have Nelson's personal communique, a definite "smoking gun"), then the court would not hesitate to return a verdict of guilty.
When I visit London, I make a point of visiting Trafalgar Square and spitting on Nelson's Column. He may be Britain's great naval hero - but to anybody with a sense of history, he's just another filthy war criminal.
Speaking of filthy war criminals who are incorrectly regarded as great war heroes...
One of the British officers responsible for firebombing Copenhagen with rockets in 1807 (historically, the first deliberate use of indiscriminate firepower against a civilian population, excepting a poorly-documented bit of nastiness by the Swedish army in Germany during the Thirty Years' War) was a certain Arthur Wellesley - later raised to the peerage as Duke of Wellington and made famous by his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. But in 1807, he was getting his jollies killing Danish civilians.
Lest anyone accuse me of anachronism, I'm not saying that Nelson or Wellington were actual war criminals - you cannot try a man retroactively under legislation imposed after the alleged criminal act was committed. What I am saying is that anyone who has all the facts will see them in a much less favourable light - as the scoundrels that they were.
I can't begin to count the errors in that....
on
DVD-Jon Completely Clear
·
· Score: 2, Informative
... but here are a few:
- - - - - - -
1397: the kalmar union all of scandinavia is united under queen Margrethe I
The Kalmar Union (so named for the site where the final treaty was signed) did unite the Nordic kingdoms, but Margrethe was never queen. Technically, she administered the united kingdoms of Denmark and Norway for her son Oluf II until he came of age. When he died in 1387, she continued to rule head of the council of nobles, and later as "fully empowered husband [sic] and lady of the North". In this context, please understand that "husband" could also mean something like "manager". Her sister's daughter's son, Bogislaw, son of Vartislav III of Pomerania, was invited to replace Oluf as king, under the more Danish-sounding name "Erik" - although it took some years to achieve recognition of his claim.
By 1397, the Kalmar Treaty was signed, adding Sweden to the Union, and making Erik the king of a united North. Margrethe continued to rule in Erik's name from 1387 until her death in 1412. Erik, after her death, proved a singularly poor king.
- - - - - - -
1660:Frederick III induces a royal despotism. Leaving norway almost without rights in the union.
Crap. Sorry, but that's the only word that fits. Following the near-total defeat of Denmark in the preceding years, and the loss of huge tracts of Danish land to Sweden, the Danish nobility (near-universally blamed for the disaster) was so discredited that the time was ripe for a system change. Driven largely by the interests of the emerging bourgeoisie in Copenhagen, absolutism (not "despotism" - you really need a dictionary) was implemented in Denmark, and later codified in the Royal Law (the world's first absolutist constitution).
The absolutist system, which may sound anathema to modern democratically-raised individuals, was in fact a great improvement on the previous aristocratic rule. The influence of the growing civic population created an unprecedented degree of freedom in Denmark. The system functioned adequately from 1660 until 1849, and was more or less stable throughout.
As for Norway being without rights, that is complete nonsense. Norway was well-integrated into the political and economic processes of the dual monarchy, and (unlike the case in the dual monarchies of Austria and Hungary), Norwegians and Danes were equal in both law, economic opportunity and personal freedoms.
- - - - - - -
1807: Denmark has declared itself neutral in the napoleonic wars, but is anyway attacked by the british without a declaration of war, they bomb Copenhagen using the first rockets in warfare killing a third of the population and creating large firestorms.
Extensive fires, not "firestorms". But, yes, it was very bad indeed. The British have a history of making this sort of decision in extremis. It is anecdotally reported that when "Bomber" Harris made the decision to firebomb Dresden during WWII, he remarked, "We'll Copenhagen them!"
- - - - - - -
1813:Denmark is bankrupt and gives Norway to Sweden.
Factually correct as far as the individual facts go, but totally mixed up. Denmark experienced a national bankruptcy - mostly because of the cost of the war and the effects of the British blockade. The cession of Norway to Sweden, however, was part of teh Treaty of Kiel, which ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1814. As "war reparations" to Sweden (which had prudently joined the British once the Danes were forced to join the French side by the British actions of 1801 and 1807), Denmark agreed under duress to swap Norway for Swedish Pomerania - which they later traded for the small Duchy of Lauenburg.
The decision to cede Norway was far from popular in Danish and Norwegian circles, and attempts were made to have Norway strike out on its own as an independent state - attempts which failed.
As for the bankruptcy, Sweden agreed (as part of the Treaty of Kiel) to accept the burden of Norway's part of the Danish-Norwegian combined na
In fact, there is no need to hark back to Plato and Descartes for philosophical precedents to the "reality-skeptic" story type. There is ample precedent in modern science fiction, before Dick's 1977 speech - most notably Daniel F. Galouye's 1964 novel Simulacron-3, which was the basis for both Rainer Werner Fassbinder's excellent 1970s TV series Welt am Draht ("World on a string") and for the film The Thirteenth Floor.
As a somewhat OT digression, I note that Vanilla Sky is a remake (with the same delectable female lead, Penelope Cruz, now unfortunately paired with the wimpy Tom Cruise instead of her original lead Eduardo Noriega) of a Spanish film written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar. I have no idea whether Amenabar was directly inspired by Galouye, though he must have been familiar with Fassbinder's TV series - his stuff is mandatory curriculum for aspiring European filmmakers. And, of course, he will have seen The Matrix (which, while it is generally poor science fiction, is an excellent action film).
In the 1961 science fiction novel by Brian Aldiss, The Primal Urge, a new craze sweeps Britain. All over the nation, people have Emotion Registers, which show a red colour when the wearer is sexually aroused, installed in their foreheads. The results are a breakdown of society's "morals", as people give in to their sexual urges.
Now, this isn't exactly the same thing (and what is at issue here isn't so much sex as questions of privacy), but the comparison is interesting.
Aldiss himself cites the story as a sort of companion to his The Male Response (1961). Both books were banned for "obscenity" - The Primal Urge in Ireland, and The Male Response in South Africa.
...before these sorts of badges are cheap enough to become everyday-use items. Imagine wearing a smart badge when you go out on the town, that tells other badges what you're looking for - say, whether you're looking for a one-night stand, or for Mr./Ms. Right.
Don't get me wrong - I think the idea is obnoxious... but when did that ever stop the yuppies?
In my native Denmark, they do. If you want to patent something in Denmark, you have to present a workabe prototype. To prevent this from being a bottleneck for would-be inventors without the cash or technical savvy to turn a worthwhile idea into workable technology, there's a government organ (Teknologisk Institut, "the Institute of Technology") which provides assistance and technical support.
It's still hard to get from concept to working prototype, but if you have a good idea, you can make it patentable, despite the prototype requirement.
Oh, heavens! The ability to properly illuminate latin texts is probably dying out as well. However shall we cope?
I know I'm supposed to hold the opposite opinion, since I am by profession and vocation an historian, and spend a lot of my time reading old manuscripts. Even more so, in that I do calligraphic art in my not-so-copious spare time.
However (you knew this was coming, didn't you?), I have to say that this isn't really as big a problem as it seems. Every generation has bemoaned the slipping-away of skills that seemed essential to the previous, at least in the handwriting department. My grandparents had lovely cursive hands, but would probably still have been incapable of reading (much less writing) the old-style gothic cursive that their great-grandparents wrote. Plus Ãa change, plus c'est la mÃme chose, as Karr put it.
It has to be said that these changes are natural - this shouldn't (even in this technologically enthusiastic forum) be regarded as an issue of high-tech vs. low-tech, or of luddites vs. technophiles. It's just change, which is constantly affecting any culture. Some things that seemed absolutely essential to past generations are now barely relevant.
I should be much more concerned if we were stagnating, trying to ensure that our children neither more nor less than what we ourselves learned ("If'n it's good enough fer mah grand-pappy, then it's..." etc.).
I'd really be concerned if our spelling and math were slipping. Um, hold on a minute....
The current decline (or rather, what most of us agree to perceive as a decline) in orthographic and mathematical understanding among the general population are a different matter, since these aren't just skills - they're fundamental tools necessary to understand a whole slew of other subjects. Now, in these cases, I think there is reason to be concerned.
I'd just gotten my first ever sound card, and plugged in my headphones (no money for speakers). I'd not really gotten any mileage out of the card, yet, because all I'd been doing had been playing little crummy sound files.
Then one of my friends dropped by with a bootlegged copy of Wolfenstein, and I ran it. A couple of minutes into the game, I was running down a corridor, when a voice YELLED RIGHT IN MY EAR. I damn near wet myself.
Sound. You never know what you were missing until you get it.
I stand corrected - you are right, the working group's opinion was divided, and the press release represents the majority opinion of the DCSD.
However, as to your point with regard to the DCSD not quoting Lomborg's rebuttals, it must be said that the DCSD statement as a whole does not go very deep into the arguments made on either side.
The DCSD statement seems to be more of a summing up of the "bottom line" of the decision of the DCSD than an in-depth analysis of the details of the decision-making process. As such, it is hardly fair (to either party) to let the brief press release be the basis of an evaluation of the process whereby the decision was reached.
"the working group never bothered to consider his responses because, in their own words, '...his rebuttals are not accepted by the complainants.'
That simply isn't true, and I find it difficult to believe that you aren't deliberately misstating the case while knowing better.
The working group was faced with several decisions:
Was Lomborg's book intended as a scientific work (hence, subject to scientific review) or a topical debate-generating book? If it isn't science, the DCSD has no cause to deal with it.
If it was a scientific work, did it meet the accepted standards for scientific works?
If it did not, was there convincing proof that this failure was deliberate on Lomborg's part (i.e., was he deliberately deceptive, or simply inadequate to the task)?
On the first count, they decided that Lomborg's book was, in fact, intended as science, not debate. Among their reasons was the fact that Lomborg himself lists the book among his scientific publications.
On the second count, they addressed themselves (naturally) to the specific complaints made against Lomborg and his work, and to Lomborg's rebuttals. It is in this context that the "his rebuttals are not accepted by the complainants" quotation appears in the report, as a simple statement of fact. Nowhere is it suggested that the non-acceptance of Lomborg's rebuttals by his opponents forms the basis of the working group's decision. It is, however, a factor - just as it is a factor that Lomborg does not accept his opponent's arguments (a detail I notice you fail to remark upon). In effect, the working group is merely saying that both parties are irreconcilably opposed.
Having evaluated the available arguments, pro et con, the working group concludes that Lomborg's book does not, in fact, meet scientific standards - largely because it is indisputably true that Lomborg has used data selectively, and failed to include necessary counterarguments. The bottom line is that Lomborg,
"in light of his systematic onesidedness in the choice of data and line of argument, has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice".
Note that the report does not address the issue of who is right or wrong, because:
"...it is not DCSD's remit to decide who is right in a contentious professional issue, but merely whether a complaint about scientific dishonesty is justified."
On the final count, the DCSD considers the case for a deliberate intent to mislead to be insufficient:
"In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization."
In other words, according to the DCSD, Lomborg's book should be evaluated as a scientific work; does fail to meet standards of scientific honesty; but is not provably a the result of deliberate or grossly negligent scientific falsification of facts.
The wording of the findings as regards the final count is very cautious - the working group does not exonerate Lomborg of deliberate intent to deceive, it simply notes that it is not provable that Lomborg is not merely a shoddy scientist, rather than a deliberate liar.
Side remark: The Danish term "arbejdsgruppe", appearing as "Working Party" in the text of the English version of the DCSD's findings, and in this thread as "working group", would be better translated as "panel" or "committee".
Laser-scanning significant sites has other applications than disaster recovery. For instance, long-term erosion tends to wear down anything, and the effects of this can be clearly seen on older buildings.
In the 18th century, many prominent buildings in Europe (for instance) were ornamented with decorative sandstone figures. These figures have not stood up well to time, and the people restoring them would have loved to have a detailed digital scan to work from. Preserving our era's monuments for the future is, if nothing else, destined to make restoration work of all kinds easier.
Another application is the recreation in virtual space of these monuments. Who knows, maybe the virtual spaces of the future will be teeming with sphinxes, statues of liberty, mounts rushmore, and other dime-a-dozen virtual monuments?
There is huge pressure on young people in the sciences to establish a long list of publications, because permanent jobs are so hard to get.
This does not just apply to the sciences - it's a phenomenon that pervades academic circles. I'm in the humanities (history, to be precise), and the same pressures apply here.
One important deleterious effect of this pressure to publish is that a long publication list "looks better" than a brief one. Thus, many researchers publish reams of papers and articles - but no major (and time-consuming works). The next time you're in an academic bookstore serving the humanities, look at the books on sale in the history section (I can't peak for the others). Chances are, if it's a hefty, important work, the author is a tenured professor. They are the only ones who have "got it covered" - who can afford setting aside the years it takes to produce a major work.
The unfortunate result of this is that junior researchers, who haven't yet achieved tenure, will work very hard indeed to produce a number of comparatively light-weight articles; even though they might be capable of larger contributions, they can't afford to set aside the time to carry them out. A paper can be done in a matter of months - a significant major work can take several years. Yet, on a citation index, they take up the same number of lines.
The only way to avoid this effect is (speaking from personal experience here) to ignore the pressure, and work at what seems the best investment of one's time, regardless of considerations such as frequency of citations, etc.
...was always clear to me. Never mind that I was entirely wrong about this clarity, it felt clear.
From an early age, I was interested in science - I wanted to be a physicist, since that seemed to me to be the most "scientific" thing to be. During my teens, I began to modify this to astronomy (always have loved the stars, always will).
Now, all the time, I was reading lots of stuff - not only the hard SF classics, but also softer stuff. I also liked to read fantasy, so a side interest in history was sort of natural. It never seemed more than leisure stuff, though.
Came the time I attended high school, and had to take a lot of classical studies and history classes (this was in my native Denmark, where the Danish Gymnasium still has some of the qualities of a classical Renaissance-style curriculum). In those classes, I met a teacher who had a terrible problem: Ernst Høybye had classes of science-majors who had to take classical studies. I'm talking about people who wouldn't know Julius Caesar from Julie Andrews if it meant their lives. Predictably, they thought he was a geek, and paid no attention.
Me, I looked at the man himself. I saw the way his eyes lit up every time he discussed these obscure subjects. The way his whole posture changed when he talked about Greek vases or the plays of Sophocles, or something else that nobody in his audience cared about - but he did.
It changed my life, though it wasn't really clear to me at the time.
I started paying attention in his classes. In my spare time, I would read the classics. I'd take Arrian's Life of Alexander to the beach, while my buddies had their noses in the latest John Le Carré novel (not knocking Le Carré, but he writes for an entry-level audience and doesn't really demand anything from his reader).
Meanwhile, I went to the University and majored in Physics, with an Astronomy major. Surprisingly, while I didn't find it heavy going (well, actually, I did find quantum theory sort of rough), I also did not find it very engaging. Oh, the astronomy was fine, but the physics just didn't grab me. I still found it interesting enough, but not as a way of life.
A year or two of this, and I decided to drop out. I took a job in computing, and went the way of the professional programmer. This was satisfying for a while, but a few years ago, I found that I was bored with it. I wanted to learn again - I wanted to go back to the University.
Not being really clear on what I wanted to do (I just knew that I wanted to learn), I took CompSci as my major, and looked around for a minor. And there it was....History. I thought about it, and decided to give it a shot.
My first history class at University level was with another great teacher, the famous-in-his-field (colonial history) Prof. Niels Steensgaard. He made an amazing impression on me. Here was a man who matter-of-factly, talked about history as a "vocation". Who discussed the fact that most historians are historians because they couldn't imagine doing anything else with their lives, not unlike a vocation for the priesthood.
His words rang a bell within me - a big, loud Quasimodo-would-have-a-tough-time-getting-it-going bell. I realised that, without ever really knowing it, history was what I'd been looking for all my life.
I won't bore you with the details of my life since then, except to say that I changed my major to History, and that my academic achievements since then have been pretty much stellar - chiefly because I feel totally at home in this field....
I often think of these two teachers, with fondness. They made me realise something about myself, something so buried that I couldn't see it myself - but when I did see it, it changed everything about me, forever. I may have been born to be an historian, but I had to learn to understand that - and these two taught me that.
Ernst Høybye is still teaching history and classics to bored science majors, still with the same enthusiasm. One of them may be undergoing the same feelings today that I experienced back then.
Professor Steensgaard retires this year. I'm planning on visiting him in his office later this term, and thanking him - one vocational historian to another....
No, Gore would report with an absolutely straight face that he had invented the art of baking cookies, whereas Bush would play the "just regular folks" card and say that he left all the baking to his wife...
Unless I've completely misunderstood, the locust is steering the vehicle, not powering it - in which case your point about batteries is completely irrelevant.
I'm an historian, currently doing research on the Black Death (yeah, I know, there's no accounting for taste). I came across this while doing a bit of online searching, and it struck me as being completely beyond the pale of tasteful behaviour:
Infectious -aw areables (catchy name, huh?) have managed to come up with a terminally revolting idea - neckties decorated with images of deadly diseases.
So far, these entrepreneurs (who, predictably, promise to donate a portion of the proceeds to medical research) have produced neckties and boxer shorts and other goodies, decorated with images of Ebola virus; Yersinia pestis (the plague bacillus); TB; Influenza, and many others. Hey, for the really sick puppies, there's even a necktie with breast cancer cells....yuck.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that I think this is just about the sickest thing I've ever seen, and this garbage is at the top of my list of things I don't want for Christmas....
- Ravn
Even so, Slashdot needs a spell checker
on
Disconnected
·
· Score: 1
This is a process that is already occuring, in a modest way.
Not only have we seen numerous "subculture" groups, essentially choosing a common identity at variance with the larger society around them, we also have such phenomena as ethnic and religious sectarianism, which have become much more important over just the past few decades.
Another, more curious, version of this trend is the phenomenon of micronationalism. Micronationalism may seem freaky, but it does show the same general tendency to pick a "personal" path along with likeminded individuals.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I don't know who to cast as Dr. Akagi Ritsuko, but I'm sure this talented young lady is a shoo-in for at least one of the parts...
Absolutely right. Norway and Sweden are not "a few miles apart", because they're right next to each other. In a very real sense (borders being imaginary and hence infinitely narrow), there is no distance between Norway and Sweden.
Sheer pedantry, of course, but amusing.
Well, it amused me.
Of course, I'm easily amused.
Slashdot amuses me, for instance.
Hmm, maybe I'd better keep that to myself...
I ran out of fingers and toes, so I did.
Besides what else would you call the sole ruler of a kingdom
Gee, I dunno... "regent"? :-P
There's a big difference between "queen" and "regent". A "regent" (for example Crown Prince Frederik, the later Frederik VI) rules in the name of the titular monarch (e.g. Christian VII). That doesn't make him/her a monarch. Margrethe I's authority derived initially from her position as guardian of the king in his minority, and from her position as head of the aristocratic council (Rigsraadet).
- - - - -
Yes Erik of Pommerania was a bad king giving rise to the danish expresion "at ga ad Pommern til" meaning that something is going badly.
I'd dearly love to see your source for this claim, since I am fairly certain that "gaa ad Pommern til" is a more recent (19th century) expression, unrelated to Erik of Pomerania's indisputably poor record as king.
Or did you just link the two concepts because they sounded like they were related? :-P
- - - - -
Frederick the III did not introduce absolutism in Denmark what he introduced was "Eenevold" maybe absolutism is closer than despotism.I did this off the top of my head and I am not a native speaker of the English language, so I do not know the discerning features of those two words.
"Eenevold" (Da., 17th century spelling) = "enevaelde" (Da., modern spelling) = absolutism. The etymology is the same, too, implying rule by personal authority, not derived from others.
"Despotism", on the other hand is "despoti" in Danish, and carries similar negative connotations in both languages.
Ask any historian or poli-sci geek for the name for the system of government enjoyed by Denmark from 1660/65 to 1848/49, and you'll get the same response: "(oplyst) enevaelde" in Danish, or "absolutism" in English.
By the way, it is bad form to quote extensively from the Royal Law of 1665 without having the courtesy to translate it for the non-Danish speakers in the readership. Allow me to assist:
There... note that apart from the brief mention of absolutism en passant, your "impressive" little quote really has nothing to do with the subject - it's all about the requirement (really almost the only requirement imposed upon the absolute monarchs of Denmark) that the monarch be of the Confession of Augsburg, viz., a Protestant of the Lutheran persuasion.
This still applies today, by the way.
- - - - -
Norway was without rigths as a sovereign nation it was ruled as a part of the danish kingdom, but the people were treated as equal (in fact they were treated as the people of one nation).
Not true. Norway was not without sovereign rights - but since Denmark and Norway were in a personal union (since I know you're to lazy to look this up, I'll give it to you: a "personal union" is when the same person is the titular head of state of two countries) and had been so since the middle ages, the apparatus of state had nec
A small correction: the Danish navy was lost in 1801 (not 1806), following the Battle of the Roadstead of Copenhagen (Slaget pa Reden).
This naval battle, in the Sound and the harbour of Copenhagen, showcases an aspect of British behaviour (in the past, at least) that I mentioned in my previous post. To wit, the historical tendency of the British to completely disregard the "proper" way to conduct "civilised" warfare, when it suits them. Now, naturally, there was no Geneva Convention in 1801 - but can anyone doubt that it was a war crime when Admiral Horatio Nelson threatened to burn the captured Danish prize ships, with their captured crews aboard, in order to force the Prince Regent of Denmark to accept defeat? If a military commander were put before a war crimes tribunal today with clear evidence of such an act (and we have Nelson's personal communique, a definite "smoking gun"), then the court would not hesitate to return a verdict of guilty.
When I visit London, I make a point of visiting Trafalgar Square and spitting on Nelson's Column. He may be Britain's great naval hero - but to anybody with a sense of history, he's just another filthy war criminal.
Speaking of filthy war criminals who are incorrectly regarded as great war heroes...
One of the British officers responsible for firebombing Copenhagen with rockets in 1807 (historically, the first deliberate use of indiscriminate firepower against a civilian population, excepting a poorly-documented bit of nastiness by the Swedish army in Germany during the Thirty Years' War) was a certain Arthur Wellesley - later raised to the peerage as Duke of Wellington and made famous by his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. But in 1807, he was getting his jollies killing Danish civilians.
Lest anyone accuse me of anachronism, I'm not saying that Nelson or Wellington were actual war criminals - you cannot try a man retroactively under legislation imposed after the alleged criminal act was committed. What I am saying is that anyone who has all the facts will see them in a much less favourable light - as the scoundrels that they were.
... but here are a few:
- - - - - - -
1397: the kalmar union all of scandinavia is united under queen Margrethe I
The Kalmar Union (so named for the site where the final treaty was signed) did unite the Nordic kingdoms, but Margrethe was never queen. Technically, she administered the united kingdoms of Denmark and Norway for her son Oluf II until he came of age. When he died in 1387, she continued to rule head of the council of nobles, and later as "fully empowered husband [sic] and lady of the North". In this context, please understand that "husband" could also mean something like "manager". Her sister's daughter's son, Bogislaw, son of Vartislav III of Pomerania, was invited to replace Oluf as king, under the more Danish-sounding name "Erik" - although it took some years to achieve recognition of his claim.
By 1397, the Kalmar Treaty was signed, adding Sweden to the Union, and making Erik the king of a united North. Margrethe continued to rule in Erik's name from 1387 until her death in 1412. Erik, after her death, proved a singularly poor king.
- - - - - - -
1660:Frederick III induces a royal despotism. Leaving norway almost without rights in the union.
Crap. Sorry, but that's the only word that fits. Following the near-total defeat of Denmark in the preceding years, and the loss of huge tracts of Danish land to Sweden, the Danish nobility (near-universally blamed for the disaster) was so discredited that the time was ripe for a system change. Driven largely by the interests of the emerging bourgeoisie in Copenhagen, absolutism (not "despotism" - you really need a dictionary) was implemented in Denmark, and later codified in the Royal Law (the world's first absolutist constitution).
The absolutist system, which may sound anathema to modern democratically-raised individuals, was in fact a great improvement on the previous aristocratic rule. The influence of the growing civic population created an unprecedented degree of freedom in Denmark. The system functioned adequately from 1660 until 1849, and was more or less stable throughout.
As for Norway being without rights, that is complete nonsense. Norway was well-integrated into the political and economic processes of the dual monarchy, and (unlike the case in the dual monarchies of Austria and Hungary), Norwegians and Danes were equal in both law, economic opportunity and personal freedoms.
- - - - - - -
1807: Denmark has declared itself neutral in the napoleonic wars, but is anyway attacked by the british without a declaration of war, they bomb Copenhagen using the first rockets in warfare killing a third of the population and creating large firestorms.
Extensive fires, not "firestorms". But, yes, it was very bad indeed. The British have a history of making this sort of decision in extremis. It is anecdotally reported that when "Bomber" Harris made the decision to firebomb Dresden during WWII, he remarked, "We'll Copenhagen them!"
- - - - - - -
1813:Denmark is bankrupt and gives Norway to Sweden.
Factually correct as far as the individual facts go, but totally mixed up. Denmark experienced a national bankruptcy - mostly because of the cost of the war and the effects of the British blockade. The cession of Norway to Sweden, however, was part of teh Treaty of Kiel, which ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1814. As "war reparations" to Sweden (which had prudently joined the British once the Danes were forced to join the French side by the British actions of 1801 and 1807), Denmark agreed under duress to swap Norway for Swedish Pomerania - which they later traded for the small Duchy of Lauenburg. The decision to cede Norway was far from popular in Danish and Norwegian circles, and attempts were made to have Norway strike out on its own as an independent state - attempts which failed.
As for the bankruptcy, Sweden agreed (as part of the Treaty of Kiel) to accept the burden of Norway's part of the Danish-Norwegian combined na
In fact, there is no need to hark back to Plato and Descartes for philosophical precedents to the "reality-skeptic" story type. There is ample precedent in modern science fiction, before Dick's 1977 speech - most notably Daniel F. Galouye's 1964 novel Simulacron-3, which was the basis for both Rainer Werner Fassbinder's excellent 1970s TV series Welt am Draht ("World on a string") and for the film The Thirteenth Floor.
As a somewhat OT digression, I note that Vanilla Sky is a remake (with the same delectable female lead, Penelope Cruz, now unfortunately paired with the wimpy Tom Cruise instead of her original lead Eduardo Noriega) of a Spanish film written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar. I have no idea whether Amenabar was directly inspired by Galouye, though he must have been familiar with Fassbinder's TV series - his stuff is mandatory curriculum for aspiring European filmmakers. And, of course, he will have seen The Matrix (which, while it is generally poor science fiction, is an excellent action film).
In the 1961 science fiction novel by Brian Aldiss, The Primal Urge, a new craze sweeps Britain. All over the nation, people have Emotion Registers, which show a red colour when the wearer is sexually aroused, installed in their foreheads. The results are a breakdown of society's "morals", as people give in to their sexual urges.
Now, this isn't exactly the same thing (and what is at issue here isn't so much sex as questions of privacy), but the comparison is interesting.
Aldiss himself cites the story as a sort of companion to his The Male Response (1961). Both books were banned for "obscenity" - The Primal Urge in Ireland, and The Male Response in South Africa.
Yuppies? Wow, that's a term I haven't heard for about 10 years...
Why, haven't you heard? Everything old is new again.
Your life's pretty simple already, then, isn't it?
...before these sorts of badges are cheap enough to become everyday-use items. Imagine wearing a smart badge when you go out on the town, that tells other badges what you're looking for - say, whether you're looking for a one-night stand, or for Mr./Ms. Right.
Don't get me wrong - I think the idea is obnoxious... but when did that ever stop the yuppies?
Call me premature:
"Not any more".
48 minutes and counting...
Patents should require a prototype.
In my native Denmark, they do. If you want to patent something in Denmark, you have to present a workabe prototype. To prevent this from being a bottleneck for would-be inventors without the cash or technical savvy to turn a worthwhile idea into workable technology, there's a government organ (Teknologisk Institut, "the Institute of Technology") which provides assistance and technical support.
It's still hard to get from concept to working prototype, but if you have a good idea, you can make it patentable, despite the prototype requirement.
Oh, heavens! The ability to properly illuminate latin texts is probably dying out as well. However shall we cope?
I know I'm supposed to hold the opposite opinion, since I am by profession and vocation an historian, and spend a lot of my time reading old manuscripts. Even more so, in that I do calligraphic art in my not-so-copious spare time.
However (you knew this was coming, didn't you?), I have to say that this isn't really as big a problem as it seems. Every generation has bemoaned the slipping-away of skills that seemed essential to the previous, at least in the handwriting department. My grandparents had lovely cursive hands, but would probably still have been incapable of reading (much less writing) the old-style gothic cursive that their great-grandparents wrote. Plus Ãa change, plus c'est la mÃme chose, as Karr put it.
It has to be said that these changes are natural - this shouldn't (even in this technologically enthusiastic forum) be regarded as an issue of high-tech vs. low-tech, or of luddites vs. technophiles. It's just change, which is constantly affecting any culture. Some things that seemed absolutely essential to past generations are now barely relevant.
I should be much more concerned if we were stagnating, trying to ensure that our children neither more nor less than what we ourselves learned ("If'n it's good enough fer mah grand-pappy, then it's..." etc.).
I'd really be concerned if our spelling and math were slipping. Um, hold on a minute....
The current decline (or rather, what most of us agree to perceive as a decline) in orthographic and mathematical understanding among the general population are a different matter, since these aren't just skills - they're fundamental tools necessary to understand a whole slew of other subjects. Now, in these cases, I think there is reason to be concerned.
Yah, I remember...
I'd just gotten my first ever sound card, and plugged in my headphones (no money for speakers). I'd not really gotten any mileage out of the card, yet, because all I'd been doing had been playing little crummy sound files.
Then one of my friends dropped by with a bootlegged copy of Wolfenstein, and I ran it. A couple of minutes into the game, I was running down a corridor, when a voice YELLED RIGHT IN MY EAR. I damn near wet myself.
Sound. You never know what you were missing until you get it.
I stand corrected - you are right, the working group's opinion was divided, and the press release represents the majority opinion of the DCSD.
However, as to your point with regard to the DCSD not quoting Lomborg's rebuttals, it must be said that the DCSD statement as a whole does not go very deep into the arguments made on either side.
The DCSD statement seems to be more of a summing up of the "bottom line" of the decision of the DCSD than an in-depth analysis of the details of the decision-making process. As such, it is hardly fair (to either party) to let the brief press release be the basis of an evaluation of the process whereby the decision was reached.
That simply isn't true, and I find it difficult to believe that you aren't deliberately misstating the case while knowing better.
The working group was faced with several decisions:
On the first count, they decided that Lomborg's book was, in fact, intended as science, not debate. Among their reasons was the fact that Lomborg himself lists the book among his scientific publications.
On the second count, they addressed themselves (naturally) to the specific complaints made against Lomborg and his work, and to Lomborg's rebuttals. It is in this context that the "his rebuttals are not accepted by the complainants" quotation appears in the report, as a simple statement of fact. Nowhere is it suggested that the non-acceptance of Lomborg's rebuttals by his opponents forms the basis of the working group's decision. It is, however, a factor - just as it is a factor that Lomborg does not accept his opponent's arguments (a detail I notice you fail to remark upon). In effect, the working group is merely saying that both parties are irreconcilably opposed.
Having evaluated the available arguments, pro et con, the working group concludes that Lomborg's book does not, in fact, meet scientific standards - largely because it is indisputably true that Lomborg has used data selectively, and failed to include necessary counterarguments. The bottom line is that Lomborg,
Note that the report does not address the issue of who is right or wrong, because:On the final count, the DCSD considers the case for a deliberate intent to mislead to be insufficient:
In other words, according to the DCSD, Lomborg's book should be evaluated as a scientific work; does fail to meet standards of scientific honesty; but is not provably a the result of deliberate or grossly negligent scientific falsification of facts.
The wording of the findings as regards the final count is very cautious - the working group does not exonerate Lomborg of deliberate intent to deceive, it simply notes that it is not provable that Lomborg is not merely a shoddy scientist, rather than a deliberate liar.
Side remark: The Danish term "arbejdsgruppe", appearing as "Working Party" in the text of the English version of the DCSD's findings, and in this thread as "working group", would be better translated as "panel" or "committee".
Laser-scanning significant sites has other applications than disaster recovery. For instance, long-term erosion tends to wear down anything, and the effects of this can be clearly seen on older buildings.
In the 18th century, many prominent buildings in Europe (for instance) were ornamented with decorative sandstone figures. These figures have not stood up well to time, and the people restoring them would have loved to have a detailed digital scan to work from. Preserving our era's monuments for the future is, if nothing else, destined to make restoration work of all kinds easier.
Another application is the recreation in virtual space of these monuments. Who knows, maybe the virtual spaces of the future will be teeming with sphinxes, statues of liberty, mounts rushmore, and other dime-a-dozen virtual monuments?
bcrowell writes:
This does not just apply to the sciences - it's a phenomenon that pervades academic circles. I'm in the humanities (history, to be precise), and the same pressures apply here.
One important deleterious effect of this pressure to publish is that a long publication list "looks better" than a brief one. Thus, many researchers publish reams of papers and articles - but no major (and time-consuming works). The next time you're in an academic bookstore serving the humanities, look at the books on sale in the history section (I can't peak for the others). Chances are, if it's a hefty, important work, the author is a tenured professor. They are the only ones who have "got it covered" - who can afford setting aside the years it takes to produce a major work.
The unfortunate result of this is that junior researchers, who haven't yet achieved tenure, will work very hard indeed to produce a number of comparatively light-weight articles; even though they might be capable of larger contributions, they can't afford to set aside the time to carry them out. A paper can be done in a matter of months - a significant major work can take several years. Yet, on a citation index, they take up the same number of lines.
The only way to avoid this effect is (speaking from personal experience here) to ignore the pressure, and work at what seems the best investment of one's time, regardless of considerations such as frequency of citations, etc.
...was always clear to me. Never mind that I was entirely wrong about this clarity, it felt clear.
From an early age, I was interested in science - I wanted to be a physicist, since that seemed to me to be the most "scientific" thing to be. During my teens, I began to modify this to astronomy (always have loved the stars, always will).
Now, all the time, I was reading lots of stuff - not only the hard SF classics, but also softer stuff. I also liked to read fantasy, so a side interest in history was sort of natural. It never seemed more than leisure stuff, though.
Came the time I attended high school, and had to take a lot of classical studies and history classes (this was in my native Denmark, where the Danish Gymnasium still has some of the qualities of a classical Renaissance-style curriculum). In those classes, I met a teacher who had a terrible problem: Ernst Høybye had classes of science-majors who had to take classical studies. I'm talking about people who wouldn't know Julius Caesar from Julie Andrews if it meant their lives. Predictably, they thought he was a geek, and paid no attention.
Me, I looked at the man himself. I saw the way his eyes lit up every time he discussed these obscure subjects. The way his whole posture changed when he talked about Greek vases or the plays of Sophocles, or something else that nobody in his audience cared about - but he did.
It changed my life, though it wasn't really clear to me at the time.
I started paying attention in his classes. In my spare time, I would read the classics. I'd take Arrian's Life of Alexander to the beach, while my buddies had their noses in the latest John Le Carré novel (not knocking Le Carré, but he writes for an entry-level audience and doesn't really demand anything from his reader).
Meanwhile, I went to the University and majored in Physics, with an Astronomy major. Surprisingly, while I didn't find it heavy going (well, actually, I did find quantum theory sort of rough), I also did not find it very engaging. Oh, the astronomy was fine, but the physics just didn't grab me. I still found it interesting enough, but not as a way of life.
A year or two of this, and I decided to drop out. I took a job in computing, and went the way of the professional programmer. This was satisfying for a while, but a few years ago, I found that I was bored with it. I wanted to learn again - I wanted to go back to the University.
Not being really clear on what I wanted to do (I just knew that I wanted to learn), I took CompSci as my major, and looked around for a minor. And there it was....History. I thought about it, and decided to give it a shot.
My first history class at University level was with another great teacher, the famous-in-his-field (colonial history) Prof. Niels Steensgaard. He made an amazing impression on me. Here was a man who matter-of-factly, talked about history as a "vocation". Who discussed the fact that most historians are historians because they couldn't imagine doing anything else with their lives, not unlike a vocation for the priesthood.
His words rang a bell within me - a big, loud Quasimodo-would-have-a-tough-time-getting-it-going bell. I realised that, without ever really knowing it, history was what I'd been looking for all my life.
I won't bore you with the details of my life since then, except to say that I changed my major to History, and that my academic achievements since then have been pretty much stellar - chiefly because I feel totally at home in this field....
I often think of these two teachers, with fondness. They made me realise something about myself, something so buried that I couldn't see it myself - but when I did see it, it changed everything about me, forever. I may have been born to be an historian, but I had to learn to understand that - and these two taught me that.
Ernst Høybye is still teaching history and classics to bored science majors, still with the same enthusiasm. One of them may be undergoing the same feelings today that I experienced back then.
Professor Steensgaard retires this year. I'm planning on visiting him in his office later this term, and thanking him - one vocational historian to another....
- Peter Ravn Rasmussen
No, Gore would report with an absolutely straight face that he had invented the art of baking cookies, whereas Bush would play the "just regular folks" card and say that he left all the baking to his wife...
- Ravn
Unless I've completely misunderstood, the locust is steering the vehicle, not powering it - in which case your point about batteries is completely irrelevant.
- Ravn
I'm an historian, currently doing research on the Black Death (yeah, I know, there's no accounting for taste). I came across this while doing a bit of online searching, and it struck me as being completely beyond the pale of tasteful behaviour:
Infectious -aw areables (catchy name, huh?) have managed to come up with a terminally revolting idea - neckties decorated with images of deadly diseases.
So far, these entrepreneurs (who, predictably, promise to donate a portion of the proceeds to medical research) have produced neckties and boxer shorts and other goodies, decorated with images of Ebola virus; Yersinia pestis (the plague bacillus); TB; Influenza, and many others. Hey, for the really sick puppies, there's even a necktie with breast cancer cells....yuck.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that I think this is just about the sickest thing I've ever seen, and this garbage is at the top of my list of things I don't want for Christmas....
- Ravn
...because it's "Kalahari", not "Kalihari".
- Ravn
This is a process that is already occuring, in a modest way.
Not only have we seen numerous "subculture" groups, essentially choosing a common identity at variance with the larger society around them, we also have such phenomena as ethnic and religious sectarianism, which have become much more important over just the past few decades.
Another, more curious, version of this trend is the phenomenon of micronationalism. Micronationalism may seem freaky, but it does show the same general tendency to pick a "personal" path along with likeminded individuals.
- Ravn