History

Westphalia

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Jan 042015
 

From the book, World Order by Henry Kissinger The Thirty Years War [Cardinal] Richelieu saw the turmoil in Central Europe not as a call to arms to defend the Church but as a means to check imperial Hapsburg preeminence. Though France’s King had been styled as the Rex Catholicissimus, or the “Most Catholic King,” since [more …]

 Posted by at 12:07 pm

The Dreyfus Press

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Dec 102014
 

Wikipedia: “The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France from its beginning in 1894 until it was finally resolved in 1906. The affair is often seen as a modern and universal symbol of injustice, and remains one of the most striking examples of a complex miscarriage of justice, where a major role was [more …]

 Posted by at 7:37 pm

Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence

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Oct 052014
 

It’s not true that all wars are fought in the name of religion, as some atheists assert. Of 1,723 armed conflicts documented in the three-volume “Encyclopedia of Wars,” only 123, or less than 7 percent, involved a religious cause. Hitler’s genocide, Stalin’s bloody purges and Pol Pot’s mass murders certainly make the case that state-sanctioned killings do not need the invocation of a higher power to succeed.

 Posted by at 6:36 pm

The Illiad

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Oct 042014
 

The whole poem has been moving toward this duel between the two champions, but there has never been any doubt the outcome. The husband and father, the beloved protector of his people, the man who stands for the civilized values of the rich city, its social and religious institutions, will go down to defeat at the hands of this man who has no family, who in a private quarrel has caused the death of many of his own fellow soldiers, who now in a private quarrel thinks only of revenge, though that revenge, as he well knows, is the immediate prelude to his own death.

 Posted by at 12:59 pm

Understanding the Role of Bretton Woods and the US Dollar

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Oct 042014
 

Monetarily, what came out of Bretton Woods was a dollars for gold system. The dollars for gold system was very beneficial for the US because it placed the dollar in a unique, privileged position in relation to gold and the world economy. But deficit spending during the Vietnam War undermined the dollar and there was a run on US gold reserves which forced Nixon to bring the dollars for gold system to a sudden, dramatic end in August of 1971. Bretton Woods was officially over. It had lasted just shy of 30 years.

 Posted by at 12:27 pm

The Idea and The Deed

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Oct 042014
 

In the late nineteenth century a wave of bombings and assassinations swept the civilized world. By the time of The Great War several heads of state had been taken by assassins devoted to the idea of bringing about a world without government, by violently removing it.

 Posted by at 12:13 pm

The English-Speaking Peoples

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Jan 252013
 

These are my notes from reading Churchill’s “History of English Speaking Peoples” and other histories of “Brettaniai” as the Greek merchant and explorer Pytheas named the island when he landed in 325 BC. I will be coming back to this page to fill in the gaps and flush out my learning, but for now I am tracing bloodlines…

 Posted by at 10:37 pm

Antikythera Mechanism – Lego Style

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Dec 102010
 

Antikythera Mechanism - Lego Style

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck. Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BC. Technological artifacts of similar complexity and workmanship did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks were built in Europe.

The mechanism is the oldest known complex scientific calculator. It contains many gears, and is sometimes called the first known analog computer, although its flawless manufacturing suggests that it may have had a number of undiscovered predecessors during the Hellenistic Period. It appears to be constructed upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers and it is estimated that it was made around 150-100 BC.

 Posted by at 3:26 pm