Archive: Posts about History
October 4th, 2007, 3 Comments »
I just watched David Pogue’s charming 4-minute review of the $100 laptop (which, as it turns out, costs $188 each). It’s charming because he really seems genuinely excited about the product, and eschews his usual unfunny schtick.
He does reference ’snarky bloggers’ who apparently aren’t digging the laptop. What? Bloggers snarky? I can’t imagine. I think it’s cool–a little piece of nerd history, really–and want one when they go on sale in November.
They’ve got a brilliant sales strategy which you’ve probably already heard of: Americans have to spend US $400 (just CAN $399.04!), buying two computers. They keep one laptop, and another gets sent to a classroom or child in a developing country.
If I can be a snarky blogger for a second, it’d be great if the New York Times let me embed Pogue’s video in this post, instead of just linking to it. You know, like the rest of the planet.
3 Comments »
September 18th, 2007, No Comments »
One of our guests asked this question, and I had no idea what the answer was. We live within spitting distance of Ta Pinu (though, you know, I wouldn’t dream of spitting on it), a basilica that’s a popular pilgrimage destination.
Wikipedia to the rescue. Apparently there are both architectural and ecclesiastical differences. First, the basilica:
- “In architecture, the Roman basilica was a large roofed hall erected for transacting business and disposing of legal matters. Such buildings usually contained interior colonnades that divided the space, giving aisles or arcaded spaces at one or both sides, with an apse at one end (or less often at each end), where the magistrates sat, often on a slightly raised dais.”
- Turning to more spiritual matters, a basilica refers “to a large and important church that has been given special ceremonial rites by the Pope.” You can read more about the specific (and frankly, pretty obscure) rites here. This makes sense, because JP 2 did once visit Ta Pinu.
And here cometh the cathedral:
- “A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop. In more detailed terms it is a religious building for worship, specifically of a denomination with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and some Lutheran churches, which serves as a bishop’s seat, and thus as the central church of a diocese.”
- As for architectural considerations, they apparently vary: “Although a cathedral may be amongst the grandest of churches in the diocese…a cathedral church may be a modest structure. Early Celtic and Saxon cathedrals, for example, tended to be of diminutive size, as is the Byzantine so-called Little Metropole Cathedral of Athens.”
Another of life’s small building-categorizing mysteries solved.
No Comments »
September 11th, 2007, No Comments »
Years ago I read about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. From Wikipedia:
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world’s first underground repository licensed to safely and permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons. It is located near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Waste is placed in rooms 2,150 feet (655 m) underground that have been excavated from a 2,000 foot (600 m) thick salt formation that has been stable for more than 200 million years.
WIPP presents an extremely long term problem. I was recently reminded of this issue in Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us:
The US Department of Energy is legally required to dissuade anyone from coming too close [to the site] for the next 10,000 years.
The Only Way to Survive Over The Long Run
That’s the thought experiment. How do prevent future farmers, developers, miners, terrorists and archaeologists from digging up a bunch of highly toxic waste? You can’t use language because, as Weisman points out, “human languages mutate so fast that they’re almost unrecognizable after 500 or 600 years.”
I may have first read about WIPP in Stewart Brand’s book The Clock of the Long Now, based on Danny Hillis’s fabulous essay. It’s actually a similar thought experiment, imagining the hows and whys of building a clock that will last 10,000 years. Here’s how he recommends you make things that last:
The real problem is people. If something becomes unimportant to people, it gets scrapped for parts; if it becomes important, it turns into a symbol and must eventually be destroyed. The only way to survive over the long run is to be made of materials large and worthless, like Stonehenge and the Pyramids, or to become lost.
So What’s the Actual Plan?
In the early nineties, the folks in charge of this project assembled two ‘expert panels’ to think about and solve this peculiar challenge. Experts from sundry disciplines–architecture, anthropology, linguistics, astronomy, environmental engineering, archeology and so forth–were gathered. A report (PDF) describes the research and recommendations they offered, and, to its immense credit, cites Shelley’s Ozymandius.
The plan, as outlined in this subsequent, tedious 58-page report (PDF), is to erect a series of 25-foot-high granite monuments with messages in seven languages–English, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabic and Navajo. There will also be a bunch of nine-inch markers made of fired clay and aluminum oxide buried at random locations and depths throughout the facility.
There will be three rooms–two buried and one information centre on the surface–which will provide more detailed information about the site. Lastly, the whole thing will be surrounded by a 33-foot-high berm in a square shape. It will be laced with radar reflectors and magnets to “alert future populations that something out of the ordinary is present at this site when aerial or other surveys are performed”.
The links in the last two paragraphs go to diagrams taken from the aforementioned government report. You can see the complete set, if you’re so inclined.
Some Alternative Strategies
Having read and talked about the actual plan, my wife and I devised some alternative strategies. Why don’t just hand the thing over to the Catholic Church for safe-keeping? They’ve demonstrated that they can protect secrets in the longterm. It’s a pity that can’t just bury all that waste under the Vatican, eh?
Along similar lines, create a secret society or cult to oversee the project. You’d probably have to manufacture some back story so that it didn’t seem like a really fresh cult. It’s got to feel steeped in history and influential in world events. I suggest this because secret societies have apparently lasted longer than nations and kingdoms.
Lastly, you could fund an annual storytelling contest associated with the site. Offer sizable cash prizes, and get people to write songs, poems, short stories and produce films and plays about the site. With any luck, one of them will prove timeless. This is actually a pretty lame idea, because you’d need to find a Shakespeare to make your story of warning to last even five hundred years.
How would you keep people away from this future nightmare in the New Mexico desert?
No Comments »
August 28th, 2007, 16 Comments »
ZDNet reports that YouTube faces criticism and possible legal action for hosting anti-semitic videos:
The videos hosted on YouTube include clips of a 1940 anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Suess and two music videos of outlawed German far-right rock band Landser, which show footage from World War II depicting Nazi military operations.
Report Mainz, which is due to air the program, said in a statement that Social Democrat (SPD) parliamentarian Dieter Wiefelspuetz said airing the clips on YouTube in Germany was scandalous. Report Mainz quoted him as saying: “Publishing these films amounts to aiding and abetting incitement of the people.”
You know, the older I get, the less sure I am about dealing with hate speech, particularly in a context like YouTube. After all, the web has increasingly sophisticated filtering mechanisms which enable the truth to bubble to the top. Nothing lives in isolation online, and so people who comment on and link to a hateful video can dilute much of its power. Is metadata a reasonable replacement for anti-hate speech laws?
Being a Caucasian, male, straight Westerner, I’m pretty much in every majority group you’d care to identify, and so I’m not really the target of any such speech. I’d probably feel differently if my grandparents died at Auschwitz.
I couldn’t figure out how to tastefully work in a reference to JewTube in this post, but it’s just staring us in the face, isn’t it?
16 Comments »
June 20th, 2007, 2 Comments »
To understand the last forty years in the Middle East, you need to understand the Six-Day War of 1967. That’s one of the messages of a fascinating, enlightening four-part BBC radio documentary about those formative days in June:
After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a sense of unfinished business in the region.
On the eve of war, Arab civilians believed propaganda broadcasts from Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s Egypt promising an easy victory over Israel; for Israeli citizens there was the feeling of anticipation of terrible defeat.
But the Israeli capability was underestimated - and Arab generals thought so too.
I’ve only listened to the first two parts, but it does a fantastic job of blending historical recordings with new interviews with those decision-makers and innocent bystanders who are still around. I’ve only ever had the vaguest grasp of Middle Eastern politics and history, and it’s a longterm project improve. This series has certainly helped in that regard.
2 Comments »
May 22nd, 2007, 7 Comments »
On June 10, 1940, Italy declared war on Britain. On the following morning, Italian bombers attacked Malta (then a British colony). Lonely Planet Malta picks up our story:
The only aircraft available on the islands on June 11 were three Gloster Gladiator biplanes–quickly named Faith, Hope and Charity–whose pilots fought with such skill and tenacity that Italian pilots estimated the strength of the Maltese squadron to be in the region of 25 aircraft!
Did the Italians ever acquit themselves well during World War II? I only ever seem to hear about Italian defeats.
Anyway, the story of Malta during World War II is fascinating, and I’d love to read a book length account (the aforementioned Lonely Planet recommends Siege: Malta, 1940 - 1943) of that period.
If you think the London Blitz was bad news for the British, consider that in 1942 the island suffer ed154 days and nights of continuous bombing. That compares with 57 days at the height of the aerial attacks on London.
Though the island was constantly attacked for three years, they never surrendered, and provided a critical tactical advantage for the allies in the Mediterrenean.
As you may have guessed, I visited Malta’s National War Museum today. They still have the remains of Faith on display. You can see a photo on this site.
7 Comments »
May 12th, 2007, 1 Comment »
This morning we went into Gozo’s main city of Rabat and paid our first visit to the citadel, which has been a fortress of one kind or another since 1500 BC. The current incarnation dates from the early 17th century, and was built by the Knights of St. John to defend the locals from raiding by French and Turkish privateers.
There’s an excellent baroque (and I mean baroque) cathedral just inside the citadel’s gates. We had a chat with a very cordial padre (you can seem him here busting out some more decorations), who pointed out the trompe-l’œil painting on the ceiling above the main dais. Apparently they ran out of money and couldn’t afford to build the cathedral’s dome, so they just painted it (with amazing effectiveness) on a round sheet of canvas above the altar. I don’t like taking photos inside churches, and it kind of has to be seen to be believed, anyway.
You’re able to walk all the way around the battlements of the citadel, and it affords an awesome view of the entire island. I took this photo looking down into the rooftops of the city below. After messing around with it in Photoshop, I’m pretty happy with the result. Maybe the treatment is a bit brash–you can decide (click for larger version):
1 Comment »
May 7th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Because I’m living in his neck of the woods (more or less), I’ve been reading some of The Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. Today I ran into an interesting couple of paragraphs (mine is a different translation, but the gist is the same) about the Scythians and their affection for the ganja:
Now they have a wild hemp in their country like flax, except that the hemp grows taller and stouter by far [goes on to explain how it makes good cloth].
The Scythians, then, take the seed of this hemp, and creeping under the felt covering of the tent they throw the seed on the stones glowing with the heat from the fire, and there it smoulders and makes usch a steam as no vapour-bath in Greece could surpass, and the steam makes the Scythians howl for joy. And hungry for hummus and pita.
All right, I added that last bit about the hummus, but the rest is pure Herodotus.
1 Comment »
April 28th, 2007, 2 Comments »
Dublin’s Landsdowne Road is the oldest rugby ground in the world that hosts international matches. They also have international soccer/football matches there–I saw Ireland beat Russia there in a friendly back in 2002. It’s currently undergoing a €365 million renovation, and due to be reopened in 2009.
In the meantime, the Irish Rugby Foorball Union is holding a massive auction of the stadium’s ‘assets’. It’s running online this weekend, and you can get yourself any number of bits of memorabilia: seats, coat hooks (?) and even sections of the turf. Highest priced item at the moment? A Scotland vs. Ireland ‘touch judge flag’ (is that the thing that sits in the corner of the field, like where they take corner kicks from?) from 1924, currently going for €1.626,00.
2 Comments »
April 26th, 2007, No Comments »
Over the past week or so, I’ve taken a few random photos which each merited commentary, if not their own blog post. In all cases, click the images for larger sizes.
We visited Minerve, which is a charming hilltop medieval town. Beside the church, there was a little museum of archeaology and paleontology. There were a series of, well, high-school quality dioramas inside, including this awesome one. The context, I think, is fairly obvious:
There was another diorama of the Siege of Minerve in 1210. The Cathars, a religious group declared heretics by the church, had been mostly slaughtered by Crusade armies at Beziers. A couple of hundred escaped to Minerve, where they were besieged and eventually burned alive:
I turned on the TV in our Dublin hotel, and surfed to a new (to me, at least) channel called Setanta Sports (man, that URL ought to be a lot shorter). Low and behold, there was ice hockey on TV. And it was those embattled giants of the frozen game, Ireland vs. Luxembourg.
By Canadian standards, it was amateur hour all around, from the on-ice play to the commentary to the charming scale of the Dundalk Ice Dome. Still, I was pleased to see that Ireland will be promoted from Division Three to Division Two after a shootout victory. The other teams in the tournament: New Zealand (who took home the gold), South Africa, Mongolia (they got their Yak-riding asses handed to them by everybody) and Luxembourg. Awesome:
No Comments »
