Rich people plan for three generations. Poor people plan for Saturday night.
Celebrated as “the German Darwin”, German biologist Ernst Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; his The Riddle of the Universe sold half a million copies in Germany alone, and was translated into dozens of other languages. Hostile to Jewish and Christian traditions, Haeckel devised his own “religion of science” called Monism, which incorporated an anthropology that divided the human species into a hierarchy of racial groups. Though he died in 1919, before the Nazi Party had been founded, his ideas, and widespread influence in Germany, unquestionably helped to create an intellectual climate in which policies of racial slavery and genocide were able to claim a basis in science.
Who was...Isaiah Thomas?
About
480 million years ago, the seven-foot-long Aegirocassis benmoulae swam
about in the sea. The lobster-like sea creature used its flaps and
long segmented body to get around. And unlike many of its fellow
relatives, it ate plankton. 'It would have dwarfed anything else at the
time, being twice as big as the next biggest animal,' says Peter Van
Roy, an archeologist at Yale University and a co-author of a study
published recently
about Aegirocassis benmoulae.
The First
Crusade, called by Pope Urban II in 1095, was 427 years after the Muslim siege of Constantinople and 249 years after the Muslims sacked Rome.
When
twelve-year-old Andrew Carnegie emigrated to Allegheny, Pennsylvania
(now part of Pittsburgh) he began work as a bobbin boy at a cotton
factory. By age fourteen he had moved on to become a messenger at the
telegraph office. In his spare hours he liked to read, both for pleasure
and with an eye to improvement. There was no public library, the only
books available being a private collection of about 400 volumes which a
local man, Col. James Anderson, opened up every Saturday as a
"Mechanics' and Apprentices' Library." In 1901, Andrew Carnegie offered
New York City $5.2 million for the construction of 65 branch libraries.
Of the 56.5 million given by Carnegie for over 2500 libraries in a
dozen countries, this was his largest single grant.
Interest rates are at 700-year lows in Europe.
Sowell,
on how the intellectual frames his analysis and thesis: The 1920s, for
example, were a decade of huge changes for the people of the United
States: the change from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban
society, the spread of electricity, automobiles, and radios to vastly
more millions of Americans, the beginning of commercial air travel, the
revolutionizing of retail selling with resulting lower prices by the
rapid spread of chain stores. Yet when intellectuals refer to eras of
“change,” they almost never mention the 1920s – because these sweeping
changes in the way millions of Americans lived their lives were not the
particular kinds of changes envisioned by the intelligentsia, through
the particular kinds of social mechanisms envisioned by the
intelligentsia. In the eyes of much of the intelligentsia, the 1920s
(when that decade is thought of at all) are seen as a period of a
stagnant status quo, presided over by conservative administrations
opposed to “change.”
Thresholds
have historically held significant symbolic value; for example, a
vampire cannot cross a threshold unless invited. The connection
between thresholds and vampires seems to be a concept of complicity
or allowance. Once a commitment is made to allow evil, evil can
re-enter at any time.
Nietzsche
understood that modern liberalism was a secular incarnation of
religious traditions. As a classical scholar, he recognized that a
mystical Greek faith in reason had shaped the cultural matrix from which
modern liberalism emerged. Some ancient Stoics defended the ideal of a
cosmopolitan society; but this was based in the belief that humans share
in the Logos, an immortal principle of rationality that was later
absorbed into the conception of God with which we are familiar.
Nietzsche was clear that the chief sources of liberalism were in Jewish
and Christian theism: that is why he was so bitterly hostile to these
religions. He was an atheist in large part because he rejected liberal
values. (John Grey in "The Guardian")
Golden oldie:
When Ibsen's Ghosts (produced
by subscription to avoid censors) appeared in London, its references
to syphilis, free-love, incest and euthanasia horrified the society. The
reviews included: An open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty
act done publicly. . . gross, almost putrid indecorum. . . . Nastiness
and malodorousness laid on thickly as with a trowel. . . . As foul and
filthy a concoction as has ever been allowed to disgrace the boards of
an English theatre. . . . Maunderings of nook-shotten Norwegians. . . .
If any repetition of this outrage be attempted, the authorities will
doubtless wake from their lethargy.
In
the first world war 324,000 Australians volunteered to fight overseas,
an extraordinary number in a nation of fewer than 5million people. Of
the 60,000 Australians who died in the war, 8,700 were lost in a few
months during a hopeless attempt to capture Gallipoli, a small piece of
territory in Turkey.
Before his fine career in basketball, Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) was a printer and bookseller in early America. A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible is
one of more than a hundred children's book titles published by him (it
added pictures to the bible to make it more children-friendly.) One of
Thomas' most significant ventures was The Massachusetts Spy, a
newspaper he founded with Fowle in 1770. Widely read and exceedingly
anti-British, his paper so angered Tory authorities that just three days
before the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Thomas was
forced to smuggle his press out of Boston to Worcester, Massachusetts,
where he remained for the next fifty-six years. His most enduring
legacy, however, is the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), which he established in Worcester in 1812.
Plangent: Adj.: 1. Loud and resounding. 2. Sad or mournful.
From
Latin plangere (to beat the breast, lament). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root plak- (to strike), which also gave us plague,
plankton, fling, and complain. Earliest documented use: 1666.
Fleming recounted that the date of his discovery of penicillin was on the morning of Friday, September 28, 1928. It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a Petri dish containing Staphylococcus plate culture he mistakenly left open, was contaminated by blue-green mould, which formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded the mould released a substance that repressed the growth and lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and discovered it was a mould, now known to be Penicillium notatum. After further experiments, Fleming was convinced penicillin could not last long enough in the human body to kill pathogenic bacteria, and stopped studying it after 1931. He restarted clinical trials in 1934. (Wiki)
There is a movement from the Daily Kos, to Democracy for America, to Campaign for America's Future to cancel the student debt in the country. But debt is never cancelled, as every liability is someone's asset. That asset holder will demand to be made whole in the form of more debt elsewhere. Like the debt in the 2008 meltdown, the burden will simply be transferred to someone else.
In 1848, Emily Brontë died at the age of thirty. Death and drama in the Brontë household dominated the surrounding eight months. In September, thirty-one-year-old Branwell had died in his exuberant manner, the last stages of his dissolution and tuberculosis expressed in delirium tremens cursing and despair. The following May, twenty-nine-year-old Anne would die in her co-operative, affirmative manner, also of tuberculosis. Squeezed between the two, also tuberculosis but typically as if on her own mysterious terms, came Emily's death. She never left the house after Branwell's death, never spoke of her condition or allowed others to, never gave up her work routine even on the last day, never allowed a doctor until literally the eleventh hour -- telling Charlotte just before noon, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now," and then dying at two o'clock.
Fleming recounted that the date of his discovery of penicillin was on the morning of Friday, September 28, 1928. It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a Petri dish containing Staphylococcus plate culture he mistakenly left open, was contaminated by blue-green mould, which formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded the mould released a substance that repressed the growth and lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and discovered it was a mould, now known to be Penicillium notatum. After further experiments, Fleming was convinced penicillin could not last long enough in the human body to kill pathogenic bacteria, and stopped studying it after 1931. He restarted clinical trials in 1934. (Wiki)
There is a movement from the Daily Kos, to Democracy for America, to Campaign for America's Future to cancel the student debt in the country. But debt is never cancelled, as every liability is someone's asset. That asset holder will demand to be made whole in the form of more debt elsewhere. Like the debt in the 2008 meltdown, the burden will simply be transferred to someone else.
In 1848, Emily Brontë died at the age of thirty. Death and drama in the Brontë household dominated the surrounding eight months. In September, thirty-one-year-old Branwell had died in his exuberant manner, the last stages of his dissolution and tuberculosis expressed in delirium tremens cursing and despair. The following May, twenty-nine-year-old Anne would die in her co-operative, affirmative manner, also of tuberculosis. Squeezed between the two, also tuberculosis but typically as if on her own mysterious terms, came Emily's death. She never left the house after Branwell's death, never spoke of her condition or allowed others to, never gave up her work routine even on the last day, never allowed a doctor until literally the eleventh hour -- telling Charlotte just before noon, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now," and then dying at two o'clock.
The
department store cannot be defined in terms of its brands and a party
cannot be defined in terms of its principles. A party is a group whose
members propose to act in concert in the competitive struggle for
political power.-- Joseph Schumpeter
Thousands of people were infected with Hepatitis C and HIV through NHS blood products in the 1970s and 80s. The contaminated blood scandal has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people.
Hundreds of those affected were in Scotland, which was the only part of the UK to hold an inquiry.
The probe, which was headed by former High Court judge Lord Penrose, said more should have been done to screen blood and donors for Hepatitis C in the early 1990s, and that the collection of blood from prisoners should have stopped sooner. Prisoners?
The Virginia Company established the colony of Jamestown in America in 1607. It had two tasks. The Virginians would supply staples for famine-prone England and at the same time bring the gospel to the Indians. A company broadsheet explained that God no longer worked through prophets and miracles; the only way to evangelize the world these days was 'mixtly, by discoverie, and trade of marchants.' Living on the Indians' land and trading with them, the colonists would 'sell to them the pearles of heaven' by 'dailie conversation.' So the quest for commodities, [Samuel] Purchas, [the company's propagandist] insisted, was not an end in itself, and the company would fail if it sought only profit; its chief objective was the conversion of native peoples rather than financial success.
Thousands of people were infected with Hepatitis C and HIV through NHS blood products in the 1970s and 80s. The contaminated blood scandal has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people.
Hundreds of those affected were in Scotland, which was the only part of the UK to hold an inquiry.
The probe, which was headed by former High Court judge Lord Penrose, said more should have been done to screen blood and donors for Hepatitis C in the early 1990s, and that the collection of blood from prisoners should have stopped sooner. Prisoners?
The Virginia Company established the colony of Jamestown in America in 1607. It had two tasks. The Virginians would supply staples for famine-prone England and at the same time bring the gospel to the Indians. A company broadsheet explained that God no longer worked through prophets and miracles; the only way to evangelize the world these days was 'mixtly, by discoverie, and trade of marchants.' Living on the Indians' land and trading with them, the colonists would 'sell to them the pearles of heaven' by 'dailie conversation.' So the quest for commodities, [Samuel] Purchas, [the company's propagandist] insisted, was not an end in itself, and the company would fail if it sought only profit; its chief objective was the conversion of native peoples rather than financial success.
AAAAAaaaaaaannnnndddddd.....a conceptual picture of Aegirocassis benmoulae:
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