Here we have one of my favorite exhibits, disposable coffee cup lids from the 70's onward. This is the sort of exhibit I see that lets me know I'm at a quality museum. No one said these were exciting, no one said people demanded to see coffee cup lids. Someone pointed out they're a subtle, important change to how we lived our lives that started decades ago and they're going to make a display about them, dammit. It is the largest public collection of disposable coffee cup lids in the world and was donated by the owners of the largest private collection of coffee cup lids.
Is this better curated if you see it in person? I don't see much history there, just random noise.
Each display is part of a larger piece that details a historical trend.
Those lids are part of a piece that details Ameica’s transition from food being primarily made and consumed at home to businesses offering alternatives that catered to and encouraged a new lifestyle.
No, it's not. We were there last year, and were extremely disappointed in the American History Museum. The history is so weak that we wondered if it were meant to be a satire of a museum.
This is mind boggling to me. I adore the history they document here. Only a few exhibits are dedicated to what I'd expect of a traditional museum while the rest eschew great man history to detail everything else that guided America to where it is today.
I don't care nearly as much about the display about George Washington as I care about the restored 18th century home people lived in during his time.
Quid on
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
An innocent bear gave up his life to make that hat, and I for one am appalled at your lack of consideration. Bear Lives Matter.
I do feel for the bear, and the hat is rockin', but the clear winner of the photo (in pretty much every category) is the man on the right.
He has the confidence to present one of the weakest 19th century combovers I've seen, because he knows his beard if the manliest thing in the shot. The fullness is sublime and it has a luxurious sheen to it.
That being said, I do want some of whatever the center guy smoked or ate, because he looks so high he could possibly qualify as a Victorian astronaut.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Here we have one of my favorite exhibits, disposable coffee cup lids from the 70's onward. This is the sort of exhibit I see that lets me know I'm at a quality museum. No one said these were exciting, no one said people demanded to see coffee cup lids. Someone pointed out they're a subtle, important change to how we lived our lives that started decades ago and they're going to make a display about them, dammit. It is the largest public collection of disposable coffee cup lids in the world and was donated by the owners of the largest private collection of coffee cup lids.
Is this better curated if you see it in person? I don't see much history there, just random noise.
Each display is part of a larger piece that details a historical trend.
Those lids are part of a piece that details Ameica’s transition from food being primarily made and consumed at home to businesses offering alternatives that catered to and encouraged a new lifestyle.
Well, it's more that the coffee cup lids seem to just be random. There is no obvious trend to my eye.
I would actually love to be given a brief historical overview about how changes in design techniques and aesthetic sensibilities have affected the evolution of coffee cup lid design.
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
Nobody's ever been able to explain to me an actual method for how what is and is not relevant gets chosen.
It always comes of more as picking and choosing what is and is not acceptable to modern audience, it would be interesting hear about it from someone who actually has some knowledge of it.
Basically, the Gospels>>the Acts and Letters of the Apostles>>Old testament
The rest of the new testament after the gospels is basically interpretive but is considered authoritative as the supposed writers(some books are a bit more questionable on authorship than others) either knew Christ directly or knew his immediate followers. The Old Testament is generally for historical and theological context and is not considered authoritative unless also supported by the New Testament.
In practice, while I have known some Baptists with an impressive handle on their theology and epistemology, the evangelical side of things tends to play a lot faster and looser with interpreting things into solid rules (for example, a hard prohibition on alcohol, which is difficult to provide any Biblical basis for at all, or views on sexuality which tend to rely a lot on stretching meaning from tenuously related passages)
I think the smithsonian veers a bit far toward pop culture/americana sorts of things; like last time I was there (granted some years ago) they had the (supposed) original leather Fonzie jacket in a relatively prominent position. And it's like, okay, Happy Days is relatively significant as a period piece... but who gives a shit
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I think the smithsonian veers a bit far toward pop culture/americana sorts of things; like last time I was there (granted some years ago) they had the (supposed) original leather Fonzie jacket in a relatively prominent position. And it's like, okay, Happy Days is relatively significant as a period piece... but who gives a shit
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
Nobody's ever been able to explain to me an actual method for how what is and is not relevant gets chosen.
It always comes of more as picking and choosing what is and is not acceptable to modern audience, it would be interesting hear about it from someone who actually has some knowledge of it.
Basically, the Gospels>>the Acts and Letters of the Apostles>>Old testament
The rest of the new testament after the gospels is basically interpretive but is considered authoritative as the supposed writers(some books are a bit more questionable on authorship than others) either knew Christ directly or knew his immediate followers. The Old Testament is generally for historical and theological context and is not considered authoritative unless also supported by the New Testament.
In practice, while I have known some Baptists with an impressive handle on their theology and epistemology, the evangelical side of things tends to play a lot faster and looser with interpreting things into solid rules (for example, a hard prohibition on alcohol, which is difficult to provide any Biblical basis for at all, or views on sexuality which tend to rely a lot on stretching meaning from tenuously related passages)
Gospels were written decades after the supposed death of Christ, nobody knows who wrote them (and some bibles even have a footnote about that), or how accurate the surviving ones are to the ones written in the first or second century (and they are contradictory to each other).
My point is more about any actual method, beyond reader prefernce, in picking which points to follow, which to ignore, what is allegorical, what is literal, and so on and so forth.
Each denomination has their own opinion, some of which can vary pretty wildly from each other, from what is taken as literal and what is not, to what translation is right, to even what the 10 commandments are.
Catholics say not to covet your neighbors wife.
Protestants prohibit graven images.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
In 1721, King George I told several condemned prisoners they could be inoculated with smallpox to test a smallpox vaccine. He promised their freedom if they lived.
Found this in my Microbiology book. Man that's one step removed from the nazis. Why aren't all the royals gone yet?
In 1721, King George I told several condemned prisoners they could be inoculated with smallpox to test a smallpox vaccine. He promised their freedom if they lived.
Found this in my Microbiology book. Man that's one step removed from the nazis. Why aren't all the royals gone yet?
They were offered the choice though, instead of having it done to them without even their knowledge like the men in Tuskegee
Offering condemned prisoners freedom or commutation of a death sentence to imprisonment in return for taking those kinds of risks was common practice at the time.
That isn't even as bad as using orphans to transport the smallpox vaccine or using orphans to test vaccines in the 20th century before medical ethics became less of an afterthought.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
Nobody's ever been able to explain to me an actual method for how what is and is not relevant gets chosen.
It always comes of more as picking and choosing what is and is not acceptable to modern audience, it would be interesting hear about it from someone who actually has some knowledge of it.
Basically, the Gospels>>the Acts and Letters of the Apostles>>Old testament
The rest of the new testament after the gospels is basically interpretive but is considered authoritative as the supposed writers(some books are a bit more questionable on authorship than others) either knew Christ directly or knew his immediate followers. The Old Testament is generally for historical and theological context and is not considered authoritative unless also supported by the New Testament.
In practice, while I have known some Baptists with an impressive handle on their theology and epistemology, the evangelical side of things tends to play a lot faster and looser with interpreting things into solid rules (for example, a hard prohibition on alcohol, which is difficult to provide any Biblical basis for at all, or views on sexuality which tend to rely a lot on stretching meaning from tenuously related passages)
Gospels were written decades after the supposed death of Christ, nobody knows who wrote them (and some bibles even have a footnote about that), or how accurate the surviving ones are to the ones written in the first or second century (and they are contradictory to each other).
My point is more about any actual method, beyond reader prefernce, in picking which points to follow, which to ignore, what is allegorical, what is literal, and so on and so forth.
Each denomination has their own opinion, some of which can vary pretty wildly from each other, from what is taken as literal and what is not, to what translation is right, to even what the 10 commandments are.
Catholics say not to covet your neighbors wife.
Protestants prohibit graven images.
So
It's not an exact answer for you, as it's got nothing to do with the New Testament.
But in Jewish tradition, we get there with lots of arguing. Discussing. And more arguing.
Almost any of the Commandments that involved the Temple or Jerusalem have been suspended until the Temple is rebuilt. That's a significant portion of most of Leviticus.
If you're deeply curious, check out the full Talmud. It's the recorded history of Torah scholarship through history. Maimonides argues with Rambam, who is centuries later argued with by Baal Shem Tov (I may have the spelling wrong). Or do to a nearby synagogue with adult classes.
We argue, we discuss, and there are men (and now more and more women) who dedicate their lives to this Study so that we can overall have guidance.
You'll rarely find anybody in agreement completely on everything. But we are usually ok with meeting in the middle.
It's both. There's stuff that is effectively ignored (if not outright rejected), and stuff that is, erm, taken as gospel (in the colloquial sense).
Eg, commandments for genocide or other sticky bits. Usually they are at least ignored. What is ignored and what is gospel depends on the denomination/person/time/culture.
Well depending on the interpretation everything in the old testament is superseded anyway. There’s a lot more theology that goes into it than just picking and choosing, though depending on church and pastor there can be a fair amount of that as well.
Nobody's ever been able to explain to me an actual method for how what is and is not relevant gets chosen.
It always comes of more as picking and choosing what is and is not acceptable to modern audience, it would be interesting hear about it from someone who actually has some knowledge of it.
Basically, the Gospels>>the Acts and Letters of the Apostles>>Old testament
The rest of the new testament after the gospels is basically interpretive but is considered authoritative as the supposed writers(some books are a bit more questionable on authorship than others) either knew Christ directly or knew his immediate followers. The Old Testament is generally for historical and theological context and is not considered authoritative unless also supported by the New Testament.
In practice, while I have known some Baptists with an impressive handle on their theology and epistemology, the evangelical side of things tends to play a lot faster and looser with interpreting things into solid rules (for example, a hard prohibition on alcohol, which is difficult to provide any Biblical basis for at all, or views on sexuality which tend to rely a lot on stretching meaning from tenuously related passages)
Gospels were written decades after the supposed death of Christ, nobody knows who wrote them (and some bibles even have a footnote about that), or how accurate the surviving ones are to the ones written in the first or second century (and they are contradictory to each other).
My point is more about any actual method, beyond reader prefernce, in picking which points to follow, which to ignore, what is allegorical, what is literal, and so on and so forth.
Each denomination has their own opinion, some of which can vary pretty wildly from each other, from what is taken as literal and what is not, to what translation is right, to even what the 10 commandments are.
Catholics say not to covet your neighbors wife.
Protestants prohibit graven images.
So
It's not an exact answer for you, as it's got nothing to do with the New Testament.
But in Jewish tradition, we get there with lots of arguing. Discussing. And more arguing.
Almost any of the Commandments that involved the Temple or Jerusalem have been suspended until the Temple is rebuilt. That's a significant portion of most of Leviticus.
If you're deeply curious, check out the full Talmud. It's the recorded history of Torah scholarship through history. Maimonides argues with Rambam, who is centuries later argued with by Baal Shem Tov (I may have the spelling wrong). Or do to a nearby synagogue with adult classes.
We argue, we discuss, and there are men (and now more and more women) who dedicate their lives to this Study so that we can overall have guidance.
You'll rarely find anybody in agreement completely on everything. But we are usually ok with meeting in the middle.
There are no organized Talmud style writings for Christianity, unfortunately, but there is a long history of religious philosophy and epistemology. The Pauline Epistles are mostly about this kind of thing, moving out of the Bible there’s Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, etc. in the early days and after the reformation it was all pretty much the wild west though rather than more moderated discussion, which would have probably saved a lot of conflict over the years.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I dunno, hanging vs medical test? I would probably take the test.
It's more a question of Hanging vs being infected with smallpox
I'd take the hanging
Hanging gives you a near 100% chance of dying, vs. 30% of regular smallpox infection. I think most people would pick the option that gives a 2/3 chance of survival vs. a 0/3 chance.
I dunno, hanging vs medical test? I would probably take the test.
It's more a question of Hanging vs being infected with smallpox
I'd take the hanging
Hanging gives you a near 100% chance of dying, vs. 30% of regular smallpox infection. I think most people would pick the option that gives a 2/3 chance of survival vs. a 0/3 chance.
I mean you can always change your mind and say "actually hanging sounds good, let's do that"
I had planned on waiting until the actual anniversary but it transpires that I'm gonna be doing some traveling that day, so I figure I'll just post this now:
On December 15, 1791 Virginia became the 10th of 14 states to ratify the bill of rights, enshrining them in the constitution and providing the apotheosis of the revolutionary movement begun with the declaration of independence. Most of the ideas in the bill of rights have become so central to modern life that they seem obvious and noncontroversial, none more than its guarantee of individual religious freedom. This belies the challenge faced by the framers though: they had to cleave themselves from a european tradition that for hundreds of years imbued churches with the power of the state. The Church of England held such a position in the Virginia colony, until Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom de-established it in 1786 (hat tip to Madison for actually y'know, getting it through the legislature.) The statute was the first of its kind in the colonies and substantively predicted the establishment and free exercise clauses.
The intellectual history of our governing document goes largely un-taught in American schools; at best students might read a bit of Locke or Voltaire, but usually the Framers' work simply claimed to be original (and/or divinely inspired) wisdom. The reality is that many were scholars and men of letters, and they approached the problem of creating of a new government the way you might expect: research.
Thomas Jefferson's curriculum included the 16th century French historian Francois Petis de la Croix' history of the Mongol Empire, The History of Genghizcan the Great, First Emperor of the Ancient Moguls and Tartars. Benjamin Franklin (another notable francophile) had imported the work, and Jefferson took enough of a shine to it to order several copies: the original french, a translation bound in leather (which by way of Monticello now resides in the library of congress) and a copy for his granddaughter, with an inscription urging her to read and study it.
Genghis Khan created by conquest a more diverse empire than any seen before in history, and arguably since. He ruled christians, jews, many sects of muslims, buddhists, taoists, chinese confucians, zoroastrians and manicheans (the remnants who fled persia, anyway) as well as pagan and animist tribal peoples. By the time he reached his middle age he was less concerned with expansion than figuring out how to forge such a diverse people into a unified state.
Genghis was what the modern era might call a deist; he subscribed to no specific religion and was often contemptuous of clergy (who inevitably in his judgment failed to live up to their high principles.) This attitude led hundreds of years of european history to dismiss him as a savage barbarian (Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was banned by the Catholic Church in part for its re-evaluation of him), but this was far from the truth. He recognized the value of religion as a moral teacher, and for the influence it had over his people. He saw that he could not rule a state riven by internecine religious conflict and this understanding became the foundation of Ikh Yasa, the Mongol Great (or First) Law. In Petis de la Croix' translation, it forbade any Mongol or subject to "disturb or molest any person on account of religion" and provided "that all men shall be free to profess their opinions in matters of religion."
Religious freedom was not an unknown concept in history; many ancient muslim states allowed other churches in subordinate positions, and india and china both had long histories of of co-existing (if not exactly tolerant) religious groups. Many of the american colonies passed acts protecting different churches (though mostly rival Christian sects.) But Genghis Khan's formulation of it as an individual right unmoored from any specific church remained as revolutionary in the 18th century west as it was in his own time. Jefferson probably drew on many sources when he composed the Virginia Statute, but it's hard to escape the idea that his language was heavily influenced by that of the Mongol ruler almost 600 years prior:
... No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I had planned on waiting until the actual anniversary but it transpires that I'm gonna be doing some traveling that day, so I figure I'll just post this now:
Of course it didn't take that long for the US government to start backtracking. From the 1850s and to this day there have been effords to errode that religious freedom...a movement that rose to its heights in the 1950s (with for example the National Motto and the Pledge of Allegiance).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I've always wondered how the requirement to not make laws respecting establishment of religion ended up turning into an absolute requirement to subsidize religion in general through exemption from taxation. Was that planned from the beginning?
Probably to avoid selective or preferable taxation as an indirect establishment- the founding fathers would have known about the jizya and what taxation of religion could represent.
Ironically, the jizya (which was put in place to encourage people to convert) led to greater religious tolerance, because forcing religious minorities to convert meant losing a source of tax. So for a long time, they were protected and not forced to convert. It didn't last though.
Ironically, the jizya (which was put in place to encourage people to convert) led to greater religious tolerance, because forcing religious minorities to convert meant losing a source of tax. So for a long time, they were protected and not forced to convert. It didn't last though.
Equally ironically, the Established church continues in Great Britain, now one of the most secular nations on earth.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Behold (under spoilers, because a bare boob), the Bikini Mosaic:
And a work safe closeup:
Yes, it's exactly what you think you're seeing. That's two Roman ladies in what's looks very close to bikinis tossing around a ball in what we're all going to assume is Roman volleyball. The full mosaic is in a room called the "Chamber of the Ten Maidens" and it is officially called “Coronation of the Winner” since it involves women practicing in gymnastics and an award being given to a winner of the competition, but it was excavated in 1960 and the bikini swimsuit had been invented a decade ago, so everybody calls it the Bikini Mosaic. It's located in Villa Romana del Casale, a ruined villa of Sicily, built by someone exceedingly rich and powerful (possibly even one of the emperors of the time) and is known for its grand mosaics, such as the Grand Hunt, which can't really be shown on a single photograph because
it covers an entire corridor. Because these are not small mosaics.
Those are life-size ladies.
This has no real historical significance. It didn't inspire any changes in history or alter any courses of events. This was just the decadent display of the super-rich if you're going to be blunt about it. I just find it amusing whenever we find some instance of something not being new under the sun. Found a swimsuit calendar of scantily clad ladies doing sporting stuff? Romans did that.
I was looking at pictures from that secret museum in Naples full of dirty Pompeii stuff and man there's this statue of Pan goin to town on a goat and I'm pretty sure I'd get fucked up for posting it here, them Romans were wild
Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.
Romans were only wild by our standards.
By contemporary morality they were viewed as dour, with (if I remember correctly) a greek remarking that the romans knew nothing of joy or culture, they knew only to rule and knew it well.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Romans were only wild by our standards.
By contemporary morality they were viewed as dour, with (if I remember correctly) a greek remarking that the romans knew nothing of joy or culture, they knew only to rule and knew it well.
Behold (under spoilers, because a bare boob), the Bikini Mosaic:
This has no real historical significance. It didn't inspire any changes in history or alter any courses of events. This was just the decadent display of the super-rich if you're going to be blunt about it. I just find it amusing whenever we find some instance of something not being new under the sun. Found a swimsuit calendar of scantily clad ladies doing sporting stuff? Romans did that.
My favorite dirty Pompeii stuff was the massive amounts of graffiti they found on the walls.
People were shitposting thousands of years before the internet was even invented.
One of my favorites is in one of the tunnels into the Colosseum. Basically, on one line, it says something like "Hippodochus is beautiful" and, right underneath it, someone else wrote "Says who?"
FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Sling bullets found in various Greek and Roman sites were found to be covered in tiny carvings of smack talk, like "Take This" and "Here It Comes, You Assh_le".
Sling bullets found in various Greek and Roman sites were found to be covered in tiny carvings of smack talk, like "Take This" and "Here It Comes, You Assh_le".
Posts
Each display is part of a larger piece that details a historical trend.
Those lids are part of a piece that details Ameica’s transition from food being primarily made and consumed at home to businesses offering alternatives that catered to and encouraged a new lifestyle.
This is mind boggling to me. I adore the history they document here. Only a few exhibits are dedicated to what I'd expect of a traditional museum while the rest eschew great man history to detail everything else that guided America to where it is today.
I don't care nearly as much about the display about George Washington as I care about the restored 18th century home people lived in during his time.
He has the confidence to present one of the weakest 19th century combovers I've seen, because he knows his beard if the manliest thing in the shot. The fullness is sublime and it has a luxurious sheen to it.
That being said, I do want some of whatever the center guy smoked or ate, because he looks so high he could possibly qualify as a Victorian astronaut.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Well, it's more that the coffee cup lids seem to just be random. There is no obvious trend to my eye.
Basically, the Gospels>>the Acts and Letters of the Apostles>>Old testament
The rest of the new testament after the gospels is basically interpretive but is considered authoritative as the supposed writers(some books are a bit more questionable on authorship than others) either knew Christ directly or knew his immediate followers. The Old Testament is generally for historical and theological context and is not considered authoritative unless also supported by the New Testament.
In practice, while I have known some Baptists with an impressive handle on their theology and epistemology, the evangelical side of things tends to play a lot faster and looser with interpreting things into solid rules (for example, a hard prohibition on alcohol, which is difficult to provide any Biblical basis for at all, or views on sexuality which tend to rely a lot on stretching meaning from tenuously related passages)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Tens of millions of taxpaying voting boomers
My point is more about any actual method, beyond reader prefernce, in picking which points to follow, which to ignore, what is allegorical, what is literal, and so on and so forth.
Each denomination has their own opinion, some of which can vary pretty wildly from each other, from what is taken as literal and what is not, to what translation is right, to even what the 10 commandments are.
Catholics say not to covet your neighbors wife.
Protestants prohibit graven images.
Opium
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
It's more a question of Hanging vs being infected with smallpox
I'd take the hanging
They were offered the choice though, instead of having it done to them without even their knowledge like the men in Tuskegee
Offering condemned prisoners freedom or commutation of a death sentence to imprisonment in return for taking those kinds of risks was common practice at the time.
So
It's not an exact answer for you, as it's got nothing to do with the New Testament.
But in Jewish tradition, we get there with lots of arguing. Discussing. And more arguing.
Almost any of the Commandments that involved the Temple or Jerusalem have been suspended until the Temple is rebuilt. That's a significant portion of most of Leviticus.
If you're deeply curious, check out the full Talmud. It's the recorded history of Torah scholarship through history. Maimonides argues with Rambam, who is centuries later argued with by Baal Shem Tov (I may have the spelling wrong). Or do to a nearby synagogue with adult classes.
We argue, we discuss, and there are men (and now more and more women) who dedicate their lives to this Study so that we can overall have guidance.
You'll rarely find anybody in agreement completely on everything. But we are usually ok with meeting in the middle.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
There are no organized Talmud style writings for Christianity, unfortunately, but there is a long history of religious philosophy and epistemology. The Pauline Epistles are mostly about this kind of thing, moving out of the Bible there’s Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, etc. in the early days and after the reformation it was all pretty much the wild west though rather than more moderated discussion, which would have probably saved a lot of conflict over the years.
Hanging gives you a near 100% chance of dying, vs. 30% of regular smallpox infection. I think most people would pick the option that gives a 2/3 chance of survival vs. a 0/3 chance.
I mean you can always change your mind and say "actually hanging sounds good, let's do that"
On December 15, 1791 Virginia became the 10th of 14 states to ratify the bill of rights, enshrining them in the constitution and providing the apotheosis of the revolutionary movement begun with the declaration of independence. Most of the ideas in the bill of rights have become so central to modern life that they seem obvious and noncontroversial, none more than its guarantee of individual religious freedom. This belies the challenge faced by the framers though: they had to cleave themselves from a european tradition that for hundreds of years imbued churches with the power of the state. The Church of England held such a position in the Virginia colony, until Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom de-established it in 1786 (hat tip to Madison for actually y'know, getting it through the legislature.) The statute was the first of its kind in the colonies and substantively predicted the establishment and free exercise clauses.
The intellectual history of our governing document goes largely un-taught in American schools; at best students might read a bit of Locke or Voltaire, but usually the Framers' work simply claimed to be original (and/or divinely inspired) wisdom. The reality is that many were scholars and men of letters, and they approached the problem of creating of a new government the way you might expect: research.
Thomas Jefferson's curriculum included the 16th century French historian Francois Petis de la Croix' history of the Mongol Empire, The History of Genghizcan the Great, First Emperor of the Ancient Moguls and Tartars. Benjamin Franklin (another notable francophile) had imported the work, and Jefferson took enough of a shine to it to order several copies: the original french, a translation bound in leather (which by way of Monticello now resides in the library of congress) and a copy for his granddaughter, with an inscription urging her to read and study it.
Genghis Khan created by conquest a more diverse empire than any seen before in history, and arguably since. He ruled christians, jews, many sects of muslims, buddhists, taoists, chinese confucians, zoroastrians and manicheans (the remnants who fled persia, anyway) as well as pagan and animist tribal peoples. By the time he reached his middle age he was less concerned with expansion than figuring out how to forge such a diverse people into a unified state.
Genghis was what the modern era might call a deist; he subscribed to no specific religion and was often contemptuous of clergy (who inevitably in his judgment failed to live up to their high principles.) This attitude led hundreds of years of european history to dismiss him as a savage barbarian (Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was banned by the Catholic Church in part for its re-evaluation of him), but this was far from the truth. He recognized the value of religion as a moral teacher, and for the influence it had over his people. He saw that he could not rule a state riven by internecine religious conflict and this understanding became the foundation of Ikh Yasa, the Mongol Great (or First) Law. In Petis de la Croix' translation, it forbade any Mongol or subject to "disturb or molest any person on account of religion" and provided "that all men shall be free to profess their opinions in matters of religion."
Religious freedom was not an unknown concept in history; many ancient muslim states allowed other churches in subordinate positions, and india and china both had long histories of of co-existing (if not exactly tolerant) religious groups. Many of the american colonies passed acts protecting different churches (though mostly rival Christian sects.) But Genghis Khan's formulation of it as an individual right unmoored from any specific church remained as revolutionary in the 18th century west as it was in his own time. Jefferson probably drew on many sources when he composed the Virginia Statute, but it's hard to escape the idea that his language was heavily influenced by that of the Mongol ruler almost 600 years prior:
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Of course it didn't take that long for the US government to start backtracking. From the 1850s and to this day there have been effords to errode that religious freedom...a movement that rose to its heights in the 1950s (with for example the National Motto and the Pledge of Allegiance).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Equally ironically, the Established church continues in Great Britain, now one of the most secular nations on earth.
And a work safe closeup:
Yes, it's exactly what you think you're seeing. That's two Roman ladies in what's looks very close to bikinis tossing around a ball in what we're all going to assume is Roman volleyball. The full mosaic is in a room called the "Chamber of the Ten Maidens" and it is officially called “Coronation of the Winner” since it involves women practicing in gymnastics and an award being given to a winner of the competition, but it was excavated in 1960 and the bikini swimsuit had been invented a decade ago, so everybody calls it the Bikini Mosaic. It's located in Villa Romana del Casale, a ruined villa of Sicily, built by someone exceedingly rich and powerful (possibly even one of the emperors of the time) and is known for its grand mosaics, such as the Grand Hunt, which can't really be shown on a single photograph because
it covers an entire corridor. Because these are not small mosaics.
Those are life-size ladies.
This has no real historical significance. It didn't inspire any changes in history or alter any courses of events. This was just the decadent display of the super-rich if you're going to be blunt about it. I just find it amusing whenever we find some instance of something not being new under the sun. Found a swimsuit calendar of scantily clad ladies doing sporting stuff? Romans did that.
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They weren't kidding.
So many dicks. Dick windchimes, dick statues, orgies, and then back to the dicks.
By contemporary morality they were viewed as dour, with (if I remember correctly) a greek remarking that the romans knew nothing of joy or culture, they knew only to rule and knew it well.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Romans being all "um, yeah?"
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People were shitposting thousands of years before the internet was even invented.
One of my favorites is in one of the tunnels into the Colosseum. Basically, on one line, it says something like "Hippodochus is beautiful" and, right underneath it, someone else wrote "Says who?"
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Most obscure SNL reference. Those guys were pretty gung-ho about Desert Storm.
My favorite is "catch!"