Spain & America History

Today I'm amazed by the sheer number of Hispanics in America. In my town we don't just have "spanish" food but specific restaurants that are Colombian, Mexican, Argentina, Peruvian, etc. What makes the rise of Hispanic culture in America especially ironic is that Spain was the original European nation in America. (Yes, the Danes arrived early but they didn't stay and had little impact on the continent).

Following the "discovery" of America by Columbus on behalf the the Spanish, Juan Ponce de León explored Florida in 1513. In 1528, Panfilo de Narváez sailed along the Gulf Coast of the United States and was shipwrecked near Texas. Between 1539 and 1543, Hernando de Soto traveled along the Appalachian Mountains and the lower Mississippi Valley looking for “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola.” Francisco Vasquez de Coronado traveled deep into the great plains, as far as Kansas, looking for gold between 1541 and 1543. Smaller groups from his expedition discovered the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed up the west coast and claimed the California area for Spain.

Spain founded two of the oldest cities in the United States—St. Augustine, Florida, (1565) and Santa Fe, New Mexico (1609). And yet after almost a century of Spanish exploration, Spain disappears from American history. What happened?

One explanation could be that the explorers never found a city of gold in the region of the United States. They found riches in Mexico and South America by destroying the Incas in Peru and the Aztecs in Mexico and those regions were ruled by Spain for centuries. When the English and French came to the Americas, the US & Canada were the only option since Spain was very defensive of Mexico and everything south.

Spain was an active supporter of the American Revolution providing intelligence, food and ammunition to the revolutionaries from the beginning of the war. Benjamin Franklin reported from Paris to the Congressional Committee of Secret Correspondence in March 1777, that the Spanish court had quietly granted the rebels direct admission to the rich, previously restricted port of Havana under most favored nation status. Franklin also noted in the same report that three thousand barrels of gunpowder were waiting in New Orleans, and that the merchants in Bilbao "had orders to ship for us such necessaries as we might want."

Spain's help in the War was considered to be decisive in the final outcome by denying the British the opportunity of encircling the American rebels from the south, and keeping open a vital conduit for supplies. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez, (pictured above) defeated the British colonial forces at Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez in 1779, freeing the lower Mississippi Valley of British forces and relieved the threat to the capital of Louisiana, New Orleans. In 1780, he recaptured Mobile and in 1781 took by land and by sea Pensacola, leaving the British with no bases in the Gulf of Mexico, except for Jamaica. In recognition for his actions to the American cause, George Washington took him to his right in the parade of July 4 and the American Congress cited Gálvez for his aid during the Revolution.

King Charles III of Spain recognized George Washington, sending him gifts such as livestock from Spain that Washington had requested for his farm at Mount Vernon.

Interesting that our history books recognize France's help during the Revolutionary War but leave out Spain.

The Agincourt Gambit

Here is a delightful cartoon from xkcd for chess players that also appreciate history.

During the height of the Middle Ages the star of the battle field was the mounted Knight. With a long lance he could strike infantrymen before they got within sword range and then quickly move on. But the tide was turned at Agincourt where common English longbowmen (pawns) devastated the French noble cavalry (knights). They shot the horses with arrows!

From Wikipedia,

The French cavalry ...  charged the longbowmen, but it was a disaster, with the French knights unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the forest of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. [Horses] armoured only on the head, [became] dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation long range shots used as the charge started. [The] wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.

For Shakespeare fans, this battle was portrayed in Henry V where King Henry gives a famous St. Crispin's Day speech to rally the troops

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;

Keen on Keys?

Today I'll point you to Slate.com for a History of Keys. Click on the picture of a key that looks interesting to learn more. It will open a slideshow with a description on the upper right. For example:

In the medieval period, keys were more commonly made of iron than bronze, but they retained both their practical and symbolic purposes: securing valuables and showing that you were important enough to have valuables to secure. One way to convey your significance in this period? By carrying a really big key.

Astrology is geocentric?

When the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars; then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.
-lyrics from "Aquarius" by the 5th dimension

While looking at a list of the top 40 news stories shared in Facebook this year, I noticed that three of the 40 were about the Zodiac signs changing (or not changing). I recall hearing something about the signs being a month off but didn't pay much attention at the time since I do not believe in Astrology. But many Americans do.

The CNN story, "No, your zodiac sign hasn't changed" (#3 on the Facebook list) nicely explains the confusion that occurred. On Jan. 10, 2011 the  Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article in which a Minneapolis astronomer affirmed that due to a wobble in the earth's axis over thousands years, the sun has shifted one whole month in the zodiac. So when the astrology page say it's the "month" of Leo, the Sun is really in Cancer. Some astrology believers refused to accept this,

“I’ve known myself to be a Sagittarius, I believe, since I was born. So to come up now with some new sign? It’s unacceptable!”

The same astronomer also pointed out that there is a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus (Ooh-FEE-yew-kus), the Serpent Bearer, between Scorpio and Sagittarius. The sun in only in Scorpio for 1 week.

Astrologers were flooded with concerned phone calls. Is it true? Is the sun not where it's supposed to be according to the Zodiac calendar? Will everyone have to change?

The answer is ... Yes, the sun is not where you expect it to be AND no, you don't have to change. 

Huh?

The answer lies in ancient history. The original zodiac, invented by the ancient Babylonians (or ancient Hindus according to wikipedia), is sidereal, meaning based on the sun's position with the stars. So if you were born under the sign of Leo, the sun really was in Leo. But the earth has slowly wobbled under the pull of the moon and the sidereal calendar has shifted by one month.

However, the Astrology tables used by Western cultures today were created in the 2nd century AD by astronomer/astrology Ptolemy. In this tropical zodiac system the start of Aries is fixed to one solar equinox (March 21), and Libra at the other equinox in September. He knew about the sidereal drift and chose to ignore it by basing the calendar on the equinox (when the day is exactly 12 hours light & dark) instead of the sun's position in the sky.

So which system is "better"? Most "Western" astrologers are sticking with the tropical system but some are making money publishing books about the sidereal system or the 13th constellation.

CNN quotes astrologer Jeff Jawer, "When we look at the astrology used in the Western world, the seasonally based astrology has not changed, was never oriented to the constellations, and stands as … has been stated for two millenniums ... Astrology is geocentric. It relates life on Earth to the Earth’s environment, and seasons are the most dramatic effect, which is why we use the tropical zodiac."

Bottom Line

That "Astrology is geocentric" sounds like an oxymoron - a self contradicting phrase. But when you think about it, the statement is true. Astrology is about the position of the sun and planets from the earth's viewpoint. Or at least it used to be 2000 years ago. As an amateur star gazer I find some value in the sidereal calendar but fail to see the astrological value of the tropical calendar based on the earth's seasons with Aries associated with the start of Spring and Libra with the start of Fall regardless of where the sun is.

Seven Wonders of the World

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
–St. Augustine

It's nice to know that some things never change. People like to travel and tourism goes back to ancient times. There were tour-guide books as early as 400 BC but instead of the 1000 Places to See Before you Die, ancient Greece recommended the Seven Wonders of the World:

• Great Pyramid of Giza
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Statue of Zeus at Olympia
• Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
• Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
• Colossus of Rhodes
• Ishtar Gate

Later lists in the Middle Ages replaced the Ishtar Gate with the Lighthouse of Alexandria. That's a shame really because the Ishtar Gate (pictured above) is the only item on this list I've seen. The Ishtar Gate was reconstructed in the 1930s at the Pergamon Museum in East Berlin out of material excavated at Babylon. I highly recommend the Pergamon Museum; my wife & I both loved it. I had no idea that the Ishtar Gate was so famous (my wife says, duh, the plaque said it was a 7 Wonder). I was more impressed by the Pergamon Altar which the musuem is named after.

This original 7 Wonders List has spawned many imitators over the centuries like the 7 Engineering Wonders, the 7 Wonders of the Underwater World, 7 Wonders of the Industrial World, and so on. Since most of the places in the original list are destroyed, sites compete to be listed as one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World

• Stonehenge
• Colosseum
• Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
• Great Wall of China
• Porcelain Tower of Nanjing
• Hagia Sophia
• Leaning Tower of Pisa

Other sites sometimes included on such lists:

• Taj Mahal
• Cairo Citadel
• Ely Cathedral
• Cluny Abbey

Of these I've seen two, an advantage of having lived in Naples, Italy for nearly three years as a teenager, namely the Colosseum in Rome and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Bottom Line

The reason I wanted to discuss this is that there is a new list of Seven Natural Wonders of the World announced by New7Wonders. This group used a combination of public voting (ala American Idol style via phone and Internet)and an expert panel led by the former head of UNESCO to select the winners which were announced on October 11. National Geographic provided photos of each wonder.

1. Iguazú Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina
2. the Amazon Rain Forest
3. Halong Bay, near Hanoi, Vietnam
4. Jeju Island, South Korea
5. Komodo National Park, Indonesia
6. Puerto Princesa Underground River, Philippines
7. Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

Now this list and any list should be taken with a grain of salt. There are accusations that the New7Wonders is just a marketing scam (which they deny).

I'm must more impressed by the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites:

• Amalfi Coast
• Ancient Thebes
• Angkor
• Central Amazon
• Chichén Itzá
• Easter Island
• Great Barrier Reef
• The Great Wall

• Kremlin and Red Square
• Machu Picchu
• Petra
• Phoenix Islands
• Taj Mahal
• Versailles
• Victoria Falls
• Works of Antoni Gaudí

How can you NOT know what year you were born?

"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near"
- To his Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell

I enjoy doing genealogy, especially now-a-days with so many resources available on the Internet. But one thing always amazes me: the multiplicity of dates listed for the life event of a single person. A relative might be online as born on 15/1/1753 or 1/15/1752 or 15 Jan 1752/3 or 26 Jan 1753 or 1 Feb 1753 and all could be correct to some degree. How can that be?

The answer begins with the year 1582 when the Catholic church took action regarding calendar creep. The Julian calendar used since ancient Rome had a leap year every four years which is very good but still has an error of 11 minutes per year compared to the sun. By the 1580's this had accumulated to 10 days of error. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decreed changes:
1. All calendars in October would be advanced by 10 days to sync with the sun
2. Leap year would be skipped in years divisible by 100 (l900 was not a leap year) unless also divisible by 400 (so 2000 is a leap year) to eliminate the small drift.

Now this occurred after the Protestant Reformation so many countries ignored the papal decree which led to more confusion as different countries had different dates. Imagine it's Oct 11 in Italy with a contract to deliver something to Germany on their Oct 2, tomorrow. Eventually all(?) countries updated their calendars to the Gregorian system. This did not occur until 1752 in England by which point they had to skip 11 days to catch up. Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752.

Back to genealogy: John Smith was born Jan 15th, 1752 so this was just before the calendar change in September in England, right? Wrong. Like many murder mystery novels I've held back a vital clue. Gregory also changed the start of the year from March 25 to January 1. Under the old calendar the year went Nov 1752, Dec 1752, Jan 1752, Feb 1752, March 1752, April 1753 (new year).  Jan 15 was very late in the year 1752 under the Julian calendar but would be listed as 1753 under new system. Genealogists recommend writing this as 15 Jan 1752/3.

The change of starting month also affects Quaker dates. [I have a lot of Quakers in my family tree.] Quakers refused to use the days of the week names since this mention foreign gods: Thursday (Thor), Wednesday (Odin or Wodin), Saturday (Saturn). So they would list a birth as the 15th day of the 1st month of the year 1752. But what is the 1st month?  It was March prior to 1752 and January afterwards.

When doing genealogy dates should be written as
day(#) Month(full or 3 letter abbreviation) year(4 digits)
to avoid the confusion of the American 1/15/1752 vs the European 15/1/1752 for the same date. I saw this problem in a British relative last night - some records said  7 Oct and others 10 July - clearly someone was confused over 10/7 vs 7/10.

But the confusion does not stop there. Some people try to be helpful by "correcting" dates from the Julian to Gregorian (especially if the person was born under one calendar and died under the other). They add 11 days to the birthday so John Smith gets a birth date of 26 Jan 1753. The trouble is how do I know if the date was adjusted or not? I don't. Hence the formula  15 Jan 1752/3 to indicate a Julian date between Jan 1 to March 24 without "correction".

Bottom Line

If you follow the rules above will you have the correct date? Maybe not. There's one more common point of confusion. Many dates are taken from old church records which typically record the Christening date (baptism) and the burial date instead of the birth date and date of death. In my example at top, 1 Feb 1753, might be the baptismal date and entered mistakenly as the birth date for John Smith. It's important to know what event the date represents.

The Fourth Turning - Can the Past Predict the Future?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana

Many years ago I read a book called "The Fourth Turning" that described generational cycles. It goes like this:

Stage 3: The Unraveling: "a society-wide embrace of the liberating cultural forces set loose by the Awakening". Society yields to the needs of the individual. "While personal satisfaction is high, public trust ebbs amid a fragmenting culture, harsh debates over values, and weakening civic habits. ...  Decisive public action becomes very difficult, as community problems are deferred ... Eventually, cynical alienation hardens into a brooding pessimism ...

We are supposedly at the end of an Unraveling era and poised to begin the Fourth Turning. It's six years late according the book's time schedule but then generations are getting farther apart as children are born to older parents. The prior Unraveling was the Ragtime, Mob Crime, Anything Goes era around WWI.

Stage 4: Crisis: the unraveling of society has reached a crisis state and a new majority arises with "one simple imperative: The society must prevail.  This requires a solid public consensus, aggressive institutions, and personal sacrifice ... A sense of public urgency contributes to a clampdown on “bad” conduct or “anti-social” lifestyles. ... Wars are fought with fury and for maximum result. ... Eventually, the mood transforms into one of exhaustion, relief, and optimism."

The new Tea Party is a sign of this. Citizens uniting against entitlements for a common good of a balanced budget government. The Left says the Tea Party can "go to hell" (congress woman Maxine Waters) but it may be a harbinger of majority opinion for the next generation. The prior Crisis period was the Great Depression and WWII.

Stage 1: The High:  "a renaissance to community life.  With the new civic order in place, people want to put the Crisis behind them and feel content about what they have collectively achieved. ... The recent fear for group survival transmutes into a desire for investment, growth, and strength--which in turn produces an era of commercial prosperity, institutional solidarity, and political stability.  ... Obliging individuals serve a purposeful society—though a few loners voice disquiet over the spiritual void.  Life tends toward the friendly and homogeneous."

The prior High was the post-WWII Baby Boom with Leave it To Beaver and many family shows about the good life.

Stage 2: Awakening: A new generation of prosperous youth yearn for some more than mere materialism. "New spiritual agendas and social ideals burst forth, along with Utopian experiments ...  The prosperity and security of a High are overtly disdained though covertly taken for granted. ... Public order deteriorates, and crime and substance abuse rise. ... Eventually, the enthusiasm cools—having left the old cultural regime fully discredited, internal enemies identified, comity shattered, and institutions delegitimized."

The authors cite (1964-1984) as the years of the last Awakening. After the awakening we experience a generation where the individual is king with another Unraveling at stage 3 and history cycles yet again.

It's one thing to look back to the beginning of the 20th century and look for a repeating pattern. But the authors of the Fourth Turning map their 4 generation cycle back to 1435 at
http://www.fourthturning.com/my_html/body_turnings_in_history.html  How successful this mapping is I'll leave to some historian to answer.

Part of the 4th turning theory is that individuals are shaped by the era in which they are raised and this echoes across the years.

Prophets are raised during the HIGH and with an emphasis on moral duty to society amidst prosperity. They latch onto the notion of Values and apply it to higher causes like global poverty, etc. They are the visionaries during the Awakening and social reformers during the Unraveling.

Nomads are raised during the Awakening as latch-key kids and learn to take care of themselves. They are self focused and take what they can during the Unraveling.

Heroes "are nurtured with increasing protection by pessimistic adults in an insecure environment" during an Unraveling. They are the front line soldiers during the Crisis, cling to Peace during the High, and fail to understand the youth during the Awakening.

Artists are raised during Crisis period. They are sensitive to fair-play, complex social situations, and cooperation for survival. They promote universal Peace during a High (Woodrow Wilson) but appear indecisive during the Unraveling.
Bottom Line

An interesting theory. We have books about about the "greatest generation" of WWII heroes and documentaries of the Hippie era of Love followed by Yuppies and Greed is Good. What will characterize the next generation?

Reformed Theology

God made so many different kinds of people. Why would he allow only one way to serve him?
~Martin Buber

Recently I was reading a Survivalist blogsite with articles on "prepper" friendly churches; i.e. churches that encourage preparing food storage and supplies for coming "bad times". One person recommended the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) which I had never heard of before. The blogger described them as follows...

The various confessions to which CREC members hold are as follows:

•Westminster Confession of Faith
•The Savoy Declaration
•The London Baptist Confession
•American Westminster Confession of Faith
•The Reformed Evangelical Confession

•The Three Forms of Unity:
 Belgic Confession
 Heidelberg Catechism
 Canons of Dort

Huh? Several months back I listened to a lecture series on the history of Christian religion and vaguely remembered some of these terms. Here is what Wikipedia has to say. Apologies to Reformed Church members for any mistakes I make below. This is all new to me.

•Westminster Confession of Faith was drawn up in 1646 in England and is used (with some modifications) by Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists. The modifications made by English Congregationalists in 1658 is called the Savoy Declaration. After the Revolutionary War in 1789, the American Congregationalists removed references to the Church of England in the American Westminster Confession of Faith.
The Baptist Church in England wrote their First Confession of beliefs in 1644, two years prior to Westminster. But the Westminster Confession contained more details and became the approved standard in England. In 1677 the Baptists created a new London Baptist Confession modeled after Westminster.

I'm not sure what the Reformed Evangelical Confession is. There's no link on Wikipedia and the CREC website says only (see Article XII).

The original Westminster Confession of Faith consists of 33 chapters describing beliefs and doctrine:
1 Of the Holy Scripture.
2 Of God, and of the Holy Trinity.
3 Of God's Eternal Decree.
4 Of Creation.
5 Of Providence.
6 Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof.
7 Of God's Covenant with Man.
8 Of Christ the Mediator.
9 Of Free Will.
10 Of Effectual Calling.
11 Of Justification.
12 Of Adoption.
13 Of Sanctification.
14 Of Saving Faith.
15 Of Repentance Unto Life.
16 Of Good Works.
17 Of The Perseverance of the Saints.
18 Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation.
19 Of the Law of God.
20 Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience.
21 Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath-day.
22 Of Lawful Oaths and Vows.
23 Of the Civil Magistrate.
24 Of Marriage and Divorce.
25 Of the Church.
26 Of the Communion of the Saints.
27 Of the Sacraments.
28 Of Baptism.
29 Of the Lord's Supper.
30 Of Church Censures.
31 Of Synods and Councils.
32 Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead.
33 Of the Last Judgment.

•The Three Forms of Unity predate Westminster and is a collective name for the official statements of doctrine of Dutch Calvinists and many Reformed Churches. From 1618 to 1619 the Dutch government, on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church, gathered Dutch delegates along with twenty-seven Reformed representatives from eight other countries to meet at a Synod of Dort, where they summarized their views in what was called the Canons of Dort. The Synod also approved two other documents used by the Dutch Reformed Church: the Heidelberg Catechism (1561, a question-and-answer format explaining biblical teaching to children and those new to the faith) and the Belgic Confession of Faith (1563). The Belgic Confession consists of 37 articles in memorizable paragraphs on the doctrines of God, Scripture, sin, salvation, and the end times. The original Belgic (Belgium) Confession in French cites scripture passages for each belief in the margins.

Bottom Line

As I wrote the above I became confused. The CREC does not list beliefs but rather multiple belief documents (called confessions). How can an organization say it "holds to" multiple confessions of faith which contain differences one from another? 

The CREC offers this explanation:

4. Why does the CREC allow so many different Confessions? Won’t this breed conflict?

It will certainly breed discussion, and the Bible tells us to strive for like-mindedness, which cannot be done without contact with one another. We have agreed on the basics of the gospel in such a way as to promote unity where we currently differ. We believe our unity is to be founded in confessional truth, and therefore we want our association with other faithful churches to facilitate the opportunity for striving for greater unity.

A wonderful statement.

During the Reformation hundreds of thousands died in Europe for the Confessions above. Catholics and Protestants fought each other and even Protestants killed Protestants over differences in beliefs (e.g. adult vs infant baptism). Several centuries before the Reformation, Catholics killed Catholics over "heretical" beliefs (e.g. is Jesus created by God and a lesser being or co-equal to God ["begotton not made"])?

It's great to see an organization of Churches that can agree to disagree on some details and work together peaceably.

Erasmus of Rotterdam

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes"
- Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536)

The quote above has always been one of my favorites but I had no clue who Erasmus was. He wrote much and is much quoted, see http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/desiderius_erasmus.html

Other famous quotes include:

• "In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king."
• "Prevention is better than cure."
• "To know nothing is the happiest life." (Ignorance is bliss)
• "Women, can't live with them, can't live without them."

So who is this Erasmus of Rotterdam? He was in his day a hero and villain but now mostly forgotten. In his home town the University and High School have been named in his honor but in 2003, a poll showed that most Rotterdammers believed Erasmus to be the designer of the local "Erasmus Bridge".

Erasmus was a Dutch Renaissance humanist ("Prince of the Humanists"), Catholic priest, and a theologian. He was excellent at Greek and Latin and translated many works such as Saint Ambrose, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Basil, Saint John Chrysostom, Cicero and Saint Jerome. Ten columns of the catalogue of the British Library are taken up with the bare enumeration of Erasmus's works and their subsequent reprints. He corresponded with more than five hundred men in the worlds of politics and of thought.

Erasmus led a "normal" though busy life as a translator until 1514 when he decided to produce a new and definitive Latin translation of the New Testament (he despised the poor "Vulgate" Latin in use up to that time). He gathered all the Latin and Greek Bibles he could find and started comparing them. He "corrected" many mistranslations and to prove that he was right when challenged, published the Greek alongside the Latin for scholars to compare. He raised questions about some practices of the Catholic Church based upon mistranslations.

Martin Luther was inspired by Erasmus's translation and observations and a year later the Reformation began. Initially Erasmus was sympathetic to Luther's criticisms, describing him as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth" and admitting that, "It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed.” For this Erasmus was an early hero of the Reformation. BUT he never left the Catholic Church and never gave his full support to Luther. For this he was vilified by the Reformation after his death.

"We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now with a few followers, although the leading men of your flock do not agree either with you or among themselves – indeed though you do not even agree with yourself, since in this same Assertion you say one thing in the beginning and something else later on, recanting what you said before."
-Erasmus to Luther on why he remains Catholic

Likewise the Catholic Church praised Erasmus while he lived because he criticized Luther. Moderate Catholics appreciated that he had been a leading figure in attempts to reform the Church from within. But by 1560 the Pope blamed Erasmus for having "laid the egg that hatched the Reformation". All of his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by Paul IV.

Bottom Line

During the Reformation Erasmus refused to takes sides. He wanted Reform but ony from within the Church. The Protestants would despise him for criticizing Luther. The Catholic Church would reject him for not criticizing Luther strongly enough. No one likes a fence-sitter.

KJV Revelation 3:15-16 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

My 36 World Changing Events

Last week I presented The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History by Professor J. Rufus Fears of the University of Oklahoma. In the first lecture the Professor admits that any list of 36 great events will be selective and reflect the biases of the person making the list. For example I find the list long on events in the liberal arts and short on science, mathematics and engineering. So as I've listened the lecture series I've been thinking about my own list of 36 events.

Rather than picking JFK's assassination, I'd use the launch of Sputnik for the birth of the Space Age (of which Kennedy played a role).

Dante and Michelangelo get pulled from the list - great poet and artist but world changing? No. Consider Newton instead. He was born in a world of superstition, ruled by mysterious unknown forces, but when he his works mathematically explained light, the tides, motion, gravity, and so much more.

Professor Fear's list is long on WWII but what about the Information Age?. What event captures the rise of computers and modern Internet for the masses?  How about the creation of Radio?

There is also much emphasis on Super Powers - Britain, America, Soviet Union, Communist China. I'd love to the last two under the birth of Communism but China is likely to play a large role in the future so it deserves to be recognized.

As much as I admire Dr. King and what he accomplished in America, I'd replace him with Henry Ford for the role that the assembly line, mass production, and unionization has changed the world. By adding Ford we can also recognize how the automobile has changed lives and landscapes.

So here is my modified list - biased by scientific events:

1. Discovery of Agriculture (10,000 BC) - growing crops made civilization possible resulting in Egypt, China, Sumer, Babylon, etc.
2. The Law of Moses (1220 BC) - the Hebrew people will persist for over 3000 years
3. The Eightfold Path of Buddha (526 BC) - influencing billions
4. The Teachings Confucius (553-479 BC) - guiding China for 2000 years
5. Solon creates Democracy (594 BC) - Solon would also influence George Washington 2000 years later as a wise leader with absolute power who gave it up voluntarily. George could have been King of America but refused.
6. The Greek Academy & the Death of Socrates (399 BC) - an example for the ages of refusing to bow to authorities and staying true to one's principles. The writings of Socrates's student Plato profoundly influenced Christian theology some 500 years later and up to the present. Plato's student Aristotle would teach Alexander the Great and shape scientific teachings for over a thousand years.  
7. Caesar crosses the Rubicon (49 BC) - Democracy dies until resurrected 1800 years later in America.
8. Galen of Pergamon studies medicine (129 – 217 AD) - not as well know as Hippocrates, the father of Medicine, but Galen preserved and advanced Hippocrates's teachings. It was Galen's writings that dominated Western medical science for nearly two millennia. His anatomical reports and dissections remained uncontested until 1543.
9. Constantine Victorious  - and Rome converts to Christianity (312 AD)
10. Byzantine Emperor Justinian I compiles a thousand years of Roman jurisprudence to create the Justinian Code of Roman Law. This was effective in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and also served as a basis for legal practice in the Catholic Church and Holy Roman Empire. It continues to influence the legal codes of continental Europe and former European colonies including all of Latin America.
11. Muhammad moves to Median (622 AD) - birth of Islam
12. Gutenberg prints the Bible (1452) - the printing press allows anyone to read the Bible, and gives birth to an explosion of knowledge propagation and mass influence.
13. Fall of Constantinople (1453) - the final end of the Roman empire, control shifts to the Muslims who block the Silk route to China prompting Columbus to find a route by sea. Greek scholars flee the fall and restore the Greek language to Europe (which was dominated by Latin) accelerating a Renaissance of new scholarship.
14. Columbus Discovers a New World (1492) - a new age of discovery and conquest
15. The Protestant Reformation (1517) - The simmering conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church over worldly power explodes into schism and warfare over sparks lit by reformers like Erasmus & Martin Luther. Christianity is forever changed as it splints in to fragmented sects.
16. The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) - Britannia Rules the Waves and builds a global Empire on which the Sun Never Sets.
17. The Battle of Vienna (1683) - the turning point where Islamic conquest of Europe is halted.
18. Newton prints Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) -  and science is never the same
19. Boston Tea Party (1773) - No taxation without representation. An idea and a revolt that eventually gives rise to America. The Tea Party continues to inspire today with a new Tea Party political movement.
20. James Watt makes a practical steam engine in 1763 - Thomas Newcomen invented the Steam Engine in 1712 but Watt made it fuel efficient which helped start the Industrial Revolution that changed almost every aspect of daily life in some way.
21. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1804) - in a nod to liberal arts, I tried to think of someone who had a lasting impact on music. Beethoven was the transition from the Classical age to the Romance age of music. He broke many of the rigid restrictions of music composition and wrote and played with passion. Over time artists would continue to "break the rules" writing ever more abstract works in music and the arts.
22. Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution (1831) - changes biology, theology, history, social science, economics, etc.
23. Thomas A. Edison invents the phonograph (1877) - Before the phonograph we had only the written page to describe the delivery of a great speech or amazing musical performance. But now we can listen for themselves and those recorded can live on forever. I did not pick the invention of photography because painted portraits saved likenesses for history. Today we combine the audio and visual in film so that great performers like Charlie Chaplin will never die.
24. Louis Pasteur and the Germ theory of medicine (1885) - ending thousands of years of Hipprocrates' and Galen's theory of humors.
25. Marconi patents the Radio (1895) - it would take many more years for the radio to become a household item but this was the birth of long-distance mass communication. FDR would master this new technology with his fireside chats in delivering his messages to an entire nation during WWII. Radio would be "upgraded" to TV with images. The Internet is both a step forward and back -support for all media types but "wires" required. When wireless Internet becomes universal it will be the next true advance in mass communication.
26. Sigmund Freud invents psychoanalysis (1899) - many may debunk him but his theory of unconscious urges changed forever how we look at ourselves.
27. The Wright Brothers achieve Flight (1903)
28. The Ford Model-T Assembly Line (1908) - before the 20th century, most manufactured products were made individually by hand. The assembly line began a new age of cheap mass production which changed the standard of living for the world.
29. The death of an Archduke begins WWI (1914) and an age of Empires comes to an end as Woodrow Wilson make the world safe for Democracy.
30. The Birth of the Soviet Union and Communism (1917)
31. Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1905), Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (1927), and Gödel's incompleteness theorems (1931) each destroy a notion of Universal Absolutes established by Newton. Science "proves" that there is no absolute right or wrong. Everything is relative to one's point of view resulting perhaps in a world without moral absolutes?
32. Einstein postulates that light itself consists of localized particles, quanta (1905). Einstein's quantum theory was nearly universally rejected by all physicists, including Max Planck and Niels Bohr. But he was right and atomic theory would change the world with bombs, power plants, and nuclear medicine. It was this discovery for which Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize.
33. The Stock Market Crash (1929) - a Great Depression changes the world, giving rise to Hitler in Germany (1933) and Franklin Roosevelt in the US (1933) and eventually WWII.
34. Mao Zedong and the birth of Communist China (1934)
35. Sputnik launched (1957) - birth of the Space Age, with travel to the moon, weather satellites, spy satellites, GPS, etc.
36. September 11, 2001 - Islam rises again to challenge the modern world

Bottom Line

What have I missed? The list is very Euro-centric.

36 Events that Changed the World

History is philosophy teaching by examples. 

~Thucydides (460 and 400 BC), The History of the Peloponnesian War

It's been awhile since I've talked about one of the lecture series that I listen to while commuting to work. Many fade in to oblivion. But the latest has been interesting: The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History by Professor J. Rufus Fears of the University of Oklahoma. He tells a good tale but I worry that it's more historical fiction than history. The dry facts of history are enlivened with speculative background details and colored with personal opinions and spin. He has selected 36 events that changed the world.

1. He begins with Law and Civilization as represented by the the Law of Hammurabi (1750 BC)
2. Then a second law code and birth of a new religion - the law of Moses (1220 BC)
   
   The "Axial Aga" where great teachers of religion and philosophy arose around the world:
3. Buddha (526 BC)
4. Confucius (553-479 BC)
   
   Democracy!
5. He mentions Socrates as one of the great teachers of the Axial Age but does not credit him with changing the world. Instead the honor goes to Solon of Athens for the birth of Democracy (594 BC) followed by
6. The Battle of Marathon (490 BC) where Democracy is triumphant against the Persian Empire
7. Still in Greece, the Oath of Hippocrates and the birth of scientific medicine
8. Caesar crosses the Rubicon (49 BC) and Democracy dies until resurrected 1800 years later in America.
   
   New Religions
9. Back to great religions again: The Trial of Jesus (36 AD)
10. Constantine Victorious - and Rome converts to Christianity (312 AD)
11. Muhammad moves to Median (622 AD)
    
    The Renaissance
12. Jump 400 years to the first university in Bologna, Italy (1088) and the Age of Learning
13. Dante's Divine Comedy & the birth of the Renaissance (1283)
14. The Black Death (1348)
15. Columbus Discovers a New World (1492)
16. Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel (1508)  - world changing how? (have not reached this point yet)
    
    The Reformation
17. Erasmus retranslates the Bible from Latin back to Greek (1516) paving the way for
18. Luther and the Protestant Reformation (1517)
    
    Perhaps not so well known is that the Reformation led to centuries of vicious warfare over religion and over empire building once the domination of Rome was broken
    
    An Age of Empires
19. The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) - Britannia Rules the Waves
20. The Battle of Vienna (1683) - I was not familiar with this one so I looked it up. The Islamic Ottoman Empire failed to capture Vienna in 1529; the first failure after almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe. For the next 150 years Europeans battled the Ottomans for control of Austria culminating in 1683 with victory at Vienna. This marked a turning point where Islam was halted and the start of the Great Turkish War to push the Ottomans out of all of Europe.
21. The Battle of Lexington (1775) - Birth of America
22. Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg (1863) - The US Civil War and how dedicated individuals are defeated by technology.
    
    The Industrial Age
23. Adam Smith (1776) versus Karl Marx (1867) - Capitalism vs Socialism
24. Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution (1831)
25. Louis Pasteur and the Germ theory of medicine (1885)
26. The Wright Brothers achieve Flight (1903)
    
    The end of the Age of Empires?
27. The death of an Archduke begins WWI (1914)
28. The Birth of the Soviet Union and Communism (1917)
    
    Who will rule the 20th century?
29. The Stock Market Crash (1929) - a Great Depression changes the world...
30. ...Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
31. ...Franklin Roosevelt Becomes President (1933) - restoring hope in a disillusioned world
32. ...Mao Zedong and Communist China (1934)
33. The Atomic Bomb (1945)
    
    Dreams and Ideals
34. John F. Kennedy Is Assassinated (1963) - end of American Innocence
35. Dr. King Leads a March (1963) - I have a Dream
36. September 11, 2001 - Islam vs the modern world

Bottom Line

Do you agree with these events? Which ones are missing? I'll present my list of 36 on Monday.

Black Plague

They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses
- Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375)

You may remember from history lessons that "The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. ... The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% – 60% of Europe's population" (Wikipedia) Did you know that the Black Plague was not a one-time occurrence?

There have been three major outbreaks of plague. The Plague of Justinian in the 6th and 7th centuries is the first known attack on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. [Some credit this for the downfall of Rome] From historical descriptions, as much as 40% of the population of Constantinople died from the plague. ... After 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century. The Third Pandemic hit China in the 1890s and devastated India but was confined to limited outbreaks in the west.

What I thought was medieval and gone is still around. Los Angeles in 1924-25 experienced a rat-borne epidemic where plague was spread from rats to fleas to people. New Mexico has seen 262 human cases of bubonic plague between 1949 and 2010 with fleas from rodents, squirrels, prairie dogs, chipmunks, and occasionally rabbits.

An early telltale sign of the plague is swollen, painful lymph nodes known as buboes. Without treatment, the illness can infect the blood (known as septicemic plague) and finally the lungs. At this point, the infection becomes known as plague pneumonia, or pneumonic plague. The mortality rate increases considerably at this point. - LA Times

Here is a description of the plague from the 1300's,

"In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg...From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves."
- Giovanni Boccaccio

Bottom Line

Always, always visit a doctor if you find swollen bumps. It probably won't be plague but it could be a sign of a serious internal infection or hernia or advanced stage of cancer that needs immediate and aggressive treatment. Do not delay - in the case of bubonic plague 80% of those who die, will die within eight days.

Remembering World War I

C.S. Choules

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

-John McCrae (In Flanders Fields)

 Last October I wrote that "World War I is finally over!" when Germany made its final payment of $94 million in war reparations. WWI occurred some 90 years ago and yet it seems a different era of time. The Wright brothers were still working the kinks out of heavier than air flight (airplanes) and most people did not yet own a car or have electricity.

WWI and its era are on the cusp of passing from living history to recorded history. The last known Veteran of WWI passed away this month. Claude Stanley Choules died in a nursing home in Western Australia at age 110. Choules (rhymes with jewels) had just turned 14 when he joined the British Royal Navy in 1917. The New York Times reports,

Mr. Choules was defiant of the tolls of time, a centenarian who swam in the sea, twirled across dance floors and published his first book [a biography] at well past 100. He also became a pacifist, refusing to march in parades commemorating wars like the one that made him famous.

There is just one remaining service survivor of WWI, another Briton, Florence Green, who was a waitress in the Women’s Royal Air Force. Who knew there were military waitresses? The last American veteran, Frank Buckles, passed away in February of this year.

Bottom Line

For most of 10,000 years human history we have only mosaics or a rare painting to capture what life looked like. The 20th century (and part of the 19th) are unique in being photographed and filmed and extensively documented. Still there is something unique to the first person viewpoint and a bit of history is lost forever when the last witness dies.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel?

Brunel

“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn”

- David Russell

I just finished a book called The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack which included several famous persons from an alternate-history of Victorian England. Many I recognized like Richard Francis Burton, Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale. But I had never head of the title character, Spring Heeled Jack, an urban-legend (?) from the Victorian era of a ne'er-do-well gentleman who could leap amazingly high.

Another character I had never heard of is Isambard Kingdom Brunel. (And with a name like that you'd think I'd remember it.) So I looked him up on Wikipedia and learned that Brunel placed second in a BBC 2002 public poll to determine the "100 Greatest Britons". Say what? Second only to Winston Churchill? Of course this was a "public" poll which becomes more obvious in that Princess Diane placed third, above Darwin (4th), and Shakespeare (5th).

Thames tunnel

So who is Brunel and what makes him so famous (at least to your average Briton)? Isambard Kingdom Brunel (9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a genius of civil engineering who designed and built dockyards, railways, transatlantic steamships, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering with innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. He assisted in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river, the first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship (SS Great Britain, which in 1843 was also the largest ship ever built), and first major British railway (The Great Western). Many of Brunel's bridges are still in use, having stood the test of time.


Clifton Bridge

Brunel is perhaps best remembered for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Spanning over 700 ft (210 m), and nominally 200 ft (61 m) above the River Avon, it had the longest span of any bridge in the world at the time of construction.

Bottom Line

I'm pleased that an engineer is recognized in his own country. There are many famous scientists but who remembers the engineers? In America the only engineer that I recall is, John Augustus Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge and many others. Perhaps only bridge builders are remembered? And some architects like Frank Lloyd Wright or I.M. Pei. But what of the others? Who built the Empire State Building? Who built the Trans-Continental Railroad? I don't recall being taught that.

Yuri's Night

"I saw for the first time the earth's shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word—joy."

— Yuri A. Gagarin

Today, April 12, is the 50 anniversary of mankind entering the space-age and according to MSNBC the "whole world" will be celebrating Yuri's Night. That was news to me and who the heck is Yuri? The answer is Yuri Gagarin (Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин), the first human in space by completing one orbit around the Earth.  After re-entry, Gagarin ejected from the craft and landed safely by parachute. Yuri Gagarin became a worldwide celebrity, touring widely abroad with visits to Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan, Finland, and the United Kingdom to promote the Soviet coup of being the first country to put a human in space with Vostok 1. [What? No US tour? :-) ]

In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Gagarin was ranked as the #6 most popular space hero, tied with Star Trek's fictional Capt. James T. Kirk.

Bottom Line

Coincidentally (?) April 12 is also the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle mission. In a way that's depressing. We've accomplished so little in space in 50 years (or even the past 30). The exploits of science fiction like 2001, A Space Odyssey or Star Trek seem so very far away.

There's none so blind...

"There's none so blind as they that won't see."
-Jonathan Swift

Speaking of things that I don't know, for yesterday's post on the Dunning-Kruger effect I wanted to use the quote above about "none so blind...", but who said it? I thought it was biblical and it is, sort of.

Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not. - Jeremiah 5:21

Close but no cigar. This could be interpreted as "those who fail to see" whereas the quote at top has more punch by stressing the refusal to see. Google pointed me to Answers.com that credited "Englishman, John Heywood, in 1546" who was paraphrasing Jeremiah 5:21.

Who the heck is John Heywood???  So I googled him and discovered he was a  playwright born 70 years before Shakespeare. Heywood is credited with creating (or popularizing) many famous English Proverbs.

*Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake? (which became having your cake and eating it too)

*Better one byrde in hand than ten in the wood.

*When all candles be out, all cats be gray.

*I pray thee let me and my fellow have A hair of the dog that bit us last night.

*Went in at the one eare and out at the other.

*By hooke or crooke.

And so on. See http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/John-Heywood/1/index.html  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heywood  for more of Heywood's proverbs.  Amazing that one man could have so many famous quotes! This was a knowledge gap I was completely unaware of.

Now back to my quest for THE source of the quote. Neither of the quote lists above included "none so blind." Was Answers.com wrong? No, a different site on Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/there-s-none-so-blind-as-those-who-will-not-see, gives a history of the quote and how it changed over the centuries.

Who is so deafe, or so blynde, as is hee, That wilfully will nother here nor see.
[1546 J. Heywood Dialogue of Proverbs ii. ix. K4]

This is Heywood and captures the idea I wanted but still sounds a bit odd to my ears. So I picked a version from two centuries later:

You know, there's none so blind as they that won't see.
[1738 Swift Polite Conversation iii. 191]

Bottom Line

While investigating a single quote I learned:
1. The wording of "well-known" proverbs changes over time
2. The author of a proverb can be hard to pin down - who get's the credit when there are many versions of the proverb?
3. Few today read the plays of John Heywood but his lines have become part of our language.

I love the Internet; instant facts at one's finger tips. Just be careful about the quality of the "facts".

Most Boring Day in History

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. - Charles de Montesquieu

Computer programmer William Tunstall-Pedoe has calculated that April 11, 1954 is the most objectively dull day since 1900. On that day the most significant events were a general election in Belgium, the birth of a Turkish academic and the death of footballer Jack Shufflebotham.

Mr Tunstall-Pedoe's computer program, called True Knowledge, was fed 300 million facts about "people, places, business and events" that made the news and this particular day was outstanding in its obscurity.

Bottom Line

"Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred and, although a typical day in the 20th century has many notable people being born, for some reason that day had only one who might make that claim - Abdullah Atalar, a Turkish academic.", said Mr Tunstall-Pedoe's .

The Allure of Gold

"And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh" - Matthew 2:11 KJV

With financially unstable times, some investors put their money in gold. But why gold, what makes gold so special? NPR Money Planet asked Sanat Kumar, a chemical engineer at Columbia University, to examine the 118 elements in the Periodic Table to find which ones could be used as money.

The orange column on the far right is all gasses - so cross that off.

The light orange elements on the far left are very reactive and can burn or explode. Sanat crossed out another 38 elements as too reactive for safe keeping.

The two rows on the bottom of the chart are radioactive; cross them off.

These three rules: Not a gas, Doesn't corrode or burn, and Doesn't kill you, reduces the list of usable elements from 118 to just 30.

Some of the 30, like carbon, are just too common to be "valuable". Imagine a currency that anyone can make from wood!  And a few of the 30 are just too rare  - for example osmium comes mostly from meteorites.

Eliminate the too common and extremely rare and you are left with five "precious metals", rhodium, palladium, silver, platinum and gold. Silver is popular and used as a currency but it tarnishes; it is mildly reactive with air. I'm not that familiar with rhodium or palladium and apparently few are, they were not discovered until the early 1800s due to their rarity. They belong to the platinum group of metals. One quarter of all goods manufactured today either contain platinum group metals or the platinum group metals play a key role during their manufacturing process.

That leaves platinum and gold as safe, non-reactive metals, both of which can be found in rivers and streams in limited but not super rare quantities. Gold was preferred because it melts at a lower temperature (just under 2000 degrees Fahrenheit) and could be fashioned into art and coinage by pre-industrial people. Gold artifacts in the Balkans appear from the 4th millennium BC.

The melting point for platinum is over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sanat says,  "For the earth, ... gold is the sweet spot. It would come out no other way."

According to Wikipedia, "Gold has been widely used throughout the world as a vehicle for monetary exchange ... [but] pure gold is too soft for day-to-day monetary use and is typically hardened by alloying with copper, silver or other base metals. The gold content of alloys is measured in carats (k). Pure gold is designated as 24k. English gold coins intended for circulation from 1526 into the 1930s were typically a standard 22k alloy called crown gold."

Modern bullion coins used for investment are frequently pure gold. The popular Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin has a purity of 99.99%.

Bottom Line

How rare is Gold? We see it everywhere as gold leaf, gold wire connections in computer chips, gold fillings, etc. There is an estimated 158,000 British tonnes of gold that has been excavated globally. This sounds like a lot but gold is very heavy,  a cubic meter of gold would weigh 19.3 tonnes. All the gold in the world would fit inside a cube 20.15 meters, or 66 feet 1.3 inches on each edge. Consider that the Washington Monument measures 55 feet by 55 feet at its base and is 555 feet tall (17 x 17 x 170 m). If you wanted to rebuild the Washington Monument in solid gold, all the gold known to man would only reach 1/3 the height of the monument.

Platinum is slightly more rare. All of the platinum in the entire world would easily fit inside the average home.

The Lost Art of Survival

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” - Oscar Wilde

Civilization is a fragile thing. We depend upon so many skills and talents of others. Consider driving a car. Could you replicate the rubber of the tires, the metal of the exterior, the electronics of the on board computers, the engineering of the engine, the production of oil and gasoline?  Recently I mentioned that ancient Rome used forks but this concept was lost with the Dark Ages. Also lost were heated baths, indoor plumbing, concrete, and many other technologies that made Roman cities famous.

A recent commuting lecture series on "Ancient Empires before Alexander the Great" described an empire in Mesopotamia that was a marvel of central planning with all labor and production organized by the Capitol. This lasted several decades but the next generation of rulers were not as skilled at planning; a drought and crop loss began a cascade of problems that unraveled the carefully made plans and the empire fell apart with food revolts.

Unfortunately the more advanced the civilization, the more dependent we become upon it, and ever less capable of surviving on our own. Most have lost the knowledge that comes from living "the simple life". How to grow food, build a home, make a fire from scratch, etc. I'm always amazed by the stories like "Little House on the Prairie" where a family builds a homestead from scratch.

The loss of basic life skills is not a recent phenomenon. In the late 1800's  Robert Baden-Powell, a Lieutenant General in the British Army, was appalled by the lack of nature skills with city boys drafted into the Army as Scouts. A Scout was required to spy on enemy positions and carry messages through dangerous territory. They needed to live off the land by hunting and gathering, build a fire and conceal it, know how to track others and how to hide. So Baden-Powell wrote a Scouting guide for the hapless soldiers. This book was published in England and became popular with young boys who wanted to play at being soldiers. Recognizing an opportunity, in 1908 Baden-Powell wrote a new book, Scouting for Boys, and began the Boy Scout organization that has spread around the world.

Bottom Line

Despite being a Cub Scout Leader, I would not fare well with outdoor survival. The only animal I've ever killed is fish (and I'm a terrible fisherman). If you want to learn survival skills check out http://www.survivalblog.com/ for daily ideas. A good starting point is Learning Traditional Skills covering the basics of Food, Water, Shelter and Fire.

What the fork???

“The true Christian is in all countries a pilgrim and a stranger” -George Santayana

For our wedding anniversary my wife & I traveled to Plimoth Plantation to share a Harvest Feast dinner with the "pilgrims". I put pilgrim in quotes because one of the Plimouth residents we spoke to objected to the term. "This isn't the Holy Land", he said. It turns out that only half the residents were religious pilgrims, the other half were loyal Church of England members. When the Pilgrims chartered the colony and the Mayflower they realized that their congregation was mostly weavers and tailors. For a colony to succeed they needed a blacksmith, cooper, baker, tanner, etc. So they opened up the colony to "outsiders" to get these skills with a promise that the outsiders would allow the pilgrims to worship according to their own dictates.

Anyhow, back to the Harvest Feast dinner which I mentioned. As the "shallet" (salad) course was served it quickly became apparent that there were no forks! Each place setting contained only a large spoon and a slightly dull knife. The shallet also had no dressing which is a good thing when forced to eat it with fingers.

While my wife & I enjoyed the meal, we both agree that Plimoth failed in its mission to educate. There was no discussion of why the fork was missing or what were the proper 1627 manners for eating. No mention of where the ingredients came from or why the dishes served were selected. Was the food served common or a rare treat? The only way to know was to ask one of the "locals" at the meal and that was often very difficult since they stay 100% true to character and refuse to speak of anything beyond 1627.

After arriving back at home I looked up forks on Wikipedia. It turns out Shakespeare ate with his fingers (and knife and spoon) as did all the early Americans in the 17th century. Before Christ the fork was used primarily as a serving utensil (by the ancient Greeks, and ancient Hebrews, I Samuel 2:13). Romans may have used metal forks for eating and this custom was preserved in the Byzantine East but lost in the European West during the "Dark Ages". The custom traveled from Constantinople back to Italy in the 11th century but took 500 years to become popular and common with Italians. (How do you eat spaghetti without a fork?)

The fork's adoption in northern Europe was [even] slower. Its use was first described in English by Thomas Coryat in a volume of writings on his Italian travels (1611), but for many years it was viewed as an unmanly Italian affectation. Some writers of the Roman Catholic Church expressly disapproved of its use, seeing it as "excessive delicacy": "God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks — his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating."

Some nobility in Europe would bring their personal fork to dinner but it was not until the 18th century that the fork became commonly used in Great Britain and America. So we can assume that George Washington used a fork.

Bottom  Line

Be grateful for your fork!  Dinner is a lot messier without it.

P.S.
I recall a Chinese meal of Cantonese Lobster. The lobster was chopped and covered in a thick sauce but NOT deshelled. What a mess trying to remove the sauce-covered shells. It did not matter if you used forks or chop sticks - there was no way to eat this meal without getting messy. I've never ordered it again.