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I actually started reading that book a few years ago and then must have gotten side-tracked and didn't finish it. I'll have to pick it up again one of these days. Seems like I've always got a book I can be reading at any time.
I don't understand why they didn't simply dig the holes deeper and throw in some dirt or sawdust after they're done. Emptying a bucket seems like an unsanitary way of doing things, and I think that by mid mid Nineteen-teens sanitation was getting more attention. Perhaps the reason is simply that the amount of men in each trench was too many, and the size of the trenches was too small, to make a deeper pit/dirt-throw practical.
Apocalypse Now…..is a Vietnam War flick. We should start another thread about Vietnam War movies, since there are many good ones.
I just saw that this site was being crawled by “linkiewinkie”. On http://www.linkiewinkie.com it claims that it's some sort of “social experiment”, whatever that is. Let's hope it's for the good.
I think that the time element is what we refer to as the “zeitgeist”. It is the series of religious, cultural, social, and economic events that create a particular set of circumstances which favor or disfavor certain ideas.
Clinton? Perhaps this is too soon to judge. Some might argue that Lincoln was overrated. Some could say that FDR was, as well, because of the baggage that his policies have left us in our current time. Whether that can be "blamed" on FDR is another question.
George III was not a foreign monarch. He was the Colonists own lawful monarch. That is why the conflict of 1175-1783 is called The American Revolution. The Rebels rose in opposition to their own King and Parliament.
Semantic here, semantics. What you say is true. However, what I may have meant, and can argue now, was that George III was foreign to the concerns of the Colonists. The pond was not the only thing that divided England and the Colonies.
If it's the same one, I remember The Day After which was shown on network television in the 1980s, right?? At the time it was a big thing, and I remember being frightful of it, and I couldn't watch it.? I was still a kid growing up in those days.? As nuclear weapons increased in power through fusion, I recall trying to figure out how far their effect area would be, and whether it would affect my house.? I also remember trying to figure out what the likelihood of the Soviets launching a nuke at the nearest major city would be.This is interesting, since the Soviet children were likely in just as much fear, if not more, than we were.? That is, if they were told similar things about the U.S. as we were about the USSR.
By the time of the Spanish arrival however the Mayan civilisation had been in decline for some time, probably as a result of warfare and overpopulation. Spanish arms coupled with European diseases such as measles, smallpox and influenza against which the natives had no immunity took the lives of millions of the Maya over this period.
I wonder where this criticism of "overpopulation" originated. It seems that a civilization such as the Maya - a largely jungle/tropical peoples - would have not had such a problem in any concept of the word. If their population outpaced their food production (probably not likely given their likely average lifetime and their loss of population due to wars), then it would seem more likely that these "extra" people would simply have died. If their population increased to the point of requiring more resources, it would seem more likely for them to conquer neighboring cities or regions to expand their empire.
I can say that women in Islamic countries are treated “quite differently” than those in the U.S., but I am not familiar enough with culture in all European countries to say the same. Women in some European countries might be treated “somewhat differently” rather than “quite differently”.
I think that the problem with a “living document” interpretation of the Constitution is that any rights that are supposedly protected by it really are not protected. If what you say is true, then it would be entirely possible for something that was protected in 1790 – such as private property rights – to be entirely unprotected in 2006, if popular opinion or individual judges opine this to be the case. A “living document” Constitution essentially becomes one where the personal opinion of judges becomes the matter of first importance, and the Constitution itself is eventually rendered meaningless. What is interesting is how you and I see the amendment process in two different lights; whereas you say that the difficulty in passing amendments suggests a desire to see the Constitution evolve over time, I see this difficulty as suggestion that the principles of the Constitution do not evolve over time with any ease. I think that the Founders had first hand knowledge of what tyranny could do, and so their intent was to set forth a set of timeless principles which would govern man's actions in the new nation for as long as the nation exists.
I think that the Greek social dynamic was radically different all around than the dynamic of our Western lives today. I recall reading that 9 or 10 people in Athens, or perhaps Greece, were slaves. If this is true, it would be a kind of society completely foreign to us. I also know that even in modern times, the role of women is different in different societies. Obviously, women in Islamic countries are treated quite differently from those in the U.S. or perhaps Europe; at least in one country in South America, women are treated with different expectations than in the West as well. So, the treatment of Athenian women is perhaps not too surprising.
