Comments on: Closing the books

By: notsneaky

notsneaky — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:03:18 +0000

It would be potentially obnoxious.

By: SG

SG — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:47:03 +0000

the Korean and Vietnam wars are still bitter memories to many Americans whose loved ones were killed or tortured by Communists

I presume by this logic, anyone who wears a US flag symbol in Vietnam is fair game…?

By: s.e.

s.e. — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:22:27 +0000

I was taught American Exceptionalism in my school and it never did me any harm either.

By: Gdr

Gdr — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:21:00 +0000

“Anglo-Saxon” and “Old English” are two names for the same language. The English of Chaucer’s day is generally known as “Middle English”.

I was taught creationism in my school, also the authenticity of the Turin shroud. It didn’t do me any harm

This is rather like saying “I was beaten as a child, and it didn’t do me any harm.” It might be true, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about corporal punishment as a matter of public policy.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:15:03 +0000

If we’re being picky about it we might as well get it correct. Old English = Anglo-Saxon. Chaucer’s language = Middle English. As Yogi Berra would say, you could look it up.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:52:43 +0000

If we’re being picky about this, Beowulf was in Anglo-Saxon; people might have listened to it in Old English in Geoffrey Chaucer’s day but not before or since.

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:20:04 +0000

That should give you an idea of how stagnant Western Culture has been since 1969. The Baby Boomers latched on and haven’t let go, 20 years past the time they should have.

It’s even worse than that. I attended two plays by Shakespeare last year – the Elizabethans latched on and haven’t let go, 400 years past the
time they should have.

By: Pyre

Pyre — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:28:43 +0000

As for the Communist vs. Nazi symbolism issue: the USSR lasted an order of magnitude longer than the Third Reich and killed many more people, the Korean and Vietnam wars are still bitter memories to many Americans whose loved ones were killed or tortured by Communists, while the Tiananmen Square massacre is a quite recent and well-recorded public event.

(And “Americans” includes immigrants from Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe,….)

Anyone who thinks adopting any of those symbols is funny or innocuous may simply not care about the emotions they’ll provoke. A cold but silent disapproval doesn’t make headlines; and getting shut out from a shop or such is just an opportunity to sue, right?

By: Pyre

Pyre — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:01:05 +0000

Toxic @ 15: “If people were still reading Beowulf in the original Old English….”

Hwæt are you talking about? Beowulf is not meant to be read in Old English — Beowulf is meant to be heard recited in Old English, as you sit in a mead-hall drinking from a horn.

Which is why one of the SCA’ers I’ve met has invested the time and effort to learn it by heart, in that language.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:03:51 +0000

If we’re looking at the general issue of lack of progress since the sixties, the fact that we’re still listening to many of the same songs seems less telling than the fact that we’re still flying many of the same military aircraft. The F111 fighter, bought in the 60s and introduced in 1973, will be in the armoury of the Australian airforce until 2010 or possibly 2012 – nearly forty years; the equivalent of flying the Focker triplane in Korea, or the original Wright Brothers model in WWII. The English Electric Canberra (despite its name, an RAF rather than RAAF thing) did even better, cracking the big 5-0.
Even more impressively, the B52 bomber has now notched up 55 years – Wright flyers in Korea, soon in Vietnam – and no end in sight.
The last time we saw this kind of stability was ship design 1700-1850.

By: SG

SG — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:18:58 +0000

I would say the sky didn’t fall in because hordes of state-school-educated plebs are holding it up with their knowledge of the truth of these things. I certainly know people from “independent” (Australian for “religious but cheap”) schools who, being uninterested in science, didn’t look up the alternative views and so left school with the idea that “evolution is just another theory”. Cute, but only if a very small number of people think so.

I suspect you have added this issue to your fuck-off list because you are making the assumption that there will always be a large and healthy state school sector in the UK, and that the influence of religious forces on schooling will continue to decrease, so the issue is of minor and decreasing importance. That certainly is the case in Australia, but I wonder if some of the American readers here find it hard to be so sanguine about the fundamental stability of their school system?

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:21:22 +0000

Perhaps (although I doubt it) there were other kids in my class who didn’t have access to libraries and whose parents sheltered them from the dreadful knowledge of evolution and are ignorant of it even today, but I have to observe that the sky has not fallen in.

I can buy this as far as the UK goes, but the situation in the US is a good deal more worrisome. There is a significant number of such kids, and international comparisons of science knowledge suggest that the sky si at least a little bit wobbly here.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:18:55 +0000

Now that I think about it, I suppose physics majors in the US as well as the UK probably are exposed to Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics before tackling QM. But as a biochemistry major I went straight from strictly Newtonian mechanics in intro physics to the rudiments of QM in physical chemistry. I think this was non-optimal to say the least- it's unnecessarily confusing to encounter Hamiltonians first in their QM form.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:14:22 +0000

No, I mean the teaching of creationism in schools. Fun fact – I was taught creationism in my school, also the authenticity of the Turin shroud. It didn’t do me any harm, because, like many other kids, I had sources of information other than my teachers. Perhaps (although I doubt it) there were other kids in my class who didn’t have access to libraries and whose parents sheltered them from the dreadful knowledge of evolution and are ignorant of it even today, but I have to observe that the sky has not fallen in.

By: 1968 at Jacob Christensen

1968 at Jacob Christensen — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:01:21 +0000

[...] Daniel Davies argues that 1968 is A Long Time Ago Now (long time as in forty years): I therefore declare 2008 to be officially The Year That We No Longer Have The 1960s To Blame. [...]