But they use a different word. Past is a foreign country etc etc.

Labels: history, humor

I just learned, at this amazingly late date, that there is a common Indo-European cosmogeny involving Manu and Yemo and a cow that tends to appear in all IE cultures - e.g. in India, they are known as Manu and Yama, in Rome, as Romulus and Remus (Yemus), along with a common motif of of a cow (wolf) and suckling. This is apparently more or less what is being depicted in the opening scene of the Alien universe movie Prometheus according to some accounts . . . wild stuff and a new area of historical religion and myth for me to delve into.

Labels: history, religion

Found a very interesting book by Robert E. A. Palmer randomly about a potential origin of the curiae of Rome, as ethnic communities that were integrated into the Roman state and kept some independence for a very long time. Will probably pick it up.

Labels: history

Turns out, it was luck and inflation, that made their debts go away. Sad but true. Which doesn't bode well for the future.

Well that is what actually happened to allow the City of New York to recover from the 1970s. In a “real” sense it only paid half, or less, of its debt and pension obligations. Not by formally going bankrupt the way Detroit did. Not by the people in the room agreeing to get less than they had promised themselves. They agreed to get every dime, as noted.

The City of New York paid half and less by paying a fixed amount in dollars, as the value of the dollar fell by half from 1970 to 1980, as a result of inflation. The bondholders and pensioners of 1980 found that the big tax-exempt score they had made in 1960s and early 1970s had been cut in half. It would then fall further. As one can see by using the Consumer Price Index calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

Labels: history, local, New York

An interesting author by the name of Manent traces the trendy idea of rights back to its source in Hobbes, and notes that

If you teach human beings to assert their rights, but deny any natural standards by which to judge the rightness of their actions, you unleash an endless quest for rights not governed by any intelligible principle—a quest that sows confusion at all levels of society.

Manent also suggests some ways to return to a more fruitful political conception.

Labels: history, philosophy, politics

I just finished reading The Soul of the Embryo by David Albert Jones, a British bioethicist. This book was published in 2004 and is "an enquiry into the status of the human embryo in the Christian tradition." The date of publication is significant because science has already changed so much in the past decade that some of the facts in the last couple chapters of the book are already out-dated. For example Jones states that only sperm can be frozen and not ova, that is no longer the case. He also contrasts Britains publicly funded abortion and healthcare system with America's private health care system. With the HHS Mandate and Obamacare, abortion coverage is increasingly funded publicly by tax-payer dollars as part of our new nationalized healthcare system. So this changes the landscape of the debate. But I digress, and these are minor details.

The scope of the book is not the most recent scientific developments, but rather it is to cover 2000 years of Christian perspective on the status of the embryo from a theological, philosophical, ethical, historical, and scientific perspective. So the history of our scientific understanding of the embryo is an important part of the puzzle, but it is only one aspect of this ambitious work.

Jones' summary is comprehensive and deals with topics that get at the heart of the human mystery:  Do we have a soul? What is the nature of the soul? Where do our souls come from? Where do they go when we die? As you can see, these are questions not necessarily answerable by science, and so much of the book delves into intricacies of historical philosophy and theology. It begins with characteristics of the pagan society and their treatment of abortion and infants. (It was not good, infanticide and infant-abandonment was widely practiced.) He also gives a brief outline of Jewish perspective in contrast to this, and then traces from Judaism the emergence of Christian attitudes toward the unborn in contrast to the pagan standard.

Jones gives philosophical and scientific understandings of embryos from non-Christian thinkers such as Hippocrates, Socrates, and Galen. Then with the advent of Christianity he goes into the earliest writings of topics such as abortion and miscarriage from the Didache to the church fathers. Contrary to what some people have told me, the earliest church always forbade abortion and treated all life as sacred. The notion of delayed ensoulment did come from the ancient Greeks and reemerged in Christian thought with the middle-ages. Some later Church fathers offered contrasting opinions or were frustratingly agnostic on the topic of the time of ensoulment (notably Augustine among them.) Thomas Aquinas favored a delayed ensoulment.

But part of the great disparity of opinion and confusion that emerged in later Christian thought it precisely because of a failure to understand the basic science of how an embryo is formed. Some thought that men alone provided the seed, sowing little homunculi into the fertile woman, who simple cooked and grew the new individual within her. Others thought it was a mixing of male and female fluids. Others favored the woman's role as dominant over the man's. Some people thought ensoulment didn't occur until "quickening" when the fetus's movements become detectable. This stems from the idea that rational thought is required to an ensouled being, and movement of limbs indicates the presence of a will and thus a soul. There was a long-held belief that baby boys were ensouled sooner than baby-girls. All of this is because of a poverty of scientific understanding.

It wasn't until the invention of the microscope that the female egg was discovered in other mammals, and eventually the human. My guess is that some of these great Christian thinkers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, if they access to the modern medical understanding of how fertilization and embryo development takes place, might change their opinion.

As a scientist myself, I was a bit bored by historical overview of Christian views on the embryo, although I know this is important material, because I felt that so much was argued from the realm of ideas, and I do believe science must inform this discussion, but for the longest time, there was no idea of how conception took place, or how an embryo developed. The term "soul" at times equated to "life-force" and there could have been no understanding by the ancients of the molecular fabric (DNA) that underwrites and directs the destiny of each embryo to unfold into a unique being.

I was most interested in the final few chapters which did focus on the modern legislation and societal effects of abortion, IVF, artificial twinning, cloning, etc. and how these have impacted the Christian view of the embryo. These last few chapters seemed the most relevant to me, but sadly already need an update to keep up with the rapid changes in biotechnology that has already occurred in the past 10 years.

And yet, this is the most comprehensive book I have found on the topic, and so it is still worth a read by those seriously interested in the topic. Although the author is writing about the history of the Christian perspective, he does a great job of acknowledging secular views (which obviously shape Christian thought) and addressing the diversity of perspectives within modern Christian circles. For example he takes a serious look at the view of abortion as a compassionate option for women, which is a common view I encounter in others today.

Perhaps the book needs a sequel or update, but again it is one of the only books I have seen that even begins to address this issue so deeply, and it is still worthy of a read, especially for those interested in the historical Church views on abortion and the state of the souls of the unborn.

Labels: book, books, catholic, contraception, history, prolife, science, technology

The computer game, of course. Many hours of happy memories there.

Labels: computers, history

A most humorous parody if you've ever used MVS, OS/390, or z/OS. I guess everyone else can just look away.

The SRM is a turkey in disguise,
and MF-1 is a telling' me lies,
Start a JOB and the whole thing dies,

Hercules running MVS 3.8 supports MF-1 if you have too much time on your hands . . .

Labels: computers, history

Long story short - the names of people in the Gospels suggest at the least that they were written by local yokels in Palestine at approximately the correct time.

Labels: Bible, history

Still looking good after two thousand years, and with more evidence of authenticity, or at least non-forgery. And of course you get some insight from Mark Shea

Still, I have a high degree of confidence this will not turn out to be a fake, not because I believe it to be the burial cloth of Jesus by faith, but for much the same reason I have a high degree of confidence that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy: because it's the most sensible synthesis of the available physical evidence. I have nothing riding on the authenticity of the Shroud. I just think it's the best explanation of all the data.

And a quote from Chesterton. How could you go wrong?

Labels: catholic, history

The Library of Constantinople was destroyed. Despite their oaths and the threat of excommunication, the Crusaders systematically violated the city's holy sanctuaries, destroying or stealing all they could lay hands on; nothing was spared. The civilian population of Constantinople were subject to the Crusaders' ruthless lust for spoils and glory; thousands of them were killed in cold blood. Women, even nuns, were raped by the Crusader army, which also sacked churches, monasteries and convents. The very altars of these churches were smashed and torn to pieces for their gold and marble by the warriors who had sworn to fight in service of Christendom without question. Although the Venetians engaged in looting too, their actions were by far more restrained. Doge Dandolo still appeared to have far more control over his men. Rather than wantonly destroying all around like their comrades, the Venetians stole religious relics and works of art which they would later take to Venice to adorn their own churches with.

809 years since the siege of Constantinople.

Labels: catholic, history

After someone refers to the Trojans as the "Troyans":

Haxis
August 20, 2011 at 12:57 pm

no… the trojans were the ones who USED that giant wooden horse. hence, TROJAN HORSE.

Response:

CheeseonToast
August 20, 2011 at 1:09 pm

Not sure if trolling, or never read Homer.

Labels: history, humor

The book that is.

Borg is brilliant and challenging. His uncovering of the historical Jesus, a pre-Easter versus post-Easter understanding, may seem irrelevant to Biblical literalists, but for those with an open mind, this book may prove revolutionary. At least it did for me. So many Gospel stories that I struggled with, had difficulty reconciling with my personal experience and understanding of God and Jesus, were given radically new explanations that breathed fresh life into some of the tired and awkward explanations I had previously accepted. Borg espouses a sort of "Neotraditionalism" one that goes back to the roots of Christianity, seeking to understand who Jesus is as the disciples understood Him. The result is a striking emphasis on Jesus' humanity, but one that makes him seem all the more radical and relevant in today's world. Well worth a read, even if you disagree with some of Borg's assumptions.

Labels: books, history

Labels: history, New York

Apparently match liturgical readings in the Eastern Orthodox service. Weirdness!

(KJV is the King James Version of the Bible, for those not inclined to know such things.)

Labels: Bible, eastern orthodox, history

A free press in a democracy can be messy. But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know. Anyone who has worked in countries where the news diet is controlled by the government can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted remark that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers.

The intentions of our founders have rarely been as well articulated as they were by Justice Hugo Black 40 years ago, concurring with the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people."

Labels: history, politics

Labels: history, politics

I am currently doing a bit of link cleaning. In my todo queue, I came across one entry that wasn't like the rest.

2008-07-26 - no leftovers

If I recall correctly, on that day almost a year ago, I got Chinese food with my family and there were no leftovers, a fact which amazed me so much that I put it on my list of things to blog about. And by coincidence, a year later I came across the entry.

I sense some Chinese food in my future. Woulnd't want to upset fate by not going for it.

Labels: fun, history, random

Who knew?

While some colonial Jews experienced difficulty living both as Jews and Americans, Boston's Moses Michael Hays created a different experience. Boston's most prominent 18th-century Jewish citizen, Hays set a high standard for civic leadership and charity. Without the companionship and support of an organized Jewish community and without legal guarantees of religious freedom, Hays thrived in the "first circles" of Boston society while publicly practicing his Judaism.

Labels: history, jewish, politics