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Chad

In: Ramsbottom
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| In fact no-one has ever qualified as a genius for discoveries they are not prepared to submit to group criticism. |
He didn't say he hasn't told anybody. He said he won't tell you.
(You will have to wait until he publishes.)
BTW, Hatty has just certified his genius... so end of argument.
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Chad

In: Ramsbottom
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| The word [genius] should be banned from this forum | .
No. It should be used whenever appropriate... which is actually quite often on this site... otherwise it wouldn't be doing its job.
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John J. O'Neill has an interesting take on it in his book Holy Warriors.
Extracts may easily be found by Googling his name. It makes reference to Henri Pirenne who wrote about Moorish Spain. Pirenne's contribution has been just about suppressed by modern historians, despite him translating original arabic texts.
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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Welcome Stephen.
One point. When you post an article, try to tell us first why we should read it and highlight the significant bit for you.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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| It makes reference to Henri Pirenne who wrote about Moorish Spain. Pirenne's contribution has been just about suppressed by modern historians, despite him translating original arabic texts. |
Henri Pirenne is just about the most famous historian of all time. Are you saying that just his Moorish scribblings have been suppressed?
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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Watching the Borgias on Television.
This entire period in history I suspect is the last of the great historical fictions. Most of it didn't happen, much of what did happen didn't happen in Italy or at the time in which it is supposed to have occurred.
Something I noticed though was the name Borgia.
Let's examine the characteristics of the Borgia family and what made them notorious:
- Were not members of the aristocracy
- Outsiders and upstarts
- Purchased their station in life
- Associated with usury
- Frowned upon for their common origins
What do we have here but a description of the Bourgeois?
Are the Borgias really just the Bourgeois?
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GrouchoMarxthespot

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| The truth is that in all of these Utopian maximal efficiency scenarios beloved by Marxists, the cost of collection and transport is never factored. Invariably, this proves more expensive than any realizable profit -- those who want old computers are not prepared to pay enough for them to justify the expense of literally giving them away (this is why recycling does not work and never will). |
Maximal efficiency isn't just the province of Marxist economists: Quite orthodox economists subscribe to a view that societies strive towards an optimum use of resources.
We can be wasteful, regarding the impact of transport costs, and not being able to even give stuff away, because our affluence allows wastefulness.
Poorer societies tend to be less wasteful.
Scarce resources is a universal condition that applies to all organised human groups.
It makes perfect sense that in previous poorer societies every resource would be used to it's best potential and used again and again. This is perfectly consistent with the negative evidence of few archaeological remains of such artefacts.
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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| KarlMarxthespot wrote: |
It makes perfect sense that in previous poorer societies every resource would be used to it's best potential and used again and again. This is perfectly consistent with the negative evidence of few archaeological remains of such artefacts. |
Sureee bob.
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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You've come to the wrong place.
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GrouchoMarxthespot

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| You've come to the wrong place |
As in wrong conclusion or had the temerity to come to the wrong website?
Scarce resources are a given of human groups.
My own observations lead me to the conclusion that the poorer you are the less you waste.
Early societies tended to be poorer than we are.
Therefore less waste.
What any society leaves behind creates the questions that we, (and that's all of us by the way), try to answer.
Sometimes they leave behind gigantic great artefacts that must have consumed colossal resources - but these also need treating with care, not least in attempting to work out both their value to those who used them AND the loss of value to those who discarded them.
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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Henry Octavian has 6 wives.
His marriage history includes 3 Catherines (who each spelled their name slightly differently) and 2 Annes.
If we look at the list here, something else is apparent:
http://tudorhistory.org/wives/
The wives can be arranged into two sets of three. Each set contains a marriage that ended in divorce, a marriage that ended in execution midst accusations of infidelity, and a marriage that ended in natural death -- and in that order. Two miniature cycles of three. Each set also begins with a marriage to a foreign aristocrat followed by a marriage to a British commoner.
Moreover, the first cycle produces children, the second cycle is barren.
In the first cycle, Catherine is divorced in favour of Anne. In the second cycle, it Anne is who is divorced in favour of Catherine.
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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Between the first Catherine and the last Catherine, there are 4 wives jammed within a 9 year period. Of these four, the two to whom he was married longest are mirrors of one another -- Anne the Executed and Catherine the Executed.
This is a very short period into which to shoe-horn 4 women, particularly the two that serve to end the first cycle and begin the second. They seem perhaps to be present only to serve that purpose.
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Ishmael

In: Toronto
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Is it possible that what we have here is a duplication in miniature?
We begin with two variant "histories" of a King who got a divorce. In one version of the story, the King divorced a Catherine and married an Anne. In another version of the story, it was Anne who was divorced and Catherine, married.
The redactors of later years could not agree on which version was the right one. So they assumed both versions were true and fasioned them into a single tale. This is the same kind of redaction we find in many works of "history," beginning with the Bible where in a great many instances -- as has been well documented -- the same story gets told twice as though it were two separate events (two examples from Genesis: The Earth is created twice and Abraham twice disguises his wife as his sister).
By duplicating the story of the King's divorce, historians thus doubled the number of wives involved.
Actually; perhaps they did more than double them.
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