History is Interpreted

There are many times I dislike the current education system.  Usually because we as a country seem to be content ruining it.  My usual gripe is the whole test mentality.  We judge the students and the school by test scores.  Schools then predominantly try to get their kids study for the test instead of, say, teaching things like critical thinking, common sense and other useful skills but the shit some test maker thought was important.  Not to impugn the people who make tests but fuck them.  The thing you decide to use as a measurement of success not surprisingly becomes the measure of success.  The problem is that with education a real measurement of growth isn’t knowing you should write ‘regardless’ instead of ‘irregardless’ (it’s not a fucking word people).  Although that wouldn’t be a terrible place to start.

The thing that pisses me off is that history teachers and social studies teacher bored the living hell out of me.  They also taught garbage.  Not all of them mind you, but enough to upset me.  And this is a tragedy as history is shockingly interesting.  And not like the nerdy way of saying ‘hey, you should know this so won’t happen again’ (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” ~ George Santayana )  and ‘history is cool’ (it is and fuck you for not thinking that) but just learning a few things about history can make you a well-rounded and better person (and chicks dig it).

Let me drop some knowledge on you.  You know that whole gentlemanly code thing.  Not chivalry to heck with that (although tipping your hat dates back to armed knights removing their visor). I mean being a man about town.  When you, present day you, walk with a lady (presuming you are a man, presuming you enjoy the company of ladies carnally and presuming that a lady doesn’t run away from you as long as we are presuming) you end up being on the street side of the sidewalk and lady is on the building side.  Odd that this is the way it’s done.  Some unknown Jungian thing where we peer into the collective unconscious?  Remember when you look into the collective unconscious, the abyss also looks into you or something like that (damn it Nietzsche stop confusing me).  No, it has to do with shit.  Well, with pails of it splashing into the street from the buildings above but shit nonetheless.  See cities and towns didn’t always have this nice thing called a sewer system.  Too bad we forgot most everything the Roman’s knew for a few centuries or so.  So people would fill their pots and fling the contents into the street.  We also didn’t know about this whole germ theory thing but more on that in a moment.  So the gents as they sauntered down the street with their intended they would stay nearer the every jostling pit of filth resembling a street.  Now imagine the whole laying down you coat so a lady can cross the way without sullying her boots or shoes.  Less appealing, right?  Oh good ,shit on the outside of my coat from the constant frothy buckets splashing from the filthy bastards above me into the foul street and laying it down every time the lady meets an intersection to get the inside all nice and juicy.  Old timey me would say, “Seriously we have to stop walking during bucket hour.  You’re totally buying me a new jacket once I’m done burning this one.”

People still believed in this thing called Miasma, or bad air, being the reason for ailments.  Yay, science, medicine and mysticism are best buddies forever.  What?  Mysticism is the thing that doesn’t belong.  Well, shoot.  Miasma was popular in Middle Ages, unsurprisingly, but also espoused in Roman times.  Usually considered to be more, you know, rational and learned.  The germ theory didn’t seem to gain ground until Louis Pasteur in 1860’s (that around the Civil War time for point of reference).  But he wasn’t the first guy to have ideas like this.  The ever crafty Italians had some people with wacky ideas, who hopefully the Papacy didn’t lock away in a tower for daring to advance society, like Girolamo Fracastoro.  Oh, he was born in the in 1470’s.  Yeah, and we can attribute the syphilis to him, or well, rather the name.  He subscribed to the theory of Atomism.  Not quite what we think of as atoms but getting there.

All those facts above, tenuously held together, to me are more interesting that the vast amount of information fed to me in history classes.  This is why history class as an adult pisses me off.  History is interesting.  And worse of all there is so much of it to look at.  And knowing history is like the best game of hey you’re an idiot and let me tell you why.  I highly recommend this game if you haven’t played it.  Caveat you actually have to know more than other people and not just sound like you do.  That’s the problem with this whole internet immediate gratification and delivery of possibly dubious knowledge.  So here are few items to help you play that game.  All basically say fuck you to ‘common knowledge’.  I put common knowledge in quotes because, well is even more dubious than internet sources unless it’s taken from the collective unconscious thing then it’s probably legit.

Look at this excerpt below from an article I found.  In your head, because aloud might be weird, say who first comes to mind.

“On March 2, 1955, [a young African American woman] was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right."

Okay.  You’re wrong.  I know it’s mean but the above is about Claudette Colvin who predated Rosa Parks as a civil rights activist and hero but was forgotten by history.  She was an expecting single mother and fifteen years old.  So she eloquently stood up to an aggressor as young woman and later won a major victory for the movement when she went to court over the trouble which ensued.  But civil rights movement chose to celebrate Rosa Parks instead, who most definitely should be celebrated, but isn’t there room for two defiant African American women who did remarkably similar things and both helped this nation move forward.  Claudette was swept under the rug however and this is likely because a young single mother might not be the poster child envisioned.

http://www.biography.com/people/claudette-colvin-11378?page=1

Try this one on for size.  What does the empire of cushy furniture (the Ottomans) and the Irish potato famine have in common?  My first guess would be nothing.   But as this ‘he you’re an idiot and let me tell you why’ that is not correct.   The Ottoman Empire actually helped Ireland during the Potato Famine and defied the English blockade against the aid.  I didn’t even know the English blockaded Ireland to stop aid.  That never entered into my mind.  The whole famine as it was presented to me made rather silly sense.  How does an island starve?  You could fish, right?  It’s a bit more complicated than that and has to do with the English trying to fuck everything that isn’t English or something like that.  I’ll let the article tell you:

“Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid sent five ships full of food supplies and funds as charity. However, the British administration did not give permission for these ships to enter the ports of Belfast or Dublin. […] these ships secretly discharged their load in Drogheda, a town approximately 70 miles north of Dublin.”

http://www.thepenmagazine.net/the-great-irish-famine-and-the-ottoman-humanitarian-aid-to-ireland/

Now here is tidbit you can throw at would be nutritionists and Atkins followers.  Who gives a shit what ancient man had to eat.  Marlene Zuk an evolutionary biologist, a title given to people who eschew activities like video games and professional wrestling for learning (those poor bastards), wrote a book telling people who think we should eat like primitive man to shut up as their stupidity voiced aloud might affect the gullible and foolish.  The book Paleofantasy (subtle as a hammer lady, er Dr., er, Dr. Lady?) basically says that there isn’t a need to live or eat as we once did it also dissolves some of the misinformation like the supposed paleodiet.  Apparently “researchers discovered evidence that people in Europe were grinding and cooking grain (a paleo-diet bugaboo) as far back as 30,000 years ago, even if they weren’t actually cultivating it.”  This information will surely piss of the anti-sugar fiends.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delusions/

I’ll throw another fact your way before we end the pseudo lecture.  This source, while I would not say it lacks merit or that it is spurious, is cited on Reddit.  This makes an immediate need for research.  As is often the case in society we fetishize something to the point where its truth is no longer called into question.  For some reason this became the case with swords.  Now don’t get me wrong swords are cool (heck, I studied the Chinese Broadsword, by study I mean learned to whack people with it in a dojo not read up on it) but they are romanticized so much we think all major battle were fought with them.  This is false.  Spears were the weapon of favor.  Samurai used spears, the Roman Legions used spears, and knights used spears.  Swords were not nearly as effective in large scale battles.  Also in the case of knights swords were rather useless against strong armor.  If they had a sword in combat they often used the pommel end to smash the attackers head.  Maybe in shield wall they might use small swords to cut under the shield and hack at ankles or groins but axes and hammers were preferred.  But this is swept away as swords are undeniably cooler.  Although Smash Brothers is a great argument for the effectiveness of the hammer as a weapon.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/157upf/what_was_sword_fighting_actually_like_did_it/c7k1cd7

Now I hate using Buzzfeed as a source so I grabbed more than one for this knowledge nugget.  But the article, or rather the grouping a pictures with some hastily crayoned “fact” below illustrates a rather interesting point.  Sharks don’t really kill that many people.  Sharks are scary things.  They rank up their with the nightmare fuel that is spiders.  But just saying that means rather little.  Let’s have something measurable.  Metrics are important.  Every years a lot of people die often from embarrassing or frightfully awful ways.  Hippos every year kill more humans than sharks.  Hippos while they seem jubilant and too corpulent to be a problem (Fantasia is full of lies when it comes to Hippos as source by the way) they are in reality heinous killing machine.  They kill around 2,900 people a year.  Ignoring the Indiana Jones movie that never really happened ants are one of nature’s badasses.  They are like the Borg; efficient, remorseless and adaptable.  They kill more than sharks at 30 people per year.  Then there is deer.  You know Bambi.  And no, they aren’t smart enough to take vengeance for redneck hunters who mount heads on walls (yet).  They kill 130 people per year.  Even coconuts kill more than sharks (150 people per year).  This makes me immediate sad.  I would hate giving that eulogy.  Sharks only kill 5 people a year.  But because of the film Jaws, a damn fine movie, people generally kill the sons of bitches.  Peter Benchley, the books author (yes it was a book first you illiterate hobgoblin), is now a shark conservationist.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/20-things-that-kill-more-people-than-sharks-every
http://www.bookyourdive.com/blog/2012/4/5/things-more-likely-to-kill-you-than-a-shark

So now that I’ve given you fodder to educate the masses, against their will if need be, you can do what I do - critically think about how we really interpret history.  We only know what has been written and recorded.  Things like book burnings, the raising of libraries, or just passing outright lies as fact (you think todays’ pundits have this cornered?) have given us the shreds of history to wade through.  History books do us a disservice by trying to sum up and group facts as if they are all encompassing.  I patiently tried not to throttle a teenager who insisted that nearly all people in Europe during the Middle Ages were illiterate.  I simply asked “how do you know?” and he stared at me with bovine intelligence.  He parroted what he saw in textbooks.  In my head only I continued the argument.   I knew further engaging him in argument further would not lead to any enlightenment for him or resolution for me.  George Carlin said, “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” In my head I asked him if he thinks everything he reads is true.  In my head I asked him if only church officials knew how to read why would information counter to the church survive?  Obviously this is unfair as there are other cultures out there storing, adding and deleting information but don’t fuck with my argument.  I simply told him he was wrong, sting a few facts and turned away from him and started a conversation with someone who wouldn’t cause my mind to rot.  Stymied he continued arguing out loud to no one.  Fortunately ignorance is not always contagious. Truth isn’t always contagious either.  I can hope that truth (which as some urn once told me is beautiful) is sought out.  Seek on.

Ben

Beer is Good For the World

Beer was probably found and not invented because beer is just that kind of thing, always helping out.  If beer was person he’s be your cool uncle who sneaks you into bars then keeps a watchful eye out for you all night and makes sure you went home safe.  The reason beer was discovered, and not invented, most likely  had to do with wild yeast.  Wild yeast is like the best goddamn Pokemon or something, gotta catch it all.  The film Beer Saves the World supposed some ancient human had this wet container of bubbling barley.  The rain filled up the container of barley and wild yeast had sexy time with all the sugars and primitive beer.  Because man is curious he probably drank the stuff.  He might have been pissed because he had hoped for dry and not bubbly barley.  However being the kind of guy who soberly decides to drink strange and new things decided fuck it I spent some time picking that stuff I’m not wasting it.  That was the proposed first experience with beer.  Three of the four main ingredients were there; barley; water; and yeast.  Hops as all that was missing.  That’s what gives beer it’s bitterness and aroma.

Beer is awesome.  It basically invented itself because it was tired of waiting.  The stuff was staple of diets for many civilizations.  Any old films got it wrong.  Egyptians didn’t drink wine they drank beer.  What do you think those monks brewed?  Beer.  Hey, you think beer is one of those predominantly male things that’s all about bro-skies and chauvinism?  Fuck that.  Some cultures only had women brew beer.  They were the brewsters , yes brewster is the feminine term for a brewer.  Certain cultures only had women brew.  Plus the word sounds like a drunk rooster.  Maybe the bastard won’t wake me up at five in morning.

Okay, so maybe beer is an equal opportunity thing and maybe people drank it for sustenance as it had the essential nutrients you needed (and was often of  much lower alcohol content so it’s not terrible for the kiddies to have it) but what else is so good about it.  What about healthy drinking water.  Eat that and you doubts Kyle.  Part of the brewing process is you know boiling, which tends to kil all manner of not so happy things.  And this is before things like germ theory.  Germ theory was before people knew that you shouldn’t handle “dirty” things before touching food.  Remember in the medieval times everything was fucking dirty.  Sewage treatment plants were the things goring in your pot before you hucked it out the window… into the street… where people were walking.  Again why men were supposed to walk on the outside closer to curb and protect the women from the splashes of actual shit.  That coat laying down thing.  So a lady wouldn’t soil herself in feces.  Those poor coats.  And backs… ick.

Well, what about those wine snobs and spirits enthusiast you?  Kyle, you just don’t give up do you?  Beer is complex as has lots of meaningful varietals just like more traditionally elegant spirits like whiskey (or whisky depending on the country of origin), or wine for that matter.  How many glasses is there for wine?  Two?  Paltry in comparison to beer.  The pilsner glass, one of many different beer glasses, has multiple styles alone.  You can pair beer with food just as well as wine or spirits.  Oh, and if you judge beer off of the large breweries you are not a smart beer drinking.  All of Europe mocks you.  And a good chunk of the states.  Beer matters.

Independent brewing, which is starting to come into its own in the States, is trying to change the perception of what beer and should be.  Sam Adams one of the biggest of the Indy’s (and yes they are still considered and independent brewer they haven’t hit enough barrels per year yet) helps out independent breweries through programs so there is wider distributions of malts, hops, barley and other items crucial to the brewing process.  These companies help each other out.  Like the time in 2008 when, shudder, there was hops shortage and Sam sold theirs (20,000 lbs) at cost to other craft breweries.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Adams_%28beer%29#2008_hops_shortage

They don’t just help each other out.  They fight for clean water.  That stuff they boil anyway to get all the nasty stuff out they still want it clean.  That’s why brewers are fighting against fraking.  And not fraking in the sci-fi expletive sense fraking as in that environmentally dangerous resource draining practice that lets some rather nasty stuff get into ground water.  But it’s okay water should be practically flmable and totally undrinkable right.  No?  Okay fuck fraking.  Oh, and certain companies are trying to fight this by saying there is trade secrets in the whole fraking process.  So you can’t really review it.  Fuck the whole poisoning the environment thing it’s damaging for you know the process.  I only wish I was joking this was a real ruling by a real judge in real American (versus fake America).  Yeah, fuck fraking.

“A judge in Wyoming has denied a lawsuit by environmental groups against the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission demanding that the list of chemicals in fracking fluids be made public, ruling such lists are trade secrets that may be withheld under Wyoming’s open records law.”

http://grist.org/list/beer-brewers-are-joining-forces-to-fight-fracking/

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/03/29

So beer actually has essential nutrients for you, was a centerpiece of history, it discovered itself, it creates brotherhood, it helps local economy, and it fights against environmental doom.  Oh yeah, and the star spangled banner came from a drinking song.  But drink responsibly, I don’t want any of you assholes giving beer a bad name by driving drunk or acting the fool.  Don’t be that guy.

Ben

Chronological Ethnocentrism

Chronological ethnocentrism… oooo, big words, that must mean I’m smart. Alright, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way we can be serious… maybe.  I find this subject actually quite fascinating because it speaks to this little nagging voice in your head, the voice that questions common truth and accepted thought. When people say at least it’s not the cold war, or at least it’s not the fifties, or at least we’re not in Russia, these are all various examples of ethnocentrism. It means that we, as a culture, kind of blot out the truth to an extent by the thought that we uniformly march forward in time progressing evenly.  So twenty years ago we had to have been more racist and less intelligent, handsome what have you, and in twenty years time we’ll all be better, less racist, more intelligent and more handsome.  Except for you Kyle, you suck.  Also we, the place we are in now, most obviously is better than other places.  The United States must be the best, regardless of my lack of experience or knowledge of other places.  Seem silly?  Draw it in a few steps.  Does your region seem better than others?  Obviously New England is far more sophisticated that other regions.  Al other states are far behind the intellectual discourse of New Englanders.  This could only be true is intelligence was inversely proportionate to driving acumen.  And, oh my god Rhode Island drivers make me swear and scream in my car.  Adi was bewildered by this behavior.  Driving in Long Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware have never given me such aggravation.   She stared, mouth agape at my transformation from rational human being to knuckle dragging insult generator and rage-bot as my fingers curled around the driving wheel shaking with fury.  Not my finest hour but I digress.

So why is that true?  Are we just so self obsessed we feel things are better because we’re around?  Or is simply more comforting to think that our ancestors were idiots and we’re better?  Maybe it is some misguiding optimism that things have to get better.

I bring this up because of this article:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/our_real_first_gay_president/

In the article it talks about the new moniker given to Barack Obama as the first gay president due to his recent outpouring of support for gay right and marriage.  I appreciate his sentiment but it always seems odd when we get character revelations around election time.  If it were near the beginning of his presidency it would seem less smacking of a grab for positive public attention.  But I’ll take what I can get.  The article goes on to say that the praise is nice but it grossly wrong.  It’s wrong because of James Buchanan.  Time to drop some knowledge.  Several article point to James Buchanan being gay.  That kinda one ups approving of gay marriage.  Now, this kind of factoid is one that must be questioned and scrutinized.  But there is enough evidence of homosexual tendencies to at least point out that while President Buchanan may or may not have been gay he was probably a bit more rainbow proud than our sitting President.  Not to detract from Obama’s stance.  Political maneuver or not I’m glad Obama is siding progressively.  At this point it seems that politician’s lag far behind popular opinion and we as a people are dragging them by the nose forward towards a brighter future.  Whereas it should be the bright luminaries of our day influencing the American public towards that beacon of improvement.  In my humble opinion it seems politics in this country have degraded and faded from their austere and pure form into backdoor dealing snake oil hucksters.

But let’s find fault in our political system another day (It’s always easy to complain about greedy politicians, regardless of the whole burden of truth).  I think a major part of the problem I history and those who tell it.  Partly I blame history teachers.  Anyone who says history is a hard subject to teach is an idiot.  History is awesome.  Its filled with wars, betrayals, illicit sex, espionage, romance, treachery, debauchery, explosions, and mystery.  No book or movie can be as awesome or unbelievable as the stuff that we as a race have done.  The problem is book make things boring.  And they shouldn’t.  Books can be wonderful amazing thins but history books for the majority of my school career were boring and at many points, wrong.  We like to think of the whole serf class during the period of the dark ages as being constantly downtrodden, horribly abused, bent backed, black teethed, malodorous perverts.  Sorry some Python leaked in at the end, ignore it and move along.  That premise is inherently false.  Serfs didn’t have it that bad.  We have this problem as seeing people living in thatch cottages near animals being the lowest of the low and that we have elevated ourselves to be better and greater.  It isn’t totally true.  There were hierarchies within the serfs.  There were those who could read.  There wasn’t as much filth and disease as everyone thinks.  IN the cities of course there tends to be much more due to chamber pots being emptied directly onto the streets hence why men were supposed to walk on the outside bit of the sidewalk and women in side and why they put their coats down when the ladies crossed the road.  Because of shit.  Men didn’t want their ladies covered in filth.  That was the code of ethics for being a gentlemen.  You wonder why we don’t hold open a door and you say chivalry is dead.  Nope it’s just there isn’t as much poop out there with the whole advent of sewers.

Sewers remind me of something important.  The Romans, predating the dark ages, had working and efficient sewers.  They had n earlier from democracy (which we Americans stole and melded with French and English thought).  Not only that but the gay thing wasn’t such a big deal.  Roman sexuality however was a bit odd in the idea of penetration equals power and oral penetration meant that your mouth and then therefore you word was sullied.  Those receiving were in no way sullied.  But worse still anyone who performed on a woman was even more sullied and thus their words were sullied.  So there were some forward thinking ideals mixed in with very archaic ones.  Which is more how I like to think is history.  We just stumble forward and some things advance while others stagnant and others, worse still, feel the effects of entropy.  So the Romans had working sewers then the dark ages didn’t.  A whole bunch of time and we as the western society took massive steps backwards in basically every bit of study like we got a bad card in Monopoly or land in Chutes and Ladders.

So I get to thinking why do we forget about all those forward thinking parts of history.  Like the great gay men who have shaped our history.  There is no denying Alexander the Great was gay.  And we obviously pretty great it was in his name and not one went about changing it to Alexander the pretty ok.  We’ve had a bit of time to revise and edit so it could have been done.  But ignoring the hot button topic of homosexuality why do we forget these ebbs and flows of culture?  Why during the dark ages did it take so long to have that amazing resurgence of art, science and philosophy of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance?  Why now do we forget our history?  Is it our fault for not educating ourselves?  Is it some darker plot of nefarious (I love that word) invisible forces censuring our intellectual consumption so we cannot know the truth of our past?  I doubt this to a certain extent as I cannot believe the government so capable of conspiracy.  It just isn’t that easy to hide massive plots regardless of what the lone gunmen say.  And yes, I just pulled an X-files reference.

I think it’s probably just our perceptions.  You get used to your environment and because it’s what you know it’s what you love.  And what you love must be the best.  So you convince yourself the rest of the world the rest of the time isn’t better than it is now.  In some ways this is right.  But mostly it is always wrong.   One thing that blew my mind recently was my preconceived notion of what certain countries look like.  What an average street looks like in Chain, in South African, in Yemen.  I thought about it and I realized I only know what has been represented in film essentially.  And I know half the time most locations are represented by Toronto.  It’s cheap to shoot there and they a bunch of different sections that mimic other cities.  There was a post online with two pictures.  Both had what appeared to be Muslim people walking down a shopping area on a busy street.  In one you see a young couple, smiling, in jeans and polos.  The other, in more traditional garb.  Obviously I can’t comment on the smiling.  The picture with the smiling couple was taken in Pakistan.  The other was in England.  I would never have guessed.  Processing that I began to think what other preconceived notions do I have?  Am I just a sponge absorbing the thought of those around me and that shapes my idea of the world?

All I know is I owe a few history teachers a swift kick in the ass for making such an interesting subject so boring.  I mean they could people talking about people flinging shit in the streets or fellatio but they talk about all the boring bits.  History should be fun.  And history makes us better people.

Ben

http://lindholm.jp/chinf_buc.html

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/17/who-was-our-first-gay-president/

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/our_real_first_gay_president/