I was reading through a thread about holocaust deniers and some of the comments were talking about how the Holocaust might be exaggerated. These arguments a lot harder for me to disprove then the flat out denial. Is there a way of debunking these or is there any legitimacy to them?
1 Answers 2014-11-18
Historically, at least from my experience and study, it seems Chinese decorative and stylistic tastes tend toward the ornate, even ostentatious, whereas Japanese stylistic tastes tend to be minimalist and simple. This is even true of cuisine.
Is this because Japanese style developed from China when Chinese tastes were less interested in the ornate? Or is it a unique Japanese influence that abandoned Chinese style? Or is it that China had contact with other countries/cultures that influenced them that Japan did not? Or did Japan simply not have the means and expertise to create these kinds of works (or vice versa)? Or something else entirely?
1 Answers 2014-11-18
1 Answers 2014-11-17
How did the politics work of the between these two? austria was part of the HRE but Hungary was not. how were the political interests of the leader of the austro-hungarian empire reconciled with half his empire being part of the the HRE?
i might have gotten this all wrong. can you point me to somewhere i can read or if someone is gracious enoughto explain id be grateful . thanks
1 Answers 2014-11-17
I noticed that some of their Neo-Nazis have shaved heads in the 'skinhead' fashion much like we have in the USA. I had no idea that the concept of the skinhead was a transatlantic one. Having seen plenty of images of actual Nazis it seems clear they did not start this trend.
So my question is this, how did this concept of shaving one's head become attached to the political agenda of racism and fascism?
1 Answers 2014-11-17
What impact, if any, did the Renaissance have on European exploration? What impact, if any, did European exploration have on the Renaissance? I can find surprisingly little on this topic.
1 Answers 2014-11-17
I know that the arabs didn't like it at all, but what was the attitude to the plan from the US, the USSR and the European Countries? Did anybody believe the plan to be viable?
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I'm just watching the 2002 movie "Hero", which is set in the period just before the unification of China under the Qin Emperor, and have also seen similar films such as "The House of Flying Daggers" (Tang Dynasty) and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (Qing Dynasty).
In those movies, the royal/imperial palaces and persons of ancient China are portrayed as almost impossibly opulent and powerful with spotless palaces covered top to bottom in lacquer, jade and gold, thousands of identically dressed servants and identically uniformed soldiers.
The Wuxia genre of film is intentionally stylised and full of exaggeration - every swordfight features insane feats of wire work, characters literally fly through treetops or across lakes and so on. So how much of the opulence depicted there is wild fairytale exaggeration and what do we know about what it was really like?
I appreciate by the way that those three films are set in wildly differing time periods - "Crouching Tiger" is specifically identified as 1779, "Flying Daggers" in 859 and "Hero" sometime in the 200s BC, and I guess I'm more interested in the earlier dates but really anything you can tell me will be of interest as I know literally nothing of Chinese history before the Boxer Rebellion...
Also, while I'm on the subject, is there a good "Basics of Chinese history for Dummies" out there anywhere? Books, Videos, Podcasts, whatever...
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A byte is eight bits, so why are bytes the more commonly used unit of measurement? And does the word "bit" really come from "binary digit?"
2 Answers 2014-11-17
Does anyone know any good resources that discuss the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution in areas outside the Fertile Crescent?
I'm specifically looking for information about China, West Africa, and Middle/South America.
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And other sources for data.
I remember reading that Persian archeology for the Mongol Invasions supports lower death tolls than the higher, long believed death tolls.
1 Answers 2014-11-17
I understand the war to get it was a big economic sink, but what advantages did they get from it, particularly during the interwar period?
1 Answers 2014-11-17
I'm going off of this painting of Napoleon.
-What does the stitching at his breast (necklace?) symbolize? -What are the dark spots on his white coat, and why are there bees on his red coat? -Why white and red? -Is his sword special? -Why does he have a Greek laurel wreath instead of a crown? -Why does he have a scepter with those fingers?
Anything else you can explain would be great.
1 Answers 2014-11-17
I'm watching The First World War (BBC 4, 2003). Fantastic documentary, but there are so many different clips of a cannon firing just as fast as the crew can cycle it. Is this for the benefit of the news reels back home?("Keep making those shells and we'll keep firing!")
Do they plan on shooting as much as they can and then getting out of there before the counter barrage?
2 Answers 2014-11-17
2 Answers 2014-11-17
Particularly I'm looking at the Venezuela Crisis of 1895, and have been trying to find things like the text of Secretary Olney's "20 Inch Gun" note to Britain.
I've tried Google, gBooks, and gScholar (although I'm not very skilled at using those sites), and have only really been able to find Willy Scruggs' pamphlets that fired up the crisis. I am really hoping I can get my hands on more than just the one pamphlet.
I'm not in school so I don't have access to university libraries and librarians who might be able to help me here, and without them I'm just stumped. Any help you can give would be beyond great!
1 Answers 2014-11-17
Just watched this film for the first time. I almost thought it's a satire itself. Am i missing something? I can't wrap my head around how self-composed most of the characters were, given the circumstances, especially towards the end, talking about suicide like it's a walk in the park. I can understand some of the ideologies of nazism when it comes to social unity, order, pride and wanting to pulverize the "filth" out of this planet, but there's a fine line between ambition and collective insanity. Is that how Hitler's true subordinates were at the time? Fully committed and loyal to their oath and their leader, willing to take a bullet for him any day of the week even when he's dead? Keeping their cool when all hope is lost? How did a single man of such a poor academic background manage to manipulate, gain control over, but most importantly brainwash and seduce the majority of his future government into hell on earth; a group of acclaimed mds, phds, engineers, lawyers, high-ranking militants and all sorts of intellectuals? How and why did loyalty become an excuse for the majority to strip themselves off any self-worth when they failed to execute the orders of their leader? Were they really his subordinates or did they just succumb into fear they could no longer explain? It's depressing, morbid, demented and haunting, but i'm genuinely curious.
1 Answers 2014-11-17
Hello, I was reading earlier about Brian Harrison who owned a "small" 1500 acre estate in England but owned several extensive lands in Australia. This got me thinking about the moneyed classes as a whole and the aristocracy in particular. Since for the aristocracy the main generator of wealth has always been land, why did they not invest in this extensively in the Empire? I know some British nobles owned some lands in the Colonial US, but I really do not know much about this at all. Did some aristocracts, and to a lesser extent rich industrialists and merchants, ever seriously invest in lands in colonial possessions?
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