Much of the text of the constitution and bill of rights seems to based on context that is now lost. The argument over the right to bear arms is always one of context. I.e. did the authors mean we need a well-formed militia, or did they mean to say everyone may carry without government restriction? The third amendment is another which has a context that seems to no longer apply.

What is the context of the right to petition? Was it expected that any person should be able to appear before congress with grievances? The Obama administration has made some attempt to meet this need with the petition system on whitehouse.gov, but that doesn't seem to make a difference. Was the government meant to respond to such petitions, or only hear them? How was this handled in the past and why was it important to the authors of the Bill of Rights?

I have read about the ways that Hatshepsut visually represented herself as a pharaoh, with the false beard and kilt etc., but I was wondering, when the very concept of pharaoh is male, how she was referred to when a pronoun was needed. Egyptian art is very formulaic, and so I could especially see an application of a male pronoun in a traditional inscription that no one thought to modify for the unconventional pharaoh. Of course, the other possibilities are that the problem was somehow avoided through circumlocutions or that not enough examples survived the obliteration of her inscriptions to draw conclusions.

Is there a particular policy we can see at work, or was it a question addressed on an ad hoc basis?

Understand that the changes in the stock market(dow jones rally) may have contributed, but why did new york city come back so strong compared to cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore.

I read Kubla Khan by Coleridge and am wondering if this city existed or if it was based of another city in China

And why does everyone go by this standard today?

Musicology professor told us that she heard this somewhere, but I can't find a source. Anybody know anything about this?

Or are the similarities between the sari and stola purely coincidence?

I'm in a debate with a friend of mine. I was describing scaphism and he said it probably never existed. Did it exist? Are there any historical documents proving that it happened?

Question came up in OneY about beards and manliness and shaving and when shavin first emerged.

I don't mean how the US benefited from the atomic bombs, I am wondering what factors actually allowed the bombs to be made successfully without anyone finding out. Scientists, organization of the project, etc. Thanks

Reading The Kerner Report, which is ostensibly a bi-partisan inquiry into the race riots of the 1960's. In its preface, it says "What white Americans have never fully understood -- but what every Negro can never forget-- is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."

Can anyone qualify this? I don't doubt it's true but I just don't know how/why/what, or really anything about how "ghettos" were created.

It is a simple question I have been pondering due to some...recent events and I wanted to make sure I was still sane when I said the chances of a nonwhite person being in central Bohemia during medieval times would be near non existent. However I do want to know if any Mongols or Turks made it anywhere near central bohemia in large or even significant numbers