Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
I composed this ode for the flairs in a private thread and thought it too good not to share:
'Tis in the year 2021, in the month of November,
That I write of a great poet whom all good folk ought to remember:
The great Scottish bard, poet and tragedian of Dundee,
William McGonagall, whose works have brought great joy to me.
If to permit my continuation you will not decline,
Consider a visit to McGonagall Online!
A repository of his over two hundred Poetic Gems,
Whose content no good asked historian condemns.
Oh, AskHistorians, what a glorious day!
In praise of McGonagall I must conclude my lay,
Seek out his ouvre without the least delay,
I'm sure you'll not suffer the slightest dismay.
as we don't actually specify required sobriety levels to answer. (u/crrpit, removal notice of 2021 November 12.)
Is this what separates r/AskHistorians from all other history establishments? Is this a rules oversight that needs correction? We need answers, people!
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I was reading u/XenophonTheAthenian 's answers here and it made me ponder a Roman Batman. Like, if I'm reading this correctly, the victim has to bring the suspect to the praetor, but what about a third party? Perhaps such a Batman would have no standing to bring the criminal to court, after catching them, idk.
Anyway this left me further pondering the old canard that Batman is fascist (which is surely because of Frank Miller -- you never hear this about Spider-Man, although it's the same thing, but never mind.) What makes him fascist? I think it's the extra-legal use of violence, right, that brings to mind vigilante justice. But Batman doesn't do vigilante justice. He's not "judge, jury, and executioner" as the saying goes. He just apprehends the criminal and the courts take care of the rest (perhaps the lack of admissable evidence is why he never seems to make any headway in terms of Gotham's crime). Like a Roman merchant catching a thief, in the days before police.
The Defund campaign and its pushback has made me think about what the police is to liberals. (Conservatives and I have I think the same conception: that police are there to enforce property and suppress labor action; it's just they approve of that and I disapprove.) And I think a lot of it is that they are seen as a necessary layer of bureaucracy between the people and the court. In America you don't bring a criminal to court, you go to the police, and it's out of your hands what happens next (the fiction of being able to "press charges" or not notwithstanding) and according to the liberal conception this is the only way for justice to not be fascist, or at least barbaric. The Batman-is-fascist narrative I think is part of that...police terrorize and brutalize and break all the supposed rules, all the things Batman does, but that's ok because they are part of the state. The real danger is the people taking things into their own hands, they cannot be trusted to make good decisions -- it's much like arguments for representative republicanism as opposed to direct democracy.
I have come to no conclusions about any of this, I just have a lot to think about. One of the reasons I find learning about ancient government forms so important is that it lets you see things from a different point of view, without the assumptions we operate under now.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, November 05 - Thursday, November 11
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 3,267 | 135 comments | With the recent Travis Scott event in mind, how was the 1991 Metallica Moscow show able to keep upwards of 500k people from incident? |
| 3,148 | 24 comments | Rome famously conquered Egypt and used its vast and consistent grain harvest to feed Rome and other major cities at a level far beyond what their hinterlands could support. What did Egypt do with its excess grain before then? Where was it exported to, and were the Egyptians making a lot of money? |
| 2,471 | 67 comments | When I was a student in a private religious school as a child, my teacher told us that continental drift was a lie dreamed up by godless scientists to destroy America. Was there controversy surrounding continental drift in the late 1980s/early 1990s, or was that a fairly fringe opinion? |
| 2,142 | 103 comments | Is there any reason why Homer consistently refers to blood as being 'black'? |
| 2,076 | 18 comments | The US federal government grants far more money to some states than it collects in tax revenue from them, effectively redistributing the nation's wealth from the wealthiest states to the poorer ones. When did state-to-state redistribution become a major outcome of federal tax/spending policy? |
| 2,041 | 102 comments | Just how "good" to the modern palate was food at c. 1900 restaurants like New York City's Delmonico's? |
| 1,884 | 12 comments | As we know today a lot of poisons need some time to take effect. How useful were food tasters employed to prevent poisoning for their kings / rulers really? Was the profession a placebo? |
| 1,834 | 10 comments | [Great Question!] In Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus decides to watch the Rude Mechanicals' play specifically because he expects it will be entertainingly terrible. Nowadays many watch movies like "The Room" for the same reason. Just how old is the idea of "so bad it's good" entertainment? |
| 1,597 | 13 comments | What was the part 2 to Gunpowder Plot? |
| 1,586 | 26 comments | We hear a lot of the United States' treatment of Native Americans during their Westward expansion, but how did Russia treat local populations during their colonization of Siberia? |
###Top 10 Comments
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What do you think is the most underrated US civil war song? I think "We are coming father Abraham" deserves more love
How can I learn about China's Hundred Schools of Thought and like the intellectual ecosystem that these ways of thinking existed in and responded to? Is there something I can read, listen to, or watch that will help make sense of it to a layman? Like Wikipedia will lay out the schools and sort of their concepts but I feel like I have no context to understand how they were significant, how they departed from previous thinking, and how they were variously absorbed into Chinese thought or rejected.
On a slightly serious note:
I was looking over pictures I took on a vacation to Scotland a couple of years ago, and came across a series I took in the outstanding Kildonan Museum on the island of South Uist. The museum included a replica of an early 20th-century blackhouse. The exhibit was neat, but the placard placed nearby was especially powerful, as both an invocation and a caution for historians and laypersons alike:
Hi all! I am interetested in posting a question about critical race theory. I have found a few good answers searching the forum, but I could have sworn there was recently (in the last year) a meta post regarding the issue. But i cannot find it in my searches. If anyone can direct me to that particular post or to some more answers on here so i can tailor my question better, it would be much appreciated.
Also is there a place in the index/wiki that contains the posfs such as the recent meta discussion on abortion history.and similar such posts (i remember one about the 1619 project and another on monuments)? These are always very interesting to me outside of just my current interesr in CRT and i would love to be able to read previous discussions like that. Thanks! Hope i asked this in the right place.
Was there ever any effect of Prussia on Chinese philosophy?
Im writing a novel with war in it, but i dont understand this passage of the art of war: (12.There are three ways a ruler can bring misfortune upon his army)>14.(2) By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain an army. This causes restlessness in the soldiers minds.