Moonlapse

The Epirotes consisted of the Chaones in the north, the Molossi in the center, and the Thesproti in the south. There were Greek colonies on the coast, but the terrain inland was typically too mountainous for the growth of much grain and so the tribes were more pastoral.

BTW, some favorite Bushisms: "The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it." "I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"

Well, Western technology has certainly taken natural selection by intelligence out of the picture. lol Just go to WalMart and listen in on some personal conversations.

I haven't noticed anything, very strange.

Has anyone read this? I just picked it up from the bookstore after wandering around for a good half hour. Supposedly aims to explain (and not just state obvious factors) why advanced civilization comes from the 'West', excluding Darwinian theories of genetic superiority, taking into account human pre-history.

NM on the dates, there were 3 interglacial periods between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago.

They don't mention Doggerland. During glaciation the area between England and Denmark was lowland tundra. The weight of the ice pushing down on the land to the north actually made this area bulge upward. As the ice melted, the land evened out - the northern land rising (northern Sweden is still rising) and the southern land sinking (Netherlands). I just wonder how they determined the date? Couldn't this have happened after an even earlier ice age? If not, then under the peat at the bottom of the southern North Sea must be evidence of an inland lake?

As far as I know, the Phasis is the modern Rioni river. The lowlands are marshy, but are bounded to the north by the Caucasus Mountains, which provide timber and the source of the river. Supposedly the Black Sea has risen in the past 200 years, making most sites unsuitable for excavation. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-11-24.html http://ina.tamu.edu/Georgia%20Survey.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Colchis...mapandersen.jpg A good indication of the river size:

Does this mean that if I quote Hitler while talking about WW2, that I'm a neo-Nazi?

Well, I'm entertained... at least theres a reason for people to look into and pay attention to these things. Gasoline prices typically drop after summer and will get to about $2.50 this winter, rising again in February. Supplies are higher this year and demand is growing more slowly. It also doesn't hurt that this hurricane season was uneventful. BTW, I'm going to split this topic.

*chuckles* If I wasn't married... I'd still probably live in a studio apartment, sleep on the floor, and own only as much as I could fit into my car... which I'm totally comfortable with.

And critically, despite the source.

Can it be plausible to say that a grade point average is a number based on how well you follow orders? I think it's plausible to say that if you excel in school, you can excel in a corporate environment. If you believe that your question is derivative of this, then yes.

I refuse to believe that its hopeless to try to find improved means of democracy.

For the sake of argument, I'll say Yes--in 1856, people had the same ideas regarding how complicated the language of a bill needed to be, what a normal life and career consisted of, and so on. What evidence leads you to think otherwise? Laws have always been complex. Look at Roman laws! Indeed the language needed to be complicated. Most people were literate without compulsory schooling and they learned written language by reading classical literature and the contemporary eighteenth and nineteenth century literature. William Blake, Emily Bronte, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Keats, Herman Melville, etc, etc. They didn't have 'Dick and Jane' or 'The Cat in the Hat'. The average person had a mastery of written English that many people do not have today. At least half the population was agrarian, though declining, and normal life for them was much different than what you and I consider normal life. Family was central to these people. Children worked with their parents, prepared and consumed meals with them. Today, children spend most of the day either sitting in a compulsory state institution, breaking their desire to learn on tedious homework, or blankly and unproductively absorbed in TV or games. Do you also think that these people spent their career climbing the corporate ladder? Does the term 'Yankee ingenuity' describe scenarios involving adaptation, invention, improvization, perseverance... all independently?

Allow me to repeat myself. Democracy is terribly inefficient and even backwards in our present circumstances. Then again... democracy didn't create the present cirumstances. Language of bills, normal life, career, etc... do you think that Americans 150 years ago had the same perception of these concepts that you have now? I agree. What I disagree with is the obsolescence of independency and the centralization of power. You speak of alternatives in the context of staying on the path our government/society has taken. Alternatives that maintain the present system. I'm saying that the path has been wrong and therefore these types of practical alternatives are wrong. I really have no idea how to revert to a more democratic system without collateral damage, since most of the progress that has been made is dependent upon 'authority'. However, that problem might be taken care of if people make the effort to educate and involve themselves even just a little bit more.

Television and radio are very important tools for influencing perception. I don't how many times someone has told me how people with opposing political views are basically brainwashed by the particular media channels they adhere to. It seems to me that most people are fully aware of this aspect, but once they pick their alignment, it seems that the caution involved in gathering information from their chosen corporate media is mostly disarmed. I understand how practical this is, because I've unwittingly done it. Between all the responsibilities involved in our modern lives, who has time to really dig for something that they are comfortable in accepting? Just one issue can be incredibly time consuming, let alone the endless issues that we are all confronted with. Why not just focus on our own personal issues and let the professionals deal with the confusing important things? Just recently I've come to grasp something that is probably not new to some people but has been an important realization for me. Even though television, radio and literature are all media and all used similarly, there's an important difference. Audio/visual media are essentially extensions of our senses, a directly input to our conscious reality. Literature on the other hand, while involving the senses, has to be filtered and interpreted in order for us to represent the content in the context of our conscious reality. As a result, I find literary media to be far more subject to objective criticism. By our nature, we usually don't question our own senses, and this is the advantage of audio/visual media in its effect on perception. While this may not help someone who has not based their principles on the real experiences of their daily life, this approach to media has helped me to make sense of current events while ingesting news from various different biases. I don't think I can say it enough - more books less TV.

Crisis of Democracy, eh? Yes, democracy is terribly inefficient and even backwards in our present circumstances. Then again... democracy didn't create the present cirumstances. Let's just be apathetic to the system and let the specialists determine the important things, right? Go turn on the TV, pick your side and delegate your efficacy to a politician. The animals have to be kept in the zoo...

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. - Albert Einstein

Some interesting quotes from Mussolini that I've come across in my reading, judge for yourself how they apply to modern reality as you percieve it: "Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power." "Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State." "Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace." "The truth is that men are tired of liberty." "It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity." "Corporations mean regulated economy and therefore also controlled economy

If their perception of you has changed the way they act towards you, don't let your new perception of them change the way that you act as well. As long as you are still the child they know, they'll realize why they really love you.

He's an ex-corporate executive... Anyways, the other Triumviri remarked that these occasions can sometimes turn out to be fortunate, and it seems that this is indeed the case.

Its a stipulative argument over a stipulative term. lol

Theophore Terence Anguish!! :punk: I'll have to refer to you by that name from now on.

If there is, I think that it would take at least as long to undo as it has taken to get to this point. I think that people should purposely put themselves in control of their lives - there needs to be many more entrepreneurs to compete with corporations, people need to make sure that they and their children get an intellectual education (stay away from the TV, read some challenging literature) and always try to improve upon it. Spending more time providing guidance and insight to your kids should be your foremost obligation when you have them - intended or not. How much of a child's day is taken up by school, homework and television/games? How late in life, if ever, do people learn financial responsibility? How many people try to find fulfillment in self-sufficiency instead of just aquiring the objects they see in advertising? The thing I've learned to cherish most in my life was spending part of my childhood on a farm. I entertained myself using whatever I could find and even though I despised it at the time, the manual labor that I was expected to do as a part of the family educated me more than school ever did.