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Garth Holman

Open and Closed questions - 0 views

  • Closed questions have the following characteristics: They give you facts.  They are easy to answer. They are quick to answer. They keep control of the conversation with the questione
  • As opening questions in a conversation,
  • For testing their understanding
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  • An open question is likely to receive a long answer.
  • To get people to realize the extend of their problems (to which, of course, you have the solution).
  • Open questions have the following characteristics: They ask the respondent to think and reflect. They will give you opinions and feelings. They hand control of the conversation to the respondent.
  • To find out more about a person, their wants, needs, problems, and so on.
  • Example As a follow-on from closed questions, to develop a conversation and open up someone who is rather quiet.
  • Using open questions can be scary, as they seem to hand the baton of control over to the other person.
  • A closed question can be answered with either a single word or a short phrase.
bw21dcs

Gargoyles - 0 views

  • Gargoyles were usually carved in the form of a grotesque face, figure or frightening creature projecting from a roof gutter. Gargoyles were painted and some were even gilded. Gargoyles might depicted any number of grotesque images including:Ugly human facesAnimalsMythical creaturesImaginary creaturesGargoyles combining several animals are also referred to as chimeras
  • ?What is the purpose of Gargoyles? The first is a practical purpose - gargoyles provided a method of drainage which protected the stones and the mortar of churches, cathedrals and castles from erosion. The number of Gargoyles added to buildings were numerous because dividing the flow of water minimized potential water damage.  The second purpose of gargoyles was as 'guardians' of the buildings in the form of abstract symbols designed to represent, and to ward off evil.
  • Gargoyles all have a common theme, they are carved with big wide-open mouths. Whilst this was a practical, functional and necessary requirement of gargoyles creatures and images with mouths wide open are symbolic of devouring giants. And lets be honest, how could Medieval stone masons make anything look beautiful when it has to be displayed with a big wide-open mouth!
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  • Perhaps the Medieval church wanted to convey a terrifying impression of hell and enforce that there was safety and sanctity inside the church. The devil would be a most inappropriate, and totally unorthodox, image to allow on a church - fantastic gargoyles, would, however have a similar, terrifying psychological effect.
  • Gothic architecture is characterized by stained-glass windows, flying buttresses, tall spires, the Gothic arch or pointed arch and Gothic Gargoyles. Gothic Architecture is the term used to describe the style of architecture which were used between 1200 AD to 1500 AD.
  • In Architectural terms only the creature serving as actual water spout is called a Gargoyle, otherwise is it known as a Grotesque. A grotesque may function solely as decoration.
    • bw21dcs
       
      There is a difference between gargoyles and grotesques.
mukul g

Society of the Mongol Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

  • During the Mongol Empire there were two different groups of food, "white foods" and "brown foods"
  • "White foods"
  • were usually dairy products and were the main food source during the summer. The main part of their diet was "airag" or fermented mare’s milk, a food which is still widely drunk today.
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  • "Brown foods" were usually meat and were the main food source during the winter, usually boiled and served with wild garlic or onions.
  • The Mongols had a unique way of slaughtering their animals to get meat. The animal was laid on its back and restrained. Then the butcher would cut its chest open and rip open the aorta, which would cause deadly internal bleeding. Animals would be slaughtered in this fashion because it would keep all of the blood inside of the carcass. Once all of the internal organs were removed, the blood was then drained out and used for sausages.[2]
  • Genghis Khan authorized the use of paper money shortly before his death in 1227. It was backed by precious metals and silk.[6]
  • During the winter sheep were the only domestic animal slaughtered, but horses were occasionally slaughtered for ceremonies.[3]
  • The Mongols rarely slaughtered animals during the summer but if an animal died of natural causes they made sure to carefully preserve it.
  • During the winter the Mongols would also go ice fishing
  • Meal etiquette existed only during large gatherings and ceremonies. The meal, usually meat, was cut up into small pieces. Guests were served their meat on skewers and the host determined the order of serving. People of different social classes were assigned to different parts of the meat and it was the responsibility of the server or the “ba’urchis” to know who was in each social class. The meat was eaten with fingers and the grease was wiped on the ground or on clothing.
  • The most commonly imported fare was liquor
  • The Mongols used Chinese silver ingot as a unified money of public account, while circulating paper money in China and coins in the western areas of the empire such as Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate
  • Under Ogedei Khan the Mongol government issued paper currency backed by silk reserves and founded a Department which was responsible for destroying old notes.[7] In 1253, Mongke established a Department of Monetary affairs to control the issuance of paper money in order to eliminate the overissue of the currency by Mongol and non-Mongol nobles since the reign of Great Khan Ogedei.
  •  
    Tells you about the daily life of the mongols which come in quest 10. 
megan s

List of Indian inventions and discoveries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Button, ornamental: Buttons—made from seashell—were used in the Indus Valley Civilization for ornamental purposes by 2000 BCE.[1] Some buttons were carved into geometric shapes and had holes pieced into them so that they could attached to clothing by using a thread.[1] Ian McNeil (1990) holds that: "The button, in fact, was originally used more as an ornament than as a fastening, the earliest known being found at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley. It is made of a curved shell and about 5000 years old."
  • Calico: Calico had originated in the subcontinent by the 11th century and found mention in Indian literature, by the 12th century writer Hemachandra. He has mentioned calico fabric prints done in a lotus design.[3] The Indian textile merchants traded in calico with the Africans by the 15th century and calico fabrics from Gujarat appeared in Egypt.[3] Trade with Europe followed from the 17th century onwards.[3] Within India, calico originated in Calicut.[3] Carding, devices for: Historian of science Joseph Needham ascribes the invention of bow-instruments used in textile technology to India.[4] The earliest evidence for using bow-instruments for carding comes from India (2nd century CE).[4] These carding devices, called kaman and dhunaki would loosen the texture of the fiber by the means of a vibrating string.[4]
  • The words for "chess" in Old Persian and Arabic are chatrang and shatranj respectively — terms derived from caturaṅga in Sanskrit,[11][12] which literally means an army of four divisions or four corps.[13][14] Chess spread throughout the world and many variants of the game soon began taking shape.[15] This game was introduced to the Near East from India and became a part of the princely or courtly education of Persian nobility.[13] Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders and others carried it to the Far East where it was transformed and assimilated into a game often played on the intersection of the lines of the board rather than within the squares.[15] Chaturanga reached Europe through Persia, the Byzantine empire and the expanding Arabian empire.[14][16] Muslims carried Shatranj to North Africa, Sicily, and Spain by the 10th century where it took its final modern form of chess.[15] Chintz: The origin of Chintz is from the printed all cotton fabric of calico in India.[17] The origin of the word chintz itself is from the Hindi language word चित्र् (chitr), which means a spot
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  • Coherer, iron and mercury: In 1899, the Bengali physicist Jagdish Chandra Bose announced the development of an "iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector" in a paper presented at the Royal Society, London.[19] He also later received U.S. Patent 755,840, "Detector for electrical disturbances" (1904), for a specific electromagnetic receiver. Cotton gin, single-roller: The Ajanta caves of India yield evidence of a single roller cotton gin in use by the 5th century.[20] This cotton gin was used in India until innovations were made in form of foot powered gins.[21] The cotton gin was invented in India as a mechanical device known as charkhi, more technically the "wooden-worm-worked roller". This mechanical device was, in some parts of India, driven by water power.[4] Crescograph: The crescograph, a device for measuring growth in plants, was invented in the early 20th century by the Bengali scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose.[22][
  • Perhaps as early as 300 BCE—although certainly by 200 CE—high quality steel was being produced in southern India also by what Europeans would later call the crucible technique.[24] In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in a crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon.[24] The first crucible steel was the wootz steel that originated in India before the beginning of the common era.[25] Archaeological evidence suggests that this manufacturing process was already in existence in South India well before the Christian era.[26][27][28][29] Dock (maritime): The world's first dock at Lothal (2400 BCE) was located away from the main current to avoid deposition of silt.[30] Modern oceanographers have observed that the Harappans must have possessed knowledge relating to tides in order to build such a dock on the ever-shifting course of the Sabarmati, as well as exemplary hydrography and maritime engineering.[30] This was the earliest known dock found in the world, equipped to berth and service ships.[30][31] It is speculated that Lothal engineers studied tidal movements, and their effects on brick-built structures, since the walls are of kiln-burnt bricks.[32] This knowledge also enabled them to select Lothal's location in the first place, as the Gulf of Khambhat has the highest tidal amplitude and ships can be sluiced through flow tides in the river estuar
  • location in the first place, as the Gulf of Khambhat has the highest tidal amplitude and ships can be sluiced through flow tides in the river estuar y
  • Incense clock: Although popularly associated with China the incense clock is believed to have originated in India, at least in its fundamental form if not function.[33][34] Early incense clocks found in China between the 6th and 8th century CE—the period it appeared in China all seem to have Devanāgarī carvings on them instead of Chinese seal characters.[33][34] Incense itself was introduced to China from India in the early centuries CE, along with the spread of Buddhism by travelling monks.[35][36][37] Edward Schafer asserts that incense clocks were probably an Indian invention, transmitted to China, which explains the Devanāgarī inscriptions on early incense clocks found in China.[33] Silvio Bedini on the other hand asserts that incense clocks were derived in part from incense seals mentioned in Tantric Buddhist scriptures, which first came to light in China after those scriptures from India were translated into Chinese, but holds that the time-telling function of the seal was incorporated by the Chinese.[34] India ink, carbonaceous pigment for: The source of the carbon pigment used in India ink was India.[38][39] In India, the carbon black from which India ink is produced is obtained by burning bones, tar, pitch, and other substances.[39][40] Ink itself has been used in India since at least the 4th century BCE.[41] Masi, an early ink in India was an admixture of several chemical components.[41] Indian documents written in Kharosthi with ink have been unearthed in Xinjiang.[42] The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in ancient South India.[43] Several Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink
  • Indian clubs: The Indian club—which appeared in Europe during the 18th century—was used long by India's native soldiery before its introduction to Europe.[45] During the British Raj the British officers in India performed calisthenic exercises with clubs to keep in for physical conditioning.[45] From Britain the use of club swinging spread to the rest of the world.[45] Kabaddi: The game of kabaddi originated in India during prehistory.[46] Suggestions on how it evolved into the modern form range from wrestling exercises, military drills, and collective self defense but most authorities agree that the game existed in some form or the other in India during the period between 1500-400 BCE.[46] Ludo: Pachisi originated in India by the 6th century.[47] The earliest evidence of this game in India is the depiction of boards on the caves of Ajanta.[47] This game was played by the Mughal emperors of India; a notable example being that of Akbar, who played living Pachisi using girls from his harem.[47][48] A variant of this game, called Ludo, made its way to England during the British Raj.[
  • Ruler: Rulers made from Ivory were in use by the Indus Valley Civilization in what today is Pakistan and some parts of Western India prior to 1500 BCE.[64] Excavations at Lothal (2400 BCE) have yielded one such ruler calibrated to about 1/16 of an inch—less than 2 millimeters.[64] Ian Whitelaw (2007) holds that 'The Mohenjo-Daro ruler is divided into units corresponding to 1.32 inches (33.5 mm) and these are marked out in decimal subdivisions with amazing accuracy—to within 0.005 of an inch. Ancient bricks found throughout the region have dimensions that correspond to these units.'[65] Shigeo Iwata (2008) further writes 'The minimum division of graduation found in the segment of an ivory-made linear measure excavated in Lothal was 1.79 mm (that corresponds to 1/940 of a fathom), while that of the fragment of a shell-made one from Mohenjo-daro was 6.72 mm (1/250 of a fathom), and that of bronze-made one from Harapa was 9.33 mm (1/180 of a fathom).'[66] The weights and measures of the Indus civilization also reached Persia and Central Asia, where they were further modified.[66] Seamless celestial globe: Considered one of the most remarkable feats in metallurgy, it was invented in Kashmir by Ali Kashmiri ibn Luqman in between 1589 and 1590 CE, and twenty other such globes were later produced in Lahore and Kashmir during the Mughal Empire.[67][68] Before they were rediscovered in the 1980s, it was believed by modern metallurgists to be technically impossible to produce metal globes without any seams, even with modern technology.[68] These Mughal metallurgists pioneered the method of lost-wax casting in order to produce these globes
  • Simputer: The Simputer (acronym for "simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer") is a self-contained, open hardware handheld computer, designed for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate. It was developed in 1999 by 7 scientists of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, led by Dr. Swami Manohar in collaboration with Encore India, a company based in Bangalore.[69][70] Originally envisaged to bring internet to the masses of India, the Simputer and its derivatives are today widely utilized by governments of several Indian states as part of their e-governance drive, the Indian Army, as well as by other public and private organizations.[71][72] Snakes and ladders: Snakes and ladders originated in India as a game based on morality.[73] During British rule of India, this game made its way to England, and was eventually introduced in the United States of America by game-pioneer Milton Bradley in 1943.[73] Stepwell: Earliest clear evidence of the origins of the stepwell is found in the Indus Valley Civilization's archaeological site at Mohenjodaro in Pakistan.[74] The three features of stepwells in the subcontinent are evident from one particular site, abandoned by 2500 BCE, which combines a bathing pool, steps leading down to water, and figures of some religious importance into one structure.[74] The early centuries immediately before the common era saw the Buddhists and the Jains of India adapt the stepwells into their architecture.[74] Both the wells and the form of ritual bathing reached other parts of the world with Buddhism.[74] Rock-cut step wells in the subcontinent date from 200-400 CE.[75] Subsequently the wells at Dhank (550-625 CE) and stepped ponds at Bhinmal (850-950 CE) were constructed.[75] Stupa: The origin of the stupa can be traced to 3rd century BCE India.[76] It was used as a commemorative monument associated with storing sacred relics.[76] The stupa architecture was adopted in Southeast and East Asia, where it evolved into the pagoda, a Buddhist monument used for enshrining sacred relics.[76] Toe stirrup: The earliest known manifestation of the stirrup, which was a toe loop that held the big toe was used in India in as early as 500 BCE[77] or perhaps by 200 BCE according to other sources.[78][79] This ancient stirrup consisted of a looped rope for the big toe which was at the bottom of a saddle made of fibre or leather.[79] Such a configuration made it suitable for the warm climate of most of India where people used to ride horses barefoot.[79] A pair of megalithic double bent iron bars with curvature at each end, excavated in Junapani in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have been regarded as stirrups although they could as well be something else.[80] Buddhist carvings in the temples of Sanchi, Mathura and the Bhaja caves dating back between the 1st and 2nd century BCE figure horsemen riding with elaborate saddles with feet slipped under girths.[81][82][83] Sir John Marshall described the Sanchi relief as "the earliest example by some five centuries of the use of stirrups in any part of the world".[83] In the 1st century CE horse riders in northern India, where winters are sometimes long and cold, were recorded to have their booted feet attached to hooked stirrups.[78] However the form, the conception of the primitive Indian stirrup spread west and east, gradually evolving into the stirrup of today.http://en.wikipe
matt k

Ancient Egyptian Inventions - 7 views

shared by matt k on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The shadoof was a very useful device that the Egyptians built to help them with their water, and the Nile River. It was operated by hand and was used to lift water from the river onto land in buckets. It has a long pole and there are two objects at each end of it. On one side, there is a bucket. On the other, there is a weight. The Egyptians would lower the bucket, and allowed the water to flow into the bucket. Then they would drop it, causing the weight to lift it back up so they could retrieve it. This was a very nifty device.
    • ed h
       
      this is a very cool device.
    • Everett m
       
      very helpful thanks
  • Paper was another remarkable invention the Egyptians came up with. Their paper was made out of papyrus, a plant very abundant in the Nile area. First they had to slice the core of the stalk into very fine pieces. These pieces get submerged in water to remove sugar. The they are pounded to drain the water. The strips are  then lay side by side and are weaved into each other. The end result is papyrus paper. In fact, the English word “paper” is derived from the word papyrus.
    • anna g
       
      they invented paper
  • papyrus.                                                                                      
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  • Locks were another making of the Egyptians. These were made to prevent the endless robberies. They made a wooden crossbar that was almost entirely enclose except for some space for the key and the pins. They dropped these pins into cavities, which locked the door. To unlock it, they slid the key into the opening, which pushed the pins out of the way, enabling the door to open.            
    • anna g
       
      they made locks
    • sarah l
       
      Thats intresting i didnt know that.
    • matt k
       
      Cool, except you could just break the lock by smashing the wood. :)
  • The shadoof was a very useful device that the Egyptians built to help them with their water, and the Nile River. It was operated by hand and was used to lift water from the river onto land in buckets. It has a long pole and there are two objects at each end of it. On one side, there is a bucket. On the other, there is a weight. The Egyptians would lower the bucket, and allowed the water to flow into the bucket. Then they would drop it, causing the weight to lift it back up so they could retrieve it. This was a very nifty device.
    • cassidy s
       
      The Ancient Egyptiond=s invented the shadoox,and without it it would be very difficult for them to get water.
  •  
    I don't think this is a very reliable site. In the first two paragraphs, there are 3 grammer mistakes. This could be reliable, but the creator of this site really needs to get an editor to fix the mistakes.
Garth Holman

KALAMAZOO 2011: Session 47 - Thursday, May 12: The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval H... - 0 views

  • An example of an object used in daily worship was a board with pilgrim badges attached to it; these were homemade pieces made by the poor.
  • “Do-It-Yourself” reliquaries were also popular. A hollow cage of soft metal could be pulled open then the pilgrim chose and placed their own relic inside. Lockets, chains, and brooches were increasingly popular as portable and personal reliquary. There were also rattles, whistles, horns and bells sold at Churches and these were often used in processions. Some were inscribed with inscriptions to Mary and
  •  
    Higher level reading on the daily religion practice by the poor of soicety
Kalina P

Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed (2011 Version) - 2 views

  • , “Make love not war,” and then -- down at the bottom -- “Screw it, just make money.”
  • A Florida woman wrote to tell me that, before reading it, she’d always been annoyed at the poor for what she saw as their self-inflicted obesity.
  • . I started with my own extended family, which includes plenty of people without jobs or health insurance, and moved on to trying to track down a couple of the people I had met while working on Nickel and Dimed
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  • widely read among low-wage workers. In the last few years, hundreds of people have written to tell me their stories: the mother of a newborn infant whose electricity had just been turned off, the woman who had just been given a diagnosis of cancer and has no health insurance, the newly homeless man who writes from a library computer.
  • t things have gotten much worse, especially since the economic downturn that began in 2008.
  • earned less than a barebones budget covering housing, child care, health care, food, transportation, and taxes -- though not, it should be noted, any entertainment, meals out, cable TV, Internet service, vacations, or holiday gifts. Twenty-nine percent is a minority, but not a reassuringly small one, and other studies in the early 2000s came up with similar figures.
  • -- the skipped meals, the lack of medical care, the occasional need to sleep in cars or vans -
  • The economy was growing, and jobs, if poorly paid, were at least plentiful.
  • many of these jobs had disappeared and there was stiff competition for those that remained
  • a healthy diet wasn’t always an option.  And if I had a quarter for every person who’s told me he or she now tipped more generously, I would be able to start my own foundation.
  • and and was subsisting on occasional cleaning and catering jobs. Neither seemed unduly afflicted by the recessi
  • suicide a “coping strategy,” but it is one way some people have responded to job los
  • Media attention has focused, understandably enough, on the “nouveau poor” -- formerly middle and even upper-middle class people who lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their investments in the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic downturn that followed it, but the brunt of the recession has been borne by the blue-collar working class, which had already been sliding downwards since de-industrialization began in the 1980s.
  • were especially hard hit for the simple reason that they had so few assets and savings to fall back on as jobs disappea
  • cut back on health care.
  • e to moves and suspensions of telephone service
  • Food i
  • “food auctions,” which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates.
  • urban hunting. In Racine, Wisconsin, a 51-year-old laid-off mechanic told me he was supplementing his diet by “shooting squirrels and rabbits and eating them stewed, baked, and grilled.” In Detroit, where the wildlife population has mounted as the human population ebbs, a retired truck driver was doing a brisk business in raccoon carcasses, which he recommends marinating with vinegar and spices.
  • ncrease the number of paying people per square foot of dwelling space -- by doubling up or renting to couch-surfer
  • “people who’ve lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent.”
  • g members of my extended family, have given up their health insurance.
  • - a government safety net that is meant to save the poor from spiraling down all the way to destitutio
  • The food stamp program has responded to the crisis fairly well, to the point where it now reaches about 37 million people, up about 30% from pre-recession levels.
  • ? There is a right to food stamps. You go to the office and, if you meet the statutory definition of need, they h
  • elp you. For welfare, the street-level bureaucrats can, pretty much at their own discretion, just say no.
  • Delaware residents who had always imagined that people turned to the government for help only if “they didn’t want to work.
  • ace a state-sponsored retraining course in computer repairs -- only to find that those skills are no longer in demand.
  • 44% of laid-off people at the time, she failed to meet the fiendishly complex and sometimes arbitrary eligibility requirements for unemployment benefits. Their car started falling apart.
  • Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
  • TANF does not offer straightforward cash support like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which it replaced in 1996. It’s an income supplementation program for working parents, and it was based on the sunny assumption that there would always be plenty of jobs for those enterprising enough to get them.
  • When the Parentes finally got into “the system” and began receiving food stamps and some cash assistance, they discovered why some recipients have taken to calling TANF “Torture and Abuse of Needy Families.” From the start, the TANF experience was “humiliating,” Kristen says. The caseworkers “treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.”
  • 40 jobs a week
  • miles a day to attend “job readiness” classes offered by a private company called Arbor, wh
  • were “frankly a joke.”
  • , “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.”  There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welf
  • fraud, but the psychological impact is to turn poverty itself into a kind of crime.
  • The most shocking thing I learned from my research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America.
  • Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.
  • Most cities, for example, have ordinances designed to drive the destitute off the streets by outlawing such necessary activities of daily life as sitting, loitering, sleeping, or lying down. Urban officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about such laws: “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a St. Petersburg, Florida, city attorney stated in June 2009, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges...”
  • the criminalization of poverty has actually intensified as the weakened economy generates ever more poverty.
  • ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with the harassment of the poor for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering, or carrying an open container.
  • ban on begging
  • grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington, D.C. -- the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Phu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972.
  • “They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless?”
  • , led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, leadi
  • way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor succumbs to racial profiling, but whole communities are effectively “profiled” for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor. Flick a cigarette and you’re “littering”; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect. And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting arrest.”
  • e government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement.
  •  Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt.
  • The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too.
  • r staggering level of incarceration,
  • g. And what public housing remains has become ever more prison-like, with random police sweeps and, in a growing number of cities, proposed drug tests for residents.
  • The safety net, or what remains of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.
  • official level of poverty increasing -- to over 14% in 2010 -- some states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty, using alternative sentencing methods, shortening probation, and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missing court appointments. But others, diabolically enough, are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of “crimes,” but charging prisoners for their room and board, guaranteeing they’ll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.
  • a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.
  • : if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
  • : if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
  • : if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
  • : if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.
  • Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets
  • But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.
mrs. b.

Winged Sandals: History: Athenian Politics and Government - 0 views

  • Direct Democracy
  • Athens, however, every governmental decision had to be made by a big assembly of all eligible citizens who wanted to take part – in some cases, this had to be at least 6,000 citizens. This is called a "direct democracy".
  • The Athenian assembly – which is the ancestor of a modern day parliament sitting – would meet in a large open-air area on the side of a hill in Athens called the Pnyx. Only male citizens over the age of 20 were allowed to take part. Women, children, slaves and foreigners were not permitted to participate in any part of Athenian democracy. Any member of the assembly could speak and make proposals (at least in theory), and everyone at the assembly voted on each issue by a show of hands. The assembly met at least 40 times a year. Sometimes, the authorities had trouble rounding up enough people to attend the assembly, so they would send out slaves carrying ropes dipped in red dye. Anybody that they hit would be fined, so people would run from the slaves to the Pnyx where they were safe and join the assembly.
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  • The Council of 500 The Athenians also had a council with 500 members (called the "boule"), which prepared the agenda for the assembly and carried out its decisions. This council also administered the state finances and a number of other state affairs. The members were chosen by lottery from the population of citizen men over the age of 30 and served for one year. A man was allowed to be a member only twice in his whole lifetime
  • Juries in ancient Athens were also chosen by lottery drawn from any male citizens over the age of 30 who volunteered at the start of each year. Juries were made up of different numbers depending on the type of case.
  • Witnesses were allowed, but unlike today, there was no cross-examination. Imprisonment was not used as a punishment following a conviction in ancient Athens – usually a person found guilty either had to pay a fine or was put to death.
Harsajan Gill

Rome.info > Fall of the Roman Empire, decline of ancient Rome - 5 views

shared by Harsajan Gill on 13 Dec 11 - Cached
    • Josh B
       
      This shows many more reasons and ideas then the website link from 7aworldhistory, it also is very helpful
    • Garth Holman
       
      Maybe you should add to the online textbook...it is time for you to leave a legacy?
    • Garth Holman
       
      I see Josh, you joined the wiki. I will wait to see what you add and change.
    • Jamie F
       
      There was probably one event that led to all these events.
    • Jack S
       
      People spent money on Churches instead of the keep up of the Roman Empire.  When there is no keep up.  Roads, Buildings, ect fall apart and then the vikings came and made Rome even worse
  • ...33 more annotations...
    • Jack S
       
      They had no money to keeps up the aqueducts that lead to dirty water.  They also built with lead pipes which made people sick.  This could be a huge reason why people died.
    • Jack S
       
      they also had to raise taxes to keep up an army and protect the borders.  There were also less people to pay those taxes.  (Final Blows Article)
    • Jack S
       
      In the end there is going to be chaos! People are going to want a leader who is strong and holy to lead them.  They are going to want there country to be the best.
    • Garth Holman
       
      You are so right Jack, From an organized soicety with a centeral government to a place of CHAOS. Well said.
  • Fall of the Roman Empire
    • Garth Holman
       
      Do these sound like anything you see in the world today?  
    • Swathi S
       
      Yes. It is like how technology will most likely take over the world.
    • Alexander R.
       
      It sounds a lot like today. With the technology advancing we get smarter, but when we don't advance our technology we suffer.
    • Garth Holman
       
      What about the Unemployment? Moral Decay and values? Urban Decay? Inflation? Are these part of our world?
    • mukul g
       
      Well most of them are, but not all of these. Unemployment is happening right now in the world. But Moral decay and values are not used today.
    • Garth Holman
       
      Really: google the term Moral Decay in America and see if people think this is happening.
  • Public Health
  • Decline in Morals and Values
  • Political Corruption
  • Unemployment
  • Inflation
  • Urban decay
  • THE FINAL BLOWS For years, the well-disciplined Roman army held the barbarians of Germany back. Then in the third century A. D. the Roman soldiers were pulled back from the Rhine-Danube frontier to fight civil war in Italy. This left the Roman border open to attack. Gradually Germanic hunters and herders from the north began to overtake Roman lands in Greece and Gaul (later France). Then in 476 A. D. the Germanic general Odacer or Odovacar overthrew the last of the Roman Emperors, Augustulus Romulus. From then on the western part of the Empire was ruled by Germanic chieftain. Roads and bridges were left in disrepair and fields left untilled. Pirates and bandits made travel unsafe. Cities could not be maintained without goods from the farms, trade and business began to disappear. And Rome was no more in the West. The total fall of the Roman empire.
  • Inferior Technology
  • Military Spending
    • Margo L
       
      How come nobody went after the attackers?
    • Harsajan Gill
       
      Empire had trouble picking the new throne so they DO NOT have efficient way, so they sell it to ANYBODY who has the highest bid. Before even that they would pick a RANDOM guard to become it if he wins.
    • Harsajan Gill
       
      This led to the other events because instead op picking a system to get it done faster instead of wasting months of choosing who randomly they could still be advancing in government and there organized military.
    • Margo L
       
      I bet the romans were terrified when the people attacked. It must be scary to the Romans because they made a lot of accomplishments.
    • kyle s
       
      It was difficult for choosing an emporer. during the next 100 years they had 37 DIFFERENT emporer and 27 of the 35 were assasinated.
  • most difficult problems
  • choosing
  • new emperor
  • new emperor
  • empero
  • never
  • created
  • effective system
  • determine
  • new emperors
  • began
  • selling
  • throne to
  • highest bidder
  • 37 different emperors
  • assinatio
  • 25 of whom
  •  
    This site explains these ideas in more detail. 
Mike Pennington

Lost cities found beneath sands of Sahara by satellites - 1 views

  • Satellite images have revealed the ruins of a long-lost civilisation which existed in what is now the Sahara desert in Roman times and before
  • According to David Mattingly, professor of Roman archaeology at Leicester uni, the vanished "Garamantes" culture was a highly advanced one
  • “In fact, they were highly civilised, living in large-scale fortified settlements ... It was an organised state with towns and villages, a written language and state of the art technologies. The Garamantes were pioneers in establishing oases and opening up Trans-Saharan trade,” says the prof.
Kalina P

Cold War - History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts - 0 views

  • “containment.”
  • President Harry Truman (1884-1972) agreed. “It must be the policy of the United States,” he declared before Congress in 1947, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…by outside pressures.”
  • deadly "arms race
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  • Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced
  • that the United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or "superbomb." Stalin followed suit.
  • the nuclear age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed poisonous radioactive waste into the atmosphere.
  • ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as well. People built bomb shelters in their backyards
  • attack drills in schools and other public places
  • Cold War was a constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives.
  • first man-made object to be placed into the Earth's orbit.
  • Sputnik
  • 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army
  • Space Race was underwa
  • creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space. Still, the Soviets were one step ahead, launching the first man into space in April 1961.
  • U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, became the first man to set food on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the Americans.
  • hearings designed to show that communist subversion in the United States was alive and well.
  • forced hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify against one another. More than 500 people lost their jobs. Many of these "blacklisted" writers, directors, actors and others were unable to work again for more than a decade
  • include anyone who worked in the federal government. Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. As this anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and "loyalty oaths" became commonplace.
  • military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south
  • but the war dragged to a stalemate and ended in 1953.
  • . The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year seemed to prove that the real communist threat now lay in the unstable, postcolonial "Third World" Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam, where the collapse of the French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist nationalist Ho Chi Minh in the north. Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an anticommunist government in the re
  • new approach to international relations.
  • Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywher
  • nstead of viewing the world as a hostile, "bi-polar" place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles? To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. At the same time, he adopted a policy of "détente"–"relaxation"–toward the Soviet Union. In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.
  • , he worked to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the worl
  • redefined Russia's relationship to the rest of the world: "glasnost," or political openness, and "perestroika," or economic reform
  • the Berlin Wall–the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally destroyed, just over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.
glever g

Medieval Clothing - 0 views

  • The clothing of peasants during the Middle Ages was very simple, while the clothing of nobility was fitted with a distinct emphasis on the sleeves of the garments. Knights adorned themselves with sleeveless "surcoats" covered with a coat of arms. Barbarian nomads wore clothing made of fur, wool, and leather. They wore long trousers, some of which had attached feet. Fine leather shoes were also worn. Imports such as turbans and silks from the East were common for the more fortunate of society.
  • As with today, clothing styles of medieval men changed periodically
  • At the end of the 13th century, the once loose and flowing tunics became tighter fitting. Besides tunics, the men also wore undershirts and briefs covered by a sleeveless jacket and an additional tunic. Stockings completed the ensemble. Men's medieval clothing also consisted of cloaks with a round opening that was slipped over the man's head. Such cloaks were worn over other clothing as a type of "jacket"
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  • kirtles
  • which were tunics worn to their ankles
  • Women, especially those who were married, wore tight-fitting caps and nets over their hair, which was wound in a "bun" on their heads. Other women wore veils over their hair, which was left either hanging loosely, or braided tightly.
tdowd t

How Feudalism Works - 0 views

  • Mind Your Manors   In the days of decentralized government, a fief was like its own mini country that produced pretty much everything that was needed from food to weapons to tools. At the heart of a lord's fief was the manor-large estates. The manor was where the lord's family, servants, and his knights lived. At first they began as large houses, but over the years became full castles as walls, towers, and moats were added for protection. Manors were always in the country and surrounded by farmland and woods. Some of the wealthier lords even had more than one manor.   A manor was the center of the community. Not only did it serve as a place for peasants to run to in times of war, but was the political center as well. When he wasn't out fighting for his Lord, the lord of a fief would act as a judge in settling disputes. He also appointed officials who would collect taxes and rent from the peasants and townspeople. Large manors had their own churches complete with their own clergy, as well as a marketplace where locals could buy and sell goods. At any time one time, hundreds of people from priests, knights, squires, entertainers, merchants, peasants, and visiting nobles would head to the manor.   For the Lady of the manor her day was spent overseeing servants & caring for the children. When her husband was away (or killed in battle) the Lady of the manor assumed the same roles her husband did, appointing officials and acting as judge. In the early Middle Ages a woman owning property was not all that uncommon.
  • Living in a castle might sound romantic but it's not all that it was cracked up to be. Medieval manors were built of wood and stone and built on a large scale. Glass was rare and extremely expensive so windows often were either left open or covered with cloth during the winter. The only means of heating a manor was the fireplace. Each major room had its own. The Great Room, which as its name implies was the center of manor life.  The Great Room was heated and lit by an enormous fireplace, big enough to stand in. The Great Room was where all of the eating, drinking, debating, politicking, and merry making and other business was conducted. Speaking of doing business, how did medieval people use the bathroom? All manor houses had privies either outside or inside the castle. The ones inside were nothing more than a seat that emptied directly into the moat. ​ To modern observers manors would have been filthy places. Fleas were common and the smell of hundreds of unwashed people (who often only bathed once a week) would have pervaded. Rats and mice also would have been running around as food was thrown directly on the floor during meal times. At night the servants swept the floor and rushes (dried river reeds) would be spread on the floor and all minor visitors and knights would bed down. The manor was often dark, cold, and smoky. To liven things up a bit, tapestries would be commissioned to decorate the walls.
mrs. b.

Ancient Greece - Athens - The British Museum - 0 views

  • Male citizens in Athens could vote on all the decisions that affected the city and serve on juries. However, democracy was not open to everyone. Citizen women and children were not allowed to vote. Slaves and foreigners living in Athens (known as metics) were banned from participating in government.
Thomas J

Ancient Greece - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Diigo - 1 views

  • Annotated View Share This Like Save Bury
  •  
    Herodotus is widely known as the father of history.
Ivy V

Athenian democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 9 views

  • Athens is one of the first known democracies.
  • It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy where the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right. Participation was by no means open
  • of Athenian freedom. The greatest and longest lasting democratic leader
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there may well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. In the mid-5th century the number of adult male citizens was perhaps as high as 60,000, but this number fell precipitously during the Peloponnesian War.
    • ed h
       
      Population matters to direct democracy
    • arman b
       
      what if the greek didn't have many people?
    • erick j
       
      If Greeks didn't have as many people, they would get more work done.
  • There were three political bodies where citizens gathered in numbers running into the hundreds or thousands. These are the assembly (in some cases with a quorum of 6000), the council of 500 (boule) and the courts (a minimum of 200 people, but running at least on some occasions up to 6000). Of these three bodies it is the assembly and the courts that were the true sites of power — although courts, unlike the assembly, were never simply called the demos (the People) as they were manned by a subset of the citizen body, those over thirty.
    • erick j
       
      Did wealth matter to your position in government?
    • Mike Pennington
       
      Yes, wealth played a direct role in just how much power you had in ancient Greece. The Patricians, or wealthy, had slightly more power in making decisions and passing laws.
    • glever g
       
      Why did wealth affect anything?
  • Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes had the right to vote in Athens. The percentage of the population (of males) that actually participated in the government was about 20%. This excluded a majority of the population, namely slaves, freed slaves, children, women and metics. The women had limited rights and privileges and were not really considered citizens. The restricted movement in public and were very segregated from the men. Also disallowed were citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia); for some Athenians this amounted to permanent (and in fact inheritable) disqualification. Still, in contrast with oligarchical societies, there were no real property requirements limiting access
    • molly c
       
      It is interesting to learn that Athenian men had to serve in the military.
    • glever g
       
      Not really if you were in that position then you would think that that would be sensible.
  • The central events of the Athenian democracy were the meetings of the assembly (ἐκκλησία ekklêsia). Unlike a parliament, the assembly's members were not elected, but attended by right when they chose. Greek democracy created at Athens was a direct, not a representative democracy: any adult male citizen of age could take part, and it was a duty to do so. The officials of the democracy were in part elected by the Assembly and in large part chosen by lot. The assembly had four main functions; it made executive pronouncements (decrees, such as deciding to go to war or granting citizenship to a foreigner); it elected some officials; it legislated; and it tried political crimes. As the system evolved these last two functions were shifted to the law courts. The standard format was that of speakers making speeches for and against a position followed by a general vote (usually by show of hands) of yes or no. Though there might be blocs of opinion, sometimes enduring, on crucial issues, there were no political parties and likewise no government or opposition (as in the Westminster system). Voting was by simple majority. In the 5th century at least there were scarcely any limits on the power exercised by the assembly. If the assembly broke the law, the only thing that might happen is that it would punish those who had made the proposal that it had agreed to
    • Garth Holman
       
      Here is some great information about the Assembly of ancient Athens
    • Mike Pennington
       
      Yes Matt, the Athenian government eventually fell during the Peloponnesian Wars. It was weakened by the Persian Wars, but as soon as Sparta truly set it's sights on defeating the every-expanding Athenians they were in danger. The war itself indirectly led to the fall of Athens, during the second and third years of fighting, disease broke out in Athens and devastated the population. It took Sparta and its allies nearly 30 years to destroy the city of Athens. The Spartans also used the help of the Persians.
  •  
    Did the government ever fall or come close to falling?
Garth Holman

Why the Greeks could hear plays from the back row : Nature News - 0 views

  • The wonderful acoustics for which the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus is renowned
  • The theatre, discovered under a layer of earth on the Peloponnese peninsula in 1881 and excavated, has the classic semicircular shape of a Greek amphitheatre, with 34 rows of stone seats (to which the Romans added a further 21).
  • a performer standing on the open-air stage can be heard in the back rows almost 60 metres away.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • ay that the key is the arrangement of the stepped rows of seats. They calculate that this structure is perfectly shaped to act as an acoustic filter, suppressing low-frequency sound — the major component of background noise — while passing on the high frequencies of performers' voices1.
  • he thinks that the Greeks and Romans appreciated that the acoustics at Epidaurus were something special, and copied them elsewhere.
  • "By the rules of mathematics and the method of music," he wrote, "they sought to make the voices from the stage rise more clearly and sweetly to the spectators' ears... by the arrangement of theatres in accordance with the science of harmony, the ancients increased the power of the voice."
mrs. b.

resourcesforhistoryteachers - 7.27 - 1 views

  • Besides the obvious differences in philosophies, there is a very big difference in geography that cause these differences. Ancient Athens was situated somewhat close to the coast; it was only about five miles to the port city of Piraeus (which became part of Athens with the building of the Long Walls), thus it was no more then a few hours of travel from Athens to the coast line, thus greatly increasing the ability to be a trade center. Ancient Sparta however is located at the shortest distance 40 miles from the coast, however the terrain is somewhat rocky and there is no real straight path to the coast line. This would have greatly impeded the ability for Sparta to become a major trading port
  • Spartan Government Typically classified as an "oligarchy" ( rule by the few), but had elements of monarchy, democracy, and aristocracy Two kings were usually generals who commanded the major Spartan armies. While both were capable military leaders one was usually considered the leader of the army. This was done mainly so that in times of war Sparta would still retain a leader if the other were to die in battle. The most famous example was King Leonidas, who famously was able to hold off the enormous Persian Army at the battle of Thermoplyae.Five overseers (ephors) ran the day-to-day operations of Sparta. These overseers held one year terms and were responsible for the education and conduct of all its citizens (The Essential World History, W. Duiker & J. Spielvogel, Second Edition, 2005, p. 76)Council or Senate (apella) of 28 councilmen. These men had to be over 60 years old and served lifetime terms. They acted as judges and proposed laws to the citizens' assembly.All Spartan males over age 30 could join the Assembly where they could show their support/dissent by shouting.
  • Athens Government Typically classified as a “limited democracy.” Also considered the “birthplace of democracy.” Athens held the first democratic state, developed in 507 BC.Principally made up of elected officials:Council of 500 made most of the main administrative decisionsThe Assembly was open to all citizens. This body passed laws and made policy decisions.Although many nations throughout time have modeled their governments on the principles of Athenian Democracy, it was not perfect. Only men were able to participate in the democratic assemblies, and this was only 10-20% of the population. Women, children, slaves and foreigners were not allowed to participate
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    • mrs. b.
       
      Why did Athens become seafaring?  
jej21dcs

NOVA Online | Secrets of Lost Empires | Medieval Siege | Life in a Castle - 2 views

  • most important figure in the daily life of a castle was the constable. His job was to look after the castle,
  • the lord was not usually at home.
  • oilets, or garderobes as they were called, usually were situated so that they opened over the moat.
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  • Perhaps some carpets hung on the walls, but
  • on the floors were rushes with dogs rolling around with scraps of meat and bones and such.
  • An awful lot of life in a castle went on in the great hall. There was a fire and shelter in the hall. People ate and slept in the great hall. Very often, certainly in smaller castles, before sophisticated domestic arrangements evolved, you would have found the lord and lady sleeping at one end of the great hall in a sort of screened-off area. So medieval men and women didn't have much privacy.
  • Very often in the great hall there was a central fire. Later on there were proper fireplaces, but a central fire with a hole in the roof was standard.
  • lords and ladies would have been slightly cleaner and sweeter-smelling than most of their subordinates.
  • If you were a lord or lady, if you were the constable or the constable's lady, then you would have had a private room.
  • medieval men didn't really bathe terribly often. People might have wiped their hands and faces from time to time.
  • He had a number of people who worked beneath him. There was the garrison, whose members vary in status, including knights, men-at-arms, archers, and engineers. You also had grooms, watchmen, porters, cooks, and scullions, who did all the washing up in the kitchen.
  • So the constable was the person whose job it was to look after the castle in the lord's absence.
  • private fortress. Most of the time the castle operated as a small, large, or medium-sized household.
  •  
    Quest 7
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