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Today in History
LauraT wrote: "Interesting ..."I was in England in those days. I worked in a mental hospital as a student nurse to earn my living. I still keep that Penguin copy of the book in my papery library with an imaginary Lady Chatterly artist picture that appeared in Life magazine. Those were golden days ...
THE HISTORY MANIFESTOHow should historians speak truth to power – and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history – especially long-term history – so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present?
The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policy-makers, activists, and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students, and teachers. All readers lovers of Today in History can read this interesting book free here at the book link.
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Jo Guldi is the Hans Rothfels Assistant Professor of History
at Brown University. She is the author of Roads to Power: Britain
Invents the Infrastructure State (2012).
David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of
History at Harvard University. Among his publications are
The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000)
The History Manifesto
We’re stepping back to the Autumn of 1899, November 4. To the day when a small academic printing-press in Vienna produced two advance copies of a book that was to herald a cultural revolution. A book that initially struggled to find a wide audience – the first print-run was 600 copies and it was almost a decade before a second was required. But a book, nonetheless, whose influence on modern humanity has few parallels. Certainly, you could make a decent case for including it alongside the likes of The Communist Manifesto or On the Origin of Species among the handful of books that helped define modern culture.
Of those two original copies of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, one remained with the author while the other was mailed to his friend Wilhelm Fliess for comment and feedback. Six months later, in a letter to Fliess, Freud would write, “not a leaf has stirred to reveal that The Interpretation of Dreams has had any impact on anyone”. I imagine him writing that letter and pausing to stare forlornly at a big box of unsold books in the corner of the room. Blissfully ignorant of the approaching storm.
And a storm it was. It wasn’t long since Nietzsche had announced the death of God, and it was only five years until Einstein would publish Relativity and the 20th Century could get underway in earnest. Rarely has the human experience changed so rapidly. It was the Renaissance, but industrialised. Versailles, Joyce and cyberspace were on their way. And in the midst of all this exploded The Interpretation of Dreams, the foundation stone of psychoanalysis.
Back then Freud believed he was building a new science. A discipline that would do for the mind what medicine did for the body. And not just in the sense of “healing”, but just as importantly, “understanding”. He came from a medical background and took a strict biological view of the mind. It was clearly a product of the body, he felt, and he had no doubt that as we better understood neurochemistry, so we would better understand the mind. But at the same time, he understood that as a phenomenon the mind merited at least as much study as the body that produced it – not least because that phenomenon seemed to be the very thing we meant when we used the word, “I” ...
Source: http://www.onthisdeity.com
Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams
The Fifth of NovemberRemember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
Perhaps most widely known from its use in the movie “V for Vendetta”, versions of the above poem have been wide spread in England for centuries. They celebrate the foiling of (Catholic) Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up (Protestant controlled) England's House of Parliament on November 5th, 1605. Known variously as Guy Fawkes Day, Gunpowder Treason Day, and Fireworks Night, the November 5th celebrations in some time periods included the burning of the Pope or Guy Fawkes in effigy. This traditional verse exists in a large number of variations and the above version has been constructed to give a flavor for the major themes that appear in them. Several books cite even earlier sources.
Source: www.potw.org
English Folk-Rhymes: A Collection of Traditional Verses, Relating to Places and Persons, Customs, Superstitions, Etc
On this day November 6 in 1990, forty-seven Arab women staged a remarkable protest against Saudi Arabia’s unwritten “law of convention” prohibiting women from driving. At the time, Saudi Arabia remained the only country in the world to violate this basic human right of freedom of movement. And so, in a display of unimaginable courage and stunning defiance, these women from Riyadh’s intelligentsia took hold of the steering wheel and, accompanied by supportive husbands and brothers, drove around the country’s capital in a convoy of fourteen cars. According to one of ‘the drivers’ – as the 47 women came to be known throughout Saudi, the action had been planned carefully so as “not to be too antagonistic to the culture. We were mothers, well covered, nothing anti-Islam.”
Thirty minutes into drive, however, the convoy was brought to an abrupt halt by the Mutawaeen – the special youth police force whose sole purpose is to enforce Saudi Arabia’s strict Islam, and who are answerable only to the king. But when the Mutawaeen jeered the women, calling them “whores” and “prostitutes”, the 47 stringently and defiantly defended their actions: “In time of war mobilization and national emergency we need to drive for the safety of our families,” they argued. In addition, they maintained that driving was not un-Islamic as evidenced by women riding donkeys and horses during the time of Prophet Muhammad. But the Mutawaeen were unyielding and dispatched both the women and their chaperones off to police headquarters for interrogation, where the men were obliged – before they could be released from custody – to sign legal documents ensuring that the women would never drive again. It was a self-policing move of which Chairman Mao’s Red Guard would have been proud.
Inspiration for the protest of the forty-seven had occurred quite recently at the outbreak of the first Gulf War when Saudi women had first watched female American soldiers driving jeeps through the streets of Riyadh. Emboldened by the huge presence of the world’s media, the 47 women gambled that the Saudi government would feel compromised and, for diplomatic reasons, ensure that their response appeared measured. Alas, this was not to be. The following day, the government had leaflets distributed throughout Riyadh denouncing the women. The leaflets called them ‘whores’ and accused them of wearing shorts, and disrespecting and assaulting the mutawaeen. Even more cruelly – and in a move unprecedented even in Saudi Arabia – on each of the leaflets was printed the name, address and phone number of each of the 47 drivers. The leaflets concluded with the terrifying official message: “Do what you believe is appropriate regarding these women.”
Within hours, more than 20,000 Mutawaeen and fundamentalist supporters had converged on the governor’s palace demanding that action be taken. As the protests escalated, a news blackout was ordered – muzzling any progressive support for the women. Interior Minister Naif bin Abdulaziz now declared the drive-by ‘un-Islamic’ and ordered the suspension or firing of the protestors from their jobs. The 47 next had their passports confiscated, and both they and their male chaperones were banned from travelling abroad. Such was the negative response throughout the country that the 47 women have endured death threats and social stigma to this day.
It would be another two decades before a new generation of Saudi women summoned the courage to again defy this unashamed violation of their human rights. In 2011, Manal Al-Sharif filmed herself driving and posted the video on YouTube and Facebook. Like the 47 who inspired her, Al-Sharif was subjected to arrest and intimidation – the Saudi authorities particularly fearful of protest in context with the Arab Spring. But under the watchful eye of social media, the campaign for women to drive could no longer be squashed. On 27 September 2017, a royal decree issued by the King Salman at long last lifted the ban.
Despite this massive victory, Saudi Arabia remains the most gender-segregated nation in the world. Women are unable to do basic things like swim in public or try on clothes when shopping. Most cripplingly, Saudi women are at the mercy of a male guardianship policy: all women, no matter their age, are treated as a minor and must live under the authoritative supervision of a male. Such abuses of human rights are no different from the Jim Crow laws of America’s Deep South and South African apartheid – contemptible, inhumane systems condemned worldwide by civil rights advocates. Gender segregation in Saudi Arabia is not a feminist issue. It is a humanist issue.
Source: www.onthisdeity.com
Saudi Arabia in Transition
Mod
It was on this day in 1492, November 7 that a meteor fell from the sky near the town of Ensisheim in Alsace, France, one of the oldest recorded meteorites. The only witness was a young boy, who heard a sound like an explosion and watched a huge piece of rock fall out of the sky and bury itself in a nearby wheat field. He went to alert the townspeople, and soon people were climbing down in the hole to chip off pieces for souvenirs and good luck. The lord of the town showed up and demanded that everyone stop immediately, and he had the big black meteorite dragged to the local church. Even after all those pieces had been hacked off, it still weighed almost 300 pounds.
In terms of historical meteorite falls, it doesn't get any better then Ensisheim! This is THE most historical meteorite fall of the Western Hemisphere. Does the year 1492 sound familiar? It should. Christopher Columbus was busy "discovering" the new world that year! The arrival of the meteorite was signalled by a loud thunderclap and history records that a young boy actually saw a single stone fall from the sky and land in a wheat field. A crowd of people soon surrounded the stone, which weighed approximately 150 kilogram (thank goodness it didn't actually hit the boy) and eventually the stone was lifted out of it one meter deep hole. People then began breaking off piece of the stone for luck. The story goes that the mayor put a halt to the stone chipping and the meteorite was placed in front of the parish church.
Here is where the storey really gets interesting! It seems that King Maximilian of Austria heard of the stone that fell from the sky and since he was engaged in nearby battles with the French, he decided to take a look at the stone for himself. Not wanting to miss a good opportunity when he saw it, the King decided that the fall was a sign from God, foretelling of his upcoming victories in his battles with the French (not unlike a modern day politician)! He declared that the stone should forever be kept in the church, after removing a piece for himself.
The stone remained in the parish church until the time of the French revolution when is was placed in a museum in nearby Colmar by French revolutionaries. As the people of Ensisheim did so many years before, French scientists removed some pieces of the meteorites for study. The meteorites was eventually returned to the the church but by this time has had lost considerable mass and had almost no fusion crust. The stone was eventually moved to the town Hall in Ensisheim, where it remains to this day. But what of the Kings battles? Well, history also records that soon after visiting the stone, the King and his army defeated the French at the battle of Salins!
Source: http://www.imca.cc/old_site/metinfo/H...
Meteorites
As a historian I thoroughly aprove of this thread, this is awesome!On this day in 1893 women in the state of Colorado were granted the right to vote. Colorado was the second state in the US to do this, Wyoming being the first.
November 8, 1674: John Milton dies, but his word “Pandemonium” still lives on.His masterpiece is “Paradise Lost”, a long narrative poem about the Fall of Man (and Satan’s role in bringing it about), published in 1667. It introduced the world to the word ‘pandemonium’, which Milton coined (with a capital P) as the name of the capital city of Hell.
Pandemonium is from this great epic poem. Given the specific way this word was formed, we can be pretty sure it was an original coinage by Milton himself. Meaning literally ‘all demons’, “Pandemonium” was Satan’s capital city in Milton’s poem. Since then, and given its connotations of chaos and evil, the word has come to mean any disordered confusion, but it retains its demonic glint in this modern world. Well, so they think many. Milton died today. His word still lives on ...
Satan’s speech
`Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,’
Said then the lost archangel, `this the seat
That we must change for heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: furthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder bath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.
John Milton: Complete Works
Maja wrote: "As a historian I thoroughly aprove of this thread, this is awesome!On this day in 1893 women in the state of Colorado were granted the right to vote. Colorado was the second state in the US to do..."
Thanks Maja for sharing common views
November 9, 1989 - The Fall of the WallThe Berlin Wall has officially been gone for as long as it stood — here's how the 27-mile blockade looks today compared to 1989
The Berlin Wall divided the modern capital of Germany from August 3, 1961, until November 9, 1989 for a total of 10,316 days. As of February 5, 2018, it has been 10,316 days since the wall fell.
A wave of revolutions swept across the Communist Bloc of Eastern Europe, and the wall came tumbling down, sparking the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991.
As the world moves further and further away from the wall's demolition, Berlin has reconnected and revitalized itself as a global capital. Today, the wall's legacy is barely visible. But if you know where to look, the history of the wall lives on in Berlin's tree-lined streets.
Although Berlin had been divided between East and West Germany since the end of World War II, the wall wasn't constructed until 1961, to keep people from fleeing the communist East for the capitalist West.
Source: www.businessinsider.com
The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989
It’s the birthday of writer Oliver Goldsmith. His exact date and the location of birth are uncertain, but he was probably born on this day, November 10, in Pallas, Ireland, in 1730. He went to Trinity College in Dublin, but he wasn’t doing very well at school, and he was so frustrated that he decided to immigrate to America. He was all set to go, but he missed his ship. So he stayed in Europe and became a writer. He’s best known for his novel “The Vicar of Wakefield” (1766) and his play “She Stoops to Conquer” (1773). And he was probably the author of a very popular children’s story published anonymously, called “The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes” (1765), the story that made “goody two-shoes” a household expression. In “She Stoops to Conquer”, he wrote:
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning,
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives GENUS a better discerning.
Let them brag of their heathenish gods,
Their Lethes, their Styxes, and Stygians,
Their Quis, and their Quaes, and their Quods,
They're all but a parcel of Pigeons ...
(Scene 2 — An Alehouse Room - From Act 1 of "She Stoops To Conquer". Several shabby Fellows with punch and tobacco. TONY at the head of the table, a little higher than the rest, a mallet in his hand.)
Source: Our Civilisation ( https://bit.ly/2yYHa4I )
The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes: To Which Is Added, the Rhyming Alphabet, or Tom Thumb's Delight
“Peace at Last: A Portrait of Armistice Day, 11 November 1918” hundred years after.“My favourite story about Armistice Day – reported by A J P Taylor in his English History 1914–45 – is inevitably contained in Guy Cuthbertson’s superbly researched and exhaustive survey of the day the Great War ended. Taylor (who, as Cuthbertson points out, was a schoolboy at the time and in bed with flu in Buxton) observed that ‘total strangers copulated in doorways and on the pavements. They were asserting the triumph of life over death.’ One of the strengths of this fine book is that the reader has the sensation that he or she actually took part in what, at the time, was regarded as the greatest day in the history of the world, though with his or her clothes on.
Cuthbertson has not merely trawled memoirs, diaries and letters in which personal experiences of the day were recorded; he also seems to have been through just about every local newspaper in Britain – a much underappreciated source – to describe the ‘mafficking’ that went on when the news arrived from Compiègne. This can at times give his book the feel of being something of a list, or a round-Britain round-up, which is its only shortcoming. But the extensive context and understanding he provides more than compensate for this. Cuthbertson is not a historian but an expert in literature who has edited the works of Edward Thomas and written a life of Wilfred Owen, who was killed exactly a week before the guns fell silent.
Cuthbertson retails the unfortunate story of how, as the bells of Shrewsbury rang out to celebrate the ceasefire, a telegram arrived at the house of Owen’s family announcing his death. It is the most vivid reminder that 11 November 1918 was not a day of rejoicing for everyone …”
Source: “Literary Review” (https://literaryreview.co.uk/let-the-...) review by Simon Heffer of this book written by Guy Cuthbertson
Peace at Last: A Portrait of Armistice Day, 11 November 1918
Any November day 2018 is ...“Novel Writing Month”. Life is full of stories that are waiting to be written. Each of us with our own tales to tell, but we never quite seem to find the time to make it happen, do we? There’s always too much to do today, the feeling isn’t right, the story just isn’t there, or we just don’t feel good enough. Thoughts like these are why some of the most influential books in history never got written, and procrastination is the great killer of artistic expression. National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo by its adherents is your opportunity to bring out your inner tales!
History of Novel Writing Month
Novel Writing Month brings your excuses to a halt by encouraging everyone to take this one month of the year to try their hand at the grand art of storytelling. 50,000 words in one month is the goal, a number that seems quite daunting until you realize that over a span of 30 days it’s just 1700 words a day. To put that into perspective, that’s about three times the length of this article!
Established in 1999, NaNoWriMo was July back then, and the heart of it was the magical city of San Francisco. That year there were only 21 people involved, and they were at the heart of a revolution, though perhaps not the heart of the one they imagined. Fifteen years later thousands of people all over the world are participating in this amazing event, resulting in volumes of creative expression unlike the world has ever seen.
How to celebrate National Novel Writing Month
NaNoWriMo has a thriving and supportive community of people who love getting together, physically and digitally, to support each other and offer encouragement and inspiration to drive the creative endeavor. At homes, restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, and schools all over the world, NaNoWriMo takes all these places by storm. You can pop into nanintoo.org and find yourself a local “write-in” near you to help you get your write on!
Obviously, whether you join these folks or not, the whole point of NaNoWriMo is writing. So dig an idea out of your head and start writing, and hold yourself to 1700 words a day throughout the entire month of November. Don’t worry about editing, rewriting, or any of the little fiddly things one does when finishing a novel, that all can wait until after you’re done. The goal now is to get 50,000 words down on the page by the end of the month! Don’t let November go by without taking your greatest novel idea and turning it into a reality!
Source: https://nanowrimo.org/
How to Write Everything
Mod
The Berlin Wall has officially been gone for as long as it stood — here's how the 27-mile blockade looks today compared to 1989
The Berlin Wall divided the..."
I have a bit of the wall cut down by my German Teacher in Uni that very night!!!
It was on this day November 13 in 1789 ...that Ben Franklin wrote this famous phrase: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The words were the second half of a sentence he’d written in a letter his friend Jean-Baptiste Leroy. It was shortly after the United States Constitution had been ratified, and his entire sentence was this: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Who Was Ben Franklin?
Mod
that Ben Franklin wrote this famous phrase: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The words were the second half of ..."
I didn't know it was him to have said that!!!!! I'll write it down!
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "It was on this day November 13 in 1789 ...that Ben Franklin wrote this famous phrase: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The words were the..."
You'd also better write down tax paying final day !!!! ....
November 14 it’s the birthday of the artist who said, “I would like to paint the way a bird sings”.Claude Monet, born in Paris in 1840. He and his friend Auguste Renoir were among the first European painters to take their canvases outside to paint directly from nature.
They would often work as quickly as they could, so that their paintings looked like sketches, and that sketchy style became known as Impressionism. Monet spent the rest of his career exploring the idea that you can never really see the same thing twice. In a single day, he would often paint the same subject half a dozen times, from slightly different angles and in slightly different light, spending no more than about an hour on each canvas.
In the last 30 years of his life, he painted almost nothing but the water lilies in his garden at Giverny. Monet bought the four-acre property in 1883, built the bridges, dug the lake, and selected all the flowers and plants himself. His gardens are now the property of the French Academy of Fine Arts, which hosts visitors from all over the world.
Who Was Claude Monet?
15th November, 2018 will be: I Love to Write DayWriting is not just for acclaimed authors. After all, they had to start somewhere too, and even though it may seem hard to believe, every famous writer started the first chapter of their first book with just one word. I Love to Write day was founded by author John Riddle, a non-fiction and self-help writer, to get kids writing in schools and encourage adults to rekindle an old dream.
This special day is celebrated by many different organizations – schools, community halls, churches, and even shopping centers. It covers all genres, from novels to poetry to writing into your local newspaper with a point you’ve always wanted to make but never found time for before.
The aim is to get people to sit down and put something on paper or on a computer, however short and in whatever style, kick-starting their writing and giving them confidence through being part of a global movement.
History of I Love to Write Day
I Love to Write Day was created in 2002 by Delaware-based author John Riddle. Riddle has been writing for the past thirty years and has written a total of 34 books so far. When asked why he decided to create a day dedicated to the love he and many other people have for writing, he said, “My goal for I Love To Write Day is to have people of all ages spend time writing.
They can write a poem, a love letter, a greeting card, an essay, a short story, start a novel, finish a novel…the possibilities are endless. (…) People need to be challenged, and writing is but one of many creative ways to express yourself. (…) For many people, that (I Love to Write Day) will be the beginning of their writing career. I Love To Write Day has the potential to launch the career of the next John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King or Toni Morrison.” An honorable goal, indeed!
How to Celebrate I Love to Write Day
The best way to celebrate this special day is to do as John Riddle has always intended for people to do on this day—write something. It doesn’t have to be anything specific, and it doesn’t have to be very long. Many people believe that in order to start writing at all you absolutely need to have the entire plan for your book formed in your mind and that when you start the writing process, the story should flow right onto your paper and go on to become an instant New York Times bestseller. This, however, is a misconception. “The Bluest Eye” took Toni Morrison 5 years to complete, and was based on a children’s story she had heard in elementary school. Joan Didion was inspired to write “Run, River” after catching a glimpse of a newspaper blurb about a murder.
And Stephen King’s esteemed horror classic “Carrie” was rejected 30 (!) times before someone agreed to publish it. As you can surely see by now, even the best-known writers have had their difficulties, so you should never become discouraged, and just continue to write and expand on your idea until you’ve achieved your goals. To make things particularly interesting on I Love to Write Day, you could also consider holding a writing and reading party with your friends. Whatever you do, take advantage of this day to make sure your potential does not go to waste!
Source: www.daysoftheyear.com
November 17 1494: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola dies.The most glamorous philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, and in many respects the most contemporary, died in the autumn of 1494. He was just thirty-one. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola came from aristocratic stock: the Pico dynasty ruled Mirandola, a tiny northern Italian principality, from a fortified castle that still bears the family name. At the time of his death, Count Giovanni Pico had mastered a Babel of ancient languages, nettled the Pope, done jail time in France, developed an unhealthy fixation with the Dominican friar and religious fundamentalist Girolamo Savonarola, dabbled in magic, and written a sunny treatise, “Oration On the Dignity of Man,” which became the anthem of the Renaissance.
The tragedy of Pico’s death, as well as the memory of his brief, incandescent life, has been revived in recent years. His remains, together with those of the man who may have been his lover, the scholar-poet Angelo Poliziano, were disinterred from the Dominican Convent of San Marco, in Florence. Both contained toxic levels of arsenic. The results confirmed the suspicions of the doctors who examined the bodies in 1494 (poison was the murder weapon of choice, the digestible bullet, in Renaissance Florence) and brought Pico’s name back into circulation. His death has become the subject of a Florentine murder mystery: a five-hundred-and-twenty-year-old cold case. Who killed Pico della Mirandola? And why? …
Even without the whodunit speculation, the bare facts of Pico’s death are harrowing. He took almost two weeks to die. The king of France, Charles VIII, who was marching from Pisa to Florence at the time (he would take the city on the day of Pico’s death) dispatched his own physicians to tend to the great mind of the age. They arrived too late. Pico fell into a kind of accepting swoon, calm and tranquil. “He asked also all his servants' forgiveness, if he had ever before that day offended any of them,” Thomas More wrote in 1504, in his brief life of the young Count.
Pico’s prodigious powers of recollection are legendary. “Do you think that I have the same memory as Pico della Mirandola's?” the former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano huffed in exasperation in a Palermo appeals court late last year, when he was being grilled over events from two decades before. Even by the lofty standards of the Renaissance, Pico was a freak. He could recite Dante’s Divine Comedy backwards, starting with the last line of Paradiso. By the time he was twenty, he had studied at the universities of Bologna and Ferrara and learned Latin (the language in which he wrote and thought), Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and Chaldean. He was the first Christian philosopher to tackle the mysteries of the Kabbalah. Throw in his aristocratic background, his height and heft—he was solidly built and six feet tall—along with his green eyes and a shoulder-length mane of wavy chestnut hair, and you have an appealing package … (keep on reading at the source)
Source: The New Yorker (https://bit.ly/2RWU9e7)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, qabbalah
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, qabbalah
November 18, 1939: Michael Moorcock is born. A prolific novelist who is famous for being able to write a novel in three days, Moorcock was also the influential editor of New Wave publication New Worlds in the 1960s, publishing many of the great SF and fantasy authors of the era, such as J. G. Ballard and Brian Aldiss.
Moorcock’s own novels include the Elric series, the Dorian Hawkmoon quartet (written at speed during the mid-1960s), and The Dancers at the End of Time, a science-fiction trilogy that tells the last ever love story, published during the 1970s. Much of Moorcock’s fiction is linked by the figure of the Eternal Champion, who comprises many different incarnations, among them Elric and Dorian Hawkmoon.
Michael Moorcock: How to Write a Novel in 3 Days. These are what we might call the seven pillars of Moorcock’s method:
1. Plan and prepare before you start. Set up a few key things before the three-day ‘writeathon’: characters, settings, themes, possible plot developments.
2. Make the basic plot of your novel the quest narrative (Moorcock uses the examples of The Maltese Falcon and the Grail Quest). Your hero/heroine and sidekick/helper etc. are looking for a particular item/person, but so are the bad guys. It’s a race against time to see who’ll get there first. (Here, we’re always reminded of the Indiana Jones films, which follow such a plot.)
3. Make something happen every few pages, so the story is well-paced. Divide the action up into four sections and then divide those four sections up into six chapters. The idea is that you know that, by the end of each quarter, the plot has to have moved forward in a significant way. Moorcock also recommends that, at a more local level, each chapter directly moves the action forward.
4. If it’s a fantasy or SF novel (Moorcock’s forte during his early career) that takes place in a different world, make a list of some images which embody that world and make it vivid: landmarks, objects, geographical features, etc. Then, when you write, you can just go to this list and fill in the picture for the reader. Make these vivid: elsewhere in his list, Moorcock suggests that ‘paradox’ is a good rule of thumb, e.g. ‘the City of Screaming Statues’.
5. Prepare an overall structure. (This is not the same as a plot, Moorcock tells us – just the basic framework of the novel. You can fill in the gaps later.)
6. Think about the timing of the story’s events: e.g. how long has the hero got to retrieve the Grail/save the world?
7. Start off with a mystery – and then, every time you solve one mystery, that leads to, or creates, another. (An example might be: the hero needs to find someone who can help him in his quest. When he tracks down the person, they’ve already been killed – but there’s a clue on their person, such as a note or a map, that leads our hero on to his next challenge.)
Of course, many of these are common-sense rules, but it’s interesting to have them all put in one place by one successful writer and elucidated so clearly and helpfully. Moorcock provides a number of other rules and guidelines, too, but if this has got you interested in his technique, we’ll allow him to explain it in full in his own words, over at the website we’ve linked to above. The essential principle, though, is one of economy: as Moorcock says, ‘you don’t have any encounter without at least information coming out of it. In the simplest form, Elric [one of Moorcock’s first fictional characters] has a fight and kills somebody, but as they die they tell him who kidnapped his wife. Again, it’s a question of economy. Everything has to have a narrative function.’
Source: www.interestingliterature.com
The Best of Michael Moorcock
Another great write-up Antonio. I find your "On This Day in History" to be very interesting, very well written and informative. Thanks.
Norton wrote: "Another great write-up Antonio. I find your "On This Day in History" to be very interesting, very well written and informative. Thanks."Thanks to you Norton. If you are interested in History, may I advise you this book I found very interesting.
How should historians speak truth to power - and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history - especially long-term history - so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. This title is also available as Open Access.
The History Manifesto
Event Date: November 19, 1863. Location: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USAThe Gettysburg Address, in which President Abraham Lincoln spoke of all men being created equal and “government of the people, by the people, for the people” was delivered on this day.
It took place at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the pivotal American Civil War battle there.The short speech had more dynamic impact following, as it did, a two-hour oration (yawn!) by Edward Everett, one-time Secretary of State. John Hay, a close friend of the President, recorded how Lincoln wrote the speech:
“Lincoln was very silent all the previous evening after dinner. No one else being present he walked to and fro in his room apparently thinking deeply. He went to bed early, and when he came down to breakfast he looked unwell, and said he had slept little. On the train [to the cemetery] he was silent for a considerable while, and then he asked me for some writing paper. On his knee he then wrote out his speech in full, exactly as it has come down to us. The impression left on me was that Lincoln was merely transcribing from memory the words he had composed during the night. When we reached the battlefield Lincoln was nervous and apparently not well. Everett spoke eloquently but very long. Then Lincoln rose, holding the papers he had written on the train. He did not read, but spoke every word in a clear, ringing, resonant, vibrating voice. His speech occupied only a few minutes in delivery. It was listened to with breathless attention and when it came to an end there was at first no cheering, but an audible indrawing of deep breath as from an audience that had been profoundly moved. In the silence of the next moment Everett leapt to his feet again and said, as nearly as I can remember, this: ‘We have just listened to a speech that will live through the ages’.”
Source: www.onthisday.com
The Gettysburg Address: The History and Legacy of President Abraham Lincoln’s Greatest Speech
Antonio wrote: "Norton wrote: "Another great write-up Antonio. I find your "On This Day in History" to be very interesting, very well written and informative. Thanks."Thanks to you Norton. If you are interested ..."
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/ha...
Mod
Pico’s prodigious powers of recollection are legendary"
As kids we are told this anectode: Pico once met along a street a friend of his who asked him waht had he eaten at lunch the day before. He answered "Eggs". Something like a year after that he met the same man who asked him "with what?", and he promptly answered "with bacon"!
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "November 17 1494: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola dies.Pico’s prodigious powers of recollection are legendary"
As kids we are told this anectode: Pico once met along a street a fri..."
They both had a good memory indeed!!!
Mod
That's what i used to answer!
National Absurdity Day November 20, 2018Life is meaningless, yet humanity is fated to struggle to find meaning in the face of a universe that is at the very least indifferent to its fate. This, in a nutshell, is the basis of a philosophical concept known as absurdism.
Absurdism was born in the post-war era, and at least some of the movement’s prominence can be attributed to a reaction to the existential threat posed by the nuclear bomb and the unbelievable cruelties of the Nazi concentration camps. While somewhat similar to existentialism and nihilism, absurdism differs in several key ways: Existentialists believe that humanity can create meaning or find meaning through faith or belief in a creator or god. Nihilists believe that the universe has no meaning, and that humanity’s attempts to create meaning are thus inherently without meaning. The absurdist believes that while there might be meaning in existence, humanity will never know it, and attempts to construct a personal meaning are in themselves absurd.
As you might imagine of any philosophy concerned with finding, creating, or rejecting meaning, absurdism has had a major impact on the arts, particularly in theater. Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and other twentieth century playwrights associated with “The Theatre of the Absurd” were notable for works that depicted people caught in bizarre and occasionally gruesome circumstances beyond their control. Among the most famous works of the sub-genre are Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966).
The Theatre of the Absurd has also been well represented in cinema, with the mind-bending films of Alejandro Jodorowsky perhaps holding court as the most prominent. His psychedelic western film, “El Topo” (1970), became a cult classic and frequent midnight feature at independent theaters. The movie so impressed Beatle John Lennon that he gave Jodorowsky one million dollars to finance his next film, “The Holy Mountain” (1973). Over forty years later, Jodorowsky’s films have lost none of their absurdist impact.
Roughly contemporary to the films of Jodorowsky was the political movement known as the Youth International Party, or the “yippies.” While not explicitly absurdist, these anti-war activists engaged in tactics that would be recognizable to any practitioner of the absurd. Protestor Abbie Hoffman was strongly associated with the movement, which, among other actions, campaigned for the nomination of a pig named “Pigasus the Immortal” for the office of President, and attempted to levitate the Pentagon.
Post-Vietnam, many of the yippies remained highly influential in the counterculture, working to promote punk rock, alternative media, and radical politics. Their absurdist pranks continued as well. In 1976, a group of yippies promoted “Nobody for President,” and politicians everywhere had to watch for pie-throwers, an activist tactic that owed much to vaudevillian film. They still do, today.
Absurdism is still currently active, with groups like the prank religion Church of the Subgenius and their entirely fictitious leader, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, the antics of the Cacophony Society (which includes author Chuck Palahniuk as a former member), and flash mob performances of songs, scripted scenes, and carefully orchestrated bizarre pranks. In Russia, youth protestors engage in “monstrations,” acts of artistic political criticism disguised as absurdist art. Doing so allows them to skirt the government’s repressive policies aimed at limiting political activism. Or, they do, at least, to an extent. So what should you do to celebrate Absurdity Day? ….
Source: www.signature-reads.com
If you search goodreads database on “absurdism” literature, you’ll find about 1064 RESULTS. Among the books dedicated to this subject I love this masterpiece:
Samuel Becket's "Waiting for Godot" and the Theater of the Absurd: "Nothing is certain" - What makes Samuel Beckett's absurdist play to one of the most ... of the Theater of the Absurd?
Mod
Life is meaningless, yet humanity is fated to struggle to find meaning in the face of a universe that is at the very least indifferent to its fate. This, i..."
I didn't know that!!!! And think that my first son is born today!!!
I'll immediatelly tell him so! When better!
Heinrich von Kleist, in full Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist, (born October 18, 1777, Frankfurt an der Oder, Brandenburg [now in Germany], died November 21, 1811, Wannsee, near Berlin).German dramatist, among the greatest of the 19th century. Poets of the Realist, Expressionist, Nationalist, and Existentialist movements in France and Germany saw their prototype in Kleist, a poet whose demonic genius had foreseen modern problems of life and literature …
Having grown up in military surroundings, Kleist became dissatisfied with the career of an army officer, which had been chosen for him, and resigned his commission after “the loss of seven valuable years.” For a time he studied law and mathematics, but his reading of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant destroyed his faith in the value of knowledge. Despairing of reason, he decided to place his trust in emotion. The unresolved conflict between them lies at the heart of his work …
Disappointed in life and embittered by the lack of recognition accorded him by his contemporaries, particularly Goethe, he came to know an incurably sick woman, Henriette Vogel, who begged him to kill her. This gave Kleist the final incentive to end his life, and on November 21, 1811, he shot Henriette and himself on the shore of the Wannsee …
Source: www.britannica.com
Fulfilling a suicide pact both delirious and deliberate, Heinrich von Kleist, a young dramatist and novelist considered by his family a parasite and a wastrel, shot Henriette Vogel, a woman with terminal cancer who had captivated him with her passion for death, and then himself at a rural inn outside Berlin. The two spent their final moments drinking coffee and rum and chasing each other like children, after writing letters of reconciliation and explanation to family and friends, assuring them that their souls were about to ascend “like two joyous balloonists” and making arrangements for their death, including, in Vogel’s case, ordering a commemorative cup for her husband’s Christmas present and, in Kleist’s, asking the Prussian secretary of war to pay a final barber’s bill he had forgotten.
Source:
A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year
Do you remember what happened on November 22, 1963? I was in England, working in a mental hospital in north London. I earned my living as a student nurse. Three great men died that day: JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley.
Do you remember what you were doing the day Aldous Huxley died? Or C.S. Lewis? You don’t think so? Well, the odds are that if you were old enough to be laying down memories at the time, you do. Because it was also the day President Kennedy was assassinated ...
What does the departure of these three men tell us? It would be difficult to argue that there was some divine purpose behind the conjunction of their deaths; easier, perhaps, to see it all as a wild coincidence and therefore as evidence of a chaotic and purposeless universe.
Nor does it tell us whether C.S. Lewis truly went to meet his maker on 22 November 1963, or whether Aldous Huxley, aided by ‘LSD … intramuscular 100mm’ administered by his wife, passed through the doors of perception.
What his assassination tells us about Kennedy is infinitely less valuable than what it tells us about our capacity to build myths in the face of mortality. It is surely in their achievements in life that we must really measure these men: the foundation of the moon mission, certainly, but also the writings of Huxley and Lewis which look beneath and beyond the world; and the 13 days in 1962 when Kennedy ensured the survival of that world in which we can continue to read them …
If you want to read the full story keep on reading at this link. This is an expanded version of a piece that first appeared in Oxford Today, the official magazine of the University of Oxford. I’m still here, sharing with you this three sided story. Enjoy life!
Source: Daily Beast https://thebea.st/2TnQ4Br
Mod
I was in England, working in a mental hospital in north London. I earned my living as a student nurse. Three great men died that day: JFK, C.S...."
I'm afraid I was not born yet! When I was in London working as Italian teacher, Freddy Mercury died - but it was some years later, and not exactly the 22; it was the 24 November 1991!
23rd November, 2018 will be … Fibonacci Day“Von Neumann probe programmed to multiply
Clickin’ and tickin’ with the equation of phi
Striving and climbing and bribing and lying
For science, fudge the numbers so that everything fits”
Doctor Steel Fibonacci Sequence
There are sequences that appear in nature time and time again, ones that seem to define the very basis of our reality and coordinate how everything comes together. One of these numbers is the Fibonacci sequence, and it can be found in the most surprising of places. Fibonacci Day commemorates this sequence and the man who brought it to our attention in 1202.
History of Fibonacci Day
Who’s the man? That would be Leonardo of Pisa, known today as Fibonacci. He was not the first to think of it however, just the first to bring it to the European world and bring awareness to its importance in the furthering of science. The sequence itself first appeared in Indian Mathematics, known as Virahanka numbers, and was connected with Sanskrit prosody. The number sequence is also tied to the golden ratio and the golden triangle, both of which appear again and again in nature, as does the sequence itself. Where might you ask? It is in the most fundamental of things, from the petals of the yellow chamomile, the complex and seemingly random branching of a trees limbs, and these are just a few. Look deeper and you’ll find them within the pine cone and the shape of an unfurling fern, and in a truly strange one, it describes the family tree of bees and is deeply important to apiarists as a result. The sequence has also inspired songs, such as that by the illustrious Doctor Steel, simply called “Fibonacci Sequence”. It’s definitely worth taking the time to check out, and then listen to the rest of his stuff!
How to Celebrate Fibonacci Day
Celebrating Fibonacci Day is best done by studying and researching the Fibonacci sequence, and going out in nature and finding where it exists, which is everywhere! You can even look in your own home and yard and find places where the Fibonacci sequence structures the world around you. You can also take some time to research the great man himself, and all of those who have built off his work. There’s so much about the Fibonacci sequence that leads to fascinating discoveries and even just reading about it is a pure joy! So get out there on Fibonacci Day, listen to some great music, and learn a bit more about the world around you.
Source: www.daysoftheyear.com
The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution
Mod
“Von Neumann probe programmed to multiply
Clickin’ and tickin’ with the equation of phi
Striving and climbing and bribing and lying
For science, fudge t..."
The Serie di Fibonacci is a nughtmare for all matematitians, or probably for people like me who, even if had to study Mathematics, can't really get inside the system!
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "23rd November, 2018 will be … Fibonacci Day“Von Neumann probe programmed to multiply
Clickin’ and tickin’ with the equation of phi
Striving and climbing and bribing and lying
For ..."
You can move around here at this link: https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/fi...
November 25, 1903, Just before midday, a well-dressed man who gave his name as George F. Robinson presented himself at the offices of the Bank of England and asked for the governor of the bank. Brought instead to the bank secretary, Kenneth Grahame (known then, until The Wind in the Willows came out five years later, as the author of The Golden Age, whose admirers included Theodore Roosevelt), he presented him with a manuscript tied with black and white ribbon. When Grahame refused to read the manuscript as asked, Robinson raised a revolver, shooting and missing three times as Grahame fled. Subdued and arrested, the gunman expressed “Socialistic views” and declared that by grasping the end of the manuscript with the black ribbon rather than the white one Grahame had proved “that Fate demanded his immediate demise.”
Source:
A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year
November 25, 1970 Mishima commits ritual suicide. World-renowned Japanese writer Yukio Mishima commits suicide after failing to win public support for his often extreme political beliefs. Born in 1925, Mishima was obsessed with what he saw as the spiritual barrenness of modern life. He preferred prewar Japan, with its austere patriotism and traditional values, to the materialistic, westernized nation that arose after 1945. In this spirit, he founded the “Shield Society,” a controversial private army made up of about 100 students that was to defend the emperor in the event of a leftist uprising.
On November 25, Mishima delivered to his publisher the last installment of The Sea of Fertility, his four-volume epic on Japanese life in the 20th century that is regarded as his greatest work. He then went with several followers to a military building in Tokyo and seized control of a general’s office. There, from a balcony, he gave a brief speech to about 1,000 assembled servicemen, in which he urged them to overthrow Japan’s constitution, which forbids Japanese rearmament. The soldiers were unsympathetic, and Mishima committed seppuku, or ritual suicide, by disemboweling himself with his sword. Though his extreme beliefs did not gain him much of a following, many mourned the loss of such a gifted author.
“The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea”, is a work of great power. It’s descriptions of the sea and the notion of love, deliver some of Mishima’s finest ever writing. Here’s a taste from the first half of the novel:
“It was the sea that made me begin thinking secretly about love more than anything else; you know, a love worth dying for, or a love that consumes you. To a man locked up in a steel ship all the time, the sea is too much like a woman. Things like her lulls and storms, or her caprice, or the beauty of her breast reflecting the setting sun, are all obvious. More than that, you’re in a ship that mounts the sea and rides her and yet is constantly denied her… Nature surrounds a sailor with all these elements so like a woman and yet he is kept as far as a man can be from her warm, living body.”
Source: www.history.com
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Today we lament the death of Black Kettle, chief of the Southern Cheyenne, killed on November 27, 1868 .......when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry in a surprise dawn attack on the sleeping Cheyenne camp – massacring over one hundred men, women and children. Black Kettle and his wife were shot in the back as they tried in vain to flee across the river in the final moments of the so-called Battle of Washita, though many historians more rightfully refer to it as the Washita Massacre. This pre-meditated and unprovoked attack against Chief Black Kettle and his people was part of the U.S. army’s “winter warfare” campaign, cruelly conceived to destroy the Native Americans’ ponies, supplies and shelters, with the ultimate goal of driving the tribes onto barren reservations – two hundred miles away from the nearest buffalo herds – in order to free the Great Plains for white settlement.
In stark contrast to his more celebrated Native American warrior contemporaries Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Geronimo, Black Kettle was the only influential Great Plains chief devoted to securing an honourable peace – having prophesized that the white man could not be defeated. But his efforts to negotiate with the United States federal government and army resulted only in broken promises and betrayal. Two years before Washita, Black Kettle had been the target of and survived another infamous massacre at Sand Creek. Without warning or provocation, over two hundred non-aggressive Cheyenne and Arapahos – mainly women and children – were ruthlessly slaughtered, sexually mutilated and scalped by 700 U.S. troops; the victims’ body parts later exhibited as trophies to roaring crowds. U.S. military leaders erroneously and cynically attempted to blame Black Kettle in order to justify both the Sand Creek and Washita massacres, and the mainstream press in turn portrayed the chief as a warmonger. It is only in recent years that his reputation as a visionary peacemaker has been restored.
The murder of Black Kettle at Washita would prove to be a watershed in the Indian Wars – for, as historian Richard Hardoff wrote, Black Kettle was “the best friend the Whites ever had.” His death confirmed that peaceful negotiation was impossible, and subsequently united all the Plains tribes in their resistance to the white man’s invasion – culminating in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. But whether they waged war or – like Black Kettle – sought peace, the sad truth as we now know it is the white man had but one goal and would not rest until all the Indians were scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding.
Source: www.onthisdeity.com
Black Kettle: The Cheyenne Chief Who Sought Peace But Found War
William Blake was born on November 28, in 1757. He was considered a madman. That’s why he is one of my best English poets of all times. Am I mad too?He was rejected as a madman by eighteenth-century society, but he is now heralded for his imaginative and innovative contributions to English literature. Blake’s work doesn’t fall neatly into one category, but much of it centers on thematic dichotomies such as heaven and hell, innocence and experience, spirit and reason, and the classic struggle of good and evil. Those are familiar enough topics, certainly addressed by writers before him, but Blake tackled them with his own blend of imagination, mysticism, and passion. “I must create my own system,” he insisted, “or be enslav’d by another man’s. I will not reason and compare; my business is to create.” And create he did. Blake wrote poetry, mythology, satires, political pieces, and prophetic works that openly defied the conventions of his time.
Blake claimed to have mystical visions throughout his life. When he was four years old, he said he saw God put his head up to the window, and at age nine he witnessed a tree full of angels. After marrying an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher, Blake taught her to read, write, and produce drafts so that together they could work to publish and illustrate Blake’s literature. Blake credits many of his ideas for art and literature to conversations he had with his dead brother, Robert. Desiring to read classical literature in the original languages, Blake taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Italian.
When Blake died on August 12, 1827, famed poet William Wordsworth said, “There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.” As strange as it might seem, that same opinion was shared by many of Blake’s readers, acquaintances, and even close friends.
Auguries of Innocence
By William Blake
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour … (https://bit.ly/2wd4ECY)
Source: www.enotes.com
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
November 30 - Computer Security DayThese days, electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers make up an important component of our everyday lives. While communication has become easier and more efficient than ever before, these technological advancements have brought with them new concerns about privacy and security. There’s even a holiday dedicated to keeping your online data safe and secure – it’s fittingly called Computer Security Day.
Computer Security Day began in 1988, around the time that computers were becoming commonplace, even if they were yet to become ubiquitous in homes. The 1980s saw not only increased usage of computers, especially in business and government, and the internet was in its early stages. While hacking and viruses have virtually been around since the early days of modern computing, evolving and increasingly sophisticated technologies began to see more applications, and therefore more security risks due to the simple fact that more data was at risk as computers found their way into banks, government offices, and businesses. More important data stored on computers and servers meant more valuable information for hackers, and this meant higher profile cases of security breaches. As such, online security became an important concern by the end of the decade, and so Computer Security Day was created to raise awareness about computer security.
The most obvious way to celebrate Computer Security day would be to focus on ensuring that your computer, your devices, and the data you have in the cloud are all secure. One very important thing to do for your online security is to have strong passwords and keep them updated regularly, as this reduces the chances of your personal data falling into the wrong hands. If you aren’t the sort of person who’s good at coming up with strong passwords (and let’s be honest, some of us aren’t), then there are a number of password managers which you can choose from to generate random passwords and also save them so you don’t have to remember.
One strategy is to mix upper and lowercase letters with symbols, as this can be harder to guess and also difficult to hack – and passwords increase in difficulty the longer they are. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem that everyone would think to do this, because “123456” and “password” have remained the two most popular passwords for years now. And don’t use the same password over and over for every online account you have – this ensures that if someone manages to get into one of your accounts, then they can access all of your accounts. Bad idea. So make strong passwords, don’t recycle them, and update them regularly.
Another thing which you can do to celebrate Computer Awareness Day is to update all of your spyware and malware protection software. Follow up with thorough scans, and you should have a more secure computer or device as an end result. While you may be aware that computers require such protection, you should also remember that your other devices such as tablets and smartphones are also vulnerable to malware and spyware – so take the necessary measures to keep them secure.
And if you still have a computer running the outdated Windows XP or Vista, you should be aware that this creates huge security vulnerabilities for you. So upgrade your OS or your device. For the rest of us with more contemporary operating systems, it’s still important to install the regular security updates in order to stay safe. You can also observe Computer Security Day by encrypting all of your files and backing them up. Your device should give you the option to encrypt all of your files (this is typically found amongst the settings), and then it’s your choice whether to go for a physical device such as an external hard drive or USB drive or for any of the numerous online cloud storage options. Many of these offer encrypted storage, and while Google’s Drive is probably the best-known, it’s far from the only player in the field. And most of the cloud storage options are free up to a certain limit.
So remember Computer Security Day, and observe it in whatever way you can because online safety and security are important things. But maybe you’re a Luddite, and don’t interact with computers and smartphones in any way at all, whatsoever – then how did you come across this article? See, you are using a computer or another device. But is it secure?
Source: www.daysoftheyear.com
The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know
Woody Allen was born today December 1 in 1935.Woody Allen emerged as a popular comedian at the age of 15. His jokes published in a local paper fetched him about $200 per week, quite an amount for a teenager. However, this was just the beginning of a new success story. Comedian, musician, author, playwright, musician and an actor: there's nothing that Allen can't do? He is the guy who made monologues and stand-up comedy more famous than traditional jokes. Comedy Central ranks him fourth on the list of '100 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians of all Times'. After mastering slapstick comedies, he turned to European art cinema and New Hollywood. He's best known for his performances in 'Hanna and her sisters', 'Match Point', 'The Purple Rose of Cairo', 'Annie Hall' and 'Stardust Memories'. Today, he's the pride owner of nine British Academy of Film and TV awards and four Academy Awards. He was recognized for his funniest screenplays and Hollywood critic Roger Ebert termed him as the true treasure of Western cinema. Though his sense and style hasn't changed in last few years, he continues to inspire us with his views on filmmaking, arts and humor.
I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.
I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.
If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.
I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.
Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.
My brain? That's my second favorite organ.
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?
Source: www.quotes.thefamouspeople.com
Woody Allen: A Retrospective
December 2, 1985: Philip Larkin dies. He was considered as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the 20th century. He began his career as a librarian at Wellington, concurrently studying to qualify as a professional librarian. All the while he continued with his literally pursuit, publishing his first collection of poems at the age of 23. It was followed by two novels. Thereafter, he concentrated on poetry writing, publishing his second collection of poems, ‘The Less Deceived’ at the age of 35. Although it made him famous, he took another nine years to publish his third collection, mainly because of his preoccupation as the librarian of the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull.
He wrote sparingly; in spite of that he became almost a household name, a rare fit for a poet. Yet his ‘Selected Letters’, containing vulgar outburst against women, minorities, and working-class and published posthumously in 1992, almost obliterated his reputation, labeling him as a misogynist and racist. His reputation was finally restored when 31 years after his death he found a place in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster’s Abbey.
Readers not fond of swearing in poetry are advised to look away now, for Philip Larkin‘s opening lines can get pretty sweary. ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’: a memorable opening line for one of Philip Larkin’s best-known poems, ‘This Be The Verse’, not exactly a laudatory paean to parenthood. But what is Larkin’s poem actually saying, and why did he feel the need to write it? The following analysis attempts some answers to these questions.
A summary of what Larkin’s poem actually says is pretty straightforward. Our parents ‘fuck us up’ (more on that colourful choice of phrase in a moment), perhaps unintentionally, because they pass on their own failings to us (since we inherit their genes) and, through the way they raise us, they inspire more failings within us. Larkin then says, in defence of parents everywhere, that this wasn’t their fault: they, too, were damaged by their upbringing by their parents, who spent their lives being either emotionally buttoned-up or, when they did show any emotion, arguing and creating a fraught home life for their children. Larkin concludes by saying that this is the way of humankind: we pass on our own miseries to our children, and they pass on theirs to their children’s children, and so on. Like a coastal shelf where deposits of sand and rock are laid down gradually over centuries, this misery ‘deepens’ over generations. Larkin’s advice is to leave home (and possibly even life itself?) as soon as you can – and don’t, of course, have children of your own.
It’s fitting that Larkin may well have written ‘This Be The Verse’ while he was staying with his mother at her home in Loughborough, where she lived from the early 1950s until 1972. Anthony Thwaite tentatively dates the poem to April 1971, which means that Larkin was possibly in Loughborough with his mother for the Easter holidays. (He worked as a librarian at the University of Hull, but during the university holidays would usually go and stay with his mother in Loughborough. She lived on her own, following the death of Larkin’s father in 1948.) Like other poems which Larkin wrote about his mother, such as ‘Love Songs in Age’ (completed on New Year’s Day 1957) and ‘Reference Back’ (written during the summer holidays 1955), the inspiration for ‘This Be The Verse’ may have come from Larkin being in the company of his mother for several weeks (with all the annoyances and petty irritations that tend to erupt anew when we go home and spend time with our parents).
Larkin was, by all accounts, a devoted son, who regularly went to visit his mother, who was prone to bouts of depression. Yet Larkin the poet could not shy away from examining and analysing the role that our parents play in shaping our own attitudes, behaviour, and prejudices. Larkin’s father was an admirer of Germany and Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts; following Larkin’s death in 1985, and the publication of Philip Larkin: Selected Letters and Andrew Motion’s Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, Larkin himself has been accused of right-wing sympathies and even of racism. Does the apple fall far from the tree? This is something else that ‘This Be The Verse’ seems to ask.
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Source: www.interestingliterature.com
Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love
December 3, 1895It’s the birthday of Anna Freud, a pioneer in psychoanalytic child psychology. Freud’s father was famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. She was born in Vienna and was deeply unhappy as child, preferring the company of her nurse, Josephine, to her mother and sister, Sophie, whom many considered more beautiful than Anna.
Anna Freud suffered from depression and an eating disorder as a teen, spending much of her time at “health farms” in order to gain weight. Her schooling was intermittent and she later said she learned more from listening to her father and his houseguests than she ever did in school. She began reading her father’s work at the age of 15. He analyzed her for the first time when she was in her early 20s and continued for several years.
It was while working as an elementary school teacher that Anna Freud first began to be fascinated by the psychological makeup of children, particularly their fears, secret wishes, obsessions and nightmares. Though she never obtained a medical degree, she published a landmark study, The Ego and Mechanisms of Defence, in 1935. By 1938, the Nazis had begun to harass the Freud family, attempting to arrest Sigmund Freud, who was very ill. Anna offered herself instead, and before she was taken away, her father gave her poison to kill herself in case of torture. Anna Freud was released, and the family immigrated to London, where she nursed her father until his death.
Source: www.writersalmanac.org
Reading Anna Freud
Mod
He was rejected as a madman by eighteenth-cent..."
I particularly love his engravings of Dante's Divina Commedia, to be seen at the Tate in London
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that Penguin Books was found not guilty of obscenity in a landmark trial over the book Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a novel by D.H. Lawrence. It’s the story of a young aristocrat, Lady Chatterley, whose husband is paralyzed and impotent, and she has an affair with her gamekeeper. A jury of nine men and three women in Court No. 1 of London's Old Bailey found Penguin Books not guilty of publishing obscenity. The book was D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The trial of Constance Chatterley is still considered the most significant obscenity contest in English literary history. For six days in court, the soldiers of moralism - those who believed some people had a right to tell others what they could read and how to behave - battled a pack of liberals who insisted these were individual decisions.
The case was wildly entertaining, studded as it was with the most articulate minds in literature testifying about how truthful a piece of writing has a right to be. The unanimous acquittal was later credited with liberalizing the context for women's rights, divorce, capital punishment, homosexuality and abortion, and even setting the mood for the sex-drenched 1960s, as Philip Larkin (b. 1922) noted in his poem Annus Mirabilis:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the
"Chatterley" ban and
The Beatles' first LP.
The fracas seems quaint today, when one can hear the words that got Lawrence into trouble any night on cable. So why is it still so moving to read the transcript of the trial that made a nation believe, at least for a while, that a free and open mind was a lovely thing to own? 'Prior to Regina v. Penguin Books Limited, English courts used an 1868 standard to define obscene material as that which had a "tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences." Literary merit wasn't a defence. And because jury members had to be property owners, they tended to be middle-class men with middle-class standards, hence obedient to the prosecution and usually willing to convict … (read on here at link https://tgam.ca/2P3sdrX)