tagged w/ Facts
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America is in deep shambles and our leaders have no clue what to do about it. As we face the fact that New Jersey's unemployment rate is at 9.9 percent, its highest level in three decades. Not to mention the ever increasing national deficit as well as the increasing number of people on welfare. As more Americans are becoming increasingly dependent on our government, more laws and policies are being passed that chip away at our abilities to make decisions for ourselves. Who can we trust to get us back on track?America is in deep shambles and our leaders have no clue what to do about it. As we... more
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Dr. Woody’s Fabulous, Fascinating Factoid, #4: Gladiators Died Hard
Where Have All the Neurotics Gone?
Being FrugalDr. Woody’s Fabulous, Fascinating Factoid, #4: Gladiators Died Hard
Where Have... more
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To see or not to see, that is the question about the new conspiracy movie Anonymous that asserts William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. As a NY Times magazine piece by Stephen Marche puts it:
“Was Shakespeare a fraud?” That’s the question the promotional machinery for Roland Emmerich’s new film, “Anonymous,” wants to usher out of the tiny enclosure of fringe academic conferences into the wider pastures of a Hollywood audience. Shakespeare is finally getting the Oliver Stone/“Da Vinci Code” treatment, with a lurid conspiratorial melodrama involving incest in royal bedchambers, a vapidly simplistic version of court intrigue, nifty costumes and historically inaccurate nonsense. First they came for the Kennedy scholars, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Kennedy scholar. Then they came for Opus Dei, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic scholar. Now they have come for me.
Professors of Shakespeare — and I was one once upon a time — are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives. Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious. “Anonymous” subscribes to the Oxfordian theory of authorship, the contention that Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Among Shakespeare scholars, the idea has roughly the same currency as the faked moon landing does among astronauts.
The good news is that “Anonymous” makes an extraordinarily poor case for the Oxfordian theory.
Yes, Shakespeare scholars, like climate scientists, must now suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and decide whether or not to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
Readers know that I am a long time Shakespeare buff — see “William Shakespeare special: Why deniers out-debate smart talkers.” Indeed, a quarter-century ago I even published a journal article on Hamlet, and I have an unpublished manuscript that explores how Shakespeare uses rhetoric and the figures of speech to communicate his meaning. So I’m well aware of the snobbish myth that Shakespeare was supposedly too uneducated to have written so many diverse masterpieces.
That merely reflects a complete lack of understanding of basic grammar school education in Shakespeare’s day — where students were taught rhetoric, the figures of speech, and Latin poetry and grammar hour after hour after hour year after year. That’s why they called it grammar school. The book I am intending to publish next year on messaging devotes a page on this very subject, how Elizabethans like Shakespeare and the authors of the King James Bible came to their mastery of the English language. Understanding how they did it is key to understanding how you can do it.
This new movie goes one step further and ascribes the plays to a person who simply could not have written them. I haven’t seen it yet — I’m quite conflicted since I’m confident it will be as head exploding as your typical denier movie. Marche actually makes a direct connection in his piece between Shakespeare deniers and climate science deniers. But first he briefly explains why no serious Shakespeare scholar buys the Oxford theory:
… the liberties with facts in “Anonymous” become serious when they enter our conception of real history. In scholarship, chronology does matter. And the fatal weakness of the Oxfordian theory is chronological, a weakness that “Anonymous” never addresses: the brute fact that Edward de Vere died in 1604, while Shakespeare continued to write, several times with partners, until 1613. “Macbeth” and “The Tempest” were inspired by events posthumous to the Earl of Oxford: the gunpowder plot in 1605 and George Somers’s misadventure to Bermuda in 1609. How can anyone be inspired by events that happened after his death?So, enough. It is impossible that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare. Notice that I am not saying improbable; it is impossible. Better scholars than I will ever be have articulated the scale of the idiocy. Jonathan Bate in a single chapter of “The Genius of Shakespeare” annihilated the Oxfordian thesis. If you want to read the definitive treatment, there is James Shapiro’s more recent “Contested Will,” although that book is nearly as absurd as its subject, because using a brain like Shapiro’s on the authorship question is like bringing an F-22 to an alley knife fight, and he kind of knows it. He ties his argument into the larger question of art and its relationship to the artist’s life, but even so the whole business is evidently a waste of his vast talent.
Scientists don’t generally use the world “impossible” — though they do use “unequivocal” and “settled fact” — but then this guy was a Shakespeare professor. He does draw compelling analogies between Shakespeare deniers and climate science deniers:
Besides, no argument could ever possibly sway the Oxfordian crowd. They are the prophets of truthiness. “It couldn’t have been Shakespeare,” they say. “How could a semiliterate country boy have composed works of such power?” Their snobbery is the surest sign of their ignorance. Many of the greatest English writers emerged from the middle or lower classes. Dickens worked in a shoe-polish factory as a child. Keats was attacked for belonging to the “cockney school.” Snobbery mingles with paranoia, particularly about the supposedly nefarious intrigues of Shakespeare professors to keep the identity secret. Let me assure everybody that Shakespeare professors are absolutely incapable of operating a conspiracy of any size whatsoever. They can’t agree on who gets which parking spot. That’s what they spend most of their time intriguing about.
Well, it’s certainly apparent that no argument and no fact can sway the hard-core disinformers — see Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming.”
And climate scientists are even less capable of operating a conspiracy than Shakespeare scholars. After all, they’d need to enlist all the major science journals and every major science organization and every member government of the IPCC….
Marche himself notes:
The original Oxfordian, the aptly named J. Thomas Looney, who proposed the theory in 1920, believed that Shakespeare’s true identity remained a secret because, he said, “it has been left mainly in the hands of literary men.” In his rejection of expertise, at least, Looney was far ahead of his time. This same antielitism is haunting every large intellectual question today. We hear politicians opine on their theories about climate change and evolution as a way of displaying how little they know. When Rick Perry compared climate-change skeptics like himself to Galileo in a Republican debate, I dearly wished that the next question had been “Can you explain Galileo’s theory of falling bodies?” Of all the candidates with their various rejections of the scientific establishment, how many could name the fundamental laws of thermodynamics that students learn in high school? Healthy skepticism about elites has devolved into an absence of basic literacy.
Precisely.
More at the linkTo see or not to see, that is the question about the new conspiracy movie Anonymous... more
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Specialty Film Researcher Jeremy Juuso shares a great tip for finding the answer to film industry questions on the internet.Specialty Film Researcher Jeremy Juuso shares a great tip for finding the answer to... more
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Gotta give it to Chris. He's been on a roll lately.
"Michael Steele is a Moron!!!" "For some reason it makes sense why he lost his Job!!!"Gotta give it to Chris. He's been on a roll lately.
"Michael Steele is a... more
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The field of public policy handles issues from the national level down to the local level of each city or state. One program and policy that is implemented on a local level is recycling, and there are many interesting facts that most people may not realize about recycling and its affects. This list offers 25 of these facts in order to give people a better understanding of the importance of recycling.
link:http://www.mastersinpublicpolicy.com/25-interesting-facts-you-may-not-know-about-recycling/The field of public policy handles issues from the national level down to the local... more
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Here in the fact-based world, where we have at least 5th grade math skills and know how to read graphs, we can see that when Bush/Cheney got their way they turned a surplus into a HUGE deficit. When Boehner gets 98% of what HE wants the market crashes and S & P lowers our country's credit rating.
Remember the old "this is your brain on drugs" commercial? "This is Republican Economic Policy. This is the Economy on Republican Economic Policy. Any questions?"Here in the fact-based world, where we have at least 5th grade math skills and know... more
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In Arkansas and Alabama this week, violent weather accompanied by tornadoes killed seven people and damaged the property of countless others. Fewer than two weeks earlier, 21 people were killed in North Carolina as dozens of tornadoes wreaked havoc on the area. In order to avoid falling victim to such a disaster, you should be able to anticipate when, where and how one will strike. Hopefully, the following facts (obvious to some) will help you do just that, enhancing your chances of weathering a twister.
LINK : http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/blog/2011/10-tornado-facts-that-may-save-your-life/In Arkansas and Alabama this week, violent weather accompanied by tornadoes killed... more
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On April 27, 1947, Babe Ruth, a few short months after being diagnosed with malignant throat cancer, stood before the New York faithful in the house that he built and received the highest honor a true Yankee can receive — the retirement of his number. At the time, he and former teammate Lou Gehrig were the only Yankees to hold that distinction. Babe Ruth Day was not just a Yankees celebration, however — it was a league-wide celebration to commemorate the most beloved athlete in American history. If you spoke to any young boy at the time, whether he was from the Bronx or Omaha, he would invariably name the Sultan of Swat has his hero and could recite dozens of Ruth facts on command. But as time has passed, memories have faded and new heroes have been made, and newer generations of baseball fans haven't seemed to maintain the same appreciation for the most dominant player in the game's 142-year history. The following facts are reminders of his proficiency as an all-around player and transcendence as a star. These are just a few of the indelible marks he left on America's pastime.
LINK : http://www.collegecrunch.org/feature/10-babe-ruth-facts-every-baseball-fan-should-know/On April 27, 1947, Babe Ruth, a few short months after being diagnosed with malignant... more
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The ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan has remained a top headline for two weeks, evoking memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Accompanying it is the revival of the decades-old argument about the safety or lack thereof of nuclear power. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), 442 nuclear reactors worldwide are generating electricity, and more are currently under construction. In 2009, nuclear power plants created 14 percent of the world's electricity. Because of the aforementioned fiascos, many people view nuclear power unfavorably. Opponents argue that increasing our dependency on it would pose a significant threat to the environment and generally do more harm than good, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Read on to learn about the various myths pertaining to nuclear power and the facts that dispel them.
LINK : http://www.onlinedegree.net/10-persistent-myths-about-nuclear-power/The ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan has remained a top headline for two... more
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You might take for granted that big name schools like Yale and Stanford have always been around. While they do have histories that go back hundreds of years, they each had to start somewhere.Here are just a few stories to educate you on how some of the biggest and most well-known colleges in the U.S. got their start.
LINK : http://www.onlinecollege.org/2011/02/13/the-fascinating-origins-of-10-famous-american-colleges/You might take for granted that big name schools like Yale and Stanford have always... more
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You might take for granted that big name schools like Yale and Stanford have always been around. While they do have histories that go back hundreds of years, they each had to start somewhere.Here are just a few stories to educate you on how some of the biggest and most well-known colleges in the U.S. got their start.
LINK : http://www.onlinecollege.org/2011/02/13/the-fascinating-origins-of-10-famous-american-colleges/You might take for granted that big name schools like Yale and Stanford have always... more
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