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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Oh has anyone else seen this? a BBC (i think) production) with terry jones narrating the history of arithmatic, basiclly number theory, but with some fine words thrown in for fun
like banker and bankrupt.
banker from from bank (a bench)
money changers had counting benches, (similar to an abacus, but the benches they worked at (in roman numerals) were printed/painted banks.
the banker was the person who 'operated' the bank (bench)
all were licenced and regulated, and if they were caught cheating, their bench (bank) was broken up (bankrupted)(and the banker was thrown in jail) makes perfect sense (rupt -like erupt or rupture still has a sense of destructions)
other good words (not in common usage were some terms from hindi for really, really big numbers. i can't really remember them.. (palya? --the term for a distance a god could run in a year; when in every blink of an eye, he could run 10,000 meters(or so) so 1 eye blink is 1/10 of second, (so its 60,000 meters per second, 360,000 per minute, (and so one till you get to one year--a really big number!there were other terms too..
it was a funny show too, (well lets start with Terry Jones doing a show on Maths...the idea of it is funny!)
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veteran
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I haven't seen that one but I've seen some of the other Terry Jones history programs, such as the one about monasteries in England. Very educational and entertaining as well.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Now, see? History can be presented in a manner of keeping our interest. History is interesting--it's where we came from, after all; it has everything to do with the way we are now; and we sometimes have been able to learn from our mistakes. So why, oh WHY, are history textbooks so darned boring?!? I had hoped they'd improved by the time my kids got to the level of taking history classes; I picked up one of their books and was putting it down again by the third sentence. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I saw it, of troy, and liked it. Though, towards the end it became more of the story of one and zero, too. Have any of youse read either of Jones' books? One was about Chaucer's Knight's Tale. Pretty academic.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Quote:
Now, see? History can be presented in a manner of keeping our interest. History is interesting--it's where we came from, after all; it has everything to do with the way we are now; and we sometimes have been able to learn from our mistakes. So why, oh WHY, are history textbooks so darned boring?!? I had hoped they'd improved by the time my kids got to the level of taking history classes; I picked up one of their books and was putting it down again by the third sentence.
The problem isn't that history is boring, it's that it's too damned interesting; and that is why history textbooks are are so damned boring.
Last edited by inselpeter; 03/31/06 02:23 AM.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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History Bites is a Canadian show that asks what would daytime television look like if thay had it in Roman times? So you get snippits of Martha Stewart as a Roman matron, game shows, talk show hosts interviewing Ceasar and Brutus and telling barbarian jokes, sports reviews etc. Much more fun than textbooks.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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The better question is what Rome would have looked like if there had been television.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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> Rome would have looked like if there had been television.
wasn't there a Star trek episode similar to this?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Any episode with the Romuluns, I suppose. But my point was that history is boring because what is essential to it is extracted and kipped before the pulp is served up in schoolrooms for the delectation of closing minds.
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