Sucking Up

Napoleon

One of then most outstanding examples of the tendency of media to suck up to power is a series of Newspaper headlines printed in Paris in 1815 about the return to power of Napoleon.

Now after Napoleon was defeated in 1814 he had been exiled to the island of Elba, which is just off the coast of Italy.

Napoleon for various reasons tired of his exile and decided to try to regain power in France. So he left the island of Elba and landed in southern France in early March of 1815. And here are various Headlines from Paris newspapers up to Napoleon's entry into Paris on March 22 1815.

Happy Holidays!!!

All the best and a happy New Year to you all!!

Pierre Cloutier

Lutherean Silliness

Martin Luther

Martin Luther is without a doubt one of the most important persons in the history of the Western Civilization and would rightly belong in any top ten list of the most important Religious figures in history however this doesn't mean he is not one of the silliest men in History.

Embattled Journey

One of the most interesting phenomena in the last couple of decades is the rise of Japanese Manga in the West. In fact now you can easily find shelves and shelves of translated Japanese Manga in book stores throughout Europe and North America north of the Rio Grande.

Now Manga are Japanese comics but they come from a quite different tradition of publishing going back to a long history of printing wood cut prints to illustrate the books that the Japanese read. also in Japan Manga are used not just entertain and titillate, (Erotic and Pornographic Manga are common.), but also to educate and teach, such things as calculus, and even engineering. Further unlike much of the West, Manga's main audience has in fact been adults. In fact in much of the West comics are usually considered entertainment for children and teens, and only in the last 30 years has that begun to change in the West.1

Diffusion Part VIII

The Mystery of Disease

Picture of Disease ravaged Natives from

the Florentine Codex

In the past I have examined the usual arguments for contact between the Old and New World pre- Columbus. What I have concluded is that at best with the exception of the Norse (c. 1000 C.E.), the evidence is both very poor and at best indicates sporadic and intermittent contact between the Old and New World and further such contact had minimal influence on the development of New World civilization.1

Here I will discuss briefly one of the seminal problems about arguing for sustained contact between the Old and New World pre-Columbus. The lack of similar diseases.2