/u/Basilikon's posts
Ian Morris makes the bizarre sounding suggestion that Anban figurines and Tamir Mummies in prehistoric china suggest a caucasoid priest-class may have ruled over much of the civilization's west. Morris is too good everywhere else for this to be mere nordicist fantasizing, but how sensible is this?
Mark as read: Add to a list
Only 708 African Americans were killed in the course of the Second World War, compared to over 405,000 total American deaths. Why was this number so small? Were Black Americans deliberately kept out of combat situations?
Mark as read: Add to a list
The word "Serene" in titles like the Most Serene Republic of Venice or His Serene Highness the Prince of Liechtenstein is apparently used to designate sovereignty and independence - how did Serenus, a Latin word more or less meaning "tranquil" like its English descendant, come to be used this way?
Mark as read: Add to a list
In ANGELS IN AMERICA, released six months before the fall of the USSR, an American leftist declares Mikhail Gorbachev "the greatest political thinker since Lenin". Was it common or reasonable for western socialists to have this understanding of Perestroika as Soviet renewal, before the dissolution?
Mark as read: Add to a list
I am an educated but not Hellenized Jew in the end of the last century BC. How much do I know about the "Oral Torah" and in what way is it influencing my life?
Mark as read: Add to a list
Did non-european cultures with concepts of third genders or robust ideas of gender non-conformity ever apply these genders to their livestock or pets, or were they always male/female?
Mark as read: Add to a list
Both her posthumous re-trial and canonization documents claim Joan of Arc's ecclesiastical trial and execution were irregular and unlawful - is this merely convenient, revisionist exculpation, or was her trial actually illegitimate by the standards of the day?
Mark as read: Add to a list
A Confederacy of Dunces depicts a local New Orleans theater playing Bergman's WINTER LIGHT near the time of release. How easily accessible were foreign and experimental arthouse films for American moviegoers in the mid-century? What kind of market existed for these pictures?
Mark as read: Add to a list
Did astrological divination in classical antiquity follow predictable patterns of analysis? Do we have any idea what stellar placements they considered auspicious, or bad omens? Or were these prognostications more "private interpretations" in the modern fashion?
Mark as read: Add to a list