Category Archives: + From the editor
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for earthpages.ca. Gains were not quite as dramatic for 2012 as they were at earthpages.org. But still, I’m happy that this blog is pulling in several thousand more hits than the previous year (31,000 views for 2011, 36,000 views for 2012).
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 36,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals
Hellenistic Civilization
Ancient Greek buildings and structures in Athens via Wikipedia
Hellenistic civilization refers to the ancient Greek people and their culture after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.
In sharp contrast to today’s Greece, struggling to fight off social and economic collapse, ancient Greece was a highly respected cultural powerhouse whose influence spread throughout the ancient world.
In those days, cultivated people spoke both Latin and Greek. And the Hellenistic age was, for all intents and purposes, a highpoint in Greek civilization, in terms of both its creative output and its general influence.
Hellenistic civilization was preceded by the Classical Hellenic period, and followed by Roman rule over the areas Greece had earlier dominated – even though much of Greek culture, religion, art and literature still permeated Rome’s rule, whose elite spoke and read Greek as well as Latin.¹
Bust of Ptolemy I Soter, king of Egypt (305 BC–282 BC) and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty via Wikipedia
The Hellenistic Age extends from Alexander’s death to the beginning of the Roman Empire in 31 BCE.
A series of dynasties, including the Ptolemies and Seleucids, dominated the region between Greece and Northern India.
Hellenistic philosophy was based in Athens from approximately 300 BCE to 200 CE. Among the many subjects explored, its chief concerns were to outline the ideal life and to develop empiricism. Hellenistic philosophy’s most prominent branches are Stoicism, Epicureanism and Skepticism.
But Hellenistic culture was diverse. It wasn’t just about hard-headed thinking. Some believe that the roots of astrology can be traced to Hellenistic Egypt.
—
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_civilization
Related Posts » Tarot
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- PHALANX VERSUS LEGION Analysis of the Greco-Roman conflict in the Hellenistic era (stefanosskarmintzos.wordpress.com)
- CONF: The Many Faces of a Hellenistic King (rogueclassicism.com)
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- Source Analysis of Plutarch’s The Life of Demetrius (socyberty.com)
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Jihad
Qur’ān. V49:11–13: "come to know each other..." via Wikipedia
Jihad [Arabic: struggle] is an Islamic term commonly interpreted as a Holy War waged against infidels, as taught in the Qur’an.
Gordon D. Newby, however, suggests that this definition is simplistic. The jihad, he says, can be divided into two types—the lesser and the greater jihad.
While the lesser jihad may involve armed conflict against evil†, it doesn’t always. Different Muslim groups have different views about the necessity of violence. And some see jihad more in terms of missionary activity.
The greater jihad, Newby says, involves a personal struggle against the evil influences within oneself. Just as in other religions we hear about “spiritual warfare,” this type of jihad is about combating evil within the self.
A third type of jihad, mentioned at Wikipedia, involves the struggle to make society better. And some say that any kind of righteous struggle can be a “jihad” of sorts. For instance, some called Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle against British colonialism a “jihad.”
For more on this controversial concept, see Newby’s entry for jihad in A Concise Encyclopedia of Islam (pdf).
———
† Newby doesn’t qualify this idea. But most would say that the understanding of “evil” is something that can be influenced by human bias.
Related Posts » Arjuna, Evil, Just War
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Think Free dislikes protectionism
Image via Wikipedia
When I lived in India in the 80s, one of the things I disliked was how certain products weren’t allowed for sale in that country. Instead of Coke you drank this soapy local stuff called… oh, I can’t remember what it was called and it doesn’t really matter. And I believe Indians can now buy Coke.
Not that being able to buy Coke is any sign of high civilization. But the point I’m trying to make is that I dislike protectionism. To me, it’s a sign of weakness if you try to pretend that a competitor (who does things very well) doesn’t exist.
With that thought in mind, I had to look at myself and how I’ve been running Earthpages.ca.
If you’ve read the About page, you’ll see that the whole project began as a book. I didn’t know I was going to put it online until years after I started writing. And even when I did take the plunge to post it online, I began with the kind of protectionism that I dislike. I did all my own graphics and barely, if ever, linked to any other site from here.
Why?
Well, I guess I wanted folks to stay at Think Free and not stray away to some far corner of the web.
But the web is the web. And my approach started to feel increasingly small and insular.
Recently I’ve come to grips with the fact that Think Free is not Wikipedia and never will be. Wikipedia didn’t exist when I began writing the book that became Think Free. But Wiki grew so fast, I quickly realized that I had both a wonderful resource at my fingertips and, also, a very real challenge to face.
That challenge, still here today, is to create an educational site that shares some qualities with Wiki, but which offers something vital that Wiki lacks.
The S500 was the first production car from Honda, released in 1963 - Image by Mytho88 via Wikipedia
Some people may scoff at Think Free, saying it’ll never really go anywhere. To those individuals I’d like to remind them of how the US car makers once dominated the market, and how small minded people laughed and joked about those “tin can” Japanese cars that hit the scene in the 60s.
Those people certainly aren’t laughing now.
The Japanese auto makers had insight as to how things were going for the future. And they’ve cashed in big with that keen sense of insight and innovation. And GM, well, we know what happened there.
By the same token, Think Free is currently small and can’t really compete (in terms of sheer traffic) with Wiki. But we believe we’ve got something that Wiki doesn’t. And we also believe that folks will read us even more if we (now) link to Wikipedia (and other sites) where appropriate.
So that means… no more protectionism. Protectionism is a sign of weakness. I guess it took us a while to see the light. But we get it now.
–MC
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Happy New Year!
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Merry Christmas!
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Change is good!
Ode to Changes: Ico Oliveira
For the past few months I’ve been entering long, complicated links at the bottom of most Think Free entries. And this morning I decided to just list related intra-site search items.
Why?
Well, entering those links takes quite a bit of time and, frankly, I’m not sure the amount of time spent was justified.
To make things easier, I’ve placed a site search box to the right part of your screen (just above “Recent Comments”), so you should have no problem searching for any item.
Some may wonder why I don’t post specific links to individual Think Free entries. The reason is that I’m always updating this site, so those specific links are forever subject to change.
I realize this setup is a tad lame. But the links I was posting (before this change) were already pointing to intra-site search results. That is, the end result will be the same.
Actually, there is a definite advantage to this approach. When you search an item you get results on a variety of related entries. This enables learning “the field,” as it were, at a quick glance.
Moreover, my interests are moving away from techie stuff and back to where it all began–namely, scholarship.
So I can be more productive at Think Free by burying my nose back into the books instead of scratching my head over all those html codes…
And Think Free will be freshly updated and expanded more often!
–MC
