Recent Comments

1. almost 10 years ago on [Deleted]

   “For instance, how many American slaves were set free and given gifts after seven years?”.Surely all?

   Are you thinking about indentured servants? Not dissimilar in many ways, but indentured servants (nearly all white) had quite different legal status from slaves (overwhelmingly black), the biggest difference being that, while some slaves were certainly freed, often on a master’s death, there was no particular expectation of it and certainly not a time limit.

2. almost 11 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Ah, the perils of translation! ;-)

3. almost 11 years ago on Doonesbury

   I usually try to rise above the level of discussion on this board, but I just couldn’t let that one pass.Tucci, speaking as someone working very hard to become an “over credentialed idiot”, I think you’re being mean-spirited about a group of people you have not made much effort to understand.I’m about three chapters shy of a Ph.D. in history (It’s taken me 12 years, because I’m also a full-time high school teacher; I write at night, until I can’t stay awake any longer).I happen to believe that understanding where we came from and how we got to where we are is valuable to society, but, honestly, I’m doing this because I love it, just as most of my engineering friends are. We can debate its value if you like.But to say that getting a Ph.D. in the humanities is easy is just plain untrue. I had to show fluency in three languages before I started, then pass an oral exam in which professors could more or less ask any question they liked about three areas of history, then write a 350-page book subject to intense scrutiny from people with 50 years more experience and convince them that it’s a new, worthwhile, contribution to our understanding of the past.When I finish, I don’t expect to go around asking people to call me Dr. outside professional settings, but will I be proud of the right to the title? Heck yeah!If the end result isn’t something you’re interested in, fine. But don’t say it was easy if you haven’t tried it.Okay. Now I’ll step down off my soapbox again.

4. almost 11 years ago on Doonesbury

   I think Thirdguy was being satirical ;-)

5. about 11 years ago on Doonesbury

   @mabrndt“grow” is pretty frequently used as a noun by pot growers, meaning “pot growing operation”. pot growers not mostly being culturally inclined to formality. ;-)

6. about 11 years ago on Doonesbury

   OK, I’m a history teacher, and I can’t stand it anymore, so let me do my best to explain some terms (gonna stay out of the rest of it—too hot for me!).

   Communism, socialism and capitalism describe economies, not government systems: in pure communism, there is no private property and all economic decisions are made by the state. In pure capitalism, everything is private property and all decisions are made by the market. (“pure” anything is hard to come by—most systems are somewhere on the spectrum in between). Socialism is between the two: some or most economic decisions are made by the state.

   Fascism describes the degree to which governments control the lives of their citizens—in a fascist state, the state controls all or most individual decisions. The opposite end of the spectrum from fascism is, technically, anarchy—a system under which the state makes no decisions at all b/c there is no state—but we usually talk about fascism as being the opposite of freedom.

   There have been capitalist fascist governments (Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain) and communist fascist governments (Stalin’s Soviet Union).

   Left and right are trickier, b/c their meaning has changed over time and because they tend to describe a constellation of ideas, rather than variation along a single spectrum. We generally think at the moment of left wingers in the U.S. as supporting more government involvement in the economy, equal rights for minorities, and a more secular approach to cultural issues and the right as supporting less government involvement in the economy, a more Darwinist, competitive model, and, in some cases, an evangelical Christian take on cultural issues which leads them to advocate more government regulation there, but none of these generalizations holds true across the board, and, say, in 1870, the groupings of those ideas were quite different. So left and right are quick shorthands, but it’s better to be more specific.

   Just my two cents. Hope that’s useful.Now back to the fight.

7. over 12 years ago on Doonesbury

   We still used “gut” when I was a grad student at harvard 10 years ago. although I think the term was somewhat relative.

8. almost 13 years ago on MythTickle

   Don’t add the wings! I kind of like going back and seeing that my favorite strips have evolved over time. My 2 cents, anyhow.

9. almost 13 years ago on Doonesbury

   @tigger what part of this strip do you see as being pro-war??? this is a pretty accurate reflection, as I see it, of its psychic cost.