(no subject)
Nov. 5th, 2008 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
One of my favorite thought experiments is imagining being able to bring someone forward from history, and see his reaction to modern times. Showing Ben Franklin a modern home, or showing Gutenberg a library.
Wouldn't it be lovely to see Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and his reaction to Obama's election?
Wouldn't it be lovely to see Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and his reaction to Obama's election?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 05:25 pm (UTC)¹ President Obama. Damn I like that phrase. The Presidents in my adult life have been a senile fool, a time-serving party apparatchik, a man of immense talent who squandered his opportunity for greatness, and a juvenile delinquent megalomaniac; I generally called them Reagan, Bush, Bill, and Shrub. But now, finally, I will have a President it feels natural to call by his title.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 05:42 pm (UTC)(On a side note, didn't they have libraries in Gutenberg's day? Not modern lending libraries, but large collections of books that scholars might go and study, surely.)
no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 06:31 pm (UTC)There were, but the scale of a modern library would have been mind-boggling. Even a small town library, with, say, 100,000 books, would rank among (above?) the largest collections of 15th-century Europe. Plus, of course, everybody is allowed to read them.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 07:25 pm (UTC)At the college where my dad used to teach, they were proud that they had over a million volumes...but, to reach that million, they had to buy a lot of crap. I worked there one summer, and they actually had Cliff's Notes.
Maybe, maybe not
Date: 2008-11-05 06:34 pm (UTC)I'd like to think that he'd be happy to learn he was wrong, though.
John Quincy Adams
Date: 2008-11-05 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 07:57 pm (UTC)http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/cartoons/11_03_08_inktank?pg=6
If you have a moment, look through all the editorial cartoons. The cartoonists, not normally a swoony bunch, have put together some of the most uplifting cartoons I have ever seen. I choked up over a couple of them.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 11:00 pm (UTC)