The Dark Ages looks plenty cool to the Rockhouse just now and it's not to play a, boohoo, Donald Trump will take us there gambit but rather the period is an intrigue in its own right and I suspect I'm not so unusual in knowing relatively little about it compared to at least some expertise in other things.
The first thing to strike me was how long it lasted since the video authors take it to starting with the Fall of Rome and it doesn't end until the Norman Conquest in 1066. That runs for seven hundred years or more and that period stunned me. From their standpoint, there really was an 'Atlantis' in Rome and they saw it sink. What an astoundingly depressing perspective in knowing we had it all and threw it away, bad guys wrecked it, or however you see the fall and it seems that inevitably would result in a depressive malaise but for seven centuries?? Whoa.
Another of the aspects which has intrigued me is the rise to dominance of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. While the political aspect is important to global history, another aspect is the Vatican was the store for the sum of human knowledge at that time and for that humanity owes the deepest gratitude.
The above is not at all cynical since the role is exactly the same as that of the Order of Saint Leibowitz in "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller. That one is another on the required reading list for Ithaka. For me, sci fi needs a good measure of Sociology to go deep and Miller delivers it.
The Order of Saint Leibowitz came into play in the aftermath of a nuke which left civilization shattered and living not so differently from the way of the original Dark Ages. As with the first time, this continued for centuries.
Telling the story is no good since it's worth reading the book and a five star recommendation on that one. I've read it maybe two or three times since high school.
Ed: your memory sucks!
My memory is generally fairly good but the book is worthy and the experience exceptional.
Ed: if you go for the two-dimensional Dark Ages effect, Trump will inevitably get engaged
Negatory since he's got to get us nuked for that. We don't need the hyperbole. Use the current review for possibly predictive of what would happen but I'm not looking to spell out why it would happen in the modern context beyond the obvious. If we get nuked then everybody dies or we're reduced nearly to animals. That's all I really need for the basis of the review and that takes me back to the story in which Clovis, the brutal bastard who unified the Franks, connects with the Church for making some serious power structure.
Some of you will get this and it's no big deal if you don't.
Ed: that's pitiful!
Don't I know it, Dagwood. I'm reviewing the video possibly in the way Cadillac Man read Hamilton's biography or Washington's or multiple others since he read them in chunks as these were some massive tomes. It seems like less than six or seven hundred pages is just a short story to him. He wants the detail of those rascals.
The video on the Dark Ages is turning out to be revelatory in a similar way although nowhere near the detail of a written version of the same thing. However, this survey course type approach is exactly what I want of it.
So far, I'm fascinated.
The first thing to strike me was how long it lasted since the video authors take it to starting with the Fall of Rome and it doesn't end until the Norman Conquest in 1066. That runs for seven hundred years or more and that period stunned me. From their standpoint, there really was an 'Atlantis' in Rome and they saw it sink. What an astoundingly depressing perspective in knowing we had it all and threw it away, bad guys wrecked it, or however you see the fall and it seems that inevitably would result in a depressive malaise but for seven centuries?? Whoa.
Another of the aspects which has intrigued me is the rise to dominance of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. While the political aspect is important to global history, another aspect is the Vatican was the store for the sum of human knowledge at that time and for that humanity owes the deepest gratitude.
The above is not at all cynical since the role is exactly the same as that of the Order of Saint Leibowitz in "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller. That one is another on the required reading list for Ithaka. For me, sci fi needs a good measure of Sociology to go deep and Miller delivers it.
The Order of Saint Leibowitz came into play in the aftermath of a nuke which left civilization shattered and living not so differently from the way of the original Dark Ages. As with the first time, this continued for centuries.
Telling the story is no good since it's worth reading the book and a five star recommendation on that one. I've read it maybe two or three times since high school.
Ed: your memory sucks!
My memory is generally fairly good but the book is worthy and the experience exceptional.
Ed: if you go for the two-dimensional Dark Ages effect, Trump will inevitably get engaged
Negatory since he's got to get us nuked for that. We don't need the hyperbole. Use the current review for possibly predictive of what would happen but I'm not looking to spell out why it would happen in the modern context beyond the obvious. If we get nuked then everybody dies or we're reduced nearly to animals. That's all I really need for the basis of the review and that takes me back to the story in which Clovis, the brutal bastard who unified the Franks, connects with the Church for making some serious power structure.
Some of you will get this and it's no big deal if you don't.
L R2, 4(,R1)
Load Register 2 with the contents of the address from four bytes past where Register 1 pointsI know why it's important to have that last comma before R1 but I don't know anything about when Clovis and the Vatican took on Constantinople or if that's how it even went.
Ed: that's pitiful!
Don't I know it, Dagwood. I'm reviewing the video possibly in the way Cadillac Man read Hamilton's biography or Washington's or multiple others since he read them in chunks as these were some massive tomes. It seems like less than six or seven hundred pages is just a short story to him. He wants the detail of those rascals.
The video on the Dark Ages is turning out to be revelatory in a similar way although nowhere near the detail of a written version of the same thing. However, this survey course type approach is exactly what I want of it.
So far, I'm fascinated.
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