Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

99kk:

This got me thinking, damn

NOOOOOO.

NO.

No.

Okay, if you don’t want to read this rant, that’s fine.  But I swear, this is not a fundamentalist Christian rant about how the Bible is all-inclusive truth.  This is a rant about actual historical fact.  That said, NOOOO.  If you don’t believe in the contents of the Bible or the Torah or the Qu'ran or any other book ever, I don’t care, that’s your prerogative, as long as you’re not a dick about it.  But this here?  This is a bad reason to not believe in something.  This is a bad reason to do ANYTHING.

Why, you ask?

Because no culture ever thought the world was flat.  EVER.

Of course they did, foolish girl, everyone knows that Columbus proved the world was round, you say.

No, no one ever thought the world was flat, I promise.  Columbus thought the world was much smaller than it actually was, thus how he managed to edit out the entirety of the Americas.  (He was also a murdering, pillaging dick, besides being stupid, but that’s another rant.)  The queen of Portugal, arguing with him, didn’t say that he’d fall off the edge of the world, she said that the Greeks measured the circumference of the Earth, like, thousands of years before.  And the Greeks were kind of held up as all-knowing omnipotent philosophy demigods (science was a part of philosophy for a long time), so everyone (except Columbus, but we don’t care about him) believed they were right.  And they were actually damn close, so, you know, respect.

Well, you huff in irritation, the Catholic Church said that people believed the Earth was flat, and they were the predominant power in the Western world for so long that it MUST be true.  There’s no way that many people could be wrong about something that the whole world believed, you point out fairly logically.

Two things about that.  First of all, no one who ever saw the ocean or even a reasonably large plain could believe the world was flat, because the horizon moves and therefore (logically) the world CAN’T be flat, which everyone at the time intuitively figured out.  And if you live on a mountain you can actually SEE the curvature of the Earth in places, so there’s that.  A few individuals might have believed it, might have even scraped together some followers, but anyone with half a brain went “…nah, bro, definitely round.”

Second of all, the Catholic Church, like any other business, was MOST concerned with hanging onto their control.  So they arranged events to work in their favor, and when things seemed disinclined to work in their favor, they just changed the way people thought.  Those pesky heathen Druidic folks in the Celtic Isles causing a problem?  Not to worry, they sacrifice children to their bloodthirsty gods!  (They didn’t.  The Norse gods were the ones with the liking for human sacrifice, especially Odin–there was a yearly festival where they hung nine animals on nine trees, and one animal was a man.)  Those problematic Jews and Muslims impinging on your Empire?  Don’t fret, they cause plague!  (They didn’t.  Actually countries with a lot of Jewish refugees were much LESS plague ridden because the Jews had this novel idea of bathing regularly.)  Those Protestants (and athiests, although in the Middle Ages those were few and far between, relatively speaking) causing issues with their radical thoughts of not paying massive amounts of money to protect their immortal soul?  Don’t even give it another thought, they’re all morons who believe the world is flat.  (They, shockingly, did not.  Because that’s stupid.)

So, long story short, by believing that this bumper sticker is legit vis a vis not being Christian, you are using centuries-old propaganda against your own perspective by the Catholic Church as an excuse not to believe in the Catholic Church.  It’s bad thinking, sloppily executed, and anyone with an ounce of sense would have realized, but everyone sort of bought into it because, as you so accurately pointed out in our little theoretical debate, the Catholic Church was sort of all-controlling in the Western world.  No one ever thought the world was flat, it was just the Catholics trying to keep their control.

If you don’t believe me, I’m not really in the mood to tag hundreds of articles, but if you go to the bottom of the linked Wiki article, there are plenty.  (x)

(Source: nikolakh-pou-eisai, via bleedingwillow96)

johanirae:

detenebrate:

0xymoronic:

shitarianasays:

theeyesinthenight:

the-sonic-screw:

platinumpixels:

volpesvolpes:

unseilie:

sarahvonkrolock:

gaysexagainstawall:

them-days-was-olden-as-fuck:

The spread of the black death.

Poland

Poland, tell us your secret.

Poland is the old new Madagascar. 

If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there. 

Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.

Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it. 

I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.

Damn Italy, you scary.

Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”

Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”

Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.

Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world. 

WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL

When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.

Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!

And parents said the internet is not educational.

(via adelindschade)

petermorwood:

kalooeh:

gregferrell:

maleinstructor:

In the heat of battle, photographer Horace Bristol captured one of the most unique and erotic photos of WWII.

Bristol photographed a young crewman of a US Navy “Dumbo” PBY rescue mission, manning his gun after having stripped naked and jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot. The Marine was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul.

“…we got a call to pick up an airman who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us they started shooting at us. The man who was shot down was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked man got back into his position at his gun in the blister of the plane.”

“And well, there was his butt, and I had a camera. I mean I AM a historian.”

8

The face of battle. Well, the cheeks, anyway… ;->

(via bronzedragon)

jesuswithalacefront:

latining:

exitpursuedbyasloth:

mmanalysis:

darkjez:

chadmsicard:

I dig this for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s got great style.

Perhaps more interestingly though, is that it’s a very different tone as far as the direction of aggression. Most people know the Clash of the Titans version where she’s  on the hunt for him once he shows up. But let’s face it, Medusa really gets the shaft from destiny overall. She starts out as a priestess in a temple who gets raped by Poseidon and gets cursed for it as if it was all her fault. The result is that she’s basically doomed to live without human contact for eternity. Then she’s hunted down specifically for her head by a demigod whose got all sorts of great toys and backing to get the job done and depicted as some sort of horrible monster for defending her turf from folks out to kill her.

There are some really interesting theories about regarding just what the whole ‘gorgon’ thing was really about from a historical perspective. It’s really quite a tragic tale about the rise of patriarchy and the purge of goddess-centric worshipers. There are also parallels to the Apollo versus Typhon story which is part of the same era. Harsh.

See, even the demystified stories from ancient times are fascinating!

deviantart:

Medusa by *MattRhodes

Reblogging for commentary. 

I wish there were more nuanced portrayals of Medusa than as just a scary, snake lady.

Not to mention all this shit went down while she was pregnant with twins, the Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor, as a result from the rape. Perseus would mount Pegasus, and use him and Medusa’s head to kill a sea monster, thus winning him a wife, Andromeda. Medusa was cursed by the very goddess she served, Athena, who also gave Perseus the mirrored shield he used to slay her. Raped, betrayed by her god, hunted down like a beast in her own home while she was pregnant, her own children stolen from her and used to glorify and aide her killers and betrayers. And she’s supposed to be the monster?

That’s how Greek men saw the myth. Greek women viewed it as Athena protecting Medusa by giving her the power to make any man who looked at her completely harmless. Her head was used as a symbol to mark women’s shelters in ancient Greece.

Friendly reminder to remember that women have their own vivid lives and cultures and that the stories which are preserved today come through a heavy filter of gender, race, and class biases.

The above

(via adelindschade)