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Blackula69 posted:I'm not reading through 39 pages, but I skimmed and I didn't see this. The Conch Republic! Last time I was down there, I met a guy at the bar (he owned this bar with some others) and was the present Prime Minister. We concluded that the Conch Republic's government was in a better financial situation than the US. This was done with empirical research and beer. I recall that they tried to reopen a federal park nearby during the government shutdown in the 90s. They couldn't find anyone to give the money to so it didn't work. They got cited for trespassing though.
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Feb 16, 2011 06:46
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Rome of course is famous for how well the patricians ate, and unfortunately those assholes apparently hogged some good poo poo till it loving went extinct: Silphium (aka Laser) The herb was native to Cyrene (Libya) and considered analogous to a giant fennel, or perhaps closer still, to asafoetida (or hing, a popular spice in India). In addition to supposed curative properties (sore throat, digestion issues and contraceptive use) it was supposedly fan-loving-tastic in food, and Apicius makes extensive use of the stuff in all sorts of recipes (try the stuffed dormouse, it's delish). Anyway, the plant goes loving extinct. This could be caused by desertification of the maghreb, overgrazing/overharvesting, or issues in cultivating the plant domestically. Either way, one account goes that by the time Nero is Emperor, the plant is effectively extinct. The Emperor is presented with what is possibly the last surviving sample of Silphium. What does Nero do? If you guessed pass emergency flora conservation laws, you're wrong. Motherfucker ate the last known plant on earth. Nero, you are a dick.
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Feb 16, 2011 07:28
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LoungieMu posted:Rome of course is famous for how well the patricians ate, and unfortunately those assholes apparently hogged some good poo poo till it loving went extinct: Silphium, you say? I was under the impression it went extinct due to it being an abortifactant -- basically, the Romans used it as a day-after pill kind of thing. But, speaking of Nero, the coolest Roman guy ever was Petronius. His official title was "arbiter bibendi" (lit: judge of drinking), but that basically meant he was the judge of all things cool and fashionable in Nero's Rome. He knew all the best parties, knew where things were going to be hot for the next season, and basically just made his living by being awesome. He ended up writing a book you may have heard of -- The Satyricon. School will teach you that the first "novel" was The Golden rear end, but really it is The Satyricon. Though the story is a little too trippy and weird to be considered a full novel, possibly. But it's all about catamites and werewolves. Oh, also, at some point, Petronius wrote some scathing satire of Nero (unfortunately, the text is lost to history), and Nero told him to kill himself. So, Petronius went on to do his duty for his country.
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Feb 16, 2011 07:41
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plaguedoctor posted:Silphium, you say? Yeah, I guess depending on how narrow/broad a view of contraception you have, that was also a suggested use for it. Here's to hoping no such effects in asafoetida though. If/when we decide to have kids, I already know we're giving up drinking in the house, but if I have to quit curry, it's going to kill me.
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Feb 16, 2011 07:48
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plaguedoctor posted:Silphium, you say? There's actually some modern controversy as to whether the Petronius that wrote Satyricon was the same Petronius as the one that was the Arbiter of Neronian Rome. Anyway, when Petronius Arbiter died (as mentioned above, ordered to execute himself by Nero), he knew that whatever he left behind was going to be inherited by Nero. He owned a particularly spectacular golden...something (I forget), and intentionally destroyed it, knowing that Nero was desperate to get his hands on it.
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Feb 16, 2011 08:07
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The curious case of James Price, last of the alchemists. A talented chemist, James thrived in his studies at Oxford University, earning his Master of Arts at 25 and becoming a Doctor of Medicine the following year. This rising star did not go unnoticed by his scientific peers and in 1781, aged just 29, he gained membership of the prestigious Royal Society. Wealthy and respected, Mr Price had a very bright future ahead of him when the year after joining the Royal Society he began a series of experiments on the transmutation of base metals into precious metals. The quest to create gold or silver from more common elements has captured the imagination of men for thousands of years but though various claims had been made, none had succeeded. Within a year of his own studies however, our talented Mr. Price confided to his friends that he believed he had developed a 'powder of projection' that achieved this goal. A discovery such as this cannot remain secret for long however, and soon James Price gave a number of public demonstrations to crowds consisting of clergymen, chemists, lawyers and the elite of Georgian society. Onlookers were astounded as he mixed large quantities of mercury with borax, nitre and finally his 'powder of projection' - red powder would produce gold, white powder silver! A quantity of the gold these demostrations produced was delivered to King George III himself. His peers in the Royal Society however were not convinced, the president of the society Sir Joseph Banks wrote to Mr. Price with a request that he repeat his demostration to a collection of Society members, so his success could be scientificallly verified. James replied that unfortunately he would be unable to comply, having exhausted his supply of projection powder. Not only that, the supplies for the demonstrations cost him £17 for every £4 of gold produced. Sir Banks would not abide any excuses and stressed that Mr. Price's honour and the honour of the Royal Society itself was at stake and he must agree to be verified. Under this pressure Price submitted. On the morning of the 3rd of August 1783 James Price welcomed three members of the Royal Society, expressed some disappointment at the poor turnout and stepping to one side, drank a flask of water poisoned with prussic acid and dropped dead. Edit: Awesome contemporary account Google Books Link
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Feb 16, 2011 11:43
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I found my mysterious gender-bender: In 1893 there was a scandal of dimensions in Copenhagen. The renown lady superintendent of the home for wayward or orphaned boys, KANA, i.e. Vilhelmine Møller, confessed to having murdered one of the orphans. The unlucky boy was the 15 year old Volmer Sjøgren and her reasons to take his young life was that they had been lovers and that he unfortunately had learned her most well guarded secret, that is the fact that "she" was a he or perhaps a hermaphrodite. Vilhelmine Møller's sexual organs had been deformed ever since birth. However, when she was arrested and taken to prison she also underwent a medical examination and her sex was determined as masculine. Even today the case is not quite clear, but as her (his) organs were more masculine than female she (he) now officially became a man and had the name of Vilmelmine Møller changed into Frederik Vilhelm Schmidt. As to his crime it always was almost incomprehensible that he would harm any of the boys as he had been an outstanding and very considerate superintendent who also wrote articles about his advanced ideas for the education of these forlorn children. Perhaps his good reputation as a dedicated person is the reason why his former assistant, Mrs Mackwitz, was seen as the one who had corrupted his morals, thus being the true criminal. Blaming her did not change the fact that he was a murderer and he was sentenced to death. This sentence was eventually changed into imprisonment for life. However, as early as 1905 he was released and that same year he married. It seems that from then on he has led a good and to all intents normal life with his wife. In 1906 he published a short article about his life in a magazine, "Naturen og Mennesket" (: "Nature and the Human Being"). He died on Christmas Eve in 1936 at the ripe old age of 91. One of the reasons this sad murder was such a scandal was that at that time these special children's homes were run by private donations. All the people who were engaged in this work feared that they would lose the public support which the homes lived on, but that did not happen. The public did not lose sympathy with these young outcasts or the people who tended and educated them. On the contrary, they went on supporting them until 1905 when the homes became part of a special children's act and thus turned State wards. Up till then they had lived at the mercy of the public.
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Feb 16, 2011 12:47
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Here's another Zappa story. He's got so many good ones. His autobiography is available in pdf form here. This one is about his encounter with Plaster-Casters (chicks who went around making molds of rock-stars' dicks). Frank Zappa posted:I met Cynthia Plaster-Caster when the Mothers were working as the opening act for Cream at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago in 1968. This was toward the end of Cream's existence, when all the guys in the band hated each other. Each guy had his own road manager, his own limousine, his own etc., etc., etc.
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Feb 16, 2011 18:01
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LoungieMu posted:Rome of course is famous for how well the patricians ate, and unfortunately those assholes apparently hogged some good poo poo till it loving went extinct: I wonder if it would actually be delicious to modern palates. I made a roman pastry years ago from a recipe and it sat on a bed of bay leaves. Like the whole bottom of the things were covered in bay leaves.
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Feb 16, 2011 18:13
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Kidney Stone posted:Hmm... Could it be Lili Elbe you're thing about? Just saw this and had to drop a little nugget on y'all. Before Louis Farrakhan was THE Louis Farrakhan, he was a Calypso singer in the 50's going by the name of "The Charmer". One of his big hits was about one of the first transexuals of the time and how it was such a abomination. He wrote the song "Is she is or is she ain't" about the very Lili Elbe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz4EAOtAfaU His name prior to changing it was Eugene Walcott.
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Feb 16, 2011 18:21
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Here's a couple of pieces of Finnish history trivia questions. Easy: which Finnish President had the highest military rank in a foreign army? A: Carl Mannerheim, a Lieutenant General of the Russian Army, first the Finnish regent 1918-1919 and then President 1944-46. He is the only Finnish Army's Field Marshall. Hard: which Finnish Prime Minister had the highest military rank in a foreign army? A: Oskari Tokoi, who became the head of the Finnish senate in 1917 - the first socialist PM in the world. After the civil war he fled to Russia and ended in the hands of the British forces holding northern Russia during the Russian civil war. The Brits formed, equipped and trained a 'Murmansk Legion' from the Finnish former Red Guards men and Tokoi was given a rank comparable to Lieutenant Colonel. As the Brits left Russia he migrated to USA.
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Feb 16, 2011 20:00
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M. Propagandalf posted:The blood lust for Coreys didn't stop there. His wife Martha was hung three days later. Giles determination not to go to trial did have the benefit of allowing him to die in full possession of his estate, which was passed to his sons-in-law as dictated in his will. Also, their son got reimbursed £50 thirty years later for Martha's wrongful death. You can see why he would refuse to make a plea at all, and spend his last days going "gently caress you" to the sheriff, while his wife awaited death at their hands. What a hosed up town.
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Feb 16, 2011 20:08
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LoungieMu posted:Rome of course is famous for how well the patricians ate, and unfortunately those assholes apparently hogged some good poo poo till it loving went extinct The truth is somewhat less stark: while the Patrician class were not shy of making hay about their ancestry, some of the richest, most influential and powerful individuals of the Republic and Principate, for a start, were Plebeian—which amuses me when watching programs like Rome, for instance, where you have scads and scads of people assumed to be patrician who were, in fact, not. Such as: Cicero, Mark Antony, Brutus, Octavian, Crassus and Cato the Younger, amongst others. Some of these come from gens which also have a patrician branch—the Tullii, Antonii and Junii, for instance—so one of the easiest ways of sorting them out is if the person had been or had a direct male ancestor who had been Plebeian Tribnune, one of the few offices outside one or two priesthoods that were still class-exclusive. Someone mentioned Petronius' Satyricon, so it should be noted that the ostentatious and very wealthy Trimalchio was a freedman, a social class held in similar disregard as actors, pimps and lanistae.
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Feb 16, 2011 20:39
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The Witch Trials were pretty entertaining* sometimes, the examinations and such are all to be found online here [quote=The Examination of Bridget Byshop at Salem Village 19. Apr. 1692 By John Hauthorn & Jonath: Corwin Esq'rs]  "Why you seem to act witchcraft before us, by the motion of yourbody, which seems to have influence upon the afflicted."  "I know nothing of it. I am innocent to a Witch. I know not whata Witch is " "How do you know then that you are not a witch""I do not know what you say.""How can you know, you are no Witch, & yet not know what aWitch is." "I am clear: if I were any such person you should know it."[/quote]Of course after Bridget's bitchy comment they were all "See she wants to curse us she's a witch!!"  *Entertaining here also means horrible and sad, but I couldn't help but giggle at their logic sometimes because I am a horrible person.
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Feb 16, 2011 20:39
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Weren't the witch trials responsible for wiping out most of the educated/not happy with just shooting out children women in Europe?
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Feb 16, 2011 20:50
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:Weren't the witch trials responsible for wiping out most of the educated/not happy with just shooting out children women in Europe? You may be thinking of the Spanish Inquisition and the associated autos da fé, though I doubt even they were that cynically applied. The Salem Witch Trials only killed 19 people all told.
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Feb 16, 2011 21:08
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The Black Death hit the general population of Europe hard, not sure the actual percentage but it was over sixty percent possibly?
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Feb 16, 2011 21:14
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Data Graham posted:The Salem Witch Trials only killed 19 people all told. Weren't they caused by the same couple of girls just being generally bitchy and enjoying the attention? I seem to remember that being the case, or if not it's how it was presented in The Crucible. edit: Data Graham posted:You may be thinking of the Spanish Inquisition and the associated autos da fé, though I doubt even they were that cynically applied. Now that I remember
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Feb 16, 2011 21:20
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John Big Booty posted:One of the most persistent misunderstandings concerning Rome is that of the difference between Patricians and Plebeians, which tends to be cast more in a feudal, medieval sense, where you have the rich and powerful on one end and a bunch of dirt-eating peasants on the other and never the twain shall meet. Just a minor thing, but Octavian was a Patrician, since he got the cognomen Octavian after being adopted by Gaius Julius Caesar, which made him part of the Julii and thereby Patrician. He wasn't a Patrician until his adoption though
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Feb 16, 2011 21:27
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BooDoug187 posted:Reading this I pictured some guy running down the street yelling: I would totally watch this movie on SyFy. "Beartastrofy starring Richard Dean Anderson, is up next- only on SyFy!"
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Feb 16, 2011 21:45
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:Weren't the witch trials responsible for wiping out most of the educated/not happy with just shooting out children women in Europe? About 100,000 people were killed as witches between 1500 and 1700. That works out at 500 a year. I don't have the figures to tell, but I'll bet other causes of death (famine, 100 years war &c.) were much more significant.
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Feb 16, 2011 21:48
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Data Graham posted:You may be thinking of the Spanish Inquisition and the associated autos da fé, though I doubt even they were that cynically applied. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing to do with witches; it began in 1478, before the witch craze really started, and was aimed at ensuring orthodoxy, especially towards Jews and Muslims, especially, converted Jews whom the Inquisition wanted to be sure were true converts* and weren't just pretending. Remember, this was during the final stages of the Reconquista. I think, off the top of my head, it actually issued astatement denying the existence of witches. Anyway the witch hunts weren't purely anti-female ("misogynistic" seems a bit weak in this situation.) 20-25% of witches throughout Europe, and in some places the majority, were men. Wikipedia sez 40-60,000 people were killed over four centuries, so it wasn't a sudden, massive disaster like the Black Death, which killed about 75-100 million people in three years. Holy poo poo. It crunches some very vague numbers halfway down the page and estimates that there was one execution for witchcraft per 25,000 deaths during the period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Early_Modern_period *If a coerced conversion can be true, anyway, though I'm sure they worked out the theology of it.
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Feb 16, 2011 22:37
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I'm actually the direct descendant of Rev. John Bayley, a peripheral character in the Crucible.
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Feb 16, 2011 22:45
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ljw1004 posted:About 100,000 people were killed as witches between 1500 and 1700. That works out at 500 a year. I don't have the figures to tell, but I'll bet other causes of death (famine, 100 years war &c.) were much more significant. There were guys like Giordano Bruno that were burned at the stake for professing heretical ideas though. Ideas such as heliocentric view of the universe, the idea that stars are actually very distant suns, and that there could possibly be planets revolving around these other suns as well.
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Feb 16, 2011 23:29
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down_and_out posted:There were guys like Giordano Bruno that were burned at the stake for professing heretical ideas though. Ideas such as heliocentric view of the universe, the idea that stars are actually very distant suns, and that there could possibly be planets revolving around these other suns as well. Every once in a while we just decide to kill people and look for any excuse we can find to justify it.
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Feb 16, 2011 23:32
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SeanBeansShako posted:The Black Death hit the general population of Europe hard, not sure the actual percentage but it was over sixty percent possibly? An earlier outbreak of bubonic plague which occured during the 6th century wiped out around 1/4 of the population of the Byzantine empire. Right when Justinian and Belisarius were trying to "Rome" back in the "Roman Empire". The Byzantines of course would have no idea who you were talking about if you said the word Byzantine and considered themselves Romans.
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Feb 17, 2011 00:00
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John Big Booty posted:One of the most persistent misunderstandings concerning Rome is that of the difference between Patricians and Plebeians, which tends to be cast more in a feudal, medieval sense, where you have the rich and powerful on one end and a bunch of dirt-eating peasants on the other and never the twain shall meet. Just to defend HBO's Rome a bit, there were many references made to Mark Antony and I think Pompey and some others as being powerful and rich, but not quite from the prestigious roots as everyone else. And that certainly was the case with the Octavia's bad influence, merchant-daughter friend. Rabhadh posted:The Byzantines of course would have no idea who you were talking about if you said the word Byzantine and considered themselves Romans. i posted this sometime in the lost middle of the thread, and I think it warrants re-posting as a great overview of the Byzantines. anyone else listen to it ? http://anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/
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Feb 17, 2011 00:22
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Equester posted:Just a minor thing, but Octavian was a Patrician, since he got the cognomen Octavian after being adopted by Gaius Julius Caesar, which made him part of the Julii and thereby Patrician. He wasn't a Patrician until his adoption though I used Octavian for the same reason everyone else does: it's something to latch onto to distinguish one prominent Roman from another with a nearly identical name. You've got one Tiberius Claudius Nero, the son of a Tiberius Claudius Nero, then another Tiberius Claudius Nero, then another Nero, formerly Ahenobarbus. Easier to sort out who's who than during the republic, when you had year after year of similarly named bastards occupying everything from quaestor to consul, but still requiring the occasional anachronistic sobriquet.
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Feb 17, 2011 00:22
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CatchrNdRy posted:Just to defend HBO's Rome a bit, there were many references made to Mark Antony and I think Pompey and some others as being powerful and rich, but not quite from the prestigious roots as everyone else. And that certainly was the case with the Octavia's bad influence, merchant-daughter friend. Then there were all the people portrayed as single and tarting about who were married--sometimes more than once--during the period depicted. They may have tarting about regardless, but most were married. Antony, for instance, was married to the widow of Pretty Boy Clodius, until happenstance dictated he divorce her and marry Octavia. This is one of the many reasons for the enmity between Antony and Cicero which led to the latter's being proscribed and beheaded: Cicero was very critical of both and during the Cataline conspiracy had Antony's stepfather put to death, for which Clodius had him exiled once he no longer had magisterial immunity.
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Feb 17, 2011 01:05
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down_and_out posted:There were guys like Giordano Bruno that were burned at the stake for professing heretical ideas though. Ideas such as heliocentric view of the universe, the idea that stars are actually very distant suns, and that there could possibly be planets revolving around these other suns as well. Bruno wasn't burned at the stake for his views on the Sun, actually. He was burned for his other heretical ideas, like that Satan could be "saved," Jesus Christ was actually a conman and illusionist, and free love. His contemporaries, like Galileo, didn't exactly rush to defend Bruno, in public or private, so it's likely that his "crimes" weren't all, or even mostly, scientific in nature. A lot of records of Bruno's trial are missing, so it's also hard to say just how focused they were on his heliocentrism, versus his other beliefs. The Catholic Church, and Protestant equivalents, were and are hostile to science, but no one has ever been sentenced to death for heliocentrism. Many scientists who espoused ideas counter to Scripture were often charged with totally different offenses. Galileo wouldn't have gone to trial if Pope Urban VIII hadn't been convinced that the "stupid" character in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was a mocking caricture of Urban himself. The Pope gave his approval to Galileo before Dialogue was published. Some cardinals were aghast at the heliocentric slant to the book, and pressured Urban to bring Galileo to trial, in part by claiming Galileo was mocking him. Also, at the end of the trial, Galileo did not mutter anything about the Earth moving under his breath. He said "Thank you" and "Goodbye."
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Feb 17, 2011 01:36
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Gunboat diplomacy Way back there was some discussion about the odd locations of capitals. In the case of Canberra one of the final options was Port Stephens which was a fine natural port and over 100 miles (160 kms) from Sydney. It was not selected in the end because at the time a significant factor was the possibility of naval bombardment. The Australian national capital has a port but it is at Jervis Bay. Canberra is only one example of the selection of a capital site with this as a factor during the era of preflight conflict. Unfortunately the instance of Gunboat diplomacy I was going to use (Zanzibar Bombardment*) has already been discussed. So although it isn't listed in the modern instances of it's use on the Wiki may I present The Falklands War. This is gunboat diplomacy in reverse. The Argentinians wanted the Falklands for reasons of National pride and arguably National security. Britian really didn't give a rat's arse but the pesky Falklaners didn't want to become part of Argentina. The British foreign office made all sorts of encouraging noises and set in to basically jerk the Argentinians off/around until the problem dissappeared through time alone. Enter Margaret Thatcher. Early in her Prime Ministership she instituted major cuts in all government budgets and one of the casualties was HMS Endurance effectively the last vestige of the British military presence in the South Atlantic. Along with all of the happy jerking noises coming from the British foreign office the Argentinians decided that this was the signal that the Brits had given up on the Falklands for good and sent a joke force of civilians to invade South Georgia 'disguised' as scrap metal merchants. This was seen as a sucess and was followed by an actual invasion of the Falkland Islands a fortnight later. One can only imagine the surprise and horror that the Argentinian's experienced as Britian reacted by sending everything it had at them. 'History' regards the Falklands as a crowning achievement of Thatcher's rule (Helped her win the 1983 election at the very least). A war I contend she inadvertantly caused by her own Tory minded incompetence! * While The Book of Heroic Failures is a great read it is less than an acedemic source and contains numerous factual errors.
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Feb 17, 2011 02:17
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How can we talk about witchcraft without talking about the Malleus Maleficarum, which describes who is a witch and how they should be dealt with. My fave part: Wiki posted:
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Feb 17, 2011 03:25
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The Catalpa rescue In short, it was an escape of six Fenian prisoners in 1876 from the (then) penal colony of western Australia. It features planning, sneaky bastardry, things going wrong, tough motherfuckerdom, more things going wrong, yet more things going wrong, things going right for once and then balls the size of the moon. How no-one has ever decided to make a blockbuster movie out of this escapes me.
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Feb 17, 2011 03:27
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Patter Song posted:
It was a wine ladle. LoungieMu posted:Here's to hoping no such effects in asafoetida though. If/when we decide to have kids, I already know we're giving up drinking in the house, but if I have to quit curry, it's going to kill me. No need to eat asa foetida, it's largely used in parts of India where eating onions/garlic is not allowed for religious reasons, so if you do eat it, you can just replace it.
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Feb 17, 2011 03:58
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Madkal posted:How can we talk about witchcraft without talking about the Malleus Maleficarum, which describes who is a witch and how they should be dealt with. I love the Malleus. It was so batshit that even the real witchfinders of the day called out the authors as goddamned nuts. It had whole pages of twisted logic and it was all about sex. In one bit it went into the claims of men who said witches made their dicks disappear. This was unacceptable to the authors though, since an agent of the devil couldn't actually destroy something created by god. Instead the authors decided that witches could actually just make dicks invisible and cloud your mind. I can't remember how they ended up determining whether or not witches could detach them and make them fly around. I think they could, but it was an illusion and thus didn't really count. Also they examined the phenomenon of incubi getting girls pregnant. Clearly this was impossible, since the devil can't create and conception is a creative act. Also, succubi never get pregnant after loving dudes. Something was off about the whole thing. They decided what really happens is a succubus fucks a dude, steals the sperm, passes it to the incubus, who then impregnates a girl. Thus demons can get people pregnant without actually contributing to conception. The whole book is like that. It's all tortured reasoning and flying invisible dicks. It's a good read. I seem to recall the authors eventually ending up on trial or at least condemned by the church at large.
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Feb 17, 2011 04:01
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The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora caused ten's of 1000's of casualties, and the year after was named 'The Year Without a Summer' because of the effects the eruption had on the atmosphere. Mount Tambora wikipedia posted:In the spring and summer of 1815, a persistent dry fog was observed in the northeastern United States. The fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight, such that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind nor rainfall dispersed the "fog". It was identified as a stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil.[6] In summer 1816, countries in the Northern Hemisphere suffered extreme weather conditions, dubbed the Year Without a Summer. Average global temperatures decreased about 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F),[4] enough to cause significant agricultural problems around the globe. On 4 June 1816, frosts were reported in Connecticut, and by the following day, most of New England was gripped by the cold front. On 6 June 1816, snow fell in Albany, New York, and Dennysville, Maine.[6] Such conditions occurred for at least three months and ruined most agricultural crops in North America. Canada experienced extreme cold during that summer. Snow 30 centimetres (12 in) deep accumulated near Quebec City from 6 to 10 June 1816. Really interesting topic that becomes more interesting with more research 
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Feb 17, 2011 04:04
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Edit: beaten by a long shot.
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Feb 17, 2011 05:35
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Drunkboxer posted:I wonder if it would actually be delicious to modern palates. I made a roman pastry years ago from a recipe and it sat on a bed of bay leaves. Like the whole bottom of the things were covered in bay leaves. Considdering the Romans liked garum (a kind of incredibly powerful fermented fish sauce) on everything I wouldn't trust their gastronomical opinions on anything. Data Graham posted:You may be thinking of the Spanish Inquisition and the associated autos da fé, though I doubt even they were that cynically applied. Actually the Spanish Inquisition gets a The real purpose of the Spanish Inquisition (which still exists today as an organization even though they don't follow any of the old traditions) was to make sure that Jews who claimed to have converted to Christianity were actually Christian and not continuing to practice Judaism in private. They were generally mild about this (well as mild as a medieval thought police could be) and avoided all the messy dramatics that most modern people associate with them. They used torture and executions but generally saved that for the "unrepentant" Jews rather than just showing up in the middle of the night at random houses to haul someone off for a session in the iron maiden (which I'm sure everyone here already knows didn't actually exist anyway).
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Feb 17, 2011 05:55
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Ohthehugemanatee posted:I love the Malleus. It was so batshit that even the real witchfinders of the day called out the authors as goddamned nuts. That... is interesting.
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Feb 17, 2011 05:58
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:30 |
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I've made a few Roman dishes and they were all pretty good. If you want to try it though, I recommend cutting the amount of salt the recipe asks for. Romans loving loved salt. I always reduce it by at least half, often more--the fish sauce is salty too. The Vietnamese kind you can find at most good grocery stores is a solid replacement for garum if you're not hardcore enough to make your own.
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Feb 17, 2011 06:02
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