h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[{Courtesy}]

mt

Oh dear, keeping track of subject headings as well as postings! I shall do my best.

See? Those Siamese where nasty and no wonder they influenced my young mind! Also the ones that come into the garden are horrid to Cassie, although she did chase one out of the garden the other day.

How about room for three King Arthurs?!

I mean, it's not as if I don't see the point: you can't just walze back in and take the money and run. I mean I even agree with that. But it seems as though I have become a non-person: if you are not eligible for fees you are not eligible for anything else, and there is no acknowledgement of the future contribution I want to make. And there is a difference between being self supporting and paying through the nose. That's what's irritating. Oh well, end of rant. Still, all my own fault. And perhaps I am being pessimistic and underestimating The System. Hah.

Makes you feel as though you have been wasting your time, eh, MT? And that's wrong. My time here wasn't wasted, and your daughter, for one thing, certainly can't be classed like that.

Sol, it wasn't a waste of time, considering I had to realize how much I hated what I was doing for a living, and really *did* want to be a professor.

Oh, good lord. I am watching the special on King Arthur...it just started, and already I'm thinking it's cheap history. Dark Ages? No one in academia calls them that any more. We call them the Early Middle Ages. They were only called the Dark Ages when we had no clue how to study them. Which is why we tend to make Charlemagne a turning point...because we know more about him than Charles Martel, or Pippin the Short, who came before, and those who came after him (his 3 sons and their kingdoms).

A talking point that keeps turning up in my summer study on English history. Current research shows that 1066 was not nearly as profound a change as once thought. What do the Brits here think?

1066 not important? Horrors! (I assume you have read Sellars and Yeatman <lauugh&gt.

Actually I think you are right. The flavour of late Saxon and early Norman history is much more contiguous than the history books suggest.

C came round last night, and I gave her the spare set of keys. I get very twitchy for the wellbeing of the cats when no-one apart from me has keys.

Z - Revenge of the Killer Angel Fish, eh? I'll bring rubber gloves.

Late for work, and don't really care.

B

Mr, there was some loss of knowledge during the Dark Ages, that was only rediscovered during the renaissance. But the actual "Dark Ages" was much shorter than traditionally thought. I sometimes wonder if we aren't heading into a new Dark Ages.

BTW, I am Tim, the Scottish Sorcerer ! Don't know how that happened !

Aren't we supposed to be telling a story or something ?

{mtg}

So Brice you are also an imposing character with great magic and an affinity for blowing things up. I like the idea about blowing things up

Ben, Sellers yes, Yeatman no. Right now I'm reading The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Postan's 2nd edition section on England). He and Maitland are very convincing.

Bryce, it's impossible to be in a Dark Ages in that sense of the term, given the amount of information available. What I was pointing out is that the term itself has gone out of favor with academics. As has the whole notion of "feudal." Basically, both are catchall phrases for complex, dynamic and often contradictory cultural movements.

MR. Not MT. Sorry. I'm always thinking 'monTANA' when I type it, and somehow the T slips in.

Well, precisely.

'Dark ages' is a value judgement on the whole period, though isn't it? As opposed to our now throughly enlightened and civilised time. Nasty, brutish and short sort of thing. Appropriate for TV, not appropriate for historians. Or something. Which undervalues TV viewers, but there you go.

The show redeemed itself by actually using Geoffrey Ashe. His opinion I respect.

Sol, its really okay. I sometimes do it too.

The Early Middle Ages is being used here too and is a better term, I don't think the Ages were particularly Dark, just not much writtne history has survived.

With the English Crown holding a good proportion of what is now modern France, there was quite an intermingling already.

Of course, the Normans were of Scandinavian descent and had already been here before.

I always wondered whether it wasn't the French holding most of Britain, myself.

B

I started watching the King Arthur last night and fell asleep in my chair. Wish I'd taped it. But I'm sure they'll repeat it. I got to the part where they said Arthur probably had a Roman haircut.

1066 not important. Ye Gods! Can't say Dark Ages anymore? Next thing you know they'll tell me that the Defenestration of Prague never happened and I've laughed at nothing all these years. I love that story.

Dang revisionists!

Good morning y'all. I'm off to Carrizozo this morning -- in addition to the errands I had planned I think I'm going to stop in and see the county attorney. I am more bothered than I realised by the gentleman who claimed to have my records. I have to presume that he means tax records; what else would he care about? And I am squeaky clean, but it concerns me as to how he might have aquired that info.

MR, I was raised to believe that the Dark Ages were dark because we had so little written information from that time. And I think I remember reading that there was a period when historians weren't even sure who the Pope was, or if there was one. Is all this learning out of date?

1066 not important!! I was reading a book (More What If I think it is called) which argued for it being very important. Previously England had been associated with the Scandinavians, even when ruled by Saxons and was all part of the Norse tradition, with Sagas, Moots, big beards and funny words that end with "ch". Then the Normans invade and England becomes involved with France, Flanders, Latinized speech and that whole Feudal, the King is all powerful type of thing. This change might have happened anyway but Harold looking up certainly helped.

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