If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support? Product details Mass Market Paperback Publisher: Be the first to review this item Would you like to tell us about a lower price? Don't have a Kindle? Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers.
Write a customer review. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Learn more about Amazon Prime. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Explore the Home Gift Guide. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. It was exactly a decade since his moment of military glory.
More by Sandra Marton
Adding to the conservationist theme, TR hired as forest rangers men who had served with him in combat. These ex-Rough Riders now protected wild America from ruin under the banner of Rooseveltian conservationism. What particularly worried President Roosevelt at the dawn of the 20th century was that citizens of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston could not understand the splendor of the American West. Adapted by the author from The Wilderness Warrior: The truth about piranha attacks. Humans are much more likely to be bitten when piranhas are removed from the water when fishing than they are while bathing in the water, the study claims.
Other studies have come to similar conclusions, but Mol suggests that under some situations the risk of piranha attack is very real. Serrasalmus rhombeusMol studied Serrasalmus rhombeus attacks at three locations in Suriname; the villages of Donderkamp and Corneiskondre on the Wayombo River and a recreation park at Overbridge on the Suriname River.
Dozens of people had been attacked at each location, with most injuries resulting in bites to the heel, soles of the feet and toes. More serious deeper wounds were also inflicted to the legs, arms and body. Some bites were so severe that the fish completely removed the toes, including the phalange bone.
Reader Mike Rizzo suffered this bite from his rhombeus last year. The recovery of toe phalanges, complete with human flesh and bits of toenail, identified the culprits as Serrasalmus rhombeus, one of the largest and most aggressive piranhas. Furthermore, no Surinamese freshwater fish other than a piranha could be responsible for the injuries reported here.
None of the three locations surveyed had reported any human deaths due to piranha attacks. Two epileptic bathers whose badly mutilated bodies were retrieved from the water are believed to have suffered seizures and then been scavenged by the fish. Villagers interviewed by Mol claimed that piranha attacks in the small villages were unheard of until the population of the village began to rise in When the human population peaked, the number of piranha attacks increased.
Feeding, not defenceWhile piranha attacks in other areas have been attributed to attacks by breeding piranhas defending their eggs and fry, Mol believes this is not the case in Suriname. The sites not only lacked stereotypical spawning sites for the species, but the surveys revealed only sexually immature juvenile piranhas, so Mol believes that the attacks stem from feeding behaviour, not the defence of offspring. How to avoid being eaten1. Piranhas are only found in certain rivers in the Amazon basin.
Avoid swimming in South America, unless you have to. If you must bathe there, fill a bucket and wash on land. But look out for Centromochus! Shoaling behaviour of the Amazonian red-bellied piranha. Red-bellied piranha Pygocentrus nattereri shoals have a fearsome reputation. However, the variety and abundance of piranha predators in the flooded forests of the Amazon in which they live indicate that an important reason for shoal formation may be predator defence.
Experiments using wild-caught piranhas supported the hypothesis that individual perception of risk, as revealed by elevated ventilatory frequency opercular rate , is greater in small shoals. Moreover, exposure to a simulated predator attack by a model cormorant demonstrated that resting opercular rates are regained more quickly by piranhas in shoals of eight than they are in shoals of two. Together, these results show that shoaling has a cover-seeking function in this species.
The prerequisite for cover-seeking behaviour is a heightened perception of risk by singletons or members of small groups. Few species have attracted greater notoriety than the red-bellied piranha, Pygocentrus nattereri Schulte The species is popularly believed to be a dangerous pack-hunting fish. This assertion is supported by the observation that, in the flooded forests of the Brazilian Amazon in which we work, piranhas are regularly predated by river dolphins, caiman, aquatic birds and large piscivorous fishes Bannerman Here, we test the hypothesis that piranha shoaling is a form of cover seeking.
We make two predictions: We use ventilatory frequency opercular beat rate as our measure of fearfulness. Previous work has demonstrated that opercular rate increases in fishes under predation risk; for example, in the presence of alarm substance Pfeiffer or in response to a predator model Metcalfe et al. Ventilatory frequency is thought to rise in anticipation of predator evasion Barreto et al.
We tested the prediction that piranhas perceive larger shoals as safer by measuring the opercular rate of fish as singletons and in shoals of two, four and eight individuals. Piranhas are abundant in the flooded forest that comprises the reserve. Fish were collected between 12 and 24 h before testing and held in an underwater cage in their natural habitat so that stress levels were minimized. Trials were conducted in sets of four to ensure comparability of handling, time of day and so on. The order in which the four shoal sizes were tested within a set was varied across the 12 replicates in the experiment.
Water was changed regularly. Oxygen levels, which were frequently monitored, did not fall below natural levels. At the beginning of a trial, a shoal of fish was gently placed in the test tank and allowed to settle for 10 min. A focal individual was then selected and its opercular rate measured for 5 successive minutes. Focal individuals, which could be identified by small variations in fin morphology, were chosen haphazardly.
Using a single focal individual per group size ensured that the same number of observations was collected in each treatment. The tank was screened to avoid disturbance and all fish were observed from above. We selected the median of the five records of opercular rate per minute for our analysis. Afterwards, all fish were removed and measured, before being returned to the wild. We exposed piranhas in shoals of two and eight to a simulated attack from a realistic model cormorant, to test the prediction that larger groups regain their previous ventilatory rate faster than smaller groups.
The model was then immediately removed. We recorded the opercular rate of a focal individual for five successive minutes after the attack. These values were contrasted with baseline opercular rate for the same focal individual, which had been measured for 1 min before the presentation of the model. There were 10 replicates per shoal size. No piranhas were tested more than once and different individuals were used in experiments 1 and 2.
Our first experiment revealed a marked reduction in opercular rate with increasing group size figure 1. The second experiment took advantage of the observation that focal individuals in shoals of eight have a lower opercular rate than do individuals in shoals of two. Piranhas in both shoal sizes reacted vigorously to the predator model. Experiment 1 had shown that there was no trend in opercular rate over 5 min for groups of two and eight in the absence of direct threat: By contrast, opercular rates in was experiment, 2 increased dramatically following the presentation of the model figure 2.
Opercular rates returned to the baseline levels more rapidly in the larger shoals. Diamond symbols represent …. The popular image of red-bellied piranhas portrays them as more feared than fearful. However, the results of our investigation are consistent with an anti-predator function for shoaling in the species.
We found that opercular rate, which typically increases under risk Metcalfe et al. Furthermore, after a simulated attack, opercular rate remained elevated for longer in the smaller shoals. Magurran, personal observation , the grouping advantages detected in this experiment are applicable to fishes in the wild. In addition to increased vigilance, there are benefits related to dilution and predator confusion.
For these reasons fishes seek cover by placing themselves next to other individuals Williams ; Hamilton ; Williams The present study strengthens the conclusion that individual piranhas join shoals to reduce their risk of capture. In our study, we examined fish that had no cover from the simulated predation attack.
It would be interesting to determine whether the benefits of shoaling as a cover-seeking device reduce in the presence of physical cover to shelter in. Time devoted to predator avoidance is time lost from other activities such as foraging. For this reason, membership of a larger shoal provides advantages over and above the differences in baseline ventilation frequency. Because higher opercular rate is associated with higher metabolic rate Shelton ; Olson , piranhas in smaller shoals probably also experience greater oxygen requirements. Physiological costs could be particularly significant in this habitat as the flooded forest is seasonally affected by low levels of dissolved oxygen, a result of high rates of decomposition Henderson et al.
Periodic mass fish kills are a natural phenomenon here Henderson et al. Individual mysids Euphasia superba consume less oxygen in larger swarms than in small groups Ritz , even when performing escape responses Ritz et al. Our results point towards a similar benefit in piranhas. Dalvino and Jonas Costa collected fishes, Divina and Luzia dos Santos maintained the field laboratory and Danielle Cavalcante and Carlos Maciel helped in the pilot study. Two referees made insightful comments on the paper. Ventilatory frequency indicates visual recognition of an allopatric predator in naive Nile tilapia.
Flocking is an effective anti-predation strategy in red-shanks, Tringa totanus. Predator vigilance and group size in mammals and birds: Geometry for the selfish herd. Evolution and diversity in Amazonian floodplain communities. Dynamics of tropical communities. Krause J, Ruxton G. Oxford University Press; The adaptive significance of schooling as an antipredator defence in fish. Partner choice in piranha shoals. The influence of predation risk on the feeding motivation and foraging strategy of juvenile Atlantic salmon.
Experiments on whether schooling by their prey affects the hunting behaviour of cephalopod and fish predators. The physiology of fishes. The fright reaction of fish. Functions of shoaling behaviour in teleosts. Behaviour of teleost fishes. Is social aggregation in aquatic crustaceans a strategy to conserve energy? Piranhas in the aquarium. The regulation of breathing. Dynamics of fish shoals: Measurement of consociation among fishes and comments on the evolution of schooling. Piranha attacks are greatest during the dry season when water levels are lowest and the fish breed, resulting in thousands of hungry young piranhas in the water.
Human attacks are most common in areas where human densities are highest in the water, such as popular swimming spots. Piranha most commonly attack children for this reason. In Amerindian villages, women in menstruation are not allowed to bathe for this reason, says Mol. Piranhas are not strictly carnivorous, so any food in the water might attract them into the area.
Piranha attacks are not isolated incidents. For more information see the paper: Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment, December ; 41 3: This article originally appeared in Piranha meat: There is something found around these parts that a lot of people say can help. Men in their retirement years eat it, start new families and swear by it. So do childless women, who drink it and give birth. Found in the Peruvian rain forests, the demand for it is phenomenal. In fact, an Amazonian witch doctor here must be consulted for a prescription.
The bitter-tasting flesh of the fish that have devoured so many villains in jungle B-movies is hailed here as the cure for problems dealing with fertility, virility, even baldness. It is said to be the ultimate aphrodisiac. The meat, they say, is acidic, sometimes toxic and utterly without medicinal powers. Piranha fisherman Miguel Socorro, for example, said his father had been sterile before eating piranha and fathering Socorro and his two siblings.
Maria Luisa Quepo, a childless woman near Pulcallpa, gave birth to twins when she was in her 40s after drinking a piranha-based brew. And the mayor of a nearby village, a widower in his 60s, started a second family with the help of the fish. The best fishermen start early in the morning by pouring buckets of blood around their boats to attract the fish, which gather with such ferocity that the water near the boat seems to be boiling. The fishermen slap the waters with their fishing poles to mimic the splashing sounds of an animal in distress — something that excites the piranha even more.
Then they they drop in multipronged hooks baited with chunks of red meat. The piranha just nibble at the meat, but a slight tug at the hook-lines tells the fisherman to jerk the hooks upward, something as likely to snag the fish in the gills or tails as in the mouths, since the piranha do not allow hooks past their razor-sharp teeth. Large black-bellied fish are generally worth a little less and are in highest demand by artisans, who make necklaces from the larger- than-normal jaws and teeth to sell to tourists.
The meat from a red-bellied piranha, by contrast, is considered potent and is snapped up by healers. Meat from a baby piranha is thought to start working quicker; pregnant piranhas are used to solve fertility-related problems. Whoever is right, the witch doctor or the pharmacist, it makes no difference to people like Quepo, the formerly childless woman who gave birth to twins when she was 43 — a miracle she attributes to piranha.
Now, thank God, we have two little children. Flor boasts cures for maladies ranging from infertility to baldness, from alcoholism to poor night vision. During a recent visit, Flor told me he could cure me of whatever ailed me. Do your feet sweat when you sleep? In fact, he was virtually indistinguishable from the 60 or so people in the nearby village of Nuevo Destino — Spanish for New Destiny — with his earth-tone clothes and high, Indian cheekbones.
The Shapibo Indian language is spoken by most people in the area. The route to his hut included a maze of minor river tributaries — some of which had to be blazed by breaking off or slipping under branches from fast-growing Amazon trees — and then a muddy, hourlong walk along an overgrown path.
Weeds sprouted between the unevenly spaced floor and the wooden-and-palm-thatched roof seemed to absorb the tube of smoke rising up from the flame Flor used to heat the potion he was making for me. The brew he concocted for me included an ounce or two of piranha meat along with a ground-up mixture twigs, herbs, powders and some drops from an odd assortment of bottles that Flor kept on a shelf with the skull of a huge Caiman. The gritty potion tasted bitter, but Flor and my guide urged me to drink it down as they chatted in Shapibo.
After I took a few hesitant sips, Flor took the clay pot back and smiled a toothless smile. He declared me almost cured. I asked Flor and my guide. They looked at me as if I should have perhaps asked for a cure for being dimwitted. A few seconds passed, and Flor spoke slowly. Lyman July 17, — Page C Cf Esther de Viveiros, Rondon …. A la fin des …. Pacificador, bandeirante, amansador de Indios, civil …. Roosevelt se retrouve en terrain connu. Ce sera chose faite en A conquista do deserto brasileiro , Rondon. Um grande cerco de paz. Kermit and I were of the old revolutionary stock, and in our veins ran about every strain of blood that there was on this side of the water during colonial times.
Protestation des artistes contre la tour. Fundraising, criticism, and construction in the United States. The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade. The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: Since , it had rarely been used, though during the Civil War, it had served as a recruiting station. Within months, Hunt submitted a detailed plan, indicating that he expected construction to take about nine months.
The four sides are identical in appearance. Above the door on each side, there are ten disks upon which Bartholdi proposed to place the coats of arms of the states between and , there were 40 U. Above that, a balcony was placed on each side, framed by pillars. Bartholdi placed an observation platform near the top of the pedestal, above which the statue itself rises.
Financial concerns again forced him to revise his plans; the final design called for poured concrete walls, up to 20 feet 6. Fundraising for the statue had begun in The committee organized a large number of money-raising events. As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work.
She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue. At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue. Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged. With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.
Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal. New Yorkers displayed their new-found enthusiasm for the statue, as the French vessel arrived with the crates holding the disassembled statue on board. Even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April Immediately thereafter, reassembly of the statue began.
Nevertheless, no one died during the construction work. Instead, Bartholdi cut portholes in the torch which was covered with gold leaf and placed the lights inside them. A power plant was installed on the island to light the torch and for other electrical needs. No members of the general public were permitted on the island during the ceremonies, which were reserved entirely for dignitaries.
The restriction offended area suffragists, who chartered a boat and got as close as they could to the island. A scheduled fireworks display was postponed until November 1 because of poor weather. The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Pour qui me prend-on? Quand viendra le Messie?
Nahmanide est seul pour ainsi dire, seul en lice. La dispute de Barcelone est toujours nouvelle. Public debates on religious subjects between Jews and non-Jews. Religious differences have at all times induced serious-minded men to exchange their views in order to win opponents over to their own side by appeals to reason. Abraham is represented in the Midrash as holding a religious debate with Nimrod see Jew. In Alexandria disputations between Jews and pagans were probably quite frequent. The first actual disputation before a worldly ruler took place at Alexandria about B. In the time of the emperor Caligula the first disputation between Jews and pagans before a ruling monarch took place at Rome, the erection of statues of Caligula in the synagogues of Alexandria having caused the Jews to send a deputation under Philo to the emperor, while the anti-Jewish party sent a deputation under Apion.
It was typical of all later disputations, inasmuch as the defeat of the Jews was a foregone conclusion. The following was the dialogue: Of an altogether different nature were the disputations between Jews and Christians. At first these were bitter and sarcastic in tone, but, like quarrels between members of one household, harmless in their consequences.
As they turned chiefly on Scripture interpretations, the Jew easily obtained the victory over his less skilled adversary. How prominent these disputations were in the early days of Christianity is shown by the number of fictitious dialogues written by Christians for apologetic purposes, and mainly copied one from the other, with references to the same Scriptural passages, and all of them ending in the same way: Abahu were known as keen debaters Bacher, l.
Quite different was the tone of the disputations introduced in the Byzantine empire. The impression prevailed among Christians that they were no match for the learned and witty Jews, while the latter frequently challenged the former, openly and frankly criticizing the dogmas of the Church. Being turned into great spectacles by the presence of the dignitaries of Church and state—mock controversial tournaments in which the Jews were bound to suffer defeat—they became a direct menace to the literature and the very lives of the Jews.
The first of these famous disputations took place at the royal court of Louis IX. The four rabbis were to defend the Talmud against the accusations of Donin, turning mainly upon two points: The second disputation took place at Barcelona on July 20, , at the royal palace, in the presence of James I.
The debate turned on the questions whether the Messiah had appeared or not; whether, according to Scripture, the Messiah is a divine or a human being; and whether the Jews or the Christians held the true faith. Disputation Between Jewish and Christian Theologians. As to the question whether the Messiah had come or not, he could not believe that he had come as long as the promised cessation of all warfare had not been realized.
But the enemies of the Jews were not set at rest.
Product details
The most remarkable disputation in Jewish history, for the pomp and splendor accompanying it, the time it lasted, and the number of Jews that took part therein, is the one held at the summons of the antipope Benedict, XIII. It began in Feb. Religious Disputation Between Jews and Christians. Belonging to the class of friendly disputations ib. The remarkable disputation of Ephraim ben Don Sango Sancho? The story of a disputation on the question, Which is the best religion? One is said to have taken place about , before Bulan, the king of the Chazars, who, uncertain whether to exchange his heathen religion, which he had come to abhor, for Mohammedanism or Christianity, summoned representatives of these two creeds, as well as of Judaism, for a disputation.
None could convince him of the superiority of his faith, and Bulan resolved to espouse the Jewish, since both Christian and Mohammedan referred to it as the basis of their own, and each recognized it as superior to the others See Chazars. In Germany it was the Jewish apostate Victor of Carben who, under the direction of Herrman, the Archbishop of Cologne, and in the presence of many courtiers, ecclesiastics, and knights, held a disputation with some Jews of the Rhine provinces about , accusing them of blasphemy against the Christian religion; the consequence of this disputation was that the Jews were expelled from the lower Rhine district ib.
Quite different in tone and character were the disputations held by the Jews, both Rabbinites and Karaites, with Christians of various denominations in Poland at the close of the sixteenth century. Here the Jews, untrammeled by clerical or state despotism, freely criticized the various religious sects, and it was considered a difficult task for a Christian to convert a Jew ib.
Occasionally disputations for conversionist purposes were arranged at German courts. One is reported to have taken place at the ducal court of Hanover, about , in the presence of the duke, the dowager-duchess, the princes, clergy, and all the distinguished personages of the city, between Rabbi Joseph of Stadthagen and Eliezer Edzard, who had had been the instigator of the disputation. It ended in the complete victory of the rabbi, who not only refuted all the arguments of his antagonist from Scripture and the Midrash, but under the full approval of the court declined to answer under oath the question as to which religion was the best.
Regarding the disputations between the rabbis and the Frankists before Bishop Dembowski at Kamenetz in , and before the canon Nikulski at Lemberg in , see Frank, Jacob. The History of Christmas. The earliest gospel — St. His calculation went as follows:. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
Augustus took power in AUC. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria d. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration.
In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city.
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped.
Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed. Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia in December and Kalends in January.
Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas see below. He died in CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.
Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in CE and created the New Testament. In , a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult.
The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden —their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.
In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did and they should distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock.
Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. And Santa was born — a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.
- La maison du fantôme (FICTION) (French Edition).
- Tales Told To Me By The Old Folks and Then Some?
- Get A Copy.
- Lesson Plans The Tin Drum.
There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th. Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries. Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.
They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches. If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: It was an appropriate thought for the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate? The reason he did not sanction one in front of the Knesset had nothing to do with Christians — but with Jews. The tree is similar to the traditional Christmas tree put up in many Western countries in appearance, but is not linked to the Christian holiday.
However, he said, the Christmas tree, like other Christian symbols, brought back bad memories for Jews, and as the Jewish state, Israel needed to ensure that its Jewish citizens were not subject to displays that would hurt their emotions. Among other official recognitions of the Christian holiday, Israeli law mandates that Christian employees of government offices receive the day off with pay. The Brits have it right: New York and London among other cities in both countries are decked out for the holidays. You get the idea. Evergreens and menorahs go hand in hand in most public places in the US.
They have silver, gold and white lights aplenty, but no red and green anything. In short, snow globes are fine, Santa is not. Half of America prefers one term and half the other. The majority wish me something along the lines of: The cards have nice images of mittens, ice skates and snow covered landscapes not to mention photos of cute kids , but not much overtly Christmas-y. They offer me everything jolly and merry this time of year, except a Merry Christmas. But even people who are clearly celebrating Christmas in their homes tend to be conflicted about what to say in the workplace or at school.
The saying in Britain seems to have lost its religious meaning. Of course, I am making broad generalizations. As a British friend reminded me, the UK has been celebrating Saturnalia long before Christmas, and plenty of places such as Birmingham have generic Winterval celebrations. But by and large, in two diverse societies with similar roots, Americans have opted to try to find neutral sounding holiday greetings, while Brits have chosen to make Christmas as open to everyone as possible.
Personally, I think the Brits have this one right.
It makes me feel more a part of their celebration. Instead of feeling more diverse and inclusive, it just feels like someone took a bit of sparkle out of the December festivities. We have seen that many peoples have been used to observe an annual period of license, when the customary restraints of law and morality are thrown aside, when the whole population give themselves up to extravagant mirth and jollity, and when the darker passions find a vent which would never be allowed them in the more staid and sober course of ordinary life.
Such outbursts of the pent-up forces of human nature, too often degenerating into wild orgies of lust and crime, occur most commonly at the end of the year, and are frequently associated, as I have had occasion to point out, with one or other of the agricultural seasons, especially with the time of sowing or of harvest. Now, of all these periods of license the one which is best known and which in modern language has given its name to the rest, is the Saturnalia.
This famous festival fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, the god of sowing and of husbandry, who lived on earth long ago as a righteous and beneficent king of Italy, drew the rude and scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught them to till the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace.
His reign was the fabled Golden Age: Slavery and private property were alike unknown: At last the good god, the kindly king, vanished suddenly; but his memory was cherished to distant ages, shrines were reared in his honour, and many hills and high places in Italy bore his name. Yet the bright tradition of his reign was crossed by a dark shadow: Feasting and revelry and all the mad pursuit of pleasure are the features that seem to have especially marked this carnival of antiquity, as it went on for seven days in the streets and public squares and houses of ancient Rome from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of December.
But no feature of the festival is more remarkable, nothing in it seems to have struck the ancients themselves more than the license granted to slaves at this time. The distinction between the free and the servile classes was temporarily abolished. The slave might rail at his master, intoxicate himself like his betters, sit down at table with them, and not even a word of reproof would be administered to him for conduct which at any other season might have been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death.
Nay, more, masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table; and not till the serf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared and dinner set for his master.
Download Tu Apprivoiseras L Inconnu PDF Free - AudleyLindy
So far was this inversion of ranks carried, that each household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of state were discharged by the slaves, who gave their orders and laid down the law as if they were indeed invested with all the dignity of the consulship, the praetorship, and the bench. Like the pale reflection of power thus accorded to bondsmen at the Saturnalia was the mock kingship for which freemen cast lots at the same season. The person on whom the lot fell enjoyed the title of king, and issued commands of a playful and ludicrous nature to his temporary subjects.
One of them he might order to mix the wine, another to drink, another to sing, another to dance, another to speak in his own dispraise, another to carry a flute-girl on his back round the house. The conjecture is strongly confirmed, if not established, by a very curious and interesting account of the way in which the Saturnalia was celebrated by the Roman soldiers stationed on the Danube in the reign of Maximian and Diocletian. The account is preserved in a narrative of the martyrdom of St. Dasius, which was unearthed from a Greek manuscript in the Paris library, and published by Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent.
Two briefer descriptions of the event and of the custom are contained in manuscripts at Milan and Berlin; one of them had already seen the light in an obscure volume printed at Urbino in , but its importance for the history of the Roman religion, both ancient and modern, appears to have been overlooked until Professor Cumont drew the attention of scholars to all three narratives by publishing them together some years ago. According to these narratives, which have all the appearance of being authentic, and of which the longest is probably based on official documents, the Roman soldiers at Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner.
Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful.
But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated. In the year A. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded, as the Christian martyrologist records with minute accuracy, at Durostorum by the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November, being the twenty-fourth day of the moon, at the fourth hour.
Since this narrative was published by Professor Cumont, its historical character, which had been doubted or denied, has received strong confirmation from an interesting discovery. In the crypt of the cathedral which crowns the promontory of Ancona there is preserved, among other remarkable antiquities, a white marble sarcophagus bearing a Greek inscription, in characters of the age of Justinian, to the following effect: How long the sarcophagus was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino, we do not know; but it is recorded to have been there in the year At all events it appears certain from the independent and mutually confirmatory evidence of the martyrology and the monuments that Dasius was no mythical saint, but a real man, who suffered death for his faith at Durostorum in one of the early centuries of the Christian era.
Finding the narrative of the nameless martyrologist thus established as to the principal fact recorded, namely, the martyrdom of St. Dasius, we may reasonably accept his testimony as to the manner and cause of the martyrdom, all the more because his narrative is precise, circumstantial, and entirely free from the miraculous element. Accordingly I conclude that the account which he gives of the celebration of the Saturnalia among the Roman soldiers is trustworthy. This account sets in a new and lurid light the office of the King of the Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels at Rome in the time of Horace and Tacitus.
It seems to prove that his business had not always been that of a mere harlequin or merry-andrew whose only care was that the revelry should run high and the fun grow fast and furious, while the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, while the streets swarmed with festive crowds, and through the clear frosty air, far away to the north, Soracte showed his coronal of snow.
When we compare this comic monarch of the gay, the civilised metropolis with his grim counterpart of the rude camp on the Danube, and when we remember the long array of similar figures, ludicrous yet tragic, who in other ages and in other lands, wearing mock crowns and wrapped in sceptred palls, have played their little pranks for a few brief hours or days, then passed before their time to a violent death, we can hardly doubt that in the King of the Saturnalia at Rome, as he is depicted by classical writers, we see only a feeble emasculated copy of that original, whose strong features have been fortunately preserved for us by the obscure author of the Martyrdom of St.
In Rome itself and other great towns the growth of civilisation had probably mitigated this cruel custom long before the Augustan age, and transformed it into the innocent shape it wears in the writings of the few classical writers who bestow a passing notice on the holiday King of the Saturnalia. But in remoter districts the older and sterner practice may long have survived; and even if after the unification of Italy the barbarous usage was suppressed by the Roman government, the memory of it would be handed down by the peasants and would tend from time to time, as still happens with the lowest forms of superstition among ourselves, to lead to a recrudescence of the practice, especially among the rude soldiery on the outskirts of the empire over whom the once iron hand of Rome was beginning to relax its grasp.
The resemblance between the Saturnalia of ancient and the Carnival of modern Italy has often been remarked; but in the light of all the facts that have come before us, we may well ask whether the resemblance does not amount to identity. We have seen that in Italy, Spain, and France, that is, in the countries where the influence of Rome has been deepest and most lasting, a conspicuous feature of the Carnival is a burlesque figure personifying the festive season, which after a short career of glory and dissipation is publicly shot, burnt, or otherwise destroyed, to the feigned grief or genuine delight of the populace.
If the view here suggested of the Carnival is correct, this grotesque personage is no other than a direct successor of the old King of the Saturnalia, the master of the revels, the real man who personated Saturn and, when the revels were over, suffered a real death in his assumed character. Whether that was so or not, we may conclude with a fair degree of probability that if the King of the Wood at Aricia lived and died as an incarnation of a sylvan deity, he had of old a parallel at Rome in the men who, year by year, were slain in the character of King Saturn, the god of the sown and sprouting seed.
Par le chanteur australien Greg Champion merci Andrew! Peter Mayle has been explaining the French to the English for 15 years. It is in the nature of neighbours to squabble, and notwithstanding the official cordiality of the past years, Anglo-French relations have been known to suffer sporadic minor ruptures. These are rather stimulating occasions, traditionally marked by name-calling and foot-stamping on both sides of the channel.
Either Albion has been more than usually perfide, or those damned Frogs have been feathering their nest again. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me that we take it in turns to irritate our friends across the water. And yet, inevitably, we kiss and make up. After all, we have so many things in common. One of them is the terminology we use when insulting one another.
Cold, self-serving, arrogant and bloody-minded — is that a Frenchman talking about the English, or an Englishman talking about the French? I have heard these same words applied to both nationalities, and they have become so well established that when we come across a humble Frenchman, or a warm-blooded Englishman, we are taken aback.
It is not at all what we have been led to expect. The fact is, quite a few of the nationalistic cliches are accurate. Like many people of my age and background, I had a bundle of preconceived notions about the French and their way of life. I refer, of course, to the French superiority complex. They consider their language to be the most elegant, their culture to be the most refined, their diplomacy to be the most diplomatic, their wines to be the most aristocratic, and their gastronomy to be the most subtle and interesting.
Then there are the physical glories of France — the mountains, the beaches, the forests, the chateaux of the Loire, the City of Light, Catherine Deneuve. They simply appreciate what they have. Nowhere is this more enthusiastically celebrated than at the table. The desire not merely to eat, but to eat well, is as much a part of the French character as the national reluctance to wait in a queue. I have become just as bad as any Frenchman — impatient for the first asparagus of spring, the first melon of summer or the first truffle of winter. I am no longer surprised, when eating with French friends, that a great part of the conversation around the table is not about politics, sport or sex, but about food.
They are amused and somewhat mystified by the North American fascination with the French Paradox, which to them is no paradox at all; simply a matter of civilised eating habits. I was recently shown, by a Frenchman who was shaking his head in disbelief, a learned paper prepared by a panel of American university professors.
Its subject was obesity, now so prevalent over there that I believe it is classified as a disease, and the paper — several closely spaced pages ending with an impressive list of references — discussed at great length the French and their paradox. The reason for the relatively low incidence of obesity in France is this: Is it true, as all we Anglo-Saxons like to believe, that France is the world capital of bureaucracy?
In , a small rural community wished, for the sum of 60 francs, to use some substandard paving stones which had been rejected by the engineer in charge of laying the main road. This required 14 decisions by the prefect, the subprefect, the engineer and the minister. After incredible difficulties and extensive activity, the required authorisation finally arrived, 11 months after the request had been made, at which point it transpired that the defective paving stones had already been used by the roadworkers to fill up a hole in the road.
An extreme case, perhaps. I remember the paperwork, the subsequent official inspection and the meticulous, vine-by-vine count when I replaced some elderly vines with younger versions of the same variety. Despite, or maybe partly because of, these national idiosyncrasies, I find France a wonderful place to live, and I would never willingly live anywhere else. This is likely to be with that daunting figure, the Parisian waiter. Consequently, be treats you with a mixture of disdain and barely suppressed irritation, and you might very easily feel that he represents the attitude of all his fellow Frenchmen.
- The Secrets of Magic and Metaphysics: Book One of the Chronicles of El Miron?
- Follow the Author?
- Art before words. (Art Art Art before words. Book 1).
- No Place to Run.
- The Amazing White Food Diet;
In fact, he is just as grumpy with his compatriots, and probably with his wife as well. Outside Paris, the English are usually treated with courtesy. Their halting French is listened to with patience, their curious habits milk in the tea, warm beer accommodated. I used to be somewhat sensitive about my nationality, and I could never quite escape the feeling that I was no more than a permanent and possibly unwelcome tourist.
La Fievre Du Desir
Then one day, a neighbour with whom I was having a drink put my mind at rest. But you should know that most of us down here prefer the English to the Parisians. How that happened is a matter of considerable controversy, with popular theories ranging from fiercer policing, to abortion, lead paint, and computer-assisted crime prevention programs. David Greenberg, a sociologist at New York University, believes none of the theories stand up on their own. It could be all or none of the above, he said. It could also be that Western civilization is just becoming more civilized and less violent, and it is finally showing up in the statistics, even with recent mass shootings in the United States.
Crime rates have fallen in most of the Western world as well as most American cities, but what has happened in New York City, with a population of 8 million, is extraordinary. The rate of violent crime began to decrease in the s, before jumping in the s when crack cocaine made it to the streets in many cities. Then it sank and has continued to do so.
In , there were 2, murders in the city. Last year the number was , the lowest since police began keeping reliable records. In one remarkable day, Nov. The same is true for other violent crimes, including robberies and assaults. Greenberg said experts typically offer two common explanations. One is that in the New York Police Department installed CompStat, a computer program that tracks crime and allows police departments to manage personnel better.
Essentially, the police department believed that cracking down on offenses from prostitution to begging and excessive noise could help suppress felony crime. Either way, the NYPD takes credit. For CompStat, the crime rate had already begun dropping when the software was installed. Greenberg also failed to find a causal relationship between an increase in misdemeanor charges and the overall crime rate. Other theories also have been proposed. There were fewer young males, the demographic sector most responsible for crime.
Both theories are highly controversial. Another theory credits removal of lead from gasoline and paint. Lead causes brain damage and could account for some criminal activity so when lead was removed from gasoline and paint, fewer children were affected. Surprisingly, some sociologists think civilization is simply getting less violent and more civilized, Greenberg said. Elias wrote that interpersonal violence had been in decline since the Middle Ages, a statement historians now accept.
Elias said that for divine monarchs, like Louis XIV of France, their worth was more measured by their ability at witty badinage and manners than swordsmanship. This more civilized tendency spread to the European middle class and finally, in the nineteenth century, to the working classes. The decrease also could be partly due to immigration to the city, an influx of people who may be particularly motivated to avoid legal trouble, especially if they are undocumented or because they are determined to make good lives for themselves, Greenberg said. Another possibility, frequently ignored, is that New York is a college town.
The City University of New York system alone enrolls , undergraduates and they are a substantial—and generally peaceful—portion of the young population. Joel Shurkin is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. He is the author of nine books on science and the history of science, and has taught science journalism at Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Hard Times, Fewer Crimes. So what explains the disconnect? Big changes in American culture, says James Q. When the FBI announced last week that violent crime in the U.
It had been a dismal year economically, and the standard view in the field, echoed for decades by the media, is that unemployment and poverty are strongly linked to crime. The argument is straightforward: The economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate, gave the standard view its classic formulation in the s. Observation may appear to bear this theory out. After all, neighborhoods with elevated crime rates tend to be those where poverty and unemployment are high as well.
But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late s and early s, a period when crime fell. Among the explanations offered for this puzzle is that unemployment and poverty were so common during the Great Depression that families became closer, devoted themselves to mutual support, and kept young people, who might be more inclined to criminal behavior, under constant adult supervision. Big-city reports show the same thing. Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines.
But other economic indicators tell much the same story. The labor-force participation rate lets us determine the percentage of the labor force that is neither working nor looking for work—individuals who are, in effect, detached from the labor force. These people should be especially vulnerable to criminal inclinations, if the bad-economy-leads-to-crime theory holds. In , though, even as crime was falling, only about half of men aged 16 to 24 who are disproportionately likely to commit crimes were in the labor force, down from over two-thirds in , and a comparable decline took place among African-American men who are also disproportionately likely to commit crimes.
This measure rests on thousands of interviews asking people how their financial situations have changed over the last year, how they think the economy will do during the next year, and about their plans for buying durable goods. The index measures the way people feel, rather than the objective conditions they face. It has proved to be a very good predictor of stock-market behavior and, for a while, of the crime rate, which tended to climb when people lost confidence.