October 31, 2009
Pagan: “a follower of a rustic or provincial religion”
from the Latin pagus, meaning a rural district.
The word “pagan” goes all the way back to the Greek root pagos meaning “that which is fixed”. “Fixed” as in “staying in position”, not like, your dog.
After crossing the Adriatic, the Romans used the [...]
October 30, 2009
At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity.
We now return you to [...]
October 29, 2009
If the earth were a single state, Constantinople would be its capital.
–Napoleon Bonaparte
In the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire stretched from Transylvania to Ethiopia, from Algiers to the Caspian Sea.
By the end of the 19th century, France had chipped away at much of North Africa, the Ottoman [...]