I just finished watching “The Hippies”, a made for TV documentary about the Hippie culture of the 60’s and 70’s that aired on the History Channel. Though flawed with its overarching, borderline ridiculous right-wing condemnations of hippie culture, it offers a fascinating glimpse at the drug-fueled, youth-driven counterculture of the era.

Too much time, unfortunately, is wasted on sensationalist, irrelevant side-stories and not enough is spent on the substantive contributions of the hippie aesthetic to the culture at large. There are also a few glaring historical accuracies; for example, one could easily conclude from the film that the Vietnam War ended after 1969 — which would certainly come as a surprise to the soldiers who served there from 1970-1973. But at least the film, at its end, correctly, if only briefly, touches upon some of the many lasting contributions of the hippie ethos to the culture at large; these include the consciousness movement, the environmental movement, and the computer/technological revolution which led to the democratization of information by the Internet.

Hit play or watch The Hippies fullscreen on Google Video.

The mention of famed “satanist” Aleister Crowley caught my ear, especially when the narrator explained how his image was “featured” on the cover of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Truth be told, Crowley is merely one of the 85 people and objects featured on the cover.

The commentary also claims Sgt. Pepper’s was “the greatest masterpiece of the psychedelic era”. As any Beatles fan will tell you Sgt Pepper’s was Paul’s baby and while Lennon’s Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds* or George’s Within You Without You have that psychedelic sound, Paul didn’t embrace the drug scene in the same way that the others did and while it may truly be a masterpiece of musical genius, I’d venture to say that later albums like Magical Mystery Tour are more psychedelic.

*Fun fact: Lennon denied Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about LSD until the day he died.
(via)

In 1707, a biblical theologian named John Mill was the first to collect and combine the text of some 100 extant New Testament manuscripts. After 30 years of study he noted over 30,000 various major to mostly slight errors in the different versions of the New Testament manuscripts. His discovery brought to light the fact that so many different versions of the New Testament exist and that the book many people think of as the immutable word of God has an uncomfortably long history of changes.

The following video lecture is a tremendously interesting look at some of the discrepancies by world renowned bible scholar and author Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

“There are places where we don’t know what the authors of the New Testament originally wrote. [...]

The problem of not having the originals of the New Testament, though, is a problem for everyone—not simply for those that believe that the bible was inspired by God.

For all of us, I think, the bible is the most important book in Western Civilization. It continues to be cited in public debates over gay rights, abortion, over whether to go to war with foreign countries, over how to organize and run our society. But how do we interpret the New Testament? It’s hard to know what the words of the New Testament mean, if we don’t know what the words were.

And so in this lecture I’ll be talking about not knowing what the words were and what we might know about the originals of the New Testament, how they got lost and how possibly they might be reconstructed.”

Hit play or watch Misquoting Jesus full screen at Google Video.

“After the Warming”, stars James Burke, whom you may remember from the days when TLC actually showed educational television and not just a bunch of reality-tv remixes in various flavors of “how to buy a house”, “how to fix up a house” or “how to be an animal while making motorcycles” in the truly worthwhile show, “Connections”.

“After the Warming” is like a special edition of Connections in which we learn how changes in civilization, the weather, and industrialization brought on the current climate crisis we now face.

Hit play or watch full screen at Google Video.

["After the Warming" is] an early documentary about global warming. It theorizes and tells facts about the effects global weather has had on our history. It then theorizes a lot more about its effects on our future and especially the way in which we will overcome it’s bad effects. If you don’t mind some, not proofed, theorizing from a reasonably intelligent guy, and are interested in our climate, this is probably a must see.

I found the news clip style predictions of an increase in hurricanes, rising oceans levels, and the devastation of New Orleans particularly chilling. Some of the prediction dates were a bit off, but interesting to think about anyway.

(via)

The following is purported to be an exact excerpt from a 1950s Home Economics textbook, (I assume published in the United States).

The Good Wives Guide

Have Dinner Ready

Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

Prepare yourself

Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

Clear away the clutter

Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc. and then run a dust cloth over the tables. Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift, too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Prepare your children

Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they ar small), comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.

Minimize all noise

At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet and happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

Listen to him

You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first—remember, his topics or conversation are more important than yours. Make this evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead try to understand his world of strain and pressure, and his very real need to be at home and relax.

Your goal

Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit. Don’t greet him with complains and problems. Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

Make him comfortable.

Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low soothing and pleasant voice. Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgement or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him. A good wife always knows her place.

(See Snopes’ article for further info)

I occasionally get into a streak where I love playing board games and my absolute favorite game to play on a cold autumn afternoon is Parker-Brother’s classic real estate trading game, Monopoly. I played yesterday with my family and though at some points it was give or take whether I would pull through, in the end, I won it all!

Disappointed by the lack of good strategy guides in a cursory search for “monopoly strategy”, I’m convinced there is a definite need for someone to get the good information out there, so I’ll do what I can in my limited knowledge.

Some interesting facts and lesser known rules about Monopoly:

• It usually takes five turns (but 6 rolls - you’ll probably roll doubles once) to go around the board. You’ll probably land on four of the 28 property spaces.
• If one or both dice roll off the board, or land on or lean against a card deck, the roll is invalid. Roll them again.
• The most landed on spaces are: Jail, Illinois Avenue, GO and the B.&O. Railroad.
• Free parking does not entitle a player to any kind of monetary reward. Free parking is a free space with no other penalty or reward.
• As a general rule, when you land on “Income Tax” pay 10% if you haven’t yet been around the board three times. You will average a net gain of $170 every time you pass Go (at least early in the game) and you start with $1500. Therefore it’s in your best interest to do the math and figure out if you have less than $2000 worth of assets.
• Pay $50 and get out off Jail early in the game while many properties remain unowned and undeveloped. You need to be in circulation so that you can buy up those properties. Later in the game it may be better to rest in jail free from expensive rent payments but still able to collect.
• If a player does not wish to buy an unowned property he or she has landed on it is sold at auction by the Banker to the highest bidder. Any player, including the one who declined the option of buying it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price.

To finish off this post, I’ve got a question that doesn’t appear to be answered in the rule book. Perhaps some of the more clever readers here will enlighten us with their opinions in the comments. It’s a fact that, if the owner of a property fails to ask for his/her rent before the second player following the one who landed on the property throws the dice, the debt is uncollectable.

My question is:

What if the player who landed on the property had rolled doubles and the owner fails to ask for his/her rent? Can the same player quickly pick up the dice and roll again? or does that only work when a second player picks up the dice and rolls?

Though I’ve found the turbulent history of the Middle East to be fascinating, I’ve never before found a resource so eloquent as the Maps of War Imperial History flash animation which enables one to see 5000 years of empire building and state history in about 90 seconds.

Though a lot of the empires shown here are familiar, I had no idea their respective magnitudes or durations.

(via Coolhunting)

Last week I went on a tour of Le Soleil newspaper headquarters here in Québec city. At the end of the tour, our guide asked us to write a little bit about what we are doing in Québec and to send a photo for their online version of the paper. I sent the following (I hope people can understand it because some of it I had help with and some I did not!):

Je m’appelle Jeff Milner. Je viens de Lethbridge, Alberta. Je viens juste de terminer mon bac à l’Université de Lethbridge en Nouvelle Media en avril.

Je suis venu ici pour apprendre le français, parce que je trouve la culture et histoire québecoise intéressante. J’ai reçu une bourse du gouvernement du Canada. Je suis en le cours Français “Elémentaire A”.

J’aime Québec beaucoup. Mes lieux preferés à Québec sont Vieux-Québec et les Plaines d’Abraham.

J’ai hate de revenir.

The photo was taken at the Plains of Abraham after a demonstration of historic battle formations and musket firing.

Update: Les photos publiées! (Click on the smaller photos to the right to see our individual photos and paragraphs).

I really liked this Google Video: Robert Newman History of oil. It hits on so many important themes and ideas in such a brilliant way that all I can say is that if you are remotely interested in world politics/economics and history, then this is required watching. It’s also quite funny.

From the description:

Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years—but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, [he] places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman’s stand-up act and supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand. Quirky details such as a bicycle powered street lamp on the stage brings home the pertinent question of just how we are going to survive when the world’s oil supplies are finally exhausted.

I’m counting the days before I head off to Quebec City for the five weeks of intensive courses in French as a foreign language. I’m extremely excited and have been hitting the Speak and Read Essential French MP3’s extra hard lately.

I’ve also been reading up on the 1759 Battle for Québec. I find early Canadian history so rich with action and excitement, I love to read all about it! We’ve got our fair share of stories that would make brilliant blockbuster movies, allow me to share this one and let me know what you think.

The odds were stacked against New France. The British outnumbered the French three to one in ships, four to one in troops, and the Brits had a ten to one advantage in money.

I’ve been checking out Google maps to try and figure out where the attack must have happened. As the story goes, the British sailed down the St. Lawrence with more than 140 ships (one full quarter of the British Navy) and were spread over a distance of 50 miles. James Wolfe, the English General, had also in his command over 13,500 men—9,000 of whom were from the best units in Britain.

It was the best trained and equipped army North America had seen, supported by the biggest and best fleet.
-popular historian Gordon Donaldson

However, conquering Québec City, “the Gibraltar of the New World” was not an easy task, and Wolfe soon discovered that despite his huge advantage there wasn’t really any way to get beyond the city’s fortified walls. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the French general, was misinformed by native-born Canadien and governor Pierre de Vaudreuil’s engineers that the English cannons did not have the range to reach them over the huge St. Lawrence River, and so didn’t reinforce the southern shore. In this they made a grave mistake.

Determined that he would wear the French down by sheer persistence, Wolfe ordered his cannons to pound the city for months killing civilians and destroying homes by the score. The prolonged destruction served no real military purpose other than to terrorize and demoralize the city’s inhabitants.

Summer turned to autumn and still Wolfe had not taken the fortified city. Time was beginning to run out for Wolfe, and he began to worry how he would explain to England why the attack was taking so long. He decided to try a new strategy.

Earlier, [Wolfe] had spotted a break in the cliffs west of the city, at a cove called l’Anse-au-Foulon. If [he] could somehow land his men undetected and then scale the cliffs, he might be able to put his army on the plains behind the city and draw Montcalm out into the open . . . and so it was, on a moonless night in mid-September, that a flotilla of 30 flat-bottomed boats slipped silently downriver with the tide.

On September 13, 1759, after bluffing their way past a French Sentry, an advance guard climbed the narrow trail and overpowered the French post at the top. The rest of the troops followed soon after pulling themselves onto the Plains of Abraham and by daybreak more than 4,500 English troops assembled on the far side of the City.

The surprise was complete. General Montcalm had been convinced that the final attack, if it came, would be on the other side of the city at the Beauport shore. When an aide suggested that the British might try to climb the cliffs, Montcalm had snorted with derision. “We do not need to imagine that the enemy has wings,” he wrote in his journal, “so that in one night they can cross the river, disembark, and climb the obstructed cliffs.” But now, they had done just that. As he hurried to assemble his troops, Montcalm looked out at the redcoats that were lining up behind the city, and complained, “They have no right to be there.”

Wolfe had managed to drag up only two light cannons. Montcalm decided that time was of the essence and that the British had to be attacked immediately, before they could dig in and strengthen their position. For the first time since the British arrived, Montcalm acted impulsively. He had 3,000 reinforcements somewhere behind the British lines—a message had been sent and they were on their way—but he didn’t wait for them to arrive. Instead, Montcalm gathered the troops he had on hand and threw open the city gates . . .

The battle lasted only 15 minutes. The British had formed a “thin red line,” two men deep, and the French advanced in a ragged charge, the regulars and the Canadiens stumbling over each other. Native snipers were picking off British soldiers from nearby woods, but Wolfe stood his ground. Then, when the French were only 30 paces away, the order was given. The redcoats raised their muskets and fired, one platoon after the next in rolling thunder across the Plains. Smoke filled the battlefield. The British re-loaded and advanced, emerging from the smoke like ghosts. They fired a second volley, and that was all it took. The French broke and ran.

Both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed due to injuries suffered in the battle, Wolfe on the Plains and Montcalm within the city walls. The two sides had each taken roughly the same number of losses, 650 each, and the British hadn’t really won anything of consequence, it was just a field, and in fact not a particularly safe one, but all the same the French were rattled.

The British had won a field. That was it. If anything, they were in a dangerously exposed position. Québec fell not because the British won, but because the French lost their nerve. Vaudreuil panicked and fled with his troops along a side road. Five days later, the city’s bewildered commander (who had been left behind without any clear instructions) surrendered the city. The Canadiens hadn’t been conquered by the British: they had been abandoned by France.

I’m heading off to Drayton Valley (a small town just west of Edmonton) to visit my sister and her family for the long weekend.

It’s Remembrance Day tomorrow so as a special treat here is a photo of my Grandpa Scoville’s war medals.

He served in the Canadian Navy during World War II primarily posted to convoy escorts and submarine hunting. He had plenty of war stories, but I was either too little or wasn’t around when they were being shared.

One particularly interesting story was when he snuck onto a German warship that was docked at a neutral port and stole the Captain’s alarm clock. He felt so guilty about what a stupid thing it was to do that (I think) he eventually gave the clock away just to keep from reminding himself about that adventure. My mom informs me that I was mistaken. It turns out, somebody on his ship stole it from him.

Because this might not be a very interesting post for those of you not related to me, here is something you might be more interested in, a cartoon viking battle of the bands type war, Jason Forrest’s animated video for ‘War Photographer’.

Two climbers on a Sierra Nevada glacier discovered an ice-encased body believed to be that of an airman whose plane crashed in 1942.

CNN Article (video)

Based on the journal of a World War II survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto this movie gets my highest “WWII holocaust movie” rating since Shindler’s List. It’s done very tastefully and at the same time isn’t so depressing that it’s impossible to watch.

Whether I agree that Adrian Brody deserved the best actor Oscar for his performance is beside the point (I don’t by the way - I think Daniel Day Lewis should have gotten it for The Gangs of New York.)

The Warsaw ghetto, as far as I understand, is the one place that the Jewish population fought back against the Germans who were shipping them off to death camps. I would have preferred to see more about the resistance itself, but because of the situation that the protagonist, Spielman, was in, we only get to see a little of the fighting and hear about through rumours and word of mouth from those around him.

I highly recommend this movie because of the importance of remembering the holocaust but in particular because this story was based so closely on Spielman’s journal and also some incidents were taken right from the directors own personal experiences. He was a holocaust survivor as well.

If you rent the DVD I also recommend that you watch the special features disk—the story of survival.