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Welcome to the New Historium
First of all, and above all else, this is a web log, a blog, an online journal, online diary, etc. That
said, this is a blog devoted to the reporting and analysing of historical information, or just about anything related to history.
The posts can vary and do. I encourage all visitors to give comments, corrections, suggestions, thoughts, criticisms, or anything
else you have to say about this site.
Thank you for visiting, now you can go ahead and acutally read the posts.
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Sunday, September 11, 2005
Sorry, but Site Rerelocation
For some reason I just lost almost all my space in Verizon. I had to delete the music and the picture to free some
more space again. Since I now no longer trust Verizon, I have decided to move Historium for the last time, hopefully,
to it's next site.
The new Historium website is here. The Historium blog is here.
Sunday, September 4, 2005
New series: Outline of History of Mesopotamia
I will start today my first Epic, titled Outline of History of Mesopotamia. This will be located in the Hall of the Epics
link in the sidebar navigation.
Just remember, not all updates will happen on the home page, so look around now and then.
Friday, September 2, 2005
Currency and Value
Every thing that is paid for, used to pay, traded, worked for, or in any way acquired with by expending something or
paid with something has a value. While the modern basis of valuating currency simply based on trust may seem complicated,
things were a lot simpler in the barter days.
If farmer A had more cows than he needed for selling products at the market, but not enough chickens, he could simply exchange
cows for chickens with farmer B, who did need cows.
This whole thing was fine until someday, the value of chickens rose. Since farmer A did not have enough cows to pay
the added expense, he aggreed to pay in clay instead. Now all of a sudden a disease wipes out half the cows and farmer B sues
A. A now pays this off in clay. But it turns out B doesn't need or want clay, so A uses fish. Soon, A ends up needing lawyers
to figure everything out, and the world enters the dark Legal Age. Umm, actually forget that last sentence.
As you can see, it would be a heck of a lot easier to just use one thing to pay for everything. Some standard. To do
that though, people would have to change their ideas on currency in general. A standard would have to be something that can
only have trade or buy/sell purposes, anything else could jumble the value. It should also be able to buy the same amount
and worth of goods, no matter who's using it. Example: A and B would both pay $5 each for a pen.
That's it for now, I'll try to continue it a few days from now, but right now it's getting late.
Thursday, September 1, 2005
American Dream
A video I saw recently in class talked about the American Dream. According to it, it had three parts common through
all times: people have often viewed America as a bountiful Eden-like place with unlimited resources, the ideal American is
an independent hard-working one, and all Americans can rightfullly be optimistic on the future.
One must remember, it is still a dream.
When the Dream took hold, most of America consisted of rural areas, in fact virtually all of 18th century Americans practiced
some type of gardening or agriculture. If the future would be like this, one could imagine a land where small independent
farms dot the countryside, the resources of such a vast country would never be used up, thus the future was good.
Whoever came up with this forgot one last thing, America has a history of leading in innovation and technology. In the
first part of the 19th century farmers increased their numbers by settling across ever-expanding territories. Eventually though,
the dream of the independent rural life ended when the last bit of good land was bought up. Now, the harsh rules of economics
came in.
After the Civil War agriculture took a turn for the worst, and since then subsidies have become more and more important.
Now the great industries appeared, briging with them great booms of wealth and a rising new upper class. Hard work was still
part of the game. Money, if not a part, was the tool needed. Independence took a different meaning, now it was pulling
yourself up "by your own bootstraps". The future became more and more shaky, as events could radically twist things in a day.
Over the 20th century America became a superpower, and the speed of events accelerated. The idealist notions of before
were replaced by realism as life challenged day after day after day. Risks had greated consequences that could hit you very
soon. Perhaps the new American Dream is a blend of "survive and rise", community, and fluctuating futures.
Now though it's still to early, we might have to wait another 20 years and see what it says in the textbooks then.
Note: I apologise for the vague, hazy, and philosophical writing of mine recently, I am working on a solid historical
series, a biography of Benjamin Franklin looks good, I will also look around to get some kind of compilation on Chinese/Middle
Eastern/South Asian history. Again, suggestion encouraged.
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