What are you currently reading?

[Jo498]

This book sounds interesting and I already seem to agree with most of its claims. What is not mentioned in the review linked (so I don't know how much the book says about it) is the obvious connection with fossil fuels powering that growth. This fact might be one explanation why it speeded up in the century from ca. 1860 - 1960. The peak everything crowd would point out the use of fossil fuels as the most salient factor, not invention.

And it has been fairly clear since a few decades that real invention and growth have slowed. The fastest practical airplane travel speed has not changed for decades. The fastest practical trains (TGV, Shinkansen) are ca. 1980 technology. In these two fields it is also interesting that more advanced technology was tried and practically abolished because the modest gains were not worth the expense (Concorde and magnetic monorail trains). With automobiles it is even worse because heavier and more luxurious cars eat up all the savings from more efficient engines and jammed traffic makes faster cars moot anway.
Space tech has basically stagnated since then as well.
It is only computers and communications that have advanced since the 1980s. And a lot of this goes into fairly silly stuff, basically entertainment, while some other applications (like fast computer-based stock trading) might actually be more of a problem than a gain.

[ritter]

Trajan I will allow you, but Constantine had a long and illustratious use in the Greek speaking Roman Empire, and then a prominent use in Russia. If nought else: an older brother, son, and grandson of Tsar Nikolai I Pavlovich were all named Constantine, all of course related to the great granddaughter of Nikolai who happened to marry King Ferdinand of Romania.  That name had much closer sources of propogation

And at the other end of the Roman world, Hispania (now known as Spain), the name Constantino, if not very widespread, is not uncommon by any means. And as of late, the name Adrián has become very popular (but that is a new development).

I get a feeling that the "romanness" of the Eastern part of the empire (as opposed to the West)  is being slightly exaggerated here....

[Florestan]

Trajan I will allow you, but Constantine had a long and illustratious use in the Greek speaking Roman Empire, and then a prominent use in Russia.

Did I say it is a uniquely Romanian name? No. All I said was that Constantin is much more common in Romania than in all other Romance people.

Last sentence: odd to read that Andrei, from a Romanian nationalist!

I am not a nationalist, but it seems that these days the mere mention of nations, their origins and history is politically incorrect. 

And at the other end of the Roman world, Hispania (now known as Spain), the name Constantino, if not very widespread, is not uncommon by any means.

Quick, my friend: how many Constantino do you know, personally or otherwise? In my family I personally know three from my paternal line, one from my maternal line and one from my wife's family. I can cite additionally Constantin Silvestri, Constantin Lipatti (that's how he was baptized; Dinu is to Constantin what, say, Joe is to Joseph), Constantin Marin, Constantin Brăiloiu, Constantin Dimitrescu --- and that's limiting myself to music only. And let's not forget Constantin Brâncuși.

I get a feeling that the "romanness" of the Eastern part of the empire (as opposed to the West)  is being slightly exaggerated here....

I don't know what you mean by "Romanness", but from my point of view it has nothing, or very little, to do with ethnicity. Since 212, when Caracalla's Constitutio Antoniniana granted full Roman citizenship to all free men in the Enpire, it became a strictly political marker, not an exclusively ethnic one as it had been before.

I honestly don't know where you get the idea that I somehow oppose the "Romanness" of East to that of the West. If anything, it's the West who, for too long and for political reasons, denied the East its "Romanness". And that was indeed some exaggerated nerve, to see some upstart Germanic kings denying "Romanness" to the direct successors of Octavian Augustus in unbroken line residing in Cosntantinople.

[ritter]

Quick, my friend: how many Constantino do you know, personally or otherwise? In my family I personally know three from my paternal line, one from my maternal line and one from my wife's family. I can cite additionally Constantin Silvestri, Constantin Lipatti (that's how he was baptized; Dinu is to Constantin what, say, Joe is to Joseph), Constantin Marin, Constantin Brăiloiu, Constantin Dimitrescu --- and that's limiting myself to music only. And let's not forget Constantin Brâncuși.

I don't know what you mean by "Romanness", but from my point of view it has nothing, or very little, to do with ethnicity. Since 212, when Caracalla's Constitutio Antoniniana granted full Roman citizenship to all free men in the Enpire, it became a strictly political marker, not an exclusively ethnic one as it had been before.

I honestly don't know where you get the idea that I somehow oppose the "Romanness" of East to that of the West. If anything, it's the West who, for too long and for political reasons, denied the East its "Romanness". And that was indeed some exaggerated nerve, to see some upstart Germanic kings denying "Romanness" to the direct successors of Octavian Augustus in unbroken line residing in Cosntantinople.

The directory of my company lists 39 Constantino (in Spain and South America), of which I know 3 personally, plus another one who left a couple of years ago., then there's the late TV presenter Constantino Romero (who had an inimitable voice). Quick enough? 

I understand your point concerning the Barbarian upstarts in the West, and I actually had a classmate back in Caracas who could claim descent from the Byzantine emperors (she was a Ghica-Cantacuzino), although many historians say such claims are unfounded (or rather, that the descent was fabricated by these families in the 16th century to boost their prestige).   

Of course, no old family in Spain claims such a thing, and (surprisingly) they usually don't even wish to, brandishing "their good visigothic stock" instead (but just looking at some of them, there's as much Jewish and Arab blood running through their veins as anything else).

But still, I really cannot see any closer cultural affinity to "the spirit of Rome" in Cluj than in Córdoba (to take two originally Roman cities at random). This reminds me of discussions I had as a teenager with a friend of mine (son of Italian immigrants to Venezuela) who still believed that modern Italy was the heir to classical Rome (all that Mussolini-inspired gibberish). And my reply was basically the same: there's as much of a Roman in a modern day inhabitant of Tarragona than in one of Naples. In any case, I'm (obviously) not an expert in such matters.

Of course, we are the "reserva espritual de Occidente", but that's another story.

[Florestan]

Come on, that "tradition" no doubt only started in the 19th c. as well, about the same time Hungarian boys were named Attila and Georgian and Finnish girls Nino and Aino, respectively. Or would you suggest in the Romanian case there's a real, continuous, tradition?

Oh, I certainly do not claim the there is a continuous tradition of naming Romanian children Constantin which dates back to Constantin the Great's days, for the simple reason that there were no Romanians back then. But for instance Constantin Cantacuzino (1598 - 1663), an influent and powerful aristocrat, Constantin Șerban (d. 1682) and Constantin Brâncoveanu (1654 - 1714 ), Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia, were not a 19th century creation.

BTW, Attila is a Gothic name meaning "little father"; his ethnicity itself is uncertain, and even it were indeed a Hun, Hungarians are not descendants of Huns. Árpád and the Magyars, on the other hand...

And as to the historical "Țările Române" or Românească that I saw much referred to in the Romanian history that I read, what we really need to know is what exact meaning this terminology in these 16th c. sources bore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Romania

\It's Wikip[edia, I know, but the article is well researched.

[Florestan]

But still, I really cannot see any closer cultural affinity to "the spirit of Rome" in Cluj than in Córdoba (to take two originally Roman cities at random).

What is "the spirit of Rome", anyway? In the case of Romania, my point is about linguistics and a "folklorically" preserved sense of continuity, not about metaphysics.

The directory of my company lists 39 Constantino (in Spain and South America), of which I know 3 personally, plus another one who left a couple of years ago., then there's the late TV presenter Constantino Romero (who had an inimitable voice). Quick enough? 

Quick and fair enough.

[North Star]

BTW, Attila is a Gothic name meaning "little father"; his ethnicity itself is uncertain, and even it were indeed a Hun, Hungarians are not descendants of Huns. Árpád and the Magyars, on the other hand...

And the Huns were an army with any number of different ethnicities represented, of course.

[Florestan]

And the Huns were an army with any number of different ethnicities represented, of course.

Of course.

What I find amusing is that for genuine Romanian nationalists I am too cosmopolitan, while for non-Romanians I might come across as a Romanian nationalist. 

And anyway, since 1980s the fashion among Romanian nationalists has been to downplay the Roman ingredient and to exalt the Dacian one, all the way to pretending that it is in fact the latter who taught Latin to the former. Reading through all 400-something pages of one such internet board has been an inexhaustible source of chuckles and downright Homeric laughters. 

[ritter]

What I find amusing is that for genuine Romanian nationalists I am too cosmopolitan, while for non-Romanians I might come across as a Romanian nationalist. 

That has a name: "contrarian" 

[Karl Henning]

There are two prequels and I believe two sequels to the series to bring it to seven....I believe.

You may well be right; in an Author's Note to Prelude to Foundation (1988) Asimov spells out a "future chronology" of his books.  At that time there were six Foundation novels, and just the one, then-hot-off-the-press prequel.


Thread Duty:  I have indeed started to re-read Foundation.

[Christo]

BTW, Attila is a Gothic name meaning "little father"; his ethnicity itself is uncertain, and even it were indeed a Hun, Hungarians are not descendants of Huns. Árpád and the Magyars, on the other hand...

There's no single Hungarian descendancy, no more than there is a Romanian one - or German or French, for that matter. The Magyar story is played large in a dominant nationalist idea of history, but that's about all that can be said of it. What we know for sure is that for many centuries many different steppe peoples settled in the great Carpathian basin, and that no doubt these multi-layered settlement patterns somehow left their traits. But just how the Hungarian language developed, is largely unknown, isn't it?

Oh, I certainly do not claim the there is a continuous tradition of naming Romanian children Constantin which dates back to Constantin the Great's days, for the simple reason that there were no Romanians back then. But for instance Constantin Cantacuzino (1598 - 1663), an influent and powerful aristocrat, Constantin Șerban (d. 1682) and Constantin Brâncoveanu (1654 - 1714 ), Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia, were not a 19th century creation.

Constantin is a standard Christian name, like those of any of the apostles and saints; the real testing case would be Traian - and I doubt if you'll find examples of that 'pagan' name before the 19th c.

As to the Wikipedia entry: many thanks! It appears to be, as expected, very much a Renaissance thing, isn't?

[Florestan]

That has a name: "contrarian" 

And yet in dealing with both parties I do nothing but state the obvious: that Romanian is a Romance language and that the Romanian people is a neo-Latin one, no less than the Italians, Spaniards, French of Portuguese (with apologies to other that I have no time or space to nominate). I am pretty confident you won't find one single mainstream non-Romanian historian or linguist who documentedly claims otherwise.

Anyway, your post reminded me an anecdote about one of my intellectual heroes. Miguel de Unamuno was taking a walk in Madrid with a friend and they arrived in front of the Ateneo. "De que se trata en la conferencia de hoy?", he asked. "Lo ignoro", replied his friend. "Pues entramos, estoy en contra!" 

[Bogey]

One of my favorite authors.  I was able to find an Ace Double like the one above. I love these old sci-fi paperbacks.

[Florestan]

There's no single Hungarian descendancy, no more than there is a Romanian one - or German or French, for that matter.

Precisely what I have already stated in plain English: the Romanian people, just like every other European people, is a mixture.

The Magyar story is played large in a dominant nationalist idea of history, but that's about all that can be said of it. What we know for sure is that for many centuries many different steppe peoples settled in the great Carpathian basin, and that no doubt these multi-layered settlement patterns somehow left their traits. But just how the Hungarian language developed, is largely unknown, isn't it?

I am not an expert in Hungarian linguistics, but my understanding is that the language belongs to the Fino-Ugric family, togther with Finnish and Estonian, although they are not mutually inteligible.

Constantin is a standard Christian name, like those of any of the apostles and saints;

Correction 1: a standard Christian name in Orthodox countries, such as Greece, Russia or Romania (certainly a "Byzantine" heritage and influence). I haven't heard about that many Constantin(e) in UK, France, Germany or The Netherlands. John, Peter, Paul and George are obviously much more common in Western Europe than Constantin(e).

Correction 2: it was originally a pagan name; it became Christian only after Constantine the Great, feasted as a saint together with his mother Helena in both the Catholic and the Orthdox churches, but at different dates.

As to the Wikipedia entry: many thanks! It appears to be, as expected, very much a Renaissance thing, isn't?

All those Italian, Polish, German or Hungarian scholars were indeed Renaissance men, or even later. But I very much doubt that they also instructed all those illiterate and unschooled Romanian peasants they were visiting and interviewing what to answer when questioned about their ethnicity and language.

[Karl Henning]

One of my favorite authors.  I was able to find an Ace Double like the one above. I love these old sci-fi paperbacks.

I need to read some.  Back in the Deeps of Time, when there was a Borders on Washington Street, I leafed a bit through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but (not at all fairly, to the author) I was a little annoyed that it so little resembled Blade Runner.

In my defense, somehow I was jonesing for a view of Blade Runner at the time.

[Bogey]

I need to read some.  Back in the Deeps of Time, when there was a Borders on Washington Street, I leafed a bit through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but (not at all fairly, to the author) I was a little annoyed that it so little resembled Blade Runner.

In my defense, somehow I was jonesing for a view of Blade Runner at the time.

Anyone who saw he movie first is probably guilty of this act....I as well.

[Bogey]

[bwv 1080]

[Spineur]

I rarely reread books I have read previously unless it is a lifetime endeavor like Proust A la recherche du temps perdu.  Today I suddenly felt a very strong urge to read this Bulgakov book on Molière for the 4th time



Bulgakov in one of my favorite author and this is probably his most touching book.  His best is naturally "Le maitre et Margerite"

[aligreto]

What a title