Interesting Links for 31-07-2018

[andrewducker]

Germany gripped by #MeTwo racism debate

(tags: racism society germany )

Fear of litigation is a key factor in decision to perform C-sections

(tags: childbirth lawsuit healthcare )

People ask for evidence of Labour antisemitism...

(tags: Labour Jews )

Calls for Corbyn ally on Labour's ruling body to be suspended after claiming antisemitism row was invented by Jewish 'Trump fanatics'

(tags: Jews labour )

Terraforming Mars harder than you'd think

(tags: mars )

Inside the World of Racist Science Fiction

(tags: scifi racism republicans )

Shockingly, people think God looks like they do

(tags: religion psychology )

Rates of Sexual Harassment in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

(tags: harassment women academia science engineering medicine )

I continue to doubt that there ever was a Jesus

(tags: history Jesus religion christianity )

Wanted: more male psychologists

(tags: psychology men )

ArdaCraft - Middle Earth in Minecraft

(tags: Minecraft lotr )

Religious revelation and the origin of Lord of the Rings

(tags: lotr religion history )

Possibly the world's ugliest baby

(tags: sharks theft babies )

An Empire of Stars - How Britain beat the odds to independently achieve space flight, and then abandoned it on the very same day.

(tags: uk space history )

Comments

[andrewducker]

I've assumed Shakespeare probably existed.

But it's not something I know much about.

[danieldwilliam]

The existence (or otherwise) of Shakespear is a curious bit of business.

There are about 4 alternative candidates, Francis Bacon, de Vere- Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Derby and Kit Marlowe (having faked his own murder with the assistance of the head of Elizabeth's secret service.

Or some combination of those 4, plus or minus others.

To me the theories seem to turn on the assumption that a middle-class boy without a university education could not have written perhaps the best drama ever so therefore someone else, someone posher, must have written them.

Having walked round his house in Stratford Shakespear, if he didn't write the plays, seems to have done very nicely out of them.


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

[calimac]

The existence of Shakespeare would be a different question than whether the man, who existed, wrote the plays.

The idea that only a posh aristocrat could have written great literature is, when put plainly, sufficiently absurd as to defeat itself.

[danieldwilliam]

Aye, and indeed.

I'm really not sure what the basis or driver for the authorship question is.

There doesn't seem to be question to answer.

It doesn't strike me as implausable that a single person called Shakespeare wrote great plays. It's not as if he were an illiterate peasant farmer who turned up in London and free-styled Hamlet at court the next day. He was middle class kid and had been to grammar school. It took him years to establish himself. And I think the theatre and the play writing process was different then than it was in Victorian times. Although perhaps not that different to how it is today. I don't think plays were written fully formed by some "writer", who was separated in time and space and concept from the production and performance or from the personal politics of the theatre company.

More fundamentally, one of the strengths of the British system of social class was that it was more flexible and allowed more mixing and cross-fertilisation than other systems (like France). People with money, people with influence and people with talent were faciliiated in getting together.

[major_clanger]

Ah, what Kyle Kallgren sums up as the "BUT HOW CAN FALCON IF NOT POSH?" fallacy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uYipLshD4

[danieldwilliam]

I'm wondering if I can start a PG Wodehouse authorship question.

[calimac]

I once came across somebody who was quite seriously trying to start a Mozart authorship question. Apparently Mozart didn't know how to compose and was dependent on this other guy secretly shipping him all of his music. The other guy was Italian, and so was the proponent of this theory.

[danieldwilliam]

What was the motive for the Italian person using Mozart as a front?

I can see why an Earl might not want to be associated with the actual business of a theatre.

[calimac]

I do not recall a motive being given for the guy. But I might not remember everything.

My role in the discussion consisted of trying to nail down the proof that this guy had Mozart works before Mozart composed them. Eventually the proponent's spokesman admitted they didn't have any proof.

The original discussion vanished with the bulletin board it was on, but if you want to get into the gruesome details, some of them are preserved on a Wikipedia talk page.

[danieldwilliam]

That is some discussion going on there.