[quote name='Justan' date='Oct 23 2009, 02:34 PM' post='319560']
"there is a site called
www.gutenbert.org which has most or all of his writings. It’s one of my favorite sites. The site has a collection of about 30K(!) books, all of which are free to all. Go there and do an author search of Charles Darwin. The site is one of the richest gems on the internet! That is, at least for people who like to read. "
Thanks for that - I didn't know anything about it at all.
"Their standard method of maintaining the secret of the pyramids was to kill the architects. That would be a retirement plan I wouldn’t really want….but it was a better draw of the straw than being a laborer!"
Much the same was supposedly the fate of the Italian who designed the Taj Mahal in honour of Mumtaz Mahal, the deceased wife of Shah Jahan, except that I am told he was blinded instead. What fun winning top commissions! On the other hand, maybe some of the guys who win top commisions today are already blind.
Blood on the Pyramids... now there's the title for another Hemingway! I wonder how accurate
any of these stories of years gone by really can be. In fact, I wonder just how reliable much evidence of the past ever was. You consider today's revisions of even recent history - code-breaking machines, for example - and you could throw in John Wayne as serve-all-purposes hero much as we seem to do with each new political leader that comes into his fifteen minutes. I think I grow ever more skeptical about pretty well everything that I am told is the way that things were, are or should be. In the end, I conclude that my own opinion on most non-technically specific things is as valid as any other. Perhaps starting life with that concept is what makes some people rise above the crowd - shame that it mostly arrives too late.
Rob C