The Washington Post has a cool photo gallery of candidates for the New Seven Wonders of the World. Take a look at the pictures, but don't pay that much attention to the descriptions.
For instance, apparently the "ancient city" of Machu Picchu was "founded by Yale University professor Hiram Bingham in 1911." That's pretty ancient! [UPDATE: This has now been corrected to "found."]
More significantly, Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is "a church that was first built in 537 B.C. as a Mosque when the city fell to the Ottomans." How many mistakes are there in that one line?
It was once a church, and it was once a mosque (though it was a mosque only after it was a church, not before), but now it's just a museum.
In fact, its construction was more like A.D. 537.
Not much chance of its having been built as a mosque even in A.D. 537 (to say nothing of 537 B.C.), since Islam wouldn't even exist for about another century after that.
And the city didn't fall to the Ottomans until about 900 years after the construction of the church (and the Ottomans arguably didn't even really exist as "Ottomans" until around 1300).
Anyway, pretty picture!
(I wish that weren't such an overused term, because it truly applies here.)
Journalism: A faith that there will always be something to get up and write about everyday, whether you have anything to communicate or not.
Most journalists seem to want to be "writers" or more ambitiously, "authors." Many have no time for learning, or facts, as they aspire to and seek a popularly accepted agenda to be advanced, so they can have an audience. Verification is irrelevant to their tasks. "Reporters" are fewer and fewer in number.
As a resident and reader there in No. Va. for over 25 years just past, and before that in Charlottesville 1948-58, I followed the descent of the WaPo, and its growth as a media empire (W. Buffett included). It has not reached the lowest levels of presentations yet. But, many there are trying for that, with a mistaken evaluation of the level of public intelligence.
"Your corrections," or assuming you were addressing the blog post itself, "You're corrections appearing."
I assume you are joking. According to some reporters, even major newspapers have stopped copyediting to save labor costs. It goes pretty much from the reporter’s word processor to into the newspaper. Modern management thinks the readers are generally too stupid to notice errors in usage and even grammar. Just read issues of the copyeditors Newsletter called The Editorial Eye. Various issues have discussed the decline of the profession. Rules I learned in high school like pictures are hung, but people are hanged are regularly violated in newspapers. From Blazing Saddles.
The bit about the Hagia Sofia and other things were pretty bad.
I know! I hate when that happens. My fingers get to typing and all sorts of silly mistakes creep in. I get it's and its wrong all the time too, even though I know exactly which to use at the proper time. I hate correcting posts with more posts, but since you brought it up. Clearly, I need a better copyeditor to set me straight before I post.
Thanks for acknowledging. You wouldn't believe the anti-intellectual horse hockey people often throw out when corrected on stuff like this.
The bit about the Hague Sophia was right on.
For awhile I thought this was some clever comment about footnotes but I guess not.
Candidates like the Taj Mahal, Hagia Sophia, Angkor, the Statue of Liberty, and the Kremlin and Red Square strike me as far more appropriate for a new list than Giza, the Acropolis, the Colliseum, etc. Those sites had their moments of fame.... not that the others haven't...
Let's just go with the Civ list of wonders; at least those have actual benefits when you build them. Of course, that didn't stop at seven.
They were nominated by visitors to a website http://www.new7wonders.com/
According to their press handout:
It still doesn't explain why Wikipedia Brown is writing for the WaPo.
Nick
Some more errors I noticed:
"...Giza Pyramids in Cairo is the only one of the original seven..."
"...but homess discovered Jan. 30, 2007, beneath the grounds.." (Stone Henge)
Looks like they created this thing in a hurry, and spent more money on the fancy Flash programming than the text content. Too bad, it has some great photos and is a nice presentation otherwise.
The bit about Hagia Sophia reminds me of Norman Cantor's aside, in The Civilization of the Middle Ages (p. 124), that "It took the Arabs ... seven centuries to take Constantinople." It's not just journalists who nod.
Aside from the AD/BC [1] typo, that sounds to me less likely to be straight from the reporter without editing, than something that was copy-edited into nonsense. That is, did an editor cross out a clause about the conversion from a Christian church (somewhere between "BC" and "Mosque")? OTOH, I have seen reporters totally garble everything they were just told...
[1] Or CE/BCE, if you want to be politically correct - and greatly increase the chances of such typos!
It might have the knock on effect of AFLAC's action for shareholder votes on compensation.
Pyramids of Giza
Colosseum
Great Wall
Taj Mahal
Stonehenge
and then I rounded it out with:
St. Basil
Sydney Opera House
but it is absolutely criminal that St. Peter's basilica isn't on the list.
Upon the Turkish conquest Constantine's city (he of "In hoc Signo vinces"), when the last Emperor Michael Paleologos threw off his imperial regalia and charged to meet the foe anonymously, Hagia Sophia became a mosque-- like the Taj Mahal, we see a minaret at each of its four corners today. Of note is, that the Ottoman conquest of Byzantium excluded Venice from the Eastern Mediterranean until the Battle of Lepanto contained Muslim power in 1573 (inspiring the Spanish Armada); a century later, the Grand Turk's siege of Vienna (1683) was a near thing, stopped only by Jan Sobieski (King of Poland) and Eugene of Savoy ("Prinz Eugen" of WWII dreadnought fame).
Gutenberg's interest in movable type stemmed directly from his High Renaissance, pre-Reformation sense that Western culture stood at a crossroads. When Constantinople became Istanbul, lackadaisical responses to Islamic imperialism dating from the Crusades would change only as European populations accessed faith directly. Though Gutenberg's first Bibles were Latin "Vulgates", translators rapidly pushed versions in "lingua franca" ("languages of the Franks"), meaning every national tongue in Western Europe.
Through the late 15th Century, as translations multiplied, Rome endeavored not just to re-assert temporal authority but to reconcile translations with Vulgate doctrine. It cannot be done... into the gap stepped Martin Luther in 1517, and the Great Schism --Protestant Reformation-- disturbed the peace of Europe through 1700 and beyond, when nation-state dynastic politics superseded doctrinal disputes after the Thirty Years' War with spasms through Bonaparte's predations in Revolutionary times.
Right... no-one taught us this, but history is critical to context and perspective. Recent contacts with our offspring's teenage friends reveal that: They have never heard of the Battle of Hastings, Magna Carta, or so-called Common Law. One in eight knew of the California Gold Rush; those few who registered the Gettysburg Address thought it was where someone lived (Lincoln-- who he?). Three thought the Civil War occured in the mid-1930s, because "that's when they did the movie" (Gone with the Wind).
Ah, well... the five percent of us not pork ignorant of culture, economics, socio-political backgrounds (sounds high falutin', don't it?) will eat the rest for lunch. Kids aren't dumb, but self-esteem means "lazy and incurious". Schools like it that way. What do you tell someone who can't identify Hitler, Stalin, Mao T'se-tung, but knows for a fact that Margaret Sanger was a rock-star in the 1950s?
Nitpicking...in WW2 Prinz Eugen was a Cruiser. Dreadnought is WW1 term due to HMS Dreadnought the first big gun ship not anymore in use in WW2 when the term was battleship. There was indeed a Prinz Eugen dreadnought but in WW1.
As a curiosity Prince Eugene had ships named in is honor in German, Italy and Austria...
Eugene of Savoy is a fascinating historical figure. Born in Italy, raised at the court of Louis XIV, he became quite Francophobic and headed into Austria-Hungary for many an escapade against the Grand Porte. After 1683, Vienna awarded him the Belvedere Palace, a luminous baroque complex overlooking the city to this day. Prinz Eugen fought campaigns with Marlborough, "the handsome Englishman", Churchill's ancestor for whom Parliament decreed Blenheim.
Good for LL! No scholar, but we do love history, and now have an excuse to review WWI naval circumstance. Hm-- come to think on't, maybe we confused the ship of WWI with the "Prince of Wales" that went down with "Repulse" off Singapore in WWII. Absolutely no connection, but that's how rumors start. Thanks again for this dash of cold salt spray.
http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php?id=306