America: Like It Or Unfriend It 277
Hugh Pickens writes "As we celebrate America's birthday today, head over the to the NY Times and take a look at a very clever 'op-art' creation, 'Like it or Unfriend It' by Teddy Wayne, Mike Sacks, and Thomas Ng, that represents what 'America's Wall' would look like through our history. Beginning with 'Christopher Columbus wrote on America's wall: 'This IS India, right?,' through 'America added Great Britain to Kingdoms I am Fighting With,' through 'The South has changed its privacy settings to accept carpetbaggers,' and finishing with 'America stopped playing the game Wild-Goose Chase While Nation-Building,' and 'America has joined the China Network' the wall includes dozens of invitations, likes, posts and changes to privacy settings that shows a summary of American history as seen from a Facebook perspective. Our favorite from the 1980s: 'Ronald Reagan created a page: "Trickle-Down Economics" followed by "Half a million upper-income people like this.'" For another take on 4th of July data visualization, Tim O'Reilly points out flag.codeforamerica.org, which aggregates twitter posts tagged #July4 into an evolving flag tapestry.
Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... (Score:3, Informative)
I wish they'd get it right for once. Christopher Columbus wasn't looking for "India", he was looking for Hindustan.
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f181/name-indian-origins-72901/ [documentingreality.com]
Re:Turrorists. (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to relay that anecdote you might want to point out that the individual was a journalist and made the comment on live TV while he was acting in an official capacity. This wasn't a matter of some random individual calling the President a dick on his or her free time.
And it was the right thing to do, journalists are not supposed to express personal views with company resources, they're supposed to be trying to be as impartial as possible.
Journalist apologizes for strongly worded criticism of Obama [thehill.com]
Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... (Score:5, Informative)
The "Columbus thought the world was round, while everyone else thought it was flat" isn't accurate.
What Columbus was fighting against is that people though the Earth was (correctly) approximately 40,000 km in diameter (The Greeks had measured it fairly accurately) while Columbus thought (incorrectly) it was much smaller and that it was practical to sail west to India. Columbus lucked out in that America was in the way, otherwise he would have been a footnote in history as the leader of an expedition of 3 ships that sailed west never to be seen again.
Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... (Score:3, Informative)
What Columbus was fighting against is that people though the Earth was (correctly) approximately 40,000 km in circumference (The Greeks had measured it fairly accurately) while Columbus thought (incorrectly) it was much smaller and that it was practical to sail west to India. Columbus lucked out in that America was in the way, otherwise he would have been a footnote in history as the leader of an expedition of 3 ships that sailed west never to be seen again.
FTFY
Re:You know... that might not be a bad idea... (Score:5, Informative)
India got it's name from River Indus.........which is called Sindhu in Sanskrit. Persians and Arabs called us Hindu(Do you see the rhyme scheme in Hindu and Sindhu) and from Hindu we got Hindustaan(Land of the Hindus). The Greeks called Sindhu as Indus(whatever way the Greek spelt it! India was known to the Greeks(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_conquests_in_India) and Romans(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Roman_trade_with_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_commerce)) and Indus became India.
The original name of the country was Aryavrata(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80ry%C4%81varta) or Abode of the Aryans(Noble people........not the Nazi thing(you can blame Max Muellar and Hitler)). Then the country was renamed Bhaarat from Bharat(Brave son of King Ajatshatru). All our modern or old text refer to India as Bharat or AryaVrata. Foreigners named us India and Hindustaan. We use Bhaarat in our daily language.
Hinduism as religion doesn't exist in any of our texts. We call it Sanaatan Dharma(it means Eternal Law/Duty http://www.sanatandharma.org/) or just Dharma(pronounced Dharm)