james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2008-05-01 03:34 pm

Context is for the weak

Even I know the difference between Stephen Douglas and Frederick Douglass.

Somewhere a Fox news editor's history teacher is weeping.

[identity profile] movingfinger.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 08:46 pm (UTC)(link)
I get the post-glaciation lakes mixed up. I consider this partly a failing of the people who named them and partly a failure of my own knowledge of geography. And since they don't exist any more, as such, contemporary knowledge doesn't help much, does it... Nonetheless, if they'd called Agassiz "Lake Manitoba" or similar, it would be a lot clearer.

Louis Agassiz was kind of a creep, anyway. A Cambridge, Mass., school that had been named after him was recently renamed, because of his (now Wrong-Wrong-Wrong, then acceptable) racist beliefs.