History questions not worth their own thread II

[Dachs]

What is the most successful usage of damnatio memoria?

Streisand effect messes it up unfortunately

see: Nikolai Yezhov

 

[Dachs]

Hmm...

what's the best way to fix feature creep in a history article?

 

[sophie]

Hmm...

what's the best way to fix feature creep in a history article?

What is feature creep?

 

[LightSpectra]

You forgot Tudors, the bridge linking Rome and Nazis.

Justified. I dislike Henry VIII more than most Romans but less than most Nazis.

 

[Dachs]

What is feature creep?

When you keep adding and adding stuff that is related to your topic but which ends up bloating the project beyond all recognition. Usually used in relation to computer software, video games, and movies.

 

[spryllino]

Delete some of it.

 

[Plotinus]

Hmm...

what's the best way to fix feature creep in a history article?

Put it aside and come back to it later, with the fixed intent of being ruthless.

Or have an editor tell you which bits to remove, and just do as they say.

 

[Dachs]

Be nice if I had somebody who felt like editing

 

[GoodGame]

Write a very tight thesis, and outline after you have your notes?

I kind of a had a similar problem recently. I wrote an xtra credit paper on a complex topic that had strict guidelines (3.5-4.5 pages and no playing games with the fonts/spacing); it was challenging to even attempt a thorough lit review, much less cover a broad summary of the related topics. It worked for me to keep an extensive note section, sub-divided by topic, and annotated with references. That way the notes were based on topic, not source, making it a bit easier to pastiche without dicussing topics that were external to my thesis. And that way you can save your notes/observations for another paper, without creeping them into your current paper. Or use the notes to expand the paper for a different project.

Just my 2cents.

 

[Arakhor]

Be nice if I had somebody who felt like editing

The problem with a content editor is that they need to know the topic to some degree to best advise you what to cut.

Being a layout/design editor is much easier - you just look at it, think it's awful, play with it, think it's good, save and print.

 

[LightSpectra]

Do Chinese proverbs serve the same function as our equivalent of Aesop's fables? It's difficult to answer this unless one has had a deep immersion in both western and eastern cultures.

 

[Tee Kay]

Beats me. I'm not deeply immersed in either.

But proverbs by definition are not fables.

 

[bombshoo]

Don't most western proverbs basically provide the same function as well? Short moral teachings?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Streisand effect messes it up unfortunately

see: Nikolai Yezhov

I don't follow. There was no internets in 1937?

 

[madviking]

Kinda not history related, but I don't wanna create a thread on this: What were Nikola Tesla's religious views? I know he was Serbian Orthodox, and his father was a priest in said church, but did his views ever waver?

 

[Tee Kay]

A casual one-minute Google search turn up this article. It doesn't seem like he was a very religious person. Here's the somewhat relevant bit:

Spoiler :

While I am not a believer in the orthodox sense, I commend religion, first, because every individual should have some ideal--religious, artistic, scientific, or humanitarian--to give significance to his life. Second, because all the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.

There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is barn. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call "soul " or "spirit," is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the "soul" or the "spirit" ceases likewise.

I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life. The acceptance by mankind at large of these tenets will not destroy religious ideals. Today Buddhism and Christianity are the greatest religions both in number of disciples and in importance. I believe that the essence of both will he the religion of the human race in the twenty-first century.

 

[Dachs]

I don't follow. There was no internets in 1937?

Stalin has signally failed to prevent future generations from knowing who Yezhov was precisely because Stalin disappeared him

 

[Traitorfish]

Stalin has signally failed to prevent future generations from knowing who Yezhov was precisely because Stalin disappeared him

Of course, Stalin did succeed in preventing you from knowing about all those people you've never heard of.

 

[Dachs]

Is that down to Stalin or my own lack of interest, though?

 

[Traitorfish]

Is that down to Stalin or my own lack of interest, though?

That depends on the unperson in question, I suppose.