

"The Edwardian era was the last era of high civilization." - asciilifeform
http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/97222.html#cutid1

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eplawless
"Nothing important that wasn't an obvious downfall has happened since then."

I don't know, I had thought that sending human beings to the moon was a step
forward.

"Edwardian Science and technology was the last time we actually had real
progress in science and technology."

Again, I had thought nanotechnology and computing theory and hundreds of
branches of medicine and myriad other fields had been conceived of and
advanced in the time since the Edwardian era. But you seem to know best,
Lupole Boucher.

"Social welfare programs like the Large Hadron Collider are brobdinagian,
billion dollar avoidances of the Basic Question."

This irritates me. Using obscure wording and speaking intentionally over your
audience is a tactic used when you're frightened of your arguments (or lack
of) being torn apart or exposed. (He didn't even spell "brobdingnagian"
correctly, the prick.)

I suppose there is some value to having read that, I can now use it as a
cautionary tale and steer my life firmly away from the direction his seems to
have taken.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Edwardian Science and technology was the last time we actually had real
progress in science and technology..._

Is anyone else driven into fits of giggles by the sight of someone typing this
phrase _into the Internet_?

Meanwhile, Wolfram Alpha continues to please. Google tells me that if you type
the phrase "life expectancy France 1910" into Wolfram Alpha the number "51.37
years" comes out. 17.3% of French children born in 1910 failed to live beyond
age ten! Someone should go back in time and explain to these kids, and their
mothers, how great it is to live in a "high civilization".

(For the curious: The life expectancy number for the UK was 54 years in 1910.
Alpha doesn't seem to return a contemporary result for the USA: it keeps
giving me 1933 numbers, by which time US life expectancy was 61 years and the
death rate by age 10 was only 8.4% in the USA. Modern numbers: France in 2006:
81 years, 0.48% dead by age 10; USA in 2005: 78 years, 0.87% dead by age 10.)

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noonespecial
A fine example of how history compresses, sanitizes and romanticizes the past.
Why in my day, "prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children
respected their elders."

Now good sir, do get off my lawn!

~~~
pyre
Reading through the comments, the guys sort of sounds like a douche. Stating
things like "women don't contribute to anything of lasting cultural value."
Well __OF COURSE __they didn't. It wasn't until 1920 that women were allowed
to vote (at least in the USA), and it hasn't been until recently that women
have made headway in holding political/powerful positions. If you take a look
at that era, you'll find that racism and sexism abounded, and I'll bet they
also believed that the Muslims were 'savages' because they didn't believe in
the 'one true god.' Sounds like a perfect and enlightened civilization to
me...

The comments section is just bunch of "I was born in the wrong era" morons
circle jerking their "my era can beat up your era" ideas. And almost
everything that they talk about is subjective... like taste in music. The
author admits his likes to jam to the 1920's Radio Network while coding, only
to decry all the newer music as garbage.

------
pg
"It was the apex of European civilization in the same sense that the era of
Pericles was the apex of Ancient Greek civilization."

Curiously enough, this is literally true, in the sense that this was when the
US surpassed Britain as the leading economic power. It would have happened
regardless of WW I though.

~~~
pyre
When people refer to European civilization, they are usually including
USA/Canada in there as they are part of the 'Western World.' It would probably
do people well to specify 'European Civilization' or 'European-based
Civilization' I guess.

~~~
gaius
There is a term, Anglosphere, which encompasses UK, USA, Canada, NZ,
Australia. It's useful to recognize the Anglosphere as a distinct subset of
The West - not least because Russia is effectively Western now.

------
olavk
I have noticed on youtube there is always someone commenting that _this_ is
from the time when they made _real_ music, not like the crap they make today.

This is regardless of whether the music is 5 or 50 years old.

~~~
arundelo
xkcd on YouTube comments: <http://xkcd.com/202/>

