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Re: [Phys-l] hypothesis testing +- real history



Apparently the Brits couldn't pay for the French and Indiana war, so to preclude more expenses they decreed there be no more westward expansion.

joe

Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. Ph.D.
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556

On May 14, 2009, at 7:41 PM, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

I'll add a little left politics here.

And it took about fifty years for me to learn an important reason
(importance, I suppose, debatable.) for the revolutionary war was so
the settlers could take more land, etc. from the Natives. England
had drawn a line the settlers were not to cross**. The much vaunted
freedom was the freedom to expropriate Native land and resources.
(What else is new?)


** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Royal_Proclamation_of_1763


bc agrees w/ John; much U.S. history is very inconvenient.

p.s. George was "actually" a rather bad general, at least initially
-- "we" won the war because there were more French than Settlers at Yorktown. He was, as John wrote, politically astute. More
recently, the Soviets had, essentially, won the war before D-Day.


On 2009, May 14, , at 14:21, John Clement wrote:

I have tried to tell teachers, and they argue with me. They never
engaged
in real research, and I have, but that doesn't stop them. Also many
teachers do not like to find out that when books are in error.
They are
mortally afraid that those errors will be tested as facts on the state
exams. One of the funnier outrageous errors is making reference to
the
"dark side of the Moon that never faces the Sun" in a Glencoe text.

This is part and parcel of what might be termed "school science"
which has
very little relationship with science as practiced. School history
and
literature has always been edited to remove any inconvenient
truths. At one
time there was a cult of George and Martha Washington and the
Gilbert Stuart
reproduction was an icon hung in every history classroom. They were
glorified as the good parents of our country. Of course they never
told the
students that the marriage was made for social reasons, and that
George was
the father of the nation in more ways than one. But in the current
era,
sexuality is glorified a bit out of proportion. George was a good
leader
and his appetites had no bearing on his abilities.


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