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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Monday, July 23, 2018

What if Henry II is beaten to death on July 12, 1174, by the Monks at Canterbury Cathedral?

In 1170, Henry II inspired some of his armed knights to murder Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a power struggle between Church and State, which culminated in Henry II saying "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Priest?" So, they did. This action resulted in a Christendom-wide scandal of epic proportions, threatening Henry's throne, and resulting in him, ultimately, having to go on his knees to Canterbury Cathedral on July 12, 1174, and permit each of the eighty monks there to administer three blows to the Royal Person. Now, in keeping with the fairly loose traditional relationship between the Christian and temporal powers, this "scourging" was more symbolic than real. If all eighty monks had applied their full physical force to three blows each, with heavy whips or weapons of any type, the King would certainly have been killed. So, let's suppose the monks do just that! They beat Henry to death, and love every second of it! What happens? Do armed men intervene to protect the King from the Monks? Do they succeed in beating Henry II to death, and does the Archbishop of Canterbury announce that now, he alone rules England, second only to the Pope himself? Does this result in a great civil war in England, to determine who really rules, Church, or State? How does the Pope in Rome react to the death of Henry II at the hands of the Monks? What effect does this have on the Crusades to the Holy Land? What is the impact on the future of Christianity in England, Europe, and the World? What is the impact on the relationship between Church and State, in Christendom, which has always been rather vague, and difficult to determine, precisely?

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