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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (89991)	4/4/2003 3:23:10 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

OT (kinda) -- It is absolutely amazing what the Romans achieved. Mind boggling! Even just the road constructions are incredible. Just for horses, carts and men. Real organization. I once read an interesting take on why the subway cars in America are as wide as they are. It reasoned the exact width is quite unusual. As it turns out, the first train cars were made by those who made chariots. As to why the chariot axle was this particular width, well that is how wide the Europeans made it. And the Europeans made it so because that is how wide the old road are in Europe. But guess what? The earliest road standards were made by Romans to be two horses wide...some standards last a long time :-)

To: maceng2 who wrote (89991)	4/4/2003 8:23:43 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> Real organization. << In my opinion, this is why wanting the benefits of advance civilization without the prerequisites to an advanced civilization is simply fantasy. There is no doubt that in the past the Islamic world was greatly advanced. There is also no doubt that at that time, the Islamic world was not dominated by fundamentalists who hated rationality and science. Rather, it was dominated by those who were learned in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and other rational arts. Aristotle. Plato. Not just the Koran. The discovery of zero, for example, isn't Muslim but Asian, Southeast Asian around Vietnam. Astronomy isn't Muslim. Nor is chemistry. It was the Jews who figured out how to send money over long distances through what the Muslims now call hawala. Or maybe they learned it from the Chinese. Or the Greeks. Or the Assyrians. All of whom had versions, all of whom travelled the Silk Road. The first version of globalization was the Silk Road. But now they object to adding their European and American cousins to the mix. Why? They say it's because they don't like Coca Cola and American hamburgers. Hamburgers are, of course, German, but Coca Cola, I admit, is American.