The Origin Of The Letter 🇦

Mass Media and Society

How does mass media affect our society? Is entertainment what drives our society moving forward, and if it is, what type of entertainment are we really pushing out there? These notes discuss how media relates and corresponds pre-existing themes, like ageism, racism, sexism, and the term ‘other-ism’ and explains the origin of the ‘mean world syndrome’ from a sociologist’s point of view.

Unfortunately

The Origins of the date of Christmas

Yesterday was Christmas, so Merry Christmas everyone! This is the holiday to be surrounded by family and friends and to look back on how far you’ve come, especially in this hellish year. Every year we celebrate this festive holiday on the 25th of December, but I’m curious, where did the celebration of Christmas originate? How did it become decided that this was when we would celebrate Christmas?

It’s a valid question! It is a fact that liturgical tradition, no matter how lauded, is no longer seen in a reliable manner any longer. The skepticism comes from the sixteenth-century Reformation, which inspired Protestant and particular Calvinist scholars to attack the ecclesiastical calendar. ‘‘As recent research has shown, it is the context of these early modern inquiries into the history of the liturgical year, which were often permeated by inter-confessional polemic, that the two basic approaches to understanding Christmas’ origins that continue to characterize the twenty-first-century debate on the subject first germinated. For lack of more appropriate labels, these two approaches may be referred to as ‘History of Religions Theory’ (henceforth: HRT) and the ‘Calculation Theory’ (CT). Roughly speaking, proponents of HRT interpret Christmas as a Christianized version or substitute for pagan celebrations that took place on the same date as the Roman Calendar, the most widely cited example being the birthday of Sol Invictus on December 25. By contrast, adherents to CT find evidence that the birth of Christ was determined independently, by resource to certain types of chronological speculation.’’

It is well known that a lot of Christianity is used to subvert or covert most of the old world’s celebrations. The holidays, like Halloween, Easter, Spring, and Christmas were all re-used from pagan traditions. German philologist Herman Usener (1834-1905) was one of the pioneers in the modern academic study of religion. ‘‘According to his view, the celebration of Christ’s birth in midwinter was essentially the heritage of a syncretistic sun cult, which already bore traces of an incipient ‘pagan’ monotheism. The central turning point in this story comes from the year 274 CE when the emperor Aurelian allegedly elevated the original sun god Sol Invictus to the supreme deity of the Roman empire and established his cult on December 25. Threatened by the persistent popularity of these rituals among newly baptized Christians, the early Church was moved to incorporate traces of the cult into its own liturgy and thus re-interpreted the annual ‘birth’ of the sun at the winter solstice as the birth festival of Christ.’’

FAMOUS AUTHORS

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

Humans, all around the world, love to leave some kind of mark, whether with their hands in caves, writing interesting novels, or creating memes, to show that we were here, we existed and we are telling our story.

A video of the castellers (Catalan tradition of climbing to create human "castles") as seen from above.

Norma McCorvey and the story of 'Roe vs. Wade'

It’s been a few weeks since Roe vs. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court. It’s been the ideal goal for conservative lawmakers and groups. The case that got it overturned, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, focused on Mississippi’s appeal of a lower court ruling that struck the state’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy as unconstitutional. In Mississippi’s appeal to the Supreme Court, the state’s district attorney asked the court not only to uphold its abortion ban but to overturn Roe vs. Wade. This marks the first time that the U.S has taken away a constitutional right entirely. The overturning got me wondering: Who was the woman who accomplished Roe vs. Wade in the first place?

Norma McCorvey, the woman ‘Jane Roe’ at the crucial center of abortion rights, had flaws, as everyone does. In 1969 she became pregnant a third time and simply wanted an abortion. According to the NY Times, ‘‘‘McCorvey, a young single woman in Dallas, gave no thought to the fight for reproductive rights. She was barely getting by as a waitress, had twice given birth to children placed for adoption, and simply wanted an abortion. She later lied about getting pregnant, saying she had been raped. When, more than a decade later, she came clean and wished to join the movement she had come to represent in earnest, its leaders denied her a meaningful part in their protests and rallies. ‘I think they’re embarrassed,” McCorvey told Texas Monthly in 1993, ‘They would like me to be college-educated, with poise and little white gloves.’’

Because of the fall of Roe, over 13 states in the United States have trigger laws that were put in place to go into effect, and it marks the first time in the country’s history that the Court has taken away a constitutional right, not to mention many abortion clinics across the country have closed down. But this isn’t the end: large companies like Disney, Meta, Apple Zillow, Buzzfeed, Amazon, Levi’s, etc., have offered compensation for their employees who seek abortion procedures. Dozens of elected prosecutors from over 29 states, territories, and Washington D.C, have released a statement, ‘‘We decline to use our office’s resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions….Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice; prosecutions should not be a part of that.’’

This video occurred in March, and I think it’s important to hear from an actual doctor. When studying anthropology in school, I was taught to be unbiased and objective, which I tried to do in my past articles. But I cannot keep my objectivity, knowing many women across the states cannot get a safe abortion, especially as this doctor explains in the video, will continue to happen whether or not they are considered legal. Norma McCorvey may not have meant to start the fight for abortion rights when she decided to find lawyers, it is important to know that she started the fight, and it will continue to pave historically on!

Who would be Nico?

I’m sorry but

can we

make

Doctor Chase from House

An older

Will Solace??

I mean just

Look

at

him!

The Study of Creation Stories

In every culture on Earth, people make up creation origins. I say origins because I am aware that many people still believe in their individual God, OR gods, and therefore, in their own creation origins. The purpose of these stories is is to reassure us, humans, that we are not alone, that we were created to have some purpose, and that there was a reason we are alive here today. Creation myths exist because every culture has one, and that is to say that some individuals created us for a reason. Creation myths can influence how the history of the world or society is viewed by the type of story the creation myth has originated from, based on how the society is living.

NO. 2

Some of the similarities among these creation myths are that in the beginning, the world is dark, but some deity or animal comes and sets the world with light and color. The deity sets to work and makes the world with animals, man, mountains, rivers, etc. In the Aboriginal Creation Origin, an endless tall pole is coming out from the ground and emerges from the land in the time before time. At the end of the pole, Ka-ro-ra, the Creator God was the one who was sleeping at the end of the pole. Ka-ro-ra produces sons by dreaming of them, searching for fruit. The Greeks made it so that the Earth was a battleground, devoid of life from the early battle of the gods, until the titan Prometheus created humans out of clay, modeling them in the shape of the gods. Except that leads to the horrible end for him, when he asked the king, Zeus for fire. As most people know, Prometheus was chained to a rock with an eagle to pick out of his liver for all eternity for stealing fire to give to the humans.

NO. 3

Creation stories are entertaining to hear, regardless if you believe them or not. Before modern technology, people only had their imagination and word of mouth to get them through the day. That’s why archeologists deduced early humans’ cave drawings and stories as ways that show that they were there, that they should be remembered and celebrated. Each creation's origin story is designed with each society's culture and views in mind. In the Inca myth, it mentions planting and plowing fields, which is what the men do, and the art of weaving and cooking, which is what the women do. Each person comes together, pro-creates, and teaches this to their children, and the cycle repeats.

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-land-and-natural-resources-protect-pololu-valley

I saw this on Tiktok and thought it needed to be passed on. Pololū Valley is sacred land currently at risk of being developed into yet another "scenic tourist attraction" for profit. Activists like @/melemaikalanimakalapua on Tiktok are fighting to have this petition seen by as many people as possible in order to prevent the senseless destruction of this land.

Note that the petition says not to donate to change.org--donations to change.org do NOT protect Pololū Valley.

I hope that by spreading this to tumblr, I can help it reach more people. Please sign this and reblog it if you can!

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-land-and-natural-resources-protect-pololu-valley