Lennart Regebro

2,117 reputation

113

bio	website	regebro.wordpress.com
	location	Kraków, Poland
	age	46
visits	member for	1 year, 7 months
	seen	Mar 31 at 14:04
stats	profile views	52

Python 3 developer and entrepreneur, author of Porting to Python 3.

All your Python 3 needs fulfilled! Python, Plone, small and large.

regebro@gmail.com

	2,117 reputation	bio	website	regebro.wordpress.com	visits	member for	1 year, 7 months
113 badges		location	Kraków, Poland		seen	Mar 31 at 14:04

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Mar 31	revised	How much tax did Romans pay? added 153 characters in body
Mar 31	comment	How much tax did Romans pay? The difference is who gets the money.
Feb 8	comment	Why are many African nations poor? @jwenting: Yes. But the existence of some tribal warfare of a fiefdom level does not warrant calling the state of pre-colonial Africa "perpetual tribal warfare". That's just a "Yes, but do you have a flag" attitude. youtube.com/watch?v=b6RhIx6US6Q
Feb 8	comment	Why are many African nations poor? @jwenting Calling the precolonial state "perpetual tribal warfare" is just another myth, I'm afraid. There was some massive and quite advanced civilizations in Africa before colonization. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kingdoms_in_pre-colonial_Africa Sure there was a lot of war between the kingdoms, but the same is just as true for Europe. From that point of view the conflicts in Europe after the wall fell is just a reverting to the state of perpetual tribal warfare in Europe. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
Feb 7	comment	Why are many African nations poor? Really, seriously: The main reasons for poverty are war, socialism and diseases. Colonialism has not been a significant cause of any of the wars, socialism or diseases in Africa the last 30 years. And 30 years is all you need to get out of this kind of abject poverty. Yes, Africa is slowly doing it, country by country. But that was not the question. The question was not "can they do it (yes)" or "are they doing it (yes, partly)", but "Why are some not doing it". If you don't understand my answer, I can maybe explain in chat or something.
Feb 7	comment	Why are many African nations poor? @RISwampYankee: I never said that Africa is stuck in poverty. In fact I've repeatedly pointed out that the problems are fixable. The "divving" up is another read herring. Saying the Asian tigers only emerged in the last 50 years is like saying that they only emerged after colonialism ended. Well, duh! Some areas of Africa was indeed treated astonishingly brutally by colonial masters. But China was treated just as brutally by communist masters and Cambodia even more so. That's again just a red herring.
Feb 7	comment	Why are many African nations poor? @astabada Thirdly, I did not ignore it. Read what I wrote again.
Feb 7	comment	Why are many African nations poor? @astabada Firstly: That's only obvious if your reasoning is circular. Secondly: I can ignore it as it's not a major reason. The three reasons I wrote above are the major reasons. You are saying (with no argumentation as to why) that colonialism somehow caused these to still go on in Africa, but not in Asia, even though they happened also in Europe with no colonialism. And even if colonialism was a cause of these three issues, then it would still be secondary to those issues. It is also nothing that can be fixed, while these three issues, which are real and existing now can be fixed.
Feb 7	comment	Why are many African nations poor? @astabada: To claim that African nations trying out socialism is a consequence of colonialism is what is astonishing. Most of America and Asia was also colonialised, in Asia's case its freedom from colonialism came at the same time as Africa's. Yet most of Asia, with a few exceptions, have now shed these problems and have risen or are rising out of poverty with an astonishing speed. If colonialism was the problem, then Asia and Africa would have the same problem as they both suffered colonialism. So that theory is obviously completely wrong. You can't blame colonialism any longer.
Dec 18	revised	What is the basis for the claims that the word “Israel” means “Exiled for their sins”? added 4 characters in body
Nov 11	comment	How did the monks whose job was to copy books react to Gutenberg's printing press? I have no sources, so not an answer: The church as a whole welcomed the press as a way to get cheaper books and hence spread the word of god. What the monks that did the copying did think about it I don't know. The illuminators still had plenty of job decorating printed bibles in the beginning so I'd guess they were happy with it.
Oct 11	awarded	Yearling
Oct 10	comment	What are the counterarguments to calling German nazism a right-wing movement? @SteelyDan: You are trying to get out of my critique by absurdly calling Stalinists "right-wing". That's of course complete nonsense, of the kind libertarians use when they call Nazis "left-wing". The global consensus is that Nazis are right-wing, and Stalinists left-wing. If you are so attached to the words "left" or "right" that you can't accept that, then this is your problem. You clearly presented a left-wing system that want to empower the state.
Aug 15	comment	Mountain flags from Batman Begins @T.E.D.: Then reasonably the question should be about Tibetan Prayer flags, not "The flags in Batman begins" which may have historical relevance or may not.
Jul 23	comment	Literacy in the classical world @Charles: Well, we know the literacy was high in the army. So out of a population of around 4 million, the army was around 16 thousand. That's 0.4%. If 80% of those were literate (probably way too high) that gives 0.3% of the population, plus some of their wifes, plus some of the non-military elite, becomes 0.5%. :-) I don't think anyone seriously argues that it was that low, but that's the absolute minimum that we can conclude from the tablets. But anything closer than saying "Somewhere between 1% and 10%" is probably more accurate than what we can say for sure. It's just guessing, really.
Jul 23	comment	Are there any existing foreign language teaching texts from the Ancient Near East? @user207442: I doubt they had any notion of linguistic categories. That came when people started studying both Europan and Indian languages in the 17th century, noticing similarities. Ancient people did often have formal grammars, though. Latin being probably the most well known example. I don't know how, if at all, they taught each other foreign languages. It's quite possible that you only learnt it by going there and using it. Language schools seems unheard of before Latin Grammar schools in the 16th century.
Jul 23	comment	Literacy in the classical world The Vindolanda tablets doesn't contradict the 5-10% figure in any way. They are mostly official, and written by scribes or the military class.
Jul 22	revised	At what point did mapmaking begin to accurately reflect what we now know about the earth? added 369 characters in body; added 95 characters in body
Jul 22	comment	At what point did mapmaking begin to accurately reflect what we now know about the earth? @dotancohen: I don't think it did. For that you have to rely on less accurate methods. And that actually reminds me of another important breakthrough, which I'll add to the answer.
Jul 22	comment	Was residual animism partially responsible for Hitler's rise? I don't think they actually claim that the Germans worshiped pagan gods "in the dark", but rather that there was a strong pagan residual element of their culture. For more clear examples, see Sweden, where you dance around a phallic symbol at midsummer etc. But yeah, that this would have anything to do with Hitlers rise to power is obviously complete nonsense.