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REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER

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The following narrative is from The Year of Lear : Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro  (2015, Simon & Schuster, New York) The Masque On the evening of January 5, 1606, the first Sunday of the new year, six hundred or so of the nation's elite made their way through London's dark streets to the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace ... With their dazzling staging, elegant verse, gorgeous costumes, concert-quality music, and choreographed dancing ― overseen by the most talented artists in the land ― masques under the new king were beyond extravagant, costing an unbelievable sum of three thousand pounds or more for a single performance ... Though it would have been impossible to tell from reading a contemporary account of that evening's masque, exactly two months earlier most of those who gathered to see it were almost killed in what we would now call a terrorist attack, one that had been prevented at the last moment. A group of disaffected Catholic gentry had plotted to b...
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The Thucydides Trap

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1st Lt A.Y.  Soderstrom USAF, 2021, 'Direct Military Conflict with China May Not Happen―and Why There Are Worse Outcomes', Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs , 152-156   ARGUMENT "Thucydides originally wrote about the Peloponnesian War between Athens, the rising power, and Sparta, the hegemonic power. As Athens continued expanding its empire, Sparta became afraid for its independence and position. The war became inevitable once fear was so deeply instilled in Sparta. With China being a rising power and the United States being a current hegemonic power, it seems that war could be a high possibility. If media outlets keep spreading misinformation or twisting facts, a fear may be deeply instilled in either country, leading to war involving direct military conflict. However, in Ancient Greece, warfare was done [ONLY] by direct military conflict. They did not conduct cyberattacks, have nuclear weapons, or other means short of war that may not be as personal as bombs leveling build...
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I am not drunk so much as tired

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  A DRUNK MAN LOOKS AT THE THISTLE  By Hugh M'Diarmid AN INTERLINEAR Scots―English VERSION based on the  William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh & London, 1926 edition (The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hathitrust Digital Library) (1)   A Drunk Man    p1 v1; p4 vv24-25; p5 v27. I amna' fou' sae muckles as tired ― deid dune. I am not 'full' [drunk] so much as tired ― dead done [exhausted]. It's gey and hard wark' coupin gless for gless It is great and very hard work matching [keeping up, tilting up] glass for glass Wi' Cruivie and Gilsanquhar and the like With [personal name] and [personal name] and the other drinkers, And I'm no' juist as bauld as aince I wes. And I am no longer as bold ['fierce', youthfull] as I once was. .................. But that's aside the point! I've got fair waun'ert . But that is beside the point! I have got quite 'wandered' [uncertain of my whereabouts,                   ...
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"But Aye Be Whaur Extremes Meet"

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'But I be where extremes meet' Hugh MacDiarmid in A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle  (1926) "Hugh MacDiarmid came into being in 1922 [Christopher Murray Grieve having in 1922 adopted the pseudonym 'Hugh MacDiarmid']: the year, as is often noted, in which James Joyce's Ulysses  was first published in book form, in which T.S Eliot's The Waste Land  first appeared, and which saw the first publication of Virginia Woolfe's first novel in her mature modernist style, Jacob's Room ".  (D. Goldie, 2011, The Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmid ) "His adoption of the Scots language [Lowland Scots, as distinct from Highland Gaelic]   in 1922   was a turning from the language of Empire, globally spoken English, to the language of some sections of a tiny country [a deliberate swerve into linguistic oddity]; it was at least as much a movement towards the unpopular [a move into inaccessibility] as it was a gesture of identification with his own people ....
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The Bonney Upwelling

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  BONNEY UPWELLING A clear explanation of this impressive natural phenomenon is provided at the bluewhalestudy site:      "Driven by wind, the process of upwelling draws deep, nutrient-rich, cold water upwards toward the ocean's surface, replacing the warmer, usually nutrient-depleted, surface water. The nutrients in upwelled water are derived from marine organisms (both plant and animal) dying and sinking to the ocean floor. These nutrients are most abundant near coasts and river outlets, but may be conveyed by currents great distances along the ocean floor to be upwelled far from their source.      When upwelled nutrients meet sunlight near the surface, minute phytoplankton (plant-like cells) 'bloom', turning the ocean green and providing a vital food source for a range of animals from krill (a type of zooplankton) to small schooling fish. These feed larger animals including rock lobster, giant crabs, fish (including commercial species), squid, seabi...
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The Ancient Port of BYBLOS

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       "The promontory of Jbeil on the northern coast of Lebanon, squeezed between the mountains and the sea, was the place where from the 7th millennium BCE a human community of fisherman and agriculturalists gave rise to one of the most durable settlements of the Levant." The Egyptians called it Kepny  (kpn), the Mesopotamian empires referred to  Gubla (Akkadian), and neighbouring Phoenicians knew it as Gebal  ( gbl). These names probably stem from the root-syllables gib  meaning 'well' and el or 'god', after a deep fresh-water well in the centre of the headland. There was a Bronze Age temple constructed immediately west of this vital resource. The ancient site is more commonly named Byblos , after its Greco-Roman title, and follows the Greek word for 'papyrus'. The city became famous for its importation of this original paper-making reed from the Nile River in Egypt and then distributing the precious rolls all over the Mediterranean. This corre...
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