LEONARDO DICAPRIO ON MARTIN SCORSESE AND DE NIRO

Don't Study Too Much History - No One Will Understand Your References When You Talk

The other day, I noted that one of my neighbors down the block had a garage door open and some ping-pong table set up. I asked them; "are you inviting over some Chinese to do a little international diplomacy and negotiation?" They laughed with me because they understood the reference. The reality is not many would, a good number of younger people in our society were not around when Nixon was president, or they didn't follow the news recently when Warren Buffett went to Asia and played table tennis as part of an international business affair.

One thing I found is that if you study history too much, and if you know too much about it, you are liable to catch people off guard who don't understand those references. They might think you are weird, or even strange, they won't understand what on earth you are talking about. Does this mean we shouldn't study history; because no one will understand the references we talk? No, I think you should study history, and it's unfortunate that more people don't. If they didn't understand the references, but they probably wouldn't make the same mistakes over and over that humans often make.

The pattern doesn't always repeat itself, but all too often it does, history really does repeat, but if you don't study your history, or if you study a false history with politically correct blinders, then I would say that old quote is correct; "you are doomed to repeat." Maybe more people should use such references when they have intellectual conversations in public, and maybe more people who don't understand what they're talking about might ask, maybe in that way we can transfer information to others and subsequent generations can learn from us.

It might be difficult to explain a historical reference in 145 characters in a tweet, but it's not impossible to do in one-on-one conversation, you can learn a lot when you study history, or when you talk to someone who has, even better someone who's lived through it. In fact, you learn more when you talk to people who have lived through it, lived to tell about it, and came back with personal lessons and personal perspectives because of it. It changes the way we live in the future of our society in so many ways.

With all of this said, it doesn't make sense to make people look stupid in public because they don't know what you're talking about, often attorneys do this, and esoteric university professors. It's probably why people don't like to talk to them very much. But everyone likes to hear a story, and when we hear stories we tend to remember them better, sometimes better than even our own history. Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on the Future of Education. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net

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The Myth of the Loch Ness Monster - Science Verses Legend

1400 years ago, so legends of Ancient Scotland claim, St Columbia encountered a giant sea monster living in Loch Ness' waters. This previously unknown local legend suddenly entered the public arena when a new road was built on the northern shore of the Loch in 1933, providing open views of the waters. Nessie sightings, as views of the friendly or not so friendly monster became known, then proliferated and drew international attention.

Series of Failed Proofs and Evidences

In 1933, the Daily Mail took advantage of the Nessie craze and hired Marmaduke Wetherell, a famous hunter, to travel to the loch, investigate the sightings and find the monster. He did not find the monster. But in December 1933, he did locate tracks-enormous footprints on the shore of the Loch leading to the water. However, the Natural History Museum sent a team of researchers to examine the tracks, and they found that the footprints were from a dried hippopotamus foot! That was pretty amazing in itself, but wasn't proof of the Loch Ness Monster.

A few months later, a respectable British surgeon, Colonel Robert Wilson, claimed that he was able to take an actual photo of the monster. He says he was driving along the new road on April 19, 1934, when he noticed something moving in the water. He had a camera with him, so he quickly stopped the car and snapped a photo. The photo showed the slender neck of a serpent rising out of the Loch. For decades, this photo-dubbed as the "Surgeon's Photo"-was considered to be the evidence of the monster's existence.

However, a kybosh was put on this evidence when Stewart Campbell analyzed the photo in 1984. He claimed that the object in the water was only two or three feet long, and concluded that it was a marine bird not the head of the Monster. Nonetheless, Campbell was also wrong. The object in the water was nothing more than a mere toy submarine outfitted with a sea serpent head. This was revealed in 1994 when Christian Spurling, Wilson's stepson, confessed his involvement in a plot involving both Wetherell and Colonel Wilson to create the infamous photo.

Wishful Thinking

Finally, the series of failed attempts at proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster came to an end 10 years ago on July 27, 2003. The remains of a giant sea creature were 'discovered' again in Scotland's Loch Ness, but instead of praising this discovery as evidence, scientists have finally concluded it to be a hoax.

The making of the BBC's television documentary, "Searching for the Loch Ness Monster", involved the scanning of the shoreline from top and to bottom to search for Nessie, or traces of her if she was breathing. The scientists used 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to ensure that not a single portion of the Loch was missed. The team surveyed the waters, and although the team did find a buoy moored several meters below the surface as a test for the equipment, in the end, no Loch Ness monster was found. Finally on July 27, 2003, the BBC finally concluded the Loch Ness Monster to be a hoax.

The BBC team claim went further. It held that that mythical monsters such as Loch Ness' own are an example of wishful thinking - when people impose their own interpretations on unexplainable phenomena that they witness. Scientists also say that the only explanation for the persistence of the 'legend' of the monster is that people see what they want to see.

But we can choose whether to accept this science or not. There is room in our imaginations for mythical creatures - in fact we almost seem to crave them. We can believe 100% in the dragons in Eragon or the powers of magic in Harry Potter. And none of the scientific evidence in the world can really put an end to a good story!

Melinda J - really Melinda Jones - is Editor in Chief of Salute the Day - Mango Salute's Magazine about celebrating global cultures, religions and justice. Check out our daily magazine at http://salutetheday.mangosalute.com. We connect people through stories & art and sell fully customizable art to make into greeting cards. Visit our site to join the conversation and to use our card wizard or send an express card. Both are created online but sent by us through the mail - with a video that you make or upload.

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Reevaluation of the Shakespeare Authorship Question

Challenges to William Shakespeare - the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon - as the author of the famous plays attributed to him began in the middle of the nineteenth century and have continued incessantly ever since. Such challenges to this icon of English literature were not made out of malice, nor were they the result of conspiracy mania. Simply put, the background of Shakespeare, particularly his education, or lack of it, was not conducive to writing some of the most erudite plays in English history.

A search for the real Shakespeare erupted. To date, more than seventy writers of the Elizabethan Era have been proposed as the true author of the Shakespearean canon. Major candidates include the Earl of Oxford, the playwright Christopher Marlowe, and the scientist Sir Francis Bacon. Minor candidates include the aristocrat Sir Walter Raleigh, the linguist John Florio, and Elizabeth I, queen of England. But no evidence in support of any particular candidate is convincing.

Evidence in support of Shakespeare as the author of the plays is likewise not convincing. In other words, there is no evidence that could not have been fabricated by the printers of the real Shakespeare, by literary friends of the real Shakespeare, or by his contacts at the Stationers' Register and in the Royal Court of England. Obviously, the real Shakespeare would have needed friends in all such places, otherwise his use of "William Shakespeare" as a pen name could never have been kept a secret. But justification for royal protection in these circumstances is difficult to imagine. The real Shakespeare may have been an assassination target for reasons unrelated to his innocuous plays.

At this point in time, centuries after the death of all eyewitnesses and after the destruction of any incriminating records (such as school attendance records) that may have existed, convincing evidence is something that can only be found in the plays themselves, the very works that make Shakespeare famous. For example, Shakespeare was born in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, grew up there, married there, had children there, bought a huge house there, retired there, died there, and generally spent lots of time there throughout his life. However, the massive Shakespearean canon makes no mention or allusion to Stratford-upon-Avon at all. If there were so much as a single reference to that town somewhere, anywhere, in the plays or sonnets of Shakespeare, we would have convincing evidence, and there would be no Shakespeare authorship controversy today. Even a mere sonnet dedicated to his wife Anne Hathaway or to his children would have been enough but it is nowhere to be found.

While there is no internal evidence in support of Shakespeare, there is internal evidence that argues against him. For example, the plays of Shakespeare, along with the plays of Marlowe, display direct borrowings from an unusual source: the prophecies of Michel Nostradamus. Thus, ancient names for the north wind, "Boreas" and "Aquilon," the long extinct city of "Memphis," and countless other terms from antiquity, simultaneously appear in the works of Nostradamus, Marlowe, and Shakespeare.

A few examples of this phenomena could of course be a coincidence but such examples are not few and far between. They are huge in number and often spread across two or more lines: words found in close proximity in Nostradamus will likewise appear, as the same words or slight variants thereof, in close proximity in the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare. For example, Nostradamus has "Mercury" and "Hercules" in a single line, and in Shakespeare we find "Mercurial" in one line and "Hercules" in the next line. Once again, this use of Nostradamus for constructive literary purposes is frequent in both Marlowe and Shakespeare.

By and large, the writing careers of Marlowe and Shakespeare are more consecutive than overlapping. The plays of Marlowe are generally attributed to the time frame 1587 to 1593 (death of Marlowe) and the plays of Shakespeare can be attributed to the time frame 1593 (earliest entry in the Stationers' Register) to 1616 (death of Shakespeare, though many plays were first published in 1623). However, it cannot be argued that Shakespeare picked up Nostradamus from Marlowe because there are many instances of Shakespeare borrowing from Nostradamus that are not found in Marlowe. Somehow, they each managed to acquire a copy of the Nostradamus prophecies and then proceeded to make use of those prophecies in exactly the same way. Though such a scenario is theoretical possible, it is not particularly credible.

The Nostradamus connection certainly makes Marlowe (despite his alleged death in 1593) a frontrunner for Shakespearean authorship but is far from proof of that. A visit to France (to acquire a copy of the prophecies), an educational background in the French language (to read the prophecies), or an interest in astrology (underlying theme of the prophecies), cannot be demonstrated for either Marlowe or Shakespeare.

It seems that Marlowe has never been seriously challenged as author of the plays attributed to him because, unlike Shakespeare, he had some verifiable education. But that is going to change. The Nostradamus connection makes it likely that the plays of Marlowe and the plays of Shakespeare were both written by the same person, who had to have been none other than the real Shakespeare. Marlowe - through his work as a spy - had strong ties to the queen's Privy Council, which in turn implies that the real Shakespeare could have fallen under the umbrella of royal protection. And with royal protection, authorship conspiracy becomes possible.

Morten St. George has investigated diverse historical mysteries ranging from the Nazca Lines to the Voynich manuscript. Abundant illustrations of textual equivalencies in Nostradamus, Marlowe, and Shakespeare can be found at Author Conspiracies of the Rose Cross.

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