A few weeks ago, I posted a brief and trivial comment on pizza, which set off a longer discussion that ended up in private messaging on the question of artificial intelligence. I have edited, revised, condensed. I begin with the initial post.
Pisa helped the maritime cities in Southern Italy to resist Saracen attacks. As early as 828 Pisan vessels were raiding North Africa and in 871 they defended Salerno Her ships fought them in Calabria in the 10th century and drove the infidels out of Reggio in Calabria.
The death of Simpson brought it all back for a moment, and I recall how uncomfortable felt when I gave people my “take” on the murders. Now it is your turn.
If the most popular legend of its founding had any validity, Pisa would have been originally a Greek colony, founded by people from Elis in the Peloponnesus, who named it after their own Pisa, the nearest town to the site of the Olympic Games.
In Pisa every year on the last Saturday in June, two groups of representatives from the different areas of the city meet at either end of the Ponte di Mezzo. The representatives are dressed in Medieval garb and divided into two teams, one for the north side of the river, the other for the south.
The creation of the city-commune in Pisa, Lucca, Siena, and Florence would have enormous ramifications for the future of the Europe. The institution of the commune is a more fundamental revolution than the establishment of the nation-state, and it will outlive the nation-state, in whose birth it played a significant part.
This essay on George Garret appeared in a special volume of the Texas Review devoted to Garret.
With the death of Henry II (1024), the male line of the Saxon Emperors failed entirely. His successor Conrad II, was a Franconian or Salian Frank who traced his descent from the daughter of Otto I.
A Federal judge in Illinois has ruled that an illegal immigrant has the right to own and carry a firearm
