Spring Break
Letter to the Editor
Issue date: 4/6/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
K.C. Vetter's article on history causes me to ask, with a look of incredulity, if said writer was used as a lawn dart as a child.
This article was incredibly written, in a very poor manner, by an individual who could not have written this article had they taken a history course on this campus. This leaves either total ignorance of the subject, which if that is the case it should not have been written on, or some type of mental injury picked up in youth.
Let us counter the points made: What does Caesar look like? It is true that there were no photographs for that time period, considering cameras did not exist until roughly the 1800s.
A quick check with Dr. Brice would have informed the writer of the marble statues, the busts of his head and the plethora of coins with his face on them from that time period as being a good indicator as to what he looked like.
How about Jesus? We know he was not a bedtime story; again, turning to Dr. Brice would have shown the writer that we have other sources from that time period to corroborate with the Bible, which was itself a compilation of works of several individuals, to prove that he was a real person.
After all, books have existed far longer than the time of the Boston Tea Party. We find documents as far back as 300 BCE. Go figure. As for the dinosaurs, it is not historians who determine what dinosaurs did, looked or acted like. That falls to paleontology, which, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, "incorporates knowledge from biology, geology, ecology, anthropology, archaeology and even computer science to understand the processes that have led to the origination and eventual destruction of the different types of organisms since life arose." A word to Vetter: next time, check your sources ... or better yet, actually find some! Use Google.
Maybe that "library" thing. Don't use Wikipedia. Make use of the excellent history department here on campus. They would have stopped you from suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.
- Jared Brokaw
This article was incredibly written, in a very poor manner, by an individual who could not have written this article had they taken a history course on this campus. This leaves either total ignorance of the subject, which if that is the case it should not have been written on, or some type of mental injury picked up in youth.
Let us counter the points made: What does Caesar look like? It is true that there were no photographs for that time period, considering cameras did not exist until roughly the 1800s.
A quick check with Dr. Brice would have informed the writer of the marble statues, the busts of his head and the plethora of coins with his face on them from that time period as being a good indicator as to what he looked like.
How about Jesus? We know he was not a bedtime story; again, turning to Dr. Brice would have shown the writer that we have other sources from that time period to corroborate with the Bible, which was itself a compilation of works of several individuals, to prove that he was a real person.
After all, books have existed far longer than the time of the Boston Tea Party. We find documents as far back as 300 BCE. Go figure. As for the dinosaurs, it is not historians who determine what dinosaurs did, looked or acted like. That falls to paleontology, which, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, "incorporates knowledge from biology, geology, ecology, anthropology, archaeology and even computer science to understand the processes that have led to the origination and eventual destruction of the different types of organisms since life arose." A word to Vetter: next time, check your sources ... or better yet, actually find some! Use Google.
Maybe that "library" thing. Don't use Wikipedia. Make use of the excellent history department here on campus. They would have stopped you from suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.
- Jared Brokaw
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