Disgruntled workers acting out in acts of violence and assassination. A greedy author looking to make a quick buck by exploiuting terrorism. Tensions between groups of people including the repeated persecution of one by the other. Sound familiar? Sound new? Not hardly. This all took place during the turn of the twentieth century.
Clymer explains that terrorism is not new in America. Workers revolting against their bosses and the system that held them down blew up railway cars and buildings. Supporters of prosecuted miners assassinated the Governor of Idaho. The Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886 caused widespread panic. Beause the culprit and the motive were never determined, the… Read more
Throwdown is simply a wonderful inside view on what being a Mixed Martial Artist takes and how difficult it is to fight these guys. If you lay off the offense for a moment, your character taps out. if you want to force a KO on your opponent you have to work at it strenuously. Violence is not the major factor here. MMA combat is no more violent than boxing or hockey and nobody is trying to ban those sports. Throwdown accurately portrays MMA as a cross between wrestling and boxing. It has the strikes and strategy of Boxing's hard punches and wrestling's trategic grappling and joint locking. Each character has a specialty and a weakness, just like the real thing. However, because the GameCube… Read more
Gaddis examines the nature of history and the function of historians through a wide range of metaphors. By putting forth the question: How long is the British coast line? Gaddis immediately sets out that if we measure in miles we won't get to the alcoves and cubbyholes and we'll probably end up with a nice round number. If we measure in microns and millimeters, it'll take a while but we'll measure every single bend and dog leg and we'll have a much larger number. Many of Gaddis' metaphors spur philosophical discussions but he does not approach them with a philosophical background, instead he sets out to solve a functional question: What is history? Is it a natural science? If it is, then… Read more
