Posted on 12/16/2023 3:28:02 AM PST by 11th_VA
On the evening of Dec. 16, 1773, a crowd of armed men, some allegedly wearing costumes meant to disguise them as Native American warriors, boarded three ships docked at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston. In the vessels’ holds were 340 chests containing 92,000 pounds of tea, the most popular drink in America. With support from the patriot group known as the Sons of Liberty, the intruders methodically searched the ships and dumped their tea into Boston Harbor.
According to the British East India Company, whose proprietors owned the destroyed cargo, losses totaled more than a million dollars in today’s currency.
The “destruction of the tea” – as the Boston Tea Party was originally called – was the pivotal event in the coming of the American Revolution. Before Dec. 16, a peaceful resolution to American objections to Parliament’s repeated attempts to tax the Colonies without their consent seemed possible. Afterward, both British and American Colonial positions hardened. Within a year, Britain and America were at war.
An attack on private property
Because it was an attack on private property, the Tea Party offended many patriots in America. When George Washington learned what had happened, he made clear he disapproved of “destroying the tea.”
Benjamin Franklin so disliked the action that he offered to pay for the East India Company’s losses himself. Samuel Adams, assumed by both his peers and modern historians to be one of the Tea Party’s organizers, never admitted to being involved.
The original multinational conglomerate
Given the importance that Americans attached to property rights, why were Boston patriots willing to take such a calculated risk? The answer was the corrupt bargain that Lord North, the British prime minister, struck with the East India Company during the spring of 1773…
(Excerpt) Read more at theconversation.com ...
Thanks! And good work!
Some of my favorite Three Stooges shorts were the ones they did at the beginning of WW2 (way before Americas entrance into the war) ridiculing Hitler and the Nazis.
Do you look at methodologies when you peruse a poll?
I do.
That’s why I don’t believe polls.
Very interesting! I’m familar with Libravox.
You must have a good voice.
I recorded a chapter or two of s book for my nephew for his boy scouts project and with my Boston accent I sound like JFK when reading.
The book on Warren sounds like a good one! I’ll try to find it or just listen!
bump
Not only did the British over-reaction to the Boston Tea Party lead to the American Revolution, but the effects of the tea party influenced the 1988 election. The Bush campaign made an issue of the fact that Boston harbor was still polluted so many years later (Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts and the Democrat nominee that year).
Oh, I don’t believe in polls at all. I do look at the “internals” of polls when I really care about them, but generally, I simply don’t care about them.
Some I give a fundamental chance of being “more” reliable, and some I give “no” chance of being reliable.
But I think ALL polls are a masturbatory process for those who commission them and for those who actually believe in them.
The root of it is, that people simply are not reliable or truthful, no matter the methodology. That isn’t saying they are dishonest-there are just so many thought processes and psychological processes that pipe into what they say, ranging from wanting to please the poll taker to refusing to even talk to poll takers (as I do) for any number of reasons, which further concentrates the invalidity of the poll taking process by skewing it right off the bat.
But they have a living to make, as do the people who commission them...and the people who actually believe them.
In my post, I used a number from a random poll I saw recently, though I often calculate these by the seat of my pants.
I often use the Rule of Thirds, because I believe it has validity in many applications as a rule of thumb. For example, in the American Revolutionary War, one third were Tories, one third were Patriots, and on third were people who simply didn’t care and didn’t want to be involved. It isn’t exact, but it serves as a semi-valid framework from which an opinion may be constructed.
In my example, I just used 37% because it was a real example. I could have used 33% to the same end! But I do believe that mechanism is much the same.
Hahahahahaha...when you said you thought you sounded like JFK, and I suspect from reading some of your posts in the past, that you are old enough to remember Vaughn Meader, the guy who had a hit comedy record doing voice impressions of the Kennedys in the White House...:). It made me laugh to think of it.
I thought my voice would be better, but I think with a little more experience, it will be better. I need to pitch it correctly...to me, it is a bit too nasally.
The other three major problems I observe in my own dictation (now that I have listened to it all the way through from end to end) is that I am speaking too loud, there is no dynamic range to my voice, and I can hear physical interactions where I touch the table or keyboard.
In my next book (which may be about John Hancock) I plan to fix these three problems:
The first two issues, the loudness and the lack of dynamic range are, I think connected. And I think they are both due to the fact I had my microphone a between one and two feet away from my mouth. If I get the microphone up to an inch or two away from my mouth (and put a foam baffle over it) I think it will greatly improve the quality of the reading. (I think because if I get it close to my mouth, I can turn the microphone gain WAY down, which should increase the quality of the recording. (I think-I am not educated in this nor an authority on these things, but I feel pretty confident those things are involved)
Secondly, I have to get a boom stand for my microphone. This will not only get rid of the annoying booming sound when I touched the keyboard or table, but will also let me get the microphone close to my mouth.
On the positive side, I really enjoyed constructing the phrasing and enunciating the words. I can say it was a surprise to me how much I had to concentrate in order to enunciate words correctly. I would tend to slur or even lisp over parts of words if I didn’t concentrate on it.
Worst of all, and most frustrating, is that the phraseology and vocabulary is a bit archaic. Archaic enough that some things just didn’t fit my accustomed patterns of speech, and as a result, I would trip over something or stutter. But I got better at it.
I plan to do more of this kind of thing, and I want to get better. I am an avid consumer of audiobooks, I have somewhere between 500 and 1000, and began listening because around the age of 50, my already terrible eyesight became worse to the point I can barely read a book. After just a few minutes of reading, my eyes begin to water and burn, and I cannot concentrate. I have had eye exams, spent thousands of dollars on eyeglasses, used eyedrops, but...I simply don’t read as much. I used to read constantly.
Anyway, I began listening to audiobooks, and I have heard enough of them to give me the conceit that I can tell in an instant if a reader is good or bad. I think I know what a good reading sounds like...I just can’t deliver it fully just yet.
I did find something that seemed odd to me, though-I have always felt reading (especially reading aloud) was the gold standard for implanting information inside the head. I am sure it is for me, and I know others that I think it is true for as well. Perhaps not universal. So, I was excited to read this book aloud, thinking I would retain it better and have it at my fingertips more readily.
I was humorously discouraged to find out, after reading the book aloud over the course of a year, that I retained very little from it. I have concluded I don’t have a good multitasking brain-I was so caught up in the technical aspect of enunciating, reading, and recording, that I wholly neglected to absorb any of it! I was quite surprised by that as well.
If you listen, I wouldn’t mind feedback. And you don’t have to be diplomatic, either...:)
I need to get better.
Thank you....for capturing, on audio, this amazing time in history.
Bookmarking!!
I am planning to do another one, and I want to do better, so criticism (if you do indeed listen to it) is something I would gratefully welcome!
No discussion as to WHY England needed the taxes .....
To send to Ukraine.
🙃
Thx for posting this history lesson/reminder :)
Sure!
Would be happy to offer any ideas/feedback.
Alriiiight!
I’m 48 so I had to look up Vaughn Meader.
I’m not surprised you’re not retaining the information you’re reading aloud. You’re brain is concentrating on the words and your diction, etc.
My voice wouldn’t work for something like this, unless it was played to encourage lemmings to go cliff-diving. :^) So, I’m not sure I’d have much useful feedback to contribute. :^o
Hahahaha...I know-hearing my own voice played back to me is alien...it doesn’t “sound” like me!
There were a lot of reasons. The colonists in some of the colonies passed laws against slaving, and the Empire vetoed those laws preventing their going into effect.
More than a location, Green Dragon or otherwise, America needs more people willing to show up. Otherwise you just have a nice location, but its empty.
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