This is the collection of the Top 10 questions that we want answered at EarthChronicle.com,
The 10 Most Wanted...
1. Food
Trace the popularity of French high (formal?) cuisine from its origin through the present.
Give special attention to its rise as an international fashion.
2. Daily Life
What was housing like in various cultures and at different social conditions?
(e.g. Pliny the Younger describes his Roman upper class villa in his letters)
3. Institutional
Italy was the center of Roman civilization. When the Renaissance emerged, it flowed from
Italy a full hundred years before it truly penetrated the rest of Europe. However, Italy
had dropped from the forefront of powers (even in Europe), was by now hopelessly fragmented,
and ruled (if by anyone) by a series of its most depraved and grasping Popes. What factors
allowed Italy to generate a movement so culturally advanced, despite it's political
collapse. How did it bring Europe back into the front echelon of civilizations and poised to
become the dominant culture that would colonize the globe?
4. Military
Trace the inter-tribal wars of Genghis Khan prior to the unification of
the tribes in 1206AD. How did the Mongol military evolve
after it embarked on its international campaigns all the way through the death of
Timur-i-Leng in 1405AD. How did it stay the same as before all the tribes were unified and how did
international war transform it?
5. Literature
Trace evidence in Bram Stoker�s notes, letters, or general background that would indicate his
vampire was named as a sick joke. Historical research has consistently failed in its attempts to
equate Stoker�s vampire in any meaningful way with the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes �the
Impaler� Voivode of Wallachia. Most attempts have limited themselves to speculating that Stoker
merely liked the sound of the name, Dracula, and there the connection ends. Yet it seems more
than coincidence, and perhaps black humor that Stoker�s creature of the night (which is only
stopped by impaling it with a wooden stake) is named after the most infamous impaler
in European history.
6. Sports
Why is the most famous and popular sport in the entire world, football, so casually disregarded
and pathetically played by the US which musters world class talent in almost every other major
sport? What programs (not teams) in the world today are truly world class and what do they do
that makes them successful, both institutionally in how they groom and select the teams that
compete internationally and what drills and techniques in everything from ball handling to
match strategy make them the world�s best.
7. Physics
Many of the newest interpretations of the quantum mechanics of time suggest that time does
not exist. What is the mechanism that causes us to think it does, why does it seem so
obvious? What other interpretations, leave open a possibility for the existence of time in
some form that closely resembles our experience? What are the problems with these
interpretations that many physicists find the elimination of time less disturbing?
8. Industrial
Mr. ????�s timing studies in the early 1900s were considered one of the monumental adaptations
of the scientific method and a major development in the history of industry. What kinds of
studies are performed in modern industrial and commercial enterprises?
9. Political
Trace the history of campaigning in the US with attention to the divisiveness of presidential
contests. Recent politics has left many feeling that politicians are less civil to one another,
yet instances like the Tilden-Hayes affair, Lincoln�s two elections, and the use of the
newspapers by candidates in the early 1800s suggest these were also uncivilized times. Was
there ever an Era of Good Feelings during a presidential campaign? How divisive have
various elections been? How are US elections similar to and different
from those of other nations? In what ways have polarization ultimately helped
or hurt these countries?
10. Historical
Excluding Egypt, the history of Africa (especially Western, Eastern, and Southern Africa)
is not covered deeply in most textbooks. How did these areas develop? For the sake of a good
argument ;), what era had Africa reached when it�s indepedent development was
interrupted by the Europeans. Formative? Medieval?
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