The Magnificent Seven
Tigerhawk notices that the "new Seven Wonders of the World" chosen by an online poll tallying 100 million people has been criticized by UNESCO, which feels it panel of bureaucrats knows best. And the New Seven Wonders are ...
the Great Wall of China; India's Taj Mahal; the centuries-old pink ruins of Petra in Jordan; the Colosseum in Rome; the statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro; the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru; and the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico
My own personal list would be headed by the Internet, GPS, the Cellphone and Unmanned Vehicles. You can add anything you like afterward. Every day that I get up the power of these human achievements just hits me upside of the head. Maybe we should start a poll that rebuilds the old medieval lists. The New Seven Deadly Sins or the New Seven Pagan and Christian Worthies. Building lists is fun.
posted by wretchardthecat at 7/09/2007 07:04:00 PM
26 Comments:
Oh, please. A bunch of ancient buildings, and not the Internet, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, the Saturn V, the Empire State Building, the Boeing 747, LCD screens, etc., etc., etc.
Is the Age of Chivalry over?
How can there be a list of Natural Wonders without even one piece of good American cheesecake?
If you're wondering why the Internet doesn't make that list, the National Journal has a 5,000 word answer for you. Acording to Carl Cannon, the Web is changing us in rude, crude, socially unattractive ways. That's pretty much it for insight; the rest of the article is devoted to what he would probably call historical context, and what I call sticky note journalism. Maureen Dowd is its most prominent practitioner, but at least her notes-to-self are mercifully brief.
If we're talking great inventions though, the racheted screwdriver would make my personal list.
Chicken McNuggets
Womens wrestling
weed
I woulda thought that the Chicken McNuggets would come after the weed.
Yeah, the Saturn V should definitely be on the list.
On the other hand, that list isn't so bad. All of the listed places/things are pretty well known, and pretty amazing.
I'm not sure I'd include the statue in Rio, or Chichen Itza, though. The Panama Canal would be a better choice than either of those, if you ask me.
I'll second the Panama Canal and the Saturn V.
The water pump. If you can drain coal mines, it's all uphill from there.
English Common Law
Bill of Rights
The United States
The Flush Toilet and modern water sanitation.
The Germ Theory
Radiology
Telecommunications
The United States Constitution
The Printing Press
GPS
The Stock Market
1. The Microprocessor
2. The Internet
3. The Egyptian pyramids
4. The Chunnel
5. The Panama Canal
6. The Great Wall of China
7. The United States Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights
(not necessarily in that order)
Here's mine:
1. A plaque that reads, "Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind."
2. Constitution of the United States + Bill of Rights (concur with above).
3. A) "On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems," 1931, Kurt Goedel; B) "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," 1936, Alan Turing; C) "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," 1948, Claude Shannon -- all leading to computers, modern communication, and internet.
4. The King James Bible.
5. "Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery," 1867, Joseph Lister. (concur with above)
6. "On the Origin of Species," 1859, Charles Darwin.
7. "Annus Mirabilis Papers," 1905, Albert Einstein.
Runner Ups:
21st Amendment to the United States Constitution
Sistine Chapel
Great Wall of China
Collected Works of William Shakespeare
Faust I & II, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Large Hadron Collider, CERN
Printing Press
""Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (The 95 Theses)," 1517, Martin Luther
Television
Israel
"the statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro"
has replaced the Pyramids of Giza?
1. A plaque that reads, "Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind."
You know, that one had occurred to me as well. . .but it doesn't really fit the "of the world" part of the whole Seven Wonders thing. :)
I haven't heard anyone mention ice cold beer and Chile Verde burritos. OK, that's only two entries, but I'm off to find a Mexican restaurant. . .
Texas
This comment has been removed by the author.
antibiotics
I would add the following:
1) The "Escape" key on the standard computer keyboard
2) Google
3) The Chunnel
4) Footprints on the Moon
5) E=mc(2)
Of course, the politically correct think to do would simply be to expand the list beyond just seven wonders so nobody's feelings got hurt.
Asprin
Air conditioning (HT: Lee Quan Yew)
Petra in Jordan is from biblical times that pre-date Islam (although it looks like Greek architecture). The Pyramids also pre-date Islam. These "wonders of the world" are located in Muslim lands. Funny the culture that claims to have given the world so much hasn't created anything memorable since its inception in 622. They took over St. Sofia changed its name and turned it into a mosque. They didn't build it.
The Middle East has to import engineers to extract oil and build its modern infrastructure, send its wealthy sick to European hospitals, educate its wealthy children in England and the U.S., hire people from Asia to work and act as chauffeurs in Saudi Arabia.
All it has given the world is merchants who try to make money off of tourists, unceasing intercine warfare, modern terrorism, and a culture that denies that ALL men (and women) are created equal.
It is a "wonder" unto itself
Does anyone else notice a pattern here? 3 of the wonders are from Latin American countries. I think I might now why too. A recent article on smart money points out how fast the internet is growing in Latin American countries. http://www.smartmoney.com/news/pr/index.cfm?story=PR-20070627-001706-1200
-- Broadband grew at an annual rate of around 54% in 2006, making
Latin America one of the world's fastest growing regions in
terms of broadband uptake. But broadband penetration at
end-2006 was only 2.5%, considerably less than the global
average of 5.4%. With its level of GDP per capita, Latin
America should in principle have ended 2006 with a broadband
Three Hardware:
Pyramids, Panama Canal, Great Wall of China
Four Software:
Bible, Internet, Human Genome, US Constitution/Bill of Rights
frankwolftown:
That might explain why the United Nations has objected to this New 7 Wonders list: it doesn't sufficiently suck up to Islamic Fascism!
The reason that Giza wasn't on the list is that it was specifically excluded from consideration. Apparently, 5000 years old isn't "modern" enough.
Also, here's another list of the greatest 7 achievements of humanity within the last 500 years or so:
1) The telegraph
2) The microprocessor
3) The railroad
4) Antibiotics and vaccination
5) The scientific method
6) The Bill of Rights, 1689
7) The Constitution of the United States of America
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