On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:48:27 +0000, Larry wrote:

Herodotus wrote in
:

Without them there would have been no Renaissance.


The number of Americans who are not professors of archiology and know about
what Moslems did in Spain during the dark ages can be counted in an hour.

Hi Larry,
Yes, the two main things I wanted to see in Spain when we sailed there
was Gaudi's Barcelona, especially his Sagria Familia - the Cathedral
that is still under construction and the Alhambra, the Moorish palace
in Granada. In both places I was in the seventh heaven. It's amazing
to see irrigation schemes around Andalucia that are still intact and
providing water to crops that were built more than 1,000 years ago by
the Moors. That era has always fascinated me and another must see was
Raphael's huge wall painting in a former Pope's bedroom in the Vatican
of "The School of Athens" with all the most important philosophers
present. One was Avveroes - the Moslem scholar of Granada who was in
communication with (Saint) Thomas Aquinas and who solved the problem
of faith verses reason -duly incorporated into Catholic doctrine.

Americans are great fodder for religious zealots even more than some place
like Afghanistan. We live in a government-sponsored vacuum.

I'd rather not comment but met a lot of well informed people in San
Francisco who said they got their news about the States from foreign
radio stations such as BBC and Deutsche Vela

cheers
Peter