However, the early 15th century saw the election of Pope Leo X. His corrupt practices and hedonistic excess led the church into the chaos of the Protestant Reformation. Until that time, scripture, laboriously inscribed by hand on parchment, and only in Latin, was accessible exclusively to the educated ruling elite. Armed with the newest technology of the day--William Caxton's printing press--Martin Luther published a translation of the bible in German. Soon, a flood of translated Bibles spread across Europe. The Bible was no longer inaccessible to a public illiterate in Latin, and splinter denominations of Catholic Church began generating a wide spectrum of biblical interpretations, some of which diverged quite far from traditional doctrine.

     These historical threads of change converged in the late 16th century and culminated in a new era known as the Enlightenment. Fed by new trends in intellectual freedom and no longer constrained by parochial politics, philosophers and thinkers across Europe began to freely explore ideas and topics without fear of censure by the church, embracing the fruits of post-renaissance scholarship. It is within this intellectual upheaval that John Locke published his watershed work, "Essay Concerning Human Understanding".

familiar

e pluribus unum

E pluribus unum translates from Latin to English as follows: “e” meaning “from” or “out of”;“pluribus” being the ablative plural of the Latin for “more”; and “unum” meaning “one”.Thus, “E pluribus unum” simply means “from many, one” or “out of many, one”.
This Latin phrase was once the United States’ motto and can be found on the official seal of the U.S.,
 among other places. It is thought to have been borrowed from the cover of a popular English periodical,
The Gentlemen’s Magazine. This particular magazine was an extremely popular and influential men’s magazine among the elite and highly educated. While some of the content of the magazine was original,
much of it was gathered from other sources (hence the word “magazine”, meaning “storehouse”,
being used for the first time to describe a periodical). On the cover of this periodical,
they’d generally include the phrase “E Pluribus Unum” signifying they gathered the content from a variety of sources. Pierre-Eugène Ducimetière, the artistic consultant for the design of the official seal of the U.S.,
The Great Seal, suggested that this be placed on the seal, which it finally was in 1782 after three major revisions to the seal design. In this context, this was meant to signify the 13 colonies forming one unified government. It was not long after this, in 1795, that E pluribus unum appeared on a $5 gold coin,
which mimicked the U.S. seal in cover design. In 1798, the phrase was added to various silver coins and soon after to nearly all gold and silver coins, though this practice disappeared completely for a time.
Finally on February 12, 1873, congress passed an act stipulating that the phrase must appear on all U.S. coins, which has continued to this day, excepting one mistake in 2007. That year the Philadelphia Mint accidentally released a batch of one dollar coins that didn’t have “E Pluribus Unum” on them.
Obviously these coins are now collector’s items.

eyes miss nose
nose miss eyes

What if Introverts Ruled the World?

By Richard Stengel Monday, Feb. 06, 2012

This week's cover story (which is one of my favorites) is not about politics. At least, not directly.But in a political season when we are evaluating candidates in terms of leadership and style, it's worth using the introvert-extrovert framework to look at the campaign. The story, by Bryan Walsh, which draws on research from a new book by Susan Cain called Quiet, suggests that as a society, we have an affinity for extroversion that may not be healthy and a bias against introversion that may not be wise. Leadership styles go in and out of fashion. The more top-down corporate-leadership style embodied by Jack Welch--think extroversion--gave way to a more horizontal, even introverted style that involves more cooperation and listening. In politics, there was a similar transition, from President George W. Bush's outgoing, resolute style to President Obama's more cerebral and inward approach. Campaigning, by its very nature, places a premium on an extroverted persona. Candidates are meant to clap people on the back, bound onstage and then deliver a passionate stump speech. No one wants to see a shy candidate on the podium who looks as if he'd rather be in a room by himself. But campaigning is not governing, a task for which a more introverted style might have advantages. Research suggests that extroverted leaders are more likely to make quick and sometimes rash decisions, while introverted leaders tend to gather more evidence and are slower to judgment. Check out the box on page 44, where we place President Obama and the four remaining Republican candidates on the introversion-extroversion spectrum.