(Part 3) Top products from r/Scotland

Here is an actual Pictish stone, reproduced for clarity. It's based on an actual pictish stone that has been significantly weathered by time.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/HiltonofCadboll01.JPG

There's a big difference between the vaguely Celtic, but cool, symbols on your Ankh-Cross (which again, I think is neat) and the symbols on that Pictish stone.

As for the meanings of the pictish stone symbols?

We haven't a fucking clue. We have a lot of guesses, but being that the Gaels of the Highlands are almost completely lost to history, their predecessors the Picts are one of the least-known people.

Now, there has been a lot of really, really cool Scholarship lately.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Discovery-Middle-Earth-Mapping/dp/039308163X <- The Discovery of Middle Earth points out a lot of the geometric logic the celts used, and points out a lot of lost history. And argues that it may be that the old celtic scrollwork has actual geometric or mathematical meaning.

I'm not sure if that's true, but it's a fascinating hypothesis.

There is a lot to be learned, but unfortunately, the archaeology has in general been either poorly done many years ago or very poorly funded and done recently as a labor of love.

And so there's much that we really don't know. There's a lot just waiting to be learned.

But the recent scholarship on the Celts, in France and Germany and in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland has opened our eyes to a number of facts that we didn't know before.

A sampling:

1. The Gauls were the richest people in Europe, which is why Julius Caesar invaded Gaul: he wanted their gold mines. Rome had run out of gold, and the only gold coins minted in western and southern Europe in the years just before Caesar's invasion bore names like Vercingetorix. It was only after his conquest of Gaul that the Romans started minting gold coins again.
   
   
2. The Gauls were the original road builders in Europe, with most Roman roads being built over older, wooden Celtic trackways. Identical, pre-roman trackways have been found in Ireland and Germany, and almost all Roman Roads in Britain and France are built using Celtic celestial geography.
   
   
3. Celtic Science, especially their use of astronomy and understanding of the calendar, was far more advanced than the Romans, and in some ways more advanced than the greeks. The Coligny calendar was the most accurate ancient calendar, and the best Lunar/Solar calender made probably until the advent of computers. It was extremely accurate, and also extremely complicated. But the Romans during Caesar's time were celebrating the fall harvest festival in the middle of August, so fucked was their calendar.
   
   
4. The Romans were liars, thieves, and marauders. They were less advanced than every culture around them, the Greeks, the Celts, the Carthaginians, in nearly every capacity. Save one: Warfare. The Romans were not the bringers of civilization and reason, they were marauding barbarians who destroyed more advanced cultures, and plundered not just their wealth, but their ideas, as well.
   
   We've learned all of this in the last 10-30 years. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can learn in the next hundred.

I think you're going to suffer too much with broad strokes. All of the things you've mentioned have their own usecases really. You should focus on one of them and learn it before deciding whether you want to try another.

Although, you can also just do 'X vs Y' for all of those things you've mentioned and see articles on the differences between them as well as what they actually do.

Before you start any of the learning on any of those things though, you should definitely take one or two JS courses. Code School, Code Academy, Udemy all have great courses on Javascript. A couple of books I'd definitely recommend are Clean Code and Javascript, the Good Parts, I'd say these are ubiquitious and essential reading for any developer looking to get better.

Less and Sass are for doing stylesheets better. They basically introduce programming concepts like functions and variables into CSS.

Gulp and Grunt are task runners. Tests, minifying, linting and live previews can all be done with them.

Angular and React are basically front end frameworks built with flavours of JS. They introduce OO concepts into javascript and the MVVM/MVC way of working for the front end. The are markedly different from how they do things.

With the other things, there's basically a wealth of information for them.

Needless to say, you have a lot of reading and practicing to do. Luckily these days there's lots of examples and documentation for every one of the things you've mentioned.

For a good general overview of Scotland's history you can't go far wrong with Michael Lynch's Scotland: A New History and my dad says that Neil Oliver's book A History of Scotland is good as well. I've not read it myself, but given that it's aimed at a general audience instead of historians it's possibly more readable than Lynch's book.

For modern Scottish history Tam Devine's book The Scottish Nation: 1700-2007 is a pretty good start. I find him quite readable, but it's more of a social history than a dates and facts history. I've taken against him a bit lately as he keeps sticking his oar in whenever there's a social issue on the go (Rangers going into administration was the latest), but I can't fault him for his knowledge and research work. I've a lot of respect for him as a historian.

The articles on Scottish History on Wikipedia tend to be quite well written, researched and sourced so you might find more specific books and information from their footnotes.

It feels strange but the probability of you having the same dream as someone you know is high. It's because there are hundreds of thousands of chances it could happen. So, for it to happen once out of hundreds of thousands of oppertunities isn't strange. That math says it's going to happen.

Especially as it's a common dream. It's so popular that google auto populates it when you type in, dream of p.

It's something that statistically is going to happen to a lot of people.

I'd recommend reading this book. I read it years ago and it is a good beginners guide to understanding why you think there is something mystical going on.

You are making one of the error explained in the book where you are attributing something that is common as being unusual.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0285638033

Probably not quite what youre looking for but I'd recommend this if you would be interested in reading up on any of our paranormal history. It's a very well researched book and not dependent on hyperbole. I just finished it and that's why it sprang to mind.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-James-Robertson/dp/0751513938

No you are arguing against megacities and economic command centers they facilitate. To create or rathe in London's case sustain such a city you need to pump in large amounts of resources, the benefits however outweigh the costs,there is a good book on it here if you are interested, old now though. Some of the basic points are to do with attracting FDI and spreading the cost of infrastructure projects.

>Keeping wealth in one region at the expense of the rest is what this guy is arguing against.

There are problems, no model is perfect, but the economics of Megacities have many many advantages. It the reason why we see so many all over the world in different cultures, societies and economies of all sizes.

>You seem to be blaming the UK and England for this.

I blame the union, the establishment, and above all other Scots who decided that our language was inferior and that it embarrassed us. This result in us enforcing the use of English on others, in order to rid ourselves our Scottishness and become more British.

>But Scotland has always had control of it's own education system, right from the beginning.

The problem goes a lot further than schools. If you really do want to learn more than you appear to know on this complex topic, a good place to start might be Scots: The Mither Tongue by Billy Kay, and Tom Devine's Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present.

>There has been nothing at all stopping Scotland from teaching Scots in school the way Welsh is taught in Welsh schools (and the teaching of Welsh in schools has predated devolution).

The Welsh language also suffered as a result of union, though again, much of this was enforced by the Welsh themselves. Here's an example: https://youtu.be/AizYg0Bewkk?t=499

>You need to accept that the decision to stamp out Scots has been taken by Scottish people, which means that will likely continue after independence.

It definitely has, as a result of unionism and cultural cringe. But as a Scots speaker in his late thirties, let me assure you that there has never been so much awareness, and dare I say even pride, in the Scots language in my lifetime, and speaking to my parents, it seems the same holds true for them. This has been a direct result of both devolution and the renewed energy brought on by the first independence referendum, with sparked all manner of discussion and reflection on our politics and culture.

He pretty much did. (check the reviews)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burke-Hare-Ghouls-Brian-Bailey/dp/1840185759
Burke and hare snatched bodies and then moved on to murder in Edinburgh in 1828 to sell to a doctor who wanted cadavers.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Highland-Clearances-John-Prebble/0140028374
The Highland clearances, English Lords and Scottish royalists force people of off the land creating poverty and destitution.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloody-Scottish-History-Bruce-Durie/dp/0752482890
This one focuses on Glasgow but he has other books it covers a broad range of events.

Edit.. Add one on

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Brother-Surgeons-Garet-Rogers/0552087556

This book is expensive wow, the hunter brothers pioneered all sorts of medical things they were from my home town and the old house is a museum. plenty online about them.

Or see posts that try to give a reasoned pro-union argument shoot of to -10 whilst a pro-indy get +50?

There is a distinct risk of creating an echo chamber here. You just have to look across the pond to see what could happen. see the now infamous sub of don-the-ald.

Echo chambers aren't good.

Yes Westminster has issues, but so does independence, as does the EU. I caught part of Guy Verhofstadt on Hardtalk and he fully admits that there are problems in the EU. His solution of more integration actually would solve a lot of these, using Brexit to force the EU countries to really get serious and not keep kicking a can down the road, is sensible. How far you actually agree or disagree with the solution is one debate, the other is does Europe get serious or keep kicking the can? What worked for 6 or 12 is becoming unworkable at 27+.

If it doesn't have to necessarily be by Scottish author then I think some on this sub in particular would get a good kick out of New Model Army by Adam Roberts.

Also there's The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod which is sort of dystopian as well in an Edinburgh where the only religious folk left are total nutters most people ignore and it has space lifts.

Meh, was a bit anti-climactic.

I preferred Fermat's Last Theorem. That took 350 years to solve, not just a quick google. Kids today etc...

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It <----required reading for participation

https://www.amazon.com/Kenneth-Coronet-Books-Nigel-Tranter/dp/0340566388
There you go mate.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Dummies-Peter-Antonioni/dp/0470973250

Debi Gliori might have a case to sue them over it? That might work.

Haven't you read the The Bell Curve?

Also:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Good-Turn-Natural-Screwdriver/dp/0684867303