Average lifespan implies that anyone surviving infancy had a reasonable shot
at dying of plague at the age of 99, like Titian.
RT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Winheld" <dwinh...@comcast.net>
To: <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 1:55 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: another day at the office
And considering the average lifespan, it's a miracle that as much
culture and civilization as there was seems to have prevailed. We are
wrestling with a heritage left to us by world of underage alcoholics.
This certainly explains a lot.
Dan
Actually there is evidence of the opposite.
Before coffee overtook Europe in 1648, people drank little water (as
unsafe), but mostly beer (beer soup as standard European breakfast).
So all Europeans were slightly inebriated in their waking hours.
Caffeine-induced sober stimulatedness was the revolution that begat
coffeehouse conversation, which in turm begat Kant and Hamann.
RT
Or evidence that anyone performed sober? Perhaps only on special
occasions.
d
How about the proposition that "there was no church in Italy in the
first half of the17th century in which the singers all performed in
the nude?" Well.. who knows? But how likely is it?
Or evidence that anyone performed sober?
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