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« Ron Paul | Main | Russ Feingold Waxes Poetic About Somalia »

Wonders Never Cease

Via email, Rammage alerted me to this post by Dale Franks over at QandO. Rammage rhetorically asks, “What's wrong with this paragraph?”

"The sun sets over Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a church that was first built in 537 B.C. as a Mosque when the city fell to the Ottomans. When Turkish President Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum in 1935, Christian mosaics covered up by the Muslims were revealed."

My concern upon reading this photo caption isn’t even the blundering lack of adherence to historical fact. Humbug to Rammage and Dale, and their "facts". I take issue with something even more fundamental in the WaPo article that is related to the error-strewn photo captions: There is no reason to "update" the list of the Seven Wonders of the World. And if there were, this list they are reporting on is pretty poorly put together. I agree with Egypt's Culture Minister, who called it "absurd". He asked that the Pyramids be taken off the list, but was denied.

See if you can find the contradiction in these two paragraphs from the Post:

Viering said the pyramids could not be removed because the competition is a purely democratic process, driven by Internet voting (and to a lesser extent phone balloting). "It's the people of the world who are making this list. It's not our decision," she said.

Voting began in 2001. Nominated monuments swelled to 177, were culled to 77, then winnowed in late 2005 by a group of experts to the current 21 finalists, each from a different country.

Expletive! This newspaper article was so poor that we are all stupider for having read it.

Of course, the Washington Post notes that many organizations have put together their own lists of 7 wonders over the years. It reminds me of another annoying trend - the many so-called "Bills of Rights" that are out there. Perhaps there should be a Seven Wonders of the Taxpayers World, and an American Society of Civil Engineers Bill of Rights. We can have experts cull the lists, then winnow them – it’ll be a purely democratic process all around.