#6 = 蔡伦

Quiz

1. How could he invent paper if it had been been in use for hundreds of years before he was even born?

2. Couldn't origami and paper airplanes and what not be made out of papyrus too?

3. You can make paper outta hemp, right?


once again I made the best youtube biography of a famous person. My favorite thing to do after uploading my video is to see what the Related Videos are. Then I do a search for my guy and see what other people have done.

this one has gotta be my favorite (fast forward to 1:06 for the biography part). This one is like a trailer for a movie or something. Maybe it is a commercial for a documentary. This one has the best music. Everyone else has cool background music in their videos. There are lots of youtubes 'bout papermaking, but this one has gotta be the best. Making paper is a lot of work. I mostly use the back of grocery store receipts when I need paper, and after watching these folks I'm not gonna start making my own any time soon

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being a eunuch means that your parents castrated you so you had the opportunity to get a good job. Working for the emperor was pretty much the best job there was. Even mopping floors or cleaning the bathroom or whatever was way more lucrative than almost anything you could do outside of the palace. Lots of honor and respect to your family too. People were also castrated after being taken prisoner in wars and raids and stuff. Some transgender folks nowadays claim eunuchs as their own. Like they are the ancestor to all he/shes. Perhaps I just can't relate on account of my lack of gender identity issues, but that seems kinda silly to me

A dude without testicles is just an amputee. A 3-legged dog is still a dog and them guys from that Murderball movie were pretty hard-core. Having a glass eye or a pirate hook for a hand doesn't change anything. Not like losing his private parts made this guy any more docile. Implanting fake plastic boobs or getting a mastectomy doesn't make someone more or less of a woman. Plus childhood castration is like neonatal circumcision or being named Seymour in that it was a decision your parents made for you

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at a mere two and a half minutes, this ADW is a bit shorter than most. Thought of adding in a paragraph 'bout how China managed to keep the process of paper-making a secret for a good half millennium, but I kinda like how this one jumps from aristocratic back-stabbing to the Cat in the Hat to porn. Seemed like introducing a bunch of history and geography woulda bogged it down as well as taking attention away from the dude we are supposed to be celebrating. Anywhoo . . . apparently paper ain't something you can reverse engineer very easily. The Koreans learned how to make it 500 years after the fact and they showed the Japanese. Muslims got it around 150 years later and went nuts. Lots and lots of paper mills and industrialization. They exported some to Europe, but Europe prefered to be racist and live in the self-imposed "Dark Ages." Good call there to resist Arabic influence. In 1221 some jack-ass king even went so far as to declare that all official documents written on paper were invalid. Finally, a few hundred years later, non-Muslim Europeans finally decided that paper was pretty cool. Here in 'Merica we had our own paper that we developed independently, but suppose all that got destroyed when them Eurotrash dudes came with their tight pants and smallpox in the name of God and the King

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Answers to last week's quiz
1. Which country (unmentioned of course) had the most sons to which shout-outs were given this week?
Uzbekistan ( تیمور and ابوریحان محمد بن احمد بیرونی )

2. Which of the celebrity gangstas of our era has served the most jail time (Suge Knight, Tupac, Snoop, or Martha Stewart)?
Suge Knight = 5 and a half years
Tupac = 11 months for that rape charge, plus he got sentenced to 15 and 120 day stints for other stuff
Martha Stewart = 5 months in prison and another 5 months with that ankle tracking thing
Snoop = a coupla years for cocaine possession, but that was before he was famous. Spent a night in a London jail after an incident at Heathrow airport, but I don't think he has served any time since being a celebrity. Lots of probation and fines and posting of bail and was banished from England and Australia, but no hard time means he ranks behind Martha Stewart

ibn Khaldun might've actually not served more jail time than these 4 combined, I'm not sure. Still though, his thug credentials are pretty legit