Classical Athens

 

The city of Athens or Athina, during the classical period of ancient Greece (480-323 BC), was the major urban centre of the notable polis (city-state) of the same name, located in Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Isagoras. 

This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for 180 years, until 322 BC (aftermath of Lamian War). The peak of Athenian hegemony was achieved in the 440s to 430s BC, known as the Age of Pericles. In the classical period, Athens was a centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, Athens was also the birthplace of Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and many other prominent philosophers, writers and politicians of the ancient world.

It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western Civilization, and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then-known European continent. Hippias, son of Peisistratus, had ruled Athens jointly with his brother, Hipparchus, from the death of Peisistratus in about 527. 

Following the assassination of Hipparchus in about 514, Hippias took on sole rule, and in response to the loss of his brother, became a worse leader who was increasingly disliked. Hippias exiled 700 of the Athenian noble families, amongst them Cleisthenes' family, the Alchmaeonids. Upon their exile, they went to Delphi, and Herodotus says they bribed the Pythia always to tell visiting Spartans that they should invade Attica and overthrow Hippias.

That supposedly worked after a number of times, and Cleomenes led a Spartan force to overthrow Hippias, which succeded, adn instated an oligarchy. Cleisthenes disliked the Spartan rule, along with many other Athenians, and so made his own bid for power. The result was democracy in Athens, but considering Cleisthenes' motivation for using the people to gain power, as without their support, he would have been defeated, and so Athenian democracy may be tainted by the fact its creation served greatly the man who created it. 

The reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four Ionic "tribes" (phyle) with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes of Greece and having no class basis, which acted as electorates. Each tribe was in turn divided into three trittyes (one from the coast; one from the city and one from the inland divisions), while each trittys had one or more demes, depending on their population, which became the basis of local government.

The tribes each selected fifty members by lot for the Boule, the council that governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. The public opinion of voters could be influenced by the political satires written by the comic poets and performed in the city theaters. The Assembly of Ecclesia was open to all full citizens and was both a legislature and a supreme court, except in murder cases and religious matters, which became the only remaining functions of the Aeropagus.

Most offices were filled by lot, although the ten strategoi (generals) were elected. The silver mines of Laurion contributed significantly to the development of Athens in the 5th century BC, when the Athenians learned to prospect, treat, and refine the ore and used the proceeds to build a massive fleet, at the instigation of Themistocles. In 499 BC, Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were rebelling against the Persian Empire.

The Last Kingdom (Netflix)

The Last Kingdom is a British historical fiction television series based on Bernard Cornwell's "The Saxon Stories" series of novels. It premiered in 2015 on BBC America, BBC Two and later in 2018 on Netflix. About the plot we could say that in the year 866, the Great Heathen Army's is a fact and they arrival in Britain. The relationship between Vikings and Anglo-Saxons could be interesting. Following establishment of Danish rule in Jórvic and East Anglia, the show largely focuses on the resistance of the Kingdom of Wessex to ongoing Viking incursions to Southern England.

The story covers about 40-45 years by the end of season 4. Season 1 covers the years 866-878, season 2 from 878 o 886, season 3 from 893 to 900, and season 4 takes place about 901 to 912. The protagonist (named osbert in childhood) is re-baptised as Uhtred after his elder brother Uhtred is killed by the Danes; his father, along with other Saxon noblemen of Northumbria, are killed in battle against the Danes. Only his uncle and step-mother survive. Uhtred a Saxon girl named Brida are taken as slaves by Earl Ragnar to his home in Danish Northumbria. 

Time passes, and Ragnar's daughter Thyra is about to be married, but fellow Danes attack the night before the wedding and set fire to the hall in which the family is sleeping. Ragnar is burned alive, and Thyra taken as a slave. Only Uhtred and Brida escape as they have spent the night in the woods tending a charcoal kiln. The attackers are led by Kjartan, a disgruntled Viking who had been banished by Ragnar from his lands years earlier for a offence committed by Kjartan's son Sven. Uhtred vows to avenge Ragnar's death, while simultaneously hoping to reclaim Bebbanburg for himself.

Uhtred is forced to choose between the kingdom of his ancestors and the people who have raised him, and his loyalties are constantly tested. The first series roughly covers the events of Cornwell's novels "The Last Kingdom" and "The Pale Horseman", although they are condensed for the screen. The second series covers the happenings of Cornwell's novels "The Lords of the North" and "Sword Song". Series 3 is based on "The Burning Land" and "Death of Kings", but with considerable plot changes. The third series' ten episodes were produced solely by Netflix.

One reviewer indicated that this had a positive effect. Much of the series was written by Stephen Butchard, and filming was completed in Hungary. These episodes cover the decline in King Alfred's health, according to one report, while he tries to ensure that his fiercely-held vision of a Christian, Saxon Wessex as part of a stable English nation will survive him as his legacy...the Uhtred-Alfred relationship is at the core of the story. All ten episodes of series 4 appeared on Netflix on 26 April 2020. As in series 3, there are significant plot differences to the books.

About cast: 

- Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred.

- David Dawson as King Alfred.

- Emily Cox as Brida.

- Tobias Santelmann as Ragnar the Younger.

- Adrian Bower as Leofric.

- Thomas W. Gabrielsson as Guthrum.

- Simon Kunz as Odda the Elder.

- Harry McEntire as Aethelwold.

- Rune Temte as Ubba.

- Joseph Millson as Aelfric.

- Brian Vernel as Odda the Younger.

- Amy Wren as Mildrith.

- Charlie Murphy as Iseult.

- Ian Hart as Father Beocca.

- Eliza Butterworth as Aelswith.

- Thure Lindhardt as Guthred.

- Eva Birthistle as Hild.

- Gerard Kearns as Halig.

- David Schofield as Abbot Eadred.

- Peri Baumeister as Gisela.

- Peter McDonald as Brother Trew. 

- Mark Rowley and Finan.

- Alexandre Willaume as Kjartan.

- Julia Bache-Wiig as Thira.

Vitamin D

Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and function normally. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium, one of the main elements that make up bones. Vitamin D plays an important role in the nervous, muscular and immune systems. 

You can get vitamin D in three ways: through the skin, from the diet, and from supplements. Your body forms vitamin D naturally after exposure to the sun. However, too much sun can lead to aging and skin cancer, so many people try to get their vitamin D from other sources. 

Food's rich in vitamin D include egg yolks, saltwater fish, and liver. Other foods, such as milk and cereal, are often fortified with vitamin D. You can also take vitamin D supplements. Check with your health care provider to find out the right amount for you. People who may need more vitamin D include:

- Old people.

- Breastfed babies.

- Dark-Skinned people.

- People with certain conditions such as liver disease, cystic fibrosis, and Crohn's disease.

- People who are obese or those who have had gastric bypass surgery.

Celtic Mythology

 

Celtic is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. For Celts in close contact with Ancient Rome, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, their mythology did not survive the Roman Empire, their subsequent conversion to Christianity and the loss of their Celtic languages. It is mostly through contemporary Roman and Christian sources that their mythology has been preserved.

The Celtic peoples who maintained either political or linguistic identities (such as the Gaels in Ireland and Scotland, the Welsh in Wales, and the Celtic Britons of southern Great Britain and Brittany) left vestigial remnants of their ancestral mythologies that were put into written from during the Middle Ages. Although the Celtic world at its height covered much of western and central Europe, it was not politically unified nor was there any substantial central source of cultural influence or homogeneity; as a result, there was a great deal of variation in local practices of Celtic religion (although certain motifs, for example the god Lugh, appear to have diffused throughout the Celtic world).

Inscriptions of more than three hundred deities, often equated with their Roman counterparts, have survived, but of these most appear to have been genii locorum, local or tribal gods, and few were widely worshiped. However, from what has survived of Celtic mythology, it is possible to discern commonalities which hint at a more unified pantheon than is often given credit. The nature and functions of these ancient gods can be deduced from their names, the location of their inscriptions, their iconography, the Roman gods they are equated with, and similar figures from later bodies of Celtic mythology.

Celtic mythology is found in a number of distinct, if related, subgroups, largely corresponding to the branches of the Celtic languages: 

- Ancient Celtic religion (known primarily through archaeological sources rather than through written mythology).

- Mythology in Goidelic languages, represented chiefly by Irish mythology (also shared with Scottish mythology.

    - Mythological Cycle

    - Ulster Cycle

    - Fenian Cycle

    - Cycles of the Kings

- Mythology in Brittonic languages:

    - Welsh mythology

    - Cornish mythology

    - Breton mythology

Outlander...Book's Saga

 

Just after the Second World War, a young couple finally reunited to spend their holidays in Scotland. One afternoon, when she is walking alone in the meadow, Claire approaches a circle of ancient stones and suddenly falls into a strange trance. Coming to his senses, he finds a disconcerting panorama...

...the modern world has disappeared, now the Scotland of 1734 surrounds it, with its belligerent and superstitious clans, rude men and women, sometimes violent, but with a capacity to live and love like Claire had never experienced in her previous life. Haunted by memories of her, Claire will have to choose between the security of the future she left behind and the gripping uncertainty of the past that she now inhabits.

In this first part of the Claire Randall saga, which continues with "Trapped in Time", "Traveler" and "Autumn Drums", Diana Gabaldon has written a different love and fantasy story, in which chance encounters and the equivocal game of time are combined in an intriguing ending...

Would you like a story of love and fantasy through the time and history?

Vocational Education and Training in Spain

 

The Spanish National System for Qualifications and Vocational Education and Training, known in Spanish as SNCFP, was established by Spanish Organic Act 5/2002, of 19 June 2002. It consists of instruments and actions which are necessary to promote and develop the integration of Vocational Education and Training, as well as to assess and accredit professional competencies. The SNCFP was created to respond to the demand for qualifications of people and enterprises in a society trying out a continuous process of change and innovation.

The SNCFP objectives are to adapt the professional training to the qualification demands of productive organizations, to facilitate the adaptation of supply and demand on the labour market, to extend lifelong learning beyond the traditional educational period, and to promote the freedom of movement for workers. For these reasons, it plays an essential role in the labour and education world. The Spanish National Catalogue of Professional Qualifications, known in Spanish as CNCP, is an instrument of the Spanish National System for Qualifications and Vocational Educational and Training (VET) which arranges the professoinal qualifications according to competences appropiate for an occupational performance.

The professional qualifications are identified in the productive system and they are susceptible of being recognized and accredited. Some of the main objectives of the CNCP are to integrate the existing programs on VET in order to adapt them to the characteristics and demands of the Spanish productive system and to be a referent to asses the professional competences. The CNCP comprises the most important professional qualifications of the Spanish productive system. It includes VET contents related to each professional qualification. The contents are organized in modules which are included in a Spanish Modular Catalogue of Vocational Education and Training. 

The Spanish National Institute of Qualifications, known in Spanish as INCUAL, is responsible for defining, drawing up and updating the CNCP and the corresponding Modular Catalogue of VET. The CNCP consists of professional qualifications arranged in professional families and levels of qualification taking into account UE criteria. the 26 professional families which make up the CNCP have been created according to professional competence affinity criteria. The 5 levels of professional qualification are based on the professional competence required for each productive activity taking into account different criteria like knowledge, initiative, autonomy, responsibility and complexity, among others, necessary for the accomplishment of every activity.

Level 1: competence in a reduced group of relatively simple working activities related to normalized processes, in which the theoretical knowledge and practical capacities involved are limited. 

Level 2: competence in a group of well-defined professional activities with the capacity to use particular instruments and techniques concerning, mainly, an execution activity which can be autonomous within the limits of the above-mentioned techniques. It requires knowledge on the technical and scientific fundamentals of the activity concerned and capacities for the comprehension and the application of the process.

Level 3: competence in a group of professional activities which require the command o different techniques and can be executed in an autonomous way. It involves responsibility on the coordination and supervision of technical and specialized work. It demands the understanding of the technical and scientific fundamentals of the activities concerned as well as the assessment of the factors in the process and the assessment of the economic repercussions. 

European Union Law

 

European Union Law is a system of rules operating within the member states of the European Union (EU). Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community following World War II, the EU has developed the aim to "promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples". The EU has political institutions, social and economic policies, which transcend nation states for the purpose of cooperation and human development. According to its Court of Justice (COJ) the EU represent "a new legal order of international law". 

The EU's legal foundations are the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, unanimously agreed by the governments of 27 member states. New members may join, if they agree to follow the rules of the union, and existing states may leave according to their "own constitutional requirements". Citizens are entitle to participate through the Parliament, and their respective state governments through the Council in shaping the legislation the EU makes. 

The Commission has the initiative for legislation, the Council of the European Union represents the elected member-state governments, the Parliament is elected by European citizens, and the Court of Justice is meant to uphold the rule of law and human rights. As the Court of Justice has said, the EU is "not merely an economic union" but is intended to "ensure social progress and seek the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples". 

Democratic ideals of integration for international and European nations are as old as the modern nation state. Ancient concepts of European unity were generally undemocratic, and founded on domination, like the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, or the Catholic Church controlled by the Pope in Rome. In the Renaissance, medieval trade flourished in organisations like the Hanseatic League, stretching from English towns like Boston and London, to Frankfurt, Stockholm and Riga. 

These traders developed the lex mercatoria, spreading basic norms of good faith and fair dealing through their business. In 1517, the Protestant Reformation triggered a hundred years of crisis and instability. Martin Luther nailed a list of demands to the church door of Wittenberg, King Henry VIII declared a unilateral split from Rome with the Act of Supremacy 1534, and conflicts flared across the Holy Roman Empire until the Peace of Augsburg 1555 guaranteed each principality the right to its chosen religion (cuius regio, eius religio). 

This unstable settlement unravelled in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), killing around a quarter of the population in central Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia 1648, which brought peace according to a system of international law inspired by Hugo Grotius, is generally acknowledged as the beginning of the nation-state system. Even then, the English Civil War broke out and only ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by Parliament inviting William and Mary from Hannover to the throne, and passing the Bill of Rights 1689. 

In 1693 William Penn, a Quaker from London who founded Pennsylvania in North America, argued that to prevent ongoing wars in Europe a "European dyet, or parliament" was needed. The French diplomat, Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, who worked negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of Spanish Succession proposed, through "Perpetual Union", "an everlasting peace in Europe", a project taken up by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant after him.

After the Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutions of 1848 in the 19th century, Victor Hugo at the International Peace Congress in 1849 envisioned a day when there would be a "United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas". World War I devastated Europe's society and economy and the Versailles Treaty failed to establish a workable international system in the League of Nations, any European integration, and imposed punishing terms of reparations payments for the losing countries.

After another economic collapse and the rise of fascism led to a Second World War, European civil society was determined to create a lasting union to guarantee world peace through economic, social and political integration. To "save succeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice...brought untold sorrow to mankind", the United Nations Charter was passed in 1945, and the Bretton Woods Conference set up a new system of integrated World Banking, finance and trade. 

Also, the Council of Europe, formed by the Treaty of London 1949, adopted a European Convention on Human Rights, overseen by a new transnational court iin Strasbourg in 1950. Already in 1946 Winston Churchill, who had been recently defeated as UK Prime Minister in 1945 had called for a "United States of Europe", through this did not mean the UK would sever its ties to the Commonwealth. 

In 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed that, beginning with integration of French and German coal and steel production, there should be "an organisation open to the participation of the other countries of Europe", where "solidarity in production" would make war "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible". The Treaty of Paris 1951 created the first European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed by France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy, with Jean Monnet as its president.