This is the third in a series of seminars from CHRN/AUG 100, explaining what it is we do in this department. I've delayed the detailed explanation of our situation at the University to a later date. Today, I would prefer to move on and tackle a case study I have prepared for you.
The source that will be dealing with comes from a popular newspaper known as The Onion, which is contemporary to you. The excerpt that augury provided me with was:
Solitary Crow On Fence Post Portending Doom, Analysts Warn
GREELEY, NE--Experts confirmed Monday that a single black crow perched ominously on a fence post in rural Nebraska is almost certainly a harbinger of great doom and despair for all Americans.
Our record cuts off there. It's a little short for an augury report, but before you go on, I want you to think about the things that we discussed in previous Friday seminars, and how you can apply that knowledge to this source. Remember to think about:
-The nature of the source
-Its reliability as a source
-The information contained
-What we can say about continuity.
I'll give you a moment to think about it.
Okay, now that you've thought about it, I'll answer the four points: First, its nature as a source. This is clearly from a newspaper, one that is contemporary to my time-normal life, but not one that I knew about. I imagine it's probably some little local thing that I never heard about.
As a newspaper, we can surmise that it is incredibly reliable. You and your contemporaries, while not immune to it, have a very low level of historiography in your newspapers, and that is commendable. So we can trust that this source is both factual and informative.
So what does it tell us? Well, it appears to be about an Omen that was sighted by Nebraskan experts. While I do not recall this being a large part of American culture, I can't use my life experience to judge this source. It could be from a time stream wholly different from my own! Therefore I must assume that this is primitive augury, as practiced by Nebraskan Americans from one 21st Century time stream. This tells us that in that culture, crows were viewed as a bad omen. Scientifically laughable, of course, but still it shows that the Americans were thinking about the ideas fundamental to augury.
Finally, let's talk about continuity. There is not a lot that we can say about this in terms of continuity. We don't have more than one source here, so we can't put it into context, but we can say this: it tells us that the town of Greeley, the state of Nebraska, and the United States all exist in the time stream that this comes from. Therefore, we can say that certain crystalized points of history precede this article: the American Revolution, Manifest Destiny, etc. There is some continuity to be had, but mostly continuity with the past more than with the future. If we found a later story about this crow and could connect it, then we might be able to say more about continuity.
At any rate, this provides us with one example of how we do our analysis here. It's a quick thing, but I wanted to get you thinking about it over your weekend.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
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