Galileo apparently said that some of his best years were those at the University of Padova:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Padua#History
... which, as the article says, had more freedom and less influence from the Catholic church.
However: this strikes me as not really being hacker news.
(PS, check out this guy, who came out of Padova:
As I recall, it was primarily baby boomers describing Iraq as "another Vietnam!!!" 2 weeks into the invasion. "We haven't won yet? It's a quagmire!"
Oddly, when comparing Obama to JFK, they never seem to remember that JFK stole an election, fought one war incompetently and started another one that turned into a quagmire ("the original Vietnam!!!"). JFK does compare reasonably well to a contemporary politician, but not Obama...
Vietnam and Iraq have little in common stateside by design. Today's political leaders weren't about to make the same mistake twice. So no TV news and no draft. Amazing how well it's worked, huh?
Vietnam has little to do with it.
Interesting (to me) is the tendency for left-leaning progressives to continue to live and fight battles from the past. The recent Iraq war has caused some to try to replay Vietnam. The coming nomination of Obama is very JFK-ish. We're having a very 60-ish discussion on how man is immoral in his treatment of the environment. I always thought the conservatives were the ones who lived in the past, but I think that has changed over the last five years or so.
My opinion only. Do not operate heavy machinery after reading this comment.