Attack Ads, ca. 1800

Craig Nakashian posted a Facebook link to this amusing YouTube snark.   Thanks to all involv...

Christians leaving the Middle East

 Robert Fisk in the Independent:Across the Middle East, it is the same story of despairing – sometimes frightened – Christian minorities, and of an exodus that reaches almost Biblical proportions. Almost half of Iraq's Christians have fled their country since the first Gulf War in 1991, most of them after the 2004 invasion – a weird tribute to the self-proclaimed...

Making a difference

Some people I know had some spare money.  On top of whatever personal use they may have made of it, they funded some good projects.  Among the beneficiaries:120 girls in Nepal who are freed from bonded labour and going to school.We...

More of this, please

A junk tank being turned into an artificial reef off the coast of Thailand.   From The Big Pictu...

"History tells us nothing of the sort:" One historian's reaction to some discouraging political events

A lot of my friends are appalled and cast down by the just-past local elections in Ontario (including me), but my Brit friends are even more discouraged by the Tory resurrection (and for good reason).   In the case of Guy Halsall, events inspired this blog post, which I excerpt here not so much for its current political stance, but for its interesting remarks on the philosophy...

More on St. Crispin's Day

Will McLean reminds us of some good posts he has written on Agincourt and Henry V.  Definitely worth readi...

Africa circumnavigated!

If a Phoenician ship didn't do it in 600 BC, one has now!  Video from the B...

Historians at war over Agincourt

From the New York Times:No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 1415. They devastated a force of heavily armored French nobles who had gotten bogged down in the...

Re-enactment, wargaming, and the Russian front ...

...among other atrocities.Are you, or have you ever been, a reenactor, a historical recreationist, or wargamer? do you know anyone who has ever dressed up in the Wehrmacht uniform for fun? Are you sure?Then you may be interested in this article by Robert Citino from history.net, which I was referred to by Brad DeLong, to whom thanks: Last week I was contacted by Joshua Green, Senior...

From the Economist: Anglo-Indians

Anglo-Indians were originally the offspring of British men posted in India with local women. Once upon a time, being half-British was a significant advantage.  Now, not so much.  This article inspired sober thoughts in me, about how a cultural turn can, like personal emigration or war, leave you absurdly isolated, your birth-culture seemingly irrelevant:DRESSED in a floral...

More beautiful iron work from a re-enactor

Historical re-enactors and re-creationists don't have the highest reputation either with the general public or among scholars.  since I have spent more than my fair share of time running around in armor, I  have a  different opinion. Part of it goes back to the attitude...

Nipissing University, pictures from September 2010

Every time I go on sabbatical, it seems, a new wing is thrown up at Nipissing University. I come back when everyone else has already gotten used to the alterations, and I feel like the new kid even though I've been here for 20 years. Not that I'm complaining!  Although I missed...

Timeline of negotiations in Afghanistan.

From the Globe and Mail.  See the preceding article on the possibility of serious negotiations n...

Historians don't own history

The e-mail list MEDIEV-L, like many an established community, falls into repeated discussions of the same subjects. One of the more common repeated conversations is the one about the accuracy of historical movies; many contributors to the list are very critical of just about anything that comes down the pike. I can understand that; I used to have the same attitude. But once upon...

Back online

The week of Canadian Thanksgiving, Nipissing University has  no classes. I was off-line for most of the time, and I've been pretty busy since the normal schedule resumed. As a reward for those of you who came back to see how I was, I am going to be posting some material that came in recently.Of particular interest to me were Phil Paine's reports on his trip to Orkney. He was...

Grim news from Afghanistan

An inexperienced US 101st Airborne unit replaces a more seasoned group, 2 Charlie.  This Atlantic article, "The Last Patrol,"shows hard fighting and the strain on morale in the Kandahar region:Two days later, on July 8, a dozen soldiers, the platoon’s noncommissioned officers, crowded into the outpost’s tactical-operations center, a 12-by-six-foot room jammed with computers,...

European countries with significant Muslim immigrant populations -HIST 3805

Does this sound like the country you are researching?  If so, you may want to look at what Juan Cole has to say about the situation in Germany. For the population background to immigration debates,  see this article in the Guardian.&nb...

Prof. Gendron invites NU students to Model NATO

He says:I'm in the process again of organising this years' Nipissing University student Model NATO team.  As part of the team, a group of 5 or 6 Nipissing students take part in a conference in Ottawa early in 2011 during which they will be part of a simulated NATO meeting.  The conference includes teams from other universities across Ontario and sometimes outside...

What I'd rather be doing...from the Big Picture

More he...

Brazil!

Saith the BBC: Number-crunchers say rising incomes have catapulted more than 29 million Brazilians into the middle class during the eight-year presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former trade unionist elected in 20...

Convivencia?

Have, historically, Jews and Muslims got along better than Jews and Christians?  Marc Cohen argues for the "yes" side:The idea that modern Arab antisemitism comes from a medieval, irrational hatredof the Jews, similar to the antisemitism of Christianity, with its medieval origins, cannot be sustained. Understood as a religiously-based complex of irrational, mythical, andstereotypical...

Orkney

Phil Paine is in (one of) Canada's mother countries:   Orkney.  He's seeing stuff like th...