A young Syrian rebel speaks

Anthony Shadid was there:As we prepared to leave, Iyad turned to me and said: “We’ve already won. We’re victorious now. I lived a life of terror, fear and killing, and now I’m free.”Before the uprising, Iyad said, his life had been boring, even suffocating. He had a degree in business and economics, but jobs were scarce. The incentive to revolt was more ambiguous, though; he’d...

Book alert for students in HIST 4505

Issue resolved: Gregory of Tours:  Glory of the Martyrs will be available at a reasonable pri...

Young supernova

From Astronomy Picture of the D...

Battle in the Early Middle Ages: Expertise and controversy

"Historian on the Edge" provides us with an expert summary of his views on early medieval warfare.I say "expert" rather than "authoritative" because as he points out, there are no authorities on this subject, only controversialists.Highly recommended for students in my upcoming fourth-year...

Qs and Ks and other ways of transliterating Arabic

The Arabist explains: I was meeting with a bunch of business people who know no Arabic and little about the Middle East. The conversation turned to Libya and one of them turned to me and asked why there were so many spellings of Qadhafi's name. What follows is what I said, which is very much what Kal of TMND argues, except I put it in laymen's terms, without the phonetics....

Sultanistic dictatorships

From the Globe and Mail's Chrystia Freeland:“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” That’s a line from Game of Thrones, a new HBO television series, but it could just as easily refer to the no-holds-barred battles we are watching in Libya and Syria. What is hardest to grasp is how these regimes are both strong and brittle. Their rulers...

The falls turn orange

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There was a time in this fair land when surveyors were national heroes

Not to  mention engineers.I'm talking Colonel By, children.There is a World Heritage site in the province of Eastern Ontario that most Canadians are oblivious to -- the Rideau Canal that connects Kingston on Lake Ontario to Ottawa on the Ottawa River.  It was built in the...

The legend of Jack Layton

People outside of Canada will probably not be aware that Jack Layton, leader of the federal New  Democratic Party (social democrats, pro-labor) and since the recent federal election Leader of the Official  Opposition in Parliament, died this week of prostate cancer.Layton...

Iranian absurdity: "Islamic" ban on waterfights

It appears that water fighting and water guns are becoming sensitive issues in Iran.Earlier this month, a number of young people were arrested in Tehran after taking part in a water fight in public. They were accused of violating Islamic principles and norms.A few days later, 17 people were reportedly arrested in Bandar Abbas for splashing water at each other. The young people...

Mark Twain, the Middle Ages, and Baton Rouge

A brilliant little essay from Jeff Sype...

Go away and just see what happens

Often enough when I go away camping in August, and am paying no attention, something dramatic happens.  In 1989, I re-entered the world of news to hear that Hungary was taking down its stretch of the Iron Curtain.  In 1991, the coup against Gorbachev took place, followed quickly by the collapse of  the Soviet Union.A lot of stuff happened this August, but for all...

Steve Muhlberger on the Combat of the Thirty -- a Chivalry Today podcast

Earlier this summer Scott Farrell of Chivalry Today interviewed me on the Combat of the Thirty against Thirty of 1351 and the contemporary re-enactments by members of the SCA at its Pennsic War. Here is that interview. This year I did not take part, but I did get the T-shirt. Really....