IT heroes save the day at Nipissing University

Call it involuntary distance education.  But it all worked out for the best.This morning I woke to the biggest heaviest snowfall I have seen in a long time.  I have a very long country driveway that can be cleared by hand if the time is available, or plowed if our neighbor...

Jimi Hendrix would have been 69 this month

That little laugh he used for punctuation says so mu...

Writing errors that make you look dumb

I don't know if any of my current students read this blog, but any who do might consider that I think this article is right on the mon...

Get out the vote!

The Arabist on today's Egyptian elections. Enthusia...

Digging the lost harbor of Theodosius

This week the CBC TV show The Nature of Things had an episode on the discovery and archaeological rescue of one of the major harbors of Constantinople.  I missed it, but fortunately the whole episode is on the web.The reason that this harbor was found was the construction of...

Thanks to my audience

In North Bay, Ontario, you can fill a room late Friday afternoon, late in dreary November, with faculty members, students, non-university community members and a dean or two, to listen to a paper on the fears and insecurities of 14th century men-at-arms.Who knew?Thanks for coming,...

Newt Gingrich, the Republican candidate with the history PhD, analyzes our current troubles

As summarized by Jim Wright:Apparently, according to Newt, America’s current economic woes stem from two sources: greedy middle school janitors and unemployed children. Newt’s solution? Fire the janitors, hire the kids.  Like chocolate and peanut butter, or feeding the homeless...

Two adjacent post titles in my Google Reader

Video: The people want the fall of the Field MarshallU.C. Davis Police Chief Suspended&nb...

Muhlberger speaks on Captivity and Ransom: Friday, November 25, 4 pm

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Smarter protest, please

Phil Paine, continuing this earlier post:Shakespeare didn’t have Romeo and Juliet commit suicide in the first act, and then let the remaining characters pitch tents on the stage and chat aimlessly for the remaining four acts.  That was because Shakespeare was a dramatist. ...

National Geographic and the Big Picture present pictures to make you weep

The Big Picture always presents amazing examples of photojournalism; National Geographic, with more than a century of dedication to photography as an art, runs an annual photography contest for portrayals of people, places and nature.  When the two together present a selection...

Fior di Battaglia (The Flower of Battle) -- a new and accessible treatment

There are a lot of people pursuing various kinds of  historical re-enactment and re-creation, and I know a great many of them.  One variety I take an interest in is the effort to re-discover the methods and techniques of medieval one-on-one combat.  This not as hopeless...

Dog sweat!

The very occasional blog IranWrites reviews the movie Dog Sweat. ... Not long into the film, I felt that I had an urge to scream, “Say something for God’s sake!” when immediately the facial expression of an actress shuts me up, saying, “What is there to say. Don’t you see?” No, I don’t see if there is no talk, no laughter, no crying, no discussions, no debates, no complaints,...

Uzbekistan in English Russia

English Russia, a Russian photosite captioned in English, used to be part of my daily routine.  Eventually the flood of traffic wore me out.  Just now I went back for a look and I found it is still publishing a tremendous amount of  striking visual material. ...

Chilperic, King of the Franks: Gregory of Tours' mysterious but oddly contemporary characterization

Gregory says (Thorpe translation) that the king "hated the poor and all they stood fo...

Dumb stuff

Phil Paine on the flaws in the "Occupy" movement:All that said, I can’t say that I’m a big fan of the “Occupy” movement.  When social media made if possible for a broad range of people to make their disatisfaction known, it had a salutory effect.  If that technology had been used to draw people to specific places, where they could engage in some surprising and dramatic...

Worthwhile Canadian initiative

There is an economics blog called "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative," supposedly named after a phrase that won a contest for "most boring possible headline."  Today I ran across a real-life WCI, an amazing example of the strengths of the  public health approach to problems...

The situation of Arab Christians

Daniel Philpott:A tense subplot of the Arab Spring is the increasing endangerment of the region’s Christians. In Egypt, Coptic Christians, 10% of the population, have been attacked repeatedly by Salafist Muslims unleashed – many literally released from prison -- by the fall...

Economics as pseudo-science

The Globe and Mail has a substantial article on how the pretentions of economists to be scientists and practitioners of a purely math-based discipline have helped bring us to the current disaster. A former colleague at my university warned me  about this 20 years ago. ...

Ancient brews recreated

Mcleans reports:And then there’s Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania who, after analyzing the residue that lingers in the nooks and crannies of millennia-old potted vessels, is bringing ancient elixirs back to life. It’s gastronomical nostalgia on steroids.McGovern, a pioneer in the field of biomolecular archaeology who did undergraduate work in...

A remarkable Waterloo re-enactment

Brought to us through some fabulous photography.Thanks to Andrew for the heads ...

Polite Canadians

The Globe and Mail reports on what happens when you give 'em a gun and the prospect of filling the freezer with moose meat.Armed gangs defending their turf. Death threats and torched property. Victims too fearful to go to police.Sounds like another organized-crime offensive on the streets of Montreal. But the action is playing out in a more improbable setting: the backwoods ...

Astonishingly good

Law and Order SVU is in its 13th season and I have to say, that although  in the normal course of events the series should be as stale as thirteen-year-old bread, in some ways it is better than ever.The most recent episode was classic SVU.  It could easily have been in...