Phil Paine: The Conservative Love Affair with Communism and How It Is Destroying Us

A grim view of the present and the future, all that much grimmer for the news that the international effort to subvert free elections has come to Cana...

Happy Leap Day!

We don't get them very often, so we should take note when they occ...

The coming end in Afghanistan

Tom Englehardt and Nicholas Turse have a detailed discussion at Tomgram, but it all comes down to this one sentence:Eleven years in, if your forces are still burning Korans in a deeply religious Muslim country, it’s way too late and you should go.But will this teach future generations...

Remember the Vietnam War? Phil Paine reminds us

For some of us, the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been all too reminiscent of the Vietnam war -- murky and unrealistic motivations, vast expense at home and terrific casualties abroad, fantastic (in the sense of dream-like) official explanations of how it will all work out fine. One difference is that because lots of middle-class kids were drafted into the Vietnam...

Harmonica band

I was reading one of Uncle John's trivia books -- which are designed with bathroom readers in mind -- about harmonicas. It listed American presidents who played, including Lincoln (easy to believe) and -- Woodrow Wilson!WOODROW WILSON! The grimmest looking president of them all! Wow!Then Uncle John went on to describe a solid gold, jewel-encrusted harmonica given by the Hohner...

Cliff face, Novaya Zemlya

Bear looks for seabird eggs; click for a good view.From the Big Picture's selection from the World Press Photo conte...

Resurrected! Two articles from Florilegium by S. Muhlberger

Way back when -- in 1984 -- Florilegium, the journal of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, was looking for content, and I, a newish Ph.D., was looking for an opportunity to publish.  I was still mining my dissertation research on Latin chronicles of Late Antiquity, so what...

Speaking of nuns...

Walter Goffart said it long ago:  Gregory of Tours, despite all his assumed modesty about his rustic style, was a heck of a subtle writer.  Teaching Gregory in a fourth-year seminar this year, I am more than ever impressed by his skillful touches. See, for instance Book 9 chapter 40 in Gregory's Histories.  Gregory is writing an account of the nuns' revolt at Poitiers....

Carl Pyrdum on medieval "doodles"

This may not be part of your mental picture of the Middle Ages:Put aside the issue of errant agency clause,* because it’s the word “doodle” that really riles my pedantic dander. Granted, it’s not the first time that a marginalia post of mine has been disseminated to teh wider...

Another version of the big lie: People in [name that country, culture, or religious group] don't really want democracy

...they love the censors, the secret police and the bosses.Prof. John Keane of the Sydney Democracy Initiative comments on the situation in China:James Madison famously remarked that a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. The present government of the People’s Republic of China has set out...

On the euro crisis

I have just been reading the comments following an article by Eric Reguly in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business.  Reguly makes the point that anger against foreign demands for Greek austerity is rising, and a lot of it is aimed at the Germans, who are providing much of...

Indefinite hyperbolic numbers!

Zillion, squillion, bajillion!Stephen Chrisomalis of Wayne State University gives a delightful talk about where these numbers come fr...

The Syrian situation -- how not to change a regime

Some of my regular morning reading just oozes pessimism about Syria today:Eshani writes in Syria Comment that Syria’s Opposition Must Find a Different Way.Note update:  Eshani discusses critiques of his position.An excerpt:As the death toll mounts on the streets in Syria, it is important to remember how we got here. Damascus has decided to reassert control over its restive...

A new era in publishing (might be "The Call of All Nations")

At the ccel.org site, they have an electronic copy of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History.And this note.This book has been accessed more than 1280134 times since July 13, 2005.This is not the only copy on the Web, eith...

A new article on Boucicaut and Christine de Pizan

A colleague drew my attention to this:Zenep Kocabiyikoglu Cecen, "Two different views of knighthood in the early fifteenth century:  Le Livre de Bouciquaut and the works of Christine de Pizan," Journal of Military History 76(2012): 9-35.Summary:  the big differences...

Review of "The Secret History of Democracy" by Christopher Hobson

A fair evaluation, I think:The Secret History of Democracy is an ambitious attempt to offer an alternative narrative to the dominant account of the history of democracy. Reacting to a common tendency to draw a line from Ancient Athens, through Republican Rome to revolutionary America and France and so on, this book seeks out other historical instances of democracy. In highlighting...

Charny as arbitrator under the "droit d'armes"

Back in 1992, the renowned military historian Philippe Contamine wrote an article of Geoffroi de Charny for the festschrift (celebratory collection) dedicated to Georges Duby.  I just found this little nugget in the article (my rough translation):At that time [Charny] was recognized as an expert in the conflicts that can arise between people in...

We could use more of this

From the Weather Network site, the sun rising over Lake Nosbonsing:It's been a gray wint...

"Killer of Men" and "Marathon" by Christian Cameron

I read these books a few months ago but I guess I was too busy to write them up properly.  I will make up for that omission now.I read these two books under what must be ideal conditions.  A mutual friend took me over to see Christian Cameron -- re-enactor, amateur scholar,...

A costuming book of interest: Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515

I got the following note a few days ago, and I know some readers will be interested:Kindly note our offer on:Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515by Anne H. van Buren; edited by Roger S. Wieck.published by Giles Ltd. in association with the Morgan Library & Museum, New York- reg. price: $95.00- now: $76.00 (20% discount) +...

Most resonant phrase I saw on the Web this week

"The unreported world," used by Al Jazeera English to characterize what they try to cover.In my experience, a pretty accurate characterizati...

Best short discussion of medieval scholarship of the day

From Got Medieval:As everybody knew, the lives of saints were meant to mirror the life of Christ, so if you wanted to tell the truth about a saint, all you had to do was tell the truth about Christ.This sort of thinking derived from the way that medievals read their Bible, which is to say, typologically. Things in the Old Testament were said to pre-figure or pre-incarnate the things...

"Losing" Iraq

Some of Obama's political opponents are peddling the idea that his administration "lost" Iraq.  An article in Salon by Matt Duss refutes this charge: Brett McGurk, who served as a senior advisor to three U.S. ambassadors in Baghdad, helped negotiate the 2008 withdrawal...