Jousting rules: Will McLean adds another piece to the puzzle

Will McLean is reading Noel Fallows Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia and blogging such things as the Jousting Rules of the Order of the Banda, ca. 1330, to wit:Each knight runs four coursesA broken lance beats no breaksTwo breaks beat oneA broken lance that unhelms counts as twoUnhorsing counts as two lances, even if the lance doesn't breakKnocking a knight...

Democracy in the Middle East

Back in 1993, Phil Paine and I published "Democracy's Place in World History" in the Journal of World History, in which we argued that just about any part of the world had customs and institutions that might lead to democracy, that the development of democracy was not simply the elaboration of a unique "Western" tradition that "other people" could not really understand.Phil...

Raja Ampat atoll, off Papua, Indonesia

From the Big Pictu...

Democracy Burman style

These are the members of parliament.Say no more, say no more.Thanks to the Big Pictu...

Christopher Lascelles, A Short History of the World

Christopher Lascelles seems to be a nice man, and he likes this blog. I love him for that. He has asked me to do something really difficult which is to review something he has written, his Short History of the World, available as an e-book from a variety of sources.  (Here and here, for instance.)Asking a professional historian to do such a review, of a book that summarizes...

Balloons over Burma

From the Big Pictu...

Darren Ferry speaks on Mechanics' Institutes: Friday March 30, 2:30 pm

From Dr. Derek Neal:Greetings to all,The Department of History invites you to join us for our final presentation of the academic year, Friday, March 30 at 2:30 pm in room A122. Darren Ferry, of Nipissing's Muskoka Campus, will present a paper entitled "Open to All Classes on Terms of Perfect Equality: The Association of Mechanics' Institutes and the Establishment of Adult Education...

Panem Spring

Several people whose taste I trust had told me that the Hunger Games books were really good, and the early reviews of the movie, professional and amateur, were promising, but I knew I was in for a treat within a few minutes, when the movie cut cleanly and dramatically from the interview...

Juan Cole translates Omar Khayyam

Now that the rose of your good fortune is blooming,why are you standing therewith no glass in your hand?Have some wine–fate is a treacherous enemy,And a day like this is hard to come by.Translated by Juan Colefrom [pdf] Whinfield 71http://www.juancole.com/2012/03/omar-...

Oddball medieval name of the day

Sir Hertank van Clux, who served under Henry V in his 1415 expedition to France, as the captain of a retinue of 14.Thus saith the on-line database, The Soldier in Later Medieval England.Image:  Agincourt. Kind of hard to pick out Sir Hertank from he...

Robert Fisk on the Afghan massacre

Fisk has covered a lot of massacres, starting in Vietnam. This is from the Independent. The Afghan narrative has been curiously lobotomised – censored, even – by those who have been trying to explain this appalling massacre in Kandahar. They remembered the Koran burnings – when American troops in Bagram chucked Korans on a bonfire – and the deaths of six Nato soldiers, two of...

Competence when it counts

This week, the weather story in Ontario's Near North is the same as it is in many places in North America, it's all about the usually warm weather.  Last week, however, it was pretty dramatic around here.  There was a great big dump of snow, followed by a big melt-off,...

Borislav Chernev speaks: "The Future Depends on Brest-Litovsk": March 16, 2012, 5 pm

From Derek Neal:The Department of History is pleased to invite you to a special presentation on Friday, March 16 at 5:00 pm in Room A226, entitled "'The Future Depends on Brest-Litovsk': War, Peace, and Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe, 1917–1918." Our guest speaker is Mr. Borislav Chernev, doctoral candidate in History at the American University in Washington,...

It's over in Afghanistan

The American "mission" will soon come to its Vietnamesque end, once more showing the futility of military occupation, its inability to do anything but produce atrocity.How much did this cost? Does anyone feel saf...

Earth, ISS, aurora and clouds

Thanks, Atlant...

This is no abstract, this is real

The moons Titan and Dione pose before Saturn and its rings.  Click that image!Beautiful, but it makes late winter in the Near North seem cozy.Thanks to Will McLean for pointing me to this feature from the Atlant...

Scalzi on "unnatural"

Scalzi:The imputation that “unnatural” means “wrong” is one of those stupid things people say when they haven’t thought through the implications of the assertion. I mean, you’re aware television is “unnatural,” right? So are pants. So are eyeglasses, cell phones, indoor plumbing, the Growing Pains complete second season on DVD, and just about any weapon more complicated than a...

And yet another

Click for a bigger view!Big Picture picks another from the Smithsonian Magazine conte...

And another

Click!Thanks, Big Picture and Smithsonian Magazi...

Blue Ice Cave in Antarctica -- from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest

Click to expand.And click here to see the Big Picture selecti...

St. Piran's Day!

St. Piran came to Cornwall from Ireland (bringing the snakes with him?) and gets credit for being the country's patron saint.  He even has a flag, white cross on black.  One can see why it's not really included on the Union flag; though maybe there will be room when the...

A schoolroom in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Click for a better view.From the Big Pictu...

Tactics used in late medieval deeds of arms -- Will McLean speaks

Until rather recently, serious scholarship has had little to say about how medieval combat worked.  That's because few scholars had any acquaintance with armor and weaponry, while few who were interested in combats could handle the source material with skill.  (In fact it was worse: fighters almost never had access to some of the most useful sources.Things have changed,...

Fred Herzog's 50 years of photographs

Like most of his work, this is a Vancouver street scene.  There is much, much more at the Equinox Gallery site he...

Beyond non-violence

This is a two-part blog post. The first is basically a long quotation from Jonathan Schell on non-violent protest.  That material, which is indented, is followed by my own reflections.Over at TomDispatch, the long-running anti-imperial blog, Andy Kroll has posted an interview...