To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Today I heard the Byrds' version of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man played in  the background of a CBC Radio One history of the music business. I realized that it had been a very long time indeed since I'd heard the original version by Bob Dylan himself. This, I thought, is how things fade into the past. To invoke the revolutionary music scene of the 1960s, the producers of...

Happy Lunar Landing Day!

 Image:   Apollo ...

Dry enough for you?

The dried-out bed of  the Mississippi River, from  the Big Pictu...

It's too late for the pebbles to vote

Words of wisdom from Babylon 5 (which I never saw the first time around): "The avalanche has already begun, it's too late for the pebbles to vot...

The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness, and Honour, by Markku Peltonen

As someone who works on deeds of arms in the Middle Ages – deeds of arms including things like individual challenges, trials by combat, jousts, and tournaments – this is a very useful book. I have always thought there was a big difference between the duels of the early modern era and the the medieval deeds of arms we see in things like Froissart's Chronicles. Peltonen thoroughly...

Medieval minstrelsy reconstructed

What should appear in my mailbox this morning but a newsletter from Boydell and Brewer entitled the Medieval Herald. This newsletter is much more substantial and interesting than many of the electronic commercial flyers I get. For one thing, it includes some very good interviews with authors, who all have the knack of making their work accessible – or have been edited very skillfully....

Bridge over a canal in Santos, Brazil

From the Big Picture at boston....

A serious discussion of " living history"

From one of the founders of DARC:  Living History - What does it look like? DARC focuses on daily life in the Viking Age. The presentation will centre on a 'camp', with costumed interpreters surrounded by a collection of replica objects consisting of domestic goods, tools,...

A witty reply to goldbugs

Noah Smith via Brad DeLong: It is simply not the case that we can cheaply and easily buy things with money because it is valuable. It is, instead, the case that money is valuable because we can cheaply and easily buy things with it. One way into the tangle of understanding why...

From Vermont

I was introduced to this kind of Yankee Drollery by a high school English teach...

Neckties

Ruslan Pukhov in the New York Times: "The continuing struggles in Arab countries are seen as a battle by those who wear neckties against those who do not wear them. Russians have long suffered from terrorism and extremism at the hands of Islamists in the northern Caucasus, and they are therefore firmly on the side of those who wear neckties." It's not just in the Middle East...

It's everywhere

Jousting: April 25, 2010 in Hermitage Flat, Lithgow, NSW, Australia. Thanks to Matt Spong, Rod Walker (riding) and Sean Garris...

Some perspective on the Arab Spring

Juan Cole takes a positive view: Americans forget that in the 1780s the Articles of Confederation did not work very well, and there were problems of too little federal government. They forget the Rhode Island farmers’ strike, Shays’ Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the various slave revolts, the continued conflicts with Native Americans, etc., etc. Thomas Jefferson, less...