British women at war, 1942

http://ww2today.com/27th-december-1942-the-life-of-an-ats-ack-ack-girl...

Made up stuff

Ta-Nehisi Coates:I don't celebrate Kwanzaa. I only celebrate Christmas because of my wife and son. I generally don't like holidays. And while I come from a family of black radicals, my Dad generally derided Kwanzaa as "fake Christmas." The holiday season in the Coates house generally meant more time for work. (Sadly it's becoming that in my household too.) With that said,...

Tolkien's prose

In preparation for seeing the Hobbit movie -- which I have now seen -- I have reread the book. I am now reading The Children of Hurin, one of his posthumous works. This leads me to reflect on how good Tolkien could be as a writer when he wasn't trying too hard.But first a story about beer. Twenty years ago and more, soon after we had moved to the Near North, some friends came...

If you care about the second amendment, do you also care about the fourth?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/21/coming-drone-attack-amer...

Tony Horwitz on the "Gun Power" -- an excerpt

In the 1840s and 50s, abolitionists often spoke of a menace they called "The Slave Power." This pejorative wasn't aimed at Southern slavery, per se. It referred to the vast reach of proslavery money and influence in Washington and beyond. If unchecked, abolitionists warned, the Slave Power would poison every corner of American life and territory. I'm wary of historical analogies....

A merry medlar medieval Christmas

From Quid plura? As always, a different take on thinking about the Middle Ages. http://www.quidplura.com/?p=4...

Whatever happened to the Arab Spring?

John Keane, historian of  democracy, offers this analys...

Honoring the animals?

 From the Big Picture: "A man rides a horse through a bonfire, Jan. 16, 2012 in the small village of San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain. In honor of San Anton, the patron saint of animals, horses are ridden through the bonfires on the night before the official day of honoring...

New Books in History – an interesting resource

New Books in History highlights new studies and their authors. One feature I really like is the long interview that often? always? accompanies listing. For instance, if you want to hear an hour's worth of discussion of an interesting book on the Holocaust, you c...

Reflections on Crusade and Jihad, 2012

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"It is a bizarre fantasy, I believe of comparatively new vintage, and one that holds pretty much the entire actual history of a free people in some combination of ignorance and contempt."

A historian should have said this. But Josh Marshall at Talkingpointsmemo.com did:There are a lot of folks who believe we’re free in the US because of guns.It’s worth stepping back for a moment and thinking about what that means.It is a bizarre, weirdly narcissistic notion that is totally unhinged from any of our history. It is also comparatively new. Since the close of the...

100th anniversary of Piltdown Man!

One of the great fakes. Will the culprit be unmasked?http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/12/13/history-biggest-scientific-fraud-goes-under-microsco...

Oh happy land!

At least this week.Bored, we  were  watching Saskatoon's Sunday evening news on  our satellite TV.First up, reaction to the  Connecticut school massacre.Second, and the top local story, an auto accident in which nobody got hurt.Third, a coyote had to be shot on Avenue U.  Everybody was very sad, even the cop who shot it.You see what I mean.  That's...

A good old-fashioned book

Think you just might be interested in 14th-century political thought?This review  by Koziol in The Medieval Review caught my eye:Canning, Joseph. Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296-1417. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 219. $99.00. ISBN: 978-1-107-01141-0. . .https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/15202/12.12.09....

A trip to exotic 1972

Yes, Close to the Edge, live....

This ain't science fiction

Astronomy Picture of the Day:  Quiver trees and the Milky Way.Click for a good vi...

Egypt's proposed constitution -- what does it mean?

It depends on who gets to interpret Islamic law -- and on what basis. A detailed analysis from Foreign Policy:http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/12/13/islam_in_egypts_new_constitutionIf a student of constitutional texts sat down to read the draft Egyptian constitution from beginning to end, he or she would find much of it familiar -- the language, structure, and institutions...

Life in those United States -- Medicare edition

From the Washington Post --In the drone of numbers that often accompanies discussion of the fiscal cliff talks, it’s easy to forget that the decisions made in them could directly impact the lives of hundreds of thousand of people — in some cases profoundly. Raising the Medicare age is one area where this is particularly true — and Merkley [a US senator] spelled out the human dimensions...

What does the future hold for Syria?

Syria Deeply interviews Joshua Landis -- very informati...

A modern take on chivalry from the Atlantic

Chivalry is seen here as entirely about relations between men and women.A story from the life of Samuel Proctor (d. 1997) comes to mind here. Proctor was the beloved pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Apparently, he was in the elevator one day when a young woman came in. Proctor tipped his hat at her. She was offended and said, "What is that supposed to mean?"The pastor's...

Book for sale -- Deeds of Arms by Steven Muhlberger

Following an agreement with my former publisher, I am now selling my 2005 study Deeds of Arms through Freelance Academy Press.  Here is the address:http://www.freelanceacademypress.com/chivalrybookshelftitles.a...

Dr. Sheila Cote-Meek speaks on the impact of ongoing colonialism --Thursday, December 6th, 1:30pm.

The History Department and the Office of Aboriginal Initiatives are pleased to welcome Dr. Sheila Cote-Meek, Associated Vice-President, Academic & Indigenous Programs, Laurentian University. Dr. Cote-Meek will be presenting on "Exploring the Impact of Ongoing Colonialism on Aboriginal Students in Post-Secondary Education" please join us in the Treaty Learning Centre...

Autumn in Queenstown, New Zealand

From the Big Picture; click for a better view.This is part of the annual the National Geographic photo conte...

Another slice of Siberian life

Enjoying spring break up on the Yenisei River.From the Big Picture; click for a better vi...

Bangladesh: still waiting for the tide to raise all boats

If you follow the news at all, you heard about that factory fire in Bangladesh that killed about 100 workers in a textile plant. One of the striking details was the fact that these workers made something like thirty-five dollars a month.Now the popular wisdom these days on development...

Sign of the times

Business Week has an article on Ronald Coase, an eminent economist, and his latest project, an attempt to get economists down-to-earth again.In typical journalistic style, BusinessWeek gives his age thus:Coase, 101, began working with Wang in the 1990s at the University of Chicago. Made me look twice or three times, I'll tell you.Seems he did his seminal work seventy-five years...

Comment to a student in my Crusade and Jihad course

Me:One other similarity between Christian crusaders and Muslim jihadists is that sometimes one or both of them were interested in Jerusalem and the holy land, and sometimes they were not. People could go for hundreds of years ignoring the fate of Jerusal...