The Stars My Destination!

Gully  Foyle talks to a loquacious robot addled by radiation:

“Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?”

“Because  you’re alive, sir.  You might as well ask, why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live  it!”

“There’s got to be more to life than just living.”

“Then find it yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to  stop because you have doubts.”

“Why can’t we all move forward together?”

“Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings.  Some must lead and hope that the rest will follow.”

“Who leads?”

“The men who must…driven men, compelled men.”

“Freak men.”

“You’re all freaks, sir. But you  always have been freaks. Life is a freak.  That’s its hope and glory.” 

“Thank you very  much.”

“My pleasure, sir.” 

“You’ve saved the day.”

 

“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir.” 

Better -- and authoritative -- news from Tiimbuctu

Excerpt of a statement from the international scholarly  organization most concerned with manuscript preservation:

From Tombouctou Manuscripts Project
(http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org)
Huma (Institute for humanities in Africa)
University of Cape Town

Since the start of this week there are reports about the destruction of library buildings and book collections in Timbuktu. It sounds as if the written heritage of the town went up in flames. According to our information this is not the case at all. The custodians of the libraries worked quietly throughout the rebel occupation of Timbuktu to ensure the safety of their materials. A limited number of items have been damaged or stolen, the infrastructure neglected and furnishings in the Ahmad Baba Institute library looted but from all our local sources – all  intimately connected with the public and private collections in the town - there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection.

There is much more detail in the full statement.

Mali -- a peaceful scene on the River Niger

From the Big Picture.  Click to make it big.

Online intellectual content – the real thing!

Two interesting posts from long time correspondents (what do you call a person whose blog you read on a regular basis?).

Over at Hammered Out Bits, Darrell Markewitz, the Norse reenactor and craftsman, brings his own perspective to the question of interpreting small objects. This artifact sparked a discussion about what it actually represents or how it can actually be used to establish details of Norse costuming.

Says Darrell:

...no matter how much you work with artifacts, you never really understand then until you see them in life, actually before you. Reading the measurements does not really impact you. Almost everything is either way SMALLER, or way LARGER in actual truth, than what you imagine it is.

That's the core of his post, but it's actually worth looking at it to see why Darrell thinks this. Well illustrated!

Then there is Professor Grumpy over at Historian on the Edge. He is writing a new book about how historians have not only lost control of history, but are in danger of being excluded from it. Sounds cranky? More like appalling, actually. In the sense that he is describing an appalling situation.

This reminds me of a time maybe twenty years ago when a well-known Canadian scholar, an historian actually, was arguing that we should reorganize Canadian academia on the model of "real countries." Reading this summary of how a real country (UK) does things, I am just glad that we have avoided reality so far.

Anyway, I highly recommend Prof. Grumpy's first chapter, and I congratulate him on maintaining his calm in the face of a situation that he must find intolerable.

The uncertain fate of Timbuktu's manuscripts

http://world.time.com/2013/01/28/mali-timbuktu-locals-saved-some-of-their-citys-ancient-manuscripts-from-islamists/

The original report was much worse, saying that tens  of thousands of the most historic manuscripts had been burned by retreating Islamist rebels.  We'll see.

Prisoners and ransom in the HYW -- a new book

Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War
Ransom Culture in the Late Middle Ages
Rémy Ambühl, University of Southampton
Hardback

Cambridge UP
ISBN:9781107010949
Publication date:January 2013
313pages
1 b/w illus.
Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm
Weight: 0.6kg
In stock
£60.00

Gillian McCann speaks: "Occultism and Utopianism in early 20th century Canada

From Anne Clendinning:

Just a quick reminder that the Department of History at Nipissing University continues its Seminar Series with our first talk of the new year, this coming Friday January 25.
Dr. Gillian McCann, from the Department of Religions and Cultures at Nipissing will speak on "Occultism and Utopianism in early 20th century Canada: an exploration of Canadian history from the dark side".

This work is from Dr. McCann's  recent book about the theosophical movement in Canada. Please join us this Friday afternoon January 25, in Room A226 from 2.30-4.30 at the North Bay campus. All are welcome and refreshments will be provided.

Winter in Afghanistan

Taking your goat for a walk!

From the Big Picture.

How to arm knights for a tournament

Latin text and English translation by Will McLean.

You have to wonder who this was written for.

The threat to Malian music – and everything else worthwhile

From the Independent:

The image of Mali has long been a gentle one. It is a land of magical music and mouth-watering mangoes, of mud mosques and medieval manuscripts. A country dripping with history and culture that was slowly forcing its way on to the tourist map for Western visitors. Now, following the intervention of French warplanes nine days ago, it will be more associated in most people's minds with Islamic militancy.

This is a tragic twist for a people whose faith revolves around the more tolerant strands of Sufism. For all its poverty, Mali has traditionally been open to outsiders. It is a nation where women are prominent and musicians more closely entwined with everyday life than perhaps any other place on earth. Music has long been part of the social and political fabric, from praise singers who, for centuries, passed on the oral history to the state-funded bands used to bond the nation after independence.

When I first went there almost a decade ago, it was for the famous Festival in the Desert, some 50 miles from Timbuktu and a symbol of reconciliation after a previous Tuareg uprising. It took three days to get there; Westerners reaching the event were treated like old friends. Days were spent sheltering from fierce sun in tents, chatting over cups of sweet tea and biscuits. At night, those amazing musicians who have taken Malian music around the globe performed in front of turbaned tribesmen on camels while burning braziers lit up the desert. An unforgettable experience.

Where once there was music and dancing, today there is misery and deprivation

More here.

Tuareg music

The group Tinariwen performing in 2006.

Fun with old alphabets

Up on the old Roman frontier, roughly on the English – Scottish border, there used to be a fort called Vindolanda. Way back when, its military significance was its most important feature, but today it is known as the site of the biggest cache of Roman correspondence, written on pieces of wood and wax tablets by a variety of soldiers and others.

There is a website where you can have a look at the handwriting typical of the first century A.D. and even play around with deciphering it. Not easy even if you know Latin!

Elsewhere, there is an article on the web about letters that never made it into the English alphabet, or were there briefly and then faded away. Fun!

Image: insular g.

Conflict between Islamist movements

Translation provided by Arabist.net:

War against the Muslim Brotherhood Divides the Gulf

Abdel Bari Atwan, al-Quds al-Arabi,

11 January 2013

 Whoever has been following the media in the Gulf – and the Saudi media in particular – has probably gotten a sense of the fierce campaign being waged against the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist currents more broadly, as well as the major preachers in the Gulf. Their influence has been on the rise recently thanks to social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and yet the dedicated security apparatuses of the various countries in the region have had a harder time controlling and blocking these outlets than they did with newspapers and websites. Dubai’s chief of police Lieut. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim pioneered this campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and was one of the first to issue vehement warnings about the danger they represented, but many articles appearing in the Saudi and Emirati press have begun to follow in his wake. This is happening in such a way as to suggest that there are bodies high up in the state that would like to open up a front against them, whether in Egypt – where they are sitting at the threshold of power – or within the Gulf itself.

 This war against the Brotherhood, and perhaps later upon the Salafi currents, represents a break with the historical alliance that has existed between conservative Gulf regimes and these figures. This alliance ensured the stability of these regimes and helped combat all the leftist and nationalist ideas that constituted a threat to this stability in the eyes of the rulers. The question that is now on everyone’s mind is why has there been a sudden reversal of opinion in the Gulf against the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, when this ideology was embraced and supported over the past 80 years. In the aim of helping control Gulf youth, Muslim Brotherhood intellectuals and professors were even allowed take over the education sector, set curricula, and establish proselytizing and charitable associations, not just within Gulf countries but throughout the entire world.

 How did this relationship of warm, strategic friendship morph into a bitter fight – at least on one side, for now — between the ruling regimes in the Gulf and the Muslim Brotherhood? The response to these questions can be summed up in the following points:

• Governments in the Gulf have realized that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “global” movement governed by an international organization. This means that the loyalty of the organization is to the Supreme Guide in Egypt, and not to local authorities, not even to the head of the group in these countries.

• The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has taken control of the process of forming the next generations by setting local curricula. This has led it to dominate the armies and security services, which has left it more prepared than ever to overthrow the ruling regimes and seize power. This is the main fear of the Gulf regimes

• With the liberal and leftist currents in Gulf countries weakened by decades of repression and persecution, the organized Islamist currents have become the leading candidates to launch Arab Spring revolutions for change in the countries of the Gulf.

• Religious and Brotherhood currents in particular enjoy a financial independence that sets them apart from the other currents, due to their intricate organizational networks and the fact that their backers possess considerable financial resources due to their control of large companies and financial institutions in Gulf countries especially. This has allowed them to combine political and economic power.

• Islamist movements enjoy significant support in popular milieus because their ideology centers on the Islamic faith. Their control over mosques — whether directly or indirectly — translates into five miniature daily meetings and one large weekly meeting every Friday.

• Non-jihadist Islamist movements – and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular – practice self-control and avoid any collision with the state. This explains the Brotherhood’s silence in Egypt concerning the attacks in which it has been targeted. It has kept calm and sent delegations to the Emirates to solve the arrests crisis through diplomatic means.It was no surprise that Saudi writers accused the Muslim Brotherhood of employing the "principle of taqiyya”[1] among its organizational practices.

  
  

  Gulf countries – to put it briefly – are worried about the MB’s control of Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan, and its attempts to gain power in Jordan, Yemen and Syria. This would leave the countries of the Gulf surrounded on all sides, and at risk of falling into the new orbit of the Muslim Brotherhood, in a sort of political “domino” effect.

More here.

Linda Greenhouse on Robert Bork

If you have access to the New York Times, you may want to read about Robert Bork, one of the most controversial failed nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States; he recently died. I have included an excerpt, but you should read the whole thing and the very interesting comments that follow. It will teach you a lot about the ideological development of American politics.

No one who actually lived through the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September 1987 is without views on the subject, and I have previously offered mine. I think that the televised hearing, which held the country spellbound, provided a rare and valuable public seminar on the meaning of the Constitution, the methods of constitutional interpretation, and the different answers that competing methods offer to the most profound questions of individual autonomy and equality.... [What] “borking” really amounted to was holding the nominee’s vigorously expressed views up to the light for public inspection. In five days of testimony, then-Judge Bork – a former professor of mine whom I liked and respected – had every opportunity to make his case. His ideas were fully aired and considered. By a vote of 58 to 42, the senators, having heard from their constituents, concluded that his constricted constitutional vision, locked into the supposed “original intention” of the framers, was not what the country needed or wanted.... I [later] asked [Bork] whether, at any time during the hearing, he had felt that a member of the Judiciary Committee had met him on his own level in serious constitutional conversation.
“No,” he answered. “Not even Arlen Specter?” I asked. “Specter had his mind made up from the beginning,” he snapped. I knew that wasn’t true.... Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, had in fact agonized over his vote, as I knew from having talked with him almost daily. A Yale Law School graduate and former prosecutor, the senator went head to head with the nominee through several rounds of questioning, hours of mesmerizing constitutional debate in which he probed for any sign of flexibility in Judge Bork’s view that the entire course of modern constitutional law was profoundly mistaken. Finding none, Senator Specter, who had assumed at the start of the hearing that he would vote for confirmation, decided to vote No.... Five other Republicans followed....

Bork couldn’t accept the legitimacy of his defeat.... Bork was hardly unique in his sense of entitlement, but it ran so deep that it prevented him from understanding the obvious dynamic of what happened....
Senator Hatch served up what sounded like a concluding, softball question: “In your lengthy constitutional studies, is there any Supreme Court decision that has stirred more controversy or criticism amongst scholars and citizens than that particular case [Roe v. Wade]?” Then came the unexpected answer: “I suppose the only candidate for that, Senator, would be Brown v. Board of Education.”... As Senator Hatch immediately grasped, the nominee had violated a cardinal rule of modern judicial confirmation hearings, which is that Brown v. Board of Education is beyond debate. The 1954 school desegregation ruling was in fact the subject of substantial criticism within the legal academy in the 1950s and well into the 1960s; some eminent professors, while endorsing the outcome, took strong issue with the court’s analytical method. Awareness of the rich critical literature from that period had faded away by 1987, effaced by the decision’s celebrated unanimity and moral weight. So while Judge Bork’s answer to Senator Hatch was historically accurate, it was an obtuse accuracy. More to the point was how the moral dimension seemed to elude him as he tossed Brown into the same box with the abortion decision of which he had been so scathingly dismissive....

I see him as a tragic figure: not because he was dealt an unjust hand – he wasn’t – but because of his inability to understand what happened. He spent his final decades surrounded by acolytes who stoked his sense of victimhood, and there seemed to be no one around him to provide a reality check as his rants about the Supreme Court’s depredations and the collapse of Western civilization (he portrayed the two as inextricably linked) became ever more extravagant.... By 1996, in “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline,” he was taking aim at Darwinian evolution and embracing “intelligent design,” evidence for which he later called “overwhelming.” “A Country I Do Not Recognize,” a book he edited in 2005, found him plunging ever deeper into the culture wars

It's time again for the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival!

Harbin is in northeastern China (Manchuria). It is so cold there that the only logical thing is to make situation an advantage. Every year, too, the Big Picture showcases the best of the festival. Here are two photos to motivate you have a look.

Click on the pics for a good view.

Phil Paine reflects on Iceland and democracy, 1

An excerpt:

But, to begin with, I’ll call up the mem­ory of my ear­li­est expe­ri­ence of democracy.

When I was a small child, in North­ern Ontario, there was a game played by the local chil­dren. It was a com­pli­cated ver­sion of “hide-and-go-seek”. Two teams of chil­dren would form up, one of which would leave a cen­tral gath­er­ing point on a com­pli­cated trail, and select a hid­ing place, leav­ing team mem­bers at strate­gic points, also hid­den. One of their num­ber would then return to the cen­tral point, meet­ing up with the other team. He or she (while the game mostly appealed to boys, girls were not excluded) would then draw a map on the ground, hon­estly rep­re­sent­ing the hiders’ route to their points of con­ceal­ment, but omit­ting the cru­cial infor­ma­tion of com­pass direc­tion. With this par­tial infor­ma­tion, the other team would set out in search, under the direc­tion of a leader. The the leader of the hid­ing team would accom­pany the search­ing team. He or she would shout out coded words and phrases, which had been agreed upon by his or her team mates. These would con­vey infor­ma­tion such as “the searchers are near but headed away from you” or “they are search­ing too far to the south of you”, etc. Some of the sig­nals were mean­ing­less, meant to mis­lead or con­fuse the searchers. The search­ing team also made use of coded sig­nals to co-ordinate their search. One sig­nal, how­ever, was cru­cial, as it would trig­ger a mad scram­ble to reach the map and erase it. This was com­pli­cated by the abil­ity of any scout to tag another, mak­ing him “freeze” on the spot, and the abil­ity of any other scout to “unfreeze” the frozen ones. Nei­ther team knew who was leader of the other team, since each had been selected after they had sep­a­rated. Each team made use of var­i­ous ruses, with scouts and lead­ers act­ing in var­i­ous ways to con­fuse their oppo­site num­bers.


It was an amaz­ingly com­plex game for small chil­dren to play. I don’t know if it is still played. Later, as an adult, inves­ti­ga­tion led me to con­clude that the game was of Native Cana­dian ori­gin. This came as no sur­prise to me, as its ele­ments are par­tic­u­larly suited to the Cana­dian phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment and to its Native cul­tural envi­ron­ment. The hunt­ing and track­ing ele­ment, and the reliance on grasp­ing the “high view” of a land­scape are both significant.

But what is rel­e­vant here is that the game was as much a train­ing for democ­racy as it was for hunt­ing and track­ing. Each stage of the game was char­ac­ter­ized by a for­mal elec­toral process. Each team leader was elected by major­ity vote in each cycle of the game, and no leader could serve more than one con­sec­u­tive “term”. Nom­i­na­tion and vot­ing were car­ried out by spe­cific pro­ce­dures which, in later life, as a his­to­rian, I found doc­u­mented among Native and Métis peo­ples in the Cana­dian north. It was to no team’s advan­tage to keep choos­ing the same peo­ple for the same tasks — the pat­tern would soon be use­ful to the oppo­si­tion. But at the same time, a com­pe­tent or expe­ri­enced per­son was the opti­mal choice. Wildly com­pet­i­tive as the game was, it was also char­ac­ter­ized by a con­sis­tent demand for fair­ness and equity. It is sig­nif­i­cant that nobody doubted that the map drawn in the ground would be an hon­est representation. 

I grew up with this game as part of my men­tal fur­ni­ture, and it came as a sur­prise to me when I found whole pop­u­la­tions of peo­ple who had no child­hood expe­ri­ence with any kind of demo­c­ra­tic com­po­nent. Their child­hoods, I came to real­ize, were dom­i­nated by the expe­ri­ence of tyranny: par­ents lay­ing down the law at home; teach­ers lay­ing down the law in school; bul­lies lay­ing down the law every­where else. It is no won­der that many peo­ple have great dif­fi­culty deal­ing with the con­cept of democ­racy. It is no won­der that many peo­ple today can­not imag­ine democ­racy as any­thing more than some incom­pre­hen­si­ble riga­ma­role pre­ced­ing the appoint­ment of a tyrant, who will then tell them what to do.

More on Phil's blog and more to come.

Image:  the old meeting site  of  Iceland's thing.

Favorite blog posts of 2012 fixed.

Go here.

Stalemate in Syria

NYT:

A multilingual former military officer, he says he is among many friends and colleagues who feel trapped: disenchanted with President Bashar al-Assad, disgusted by the violence engulfing Syria and equally afraid of the government and the rebels, with both sides, as he puts it, ready to sacrifice “the innocents.”

 Mr. Assad remains in power in part because two years into the uprising, a critical bloc of Syrians remains on the fence. Among them are business owners who drive the economy, bankers who finance it, and the security officials and government employees who hold the keys to the mundane but crucial business of maintaining an authoritarian state. If they abandoned the government or embraced the rebels en masse, they might change the tide. Instead, their uncertainty contributes to the stalemate.

 The Egyptian and Tunisian rebellions that inspired Syria’s initially peaceful uprising reached tipping points within weeks, with far less bloodshed. In those cases, widespread desire for change overwhelmed the fear of the unknown, and toppled governments — or rather, the dictatorial cliques that headed them. But in Syria, each side has bloodied the other while many stay on the sidelines, and a core contingent of supporters feels obligated to stick with the government even as their doubts grow. That is in part because the government’s ruthless crackdown has made protest far more risky than in other uprisings. But it is also because of doubts, among the urban elite and others, about the direction of the revolution and how a rebel-ruled Syria would look.

 “Me and my neighbors, we were the first to go down to the street and scream that we want a country, a real country, not a plantation,” said Samar Haddad, who runs a Syrian publishing house. “But this armed revolution, I refuse it as much as I refuse the regime.”

Ms. Haddad, who is in her late 40s and now spends much of her time outside Damascus, said that she and her circle of intellectuals and professionals embrace unarmed Syrian protesters as heroes, but believe that the armed rebellion is creating warlords and cycles of revenge that will be hard to uproot.

 The fence sitters include government employees, security forces, intellectuals and wealthy Syrians. Some, including members of Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect, say they fear the rule of Islamists, or the calls for vengeance from some factions of the Sunni Muslim-dominated uprising.

Some are former soldiers who say they defected only to be disappointed by rebels who lack discipline or obsess about religious ideology. One young man, Nour, said he gave up on revolution when he tried to join an Islamist brigade, Al Tawhid, but was rejected for wearing skinny jeans.

Joshua Landis at Syria Comment has long  been putting out this kind  of analysis.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Most people who know the phrase “bonfire of the vanities” do so in connection with a Tom Wolfe novel of the 80s or the movie that was made from it. I haven’t read the book or seen the movie but I do know the historical reference that Wolfe used. Vanities, said Christian teachers, were unworthy things that distracted believers from what was ultimately important, eternal salvation. Vanities could be any kind of luxury which absorbed the believer's attention. On occasion revivalist preachers would call upon their congregations to collect those vanities, bring them to a central location and burn them. The most famous of these preachers is the friar Savonarola who at the beginning of the sixteenth century preached in Renaissance Florence against her wealth and art and luxury that characterized Florentine life at the time. He is not my favorite historical figure by any means, but the phrase bonfire of the vanities I primarily associate with him has suggested the following line of thought about the gun crisis in the United States.

I won’t argue the point that there is a gun crisis. That’s my starting point and if you disagree, you might as well stop reading now. But the large-scale arming of America, and the development of an ideology sees mass ownership of heavy-duty weaponry as an essential guarantee of American freedom have attracted my attention for a long time. I remember some time in the 80s I was talking with my friend Phil Paine about this phenomenon and its effects on Canada. I made some observation about regulation, and he responded that when you have a large-scale popular movement like this it is difficult to do anything about it through legislation.

As we look at the situation in the United States today, the truth of that statement is evident. I think it would be quite possible to create legislation and regulations that might have a positive effect, make it more difficult for angry or crazy people from working out their dreams of mass murder. But the fact remains that there are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States and it simply would not be possible to take those guns away from their owners, short of civil war.

Indeed there is only one way that a large reduction in the availability of truly dangerous guns could be, and only one group of people who can make it happen.

That group of people is gun owners. A significant reduction in the supply of guns can only be accomplished by burning them on the bonfire of the vanities. The popular movement that has armed or over armed America can only be counteracted by another popular movement.

Two groups will have only a marginal role in the creation of such a popular movement if indeed it ever takes place. People who are opposed to private gun ownership have no influence on their gun owning fellow countrymen. People on the other hand who believe that gun ownership is a practical and necessary guarantee  against government tyranny, an essential element of their identity as Americans are certainly not going to take any initiatives to reduce the number of guns in circulation. Both of these groups have fundamentalist convictions not shared by the majority of Americans, and because those convictions are absolute they are unlikely to become the majority position.

But there are many people in the United States who think that gun ownership, practiced responsibly, has a place in their lives. I live in the country and although I don’t have a gun, I understand why some farmers might want to have one. In fact, I think it’s a good idea that some of my neighbors have them; I might someday need to find somebody with a gun to, say, kill a rabid animal. I think arming yourself at least in Canadian conditions probably leads to a net loss in personal safety, but I can understand that people might disagree. And long ago, I shot guns for fun in the context of a Boy Scout camp, and learned gun safety in a program sponsored by the NRA. I didn’t follow up on this, but I can see it.

I think that such people very seldom have tremendous numbers of guns and ammunition, and seldom foresee shooting down the agents of their own elected government in defense of their freedom; not as a real possibility. If this large group of people who share the majority opinion that guns by themselves are not an intolerable menace, but things that can be useful in certain circumstances turns against the over arming of America, they will have an influence on the culture of guns that the out and out opponents of gun ownership will never have. But they will only have that positive influence if they abjure the other fundamentalist position, which justifies heavy armament, rather than any other political principle, as the source of political liberty.

If many gun owners look around one day and conclude that some armaments are vanities, unnecessary and even dangerous to good old-fashioned American liberty, and decide that some of what they personally own should go on the bonfire, and begin to urge their fellow gun owners to take that perspective, then the overarming of America may be rolled back.

And if not, not.

Afghanistan's Jewish community a thousand years ago

A trove of Jewish writings in various languages indicates how big a Jewish community once existed in Afghanistan. From CBS/AP:

A trove of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew characters rescued from caves in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan is providing the first physical evidence of a Jewish community that thrived there a thousand years ago.

On Thursday Israel's National Library unveiled the cache of recently purchased documents that run the gamut of life experiences, including biblical commentaries, personal letters and financial records.

Researchers say the "Afghan Genizah" marks the greatest such archive found since the "Cairo Genizah" was discovered in an Egyptian synagogue more than 100 years ago, a vast depository of medieval manuscripts considered to be among the most valuable collections of historical documents ever found.

Genizah, a Hebrew term that loosely translates as "storage," refers to a storeroom adjacent to a synagogue or Jewish cemetery where Hebrew-language books and papers are kept. Under Jewish law, it is forbidden to throw away writings containing the formal names of God, so they are either buried or stashed away.

The Afghan collection gives an unprecedented look into the lives of Jews in ancient Persia in the 11th century. The paper manuscripts, preserved over the centuries by the dry, shady conditions of the caves, include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic and the unique Judeo-Persian language from that era, which was written in Hebrew letters.

"It was the Yiddish of Persian Jews," said Haggai Ben-Shammai, the library's academic director.

Favorite blog posts of 2012

This is a rather haphazard selection, rather than rigorous listing of the best I was able to put together this year. I was struck that despite the fact I'm working very hard on the Middle Ages, not much of it leaked through into blogging. Also, I included far fewer Arab spring/Arab uprising posts than I might have, but I felt that only a few had lasting value on their own.

Le spectacle des joutes Sport et courtoisie à la fin du Moyen Âge, by Sebastien Nadot

A friend sends news of this French academic book on jousting. I haven't seen the book so will just copy the description off its publisher's webpage:

Le spectacle des joutes

Sport et courtoisie à la fin du Moyen Âge

Les pas d’armes sont des jeux corporels où la dépense physique, les accidents, l’esprit compétitif, les tricheries et le chauvinisme font rage, dans un cadre réglementé. Spectacles pour un public nombreux en partie féminin, les pas d’armes ont aussi une réalité financière et politique. Les plus grands princes de Castille, de Bourgogne ou de France côtoient les champions les plus réputés. Avec ce regard sur les pratiques physiques médiévales, la comparaison entre sport et pas d’armes devient possible. Elle s’oppose aux « penseurs du muscle » qui ont communément admis que le sport est né au XIXe siècle en Angleterre sur des bases antiques…
Avec une préface d’Adeline Rucquoi.

2012 Sébastien Nadot Domaine : Histoire médiévale Collection : Histoire Format : 15,5 x 24 cm Nombre de pages : 354 p. Illustrations : Couleurs ISBN : 978-2-7535-2148-3 Disponibilité : en librairie Prix : 18,00 €

And is it another $100 book?  NO! Color pictures and all, a mere 18 euro!

Kevin Kelly says: "Nobody ever suggested that Picasso should spend fewer hours painting per picture in order to boost his wealth or improve the economy."

Want to bet?

Despite the snark, I think this is one of the most interesting articles I've read on the web this year or maybe even last year! (smile)  Some years back I came to the conclusion that the general availability of safe clean water was the measure of civilization. I am not backing off that statement, but Kevin Kelly has made me rethink myself. You should read his article, because it is a great push back on the philistinism of our current age. Potential Picassos are being told to get a job all the time, and the cultural infrastructure built by past Picassos and their fans is being dismantled in the name of both morality and prudence, but mainly productivity.

Take a look at these farm houses which I saw under construction in remote areas of Yunnan province China. They were not unusual; farmsteads this size were everywhere in rural China. Note the scale of these massive buildings. Each support post is cut from a single huge tree. The massive earth walls are three stories high and taper toward the top. They are homes for a single extended family built in the traditional Tibetan farmhouse style. They are larger than most middle-class American homes. The extensive wood carvings inside and outside will be painted in garish colors, like this family room shown in a finished home. This area of Yunnan is consider one of the poorer areas in China, and the standard of living of the inhabitants here would be classified as "poor."
Part of the reason is that these homes have no running water, no grid electricity, and no toilets. They don't even have outhouses.
But the farmers and their children who live in these homes all have cell phones, and they have accounts on the Chinese versions of Twitter and Facebook, and recharge via solar panels.
This is important because a recent thought-provoking article by a renowned economist argues that the US economy has not been growing during the internet boom and probably will not grow any more than it has already because computers and the internet are not as productive as the last two industrial revolutions.


You can read the article here: Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? (PDF) by Robert Gordon.
Gordon answers his own question with: Yes, US economic growth is over for a while. I think Robert Gordon is wrong about his conclusion, but I wanted to start with one of the bits of evidence he offers for his view. He is trying to argue that the consequences of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, which bought to common people electricity and plumbing, was far more important than the computers and internet which the 3rd Industrial Revolution has brought us. (Gordon's 1st Industrial revolution was steam and railroads.) As evidence of this claim he offers this hypothetical choice between option A and option B.

With option A you are allowed to keep 2002 electronic technology, including your Windows 98 laptop accessing Amazon, and you can keep running water and indoor toilets; but you can’t use anything invented since 2002. Option B is that you get everything invented in the past decade right up to Facebook, Twitter, and the iPad, but you have to give up running water and indoor toilets. You have to haul the water into your dwelling and carry out the waste. Even at 3am on a rainy night, your only toilet option is a wet and perhaps muddy walk to the outhouse. Which option do you choose?

Gordon then goes on to say:

I have posed this imaginary choice to several audiences in speeches, and the usual reaction is a guffaw, a chuckle, because the preference for Option A is so obvious.

But as I just recounted, Option A is not obvious at all.
The farmers in rural China have chosen cell phones and twitter over toilets and running water. To them, this is not a hypothetical choice at all, but a real one. and they have made their decision in massive numbers. Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, if not billions of people in the rest of Asia, Africa and South America have chosen Option B. You can go to almost any African village to see this. And it is not because they are too poor to afford a toilet. As you can see from these farmers' homes in Yunnan, they definitely could have at least built an outhouse if they found it valuable. (I know they don't have a toilet because I've stayed in many of their homes.) But instead they found the intangible benefits of connection to be greater than the physical comforts of running water.
Most of the poor of the world don't have such access to resources as these Yunnan farmers, but even in their poorer environment they still choose to use their meager cash to purchase the benefits of the 3rd revolution over the benefits of the 2nd revolution. Connection before plumbing. It is an almost universal choice.
This choice may seem difficult for someone who has little experience in the developing world, but in the places were most of the world lives we can plainly see that the fruits of the 3rd generation of automation are at least as, and perhaps more, valuable than some fruits of the 2nd wave of industrialization.
So if people value the benefits of computers and internet so much why don't we see this value reflected in the growth of the US economy? According to Gordon growth has stalled in the internet age. This question was first asked by Robert Solow in 1987 and Gordon's answer is that there are 6 "headwinds," six negative, or contrary forces which deduct growth from the growth due to technology in the US (Gordon reiterates he is only speaking of he US). The six "headwinds" slowing down growth are the aging of the US population, stagnant levels of education, rising inequality, outsourcing and globalization, environmental constraints, and household and government debt. I agree with Gordon about these headwinds, particularly the first one, which he also sees as the most important.
Where Gordon is wrong is his misunderstanding and underestimating of the power of technological growth before it meets these headwinds.
... the 3rd Industrial Revolution is not really computers and the internet, it is the networking of everything.
And in that regime we are just at the beginning of the beginning. We have only begun to connect everything to everything and to make little network minds everywhere. It may take another 80 years for the full affect of this revolution to be revealed.
In the year 2095 when economic grad students are asked to review this paper of Robert Gordon and write about why he was wrong back in 2012, they will say things like "Gordon missed the impact from the real inventions of this revolution: big data, ubiquitous mobile, quantified self, cheap AI, and personal work robots. All of these were far more consequential than stand alone computation, and yet all of them were embryonic and visible when he wrote his paper. He was looking backwards instead of forward."
Finally, Gordon is focused, as most economists, on GDP which measures the amount of "labor saving" that has been accomplished. The more labor you save while making or serving something, the more productive you are. In the calculus of traditional economics productivity equals wealth. Gordon rightly points out that so far the internet has not saved a lot of labor. As I argue in my robot piece in Wired, Better Than Human (not my title), I think the real wealth in the future does not come from saving labor but in creating new kinds of things to do. In this sense long-term wealth depends on making new labor.
Civilization is not just about saving labor but also about "wasting" labor to make art, to make beautiful things, to "waste" time playing, like sports. Nobody ever suggested that Picasso should spend fewer hours painting per picture in order to boost his wealth or improve the economy. The value he added to the economy could not be optimized for productivity. It's hard to shoehorn some of the most important things we do in life into the category of "being productive." Generally any task that can be measured by the metrics of productivity -- output per hour -- is a task we want automation to do. In short, productivity is for robots. Humans excel at wasting time, experimenting, playing, creating, and exploring. None of these fare well under the scrutiny of productivity. That is why science and art are so hard to fund. But they are also the foundation of long-term growth. Yet our notions of jobs, of work, of the economy don't include a lot of space for wasting time, experimenting, playing, creating, and exploring.

 Thanks to Brad DeLong for the heads-up. And Will McLean for this comment.

Modern nomads in Mongolia

Using a solar panel to run a flat-screen TV.

Thanks to the Big Picture at boston.com.