Three pictures of rural Iran

Three striking views of Palangen village by Amos Chapple via The Big Picture. Click for the big pi...

Was the Roman Empire drowned in a bathtub?

Recently, I was at the conference Shifting Frontiers X, a leading late antiquity conference in North America.  At the conference George Benton and Richard Burgess gave an interesting talk on the changing role of gold in late antiquity. Here is an excerpt of the abstract reproduced with permission.From the time of the introduction of the solidus by Constantine the use and perception...

The dog ate my legislation

Jonathan Bernstein at the Washington Post cites David Farenthold:Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) was assigned to write legislation that would cut $380 million in loan guarantees to clean-energy companies. But nothing happened with that idea, because Kelly never wrote a bill. He got distracted.“It...

Medieval imagery strikes home

You don't have to be a big fan of the papacy to be struck by how appropriate this medieval sounding statement by Pope Francis is. He made it in connection with his foot washing yesterday:  NBC News reports that since Pope Francis became pope, he has "proved many times over...

The other account of the deeds at Vannes – a treat for my faithful readers

I have been too busy and distracted to do much with this blog recently. For those who have been checking this space in vain, I offer the other account of the famous deeds of arms at Vannes, so well known in the version by Froissart. There is a second version, told through an intermediary by one of the French combatants at the deed. It's a somewhat less friendly account of competition...

The People is Oll Korrect

I was driving home today listening to a talk show about  the leadership race in  the Liberal Party of  Canada.  One guest, a pollster, said it all depended on whether a certain candidate had "electricity."  I had to wonder if,  back in the 1840s, pollsters talked about candidates  having "electricity."A few minutes later a political science professor...

Juan Cole on the damage done by the Iraq War

Cole has ten points of the harm done to the USA; this is part of the introduction and the first point: Coming into 2003, the US enjoyed a great deal of sympathy and solidarity from the rest of the world (including Iran) over the al-Qaeda strikes of September 11, 2001. In the aftermath...

What the Irish ate before potatoes

Bon Appetit magazine says milk, butter and curds in dizzying variety:There was drinking milk, and buttermilk, and fresh curds, and old curds, and something called "real curds," and whey mixed with water to make a refreshing sour drink. In 1690, one British visitor to Ireland noted that the natives ate and drank milk "above twenty several sorts of ways and what is strangest for...

The Papal Election

Somehow the Atlantic got the idea of getting a historian to write up a piece.  They picked a good one, David Perry. I especially liked this:1) Voting is medieval.Voting is a quintessentially medieval activity. Sure, popular representations of the Middle Ages focus on kings and knights, princesses and peasants, but medieval people, especially in cities, loved to vote....

Iraq War 10th anniversary

I posted this in June 2010 and it may still be the Best summary of the results of the Iraq war so farOne of the McClatchy bloggers -- an Iraqi reporter for the best American wire service -- looks for celebrations of Sovereignty Day (formal end of the Coalition occupation)...

Visiting a future via Star Trek: The Next Generation

It's heresy around my house to say it, but I doubt I could watch the original Star Trek  series all the way through.  It was just not good  enough science fiction even the first time around.  Furthermore I have a very limited tolerance for James T. Kirk/William...

Heraldic insignia and late medieval warfare

Will McLean has a good entry on the use of various heraldic signs in time of war.   Here's the most interesting bit:When did men-at-arms wear coat armor, and when did they wear something else? It's a complicated question.  [The ]  closely related Agincourt accounts of Jean Le Fèvre and Jean de Waurin shed light on who wore coat armor and when.To tell the...

"The honour of the Crown is thus engaged here."

Thus says the Supreme Court of Canada about the failure of federal governments to fulfill an 1870 commitment to the native Metis, i.e., to distribute and convey title to an appropriate land allocation to them in what is now Manitoba.  The CBC has a good summary:The Métis argued that Ottawa reneged on its promises under the Manitoba Act, which created the province...

The Great Reversal: How We Let Technology Take Control of the Planet by David Edward Tabachnick

David Tabachnick of Nipissing University (i.e., down the hall) has a new book, The Great Reversal: Every day, we are presented with new technologies that can influence human thought and action, ... Have we let technology go too far in this respect? In The Great Reversal, David...

A musical memory from the 1970s

A correspondent was remarking on the fact that the blockbuster Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. My first reaction was to say, maybe a little ungraciously, that I preferred earlier Pink Floyd. I remember an interview where a member of the band said "We started out as a three-chord blues band, but that was too much work, so we became a one-chord space band." I loved that...