Three pictures of rural Iran

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

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 of gold were changed radically in the Roman Empire. Silver, hitherto the dominant metal for the making of high-volume coinage, was demoted to use in decoration and gifts, while gold, whether as a unit of account or, increasingly, as bullion minted in solidi, dominated economic exchange. The massive scale of gold use is amply attested in literary sources and papyri, as well as archaeologically in the form of hoards. What remains less clear is whether there was actually more gold circulating… A largely ignored study that used proton activation analysis (PAA) provides tantalizing evidence that a new source of gold became available in the 350s.… This new supply enabled the empire to move to sort of gold standard. With this model in place of the changing use of gold, we are not a position to revisit the earlier trace elementanalyses with new hypotheses. At which minted the gold edge of the empire, was the new goal available in both the East and the West? Where were the mines?

And much of the actual paper was a discussion of which techniques might be feasible for testing coins nondestructively for trace elements like platinum. Best of luck to this project.

For my part, the paper implied that the fall of the Western Empire might be a sort of Grover Norquist scenario, in which all the new extremely high-value money accumulated in the hands of the ultra-rich, and the Imperial government became small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.

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 was a priority, and it remains an issue of interest. But Mike’s efforts shifted when he chose to focus more on holding the administration accountable with regards to [Operation] Fast and Furious. And then when the Benghazi tragedy occurred, that took the cake,” said Kelly’s spokesman, Tom Qualtere.



The truth is that the House of Representatives right now appears to be both incapable of legislating and not very interested in it, either. Thus the Boehner Rule that the Senate needs to go first; thus the fact that it’s the Senate, not the House, hard at work on both immigration and gun bills; thus the dozens of votes on repealing Obamacare but hardly any actual legislation with any chance of becoming law.

That’s from a nice article by David A. Fahrenthold about the fizzling of budget-cutting efforts by Barack Obama and by House Republicans. The Obama portion is interesting, but when it gets to the House Republicans, it rapidly becomes farce. Basically, the Republicans came up with a nice gimmick but had no interest at all in legislative follow-through.

Couldn’t write a bill because he was distracted by Fast and Furious and Benghazi? Why not just say that his computer was down or that a dog ate his homework? At least those cliched excuses don’t imply what is really going on here: Republican politicians who believed that the job of a member of Congress is to be outraged, and once they’ve done that, they can pretty much go home.

Which, as I was getting at yesterday, is the whole story of the Boehner-era House Republicans. Their big bill from the last Congress was to be repeal-and-replace, yet they never even held hearings to develop a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act. They do pass (nonbinding and unusually vague) budget resolutions, but there’s never any legislation to implement those resolutions. Last week was the third time in three years that House Republicans voted to replace Medicare with a new scheme, but they don’t even pretend that there will ever be an actual bill to carry out that plan. Now, it’s comprehensive tax reform that is supposedly their agenda. We’ll see … or, as I’m predicting, we won’t see.

My initial reaction was to say, "worse than I thought" in a comment on Facebook. But thinking about it the next day, I realize that many legislatures in many countries are effectively dysfunctional. The process of getting elected and reelected takes over and crowds out any commitment or desire to consider policy and legislative initiatives.

John Keane and thousands of others have made the point that elections by themselves are not democracy. Legislatures by themselves are not democracy. Keane his made a point in his Life and Death of Democracy that our leading institutions are 19th century attempts at implementation at the best. Perhaps we need something better; and not just a better stage for people to posture on.

Image: Some British politician.  Who knows, he may be a hard-working legislator.

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 that he wants to break away from clerical privilege, come down from St. Peter's throne and act as a humble servant of the faithful."
During a short homily before the ritual, the pope urged priests to go out into the world.
"It is not in soul-searching... that we encounter the Lord," he said, according to the BBC. "We need to go out ... to the outskirts where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters."

It is good to hear someone powerful admit that many prisoners, today, are in thrall to evil masters.

Image:  Saint Catherine thrust into prison. And  being beaten just for the heck of it.

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 between English and French knights. Just because a participant tells the story, we do not necessarily have to take it at face value. The story is being retold 50 years after the event! Eventually this translation, which is mine, will appear in a book called Will a Frenchman Fight? The book will discuss how chivalric deeds of arms fit into practical warfare in the 1380s. (I have also discussed these events in my book Deeds of Arms.) In the meantime the truly dedicated can compare this account with the more famous one.

Deeds of Arms at Vannes (From the Chronicle of the Good Duke)

XLIII How the earl of Buckingham raised the siege of Nantes and how the fifteen English did not perform their arms with fifteen Frenchmen.

 Charles King of France in honor of his coronation made many knights of whom he had many in Nantes who grandly held steady with their companions against the English. The earl of Buckingham who saw this weakness among his people and no advantage to continuing his siege of Nantes, had the intention to raise his siege for this reason; but he delayed it somewhat because fifteen men at arms of the household of the duke of Bourbon had proposed a battle on an island near Nantes with another fifteen English men at arms in the household of the earl of Buckingham, to fight to the end with no judges but only two heralds, one of France, the other of England. And this was promised and sworn, but failed on account of English as you have heard. And this enterprise cost the duke of Bourbon three thousan francs in harness and equipment that he had sent to his people every day for the space of three weeks; and the fifteen in the household of the duke of Bourbon did nothing but insist that the English hold this fight, but the English led them on by words, and told them "wait, wait, we will tell you right away." Thereupon, the earl of Buckingham seeing a great loss of his English from dysentery, one evening decamped with all his people and the next day in the morning, the fifteen English sent by a herald to the fifteen French of the household of the duke of Bourbon that they would not hold the battle there, but if they wished to come to Vannes, where their master the earl had come, they would accomplish their arms. The fifteen of the duke of Bourbon gave no other response except to say to the herald that if the duke of Brittany wanted to give them good security that they would come and accomplish them there. And so the earl of Buckingham left the siege of Nantes without having done anything to his advantage, and his Englishmen rode towards Vannes. And after them sallied out the French captains, Messire Jean de Chastelmorand, Messire le Barrois, Messire Pierre de Bueil, and the marshal of Savoy, who were a good eight hundred men at arms who harassed and held the English close and took much of the baggage train before they got to Vannes. And the French retired to Chastel-Josselin, where the Lord of Clisson, the new constable of France, had come, and asked him leave to depart for those of the garrison of Nantes to go to their masters. The Constable told them no, insisting that they should wait until the English embarked on the sea and in the meantime the fifteen of the household of the duke of Bourbon who had turned back to Nantes in the garrison with the others sent to the English fifteen that they should appear to fulfill their promise and that thereupon they should send them good guarantees from the earl of Buckingham their master and from the duke of Brittany and they would willingly come there. So a herald carried the safe conducts to Messire Jean de Chastelmorand, to Barrois and their companions, and that with them they would be able to bring forty gentlemen to accompany them and gave willingly the safe conducts believing that the fifteen French ought not go there at all; but notwithstanding the safe conduct the fifteen sent Cordellier de Gironne, a squire of the household squires of the king of France, to the earl of Buckingham and to the duke of Brittany for the guarantee, and he brought it and the fifteen companions went with Cordellier to Vannes to the duke of Brittany and to the earl of Buckingham there presents, and to notify them that they had come all ready to accomplish that which had been promised, the next day after their mass.

 XLIV How five noble Frenchmen performed arms at Vannes against five noble Englishmen and what happened.

The earl of Buckingham, seeing that this was in earnest had great counsel with the duke of Brittany to about what should be done. And the response which the earl of Buckingham made was that his people were not up to the mark, and it had been a year since he left England and also that he and his people had been at siege before Nantes for three months, for which reason their harness was very deteriorated. For this reason he was not in favor of performing arms especially to extremities but he had thought to give his advice to some of his servants that if there was any from the household of the duke of Bourbon who wished to perform specified arms, to this he agreed willingly. So the companions of the agreement were much amazed and infuriated thinking that they would not fight at all. So they decided that they should not hold to them but it would be good to do something of the sort for which they had come there and they should take what the English were offering. The arms which the English wished to do were five blows of the lance, five of the sword, five of the axe, five of the dagger, all on foot; and it was granted to them. And the next day early in the morning there were but five Englishmen who wished to perform arms and from the people of the duke of Bourbon another five: namely Jean de Chastelmorand, Messire le Barrois, the bastard of Glarains, the viscount of Aunay, Messire Tristan de la Jaille; and the five English were Messire Walter Cloppeton, Edward de Beauchamp, Messire Thomas de Hennefort, Brisselai, and Messire Jehan de Traro. All the companions standing on the field where the duke of Brittany and the earl of Buckingham were accompanied by their people. The first to perform arms from the French was Jean de Chastelmorand against Walter Cloppeton Cloppeton, an Englishman, of which they were not able to do more than threeblows of the lance on foot, four for Messire Walter Cloppeton was wounded by the lance right through, between the lames and the piece, and it passed through as he fell to the earth and of those two there were only these three blows, for Cloppeton was carried off. Messire le Barrois, who was armed, entered the field to perform arms against his companion, Thomas de Hennefort, who entered the field likewise and they did their five blows with the lance very chivalrously; and when it came to swords, when they attacked at the first blow of the sword Le Barrois wounded the Englishman between the piece and the gardebras and damaged the mail and pierced the shoulder completely so that it was necessary to lead off the Englishman without doing more arms. Then came the bastard of Glarains and Edward Beauchamp and when it came to combat with lances Edward Beauchamp turned his shoulder a little and so much that the bastard of Glarains twice knocked him to the ground with two blows of the lance, notwithstanding that he was large of body and a good gentleman and then the Englishmen said that Beauchamp was dronch, that is to say, drunk. They picked him up and led him away. Then came Messire Tristan de la Jaille to his English companion and they accomplished all of their arms up to the axes; and when this came to strike Messire Tristan knocked down his Englishman with the second axe blow, and badly wounded him and that was it. The Viscount d’Aunay came into the field to his companion who performed his arms beautifully, but the Viscount wounded the Englishmen with last blow of the lance, between the avant-bras and the garde-bras, and pierced the arm right through, so that he did no more. And so were the arms accomplished that day in which the five noble men, the French companions, had the better of it, and the five noble Englishmen the worse as you have seen above.

XLV How the arms having been accomplished Messire Guillaume Farintonne, an Englishmen and Jean de Chastelmorand fought and what happened; and how the knight was put in prison and how Chastelmorand said some fine words.

The Duke of Brittany and the Earl of Buckingham, who had seen these arms, retired to their houses, and the French disarmed themselves; and because it was almost night the duke of Brittany sent one of his knights, maître d' hôtel, to summon them 'sto to supper with him. They conceded it to him as they had been in his city and all those who had performed arms came to supper and the duke of Brittany highly honoredthem, making them all sit at his table and serving them very grandly. And on the removal of the table came a knight, fair and grand, named Guillaume Farrington, who urged Chastelmorand to perform arms that Messire Walter Cloppeton, his cousin German, had hardly been able to accomplish. So Chastelmorand agreed with him that if it pleased the duke of Brittany, but he did not wish to allow it and it infuriated him most feloniously against his English knight, who had come to make demands at his table. But Chastelmorand begged so much to the duke of Brittany that the next day at sunrise he was armed in the field against the one who had demanded it, to accomplish this, and more which he had not demanded, because it was necessary for his companions to mount up the next day. And when they were together in the field the English knight had no armor at all on his legs for he had a disease in one knee, on account of which he was not able to arm himself there, and they sent via Cordellier de Gironne to urge Chastelmorand that they should not have more armor on the legs and they should guarantee not to strike at uncovered areas. This having been done the two knights in the field struck lances and with that stroke did their duty well; at the second blow they came strongly together, and the Englishmen, Messire Guillaume, struck Messire Jean de Chastelmorand on the arms and Chastelmorand struck the Englishmen under the cincture and so much so that Messire Guillaume Farrington fell to one knee, and put a hand to the ground; and the third blow of the lances they came in contact strongly against each other but when it came to the clash Messire Guillaume lowered his lance and crouched a little from which he pierced Messire Jean de Chastelmorand right through the thigh, and it was advisable to carry him to his hôtel; on account of this blow there was a great cry from the company present seeing that the English knight had promised not to make an attempt by arms on uncovered areas, especially in the legs. And then the duke of Brittany and the earl of Buckingham who had seen this impropriety had the Englishman Messire Guillaume taken, and disarmed to his little pourpoint and went to have him hurled in prison and they said to le Barrois cousin german of Chastelmorand: "Go to Chastelmorand and tell him that we are very unhappy and indeed infuriated that this knight has failed to do what he had promised and we are delivering him to Chastelmorand to be his prisoner, to put him to such ransom as pleases him and between you his friends if Chastelmorand dies you can do what you like to that knight." This was considered very just on the part of the lords to maintain their sureties and safe conducts. So Chastelmorand heard the response from Le Barrois and Cordellier de Gironne, to which Chastelmorand answered that he thanked heartily the earl of Buckingham and the duke of Brittany for the good reason and justice which he found in their lordships and that he would prefer that Farrington had damaged his honor over him than that he, Chastelmorand, should have damaged his over him. "And when you inform me that he ought to be my prisoner I thank you humbly and please you to know that when we came from our side before you to perform arms with your surety and safe conduct neither my companions nor I came motivated by avarice nor covetousness and it would turn to my dishonor to wish take ransom from your knight for which I beg you to let him out from prison and do what you please, for the deed of arms involves risk. And you well know that Messire the duke of Bourbon to whom we belong gives us what we need and he, who sends us out in the world to acquire honor, would be discontented with this covetousness." And the Englishmen and the Bretons found these words to be very honorable and the earl of Buckingham sent to Chastelmorand a goblet of gold and 150 nobles; but Chastelmorand returned the gold coins to him, letting him know that he had enough money for his affairs. So he kept the goblet to drink from for the sake of his honor. At that time Chastelmorand told his companions that they should not delay riding back for him. For he did not think himself in such bad shape that he could not follow their trot. 

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   was on saying  that if the new Liberal leader was going to  win,  he'd have to convince voters to think about their unifying interests and not just the sectional interests that divided them.

Sectional interests?


Sure  enough, I was driving through  the 1840s.   I should  have known this was possible when the Know-Nothing Party revived.

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 of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US was widely seen as an international bully. The hard-nosed realists of Washington, of course, don’t care how the country is perceived. But the poor opinion translated into an unwillingness to help out with the Iraq project, a project far too large for the United States to handle on its own. And no, El Salvador wasn’t able to help that much. Moreover, in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, public discourse in the US moved toward greater decency. Some of that achievement was lost because of war propaganda against Arabs and Muslims.

1. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq harmed the US in bringing into question its basic competency as a world leader. Almost everything the US did in Iraq was a disaster. It could not even get the stated reason for the invasion right, as it turned out there was no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons program. It looked dishonest, bumbling. It went into the war having no plans, and the plans the Bush administration made on the fly were mostly poorly thought-out and doomed to fail. It fell into search and destroy as a tactic for counter-insurgency, with the same results as it had had in Vietnam– it caused resistance to swell. Billions were wasted on reconstruction projects that assumed Iraqi know-how and equipment that they did not have, and which could not therefore be maintained even if they were completed. The US tried to run in English an Arabic-speaking country that had been deliberately isolated and cut off from the world by sanctions, without any basic understanding of Iraqi culture, customs, beliefs or ways of life. The pro-Israel Neoconservatives high in the administration blackballed (as insufficiently pro-Israel) Arabists who volunteered to go help and left the Coalition Provisional Authority blind.

Basically, the world is always looking around for a team leader and a consulting group that is known for competence and for getting good results. After World War II, the US was for the most part that country. Being the world’s team leader turns into respect, cooperation and, ultimately, confidence and investment. If the US came to most of the world today with a group project, it likely couldn’t get the time of day from them. The United States is deeply diminished in world counsels.

Lots more here.

Image:  Abandoned Camp Cooke.

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 most part love it best when sourest." He was referring to bainne clabair, which translates as "thick milk," and was probably somewhere between just straight-up old milk and sour cream. And in the 12th century, a satirical monk (this is Ireland, after all), wrote a fake "vision" in which he traveled to the paradise of the Land of Food, where he saw a delicious drink made up of "very thick milk, of milk not too thick, of milk of long thickness, of milk of medium thickness, of yellow bubbling milk, the swallowing of which needs chewing." And many British tacticians, sending home notes on how best to suppress local rebellions, noted that the majority of the population lived all summer on their cows' milk, so the best way to starve out the enemy would just be to kill all the cows.

And the introduction of the potato was part of the impoverishment of the Irish people.

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 most part love it best when sourest." He was referring to bainne clabair, which translates as "thick milk," and was probably somewhere between just straight-up old milk and sour cream. And in the 12th century, a satirical monk (this is Ireland, after all), wrote a fake "vision" in which he traveled to the paradise of the Land of Food, where he saw a delicious drink made up of "very thick milk, of milk not too thick, of milk of long thickness, of milk of medium thickness, of yellow bubbling milk, the swallowing of which needs chewing." And many British tacticians, sending home notes on how best to suppress local rebellions, noted that the majority of the population lived all summer on their cows' milk, so the best way to starve out the enemy would just be to kill all the cows.

Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2013/03/what-irish-ate-before-potatoes.html#ixzz2NQVXy7jy

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. They organized themselves into groups - guilds, religious fraternities, charitable organization, drinking societies - and wrote complicated bylaws governing elections. Many cities embraced various kinds of representative government during the High Middle Ages. Even the army outside the walls of Constantinople in 1204 took time to develop a voting system to elect the next emperor.
It's easy to characterize the Conclave of Cardinals as an authoritarian relic of the past. It's not. It's the same kind of democratic tradition that permeates modern American and European life, from board rooms to union halls to church groups to town councils.

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 far

One 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) , can't find them, and realizes why:

Then I called the Baghdad Municipality office – They must know if an event is to take place in Baghdad, but, no, there was nothing.

"Last year we were informed weeks in advance in order to make preparations – It's 2.30 already and until this moment we have received nothing. I doubt very much that there will be any celebration tomorrow".

Still not convinced that the incumbent government is not taking advantage of this anniversary to boost its standing in the talks to form a government (that are not making any progress), I called our source within the interior ministry – Maybe he had an idea.

"Sovereignty Day?? What sovereignty?? And who is to hold the celebration?? The government? What government??" [The elections some months back have still not produced a ruling coalition in parliament; there is only an interim government and negotiating parliamentary factions. -- SM]

I put down the phone.

Indeed – What sovereignty? And what government?

This occupation opened the door for powerful winds – and they entered and are blowing, still.

Iraq has become a plain on which international and regional forces are struggling for supremacy. A tug of war between the Shiites in Iran and the Wahabis in Saudi – between the Kurds, whether in Iraq, Turkey or Iran, and the Arabs – between forces that want to keep the country together and forces that want to rip it apart.

And in the midst of all this – I think the government has actually forgotten Sovereignty Day.

It is as if Sovereignty Day does not exist.

There you have it.

Image: Iraqi sandstorm.

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 Shatner.  The fact that Kirk was given the Federation's best starship and allowed to keep its command says something rather alarming about the Federation.

ST:TNG, on the other hand, though it started out rather weak, was good enough in my memory to give a second chance. I have now been through TNG a second time, and I quite enjoyed it.

It still was not great science fiction.  The superscience explanations of the technologies, of the threats to the Enterprise or other good guys, of the solutions to those threats were either gruesomely bad or laughable, depending on my mood.  Another ST series, I forget which, wore out the phrase "reverse[d] polarity."  In TNG, "interference," which prevented rescues or self-defense or timely reaction to some threat, explained everything.

 Action/adventure plots were usually just as lame. So many preventable  disasters so easily avoided if only the command staff had used common sense or had sensible security protocols!  Here comes a mysterious alien ship that refuses to open communication! PUT THOSE DAMNED SHIELDS UP! (Blam! Too late!)

Then there are some of the odd unexplained features of the largely unseen future society of the  Federation.  Real ST fans have thoroughly explored the question of whether the Federation uses money (the evidence is contradictory).  But it is certainly noteworthy that commerce is shown as a marginal and unworthy activity, indulged in by lowlifes.  One wonders about how non-Starfleet Federation citizens get from planet to planet.  Are there passenger ships (we see none)?  If there are, can you buy a ticket?  How much would a passage cost? Or do only people with Starfleet connections travel the stars, hitchhiking on Starfleet ships (we see that a lot) or use shuttlecraft size transport?

Is Starfleet a vastly privileged aristocracy resting on a subject population?  Is it the 18th -century in space, minus the slave trade and distant plantations? (A dish of tea, captain?   Earl Grey, hot?)

On the other hand, there were some really good aspects to the series.

When the show tackled ethical questions that sprang from real science fiction premises,  it often, maybe more often than not, did a really good job.  The episode where the Enterprise crew decides not to weaponize a Borg drone but to treat him like an individual rather than a walking computer virus -- thus giving up an opportunity to destroy the hostile and very dangerous Borg -- was one of the best ST episodes ever. Whether anyone could be that ethical is another matter, but they sure did not duck the issues.

Another thing that the real fans have debated is the mixed record TNG had on gender issues.  Certainly the complete lack of gay people makes the future society look kind of old-fashioned.  But what does one expect  from an American prime-time show from the 80s and 90s?  It is quite remarkable, however, that in most societies depicted, women and men were treated as equals in intellectual and institutional authority. I remarked to my wife as we watched that ST:TNG must have had more good parts for middle-aged women than any other show of the time.  And that is no small thing, indicative  of a real commitment to incorporating male/female equality as a basic feature of that fictional society.

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 truth, the king of England had wanted to lodge in another village which had been taken by his herbergers, but he, who always observed proper and honourable practices, did what you will now hear. It is true that whenever he wanted to send scouts before towns or castles or any matter, he had the lords or gentlemen take off their coats of arms when they went off and put back on again when they returned. It it so happened  that on the day that the king left Bonnières to go up close to Blangy, there was a village which had been commandeered by his harbingers, but he had not been told of it. Not knowing in which village he was supposed to lodge, he went on by a bow shot and rode past it. Then he was told he had  passed it. Then he stopped and said 'As I have passed, god forbid that I should return as I have got my coat of arms on'. And he moved on and lodged where his vanguard was lodging, and moved the vanguard further forward.

...But to return to the king of England, before he crossed the river at Blangy en Ternoise, because the crossing was narrow he had six bold men of his vanguard take off their coats of arms and cross over in order to find out whether the passage was guarded. They found that there was no one seeing to its defence, so they crossed quickly.

From these accounts it appears that coat armor was particularly associated with pitched battles, and that anything that could be considered retreat could be considered dishonorable once it was put on. For that reason Henry did not want it worn when scouting, because the men would necessarily have to return to the main body, and this could be described as retreat. Also, coat armor was worn not only by commanders, but by at least some of the ordinary gentlemen.

Later, Le Fèvre and de Waurin tell how Anthony, duke of Brabant, rode in such haste to the battlefield that he left the main body of his men behind.

As he would not wait for him, because of the haste with which he had come he took one of the banners from his trumpeters, made a hole in the middle of it, and used it as his coat armour.

So, the duke did not have coat armor with him on the march, but thought it so important to wear it in battle that he made improvised coat armor from a banner.

"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 and brought it into Confederation.

The Manitoba Act, made in 1870, promised to set aside 5,565 square kilometres of land for 7,000 children of the Red River Métis. That land includes what is now the city of Winnipeg.

The land transfer to the Métis outlined in the Act was to be a "concrete measure" to reconcile with the Métis community, the ruling agrees, calling its "prompt and equitable implementation... fundamental."

The land grants were meant to give the Métis a head start in the race for land in the new province, and that meant the grants had to be made while a head start was still possible, the justices wrote. "Everyone concerned understood that a wave of settlement from Europe and Canada to the east would soon sweep over the province."

The land deal was made in order to settle the Red River Rebellion, which was fought by Métis rebels struggling to hold onto their land amid growing white settlements.

However, it took 15 years for the lands to be completely distributed, while the Métis rebels faced hostility from large numbers of incoming settlers.

Lower courts found in federal government's favour

The federal government ultimately distributed the land through a random lottery, destroying the dream of a Métis homeland.

"Section 31 conferred land rights on yet-to-be-identified individuals – the Métis children," the ruling says. "Yet the record leaves no doubt that it was a promise made to the Métis people collectively, in recognition of their distinct community. The honour of the Crown is thus engaged here."

The Metis are not asking for the land allocation (which would include all of Winnipeg!) but for compensation.  How long will that take?

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 Edward Tabachnick contends that this question may not be unique to contemporary society. Through an assessment of the great works of philosophy and politics, Tabachnick explores the largely unrecognized history of technology as an idea.

 The Great Reversal takes the reader back to Aristotle’s ancient warning that humanity should never allow technical thinking to cloud our judgment about what makes for a good life. It then charts the path of how we began to relinquish our deeply rooted intellectual and practical capacities that used to allow us to understand and regulate the role of technologies in our lives.

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 "one-chord space band."

Thinking of early PF, I then remembered a truly spooky experience from the 1970s when I was a single, not particularly prosperous grad student. One of my free amusements was to wander through record shops on Yonge Street (not then as grubby as it later became) trying to figure out which purchases would be worth making.

One sunny weekend afternoon as I made this trek, I realized that everywhere I went, in the stores and on the sidewalks, I was hearing the same ethereal music, which sounded like it was leaking in from another dimension.

Eventually an explanation: the only good rock station in Toronto was playing one side of PF's album Meddle, and the owners or staff of every shop -- not just record stores -- were tuned into that station, giving the downtown shoppers a common subliminal musical experience.

Odd to think how unlikely it would be today for so many people to be plugged into a single source of music.