Why I didn't join the SCA

I didn't go to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Society for Creative Anachronism, but I did contribute some of my recollections of my very early days in the organization.  Flieg was kind enough to present it three times at the event.  For those who missed it, here is my story of:I wasn't interested in the SCA – I was a fanBy Steve Muhlberger (Finnvarr de Taahe)This...

Is this America?

CBC's Radio program "The Sunday Edition" interviewed Rebecca Solnit and Andrew Solomon on the "Trump phenomenon" and violence in American politics. They were appalled, of course. Solomon said among other things The gap has got wider and wider and wider ... The Trump phenomenon...

Donald Trump as eccentric knight errant

Kevin Baker in the New York Times: ...he risks becoming completely untethered — nothing more than the slithering id of a nervous age. He comes off too often as the candidate of “Game of Thrones” America, a bombastic, misogynistic knight errant in an endlessly wandering, unfocused narrative; traversing a fantasy landscape composed of a thousand borrowed mythologies, warning...

The Most Eminent Orators and Statesmen of Ancient and Modern Times by David A. Harsha

Today someone in Facebook's management made the prediction that in a few years text would be irrelevant to the operations of the company because everybody would be using videos. This strikes me as a pretty unlikely scenario, seeing that newspapers still exist at least in a...

Somethin's goin' on and you don't know what it is

--Do you, Mr. Jon...

Vast medieval cities of Cambodia

Just after World War II, when there are plenty of airplanes sitting around doing nothing in particular, archaeologists started using aerial photography to map and explore wide swaths of the ancient and medieval landscapes.Well, both photography and air travel have improved a lot...

Forbes gets it right about Catal Huyuk ( Çatalhöyük)

Twenty-five years ago, when I was first teaching ancient history, I spent a whole lecture of the Anatolian site of Catal Huyuk as an example of an early city. The settlement was called a village in most accounts, but it looked like a city to me. I was following a very persuasive and accessible discussion by Jane Jacobs, who may not have been an anthropologist but knew a thing...

On CBC Radio this morning was news of a partial cure for MS developed by Canadian researchers. Partial cure means this does not benefit lots of people with MS (there are a number of different types of MS). But in an experimental group of 20+ most of the patients got significantly better. One woman who was unable to walk danced at her wedding and took up downhill skiing. Here's...

My review of Anne Curry's Agincourt (from the Medieval Review)

Curry, Anne Agincourt. Great Battles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 256. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-19-968101-3. Reviewed by Steven Muhlberger Nipissing University (retired) steve.muhlberger@gmail.com Anne Curry is a distinguished and prolific scholar of the...

Back to the 1970s again

Last summer I went to Art in the Park in Windsor and discovered that this event preserves the attitudes and flavor of the 1970s to an almost scary extent. One of the key moments was when I spotted a man wearing a Dark Side of the Moon T-Shirt. Well this year I Went to Art in the Park and the first person I saw coming out of the park was that same guy or somebody else wearing a...

Not a horned helmet among them

A couple or three weeks ago I had a look at the Last Kingdom, a TV series depicting the period of Alfred the Great and his wars with the Danes. I was referred by friends to a critique of the authenticity of this film put on YouTube by a man named Lindy Beige. Mr. Beige is repeatedly...

Summon back the fire-witch to the court of the Crimson King

<\p>Did the young George R.R. Martin listen to King Crimson A L...