History
terrasig | October 5, 2007Folks are probably wrapping it up in St. Augustine at this hour, but I just wanted to send out happy 91st birthday wishes to the Old Lion, Stetson Kennedy.
Anastasia Books invites the community to a birthday celebration for Stetson Kennedy during the First Friday Art Walk.
Kennedy, the 91-year-old civil rights activist, folklorist and environmentalist, authored four books on civil rights and the Florida classic "Palmetto Country," a social history of Florida's ethnic cultures and folklore in the 1930s.
(More at his MySpace site with "Stetson Kennedy" by Florida folk music patriarch, Frank…
oracknows | October 4, 2007Given my post yesterday about the strange things people like to stick up their nether regions, it makes perfect sense to revisit a man who has his head up his ass: David Irving. It's pretty funny to see that his former comrades are none too happy with some of his recent statements:
A famed Holocaust denier is revising his revisionist thinking -- and the move is opening up a rift among his fellow travelers.
David Irving, who was released from prison last December in Austria after being convicted of Holocaust denial, recently announced that he is rethinking his position on the fate of European…
pharyngula | October 3, 2007Tristero makes a few points that are exactly what I've been trying to get across in my introductory biology class this week, where we're covering Charles Darwin and the evidence for evolution. The first is that we do not rely on Darwin's authority; there is no cult of personality, no reliance on the master's word, no simple trust of anything or anyone. The other, though, is that Darwin is still a fascinating and important figure, and it's not just that he was an old guy with a white beard who lectured the law.
Darwin's not a stuff-shirted Nigel Bruce pip-pipping his way across the Empire. He…
oracknows | October 2, 2007I knew it!
I knew it was just a matter of time until arch-Holocaust denier David Irving emerged from whatever rock he's been hiding under ever since he was released after his prison term in Austria for having denied the Holocaust, decided he wanted to be in the limelight again. Back in December, I made a little bet about just how long it would take Irving to mount a comeback tour. I guessed weeks. I was wrong. I'll give Irving credit; he held out nine months before making a play for vindication:
Ten months ago he was languishing in an Austrian jail, less than halfway through a three-year…
aardvarchaeology | October 1, 2007
Happy Djurhamn project co-directors Katarina Schoerner and August Boj.
Aided by many volunteers and using tools borrowed from my dad and the Stockholm County Museum, I've spent the day getting the Djurhamn sword out of the ground.
I found the sword on 30 August while metal detecting around the Harbour of the Sheaf Kings. Today we marked out a 2.5 by 2.0 metre trench around the sword, got rid of a lot of vegetation, dug and sieved 2.5 square metres and got the sword out. Its point was wedged between the roots of a large hazel bush, so I only got it out in one piece thanks to its excellent…
evolvingthoughts | September 27, 2007
There's been a lot of media spin and unthinking objections to the visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the US. He was called the "modern Hitler", for example. This strikes me as both unthinking and dangerous. Ahmadinejad is his own kind of threat and problem, and comparisons to past dangerous individuals don't resolve or enlighten anything. As Time Magazine clearly noted, he has no power over the things that he is being demonised for, and is incompetent and hated internally for the things he does.
But it seems to me there is a wider issue here than the internecine politics of an…
aardvarchaeology | September 25, 2007
Found an early-16th century officer's sword at the Harbour of the Sheaf Kings. I tried to keep it quiet, but now the mainstream media want my ass. I'm seeing the County Archaeologist about an excavation permit this afternoon. More anon.
Media coverage: Metro, Radio Skaraborg, SVT, ABC-nytt, Radio Stockholm, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Östgöta Correspondenten, Jönköpingsposten, you tell me what else please.
[More blog entries about archaeology, history, Sweden, swords, 16thcentury; arkeologi, historia, Djurö, Värmdö, svärd, 1500-talet.]
oracknows | September 25, 2007
While I happen to have found myself back on the subject of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial again today, I thought I'd mention this, something I've been meaning to blog about since I found out about it last week.
Beginning this week, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will start featuring a display that, to me at least, is almost as disturbing as the usual pictures of the horrors of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps with which we've become so familiar and to whose horrors we have perhaps become inured. Basically, it's a recently discovered scrapbook with photos depicting the daily life of…
oracknows | September 25, 2007Andrew Mathis gives his perspective.
And an excellent analysis it is, too. One brief excerpt:
...I have to wonder exactly where a man who runs a police state gets off asking a question like this. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran does not allow religious freedoms outside those recognized by the Qur'an. People are thrown in jail -- routinely -- for opposing the government. When government opponents visit the country, they are jailed. I say this without qualification: Every single country that has a law against Holocaust denial is a more free country that Iran. EVERY LAST ONE.…
oracknows | September 25, 2007Iranian President (and Holocaust denier) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed up at Columbia University yesterday to give a speech. Given my interest in Holocaust history and Holocaust denial I had debated whether to comment on it before it happened. Given my contempt for him, his anti-Semitism, and his Holocaust denial, I was rather torn by the whole affair. On the one hand, I am very much in favor of free speech, and having this loon speak can in one way be argued to be evidence of what is great about this country (although it would have been more convincing if Columbia had a better record on this…
aardvarchaeology | September 24, 2007The excruciatingly witty and multi-talented David Nessle has been alerted by his erudite father to a long enthusiastic article about cannabis in the classic Swedish 1909 dictionary Nordisk Familjebok (uggleupplagan). This dictionary was in every home with any pretentions to literacy and social respectability. A stoner among the dictionary's contributors, pharmacology professor Oskar Teodor Sandahl (1829-1894), has clearly done a lot of pot to be able to report the way he does (note that he mentions the munchies), and the editorial board has then felt it proper to devote an entire page to the…
aardvarchaeology | September 22, 2007
Friday last week I did some met-det for Thomas Englund and Bo Knarrström at the 1719 battlefield at Baggensstäket on Skogsö, of which I've blogged before. This time I was directed to a hillside that had seen heavy musket fire. I may not have had much balls when I came there, but I certainly did when the day's work was done, before I handed my finds over to the guys. Above is an intact 1719 musket ball, either dropped by a shaky soldier or fired into soft earth. Below is a ball that has hit a rock. Getting hit by one of those 15 mm lead spheres was not an enjoyable experience, but at least…
aardvarchaeology | September 20, 2007
Here are the fruits of my ten hours of metal detecting in Kaga while Immo and Per mucked around with the magnetometer Wednesday and Thursday.
Top left is a spool-shaped copper-alloy handle, cast around a slim iron rod that's broken off at the lower end. There's indistinct cast relief decoration on the handle, and its shape and size are identical to those of 11th century key handles. These keys are L-shaped with prongs toward the end of the horizontal rod.
The next thingie is also a handle, belonging to a key or an ear scoop. El Cheapo openwork decoration typical of the 10th century, where…
evolvingthoughts | September 20, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse, of Evolutionblog, has posted a rather snarky review of a book review by the historian and philosopher Ian Hacking that was published in The Nation. Jason titled his comment "How not to defend evolution". Here's my take on it.
Jason thinks that Hacking was pretentious, that he was not careful in his use of language, and that he was wordy. The essay was 4600 words long. Jason's response is 1520 words of part one of a two parter. Hmm...
The problem as I see it lies in the attitude of the sciences (and yes, I include mathematics amongst that tribe) to the humanities, and…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2007tags: book review, history, biography, James Smithson, Jacques Louis Macie, Smithsonian Institution, Heather Ewing
As a nearly life-long resident of the West Coast, I have visited the Smithsonian Institution exactly once in my entire life, and to be honest, I didn't notice the bust of its founder, James Smithson. I suppose I should feel guilty about that but, according to what I have read, his bust is located across the street from the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. At that time, this area was not included in my Smithsonian-seeking trajectory. However, after visiting the Smithsonian…
oracknows | September 18, 2007As the resident World War II maven on ScienceBlogs, I noted with interested PZ's mention of a story from Germany about a German Cardinal's jaw-droppingly bad choice of words:
A German cardinal has triggered a storm of criticism in Germany by describing atheist art as "degenerate" -- a term usually avoided in public discourse because of its association with the Nazis.
Cardinal Joachim Meisner was speaking at the blessing of his archdiocese's new art museum, the Kolumba, in the heart of Cologne, on Friday.
"Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism…
oracknows | September 12, 2007I'm not normally a big fan of these reality TV courtroom shows, and I've never watched Judge Hatchett before. That being said, I was surprised how well done this segment was in which a 14-year-old who's fascinated by Adolf Hitler (even going so far as to write "I love Hitler" in large letters on a sheet of paper) and had come to admire hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan was educated about just who and what it was that he was idolizing.
Although I'm skeptical that a single visit to the Museum of Tolerance and meeting with Elizabeth Mann, a Holocaust survivor, can turn this kid around, I'm…
oracknows | September 11, 2007This video was shot by Bob and Bri, who in 2001 lived in a high rise a mere 500 yards from the North Tower. There is nothing to add, at least not by me. It is difficult to watch.
oracknows | September 10, 2007
Today is the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. A couple of years ago, I wrote an extended take on the attacks and what I thought about them. I encourage you to read it, either for the first time or again. Two years later, I don't have much to add other than to note that I've seen several stories in the press expressing concern that Americans are forgetting the the attacks or not paying sufficient reverence to the fallen anymore.
This story, for example, appeared in a New Jersey newspaper over the weekend:
In Westfield, weeds have taken over the brick walkways around the 9/11 memorial…
omnibrain | September 10, 2007A torture manual created by psychologists in the 1950s entitled The Manipulation of Human Behavior is freely available online. Included are these scary sounding chapters:
1 The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject
as it Affects Brain Function 19
Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr.
2 The Effects of Reduced Environmental Stimulation
on Human Behavior: A Review 51
Philip E. Kubzansky
3 The Use of Drugs in Interrogation 96
Louis A. Gottschalk
4 Physiological Responses as a Means of Evaluating
Information 142
R. C. Davis
5 The Potential Uses of Hypnosis in Interrogation 169
Martin T.…