History
clock | May 11, 2007Two years ago today, I posted this. One year ago today, I only linked to it, though I should have reposted it instead to start a tradition. Well, I'll fix that this year on this day - under the fold:
In exactly one year I will be officially old. Well, I may be old, but my memory is still in perfect shape.
I remember the dinosaurs. I had a baby Therizinosaur when I was a kid. With those long arms, he was great for hugging and for playing catch. But, that was 3500 years ago.
You should have heard how Noah was cursing the Big Contractor In The Sky! Too little time, too small budget. The…
oracknows | May 9, 2007Since today seems to be World War II history day on the old blog, I just can't resist posting this little gem for geeks:
A full resolution version can be found here.
Of course, the nitpicker geek in me can't help but point out that, not only is the Swastika on the left arm of the robot reversed, but I'm really quite sure that the Nazis didn't have giant robots to use to attack U.S. Naval bases in the Pacific.
OK, OK, back to medicine tomorrow.
oracknows | May 9, 2007I'll admit it.
There have been at least two times since I started blogging that I fell for a dubious story because I exercised insufficient skepticism. The first time occurred very early on in my blogging history when swallowed a story about how legalization of prostitution was claimed to lead to the requirement that unemployed women take jobs as prostitutes or lose their unemployment benefits. More recently, I backpedaled a bit over a story about how supposedly history teachers in the U.K. were not teaching about the Holocaust out of concern for offending the sensitivities of certain of…
aardvarchaeology | May 9, 2007Here's something pretty cool recommended by my amateur archaeologist and fellow honorary Chinese buddy Jerry Helliker: The Hakluyt Society.
"The Hakluyt Society seeks to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material.
Membership of the Society is strongly recommended to anybody interested in the history of exploration and travel, exploratory voyages, geographical discovery and worldwide cultural encounter."
The Society's latest publication is The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835-1844,…
pharyngula | May 4, 2007I almost missed it—today is Thomas Henry Huxley's birthday. There are some good photos at that link. The man certainly had a fine beard in his younger days, but I admit the cleanshaven look is how I always picture him.
clock | May 2, 2007Survivor Testimonies Engage Students in Holocaust History:
Through a program funded by the Claims Conference, a group of 8th graders in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who had never before learned of the Holocaust found themselves deeply affected by these first-person narratives during a month-long educational unit on the Shoah.
Victoria Monacelli, a teacher of reading and language arts at the Warren G. Harding Middle School, incorporates technology into her curriculum in order to engage students. As part of her literacy program, her students produce a monthly "podcast," a recorded oral…
evolvingthoughts | May 1, 2007
OK, Americans, a couple of years after the British saw it, you are being treated to Jonathon Miller's A Brief History of Unbelief, a three-part series on how atheism came to be possible in western society, such that it is now one of the larger "religious" divisions in our culture. I'm not mocking, as Australia hasn't seen it yet. But I got sent a review copy, so here are my thoughts, below the fold. It starts on 54 May on PBS, I'm told, so check your local schedules, as they say.
I really really really wanted to like this series. Miller is one of my TV heroes, and was famously a member of…
aardvarchaeology | May 1, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, history, Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway; arkeologi, historia, Skandinavien, Danmark, Norge, Sverige.]
Archaeology consists of a myriad of weakly interconnected regional and temporal sub-disciplines. My work in Östergötland is largely irrelevant to a scholar in Lapland and entirely so to one in Tokyo. Larger interregional syntheses are rare and tend to be read mainly by undergraduates who have yet to select a specialty.
Now, imagine someone outside of Scandinavia, who speaks none of our languages, but who wants to approach our prehistoric…
evolvingthoughts | April 30, 2007
Craig Miller dropped by and we got to reading some Locke, as visitors to my office are wont to find themselves doing:
The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing…
oracknows | April 30, 2007Andrew reminds me that today is a very special day. Yes, indeed, it's the day that everyone who detests fascism should celebrate:
Fuehrerstodestag! (Otherwise known as "Dead Hitler Day.")
Yes, 62 years ago this hour, Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer of the Reich, finally cornered, his nation in ruins, offed himself in his bunker in Berlin as the Red Army was relentlessly advancing on him. After over 12 years in power, he had plunged the world into the largest war ever fought, resulting in the deaths of millions upon millions of people, and his exterminationist anti-Semitism had resulted in the deaths of…
oracknows | April 28, 2007After the Virginia Tech shootings, as you may recall, a lot of people started using the shootings as a convenient excuse to start pontificating about their favorite cause or to attack their most hated enemy, be it secularism or even vaccines. In fact, politicians, pundits, and just plain annoying whackjobs are blaming the rampage on so many different hobbyhorses, that there's even a blogger keeping a running tally, which is up to 72 so far.
A few days ago, I thought I had uncovered the lowest of the low, where a white nationalist besmirched the name of one of the heroes of that horrible day,…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, history; arkeologi, Nacka, historia.]
Long-time Dear Readers may remember the visit I paid last May to the wooded Skogsö hills where the Battle of Baggensstäket was fought in 1719. Bo Knarrström, Tomas Englund and the others on their project team are now back on the site with their metal detectors, finding more and more objects from the battle. This time, I'm joining the team for two days. Tuesday, they were visited by celebrated military historian Peter Englund.
A battle fought with firearms seeds an area thickly with evidence for what has taken…
evolvingthoughts | April 25, 2007
The BBC is reporting that the parchment manuscript that had a palimpsest of Archimedes' treatise on floating bodies, also turns out to have two other lost works: a text by Hyperides, a 4thC BCE politician of Athens, but much more excitingly, a 3rdC CE commentary on Aristotle's Categories, in which modern logic was first defined (along with other works by Aristotle), by Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Some, for instance Calamus, are critical of the Christian monks that, in the 13thC CE, scraped these works off the parchment to reuse it for a prayer book. But this is possibly due to the fact that…
oracknows | April 23, 2007A while back, I posted about news reports that teachers in the U.K. were reluctant to teach about the Holocaust because of fears of offending the sensibilities of certain parts of the population. The subtext, of course, was that Muslims were the ones who would be offended. I lamented that such sensitivity might be causing teachers in the UK not to teach the Holocaust properly, much as sensitivity to the religious beliefs in the US lead to teachers not teaching evolution. I wasn't alone in making this connection. Both PZ and the Bad Astronomer made similar comments.
It turns out that perhaps I…
oracknows | April 22, 2007Ever since the Virginia Tech shootings a week ago, there's been a lot of playing of the blame game in the blogosphere over who or what was to blame for Cho Seung-Hui's deadly rampage. A few days ago, I mentioned one bright spot of heroism among the carnage, where a faculty member, Professor Liviu Librescu, barred the door to his classroom to the gunman, buying his students precious time to escape. He was apparently shot multiple times through the door.
Librescu ended up giving his life so that a few more students could jump out of the windows of the classroom. As it turned out, he was also a…
pharyngula | April 21, 2007Larry Moran raised an interesting comparison over at Laden's place. In response to this constant whining that loud-and-proud atheism 'hurts the cause', he brought up a historical parallel:
Here's just one example. Do you realize that women used to march in the streets with placards demanding that they be allowed to vote? At the time the suffragettes were criticized for hurting the cause. Their radical stance was driving off the men who might have been sympathetic to women's right to vote if only those women had stayed in their proper place.
This prompted the usual cry of the…
purepedantry | April 20, 2007A controversial portrait -- possibly of the writer Jane Austen -- was put up for auction at Christie's yesterday. (Actually it failed to sell.) The controversy is over whether the picture is actually of her. (A photo of the portrait is to the right.)
All of that is very interesting, but not nearly so interesting as the argument I heard on NPR on why it isn't her: the woman in the picture is too attractive.
Some skeptics have argued that the short hair and empire-waist dress weren't stylish until Austen, who was born in 1775, was much older. They say that the young girl in the painting is…
pharyngula | April 18, 2007
Today is the anniversary of Darwin's death in 1882, and I am prompted to post this in response to a peculiar question. "Just read Carl Zimmers Evolution, a triumph of an idea. In it he states that Darwin, on his death bed cried out to god? How could this be if he had denounced religion and god?"
It's quite true that Zimmer does briefly mention the death of Darwin:
...Emma caught him in her arms when he collapsed at Down House. For the next six weeks she cared for him as he cried out to God and coughed up blood and slipped into unconsciousness. On April 19, 1882, he was dead.
The question is…