I’m read­ing a lot of Ice­landic his­to­ry, late­ly, and came across this fine descrip­tion of the Ice­landic horse in Mag­nus Magnusson’s Ice­landic Saga. It sounds very like the stur­dy lit­tle native ponies I saw in Wales: Read more »

Here in Cana­da, Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er is joy­ful­ly ram­ming through a mas­sive omnibus bill (C‑38). The spe­cif­ic con­tent of the bill is not the real issue, it is the arro­gant con­tempt for democ­ra­cy, for Cana­di­an tra­di­tions, and the Cana­di­an peo­ple, that is inher­ent in such a huge, catch-all omnibus bill. Such things have long been seen in the Amer­i­can sys­tem, but they are for­eign to our par­lia­men­tary tra­di­tions. But Harper’s con­tempt for Cana­da and Cana­di­ans is already well attest­ed, so it should come as no sur­prise.  Read more »

I strong­ly rec­om­mend this post from my life-long friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor, Steve Muhlberger.

The only thing I can add is a ques­tion. Who took this superb photo?

I have a per­son­al inter­est in Tim­buk­tu (see blog for Mar 7, 2006), so I have fol­lowed, as best as I can, the recent events in Mali that affect it. After the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, sev­er­al hun­dred young Tuareg who had been serv­ing as mer­ce­nar­ies in his army have returned to Niger and Mali. Along with them came a large stock of weapons. This re-ignit­ed the low-lev­el civ­il war which had come to an appar­ent­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry peace set­tle­ment in 2009. Dis­at­is­fac­tion with the response to this renew­al of vio­lence seems to have trig­gered a coup d’état by the country’s mil­i­tary against the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment. As a con­se­quence of the insta­bil­i­ty fol­low­ing the coup, the “Nation­al Move­ment for the Lib­er­a­tion of Aza­wad” (MNLA) quick­ly occu­pied the three largest north­ern towns (Gao, Tim­buk­tu and Kidal) and declared an inde­pen­dent state of Aza­wad, cleav­ing away the thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed north­ern half of Mali. Read more »

The Iron Gates are a nar­row gorge on the Danube, with Ser­bia on one side and Roma­nia on the oth­er. A his­to­ry of this place would fill vol­umes, or shelves of vol­umes, or banks of shelves of volumes.

My favourite store cookies:

Dare Black For­est Whip­pet [Forêt noire] :

President’s Choice Peanut But­ter Choco­late Chunk :

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