15738. (Unto Salo) Ukko, The God of Thun­der of the Ancient Finns and His Indo-European 
. . . . . Family
15739. (Émile Ben­veniste) Les valeurs économiques dans le vocab­u­laire indo-européen
. . . . . [arti­cle]
15740. (Bernard Wailes) The Ori­gins of Set­tled Farm­ing in Tem­per­ate Europe [arti­cle]
15741. (Ber­nice Mor­gan) Cloud of Bone
15742. (Edgar Polomé) Ger­man­ic and Region­al Indo-Euro­pean [arti­cle]
15743. (William F. Wyatt, Jr.) The Indo-Euro­peaniza­tion of Greece [arti­cle]
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This is an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ity of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and why Democ­rats from a pro­fes­sional back­ground don’t con­nect with it. How­ever, it makes unwar­ranted assump­tions about the ratio­nal­ity and “pro­ce­dural savvy” of the social group the author sees him­self as belong­ing to. In my expe­ri­ence, they have demon­strated exact­ly the same degree of sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to super­sti­tion, mag­i­cal think­ing, and irra­tional mum­bo-jum­bo as any of the pro­les that he con­trasts them to. You rarely see this kind of dis­cus­sion in Cana­da. We real­ly do live in dif­fer­ent worlds, now. It is a good arti­cle, mak­ing some good obser­va­tions, despite the patron­iz­ing tone, and the annoy­ing use of the sil­ly neol­o­gism “com­pe­tency” in place of the Eng­lish word “com­pe­tence”. Avail­able at Burke’s blog Eas­ily Dis­tracted, or through Brad DeLong’s site..

The ear­li­est known his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment is a Sumer­ian king list, of which there are 16 extant copies. It is some­what myth­i­cal in tone (the sec­ond king, Alal­gar, is said to have ruled for 64,800 years. But many of the kings seem to have been real, and some seem to have had hum­ble ori­gins, which the chron­i­cle is care­ful to point out. We are told that “The divine Dumuzi, the shep­herd, ruled for 36,000 years”, that “Etana, the shep­herd, who ascend­ed to heav­en and put all coun­tries in order, became king; he ruled for 1,500 years”, and “The divine Lugal-ban­da, the shep­herd, ruled for 1200 years”. Not only shep­herds aspired to king­ship: “The divine Dumuzi, the fish­er­man, whose city was Ku’ara, ruled for 100.” He was the king just before Gil­gamesh, of epic fame, who is gen­er­al­ly thought to have been a real per­son. Oth­er trades­men in the king list include Kiš, Su-suda, the fuller, Mam­a­gal, the boat­man, Bazi, the leather work­er, and Nan­niya, the stone­cut­ter. Alto­geth­er, even in a long king list, this seems a remark­able num­ber. Per­haps there is, embed­ded in this list, a hint at some mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion in our ideas of the nature of Sumer­ian kingship.

But most remark­able of all was a woman king (appar­ent­ly not a queen who came to pow­er through wid­ow­hood), Kuba­ba. The text reads: “In Kiš, Ku-Baba, the woman tav­ern-keep­er, who made firm the foun­da­tions of Kiš, became king; she ruled for 100 years.” Sure­ly there’s a inter­est­ing tale behind this terse entry. If she is a real his­tor­i­cal fig­ure (and one should­n’t assume so), her reign may have been in c.2400 BC. It’s thought that she over­threw the rule of En-Shakan­sha-Ana of the 2nd Uruk Dynasty to become monarth. The peo­ple of the ancient Near East cer­tain­ly thought her remark­able. Kuba­ba (or Ku-Baba or Kug-Bau) also appears in the text known as the Wei­d­ner Chron­i­cle, in this most remark­able pas­sage: Read more »

I can’t describe this amus­ing graph­ic nov­el any bet­ter than the back cov­er blurb: “The aston­ish­ing sto­ry of the incom­per­a­ble Rex Lib­ris, Head Librar­ian at Mid­dle­ton Pub­lic Library. From ancient Egypt, where his beloved Hypa­tia was mur­dered, to the far­thest reach­es of the galaxy in search of over­due books, Rex upholds his vow to fight the forces of igno­rance and dark­ness. Wear­ing his super thick bot­tle glass­es and armed with an arse­nal of high tech­nol­ogy weapons, he strikes fear into the recal­ci­trant bor­row­ers, and can take on vir­tu­ally any foe from zom­bies to rene­gade lit­er­ary characters.