Friday, February 22, 2008 — A Shameful Display of Contempt for Democracy From General Hillier

Posted by on February 22, 2008 No comments

I have lost all respect for Gen­er­al Rick Hilli­er, Canada’s Chief of Defense Staff (the high­est rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer in the coun­try). He may be very com­pe­tent in run­ning mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, but he can­not be trust­ed in the fun­da­men­tal area of prop­er pub­lic behav­iour for some­one in his post. He has done some­thing which is extreme­ly offen­sive to a free peo­ple in a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation. He has used his office to try to muz­zle demo­c­ra­t­ic debate in Cana­da about our role in Afghanistan. By claim­ing that our free demo­c­ra­t­ic debate “helps” the Tal­iban, he is demon­strat­ing that he, him­self, is infect­ed with the vilest ide­ol­o­gy of the Tal­iban. His “shut up, don’t think, and do what you’re told” atti­tude to the Cana­di­an peo­ple is pro­found­ly offen­sive. He should be removed from his post at once.

The rul­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty is rife with kind of Tal­iban-like men­tal­i­ty. We should be work­ing to get rid of them, too.

15670. (Thomas Kyd) The Spanish Tragedy, or, Hieronimo Is Mad Again [play]

Posted by on February 22, 2008 No comments

This was the most pop­u­lar play in Eliz­a­bethan Eng­land before the arrival of Shake­speare (it was appar­ently first per­formed around 1582). Shake­speare was clear­ly influ­enced by it in some ways. It’s a bru­tally vio­lent and lurid study of revenge. I couldn’t find any audio or video per­for­mance of it. The poet­ry doesn’t exact­ly call up any admi­ra­tion, though Kyd gets some amus­ing effects when he has char­ac­ters alter­nate sin­gle lines in a kind of rapid-fire pat­ter. We don’t know much about Kyd, and not much of his work has sur­vived. He is reput­ed to have writ­ten the “Ur-Ham­let”, the treat­ment of the Dan­ish sto­ry that Ham­let is said to have either revamped or sup­planted, but which has not sur­vived. He was not as skill­ful at elud­ing the cen­sors as Shake­speare. For var­i­ous impi­eties, he was impris­oned and tor­tured. His career ruined, he died at the age of 35. He had been Marlowe’s room mate for awhile. Mar­lowe was either assas­si­nated for polit­i­cal rea­sons, or in ran­dom brawl, depend­ing on the biographer’s incli­na­tion. Being a play­wright was a rough game, in those days.

Thursday, February 21, 2008 — How Far Could They Paddle?

Posted by on February 21, 2008 No comments

A read­er asked me why I assumed that late mesolith­ic and ear­ly neolith­ic peo­ples could under­take long riv­er and coastal journeys. 

08-02-21 BLOG Thursday, February 21, 2008 - How Far Could They PaddleLet me tell you about a lit­tle place in north­ern Cana­da called Peawanuck. I have writ­ten about it else­where, because it has sen­ti­men­tal impor­tance to me. It also has some impor­tance to the out­side world, because, since 2000 it has been the site of the Peawanuck Neu­tron Mon­i­tor. This is part of a glob­al net­work of neu­tron mon­i­tors strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed to pro­vide pre­cise, real-time, 3‑dimensional mea­sure­ments of cos­mic ray angu­lar dis­tri­b­u­tion activ­i­ty. If your main inter­est is his­to­ry, you may not know why this is impor­tant, but trust me, it is. Oth­er mon­i­tors are locat­ed at the South Pole, Maw­son and McMur­do Sound sta­tions in Antarc­ti­ca; at Inu­vik, Fort Smith, Nain, and Goose Bay in Cana­da; at Thule in Green­land; on Sval­bard (the arc­tic island which appears in The Gold­en Com­pass); and Apati­ty in north­ern Rus­sia. These loca­tions share an obvi­ous char­ac­ter­is­tic: remote­ness. Read more »

15664. (Fischer, Anders et al.) The Composition of Megalithic Food: Evidence from the Submerged Settlement on the Argus Bank, Denmark [article]

Posted by on February 20, 2008 No comments

A read­er sent in the paper in the cur­rent issue of Acta Archae­o­log­ica, because it seems to con­firm some of the points I made in the blog entries for Feb­ru­ary 18 and 20. It does con­firm that many oth­er sites may have been inter­preted as dom­i­nated by hunt­ing big game when they were pri­mar­ily fish­ing vil­lages. How­ever, it isn’t an exam­ple of a fish­ing vil­lage act­ing as a syn­er­getic fac­tor in neoloth­ic agri­cul­ture. I’m look­ing for­ward, opti­misti­cally, to some­thing along those lines.

Alan Tam

Posted by on February 20, 2008 No comments

Alan Tam [谭咏麟] was, along with Leslie Che­ung, a big name in Hong Kong can­topop dur­ing the 1980s. All I have is a cas­sette made in HK, with no Eng­lish on it. The songs are all “laid-back” bal­lads that would sat­isfy any Per­ry Como or Bar­ry White fan. The ones I like best on the tape are “水中花” and “擁抱”, strict­ly on the basis of the smooth­ness of the singing. Not for any­one who has a low thresh­old for mush.

(Lucas 2005) Star Wars: Episode III ― Revenge of the Sith

Posted by on February 19, 2008 No comments

Natal­ie Port­man plays a chin cush­ion in Revenge of the Sith.

Final­ly got around to see­ing this, albeit only on the small screen. I nev­er knew there could be any­thing more tedious than Par­si­fal. I notice now that the female char­ac­ters in the Star Wars movies have got­ten pro­gres­sive­ly more inac­tive and orna­men­tal. Remem­ber Princess Leah? She was expect­ed to do some fight­ing and solve prob­lems. But that was the 1970s. This episode’s Pad­mé has all the dynamism of a hydro­gen atom at the end of the uni­verse. Not even spec­tac­u­lar CG bat­tles could keep my eye on the screen. I’m not very demand­ing when it comes to space opera. A few nice visu­als, maybe a clever line or two is all it takes to keep me hap­py. But I would have been pissed off if I had paid the­atre prices to see this.

Monday, February 18, 2008 — More About Fish ― More Than You Probably Want to Know

Posted by on February 18, 2008 No comments

puffer_fish_1For the last fif­teen years, I’ve been com­plain­ing to every­one I know about the pecu­liar absence of fish from his­tor­i­cal writ­ing and analy­sis. Go into any uni­ver­si­ty library, and you will find the stacks filled with mas­sive col­lec­tions of books and jour­nals about every con­ceiv­able aspect of farm­ing, ani­mal hus­bandry, and nomadism. Urban stud­ies from every region and era have been under­tak­en. Con­tro­ver­sies and debates about the pre­cise rela­tion­ships between all these activ­i­ties flash like sum­mer light­ning storms. But where is fish­ing? Try to even find his­tor­i­cal stud­ies of fish­ing and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties in a uni­ver­si­ty library. One imme­di­ate­ly plum­mets from banks of shelv­ing units to a tiny clus­ter on a sin­gle dusty shelf. Very lit­tle of this is his­tor­i­cal in out­look. Read more »

Throbbing Johnson

Posted by on February 15, 2008 No comments

Lis­ten­ing to A Taste of Throb­bing John­son, an ama­teur­ishly pro­duced indie tape that I some­how acquired in 1999 or 2000. Just the bare tape in a blank case, so no names to go on. It has a mild­ly amus­ing audio skit at the end. A total mys­tery… some­one must have giv­en me the cas­sette, per­haps a street busker or some­one I met in a club, but I can’t remem­ber who or under what cir­cum­stances. I accu­mu­late a lot of music that way, which tells you some­thing about my life. No trace of the band any­where on the web. It’s not bad music, tho.

15616. (Darius M. Rejali) Torture & Modernity — Self, Society, and State in Modern Iran

Posted by on February 12, 2008 No comments

I looked for­ward to read­ing this book, which had been rec­om­mended to me. But it proved a dis­ap­point­ment. Occa­sion­ally, it laps­es into com­mon sense for a page or two, but for the most part it’s an exer­cise in regur­gi­tat­ing the tedious ortho­dox­ies of our time. Plen­ty of Fou­cault. Plen­ty of neb­u­lous and de-human­ized pas­sages like “Polit­i­cal vio­lence may have lacked sys­tem­atic­ity because juris­dic­tions con­flicted, but it retained an over­all coher­ence through its tech­niques. These tech­niques involved the inscrip­tion of signs, and it is there­fore not sur­pris­ing that the vio­lence about penal rit­u­als involved the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of signs….The brig­and in this instance used pun­ish­ments as a tech­nique or rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He did not oblit­er­ate the sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tions; he mere­ly play­fully changed what the signs meant.” That is how the author choos­es to describe some­body hav­ing nails ham­mered into his feet. We learn that “the encar­cer­ated become sub­ject to a hermeneu­tics of sus­pi­cion”, and so on. Read more »

Tones On Tail

Posted by on February 12, 2008 No comments

This line­up of Daniel Ash, Kevin Hask­ins and Glenn Cam­pling was an ephemer­al inter­me­di­ate stage between Bauhaus and Love And Rock­ets. The Album Pop (1984), which I have only in a poor qual­ity copy, was one of two cas­sette-only con­fig­u­ra­tions of songs tak­en from sev­en and twelve inch vinyl sin­gles. The songs are moody and sur­re­al­is­tic, quite inter­est­ing, and very sim­i­lar to the fine work that sub­se­quently appeared on Love and Rock­ets’ Sev­enth Dream of Teenage Heav­en. I have no idea where you could find this par­tic­u­lar item, but the 1998 CD com­pi­la­tion Every­thing!must con­tain the same tracks.