I haven’t commented on my semester so far – mainly because I spend so much of my time trying not to get behind. I’m teaching two courses, Art 101 (cave painting through Gothic) and Medieval Art & Literature: Laughter in the Middle Ages. The second is team taught with the professor of English I worked with last fall for the Anglo-Saxons; we make a good team! We have 42 students in that course and I have 46 in Art 101 (currently — I’m grading the 2nd assignment now and someone has probably dropped since I reviewed the roll last).
Monthly Archives: January 2006
Atlatl Season
Pennsylvania has approved an atlatl-season for deer. Don’t remember what an atlatl is? Go read.
I stress read because, like so many stories on the internet, it has no pictures. Now the National Geographic has to have internal access to more stock photos of atlatls than anyone else in America! Are you telling me that the magazine art department is so jealous of its copyright that it doesn’t make old “artist’s conceptions” of prehistoric hunting available to the other departments? They’re bound to have one of the larger supplies in the world of photos and drawings out of copyright of this kind of thing — why don’t they scan them? It doesn’t surprise me, but it’s STUPID.
I was complaining about this pattern over at Mirabilis.ca just the other day (on an entry about stackable cars) — why do so many news outlets not post pictures on their web versions of stories? I especially dislike that about CNN, given that most of their news is video driven anyway!
The National Geographic News Service does provide a link to a lovely atlatl site, atlatl.com. Can you tell I’ve always enjoyed the word atlatl? I do. And I love saying it. Ever since I was 9 or 10 and went to Russell Cave with my class and threw a stick using an atlatl I’ve enjoyed the word. “Flint knapping” does nothing for me, by the way — the words, not the practice.
Science. Ummmm
I’m sure this is very interesting, but they’d better be glad I’m not voting on their funding: Scientists Find Gene That Controls Type of Earwax in People
Locked Room Mystery in the Indonesian Consulate in NYC
Future episode of Law and Order? Even the neighbors think so:
Residents of the block were less sanguine. “I thought they were filming for an episode of ‘Law and Order,’ ” Michelle Brilliant, who lives next door, said as she emerged with her daughter, Aza Hougie, 3, carrying a Snow White umbrella into the light drizzle of an overcast day.
Wikipedia policy
More of why I gave up on Wikipedia — you see, rewriting an entry to make your employer look better isn’t against the rules. There are no real rules. Here’s my most recent note on the subject.
What I want . . .
What I want is a 5-10 minute piece of video showing a nice monastic practice of the Office. The music is decidedly secondary for me! I would like best a bit of procession in, chant, standing, bowing, and sitting — I want to show students the business end of medieval monastic prayer. I’m going to use a chunk of The Name of the Rose tomorrow, but I’ve never really been satisfied with that depiction. What I’d like best is a little bit of video from a restrained Cistercian house — there was a PBS thing on Cistercians a few years ago that I can’t find anywhere online to order.
Any ideas?
further: The more I think of it the more I seem to remember it being out of the monastery at Mepkin, SC. Hmm.
still further: Here it is. It was adequate, I think. I’ll order one. I had no idea it was made for ABC!
Unbanning polygamy
The argument seems to be if polygamy is illegal, only criminals will have more than one wife.
For an overview of contemporary polygamy (including Bountiful, BC, where the Canadian process seems to have begun) you might read or listen to Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven (I listened via Audible). One of the things Krakauer makes clear is how the cross-border movement of multiple wives works.
via Kathy Shaidle
Spam Subject Lines
You know, I actually opened the email with the subject line: cowshed granule. Silly, I know, but I was intrigued. About what you’d expect.
Spring Break in January!
This is such an odd week! Mid-50s, blue skies (at least part of the day), and So. Main Street and the cmapus parking lots empty of cars — It’s like mid-March in Geneva, but earlier.
If this is global warming, bring it on!
Best Celebrity Endorsement in Decades
Kirstie Alley, It’s Raining Men on behalf of Jennie Craig. Impressive use of twentieth century confessional celebrity — someone give that woman a new TV show!
Oh, my. My filmic youth.
Did you know that there’s a collectors’ edition of Footloose? Neither did I. Nor do I know why Amazon recommended it to me. Maybe it was that Whit Stillman book that I bought as a Christmas gift? Umm – Metropolitan is coming out in a Criterion edition. Just saying. Scheduled release, a week after February 7th. Ahem.
Back and blogging up a STORM
Mirabilis.ca, that is. Brain science, black death, Befana – go read!
Wonder of wonders!
Albanian Mafiosi? No big surprise
This article about Albanian crime groups in the New York Times misses an interesting point – the Albanians have a strong reputation for this kind of violent extortion crime in Italy. Any Italian-American suitably in touch with family in Italy might react differently than the author of the story, who’s comparing them to the Westies as just another up-and-coming criminal grouping.
More Hydraulicism
Another independent civilization turns out to have been canal-driven, though:
[The archaeologists] reported finding no evidence of a centralized bureaucracy to manage the canals or mechanical devices to control flow rates.
We’ll see.