Don't you know wine critics live to write sentences like that?

Interesting article about a major wine distributor in America.

So, I'm headed to NYC the second half of the coming week. Look at this (deeply unimaginatively designed) web page of pages from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry.

That's from a review of Diane Ravitch's new book renouncing No Child Left Behind and most of the data-driven approaches that created it. It's that "consistent and reliable way" that gets me. After all the money flung at the problem where are we? And if all we got from NCLB was a way to identify the worst-performing schools - I'll bet that a candid interview with the central staff of each school district in America could have done that in a year for a lot less - we've always known which were the worst schools in any system. I taught high school Latin part-time in two radically different districts in Georgia - Atlanta City and Cobb County - and there was certainly a clear idea of which middle schools that fed us were the worst.

Joanne Jacobs round up some reactions to the proposed national standards.

The MP is also annoyed because the British Museum (and all other medievalists) think they were made in Norway, not in the Hebrides.

Yeah, if there's a bigger museum on that island some more people will visit. I say send them an assortment - maybe a dozen. There are something like 80 of them, all told, in the British Museum and in Edinburgh.

via Cronaca.

A Federalist, anti-Jefferson, newspaper, very important to American freedom of the press and libel law (Hamilton argued about truth and intent in the trial). I'm listening again to Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton - good book!

The project is cosponsored by Oman and Singapore - and they're retracing medieval trading routes. Fun!

I WILL be showing this to Islamic Art & Architecture!

I'm not a slave to the idea, but lots of medievalists prefer to quote the Douay-Rheims version because it is a translation of the Vulgate, close enough to the Vulgate version of Jerome that it is occasionally more representative of the versions medieval people would have known; however, there are all kinds of qualifiers, like which version of Psalms you use - and in my period there are still lots of copies of the Old Latin (the Vetus Latina - speaking of which here's a great site for that!) knocking around.

Really, the idea that there was one, standard version of scripture before the invention of printing is problematic. Printing standardized things a lot - though it opened other cans of worms.

"What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections - drowning out the voices of average Americans," Gibbs said. "The president has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response."

Maybe it's because he's an Auburn guy and the Chief Justice was talking to law students at the University of Alabama (or, as we like to say, "the University"), but Gibbs should have let this go.