A Description of a City Shower

One of my favorite English classes at college was 18th-Century English literature. I found I really liked Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and other satirists. I guess I just really appreciated a time when people talked about serious things but in no way took themselves seriously. Jeni, if you’re reading this, what was the name of [...]

Read Full Post »

The Great Wall

With Obama’s trip to the Great Wall of China, I thought this would be an appropriate time to recycle and old post about Nixon’s visit to the wall.
–
From my sister:
I had to send you this quotation, which I got from the book I am teaching tomorrow, a book of poems by Yunte Huang called _Cribs_. [...]

Read Full Post »

Remember the Maine

Remember how two newspapers spurred the country to war by reporting wild speculation just so they could sell some papers. I wish I could say we have progressed as a nation since then.
The explosion of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, ensured that the U.S. would not be content to [...]

Read Full Post »

Willfully ignoring history

There’s the popular adage that those who never learn from history are destined to repeat it. But that’s really all it is. An adage. Something to put on a t-shirt, but certainly not something to practice apparantly.
I was listening to NPR yesterday and I heard Bob Edwards Robert Siegel interview Errol Morris the filmmaker of [...]

Read Full Post »

Never again?

Today we hear another case of random yet targeted violence in the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Random, because the perpetrator didn’t know the museum security guard who he killed. But targeted, because the perpetrator, a white supremacist, chose to kill someone at a museum which documents the genocide of millions of [...]

Read Full Post »

Everything you ever wanted to know about Renaissance fairs

Although historical reenactments are by no means exclusive to the United States (for example, the Earl of Eglinton in Scotland sponsored a large tournament as early as 1839)[4], the Renaissance Fair is, arguably, a uniquely American variation on the theme, having as much the flavor of an amusement park combined with a shopping mall as [...]

Read Full Post »

Charles Joseph Minard’s famous graph…

…showing the decreasing size of the Grande Armée as it marches to Moscow and back with the size of the army equal to the width of the line. Temperature is plotted on the lower graph for the return journey (Multiply Réaumur temperatures by 1¼ to get Celsius, e.g. −30°R = −37.5 °C)

I thought Jake might [...]

Read Full Post »

Historical revision of the day

It’s interesting how photographs create history. We’ve all seen the Ken Burns’ affect in countless documentaries, but what if the photographs are deliberately misleading? Will anyone remember and revise the historical record?
My sister brought this story to my attention. A Japanese-American battalion liberated the concentration camp of Dachau during World War II but no photographic [...]

Read Full Post »

Danton the cat

On Monday we brought Danton home for the Seattle Animal Shelter clinic where he was neutered. Since then he’s had an amazing recovery. On day one and two he primarily hid under the bed, but by day three he was coming out to be pet. On day 4 he found our bedroom upstairs to visit. [...]

Read Full Post »

Trivia for the day

I was trying out another trivia place last night (Lockspot Cafe Mondays at 8 o’clock) when I came across what I thought was a very good question. Enjoy.
Name all of the twelve Gods of Olympus (Greek names only). Answers after the jump.

Read Full Post »

What is the world’s tallest building?

We often get this at trivia and it’s always confusing. Habitable building or tallest structure? I found this entry in Wikipedia both informative and complex.
While determining the world’s tallest structure has generally been straightforward, the definition of the world’s tallest building or the world’s tallest tower is less clear. The disputes generally centre on what [...]

Read Full Post »

Quote for the day

Regarding the “personal triumphs” of Kate Winslet’s character in the Oscar nominated The Reader:
What, exactly, was the Kate Winslet character’s “personal triumph”? While in prison for participation in an act of mass murder that was particularly gruesome and personal, given the generally impersonal extermination process—as a death camp guard, she helped ensure 300 Jewish women [...]

Read Full Post »

“Christmastime is Nazi time”

An odd headline, for an interesting article:
‘Tis the season to gather, be grateful for what we have and share what we can. But for cinephiles, it’s awards season, and that means dreary fare – particularly with a World War II or Holocaust focus. No fewer than six are set for release this holiday season.
So why, [...]

Read Full Post »

Hitler and Stalin rolled into one

According to Rep. Paul Broun (R) from Georgia that’s what Obama is. It’s quite brilliant to get that two-in-one combination to work out logically.
A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.”It may sound a bit crazy and off base, [...]

Read Full Post »

Whitewashing Stalin

I was telling a friend a rather embarrassing story of me telling a Georgian diplomat that of course I knew that Georgia was a country: “I know, Stalin’s home,” I said. To my surprise my friend launched into a speech that Stalin wasn’t really that bad. My friend is Chinese leading me to believe his [...]

Read Full Post »

Rush is a communist

Giving further proof that right-wing Republicans haven’t a clue what socialism is, we find this statement from Rush Limbaugh:
We’re going to get some rank and file, average American Democrats that are going to vote for McCain.  But these hoity-toity bourgeoisie…
Well, they’re not the bourgeoisie, but… Well, they are in a sense. They’re following their own [...]

Read Full Post »

Gird your loins

The Explainer on Slate tells you how to do it. I’m not sure when this will come in handy though.
At a Seattle fundraiser on Sunday, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden warned supporters that, if elected, Barack Obama will be tested by “an international crisis” early on in his first term. He also advised the crowd [...]

Read Full Post »

Rediscovering the Old: Bicycles

I thought I’d start a series on items and notions of that past that have received new vitality in the current day. While we appear to be modernizing as a species and value those things that are new, we inevitably find that the things of the past still have value and may in fact be [...]

Read Full Post »

Rice-A-Roni is Armenian

Today, I heard this great story on NPR about the origin of Rice-A-Roni. I haven’t made Rice-A-Roni in years, but I remember liking it. Of the woman who created the inspirational recipe, the story goes:
“Mrs. Captanian, I had a liking for her right away. So we moved in. Tommy would work until about 7 o’clock [...]

Read Full Post »

NASA Audio Slide Show

The BBC has an audio slide show of the past 50 years of NASA. Check it out.

Photo via HowStuffWorks.

Read Full Post »

Happy Bastille Day!

I have this story of the time I went to Paris and I tried to find the Bastille only I was actually expecting to find the Bastille itself. I felt very stupid, but I have a friend who did the same thing so clearly it’s not that unusual. The confusion comes from the fact [...]

Read Full Post »

Goodbye from the world’s biggest ass

This story has been well reported, so I don’t expect anyone reading this will be surprised, but I thought it might bring about a good topic for discussion and that is “is this guy psychotic or what?”
Bush has said many times that history will vindicate him as a president. I just have to wonder how [...]

Read Full Post »

Hitler Wax Replica Decapitated

A man has been arrested after tearing the head off a wax figure of Adolf Hitler at a newly opened branch of Madame Tussauds in Berlin.
Police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said a security guard had been shoved aside by the attacker.
“He tried to prevent the man from acting but failed. The suspect, from the Kreuzberg district, [...]

Read Full Post »

The Arctic Club Seattle

The Arctic Building is associated with one of the lesser-known facets of the Klondike gold rush–the formation of social institutions for the men who returned from the Yukon gold rush after “striking it [...]

Read Full Post »

Quote for the Day: What a Great Wall

Thank you Marcella Proust for this.
I had to send you this quotation, which I got from the book I am teaching tomorrow, a book of poems by Yunte Huang called _Cribs_. It appears in a footnote to the poem. “Note–When Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, his Chinese hosts took him to see [...]

Read Full Post »