Category Archives: history

selective historians

When Greece won independence from Turkey, romantic foreigners set about reshaping it to a Classical ideal; among other things they destroyed any nonclassical buildings on the Acropolis, which was most of them, because the Acropolis was once a living town. … Continue reading

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was it a blur for you too?

Eighties Trivia – without looking, I’m sure of the answers to 27 of the 106 questions. It might help if I had watched television.

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tits over time

Some public-spirited person has posted [and soon thereafter removed] all of Playboy’s centerfolds from Norma Jean to Miss October 2002. (I can’t resist a complete series of anything at all interesting.) It’s not without interest to compare the earlier and … Continue reading

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1897-1997

Teller doesn’t talk, but he writes. His story A Memory of the Nineteen-Nineties, a sequel to Max Beerbohm’s “Enoch Soames” (which I read sometime in the Eighties), almost makes me wish I’d thought of making the same pilgrimage. Teller’s account … Continue reading

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the wishful thinking of historians

Bellesiles goes down. Lighten up Clayton, you’re entitled to gloat a bit.

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bedfellows

Andrew Bulhak observes: (The identity of heroes/villains in films can be telling; for example, there’s Four Feathers, which glorifies the British Empire (which can be seen as a rather prestigious model to proponents of a a global American empire) and … Continue reading

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a use for the stuff

George Byrd, who has contributed to this space before, comments on the urine item below: I recall reading somewhere that during the last years of the Civil War, some southern cities instituted regular collection of urine from chamber pots, from … Continue reading

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