History & Biography – Page 5

What Bread Would Chaucer Have Eaten?

I was mulling over the growth of the whole ‘artisan bread’ movement as I made another batch of dough last week to cold ferment in the fridge. As I lay in bed reading one night, I started to wonder what sort of bread Chaucer would have eaten. Or Shakespeare. That led to: how was bread made 500 years ago? 1,000? What ingredients did they use? How did the technology and techniques develop? How was yeast’s work discovered and when? How authentic is today’s bread? Aside, that is, from the refined flour, sugar, salt and highly domesticated yeast… So I started to ……… click below for more ↓

Poor Lao Tzu: He Gets Blamed for So Much

2013-10-09 2013-10-09 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / History & Biography / Memes; Internet & Social / Quotes & Mis-quotes7 Comments

Poor Lao Tzu. He gets saddled with the most atrocious of the New Age codswallop. As if it wasn’t enough to be for founder of one of the most obscure philosophies (not a religion, since it has no deity), he gets to be the poster boy for all sorts of twaddle from people who clearly have never read his actual writing. This time it’s a mushy feel-good quote on Facebook (mercifully without kittens or angels) that reads, If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are ……… click below for more ↓

I Didn’t Know That…

2013-10-02 2013-10-02 Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / US PoliticsOne Comment

One of the great delights of learning is to be able to read or hear something new, something unknown, something that challenges the mind or your previously formed ideas and opinions. Something that fascinates and delights you. That “ah ha!” moment. Last week I stumbled across a website called History of England and I felt like that when I started to read through it. Better yet, I spent an hour downloading the 104 free podcasts of his history (plus the eight or so supplementary ones) to listen to while I walk my dogs.* The site is a blog created by ……… click below for more ↓

Losing the world, and some sleep, but enjoying it

2013-07-16 2013-07-16 Games & Gaming / History & Biography / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Brave New World – not the novel of a dystopian future by Aldous Huxley – is the name of the latest add-on for Civilization V, following after Gods & Kings, released in 2012. BNW was released last Tuesday, and I was at the local EB Games store to get one on launch day. Over the weekend, I took a look at it, playing for several hours in learning mode. Civilization, if you don’t already know, is a turn-based 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) computer game/simulation created by Sid Meier, originally in 1991. It has gone through numerous releases ……… click below for more ↓

Rasputin: Two Perspectives

2013-04-28 2013-05-01 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Perhaps no character stands out in pre-Revolution Russia as much as that of Grigory Rasputin. He was influential, enigmatic, charismatic, secretive, held no office, yet had enormous influence on the events and people of the era. How could a barely literate peasant affect the destiny of an empire? In many ways, Rasputin was the icon of the changing times, in others he represents the end of the old era, the last gasp of the autocratic, superstitious Russia. Mythologies grew up about and around him during his life, and even more so in death. No matter how you view him, he ……… click below for more ↓

The Missing Lines

2013-04-19 2018-03-20 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Literary pretensions / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

The National Museum of Iraq – known originally as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum – once housed some of the oldest works of literature in the world. Treasures from the origins of civilization, from the cities of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria were on display*. In 2003, when the Americans invaded**, a battle was fought between US and Iraqi forces at the museum. The Iraqi troops fled, and looters came in. According to Wikipedia: According to museum officials the looters concentrated on the heart of the exhibition: “the Warka Vase, a Sumerian alabaster piece more than 5,000 years old; a bronze Uruk statue from ……… click below for more ↓

April, the cruellest month

2013-04-15 2013-05-01 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

April, wrote T.S. Eliot in his remarkable poem, The Waste Land, is the “cruellest month.”* And not merely because of the inclement and unsettling weather that seems to mix winter with spring in unpredictable doses. Nor for the necessity of filing one’s taxes before month end, always a painful chore. I started thinking about April while watching the movie, 1911, about the Chinese uprising against the Qing Dynasty, in 1911 (saw it this weekend). Fascinating period of Chinese history that led to the first republic under Sun Yat Sen, but, I wondered, was it so interesting elsewhere? Yes, it seems ……… click below for more ↓

Culloden and the Family Tree, 267 Years Later

2013-03-31 2020-11-11 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Places & Geography / War & MilitaryOne Comment

It doesn’t begin with Culloden. History is seldom so neat and precise that a single event can be identified as the start or end of a thing. Rather, Culloden was a hinge, a point at which events changed direction, when the door to the past was closed and one to a very different future opened. You might say it really begins centuries earlier, in the long, bitter wars between England and Scotland that trace their roots to the Norman conquerors. But that’s too vague and longwinded. It would be better to say it the introduction to the story was written ……… click below for more ↓

Lost Worlds, Lost Words

2012-12-13 2012-12-13 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Language & GrammarLeave a comment

Moidered. It sounds like something from the Three Stooges. Or maybe something Tony Soprano would say.”I moidered him.” But it actually means “crazed,” according to Samuel Johnson in his famous dictionary of 1755. It’s long since left the stage of English usage. Scan down another few inches and you’ll find “mome.” No, not “mome, mome on the range” or a reference to Mitt Romney’s bizarre religion. Mome means, “a dull, stupid blockhead” according to Johnson. I can think of a use for that right now. Some words deserve to be resurrected. Johnson’s wasn’t the first dictionary of English – that honour goes back to ……… click below for more ↓

The sinking of the St. Croix, September, 1943

2012-09-20 2012-09-20 History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Politics / War & MilitaryOne Comment

On this day, September 20, in 1943, the Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, St. Croix, was escorting a convoy and protecting its ships from U-boats, during WWII. The ship was between Greenland and Iceland at 57.30N, 31.10W. It carried almost 150 crew, including a young man named William (Billie) Sydney David Pudney, aged 22, listed as a signalman (V 27871 (RCNVR)). The St. Croix was a bit past her prime; the 1,190-ton destroyer had been built for the US Navy in 1919 (then called the USS McCook), but given to Britain for the Royal Canadian Navy in September, 1940. In September, ……… click below for more ↓

The Oldest Art: 40,800 Years Ago

2012-06-20 2012-06-20 Arts / History & Biography / Science & TechnologyOne Comment

Paleolithic paintings in El Castillo cave in Northern Spain date back at least 40,800 years — making them Europe’s oldest known cave art, according to new research published June 14 in Science. That’s the lead to a fascinating story about the origins of art. Cave art seems to have been practiced 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. That age could make the artists either the first modern humans or even Neanderthals. That latter possibility is pretty exciting. We know from burials found in the Middle East that Neanderthal people practiced ritual burial and made musical instruments. This find suggests that ……… click below for more ↓

A Delightful Farce Called Anonymous

2012-04-29 2012-04-29 Arts / Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Memes; Internet & SocialLeave a comment

Watched a delightful, satirical farce last night, called Anonymous. It’s a spoof about the conspiracy theory that the Earl of Oxford (Edward de Vere) wrote the works of William Shakespeare. This conspiracy notion has a pop following, but lacks significant scholarly and any historical support. Like other conspiracy theories, it has gained ground on the Internet from the simple fact that most people are naturally superstitious and suspicious, and would rather not apply critical thinking or do any serious research to prove or disprove outlandish claims. As theories go, de Vere-as-Shakespeare is up there with the Elvis-is-still-alive, JFK-survived-the-Dallas-shooting or the-American-government-was-behind-the-9/11-attacks. ……… click below for more ↓

Horwath needs to read her Machiavelli

2012-04-20 2012-04-20 Canadian Politics / History & Biography / Municipal Politics3 Comments

Andrea Horwath needs to do some more reading before she decides to negotiate further with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. Specifically, she needs to read more Machiavelli. The Prince, in particular. This week the Globe & Mail reported that Horwath announced that, “…NDP Leader Andrea Horwath (is) now abandoning another major proposal in return for her party’s support of the governing Liberals’ budget, it will be easier for the two sides to strike a deal.” Her “proposal” – actually a demand in exchange for the NDP’s support of the Liberal budget – was to remove the provincial portion of the harmonized ……… click below for more ↓

This time it’s a Machiavellian mis-quote.

2012-04-10 2016-02-26 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / Quotes & Mis-quotes2 Comments

Whilst perusing the Net for some material for my book on Machiavelli, I came across this maxim: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” It’s attributed on many, many sites to Machiavelli in his most famous work, The Prince. Sounds pretty Machiavellian, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. Machiavelli never wrote those words. Sun Tzu wrote that, “All warfare is based on deception.” (Book 1, 18), which is close. Sun Tzu went on to add in the next two lines (19 and 20), “Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, ……… click below for more ↓