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Chivalric Questions

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Thursday, April 02, 2026

Interstellar images turned into music

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This is marvellous.
Thursday, March 19, 2026

A super-cargo ship of the 15th century

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li vescience.com has a fascinating article on the discovery of a huge cog -- a late medieval cargo ship -- off the coast of Denmark. ...
Tuesday, March 17, 2026

A small piece of the "real" Jack Vance

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Here's what I meant t0 include: From Jack Vance's sf novel The Book of Dreams. ...Gersen sauntered along Corrib Place, looking into ...
Tuesday, February 17, 2026

The New Justinian

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I have been writing a history of the Middle Ages, meant for people who are interested, bright but not necessarily well-informed. It's g...
Thursday, January 15, 2026

Charlie Angus quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

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Thursday, January 08, 2026

Has the next world war already begun?

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Since I started seriously reading social media and blogs I have learned some important things from Umair Haque at The Issue . I haven't...
Saturday, November 22, 2025

Canada is heaven (2)

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I believe I wrote a post a year or so ago with the title "Canada is Heaven" My point was not that Canada is perfect -- far from it...
Thursday, November 20, 2025

An excellent review by Ken Mondschein of Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry: A Casebook.

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If you have a general interest in the Middle Ages, you might want to subscribe to the Medieval Review. It is free and includes reviews on al...
Monday, November 10, 2025

Kirth Gersen goes shopping

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From Jack Vance's sf novel The Book of Dreams. ...Gersen sauntered along Corrib Place, looking into shops, which here affected a sp...
Sunday, November 09, 2025

Mexico: The advantages of having a woman as president

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Politico covers https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mexico-president-sheinbaum-presses-charges-after-street-groping-incident/ar-AA1PTFmC?o...
Thursday, November 06, 2025

Some wise words from Umair Haque

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Months, nay years ago now, I used to post material from Umair Haque pretty regularly on this blog. He struck me as one of the few commentat...
Monday, November 03, 2025

The organization of Early Medieval (Carolingian and Ottonian) armies

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Medievalists.net has published an article by a distinguished historian, David Bachrach. He has written extensively on how Charlemagne and hi...
Saturday, November 01, 2025

AI generates a podcast reviewing my article " Heroic Kings and Unruly Generals: The "Copenhagen" Continuation of Prosper Reconsidered. Florilegium, 6 (1984) , 50–70.

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Yesterday an unexpected item showed up in my mailbox: a podcast, based on my 1984 article analyzing an Italian chronicle which preserves un...
Sunday, October 26, 2025

The 20th Century is a long time ago

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This morning I was reading a lecture by Alan Lupack The 2016 Loomis Lecture: Moral Chivalry and the Arthurian Revival . It started out rathe...
Monday, October 20, 2025

Jack (the real) Vance -- as I see him

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Jack Vance -- the sf and fantasy writer, not the guy who is US VP-- was a wonderful writer. He hhad a unique talent. His vast vocabulary, t...
Saturday, September 20, 2025

Tambora and the Year without Summer

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Link to Substack pictures to come. Here's some striking paintings of the Year Without Summer . Thanks to xtracurriculars for this l...
Thursday, September 18, 2025

Cobalt, Ontario 1931 by Yvonne McKague Housser

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Sunday, September 07, 2025

Deir el-Medina and The Golden City -- looking at artisan life in Egypt

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Material now at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge gives us a look at daily life comparable to Pompeii according to experts. This post fro...
Wednesday, September 03, 2025

Timothy Burke summarizes one aspect of Graeber and Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything"

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Timothy Burke writes an extensive thought piece on Substack on how Trumpism is possible (Thanks to Brad DeLong for alerting me to t...
Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Words of Wisdom from Frank Zappa and Steve Vai

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I was idly paging through YouTube shorts when I ran across this piece of an interview with the musician Steve Vai (who I don't know from...