indulgence & sin

I am reading my slow, marvellous way through the Yule-Cordier edition of The Travels of Marco Polo, armed with Google Maps, Google Images, Wikipedia and the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. It is stirring up an insatiable storm of Wanderlust, and so to expiate my guilt at not PhD-ing, I am sharing my vicarious armchair travelling. Marker [...]

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links for 2008-08-28

Accidental Blogger: Legalized Depravity
Obama vs. McCain on the question of evil. the divide between their world views is almost entirely one of moral sophistication. man, only a raving Republican could effortlessly substitute the words 'Al Qaeda' for 'evil' — sadder still that it's probably exactly what most of his voters want to hear.
(tags: evil morality [...]

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links for 2008-08-26

Racism is the only reason Obama might lose – By Jacob Weisberg – Slate Magazine
"If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to." — when [...]

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bookporn #35: lankester antiques & books, saffron walden

an excursion out into the Cambridge hinterlands yields a Find in the town of Saffron Walden: Lankester Antiques and Books, which is exactly what it says on the tin:

that is to say, a stacked and dangling jumble of curios, oddities and knick-knacks, hemmed in sternly by shelves of books — all seeming to tremble on [...]

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links for 2008-08-25

NYPL Digital Gallery | Home
a gold mine of images!
(tags: history reference images photography primarysource archives explorethislater)

Wanderlust: GOOD traces the most famous trips in history
interactive maps of famous old travel routes. stirs the lusty traveller in me.
(tags: maps travel history exploration flash world)

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on bad citation

The latest issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas features a series of article conversations between various historians on the features, role and existence of so-called ‘moral history’, which I gather is taken to mean something like history sensitive to ethical considerations. This post isn’t about that, though the place of ethics in [...]

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links for 2008-08-20

And Many More | Futility Closet
Robert Louis Stevenson on the most righteous course of action concerning little girls afflicted with the terrible misfortune of sharing a birthday with Christmas
(tags: funny anecdote via:adammyers)

Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture by Alan Sokal, reviewed by The New Republic Online
you know you're a famous philosopher when you can [...]

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links for 2008-08-14

2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony – The Big Picture – Boston.com
totally sumptuous photos of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. the ceremony, whose artistic direction was provided by none other than the inestimable director of Hero, blew my mind. London will, no doubt, be sweating all the way to 2012…
(tags: olympics awesome photography)

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links for 2008-08-13 [delicious.com]

'Sovereignty' That Risks Global Health – washingtonpost.com
"Here's a concept you've probably never heard of: 'viral sovereignty'…that deadly viruses are the sovereign property of individual nations." When I first saw the term 'viral sovereignty' I had a fleeting notion of infectious self-determination, kind of like how colonies or oppressed peoples could catch the national independence bug. [...]

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a novel social history

I read George Eliot’s Middlemarch recently, and it is so absolutely wonderful that I wish to coerce everyone into reading it. Consider this, then, a Trojan horse post. In the guise of rough-hewn, wooden ruminations on social history, novels and parliamentary reform, I shall smuggle Middlemarch and its glory into the unguarded citadel of your [...]

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