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Category Archives: History

The oldest profession

No, I’m not talking about that kind of solicitor, I’m talking about the other kind of solicitor. The one who tells you what the law is. You may think you can shake us off, but the evidence shows we’ve been around for a lo-o-o-ong time, at least 3700 years. Researchers from the Hebrew University of [...]

Helen Thomas and anti-Semitism

Okay, I’ve just got to get this off my chest because it’s been bugging me for the last few days. Helen Thomas, famed White House reporter, retired suddenly after a controversial video interview on a website called RabbiLive.com, when she was asked whether she had any comments on Israel. She was reported to have said: [...]

ANZAC Day Redux

It seems to be de riguer for a certain type of journalist to write stuff on ANZAC Day saying that it’s a jingoistic load of crap celebrated by right-wing lunatics. Now, there’s certainly an element of society which seems to see ANZAC Day as a “glorious tradition”, and that tries to harness it to an [...]

All’s fair in love and literature?

“Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever.” (Holbrook Jackson, The Anatomy of Bibliomania) How can one judge how much one loves a book when one also loves the author? This question has been raised by the recent debacle in which an anonymous [...]

The Liberty Pool

Well, if it isn’t an atheist bunfight, it’s a libertarian bunfight.  Last week — in an excellent piece for Reason Magazine — David Boaz argued that libertarians ought to stop looking backwards for some ‘golden age of lost liberty’, because no such age has ever existed. More to the point, no such age ever will [...]

The only piece of real estate in the ME not floating on oil…

… And still they keep fighting over it. The graphics were originally produced by ‘Maps of War‘, who do a nice job of this sort of thing. One thing that stands out to me: how late and brief European Colonialism was, which suggests that many of the people now moaning about it may be protesting [...]

Hitler only faced one ball

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I enjoy cricket and collect cricket trivia. I do obscure cricket-y things like remember sundry batting averages and how Don Bradman was dismissed in his last innings (bowled). I’ve also played at a moderately high standard, including for Oxford University, and still get an immense kick [...]

Oh, the squick, it burns…

I have never seen this film, and I’m not sure I want to see it either, as it seems to consist of humour that makes you excruciatingly uncomfortable at the same time as being funny. Of course the premise is unbelievable: it is economically impossible for a state with significant chattel slavery ever to develop [...]

You wouldn’t read about it

A Muslim protester accused of calling soldiers murderers at a parade claims he did not intend to upset anyone. Munim Abdul told Luton magistrates he did not expect to cause offence because his group had spoken “the truth”. Seven men deny using threatening, abusive or insulting words and behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm and [...]

iSay

Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city. Italy’s culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site, state news agency Ansa reports. Among the ruins visible on the search engine’s free mapping service are the [...]