It's another New Year, an opportunity (hopefully) to do better than before. I'm taking the opportunity for new beginnings to do something I've thought about for a long time: leave Facebook. After nearly a decade on the medium (with the enormous amount of time to show for it) I've had enough. I'll be leaving shortly. …
Sexual Crimes Seem to Inspire Suspension of Due Process
That was certainly the case in early Byzantium, as recorded by Procopius in his Secret History, 11: After that he (the Emperor Justinian) passed a law forbidding pederasty, not inquiring closely into those acts committed after the passing of the law but seeking out men who had succumbed to this malady some time in the …
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That’s One Way to Deal with Sexual Assault
This, from Livy, 38, 24: the Romans were conquering Galatia in Asia Minor, which the Gauls (the Romans' frequent opponent) had occupied. This incident tells us that Celtic women were as strong willed then as now: The wife of the Gallic chieftain Ortiago was one of a number of prisoners. She was a very attractive …
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The “Debt Direction” of the British Empire Needs to be Reversed
While musing over what's the "morally appropriate language" one should write in, Arundhati Roy was confronted with the following: Only a few weeks after the mother tongue/masterpiece incident, I was on a live radio show in London. The other guest was an English historian who, in reply to a question from the interviewer, composed a …
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Jubal: Trust
Wheat WR 1001 (1977) Although this Detroit-based production has been described as "Christo-funk," it's really very eclectic, with a wide variety of styles that reflect the makeup of the group. There's both jazz and soul elements in it, some hard driving stuff and some very light stuff too. One thing that's missing is any churchy …
The Oyster and the Flying Fish
There are many ways of expressing the idea that you should be content where you're at, but my favourite is this one, from Kevin Ayers' 1970 album Shooting at the Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOMS4Zs6PtM The lyrics are as follows: An oyster was a'travelling Along the ocean road He'd been some time preparing And now he'd left the …
The Wrong Side of the Border for Good Tamales
Even the Mexicans know the truth, if they won't admit it: We bring tamales by the bagful to holidays gatherings, trading them like baseball cards with friends and cousins—I’ll give you some of my TÃa Meme’s pineapple tamales if you hook me up with the potato ones from your Guatemalan sister-in-law. And, once we’ve put …
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Sounds of Christmas Past: Robert Shaw's Joy to the World
The first Christmas album I ever owned--and I still have it--is the Robert Shaw Chorale's Joy to the World, released on RCA Camden in 1958.  Recorded right after World War II, it has two distinctives: it's entirely a capella and all the carols are traditional and sacred. "Jeffnham" has done something completely different: he's recorded the …
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In Defence of Prog
It was a sorry moment on Twitter when I found the Atlantic's James Parker's "book review" on David Weigel's The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. It's not as much a book review as an assault on "prog" as it's called. Given that everything else "progressive" gets good press in …
Those African Immigrants Sure Are Encouraging
Carol Swain, the Vanderbilt professor who took early retirement after ruffling the feathers of their very politically correct establishment, tells this turning point while growing up in Roanoke, VA: She married in her teens and wound up a "divorced welfare mother of two sons." It was a fellow shift worker at the Liberty House Nursing …
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