Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
They talk a good game, but as a recent Pew report notes, those purveyors of same-sex marriage bomb in the racial diversity department. Â Even with the choice of Presiding Bishop Curry, the Episcopal Church is whiter than--horrors--the Southern Baptist Convention! It's hard to blame non-white people from avoiding the Episcopal Church; in fact, it's …
Continue reading "Those Undiverse Episcopalians, and Others"
The infamous ISIS video star is on the run: British terrorist Mohammed Emwazi – known as Jihadi John – has fled the IS terror network and gone on the run in Syria, according to sources... Emwazi is also believed to fear his unmasking had diminished his value as an IS killer and also that jealous …
Continue reading "Jihadi John, Your Services Are No Longer Required"
This post is inspired by a friend of ours who told a very interesting story from her growing up in a neighbouring Southern state. (And when you live in Tennessee, that doesn't mean much, because most of the Southern states and some of the border ones too are neighbours.) She grew up in the 1980's, …
Continue reading "What Discrimination Gets Punished Depends Upon Who's Doing the Punishing"
This continues a series inspired (somewhat) by Noel Barber’s The Sultans. The previous instalment is here. The question of the massacres of the Armenians during the Ottoman Empire is one of those poisonous issues that never seems to go away. But what can we learn from it? To find that out, we need to go …
Continue reading "The Ottoman Tales V: Facing Reality on the Armenians"
This continues a series inspired (somewhat) by Noel Barber’s The Sultans. The previous instalment is here. It should be obvious from this post that the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic state. In fact, in its day it was the Islamic state in the Middle East and anywhere else. Yet it's different in many ways from …
Continue reading "The Ottoman Tales IV: Islamic States, Then and Now"
I mulled long and hard what I'd put up as a reflection of the terrorist shootings here in Chattanooga last Thursday. Given that the shooter was an electrical engineer and graduate of the same institution where I teach, I think it proper to repost--with a few updates--my piece Coming Home from Heathrow, which I first …
This continues a series inspired (somewhat) by Noel Barber’s The Sultans. The previous instalment is here. When Benito Mussolini broke with the Socialists and began his journey towards Fascism and taking over Italy, his newspaper, The People of Italy, screamed with this headline for its first issue in 1914: The Banner of the Prophet in …
Continue reading "The Ottoman Tales III: The Banner Named Barack"
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the incident that inspired a long-time post on this site: When You Need a Native Guide. It doesn't seem that long since we almost replicated the Titanic's fate in the Bahamas, but it has... The simplest way of depicting this cruise without too many details is to overlay the …
Continue reading "Still Needing a Native Guide, Fifty Years Out"
This continues a series inspired (somewhat) by Noel Barber’s The Sultans. The previous instalment is here. Ottoman culture has seeped into ours in ways we're not aware of. When we hear words such as divan, caftan and ottoman itself, we're hearing about things that came from that culture. Like most people, I like to take …
This is the first in a series inspired (somewhat) by Noel Barber's The Sultans. Although it's largely forgotten these days (along with most important history, especially by Americans) for five centuries the Ottoman Empire loomed large in every sense of the word. In its highest days (under Suleiman the Magnificent/Lawgiver) it threatened Christian Europe, a …
Continue reading "The Ottoman Tales I: The Hem of His Garment"
Positive Infinity 