Farewell

I have decided that it is time for me to discontinue The Elfin Ethicist. In fact, I knew several months ago that I would end it around this time.

I began blogging early in my undergraduate career, while I was still a teenager. (That was probably a mistake.) Over the months, The Elfin Ethicist has revealed my moments of creativity and boredom; fear and optimism; irritation and joy; pretentiousness and silliness; and immaturity and, I hope, some growth in understanding. My audience has changed as I have changed, and the site seems to serve a different purpose now from what it once did, if any at all.

Interestingly enough, my subtitle is more appropriate than ever.

Because The Elfin Ethicist bears the scars of my undergraduate years, because it no longer has a clearly defined target audience, because of my desire for a clean break as I begin my graduate studies, and because I anticipate having little time or confidence to post this year, I am stopping now.

Of course, I do not anticipate leaving the blogosphere entirely. I will still be reading weblogs and commenting occasionally. And someday, I may start writing for the web again.

Goodbye, everyone. It's been interesting.

History Carnival XLII

The forty-second History Carnival has been posted at Holocaust Controversies. This edition has Pilgrims and castles and lawyers and suffrage and all sorts of other good things.

Reading list

Terry Eagleton excoriates Richard Dawkins for "philistinism and provincialism."

Richard N. Haass believes we are entering a new era of Middle Eastern history -- an age in which Western powers are losing influence as local radicals gain power.

Peter Berkowitz disparages George Lakoff's attempt to distinguish between liberal and conservative views of freedom in America.

National Review's Jonah Goldberg admits that the Iraq war was "a worthy mistake."

Update: An early modern edition of Carnivalesque is up at Recent Finds Weblog.

History Carnival XLI

The forty-first History Carnival is up at ClioWeb. Among the entries:

Andy F. Brian tells the sad, sad tale of Indiana Jones' denial of tenure. >>

Mark Grimsley has challenged his readers to decide which fields should be represented on a 15-member history faculty. >>

Tim Abbott notes that Willie and Joe, Bill Mauldin's cartoon GIs, had a rocky career after the Second World War ended. >>

Blogger "Gracchi" critiques Bailyn critiquing Berlin critiquing utopians. >>

Reading list

In the current issue of The American Conservative, John Zmirak tries to combat the polarization of American politics by asking both parties to play an uncomfortable game of Let's Pretend. (HT: Caelum et Terra)

Crooked Timber's famous academic blogroll is now a wiki with its own URL.

Teachers happen because of the example of other teachers. Mark Grimsley got a chance to say thank you to one of his.

A Non-Philosopher's Guide to Philosophical Terms. (HT: Siris)

Reading list, legal edition

Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone notes that the Bush administration is undermining a legal right that, according to Justice Scalia, "dates back to Roman times."

Speaking of, Jacob T. Levy has posted a roundup of Balkinization entries on "executive power, torture, and the Bush administration's extravagant constitutional claims."

Radley Balko has a good article at Reason on the case of Cory Maye. He is still on was sent to death row for self-defense, in what appears to qualify as a judicial lynching.

In December 2005, as Evans was preparing Maye's appeal, he received a phone call from Prentiss Mayor Charlie Dumas, who is close to Officer Ron Jones' family. Dumas told Evans that several of the town's aldermen had expressed concern about his decision to handle Maye's appeal. Although representing an indigent defendant on appeal was Evans' job as the town's public defender, Dumas told Evans he could lose that job if he continued to act as Maye's attorney. Evans ignored the threat.

Six weeks later, in January 2006, Dumas called Evans with the news that Prentiss had fired him as its public defender. Evans says Dumas explicitly cited his representation of Maye as the reason for his termination.

Fixing Tolkien

A week ago, Peter Chattaway spread the word that not only does MGM still exist after all; it is hoping to make "one or two installments of The Hobbit" within a few years, probably with Peter Jackson.

Two days ago, Chattaway found proof of his suspicion that this is a very bad idea.

Jackson hadn't actually been approached with the idea by the studio, apparently, when he did this interview. And he claimed to be too busy to do The Hobbit anytime soon, if anyone did ask him. But here's what he would do if he were asked to direct the film:

If I was doing The Hobbit I'd try to get as many of the guys back as I could. I mean, there's actually a role for Legolas in The Hobbit, his father features in it, obviously Gandalf and Saruman should be part of it. There's things that you can do with The Hobbit to bring in some old friends, for sure. I have thought about it from time to time ... Elrond, Galadriel and Arwen could all feature. Elves have lived for centuries. Part of the attraction would be working with old friends. I wouldn't want to do it unless we could keep a continuity of cast. [...]

Yeah, we're supposed to be writing The Lovely Bones, but of course Phil, Fran and I read the thing on the net and spent most of this morning talking about The Hobbit. We think the two film idea is really smart. One of the problems with The Hobbit is that it is a fairly simple kids story, and doesn't really feel like The Lord of the Rings. Tonally I mean. It's always may be a little worried, but with two films that kinda gets easier. It allows for more complexity. At that implied stuff with Gandalf and the White Council and the return of Sauron could be fully explored.

That's what we talked about this morning. Taking The Hobbit and combining it with all that intigue about Sauron's rise, and the problems that has for Gandalf. It could be cool. That way, it starts feeling more like The Lord of the Rings and less like this kids book. You could even get into Gollum's sneaking into Mordor and Aragorn protecting The Shire. That's what we'd do. Love to work with Viggo again.

History Carnival 39

The thirty-ninth History Carnival is up at Cliopatria. It has lots of good stuff; look for the entry from my little brother.

Spoken word

Just this evening, I ran across a podcast series from the University of Sydney. The list of speakers is promising; I've been listening to a lecture by Quentin Skinner (MP3), who is presenting a "genealogy" of British and German concepts of individual freedom. I recommend it.

Reading list

The good quit young: Caleb McDaniel is boarding up Mode for Caleb in order to concentrate on real life for a while.

Richard Wolin, reviewing Eric Paras' Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge, notes evidence that Foucault turned over a new leaf later in life. (HT: several people)

The new issue of Foreign Affairs includes Walter Russell Mead's "God's Country?", a survey of contemporary American Protestantism. It is a much more careful and constructive treatment of the subject than the recent "theocracy" alarmism has offered.

Simplicius shows us a fun set of marginal notes left by the former owner of a textbook.

Target.com is selling a Franklin Roosevelt action figure. I particularly wonder where they found the promised photos and audio clips of, er, President Franklin. (HT: WN)

History Carnival 38

The thirty-eighth History Carnival is up at Frog in a Well: Japan. The reading in this one looks excellent.

Jim Davila talks about excavations at Vindolanda, a Roman fortress in Britain. He provides photos of the fort and Hadrian's Wall, for good measure. >>

Brett Holman David Tiley tells the story of Dina Gottliebova, an artist and Auschwitz survivor who wants her paintings back. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum wants to keep them. >>

Amanda McCloskey provides an etymology of biliary atresia. >>

Ralph Luker describes the sudden delivery of a footnote after a very long gestation. >>

Jennie W. gives us a peek at a Civil War letter from Lucy Hayes to her "dearest Ruddy." >>

History Carnival 37

The thirty-seventh History Carnival is up at Mode for Caleb.

Strange searches

Borrowing an idea from Parableman ....

spem whale
According to Google, only 476 spem whales still exist on the Web. I'm happy to do my part to raise awareness.

"italians are the most"
I've always said so.

modern literature ha
Well, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.

"needs of the many" -"star trek"
I imagine you are thinking of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, or perhaps III: The Search for Spock. But I've said too much already.

euphemisms of dumbbell
Muscle capability enhancer, maybe?

funny metaphors to explain organizational behavior
Lemmings. Drinking the Kool-Aid. Chattel slavery. Congress.

Reading list

The American Bar Association presents the strange history of the presidential signing statement. The current chief executive has issued more than all of his predecessors combined.

Umberto Eco, reviewing a book by Paul Collins, recounts some "outlandish theories that were taken seriously for a long time" -- especially various hollow earth theories -- which, he says, remind him to "distrust many ideas that are accorded full credence in the media, and even in some scientific circles." I wonder what he has in mind. (HT: A&LD)

Christianity Today is watching the war in Israel and Lebanon, running a series of articles from a range of perspectives. Botrus Mansour, for example, is an Arab Christian living in Nazareth.

In the third installment of his series on academic history, Jason Kuznicki explains why you shouldn't go to grad school.

On a more cheerful note, if you haven't visited Today in Alternate History yet, you really should.

Reading list

Brandon Watson summarizes the case presented by George Campbell, a Scottish minister, against the rebellion of the American colonies.

At Ship of Fools, Stephen Tomkins writes a series of amusing biographical (and occasionally apocryphal) articles called "Loose Canons: Golden Moments from the Pages of Church History."

Dr. History has some useful-looking advice for first-year history graduate students.

Matthew Yglesias likens American adventurists to the Green Lantern Corps -- "capable of achieving anything if only we have sufficient will." (HT: VI)

Etgar Keret explains why the current conflict has some Israelis feeling relieved: "'It's a real war, eh?' And after taking a long breath, he added nostalgically, 'Just like in the old days.'" (HT: TAS)

And Hiram Hover has prepared the seventh Carnival of Bad History. Loads of fun!

History Carnival 35

The thirty-fifth History Carnival is up at Air Pollution. But I'm too tired to link any specific entries tonight.

Reading list

Miland hosts the fifth Asian History Carnival.

My friend Wheeler kindly sent me this: From the Ball-Room to Hell, a highly informative tract from 1892. That settles it -- I'm learning to dance!

In the second entry of a series that started with this, Jason Kuznicki argues that academic historians should try to capture the fact that "generally speaking, historical actors do not act for 'a' reason -- they act with many reasons."

Reading list

Timothy Burke posts some "scattered thoughts" on the war on terror, reflecting on (among other things) what makes America a truly worthy adversary.

Jason Kuznicki presents a manifesto on theory and primary literature.

The new edition of Common-place is up.

From the shadows of Internet prehistory comes "You May Be a Graduate Student If ..." Uh-oh. (Via Ralph Luker)

Andrew S. Finstuen traces the path of the sometimes-friendly, often-hostile "public conversation" between Billy Graham and Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1950s.

History Carnival 34

I believe the thirty-fourth History Carnival, up now at Chapati Mystery, has the distinction of being the only edition to have been delayed for World Cup play. It was worth the wait, I think, with a set of photographic entries as well as contributions like these:

Rob MacDougall looks into real and fictional history in various Superman stories. >>

Zalman Paktorowicz explains the connections among Henry Ford, altered names of Eastern European immigrants, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. >>

Amardeep Singh weighs in on a debate over the effects of British imperialism in India. >>

Brian Ulrich describes the career of Abd al-Malik, an Umayyad caliph who played a decisive role in the political history and perhaps even theology of Islam. >>

Blogroll changes

I have finally updated my sidebar to reflect my reading habits. "Blogs of the Academy" is now more inclusively called "Blogs of the Mind." Under that heading are 100 sites, unless I lost count somewhere.

These days, of course, I monitor virtually all of my reading choices by subscribing to their RSS feeds.

Reading list

Sam Anderson profiles the paradoxical Garrison Keillor.

The blogger at Recollections suggests that "hate the sin, love the sinner" misses the point.

Christina Lamb traveled to Afghanistan to report on reconstruction there. She says we have abandoned the Afghans.

Timothy Furnish traces the history of democratic reform in the Ottoman Empire.

HNN debunks "the top 5 myths about the Fourth of July."

Ryan Sager believes the GOP is now losing its appeal among populists. I've been convinced for some time that brazen populism is the main reason for the Republicans' recent successes. In still thinking of themselves as champions of the common American, the Democrats have been deluding themselves. For the real American heartland, look to Wal-Mart.

Carnival of Bad History VI

The sixth Carnival of Bad History has been posted at Frog in a Well: Japan.

This carnival, of course, comprises blog entries that examine histories that are somehow ... deferred successes, let's say. For example:

Holocaust Controversies is a blog dedicated to refuting Holocaust deniers. >>

Joerg Wolf et al. review an apparently anti-American high school history text created by a Franco-German committee (and note some astounding allegations about the French foreign minister). >>

Miland Brown lists eight rules for those who would like to run separatist movements of their own. >>

Grant Jones notes evidence that the U.S. State Department is reluctant to speak the truth about the Armenian genocide. >>

Reading list

Jennifer Woodruff Tait provides a history of the pew.

Speaking of Christianity, Parableman refutes a defamatory Huffington Post article that shows, I think, just how ignorant and bigoted some critics of evangelical Christianity can be.

Speaking of that sort of thing, Matt Welch, who seems to have been the original "warblogger," waxes nostalgic for the heady days of December 2001, when the blogosphere was less polarized.

And speaking of warblogging, Madman of Chu takes on the complex specter of Vietnam.

John Quiggin also reflects on complex specters to point out that both supporters and detractors of the Iraq invasion had many different visions of what the war was going to be like.

History Carnival 33

The thirty-third History Carnival is up at American Presidents Blog.

History Carnival 32.2

The second half of the thirty-second History Carnival is now up!

History Carnival 32.1

The first part of the thirty-second History Carnival is up at Aqueduct. The loose theme for the presentation is "exceptional uses of academic technology."

Brian Ulrich explains that anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim Middle East was a European import. >>

Nathanael Robinson extols the virtues of digital photography in archival research. >>

Evan Roberts provides a more detailed guide to amateur digitization for historians. >>

Mirium Burstein discusses the teaching of controversial texts from canonical authors. >>

Reading list

Joseph Bottum discusses The Mad Scientists' Club. I loved those stories. (HT: Siris)

Derek likens plainchant to Victor Borge.

Slate has commissioned a set of lurid pulp-fiction-style jackets for classic literary works. I want to see these in bookstores.

Holyoffice strikes again: "The Internet Theologian Explains The Da Vinci Code." Stuff this good shouldn't be hosted on LiveJournal.

Steven F. Sage claims that Adolf Hitler consciously imitated a Henrik Ibsen play as he orchestrated the rise of the Third Reich.

Reading list

Swapatorium has a series of photographs of a Macy's parade from about 1932.

Noting an odd tendency in her students, Another Damned Medievalist asks whether anybody knows just when Americans started thinking of the two world wars as American interventions on behalf of the utterly feckless British and French. The comments so far suggest that it started early.

I should link at least one of this year's commencement addresses. John O'Hurley (J. Peterman on Seinfeld) delivered a good one to Providence College. (Via Marc, who was there)

Eric Muller has uncovered a cool letter of protest sent to FDR in April 1942 in response to the Japanese-American internments. It is signed by Countee Cullen, John Dewey, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Reinhold Niebuhr, among others.

Ancient and medieval history

Brandon Watson has put together a great edition of Carnivalesque, the premodern history carnival. I should link Carnivalesque more often. Topics in this one include the International Congress of Medieval Studies, unprovenanced artifacts, and Aristotelian metaphysics.

Reading list

Two recent HNN articles highlight different aspects of the history of the American press. Eric Burns talks about the scurrilous tactics and outrageous falsehoods of founding-era journalism; Christopher B. Daly describes early efforts to restrict press freedom.

Hugo Schwyzer meditates on Las Vegas, Capitol Hill, and the kingdom of heaven.

Faced with evidence that some observers are hazy on the specifics of Christianity, Holyoffice provides a "cheat sheet" of important terms.

Headline at The Onion: "Heroic Computer Dies to Save World from Master's Thesis" (HT: Jeremy Boggs)

With "The Polyglot Manifesto" (part I; part II), Manan Ahmed argues that historians need to learn to communicate in a digital environment.

History Carnival 31

The thirty-first History Carnival is up at Airminded. Brett Holman has prepared an excellent compilation, including such gems as these:

At Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, the master presents a list of Galfridus Chauceres lynes of picke-uppe. "Ich haue the tale of Lancelot yn myn roome. Woldstow rede of yt wyth me?" >>

Dorothy King describes the fascinating stonework assocated with the Small Metropolis, a little Byzantine church. >>

Martin Rundkvist discusses the Viking settlement at Baggensstäket. >>

Michael Lorenzen reminds us that President James K. Polk was censured by Congress for provoking war. >>

Jonathan Petropoulos discusses the role that some German royals played in helping Hitler to power. >>

Reading list

At Got Medieval, Carl Pyrdum has exposed S.R. 458 (a Senate resolution that the national anthem should be sung in English only) for the self-stultifying silliness it is.

Caleb McDaniel critiques what he calls "the cult of information" that, among other things, leads the public to excuse government overreach. I'm tempted to start quoting T. S. Eliot.

Laura James reminds us what un ugly thing a presumption of guilt can be. That may be useful to remember when discussing cases like this; I feel safe saying that some innocent players have been branded brutes because of their association with the team. The rest of the matter, Lord willing, will be sorted out properly in court.

Mirium Burstein provides a helpful guide to interpreting the coffee-shop rituals of professors in finals season. Please approach such professors cautiously; the grade you save could be your own.

After nine months of teaching at Duke, Mark Goodacre reflects on the differences between American and British higher education.

Reading list

At The Galilean Library, David Misialowski has begun a series of articles on the roots of modern art. Links to the first three installments may be found here.

Lunettes Rouges takes us on an illustrated trip through an exhibit at the Kunstmuseum Basel. The show is "Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years (1515-1532)." The entry is in French; information is also available in English at the museum's Web site.

openDemocracy has published Fukuyama's new afterward to The End of History and the Last Man. Several other oD contributors debate his conclusions here.

At Ben Witherington's blog, a Texan evangelical Christian by the name of Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi discusses his struggles with religious identity, racism, and nationalism -- and the meaning of Christ's sacrifice.

An anonymous humanities PhD has started a blog as part of a project to reunite his or her Christian faith with his or her life as an academic. The inaugural post explains.

History Carnival 30

The thirtieth History Carnival is up at ClioWeb. I would link a few favorites as usual, but I'm a little preoccupied at the moment. Go take a look for yourself.

Reading list (IR edition)

At Foreign Affairs, "Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside" explains why Saddam's regime behaved as it did before and during the invasion. The article -- based on a report commissioned by the US Joint Forces Command -- makes our prewar enemy look remarkably weak, and even compliant where WMD were concerned. On the other hand, it also says the Saddam Fedayeen was planning a series of terror attacks on Western targets. For my part, I think the report tends to make the Bush administration look better overall but makes the actual invasion rationale look worse. Others may differ.

Caleb McDaniel is making a case for the abolition of nuclear weapons. To me, his argument seems to rely on the conviction that total war itself is never justified. However, he also makes a more pragmatic case for the abolition of nuclear weapons in light of current geopolitics.

Hugo Schwyzer explains how he got over his romantic ideas about Revolution: by visiting Colombia.

Meanwhile, Chris Bray says his experience with the US Army illustrates the foolishness of trusting the state to provide human services.

Speaking of that, Rebecca Ulam Weiner notes that some private security firms are negotiating for a role in peacekeeping missions. The UN is nervous about the idea of "privatizing peace"; meanwhile, civilians are still dying in Darfur.

History Carnival XXIX

The twenty-ninth History Carnival has been posted at (a)musings of a grad student. Here are some of my favorite entries, in no particular order:

Sergey Romanov is providing a glimpse of what the Soviets knew about Auschwitz during World War II, posting transcripts of Soviet reports. >>

Hiram Hover argues that this year's Guggenheim fellowships in history tell us something about the state of the field. >>

Hieronimo presents a British royal declaration of 1633 regarding lawful sports. >>

Patrick Hunt provides an elephant's-eye view of Hannibal's trip through the Alps, with photographs. >>

Natalie Bennett takes note of evidence that the Romans brought female infanticide with them to Britain. >>

History Carnival XXVIII

The twenty-eighth History Carnival appeared yesterday at Patahistory. This one is a particularly delightful haul. For example:

Chris Brooke seems to be answering a question with a question ... or maybe just trying to force people not to beg the question. In any case, The Virtual Stoa is raising questions about the Enlightenment. >>

Following Peggy Noonan, Marc argues that American schools should teach our younger children about the inspiring "grand sweep" of the nation's past -- saving the bitter ironies for teenagers, who will be both better able to cope with them and better able to enjoy them. >>

Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs examines competing theories about the birthplace of Myles Standish. >>

Miriam Burstein has developed eleven easy-to-follow rules for writers of neo-Victorian novels. >>

Trivium Pursuit provides "classical-education" homeschoolers with a list of books about biblical chronology. Bishop Ussher's chef-d'oeuvre ("one of the most important history books ever to be written") leads the pack. [As a homeschooler myself (one who never accepted Ussher's chronology, just so we're clear) I submit this link as evidence that even when homeschool curricula look strange, they are often meticulous. We homeschoolers are a quirky lot sometimes, but most of us can read figure-eights around the other kids.] >>

Feed reading

I confess myself a great admirer of RSS. To keep up with as many blogs and other news sources as I do, a feed aggregator is a virtual necessity. Gone are the days when I could open up each site in my blogroll to see whether anyone had updated; to do the same thing today would take too long. Instead, I let the updates come to me.

I use a Web-based reader rather than downloaded software. The advantage of keeping it all online is that I can check my feeds from anywhere. I don't have to be at my own computer.

Specifically, I use Google Reader to view my feeds because it displays posts in one continuous queue. I cannot easily skip things; I have to read posts in the order in which they come in. (If Cliopatria has a post at 11:00 a.m. and my friend Wheeler has a post at 10:58, GR displays the one entry right after the other.) Back when I used Bloglines and Thunderbird's built-in reader, by contrast, my feeds were broken up by source, so I could skip reading entire sites if I didn't have much time. That biased my reading habits; I wouldn't look at some blogs for weeks, especially as my list of feeds got longer.

Today, I monitor 194 sites with Google Reader, and I add to that list frequently. Unfortunately, I have almost stopped adding new blogs to this site's sidebar. I just add their RSS feeds to my reader instead. That means that I get swamped with information (a problem I love having) but my visitors don't get to see all of my wonderful finds. I am going to try to fix this problem over the next few weeks.

Reading list

To celebrate an "opposite day," which involves writing non-parodic defenses of views opposite to one's own, Jason Kuznicki makes a plea for the divine right of kings. He explains himself here.

Meanwhile, in Perspectives, Jerry Z. Muller is exhorting academics to write better.

Phil Renaud, looking closely at his university grades, has turned up some evidence that the fonts he uses have affected his essay scores. I've operated on the same theory for years; it's one of the reasons I tend to use Book Antiqua or another less common serif face rather than pedestrian Times New Roman.

Michael A. G. Haykin has posted a long entry on St. Patrick.

History Carnival XXVII

The twenty-seventh History Carnival has been posted at History : Other. Here are some entries that immediately caught my eye:

Natalie Bennett profiles Ranavalona, the anti-colonial and anti-missionary queen of Madagascar. >>

For her "Sunday protest blogging," Maia describes the 1981 rugby anti-apartheid protests in New Zealand. >>

Is historicism sexy? Scott Eric Kaufman thinks so. >>

Grant Jones is telling the story of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. >>