1001 Ahistorical Posts

In honor of this, my 1001st post and the beginning of my first official hiatus, here is a review of some of my most notable work here. I posted a few of these in response to this survey, but this is more comprehensive and categorized.

Significant Statements

• Why I blog
• Blog Against Disabilism Day: The Seeing Spouse was one of my best received posts, also one of the most personal.
• The Fifth Carnival of Bad History was one of my most successful posts ever in terms of traffic and raising my profile among smart bloggers.
• The DiagonAlley v. Ahistoricality blogwar was exciting.
• My Comments Policy has gotten noticed, and imitated; my good luck to decide to write it just when people were starting to think seriously about this.
• I was proud of my Hypocrisy Watch index during the Terry Schiavo debacle -- it's really the only way I could write about that without exploding off the page -- and that theme has come up again and again here.
• This brief discussion of civil discourse is still a touchstone of mine, as are these theological comments
• Possibly my favorite title ever: When Sex, Liberalism, Parenting, Advertising, Law, Risk-Aversion and Puritanism collide. Also a very interesting piece
• Tips for reading post-terrorist attack commentary is my personal nomination for "most underappreciated."

Regular Features

• Quizzes and Memes, really one of the reasons I started this blog.
• Thursday Verses, including a few original works, mostly in short (haiku, limerick, fib) forms
• Quotations collection, which I really ought to get back to, including some great quotation resource links
• Photography is not a new interest of mine, but sharing it here is.
• More or less annual comparison of underreported stories.
• Finally, of course, the raison d'etre of my nom de blog: Ahistoricality Alerts, my irregular but urgent contributions to historical literacy.

Humor

• Probably my funniest post: The Diet of Penguins. It's also a spam magnet, for obvious reasons.
• One line review: Harry Potter v. 6
• Mix Spam, Jedi, and Viagra... and laugh.
• This little item is one of my most frequently trafficked posts, thanks to search engines. So is Grrl googling.

As for the hiatus (which has nothing to do with my parents discovering this site; sheer coincidence) I will continue to post quotations, maybe an odd quiz or meme or picture, irregularly until I decide I have the time and energy to come back to this, my least professional outlet. I'll still be around -- I'm not giving up blogging or commenting, just trying to focus my energies. Any future posts worthy of note will be collected elsewhere, though the indexes on the sidebar will continue to be updated as appropriate.

Doing Something Right? Thanks...

There are bloggers out there who like this blog enough to link here, though most of them never link to specific posts nor leave comments.... I'm grateful, but a bit mystified. The order is (roughly) the same order in which I noticed the linkage.

David at Life After Breakfast is a veteran teacher of what my school called "Language Arts" (that probably dates me very specifically) with a progressive Quaker perspective and healthy attitude.

Brandon at Julius Speaks is the proprietor of the Radical Progressive Carnival and, like me, an incorrigable poster of song lyrics.

Jefe at http://christianquixote.blogspot.com/ (formerly here) is a witty and warm-hearted sort, Christian and hip. Something like that, anyway.

Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb (also Revise and Dissent) is one of those people redefining the cutting edge of technology in history pedagogy. Nice guy, too.

Jon Swift does great satires. Every day. I'm lucky if I'm funny once in a while....

Paktorowicz and Levery at 91st Place have a strong interest in Jewish history and anti-semitism. Not a fast-paced blog, but substantial.

Jonathan Wilson, aka the Elfin Ethicist, is one of the more interesting historical/theological bloggers out there. Very smart fellow, with a great eye for material.

Finally, as a thank-you to all those other folks who's blogging has informed, inspired, entertained or productively infuriated me, a gratuitous but obscure repetition of my blogroll.
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Lost Words

Pre-feature advertising: History Carnival's up! And now, on with the show....

Via Mutantfrog and Ralph Luker, I found the Compendium of Lost Words, OED entries which have fallen out of use. Here are my nominations for "words we need now more than ever (except the last one)." I have replaced the original sample sentences with ones more relevant to modern life, to give a sense of just how useful these words might be.

• A through E
• agonarch n 1656 -1656
  judge of a contest or activity
  I've often wondered how I could get a job as a Reality TV agonarch.
• aquabib n 1731-1883
  water-drinker
  Since I gave up coffee, I've become a boring aquabib, but my seltzer budget has skyrocketed.
• caprizant adj 1730 -1736
  of the pulse, uneven or irregular
  Syncopation in music is much more fun than caprizant EKGs.
• circuland n 1821 -1821
  that which is to be circulated
  Most of what we call "memes" -- internet quizzes and the like -- we really should call "circulands" because they're not just free-floating ideas but are deliberately spread by "tagging."

• F through M
• hymnicide n 1862 -1862
  killing of hymns through alterations
  Modern churches seem to have no alternative to hymnicide, as newer liturgical music is often even worse than modifications to older stuff.
• jobler n 1662 -1662
  one who does small jobs
  One of the problems of academia is over-production of PhDs, leading to a proliferation of joblers.
• modernicide n 1774 -1774
  killing or killer of modern people
  Many anti-intellectual movements -- Khmer Rouge, jihadists, etc. -- engage in modernicide as policy.

• N through R
• odynometer n 1889 -1893
  instrument for measuring pain
  Without an odynometer, doctors must rely on patients' subjective reporting.
  
• phlyarologist n 1867 -1867
  one who talks nonsense
  So many bloggers are phlyarologists that I fear for the future of humanity.
  
• pudify v 1656 -1656
  to cause to be ashamed
  Though he had a respectable professional identity, he knew the revelation of his "sex-life/weight-loss" blog would pudify him.

• S through Z
• quibbleism n 1836 -1836
  practice of quibbling
  Among bloggers, many heated debates devolve into quibbleism, particularly linguistic.
  
• schismarch n 1657 -1657
  founder of a schism
  There are no mediocre schismarchs, I think: either they are wildly successful and their followers venerate them for generations, or they are short-lived, pitiable failures.
• speustic adj 1656 -1658
  made or baked in haste
  Much of my cooking is speustic, and modern prefabricated food and cooking ingredients make it easier than ever.
• stagma n 1681 -1820
  any distilled liquor
  Though we are a long way past legal Temperance, and beer and wine are common accompaniments to food, there is still a stigma to stagma, particularly unmixed.
• tortiloquy n 1656 -1656
  crooked speech
  The trick to political speechwriting is to clothe tortiloquy in hallowed images and insulate promises with conditions.
• uglyography n 1804 -1834
  bad handwriting; poor spelling
  My policy is to take off points for uglyography only when it thoroughly obscures the meaning of the text.
• vampirarchy n 1823 -1823
  set of rulers comparable to vampires
  I think vampirarchy is a much better description for our current administration than kleptocracy, because it is something inherent in their nature, rather than a character flaw, which is draining us dry.
• venialia n 1654 -1654
  minor sins or offences
  We have replaced the traditional venalia -- dishonesty, cupidity, lechery -- with modern flaws such as "failure to diet," "impolitic expression" and "slow responder to electronic communications."
• weequashing n 1888 -1902
  spearing of fish or eels by torchlight from canoes
  I suspect that weequashing is today more common among Pacific Island cultures than it is among Atlantic coastal communities.

Ahistoricality Alert Index

Every so often I run across some terribly abused historical analogy or argument. It offends me. This, of course, is nothing compared to the Carnival of Bad History, but it's my small contribution.

2008 May 2: Hilary Clinton compares globalization to Holocaust
2006 May 11: Right-wing commentators drastically underestimate Gandhi and channel Father Coughlin
2006 March 20: Secretary of Defense claims unwarranted virtue for US throughout history, calls for continued unwarranted virtue (follow-up)
2006 January 25: The cost of wars, compared, without any reference to context.
2005 December 4: Right-wing blogger ignores centuries of assymetrical warfare to make cheap political attack
2005 December 2: Not my catch, technically, but it does illustrate a common fallacy.
2005 September 12: An interesting discussion of "rules of war" under Lincoln.
2005 May 5: What is "America" and how did it do all that stuff?

It takes a worried man....

Bush is largely blameless for all these troubles.... so says David Broder about our deteriorating relationships with Canada, Mexico, Russia, Iran, the WTO, and most of East Asia. What a load of ... narrow vision. The current problem with Canada is pointless nitpicking (will our security really be improved along 3000 miles of mostly open border by more paperwork?); the problem with Mexico is Republican (and I'm pretty sure the President has some influence there) anti-immigrant hysteria; the problem with Russia is most of our foreign policy; the problem with Iran is one area where I think the administration is more or less doing the right thing as long as they aren't actually planning an invasion; the WTO is the result of hypocrisy and spinelessness in Congress; and the North Korean issue should have been dealt with before the Iraq invasion started.

Broder does make an exception for Iraq, which is pretty clearly the Administration's albatross. Impeachment, anyone?

Miscellania
Wonder how you compare to the fascists of yesteryear? I think this test needs a little updating, but I'd be happier if it needed a lot more.... Anyway, I got an unsuprising dead-center "liberal airhead" score, 2.53. [via]

Penny Richards found some great signage.

Sarcasm can get you fired, at least if you're a Singaporean blogger/journalist.

Two-Thirds Loser... Matey

First, the Carnival of Satire is up, and I think, given how little satire was submitted this week, he's right to give it a break next week. Ringxiety was good, though, and Chainik Hocker's riff on a headline is fantastic.

Speaking of losers.... [via] The last question in the quiz is whether, if you get a loser result, you will actually share it. What I want to know is whether that increases or decreases your loser-quotient....

But if I'm such a loser, how can I be:

You scored as Captain Jack Sparrow. You are definitely quirky and often mistaken for mad but if anyone is truly paying attention they can see there is method to your madness. You try really hard to be bad but in the end you tend to do the right thing. Captain Jack Sparrow 92% Captain James T. Hook 75% Mary Read 58% Dread Pirate Roberts 58% Black Beard 50% Will Turner 33% Sinbad 33% Long John Silvers 33% Captain Barbosa 25% Morgan Adams 0% What kind of Pirate are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Interesting result. Apparently my interest in Depp continues....


Non Sequitur: Caleb's moving haiku are quite good.

Argument for a draft?

This is a post I've kind of put off. There's been a lot of discussion (Orcinus, Cunning Realist, etc., etc.) about the problems being caused by weak recruiting and retention pressure: soldiers serving who would normally be discharged, or who normally wouldn't be allowed to join in the first place and whose military training and access could well be a threat to our own security in the years to come.

Many on "my side" of the political spectrum would argue that this is evidence in favor of immediate withdrawal; it's certainly evidence that our reach has exceeded our grasp at the moment, that the "planning" for the war and postwar was inadequate. Some have even suggested a draft in order to "share the burden" though my own impression and most statistics seem to suggest that the military is pretty representative (not perfectly, but that's what happens in real life and in a military that barely tolerates women and excludes homosexuals) of the population as a whole; anyway, the reality is that those advocating a new draft mostly want to scare people into backing away from the policies and politicians which have got us here.

But I've started thinking, given that what we're (supposedly) trying to accomplish is both worthwhile and an obligation which we have incurred, and given the fact that we might well have other obligations -- moral, political, etc. -- to follow through on while finish up what we set out to do in Afghanistan and Iraq, that a draft might be appropriate. As things stand now, it would not be a "total war" style draft in which a generation marches to war, but it would be a selective one. Not the "lets pick the professionals we need out of the economy" selective draft that some have discussed, but an truly random segement of the eligible population, with reasonable deferments. That would bring enough people to the table to allow the military to weed out its "weak link" soldiers and recruits and get the job done.

This is not just about "putting our best foot forward": it's about having national policy and national priorities that make sense within the context of what we're willing to do to accomplish them. It's also about self-protection: gang members, extremists, unstable personalities are bad enough without military training.

Here's the thing: if we're not willing to seriously consider a new draft, then I don't think we have any choice but to muddle on the way we've been doing or radically rethink our moral and tactical position.

We need, to be honest, a strategy, which is sorely lacking.

Bugs and Lust....

I'd been looking for some good reason to post these pictures, some "hook" to make them relevant. Finally, Natalie Bennett found a candidate for worst poem ever written in English, an elegy to a rotting -- yet oddly desirable -- corpse.

To add insult to elegy, The Little Professor alerts us to the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Contest winners, those awful first lines for novels you're mostly glad were never written. As always, I pick my favorites from the runners up:

• "It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he'd been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream." -- Chris Harget, Campbell, CA
• "Christmas Eve fell upon the piazza, and the pealing, the tintinnabulous pealing, (perhaps not a pealing but an incessant tinkling, albeit an appealing incessant tinkling) of the street performers reached my ears, masking the shot, which would have rung out had not the tintinnabulations raised such an incessant tinkling that the sound died as dead as the musician who fell like Christmas Eve at my feet - his bell having been rung." -- Ben Ross, Lexington, NC
• "Sex with Rachel after she turned fifty was like driving the last-place team on the last day of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, the point no longer the ride but the finish, the difficulty not the speed but keeping all the parts moving in the right direction, not to mention all that irritating barking." -- Dan Winters, Los Altos Hills, CA

Finally, I note the nearly 200th Carnival of Vanities, very ably hosted (and I'm not just saying that because he liked my post!), though the cavalcade of business posts at the front suggests to me that there's a bit of spamming going on in the CoV and it's likely to get worse.

Historical and Psychological Facts

Historical facts, Marc Bloch said, are psychological facts, and it's very true that a great deal of what we study in history is actually about attitude and personality, even when it seems like it's about something else: social and political and intellectual (even economic) history are about the life of the mind and the heart. That said, some of the worst history ever written was deliberate attempts to apply psychological insights of the present to past historical figures or societies -- the aptly named "psychohistory" movement was short-lived and we learned a lot of valuable lessons from it, in spite of itself. We're more careful now.

So it is with cautious consideration that I pass on this interesting bit of psychohistory, John Dean channeling James Dave Barber and Richard Neustadt (via, who also points to this)

Bush has never understood what presidential scholar Richard Neustadt discovered many years ago: In a democracy, the only real power the presidency commands is the power to persuade. Presidents have their bully pulpit, and the full attention of the news media, 24/7. In addition, they are given the benefit of the doubt when they go to the American people to ask for their support. But as effective as this power can be, it can be equally devastating when it languishes unused - or when a president pretends not to need to use it, as Bush has done.

Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.

Bush is following the classic mistaken pattern of active/negative presidents ["who actively pursued the job but had negative feelings about it"]: As Barber explained, they issue order after order, without public support, until they eventually dissipate the real powers they have -- until "nothing [is] left but the shell of the office." Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all followed this pattern.

Active/negative presidents are risk-takers. (Consider the colossal risk Bush took with the Iraq invasion). And once they have taken a position, they lock on to failed courses of action and insist on rigidly holding steady, even when new facts indicate that flexibility is required.

Dean goes on to argue that the Administration has an "October Surprise" planned to redeem the mid-term elections for Republicans, which isn't terribly original (of them, or of him) but his thoughts on the matter are interesting.

What Religion is YOUR Superhero or Supervillain?

Via the usually philosophical Brandon, I found this index of the religious affiliations/beliefs of a wide swath of comic book heroes, supporting characters and villains. So, I've added, to this quiz [via], their religious affiliations.

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman (Methodist) 80% Spider-Man (Protestant) 65% Iron Man (Secular/Agnostic) 50% Robin (Christian) 45% Hulk (lapsed Catholic) 45% Green Lantern (various) 40% Supergirl (Methodist) 38% Catwoman (Catholic) 35% Batman (lapsed Episcopalian/Catholic) 35% The Flash (nominal Christian) 20% Wonder Woman (Greco-Roman Classical) 18%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong, Methodist, and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Adding this result to my quiz and meme index, I note that I took this before and came out almost the same. Does it mean anything that I'm a bit more Superman than I was six months ago?