Investigations of a Dog

I don’t normally blog about present-day politics. That’s not really true because my support for feminism is political (in exactly the same way that anti-feminism is political), and also because copyright is an important political issue for me. What I mean is that I’m not very interested in what the mainstream media call politics (ie what Labour and the Tories have said about each other, and what lazy journalists have said about them). I don’t watch TV or read newspapers because I just find them boring. So I’m only vaguely aware of what’s going on.

I see from Ted Vallance that the British government is planning to do something involving Habeas Corpus and the number 42, and that various opponents have invoked Magna Carta in a way that misunderstands what Magna Carta was. I heard on Richard Herring’s podcast (which is pretty much my only regular source of news, but perhaps that perspective is no more distorted than any of the papers) that David Davis is standing against this in a by-election.

I’m clearly not the only person to be surprised that Davis is making such a stand for civil liberties. I heard from my friends in the band Billy Ruffian that they’ve recorded a song about this and put the video on YouTube, and that it’s already got a lot of attention from politics blogs. “The Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender of All” isn’t their best song (check out “Death of a Band”) but political songs are notoriously difficult. The kind of words that you need to use don’t fit together easily. I always think Billy Bragg is at his best when he’s singing about woman trouble and that his most overtly political issue-based songs can be quite clunky (the arguments in “Sexuality” can’t be disagreed with but if you’re going to write a song about that then shouldn’t it be, y’know, sexy? For a better celebration of gay sexuality try Luxembourg’s “Close Cropped”).

It’s also pretty unlikely that Billy Ruffian should ever find themselves supporting David Davis. They’re on Filthy Little Angels, they’re friends with Art Brut, their cool alternative credentials are impeccable. I’ve known Ste (the singer) for nearly 7 years and played bass in one of his previous bands (we’ve both come a long way since then) so I know that he’s no friend of the right wing and previously didn’t like David Davis very much. That such unlikely bedfellows are united against them shows just how badly New Labour have screwed up.

Future Retro is a new blog which forms part of the History Nexus site. “Future / Retro is concerned with all aspects of history, and not just on the web. It is also concerned with information technology, and in particular that which can enhance digital humanities.” It already includes tips on how to start history blogging, and an interview with Dave Tabler of Appalachian History.

Not really a proper post, just some random things:

Bill Turkel is always right. First because in the first of his excellent posts on analysing the Old Bailey Proceedings he recommended DownThemAll. This is a Firefox extension that lets you download all the files linked to from a web page in one go. You can set up filters to only download certain types of file, or you can select the files by clicking on a list, then download them all with one click. As well as the obvious benefits for digital historians it’s very handy if you want to download a whole album from LastFM.

Second, because in a post on infrastructure he recommended expensive ergonomic chairs. I’m currently waiting for delivery of a new chair so that I can spend a reasonable amount of time working at the computer without my back hurting. Cheap chairs are a false economy.

Over at Glod’n'Epix Esther posted some interesting thoughts on sexual harassment and gender stereotyping in live action role playing, which also led to some discussion of cross-dressing and gender swapping.

Gary Smailes has launched a new website called OneBook which features brief posts from different people recommending a book. Anyone can submit a post and they don’t have to be very long.

The Difficult Second Article is getting there but still needs a lot of work. Once this is out of the way I never want to hear anything about the causes of the English Civil War ever again.

I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hill’s The English Bible and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Apart from lots of useful historical insights it made me think that my generation’s equivalent of the bible is probably Star Wars.

And finally the latest early-modern edition of Carnivalesque is up at jliedl.ca.

The 15th Military History Carnival is now up at Cardinal Wolsey’s Today In History. Alun has done an excellent job (and I didn’t even have to send in any extra submissions this time). The next edition will be at the Osprey Publishing blog on 18th August. E-mail submissions to blog at ospreypublishing dot com or use the submission form.

The 15th Military History Carnival will take place at Cardinal Wolsey’s Today In History on Saturday 14th June. Please e-mail submissions to alunadler at yahoo dot co dot uk or use the submission form. Posts on any of the following themes will be particularly welcome:

• forgotten (or little known) engagements
• good and bad tactics
• collateral (civilian impact)
• eyewitness accounts
• (lowish rank) individuals who made an impact
• interesting weapons
• book reviews
• contributions to “big debates” (eg is the Civil War over yet)

The 15th Military History Carnival will take place at Cardinal Wolsey’s Today In History on Saturday 14th June. Please e-mail submissions to alunadler at yahoo dot co dot uk or use the submission form. Posts on any of the following themes will be particularly welcome:

• forgotten (or little known) engagements
• good and bad tactics
• collateral (civilian impact)
• eyewitness accounts
• (lowish rank) individuals who made an impact
• interesting weapons
• book reviews
• contributions to “big debates” (eg is the Civil War over yet)

We also need a host for the July edition. If you’re interested in hosting please leave a comment here or e-mail me. If I don’t get a host for July I might do it myself, or I might just skip a month. Do you feel lucky punk?