There is a style of argument which people trained in the classics often use. In this approach, one goes through the evidence piece by piece, artfully arranging it and discussing how to interpret the difficult points, then sums up by drawing it into a grand conclusion. This evidence is mostly widely available, great pains having been taken to publish Greek and Roman literature, the more important inscriptions and vases, and other remains of the ancient world in cheap editions and translations. Anyone with access to a library and the willingness to search should be able to find the main sources which lie behind a book on ancient history, and a growing number are available on the Internet. This style of argument can be great fun to read, with impressive learning and elegant transition from author to tombstone to vase. But eventually the lover of the ancient world discovers that learned and literate scholars can use this approach to write completely contradictory studies of the same topic. By selecting which passages to cite, by glossing the complicated ones, and by leaving out the inconvenient ones or sticking them in a dim corner of one’s scholarly edifice, its possible to present a case for whatever one wishes to argue. And the custom of going through the evidence piece by piece can make a lot of weak, hard to interpret pieces of evidence look solid (or many weak pieces of evidence which all lean in the same direction seem feeble). Just organizing a long list of pieces of evidence and commenting on them does not necessarily lead to the truth.
The promotion of Ada Lovelace Day and the publication of Sydney Padua’s steampunk graphic novel The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage has kindled the coals of the debate about whether Ada Lovelace was a capable mathematician or an enthusiast who needed her hand held. I do not care very much about 19th century mathematicians, but I do care about the truth, so I have been following this from a distance. And one thing which I notice is that people on both sides don’t really quote their sources at all.
Today is Data Protection Day. I don’t know all of my gentle readers, and I do not give unsolicited advice to strangers, so I won’t nag you to change your habits. There are plenty of people and groups which can give better advice to people interested in data security and privacy than I, including the GNU Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Bruce Schneier, and Eleanor Saitta. What I would suggest is that you throw a few dollars or Euros in the pot of some of the free software and online services which you use. Read more
Travel involves leaving things behind, and the holidays are a time to get reacquainted with them. This week I thought that I would talk about three swords and the different problems which they attempt to solve.
At the top we have a Naue type II by Neil Burridge, the only man alive who has mastered the process of hammer-hardening the edges which was used on Bronze Age European swords. Neil can make bronze swords which would be very hard to distinguish from the originals, and provide them with scabbards copied from Bronze Age graves and paintings and reliefs. But his swords are sharp, and the only hints about how people in the Late Bronze Age used their weapons are the two-faced evidence of art and the weapons themselves and parallels in later martial arts. Burridge’s swords tend to be bought by collectors and museums to display, by archaeologists to experiment with, by reenactors to wear, and by enthusiasts to reap a dreadful harvest of plastic bottles, Tatami mats, and gourds. Read more
A Schludernser street scene. Photo by Sean Manning, May 2015. I find that after this week I do not have any words left. Rather than fake it, this week I thought I would post some Vinschgauer and West Coast fauna. Some BC fauna. Photography by Sean Manning... Continue reading: No Words Left
William H. Stoddard, with Peter dell’Orto, Dan Howard, and Matt Riggsby, GURPS Fourth Edition Low-Tech. Steve Jackson Games: Austin, TX, 2010. Link to publishers’ online store.
Its a hard time for small publishers. On November the 12th Steve Jackson Games released its annual Report to the Stakeholders and announced that in a year with their second highest revenues ever they could not afford to print their fully typeset GURPS Discworld. Apparently they have a much harder time selling their roleplaying games than their card and board games. I think that is a shame, because many of their books would be valuable outside the small number of people who play games with the GURPS rules. One of these books is GURPS Fourth Edition Low-Tech.
A burgonet and cuirass alla antica in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. No information from label available. Photo by Sean Manning, September 2015.
Trying to interpret armour in art is not a new project. By the beginning of the sixteenth century at the latest, Italian armourers were looking at Roman coins and sculpture and paintings (and perhaps the odd scrap of bronze pulled from a tomb) and trying to decide how to give their customers their own Roman armour. In this case, the armourer looked at one of the statues of a Roman emperor wearing a form-fitting breastplate of scales with embossed decoration, and tried to imitate it with a few nods to the taste of their own day. But not all is as it seems.
In 1837, the remaining Protestants living in the Zillerthal in eastern Tyrol were ordered to convert to Catholicism or leave. Mathias Schmid (d. 1923), “Vertreibung der Zillerthaler Protestanten im Jahr 1837/Letzer Blick in die Heimat,” 1877. In Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck; catalogue number Gem 3718. Photo by author, October 2015. Xenophon,... Continue reading: Keeping Just One Cloak
An overwhelming flow of information is not a new problem: a bookwheel inspired by ones from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the Hauptbibliothek Neubau, Universität Innsbruck. Made 2008? Photo by author, October 2015.
German for Classical Studies at the University of Cologne, free course June/July 2016, application deadline 30 November 2015 (link: warning, Facebook!)
The academics in Ghana went on strike again over nonpayment of their book allowance in August 2015 (link). As often with news from Africa, this has not received much attention in Europe and North America, even though its hard for any academics at universities in Ghana to work if they can’t buy books and journals.
Meanwhile, historian Alice Dreger has resigned from her post in Illinois after a dispute about whether a glossy magazine with her university’s logo was research (protected by academic freedom) or publicity (overseen by the university administration) revealed a deeper difference about what sort of institution she was working for (her public statement on the subject and her resignation letter). This issue has received a great deal of attention on the Anglophone internet.
The Carmarthenshire Archives in Wales are being devoured by mould, and a Freedom of Information request by J.D. Davies has revealed some disturbing facts about how the local authorities are responding to this crisis.
Some people with more money than sense decided to see what happens when you throw a human-weight or hobbit-weight mass of organic material into a pool of lava. There are videos.
A country Bahnhof in southern Germany (Herbertingen, Spring 2014). Photo by author. On Sunday the 13th Germany announced that it was imposing customs inspections on the border with Austria in response to the flood of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and the horn of Africa and the reluctance of countries to the... Continue reading: Becoming a Source
