Category: Uncategorized

Or, Still Starting in on the Bibliography

I never spoke to Professor Howard Zinn, though I did hear him lecture once, in college.

It was a disappointment; I felt I had grown since getting fired from my first job at fourteen for reading The People’s History at work (his books among others, hiding in a stopped elevator between floors), but that he had not grown with me. His arguments were still the same, the world still very simple.

Even more boring were the sad attempts at rhetorical fireworks my fellow audience members made, kowtows with nine syllables instead of nine bows. I’ve only grown further apart from his work as I’ve continued to hoe my own row in history, for reasons that Michael Kazin’s 2004 piece on it in Dissent, which many have cited this week, explain better than I could.

But that doesn’t mean his work — especially A People’s History — isn’t important, either to me or to the profession or to the American public. If you’ll excuse my borrowing yet another writer’s words to explain myself, I think Scott Eric Kaufman’s take is entirely the right one. Zinn’s book “…isn’t meant to replace traditional histories so much as supplement them.” Kazin’s right in a thousand ways, but despite his strident totalizing tone, Zinn is really only one ingredient in a big stew; at least, he explained himself in those terms occasionally.

Furthermore, A People’s History:

…represents a stage in one’s intellectual development.

It was never intended to arrest it.

Unlike, say, Ayn Rand.

And that — even more than the content of the work itself, though that too is important, if incomplete — is what makes Zinn such a great writer of history, to me and so many others.

Rest in peace, Prof. Zinn. And thank you.

Image cite: Austin Kleon, “‘If you don’t know history…’,” Flickr, CC License

It’s a wonderful thing.
…
No, but actually, I spit out coffee I was laughing so hard.

Image cite: sea turtle, “Caution: Jazz Hands When Wet!,” Flickr, CC License

Or, I read the web today, oh boy

Update: Here’s a link to the orig. post for FB readers.

Some links:

• Nick Bilton, ” ‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web,” Bits, NYT

  Curating finds on the web is the new black. Everyone’s doing it.

• Cathy Davidson, “Why is the Information Age Without the Humanities Like the Industrial Revolution Without the Steam Engine?,” HASTAC*, 24 January 2010.

  Steam engine references are like catnip to me, so of course this one I couldn’t let go. The analogy here doesn’t quite work — steam doesn’t help us understand the meaning of the industrial revolution, and anyway it’s arguable that steam wasn’t what the IR was about, per se. But the claim that the Info Age doesn’t make any damn sense without the tools the humanities offer is one that rings true.

• Fabio Rojas,”how to save the humanities,” OrgTheory.com, 24 January 2010.

  An interesting piece, if a tad condescending and a bit fuzzy on what “the humanities” are. Suggestions 1 (“slash doctoral programs”) and 2 (“increase masters programs”) are good as far as they go, but what exactly is going to get universities or departments to act? And get enough of them to act in concert to have an effect? Has an orgtheorist really forgotten about incentives? Suggestion 3 is less helpful, as a commenter (more kindly) points out, because it is ill-informed about the problems with the idea of reclaiming ‘the canon.’

• Finally, here’s the best mnemonic device for the Presidents I’ve heard so far:

I love, love, love this acronym, it’s the first non-French-yet-cool-and-military-industrial-complex sounding humanities org I’ve heard. Sadly, it’s pronounced “hay stack,” instead of rhyming with a primary component of the Goa’uld fleet, which — and trust me on this — would make it way cooler.

Image cite: ian murchison, “59:365 Hot steaming cup of awesome,” Flickr, CC License

Or, A Use for the Otherwise Useless

It can convert from words to pages! This is (seriously) something I have immense trouble with, especially with conference papers. I spent a good hour procrastinating about this just last week, so now I need a new hobby. Gee thanks, Wolfram Alpha.

…

Long hiatus, I know. Writing, dissertating, being lazy — all things that take time.

I have big plans for the new year, er, semester, though. So watch this space! Or at least keep it in your rss reader.

In the meantime: C. Vann Winchell makes for some fun light reading– a one man TMZ for history. I wish he would post more.

PS – (h/t) to Merlin Mann.

Image Cite: xurble,“Wolfram and Hart,” Flickr, CC License.

Or, If I had to read this, so do you

Bad writing in economics has a long history:

Mr. Pennant, in his British Zoology, chap. I. div. I. sect. iii. under the article Sheep, makes the following observations:

It does not appear, (says that agreeable writer) that the breed of this animal (sheep) was cultivated for the sake of the wool among the Britons; the inhabitants of the inland parts of this island either went intirely naked, or were only cloathed with skins.
…
On the coins or money of the Britons are seen impressed the figures of the horse, the bull and the hog, the marks of the tributes exacted from them by the conquerors (Camden.) The Rev. Mr. Pogge was so kind as to inform me, that he has seen on the coins of Cunobelin that of a sheep. Since that is the case, it is probable that our ancestors were possessed of the animal, but made no farther use of it than to strip off the skin and wrap themselves in it, and with the wool inmost, obtain a comfortable protection against the cold of the winter season.

~Tench Coxe, Remarks on Lord Sheffield’s Observations on the Commerce of the American States; by an American (London, 1784), p.19-20

Update: also this little tidbit, a few pages later:

In England, it is well known they spend half their money in drink. (p.26)

* Made a tiny bit more tolerable by the fact that the original uses a long s, which I always hear it as a lisp while reading.

Image cite: Wiccked, “Sheepish,” Flickr, CC License