At the top of my list of things to read: Tim Burke's"Well, At Least It's Over," on Live 8 at Easily Distracted. Instead of intoning"Amen" to high sounding claims, Burke is teaching this Christian to say:"No, It's not."

Diane Ravitch's"Ethnomathematics: Even math education is being politicized," Wall Street Journal, 26 June, has been getting a royal fisking from Kevin Drum at Political Animal. There are problems enough with public education in the United States that criticism of it doesn't require making stuff up and making boredom obligatory.

George Will has been reading Edward J. Larson's Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion and his column,"A Debate That Does Not End," in Newsweek is the better for having done so.

At Apocalyptic Historian, Lisa Roy Vox's"‘Stalking' Shelby Foote (Reflections on a Historian)" is a more extended response to Alan Allport's question about Foote's importance as a historian than anything we've had here at Cliopatria. See also: Lauren Winner.

At Early Modern Notes, Sharon Howard has been taking requests. Her favorite is on"The Social History of Early Modern Costume."

Charles Kaiser,"Rebel With A Cause," Washington Post, 3 July, reviews Neil McKenna's The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. So, what's the secret? McKenna's title reminds me of the remark of Albion Tourgee when he was told the"secret" that disrupted the British anti-lynching movement. One of its leading promoters, Catherine Impey, had confessed her love to Dr. George Ferdinands, a man of color who didn't return the favor."For a 'secret,'" said Tourgee,"it seems very badly kept, considering the number that are engaged in holding it down." Now, if Wilde had been a heterosexual, that would have been a secret.