Good Bets, Conversations, and Queries
Conversations: Tim Burke, Alan Jacobs and others at Easily Distracted are having an excellent discussion about"moral panic."
I like to think that my colleague, Rob MacDougall, is not delusional, but he keeps assuring me that *alot* of my student's *societal* references will evanesce if I simply walk them through to clarity of argument before they compose their papers.
Queries: Mark Grimsley asks about the early military use of telescopes and their effect on warfare.
Jonathan Wilson wonders about the credits to Edward Said in the film version of Vanity Fair. Richard von Busack at MetroActive says:
Nair dedicates her film to the historian Edward Said. In Said's honor, it seems, Nair has taken Thackeray's satire as the revenge of the colonized on the colonials. Yet Thackeray considers colonies the worst backwaters of them all, and he shares in the main characters' mockery of a mulatto heiress. Nair's choice to pick India as an offscreen land of sensuality and happy endings seems another strangely politically correct choice.
Yes, it seems odd, somehow. Manan? pdcs? Anyone?
Finally, the New York TimesThought for Today: ''Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction.'' -- W.H. Auden, British poet (1907-1973). Sorry, KC, but that one was just too good to pass up.