Recent Posts

1

History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / Re: History yays

« Last post by dubsartur on July 09, 2020, 10:53:29 PM »

I wish the Medieval Indonesia guy had not deleted his real blog, created a Medium account then gotten too busy to keep writing and deleted it too.  https://medium.com/@siwaratrikalpa

I also think that for an up-and-coming premodern historian, archaeogenetics would be a great skill set to focus on, because interpreting studies is hard and there are a lot of overhyped papers and historians need people they can trust to tell them which ones to look closely at. 

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Poetry and Artistic Writing / Re: Jubal's poems

« Last post by Jubal on July 09, 2020, 04:58:15 PM »

Oh, Gallant Hero

Oh, gallant hero,
 Am           Em
Rise to the wars,
 Am           G
The shade of the olive
      F                C
Is no longer yours,
    C            G
No longer yours is
  C             G
This peace in the sun
      Am              Em
Oh, gallant hero,
 Am          C
Begone
Am

Oh, gallant hero,
Rise to the wars,
The shade of the olive
Is no longer yours,
No longer yours is
This peace in the sun
Oh, gallant hero,
Begone

Oh, gallant hero,
Battle draws near,
The shade of the olive
Is no shelter here,
No shelter here,
Under arrow-pierced skies,
Oh, gallant hero,
Arise

Oh, gallant hero,
Your bright spear awaits,
The shade of the olive
Shall not be your fate,
Not be your fate,
'til the last swordpoint falls,
Oh, gallant hero,
Fate calls

Oh, gallant hero,
For home you shall yearn,
The shade of the olive
Awaits your return,
Awaits your return,
Slain or victory blessed,
Oh, gallant hero,
To rest

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Fandom Discussion - The Secret Garden / Re: Narnian/Rowlingian realities

« Last post by Jubal on July 09, 2020, 04:11:57 PM »

I think I see Harry Potter as being a badly off person's fantasy about suddenly occupying a higher place in the traditional British class heirarchy. Which is an age old genre, in some ways (see also, Great Expectations, or Perceval's discovery of the world of knighthood). And most texts in that genre don't take on a socially critical role: the hero, being heroic, is rewarded (or pre-empted and enabled) with a higher palce in the structure, which is just a backdrop. It's not even so much pessimism as a lack of consideration. Though it's perhaps stranger in Rowling's works because their villains are pretty explicitly fascist and relatively neatly categorised and uncomplicated with one or two exceptions.


In the case of Narnia, I have also thought about what was west (and indeed south) of the map: my Narnia mod for Rome: Total War has some exploration of that, mostly including some human and semi-human realms around Calormen and a wasteland beyond which a rather early-medieval Old Telmar still scrapes by.

4

History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / Re: History yays

« Last post by Jubal on July 09, 2020, 01:54:51 PM »

This one's fascinating:

Ancient Americans made epic Pacific voyages



New evidence has been found for epic prehistoric voyages between the Americas and eastern Polynesia.

DNA analysis suggests there was mixing between Native Americans and Polynesians around AD 1200. The extent of potential contacts between the regions has been a hotly contested area for decades. In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl made a journey by raft from South America to Polynesia to demonstrate the voyage was possible.

Until now, proponents of Native American and Polynesian interaction reasoned that some common cultural elements, such as a similar word used for a common crop, hinted that the two populations had mingled before Europeans settled in South America. Opponents pointed to studies with differing conclusions and the fact that the two groups were separated by thousands of kilometres of open ocean.

Alexander Ioannidis from Stanford University in California and his international colleagues analysed genetic data from more than 800 living indigenous inhabitants of coastal South America and French Polynesia. They were looking for snippets of DNA that are characteristic of each population and for segments that are "identical by descent" - meaning they are inherited from the same ancestor many generations ago.

"We found identical-by-descent segments of Native American ancestry across several Polynesian islands," said Mr Ioannidis. "It was conclusive evidence that there was a single shared contact event."

Rest of article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53338203

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Fandom Discussion - The Secret Garden / Re: Narnian/Rowlingian realities

« Last post by dubsartur on July 09, 2020, 12:31:24 PM »

I always wondered what was out west of the map, and what everyday history in Narnia looks like.  When there were feasts and tournaments at Cair Paravel, what did that look like?

The Wizarding World is odd because JKR can see so much about her Britain, but her stories don't ask whether those things should be changed, they take a more pessimistic view that as it was, so shall it ever be (with some fiddling at the edges like liberating a house elf or creating scholarships for poor students).  Her rigid, incompetent bureaucrats promoted by the Old Boys' Network look very timely.  I hear that the new films play up the imperialism and apartheid which are implicit in the setting, and someone I respect does not think they ask the right questions (JKR's's wizards don't think erasing a Muggle's memory or keeping magical healing for themselves is a big deal, but JKR is pretty clear that slavery is bad and tossing muggles around the sky for fun or murdering them to practice your curses is bad).

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Fandom Discussion - The Secret Garden / Re: Narnian/Rowlingian realities

« Last post by Jubal on July 09, 2020, 12:30:48 PM »

Ooh, that's actually really difficult, both being interesting but also icnredibly flawed additional-world constructions. I think it depends on the question of whether just Narnia is real, or whether the full cosmology around Narnia is real. If the latter, I arguably shouldn't want Narnia to be real because in the wider Narnian cosmology, atheists are inherently unicorn murdering mouldy turnip eaters who are condemned eternally to that state after death which doesn't sound ideal. If the former, Narnia is the obvious choice, because Narnians generally don't come over and murder us over here (whereas dark wizards absolutely 100% do murder muggles).

I'll opt for Narnia being real, I think. I actually do like Narnia more as a setting.

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Fandom Discussion - The Secret Garden / Narnian/Rowlingian realities

« Last post by Tusky on July 09, 2020, 12:30:21 PM »

Narnia is real or the wizarding world from Harry Potter is real?

Mod note: early posts in this thread are copied or moved from the "would you rather?" thread.

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Jubal on July 09, 2020, 12:22:20 PM »

Pad

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Tusky on July 09, 2020, 11:54:48 AM »

Shoulder

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Jubal on July 09, 2020, 10:31:21 AM »

Cold