In case you haven't seen it, read Ronnie Dugger's long-promised, blockbuster article on computerized voting,"How They Could Steal the Election This Time", in The Nation. My fellow Republicans need to understand that the stench of election fraud this time around is a covenant-breaker.

Geitner Simmons calls attention to two posts at Regions of Mind about how the Pulitzer Prize winning Polish novelist, Henry Sienkiewitz, was influenced by his travels in the American West; and a third about how the United States accommodated Louisiana's Spanish and French heritage. Simmons especially calls attention to the responses by Nathanael at Rhine River, who wrote about the influence of Sienkiewitz on modern literature; and compared the United States's assimilation of Louisiana to the contemporary Prussian annexation of the Rhineland. As Simmons said, these are important indicators of the kind of immediate intellectual exchange that blogging enables. We both recommend Rhine River as a fascinating history site, with strong visual appeal.

Siris, which we've just added to the blogroll at Cliopatria, actually has rules for what is blogrolled over there. The discriminating philosopher says:"Political blogging is the parasitic scum of the blogosphere." I was just bottom-feeding, when I recommended Dugger's article, but I meant it!

Thanks be to all goodness, NaomiChana has breathed life back into Baraita.

Finally, Brian Ulrich observes that"... you know you're a grad student in history when you set your books down to check out and a visible cloud of dust emerges from one of them." He reminds me of the professor of European intellectual history who spoke of our job-related injuries. He was working quietly one day in his library carrel, when a bound volume of the London Times fell on his head. Maybe you have to have seen what a bound volume of the London Times looks like to appreciate that one.