Saturday's Noted Things
9/11 kept Got Medieval's Carl Pyrdum busy commenting on the misuses of"medieval" in reference to the Arab world. When The Nation's Katha Pollitt tried to explain what's wrong with the term"Islamofascism," a reader agreed and insisted that radical Islam was more like Puritanism run amok. Which sent Truewit of Blogging the Renaissance to the defense of the Roundheads."What," asks TW,"is The Nation taking letters from 400-year-old Royalists, still bitter about spending the 1650's in Paris?" Thanks to Sharon Howard at Early Modern Notes for the tip.
Jill Lepore's"The Sharpened Quill," New Yorker, 16 October, reviews Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. Lepore's review essays in the New Yorker are must reads.
Finally, William J. Turkel of Digital History Hacks and Nicolás Quiroga of Tapera have launched a survey of history bloggers. Their preliminary results are here: One, Two, Three. There's also a wiki page for the survey. There's even a neat sociogram of our behavior. The sociogram reflects the received input from the survey and it's currently a little strong on the UWO-GMU Axis of Digital Evil. edwired's Mills Kelly calls it"incest". I call it" community". If you'd like to participate in the survey, contact Nicolás: tapera*at*tapera*dot*info.
