Things Noted Here and There

XXXI, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Practica. Tiruncula is your host!

Waldemar Janusczcak,"Terra Cotta Army at the British Museum," London Times, 16 September, reviews the BM's exhibit of 20 terra cotta soldiers. They guarded the tomb of Ying Zheng, who ruled Qin in the 3rd century BCE.

George Johnson,"An Oracle for Our Time, Part Man, Part Machine," NYT, 23 September:

In the 12th century A.D., when the Arabic treatise"On the Hindu Art of Reckoning" was translated into Latin, the modern decimal system was bestowed on the Western world — an advance that can best be appreciated by trying to do long division with Roman numerals. The name of the author, the Baghdad scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, was Latinized as Algoritmi, which mutated somehow into algorismus and, in English, algorithm — meaning nothing more than a recipe for solving problems step by step. ....

Sharon Ullman,"Rebels, Writers, and Milkmaids," Boston Globe, 23 September, reviews Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. Hat tip.

Niall Ferguson,"What Might Have Happened," TLS, 23 September, reviews Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tips.

David Kaiser's"Turning Point," which he posted here at Cliopatria and at History Unfolding on 15 September, addresses the American crisis in Iraq in historical perspective. It appears this week on HNN's mainpage.

Finally, Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History from On the Concept of History; and
Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History rendered as poetry. Hat tip.