Thursday's Notes

Biblical Studies Carnival #41 is up at Exploring Our Matrix. The Carnival of Genealogy #71, with a Local History theme, is up at What's Past is Prologue. The anthropology/archaeology carnival, Four Stone Hearth #66, is up at Aardvarchaeology.

Alexandra Mullen reviews Patricia T. O'Conner's and Stewart Kellerman's Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language for the Barnes & Noble Review, 5 May.

John Lichfield,"Was truth the biggest casualty in the case of Vincent and his severed ear?" Independent, 5 May, reports the argument of Hamburg University's Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, in Van Goghs Ohr, Paul Gauguin und der Pakt des Schweigens [Van Gogh's Ear, Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence], that Gauguin was responsible for Van Gogh's loss of an ear.

Christopher Hitchens,"Ruthless yet Humane," Slate, 4 May, finds reasons Obama cited Churchill on torture.

Finally, we grieve with our colleagues, who teach at the University of Georgia and Wesleyan University, for the tragic deaths by murder that their communities have recently experienced.