Early Modern Notes

Take a look at Google, January 2001. (H-T)

I was still a PhD student. I had a website, but it wasn’t at this domain and it was a bit rubbish. (All static HTML and barely a drop of CSS in sight! Here’s the granddaddy of today’s site, believe it or not; it looks even worse than it did then. For whatever reason the archive version isn’t loading the background image and so it’s showing the background color, which is clashing nastily with the header. Why I thought that bgcolor was a good idea is anybody’s guess.)

And I didn’t have an internet connection at home. (My grey brick of a laptop didn’t even have a modem.) Fortunately, the university facilities were pretty good. But how did I cope?

A search for early modern resources. Interesting to see what’s still going (although it might be at a different address these days) and what’s defunct or disappeared altogether.

(Which sorta reminds me of the really important piece of news this week: BÉRUBÉ’S BACK!!!)

The Internet is now in Handy Book Form!

It’s quite funny too. Mac devotees should check out the Schmapple store.

All products available in these shades:
1. Incredible White
2. Fantabulous White
3. Virginal White
4. Snow White
5. Cyphocilus White
6. Black

(They just forgot to mention that Black costs you an extra 200 quid thank-you-very-much-suckers.)

Also, there probably ought to be some mileage in spoofing WordPress these days. I luv my WP, but is it really necessary to get quite so excited about a new version quite so often? (The last one was in May; there seems to have been a new security update every other week ever since, which doesn’t help that ennui-y feeling.) Is it really that thrilling, Matt dearest? I’m personally raising a shaggy eyebrow at the breathless announcement that they’re dropping a feature (combined link and post categories) that they only introduced nine months ago (and it broke my theme, dammit). And you know, I just can’t get that excited about tags. Am I really the only person left in the universe who doesn’t feel the slightest urge to randomly tag every conceivably significant word or phrase or idea in every bleedin’ post I write? Pfft.

Apparently Elton John wants to Just Say No to the entire Internet. The source is the Scum, so he probably never said anything of the sort, but can any of us even begin to imagine the idea?

(I’d be out of a job, for a start.)

Life without the blogs, news, music downloads, youtube videos, recipes, LOLcatz, and other assorted things that cheer up your day?

Without Google on hand to answer all those troubling little questions that you once had to trudge to the library for (and if you got that far you probably wouldn’t find the answers anyway because you wouldn’t know where to look)?

Without all your favourite places to spend money at the click of a mouse? Without IMDB? Without email?

Without all your online library catalogues, electronic journals, primary sources?

Without my website?!

Seriously – I realised earlier today that I hardly ever use the Bookmarks folder in my browser these days, except for the handful I keep in the quick find tab straight above the browser screen and an even smaller handful of others. I’m far more likely to go to the Google bar and look for websites that way. For blogs, I mostly use my own blogroll, and for research-related stuff I’ll probably start by searching EMR. (What’s the point of having a website if you don’t use it?)

It’s funny how your computer use can gradually be transformed without you really being aware of it. In the B. F. (Before Firefox/Before Feeds) era, just three or four years ago, I relied heavily on my IE Favourites folder. I hardly ever add anything new these days, but I still have hundreds of links in my FF Bookmarks folder going back years (I’ve always kept transferring my old bookmarks across to new browsers and new computers, out of habit). Half of them are probably dead. (There’s an entire folder of blogs from around spring 2004, most of which are by now part of the ancient history – and legends, in some cases – of the blogosphere.) When I first hosted a carnival, I put all the interesting posts I found in a bookmarks folder. Now I just right-click and ‘Send Link’ on the page and email it to myself.

What changes in other readers’ internet habits in the last couple of years have crept up on you without you even noticing?

The Toynbee convector “is a kind of dialogue with, or interrogation of, a half-forgotten and rather unfashionable master”, Arnold Toynbee, primarily through his own words. There are a lot of ‘em.

Harvard is introducing teaching reforms.

Russell Jacoby isn’t impressed by a book on consumerism. My mate Natalie is more positive about a book about how eevil Tesco is.

Tulipmania, a myth. Which is no fun. Bah to historians.

Andrew Marr has been trying out ebooks. Is the paper book dead yet?

And another good game: favourite opening lines of novels.

Nearly forgot: Professor Korncrake has been liveblogging (well, nearly) the medievalists’ shindig, Kalamazoo. Almost makes you want to be a medievalist…

For those thinking of taking it up, the Guardian has a guide to doing family history. (Anybody who wants it is welcome to my paper copy, since I’m not likely to use it…)

Digital history in the 21st century, from Dave at Patahistory.

Germaine Greer is entertaining on why Mary Shelley really did write Frankenstein.

Never mind that Foucault fellow, it’s time for some Antonio Gramsci, on the 70th anniversary of his death.

Another link that got lost in my drafts folder: Atomic Platters: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security

And maybe some good news for independent bookshops.

I nearly forgot to link the first Military History Carnival. In my defence, I was a bit poorly this week.

The first book event at The Long Eighteenth, a discussion of Michael McKeon’s Secret History of Domesticity, has been highly successful: it started with several fine posts and has been enhanced by a thoughtful response from the author and a follow-up discussion, not to mention lively conversations in comment threads. (Once it’s finished, I’ll try to post a full set of links, but for the moment it’s all on the front page: it starts here). Indispensable for anyone interested in the 18th century.

Anyone with interests in the Tudors and without access to the ODNB, meanwhile, will want to visit Holbein: behind the portraits, which the ODNB has set up to complement Tate Britain’s exhibition Holbein in England. There are 35 biographies, freely available until January.

If you’re thinking of a trip to London to take in the Holbein exhibition, you might want to visit something very different while you’re there: Kinetica, the UK’s first kinetic art museum, has just opened its doors in Spitalfields. (Channel 4 news report, which may be Windows-only.)

For Americanists, the latest issue of Common-place is up.

Those interested in modern Irish history need to know about the County Waterford Image Archive, which has several thousand photographs dating from the 1890s.

And sad news for social historians: Arthur Marwick has died.

I’ve just noticed the BBC’s UK Local History Legacies website. Lots of yummy goodness.

I don’t tend to pore over the Guardian’s Face to Faith column, but yesterday it profiled Thomas Helwys, a founder of Baptism and early 17th-century champion of religious liberty. (And no, there isn’t a happy ending.) His writings are available from the Baptist Library Online.

Which leads on quite neatly to notices of the 200th birthday of John Stuart Mill: plenty to read here. Although it’s not quite what you’d call light reading for a Sunday afternoon.

Some Scandinavian coolness: Finland won Eurovision (watch it…). Norway is the richest nation in the world. Denmark is holding a Renaissance Year. And Sweden’s just finishing up an International Science Festival. (Iceland + medieval bonus: Njal’s saga.)

And if only Geoffrey Chaucer had written the Da Vinci Code…

MONDAY UPDATE: today it’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday!

History Carnival will soon be up at (a)musings of a grad student… and here it is!

And Carnivalesque will come tomorrow at Earmarks in Early Modern culture… and it’s here!

Bardiac has posted the NEXT draft of the REALLY dead women writers meme…

(Since the texts went behind a paywall, I hadn’t taken much notice of the Brown Women Writers Project. But there are still a few useful resources there that are free to view.)

How to create a digital library of early modern texts…

Dan Cohen has written about Search Engine Optimization for Smarties…

A good contribution to the bad academic writing debate from the Guardian…

Something for Easter… and a Jewish joke for Passover…

Is there such a thing as a British intellectual?

Intellectual or not, guess where I’ll be at 7.15 this evening?…

PS: decided not to get an Easter Egg this year… but I did buy a bar of the good dark stuff instead. I am not alone.

PPS: Spam email oxymoron of the week: “Academic Qualifications available from prestigious non-accredited universities”…

The Guardian on Bellini and the East, a new exhibition at the National Gallery.

Charlie says… Public Information Films at The National Archives.

A newish website on Historical Fiction looks fun.

The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945 is looking for contributions. Perhaps it’ll (eventually) be able to add something to the debate now heating up over gendered reading preferences.

Rob MacDougall has discovered The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. (And see Giornale Nuovo for more on Athanasius Kircher.)

Is it a fish? Is it an ugly bugger? Neener-neener-neeeeeeeeeener! (And, unless you’re scared of insects… Wow.)

… And here’s an upcoming centenary to celebrate: TH White was born 100 years ago next month.

Something for the weekend: NY Times on swearing, obscenities, cursing (etc).

Mind you, I’m curious about what the Seven Dirty Words would be. (Update: Now I know.) I can’t imagine there are that many unsayables left on British TV. And just why are Americans so squeamish about the word ‘toilet’?

(Hat-tip: Head Heeb.)

Books and reading
Bookish (lit/culture blog)
2005 Lyttle Lytton winners (shorter worst opening sentences of imaginary novels)
Where have the editors gone?
PotterCon
Louise Welsh (we are not worthy)
Secret signals in lotus flowers (review of book on the ‘Indian Mutiny’ and the British imagination)
Soldiers’ letters
Setting the slaves free
On guard! (buckling some Spanish swash…)

Robin Cook
BBC obituary
Guardian obituary
Profile
One of the greats – out of office
Acerbic master of the despatch box
A lifetime passion for politics
An intellect that enthralled the House
The resignation speech

Destroyer of Worlds
60 years ago today: Hiroshima
A poem for the anniversary of Hiroshima
The atom bomb: a different perspective
Hiroshima Archive
Hiroshima remembers

Finally, on a lighter note…
Watching Braveheart (from Popcorn and chainmail – if you’re fed up of bad historical movies, there’s much here to enjoy)

Oh yes, and Channel 4 has just started a repeat run of one of my favourite history series of the last year or so, which has a marvellous mini-website: The worst jobs in history. (Tony Robinson getting the shit scared out of him or trying not to vomit at the latest disgusting stench every few minutes – not your average history presentation style.)

Prosaic, the Little Professor on academic writing and reading

Where the wild things were, on nature writing, the particular and the universal

Back to the future, on the film The battle of Algiers

Another review of The Historian (I’ll still wait for the paperback, but it does look as though it will be fun to read)

Feature on Reginald Hill (it might even make me forgive the Telegraph for that British identity codswallop)

“As I knew I could not attain a heavenly paradise … I became a historian.” The reviewer has some criticisms, but The Historian could be worth reading. (It’s an updating of the vampire novel, and Count Dracula himself is the historian.)

Searching for women who wrote in Latin: not quite as difficult as you might think.

Winners of the alternative Harry Potter ending competition.

Live coverage of rain at Lords. The British weather might just save our sorry hides from the complete thrashing that we thoroughly deserve.

Review of a book on fashion and politics in history. Sounds fun.

OK, yet another article on the Harry Potter phenomenon, but quite interesting.

Adaptations of Les liaisons dangereuses

Alternative Harry Potter
The Harry Potter magic

Middle England and Marx

Books about Nelson

Being a cardinal, Borgia-style (reg. required)

It could have happened here (reg.)

Salvator Rosa: Wild Landscapes (reg.)

Museums sell out (reg.)

(When not watching the OC, that is. Love OC. Hate T4. Who is that moron “interviewing” Josh Schwartz?)

How the west was spun, Annie Proulx on the heroic myth of the American west

…And Howard Zinn on myths of American exceptionalism

Salman Rushdie on facts

Blake Morrison on Richard Ingrams on William Cobbett

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in verse

Antony Gormley (you’ve just got to see what he’s made this time…)

JG Ballard claims to be hooked on CSI. I found myself wondering whether it was quite the same CSI (the original, never the spinoffs) that I’ve been hooked on for several years. Hmm.

Germaine Greer on photography and politics

Right, OC’s on. More later.

Coffee. Mmmm, coffee. Is it too hot for coffee this afternoon? Maybe not if I make it with ice cream…

I so want to go to this new Stubbs exhibition.

Horation Nelson. It’s the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar this October, so there’s going to be a lot of Nelsonia over the coming months.

Dressing down at the Civil Service. (C4 News viewers will know that this story prompted Jon Snow to strip in the studio during the week. Shocking. Jon without his funky ties? Unthinkable!)

Women who chafed at society’s corset (NY Times, registration required), on a fab-sounding new exhibition on extraordinary women of the Romantic period. (Hat-tip: C18-L, again)
… And I missed this website for the exhibition (thanks to scribblingwoman once again)

Dr Johnson’s dictionary (Sunday Times)

French attitudes to Shakespeare (Telegraph)

Review of book on the Black Death (Guardian Review)

Review of book about (ship) wreckers (Guardian Review)

New light on la Gioconda, and Canaletto for sale (BBC)

We have a new Research Council. Yeah, that’ll make a huge difference. And what is that logo supposed to represent?

Weapons of the weak (Mark Grimsley)

Self-study (Little Professor). Also Chuckle (personally, if I can’t get at least one laugh out of my audience, I consider a conference paper a failure)

Can academics be bloggers? (Daniel Drezner)

An historical Chesnutt (Sean McCann, at the new literary group blog The Valve)

Over at my other digs, everything furriners need to know about the General Election

Of course, when academics complain that we have to take a load of shite, we don’t usually mean it literally

A host of books-and-reading links from the scribblingwoman. That should keep you going for a while (this, too)

Sunday evening update: You just gotta read this. I wet myself laughing. Yours, Sister Broadsword of Loving Kindness. (Hat-tip: Pharyngula)

Two science reports I’ve come across today. I’m edging towards some real blogging (but I’ll be away for much of the next 2 days, so don’t bank on it), but I feel I should pass out the occasional tit bit, in case you all stop coming back.

Yawning is sexy.

What sex did to the X. Why women really are better than men, so there.

Plus: The new Daleks can go up stairs? That’s heresy. Why the old ones couldn’t.

While things are quiet, a website for cake lovers: An electronic history of J Lyons & Co.

Or if you prefer ale to cakes: Guide to British pub etiquette.

Who needs a theme anyway?

Whig history (thanks to Ancarett – a post worth reading, too)

A history of flawed teaching

A Romantic natural history

Modern Drunkard Magazine

Confusing words

English idioms

Review of Joe Queenan’s book about England (which I’m including primarily because it contains the priceless line: “it is unfunny in the way that previously only Kathy Lette has been able to be unfunny.” I’m always delighted to encounter other Lette-loathers.)

Britain’s best B&B breakfasts

And Matthew Fort cooks sausages