Deviant historians

How do historians pick a subject to study? Most hit on a topic that floats their boat. To which I say: birds, war, observation, landscape? Dude! Why would anyone work on anything else?

Historians try to maintain the fiction that what they work on is either the cutting edge of current historiographical inquiry or merely happenstance. But it ain't so. Snobs work on the cultural history of the class system. Spies work on the history of Afghanistan. There are historians writing on the history of horse racing, on amateur mushroom hunting, on the history of Boy Scouts, on the history of the book.

(An aside: Historians of the book are an exceptionally excellent bunch. They're all crazy about books. Not just the text: the book, in all its musty, bumped, sunned glory. They know that the materiality of each copy of a book is part of the experience of reading the text within it. They get excited about typography, about buckram, about the different sizes and colours of nineteenth century cheap editions. Those endless internet debates about the goods and bads of e-publishing would be so much more interesting if their authors had read some good History of the Book before they opened their mouths)

There are exceptions to the "look at the subject and see the historian's psychopathology" rule. In my field, for example, you mark yourself out as a proper, level-headed, non-eccentric career academic if you work on Darwin. Darwin is not kinky. Darwin is "real" history of Science. Similarly level-headed subjects include the Manhattan Project, the history of Molecular Biology, the history of Medicine (generally) and maybe the history of Astronomy (although I'm not sure about that). Newton scholars are all bonkers. To a man. Remember that. It may one day save your life.

(Note: any subject that attracts the interest of "independent scholars" is, ipso facto, not on this list. I once spoke companionably to a guy in Starbucks. Nattily clad in a linen jacket and a Panama hat, he was poring over a copy of the Principia. It was a mistake. Within thirty seconds he'd started telling me about this code he'd found, hidden in its pages, which was the key to...") Me running away.

Anyway, the reason for this? An email from my friend R this morning. Which I reproduce below. This Bullough chap seems so delightfully, honestly unworried about all these pesky face-saving academic conventions. Yay for him.

I was just looking for information on a couple of articles on the medieval universities by a historian of medicine called Vern L. Bullough, when I discovered the following reference to a piece by him:

'Attitudes toward deviant sex in ancient Mesopotamia,' Journal of Sex Research, VII (1971), 184-203.

I'm torn between wondering who would want to read an article with a title like that, and wondering who wouldn't want to read an article with a title like that.

Then I spotted, further down his bibliography, another reference:

'Deviant sex and the detective novel,' Mystery and Detection Annual, edited by Donald K. Adams, II (1973), 326-31.

How's that for a sideline?

Result!

Not only did they junk the gyrfalcon picture, they chose the best goshawk image ever painted. I'd not heard of Marie Winn before, so checked her out on Wikipedia. Ah, yes, the Redtails in Central Park woman. What I did not expect to read on her wiki entry was this:

In the late 1980's, Winn succumbed to a terrible addiction to television's late night soft core pornography. In order to combat this aliment [sic] she took up bird watching in central park, noting the erotic nature of birds, a quality she found to be regenerative to her overall wellbeing.

That is a brilliant bit of wiki sabotage! Made my morning.

Falconer's frown

Still not there with the calling-off, dammit. Also: memo to self. Don't try training a goshawk when you're unhappy. It's not the most calming of enterprises.

S laid the Gos Law on me last night. More important training recommendations. Damn, I thought I was a reasonably good falconer. What makes goshawks so different? I am worried I'm messing with this bird's blank-slate brain. Oh lord, let me not have ruined this hawk already.

That's what this frown is all about.

Narcissists' Manifesto

Harry Hutton at Chase me Ladies is being as bitterly misanthropic as ever:

This is why life has become such a pain in the harris. You call the bank, and they don’t answer the phone because they don’t like banking, and want to do something “fulfilling” instead, like the guy who gets fired out of cannons at the circus.

Well let me tell you something. When the ratio of bankers to cannonning clowns falls below 10,000 to 1, you’ve got a problem. No nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

Hutton reminds me of Bernard Black, and his famous phrase "Don't make me sick into my own scorn". A phrase so good I've long wished to find occasion to use it, but I just haven't been able to. Don't think I'm bitter enough. Ah well, give me a few years. I'm sure I can get there.

Way to go, yet

Lord Byron's establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about hte house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it ...

... I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective, and that in a material point. I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane.

P.B Shelley

Exposed!

Pluvialis is finding out more and more about goshawks.

They're much, much more interesting , and much cleverer than she'd thought they'd be. They make peregrines look dumb as posts. Goshawks enjoy watching Planet of the Apes (the original, not the terrible Tim Burton remake) and also enjoy Britain's Strongest Man, but aren't keen on CSI Miami.

Goshawks like looking under things. Goshawks like water. Goshawks don't like white paper bags very much. And in the evening they are disarmingly prone to play. See?

Falconer plays peek-a-boo with parent-reared goshawk shocker!

Scripture Safari

From Querencia, a headsup on...camo Bibles!

This Custom Edition Bible features a Bonded Leather Camouflage Cover with the ultra realistic REALTREE HARDWOODS GREEN® HD™ pattern. Each cover is uniquely different and is printed using High Definition®, Realtree's proprietary printing process.This Bible includes: The Words "Holy Bible" Embossed in Gold on the Cover Large, Easy to Read 11-Point Type Words of Christ in Red Center-Column References for In-Depth Study of the Bible An NIV Concordance for Quick and Easy Reference An 8-Page Full-Color Map Section The Extra-Thin Binding (measuring less than one inch thick) makes this Bible great for not only reading at home but also in a tree stand, ground blind, boat, or tent. The Bible is packaged in a beautiful two-piece box, great for storing or gift giving. Approximately 9-1/4" x 6-1/4". This easy to read study reference Bible is a wonderful asset to outdoorsmen wanting to read the Word of God. It is also great for giving and sharing with other hunters, fishermen, and outdoors enthusiasts.

Looks like RealTreeTM has competitors, though! Christian Camouflage! Awesome.

Shameless II

Look! My little map in a glossy colour supplement to the Daily Telegraph. Wha-hey! Those long nights of fine nibs, whisky and trying to focus at 3am were all worth it. Pluvialis has a publication that isn't words!

The map is of course, not the point: what is the point here is Robert Macfarlane's wonderful prose. And the map looks much happier in the endpapers of this book, its natural home, for which it was lovingly drawn. You can read extracts here. Buy the book! It's wonderful.

New Dinosaur Comics t-shirt

Based on this particular work of genius. Actually all the t-shirts are awesome!

Arrrrr!

Aimee as pirate. Click for big picture. She spent an entire morning ambushing people and saying "You! Walk the plank and get eaten by crocodiles and sharks!" How exceptionally cool is my niece? A career in the UN beckons.

Greatest book review of all time

From Field and Stream, November 1959

Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been re-issued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English game-keeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional game-keeper. Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeper.

Indulgent goshawkery

Inspirational speech

The Lopez Credo

Once I was asked by a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight, a man who took the liberty of glancing repeatedly at the correspondence in my lap, what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughter, who wanted to be a writer. I didn’t know how to answer him, but before I could think I heard myself saying, “Tell your daughter three things.” Tell her to read, I said. Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she’s reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and a written language. She may be paying attention to things in the words beyond anyone else’s comprehension, things that feed her curiosity, her singular heart and mind. Tell her to read classics like The Odyssey. They’ve been around a long time because the patterns in them have proved endlessly useful.

Second, I said, tell your daughter that she can learn a great deal about writing by reading and by studying books about grammar and the organization of ideas, but that if she wishes to write well she will have to become someone. She will have to discover her beliefs, and then speak to us from within those beliefs. If her prose doesn’t come out of her belief, whatever that proves to be, she will only be passing along information, of which we are in no great need. So help her discover what she means.

Finally, I said, tell your daughter to get out of town, and help her do that. I don’t necessarily mean to travel to Kazakhstan, but to learn another language, to live with people other than her own, to separate herself from the familiar. Then, when she returns, she will be better able to understand why she loves the familiar, and will give us a fresh sense of how fortunate we are to share these things.

Read. Find out what you truly believe. Get away from the familiar. Every writer, I told him, will offer you thoughts about writing that are different, but these are three that I trust.

Barry Lopez, quoted by Robert Macfarlane, via The Book Depository

And before I change the subject

Here's a job: googling all day for the CIA!

Double-nosed Andean Tiger Hound

Here's a good one!

"Explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell has had close encounters with vampire bats and angry bees, but his latest brush has been with a rather odd dog. He spotted a rare breed of Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound, which has two noses, on a recent trip to Bolivia..."I was sober at the time, and then I remembered the story that the legendary explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett came back with in 1913 of seeing such strange dogs in the Amazon jungle. Nobody believed him, they laughed him out of court. [...] The Bolivian Army came and took DNA samples because they're interested in the breed. He's not the only dog like this, there are others in the area."
The Scientific Exploration Society was in Bolivia to investigate a shallow crater about five miles in width. According to Colonel Blashford-Snell, he has now found evidence that this was caused by a giant meteorite, which struck the Bolivian Amazon Basin up to 30,000 years ago. He says he has found evidence of human habitation within 50 miles of the blast zone, and believes these people were wiped out as a result of the meteor's impact. The explorers also carried with them a church organ from Dorset as a gift to local Bolivians in order to secure their help with finding the meteorite.

You can read the whole thing here. It's not just the dog, which is extraordinary. It's not just the bewitching sentence "I was sober at the time". It's that utterly glorious last sentence.

Surprised

I really, really, really like this Goshawk. Why didn't anyone tell me that goshawks are not only scary tactical assessment and weapons deployment systems, but also cute?

Review

Is out, here. Shameful self-promotion!

Just strange

"'This is Yellowhammer," says Marcus Coates excitedly, pointing at a video of a man with a paunch reading a newspaper over breakfast. Suddenly, the man's eyes dash from side to side. His chest twitches up and down, and he bursts into an orgy of twittering and tweeting. "He sat there singing for an hour and 10 minutes," says Coates. "Watch: his mannerisms are so bird-like."

Yellowhammer is one of a cast of characters Coates has created for an extremely odd video installation, to be shown at Baltic in Gateshead next month. Dawn Chorus, which recreates the sound of birdsong using human voices, is an ambitious project, with scientific as well as artistic goals - medical research charity the Wellcome Trust sponsored him, and the birdsong has been archived for researchers."

Full story here, with video. Very, very odd.

Awful curtains

Um

Goshawk fact: if you make a sound like an injured rabbit, a goshawk will involuntarily gripe its feet, hard, exerting vast amounts of killing power with all eight toes through the glove. And bruise your hand.

I already knew this.

I have found that exactly the same response is triggered by the following sounds:

1. The beeping of a cashpoint machine extruding twenty pound notes.

and, more sinisterly,

2. A baby crying.

Hmmm.

Want. Teleshadow.

Probably old news, but I've only just seen this. New media/puppetry/virtuality, presence, privacy, history: this is just glorious stuff for any out-of-work cultural theoreticians out there. I so hope this goes into production....

Fallow field

Really lovely shot from John Wright. Corn and velvet. See the rest here.

World Changing Idea?

This is hilarious. Tempting though. $100,000 for an compelling concept! Dude!
Anyone got any ideas? Apart from firing their team of writers?

The Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas
(For Innovation in Communication)

BACKGROUND

Why Saatchi & Saatchi believes passionately in the power of ideas.

To enrich lives.
To solve problems.
To prevent disasters.
To increase pleasure.
To reduce pain.
The truth is, there can be no progress without ideas.
Conflict resolution is a vain hope without ideas.
The end of poverty is just a dream.
At the heart of all human existence lies the activity of communication.
And an innovation in communication may have the power to change one person’s world.
Or a whole community’s.
Or the world itself.

Winning The Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas exists to recognise brilliant thinking, to bring it to the world’s attention and to reward the most outstanding innovation with a prize worth $100,000.

Who Can Enter
We invite submissions from innovators around the world. Their ideas may be scientific, linguistic, artistic, technological. They may be hi-tech, lo-tech or no-tech. Their ideas may be in prototype, the finished thing or merely a compelling concept. Previous finalists have ranged from a tornado early-warning system, self-adjusting spectacles, a sonar system that enables the visually-impaired to ‘see’ with their ears, a compound that can replicate the sensitivity of human skin, a new kind of aeroplane, a storage system for the world’s languages, viable electric lighting for the developing world, and near-instant buildings for disaster relief. Yes, communication is a vast territory.

Any innovation which could improve, revolutionise, or make possible communication between individuals, between individuals and their environment, between companies and their customers, between performers and their audiences, between nations or even between planets will be considered.

Cabin fever

Yesterday watched, in between the lifestyle programmes' offerings to the gods of laminated floors and ikea sofas, a programme about rig divers. These guys live in a a pressurised coffin of bunk-beds for 28 days at a time, breathing heliox so they speak like speeding disney characters, slathering chili sauce over their food because nothing tastes of anything at this pressure. And then they, you know, pop down to the bottom of an oil rig to fix things. Six hours in the dark, on the sea floor. Whales go past. Back in their pressurised coffin, one rings home, but his helium voice is just impossible to understand.
"Happy Birthday, son"
"What?"
"Happy birthday"
"I don't understand you. Is that dad?"
"It's dad. I'm ringing you on your birthday. Happy birthday!"
"What?"

Yep.

Morning

Grainy, military tiredness. Gos is fine. I'm half dead.

Xtin's Road Trip pix

Supplies. On dashboard. All essential.

Xtin in Café Nescafé. Sensibly, not having coffee. Yes, that's my red bull can...

This was a bad sandwich. Biting gingerly: moral imperative: must eat it.
It cost £5. Daylight robbery!

Hotel horror

Waiting on quayside for gos, having a cigarette, slowly recovering from hotel trauma, and about to fend off teenage smackhead asking for money for heroin, aka his "81 year old sick grandmother"

Back home 8 hours later....

more photos here.

Proper gos pics soon. Can't use camera: I'm typing with one hand, gos on the other, and I'm so tired it feels as if I'm made of wool...

Quote of the Day

"In order to determine the time at which the planets were formed and to calculate the cooling of the terrestrial globe, he engaged the services of four or five lovely, sweetly complexioned ladies; he had several globes of all sorts of materials and of all sorts of densities heated to red-hot, and these they held by turns in their delicate hands, reporting to him the degrees of the heat and the periods of cooling; and upon this fragile basis, he erected the most audacious of edifices"

Chevalier D'Aude, Vie privée du comte de Buffon, suivie d'un recueil de poésies, dont quelques pièces sont relatives à ce grand homme. Lausanne, 1788.

boldly gouache

Thanks to Rebecca for this Shatner joy !