Some thoughts on Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts. Everyone should know about the events that Mike Davis chronicles in this book. Worldwide famines beginning in 1877 killed tens of millions in India, China, Brazil and Africa; altogether around fifty million people died for starvation or disease. Famines with comparable death tolls occurred again around 1890, [...]
… because you never know what strange treasures you will find. At BookBuyers in Mountain View this weekend I saw the “Manifèst del Partit Comunista.” Just glancing at the title, I assumed it was a Catalonian translation of the Manifesto. But no! This is the (one assumes the one-and-only) Occitanian translation of the same. Including [...]
I’m still reading Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts. It’s a really amazing book, essential reading about how imperialism and colonization turned the great El Niños of the late 19th century into famines and bouts of pestilence that claimed the lives of around fifty million people. Hopefully I will gather my thoughts together to write a [...]
“The [Indian] central government under the leadership of Queen Victoria’s favorite poet, Lord Lytton, vehemently opposed efforts … to stockpile grain or otherwise interfere with marked forces. All through the summer of 1876, while the vital kharif crop was withering in the fields of southern India, Lytton had been absorbed in organizing the immense Imperial [...]
(“Toleranz / Tolerance”, via) Just finished reading Christopher Hill’s The Experience of Defeat, about the long and painful intellectual climbdown of revolutionaries after the English Civil War, through the slow loss of steam of the revolution in the 1650s, and after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Very interesting stuff, at least if you’re [...]
While I was in Purdue I picked up G. C. Waldrep’s new book, Archicembalo, and oh man is it great. For me at least Waldrep always gives the impression of the poet who operates on a completely different plane than the ordinary people around him; he experiences the world in a deeper and much more [...]
Crazy day — I’m now getting ready for two conferences, instead of one, since WAIL just emailed to let me know that my alternate status has been upgraded to full conference presenter. So, yay! But also making travel plans for two trips this month, including auxiliary travel with both conferences to visit friends and family. [...]
During the Anglo-Irish war, this notice was posted in Macroom, County Cork, after the I.R.A. Flying Column killed eighteen elite British soldiers in a battle at nearby Kilmichael: NEW POLICE ORDER IN MACROOM December 1st, 1920. Whereas foul murders of servants of the Crown have been carried out by disaffected persons, and whereas [...]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 8: If you thought that this TV show ended after season 7 finished five years ago, you’re right. “Season 8″ is a comic book series — currently at 22 issues (or “episodes” if you prefer) and counting, though I understand it’s going to run out to around 40 altogether. I’m [...]
I got some pretty cool birthday gifts this year. One of the most intriguing was a Mongolian revolutionary pamphlet / magazine, with this cover: There’s a lot of awesome here, but a couple details are especially nice, such as: the yin/yang symbol inside the socialist star; and the border made out of Wright Brothers-style airplanes, [...]
