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September 9th, 2009 | Category: photos, politics | Leave a comment

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, [...]

September 7th, 2009 | Category: bibliophilia, politics | Comments (1)

Me again. Two days in a row! Tomorrow? We’ll see. For today, a photo: (May Day, London, 2008, photo from flickr) And if you enjoy that, please to be visiting the African Activist Archive. Amazing collection of photos and posters and so forth.

September 1st, 2009 | Category: photos, politics | Leave a comment

photo from Nepal, via Flickr

July 8th, 2009 | Category: photos, politics | Comments (6)

Here’s an image I just made for this morning’s lecture on writing systems of the world (and specifically why we know so little about the Mayan writing system):

July 2nd, 2009 | Category: linguistics, photos, politics | Comments (2)

As long as it’s still June (and even when it’s not!), check out these amazing photos by Diana Davies from the early days of the Gay Liberation movement in New York. Lots of lovely color photos.

June 30th, 2009 | Category: photos, politics | Leave a comment

Hondureños blocking army tanks with their bodies One frustrating fact for Americans who want to show their support and solidarity with protesters in the streets of Iran is the narrow leverage that they have. Any involvement coming from the US is going to be viewed with real suspicion — and rightly so, of course. At [...]

June 29th, 2009 | Category: politics | Leave a comment

“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 [...]

June 22nd, 2009 | Category: bibliophilia, politics | Comments (2)

o hai. It’s been a little while. Reasons are several; most recently I’ve been fairly preoccupied with lesson planning for my summer school course which begins on Tuesday. Probably the most troubling moment this week was on Wednesday afternoon in the library, when my laptop suddenly started to go up in flames. Not good! But [...]

June 20th, 2009 | Category: photos, politics | Comments (5)