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Category Archives: History
The Winter Solstice and Trying to Explain the Movement of the Sun
Many years ago I found myself trying to explain the movement of the sun during the winter to a class in Victoria, British Columbia, and ever since I have been struck by how cultural knowledge can be allowed or disallowed … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, Culture, History, Literature, Teaching
Tagged axial tilt, cultural understanding, Earth's axis, pedagogy, Vinland Sagas
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A Use of Old Cannonballs
Galileo was alone on the top of the tower. He’d asked his friends to stay away from his experiment. He’d experienced enough failure in the past to worry that his latest venture might prove to be embarrassing and he was … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged cannonballs, experimentation, Galileo, inquisition, pisa, scientific
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Keller and Rosa Parks: Case Studies in Historical Oversight
The story of both Parks and Helen Keller have been so heavily overwritten by the public imagination that they are almost invisible in a narrative ostensibly about them. This line drawing of their lives looms much larger than the more … Continue reading
Posted in Activism, Culture, History
Tagged activism, Civil Rights, Helen Keller, Rosa Parks
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Ancient Science at the Planetarium
Whenever we think about our ancestors we are inclined to imagine them as moronic, backward troglodytes, dragging their knuckles through lives as brutal and stunted as themselves. In our rather short-sighted and ungrateful vision, they do not hope to compare … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, Art, Astronomy, Culture, History, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged ancient Greek mythology, Australian Aborigines, Constellations, Cro-Magnon, Freud, giant kangaroo, Glooscap, homo habilis, Lascaux Caves, megafauna, Neanderthal, Piltdown Man, planetarium, Pythagoras, Sunstones, The Dreaming, Theory of Relativity, Thylacoleo, Ursa Major
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Working on the Birth and Death of Planeville
I have spent the last few months—when I can spare a moment from teaching and marking—working on my novel about the now extinct village of Planeville. In some ways this project has been more difficult than others, perhaps because although … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, History, Writing
Tagged New Brunswick, Planeville, Planeville: The Birth and Death of a Village, Writing
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The Bible is Perfect. No Wait, It’s Not
Many Christians trouble themselves over whether the bible, the book they rely on for so much of their understanding of both the physical and spiritual the world, is perfect and the writing of god, or whether it is flawed and … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, Culture, History, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged Atheism, bible, Christianity, Church in School, Council at Nicaea, fanaticism, Historical Jesus, inconsistencies in the bible, Notastampcollector
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Donald Trump and the Conspiracy of Nonsense
The internet is so effective at the promulgation of conspiracy theories we almost think it might have been made for that purpose. Marshall McLuhan suggests that each of our technologies simply extend our own abilities, just as a spear extends … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, News, News of the World, Superstition
Tagged anti-vaccine, Birther, democrat, Donald Trump, George Bush, global climate change denier, Hillary Clinton, Justin Raimondo, nomination, presidency, republican, white house
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The Vast Edifice of Culture
The vast edifice that is culture is as fragile as a butterfly’s wings. It is as beautiful and as tenuous. Over the many centuries of struggle since we first began to bang rocks together we have tried to build something … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, Culture, History, Supernatural, Superstition
Tagged Supernatural, Superstition
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The Khoisan People and their History
It seems incredible to me that we have an ancient lineage of people existing today. That means that while the rest of the world was happily breeding with whomever, the Khoisan went their own way. In order to find a … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Peoples, Culture, History
Tagged Ancient Lineage, Beowulf, Black Sea Flooding, Grendel, Khoisan, La Gomera, Neanderthal, Noah's Ark, The Flood, Whistle Language
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