Here are a few relatively fresh links on topics other than the war and its aftermath:
Winds of Change, has some info on technology that could have come from a 50s sci-fi B-movie. WofC also links to the Stupid Security Contest, "an international competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures." The winners are up - check it out.
World history in a nutshell from Brad deLong. I mean from the first domesticated animals to WWII, including the influences of weather, terrain, and technological innovation on historical events. Excerpt:
p. 128: climate change (probably) and pastoral expansion (certainly) hurt agriculture throughout the semiarid heartlands of Southwest Asia, and the Black Death was very costly.... Muslim governments did invent ingenious ways to subsidize caravan trade.... But this did not enable camels to carry heavier loads. High-cost luxuries therefore remained the staples of interregional commerce in Southwest Asia. Peasants, oppressed by rents and taxes in kind... harassed by nomads... could only enter marginally... limited capacity of overland caravans inhibited commercialization of the rural majority in Muslim lands on anything like the scale that China and parts of Europe witnessed...The comments are great too.
I forget where I first learned of Cronaca, a weblog primarily devoted to archeology. Given the prominent role of archeology in the Iraq conflict, Cronaca has some timely news as well.
And, last but not least, Meryl looks back on two years of blogging. (That's an entire generation in dog years, but as they say, on the Internet no one knoes you're a dog . . . ) happy anniversary, meryl, and here's to many more!
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