I SUBMITTED MY Ph.D.!!!!

I submitted the review copy of my thesis this morning after some pretty hardcore final edits this week (including spending from 9:30 in the morning to 5 am on Wednesday on a final proof read). I can now think about other things in my life, which is exciting.

I'm flying to the States to visit family on Monday which should be good times, but I am a little sad I don't have time to do fun things in Dublin now that my life is mine again. I suppose I'll have loads of time when I'm back in two weeks to start teaching (or at least, I hope to start teaching, my uni tends to not tell us what hours we have until the week before we're meant to start....)

During the course of my research I've come across a fascinating text called In Cath Catharda; an early medieval Irish interpretation of Lucian's Pharsalia. It's so fascinating because Julius Caesar is portrayed as a sort of Irish warrior-hero and high-king who possesses the attribute of airúath: the power to inspire dread and terror in all those who surround him, which was actually seen as a heroic and noble attribute. Instead of showing clemency and mercy to his enemies, Caesar is an imposing and dreadful figure (which is a good thing) who causes his foes to flee battle and who motivates his troops to victory out of sheer terror.

Here's an excerpt that I really like:

And yet Caesar did not deem what they brought enough. A dense, dark sacred grove stood before him beside the camp; and no one dared to visit it or to fell one of its trees, because it was a sacred grove, consecrated to the adored gods from the beginning of the world. The horror and loathsomeness of it were very great. On every single tree therein was the colour of human blood. No bird nor winged thing durst make its nest or dwelling in the top of one of its trees. No fire used to burn them, nor wind lay them low. Dragons and serpents and venomous beasts (were) at every point and at every end of it.

Caesar ordered his people to cut down that sacred grove, for it was very near to them. Howbeit the troops durst not go to cut it down, since they expected that every blow that each of would give to the tree would alight on his own limbs.

When Caesar saw that great fear on his troops, he himself grasped a large axe and began to fell the oak which he deemed the highest he saw in that grove, and he desisted not till he cast it lying on the ground, and then he said: ‘Get ye gone to the grove, my lads; let the gods (take) vengeance on me if the felling thereof displeases them.’

Thereat they all arose at the high-king's orders; and yet the fear of the gods did not leave them, but greater was their fear of Caesar, and less did they dare to delay his word. The grove was laid low by them at once. Such was the closeness and density with which the trees tumbled, that, after being felled from its butt, a tree would remain aloft owing to the closeness and abundance of the other trees at every point beneath it.

End of first week in South Africa. I got to enjoy Heritage Day, and spent 3 days in the main archives and 1 day at one of the ministries where I do some research. I have over 2000 images to show for it, but what's interesting is that there's a crisis of purpose in the whole dig right now. I wanted to go to Zimbabwe, but finding a host has been problematic, so I'm working on odds and ends. I find myself snagging things relevant to the book that already came out, when I really want to grab new things for the upcoming project. So the mission is a little confused. On the other hand, almost everything has some purpose, so there's that. I've already lost nearly six pounds in one week from several miles' extra walking every day (I only grab the bus or taxi/combi for the long, level part of the trip) and a leaner diet, which is good, but I feel my age more than ever now. The knees, the hearing, and the back aren't very happy with eight-hour stretches anymore. But I may get to give a talk over at Trigsurvey which would be nice.

One metric I observe for my visits to SA is the "Leon Schuster range." That is, how long will it take to encounter a Leon Schuster movie on SA broadcast TV? The current trip's range was three days, twenty-two hours. Ah, Schuks.

[edit: God bless Cell-C for having a data-only plan for visitors, and bite me, Verizon, for being stingy. Also, the 22W solar USB charger I bought for $60 on Newegg actually works! The exchange rate is crazy down here, but man are South Africans hurting over it.]

Can anyone give me a rundown of the duties of a governor of an island during "pirate/high seas" time?

Why do washing machines usually have a dial you have to pull to start it, but dryers typically have start buttons. Is there a historical explanation or an engineering one.

Any good sources/books on the military innovations (tactics,weapons, armors, etc..) that were brought on by the First Crusade?

Thank you :)

So recently I found out about the Royal Navy's West African Fleet that actively blockade slave trade in West Africa during the 19th century. I wonder if anyone here knows more about the fleet? How the fleet was organized? How successful were the fleet's mission? Why the fleet was disbanded at the end?

I am doing something stupid and buying an Apple laptop today. Charging it through my student account. I love my desktop computer but Win10 is so unstable that I can't even access the Internet (and, in at least two cases, can't fully shutdown the computer either).

Yes, I am an idiot, why do you ask?

This is probably a bit elementary but I'm greatly interested in learning more about two Presidents: Lincoln and Eisenhower. Are there any definitive books that I should be looking at? I recently traveled cross country and so my interest in Eisenhower is at its peak because the interstate system is frankly amazing to me.

I recently picked up the book The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo and I am loving it. It is pretty much a beautiful take-down of all the AB tropes and myths that have been perpetuated throughout history (with special attention paid to pervy David Starkey's slavering obsession with what went on between Anne's legs. The fact that Starkey is considered the Tudor historian of our age drives me up a wall, so thank you Susan Bordo for standing up to him, finally).

If anyone is looking for a book that deals with how bloody hard it is to uncover the "real Anne", as well as all the ways Anne has been reimagined by every generation since her death, you can't do much better than this. Bordo goes to great lengths to critique the accepted history of Henry VIII's second queen, taking a critical look at both the pro-Anne historians and the anti-Anne historians.

What got me to pick the book up in the first place was an extract of her interview with Natalie Dormer, who portrayed Anne in Showtime's "The Tudors". One of the absolutely worst portrayals of Henry VIII's court I can think of in recent memory, Dormer's performance still managed to be credible and sensitive to Anne as a real person, and a lot of credit has to go to her for pulling that off given the material she was working with. Dormer opens up to Bordo about the misgivings she had with the script in general and Anne in particular, which was actually a huge relief to read.

If you're at all interested in the Tudor period, and Anne especially, don't miss out on this book!

So I am now back with a FREAKING MACBOOK. ZOMG SO SHINY

*writes "buy palmguard" on a post-it note*

Now, where were we? Ah, right, historical mutterings.

Today's topic starts with the following phrase (idiom?): "drinking the kool-aid".

What do you think about when you hear that someone is "drinking the kool-aid"? What kind of a person do you imagine? Do they look like your fellow co-workers? Do they look like your friends, your parents, your cousins, your siblings? Do they look like the average person you know that you meet in day-to-day life? Or do they look deranged, wearing odd clothes and staring at you with a blank stare before drinking cyanide-laced fruit-flavored punch without a second thought or protest?

Think about it for a moment. I can wait, I was waiting for several hours already, so a few extra minutes won't really hurt.

Okay. I'm going to guess that what you just thought of was the last one -- the deranged, crazy fanatic who does not question anything and blindly obeys the commands of a charismatic leader. The person you thought of -- would you also call them a "cultist"? Yes?

Now, do you know where that phrase comes from?

What if I told you that the phrase partially (if not completely) originates from a mass suicide/murder (possibly closer to murder, but that's still a question for historians to answer) in the jungles of Guyana on 18 November 1978? Does this ring a bell? What about "Jonestown"? Does that now ring a bell?

Now you see what I'm getting into: the deaths on 18 November 1978.

After the mass deaths, the media labeled the people who died in these deaths cultists. They literally drank the kool-aid (well, actually Flavor-aid, although there is footage of Jim Jones showing off packages of Kool-aid, so maybe it was a mix). They are the archetype of the phrase! They literally did not use their critical thinking skills to overturn that poison-laced vat, or kill Jim Jones, or otherwise resist! Were they not literally crazy?

But then one looks at the statistics. The community that perished that day was over two-thirds black, with a third being children and a pretty large segment being over the age of 60 (and thus seniors). Women outnumbered men. The residents hailed from California, a number of southern states, from Indiana, from Ohio, from Washington, from New York. There were family groups in Jonestown, parents with their children and grandparents with their grandchildren and aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone. They had family outside that group. They had professions in medicine, in construction, in food service, in finance and management and law and other fields.

In other words, they look like normal people. Calling them "cultists" and using the phrase "drinking the kool-aid" strips these people of their humanity and reduces them to dead bodies lying on the ground in a jungle in South America.

But why would they join such a group? What lead them to eventually die in that jungle so far from home? Turn in next week for another installation of "cordis nerds out on Peoples Temple"!

Articles:

• Drinking the Kool-aid: The Cultural Transformation of a Tragedy
• What Does Kool-aid Even Mean?
• Drinking the Kool-aid (Note: this is a personal reflection from one of the survivors; I added it here in case someone was interested.)
• The Demographics of Jonestown

This didn't get answered last week, anyone this week got an opinion?

Anyone here familiar with Jewish history in Europe, especially the 16th and 17th centuries? Taking an upper-division Intro to Judaism class (not a history major, but definitely an enthusiast), and have to write a 10-12 page term paper. My first idea was to write about the Jewish influence on Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age (I had read a little about it in The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson and was intrigued). When I brought the idea to my professor, he led me down the rabbit hole, taking me on a mini-journey that encompassed:

Jewish exile from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century
The Ottoman Empire
Jewish colonies in Brazil
The Dutch East India Company
Peter Stuyvesant and his religious intolerance
Spinoza, his family and his "excommunication"
Some other stuff I can't remember

His best advice was to find a way to narrow down what I wanted to write about. I've read a little about each of these topics now, but doubt I'll have time to explore any of them in enough fullness to come to an informed decision. So before I arbitrarily pick a direction and go, does anyone have suggestions for a good angle of attack?

So I've wanted to start looking into the South Sea Bubble. Any suggestions on how to get started?