A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the second part of the second part of our three(ish) part look at the governing structures of the Greek polis (I, IIa). Last time, we looked at the basic institutions of governance, how nearly every polis has magistrates, an assembly, and one or more councils which function together to govern the polis. We … Continue reading Collections: How to Polis, 101, Part IIb: Archons
This is the second post of our three-part series (I) looking at the structure of the ancient Greek polis. Last week we looked at how the Greeks understood the component parts of a polis, so this week we're going to look at how those parts were governed. The Greek term for the structure of a … Continue reading Collections: How to Polis, 101, Part IIa: Politeia in the Polis
This is the first of a planned three part look at the structure of the ancient Greek polis, the self-governing 'city state,' as part of a larger series on civic governance in the pre-modern world. Since I argued, way back in June of 2019, that a noble house in Game of Thrones was unlikely to … Continue reading Collections: How to Polis, 101, Part I: Component Parts
Hey, folks, fireside this week! As this is going up, I am preparing to appear digitally on a panel on "History and the Public, Now and in the Future" at the University of Maryland. March may end up with more than the usual number of firesides, because I actually have three of these invited talks … Continue reading Fireside Friday, March 3, 2023
Today marks the end of the first year of Putin's War in Ukraine. I will not call it an anniversary, because I don't think anyone is celebrating. Nevertheless I think this makes a useful moment to look back and take stock of the state of the conflict at present but also on the things I … Continue reading Collections: One Year Into the War in Ukraine
So I stirred up a bit of conversation on Twitter last week when I noted that I had already been handed ChatGPT produced assignments. For those who are unaware, ChatGPT is an 'AI' chatbot that given a prompt can produce texts; it is one of most sophisticated bots of this sort yet devised, trained on … Continue reading Collections: On ChatGPT
Fireside this week, the first fireside of the new year! There might be a few more of these than usual over the next few months as I am continuing to work on my book project, but have to balance that with unexpectedly teaching a course on US Naval History, which is of course quite a … Continue reading Fireside Friday, February 10, 2023 (On Academic Freedom)
This is the third part of our three part (I, II, III) look at many of the smaller issues of historical realism in Amazon's Rings of Power, following up our mode the major worldbuilding problems the show experienced. Last time we discussed the tactics (or lack thereof) of the Southlanders and Orcs in the major … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part III: That Númenórean Charge
This is the second part of our look at many of the smaller issues of historical realism in Amazon's Rings of Power, following on our more substantive discussion of the major worldbuilding problems the show experienced. I had hoped to keep this at two parts (actually, I had hoped this would just be a one-off … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part II: Falling Towers
This week we're going to return to Amazon's Rings of Power, as promised in the first post there were a plethora of smaller believably and realism issues with in the show that I wanted to discuss but which didn't rise to the storytelling problems of those major issues. These are the sorts of small issues … Continue reading Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part I: Exploding Forges