Philobiblon

It seems being nasty about “elitists” has a long history. This is from a collection of historic jokes, found via History Carnival No 22, now up on Frog in a Well. As usual it is a wonderful collection, from how Harry Potter tapped into the medieval (which reminds me about how I got a story about astralabes and a sentence of medieval English into The Times)to a fascinating history of swimming in the early modern world.

Check it out!

A fascinating account of how films and TV are in love with the idea of the calculating “Black Widow”. But a majority of women who kill their partners are long-term victims of abuse. It seems, however, that the US legal system doesn’t take this into account:

Women who are charged with the murder of their partners have the least extensive criminal records of any group of convicted offenders. Yet the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that the average prison sentence of men who kill their female partners ranges from two to six years, while women who kill their partners are sentenced to an average of 15 years. In states ranging from Florida to South Carolina, many are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.

How are the men getting such lenient sentences? I suspect they’re probably using “provocation” defences – such as they believed the woman was having an affair, or was “nagging” him – as has been the the case in the UK.

What sort of hang-over of “women as property” is the former? And as for the latter, well there is a simple – non-criminal – solution: leave!

Finally, at least British law is trying to make this fairer – and perhaps protect more women.

After Britain and France’s “race riots”, it is now Australia’s turn, or at least so a simplistic analysis would have it.

The ignition point in Sydney was access to and use of a beach. Two surf lifesavers were beaten up by some men from a Muslim background who had been told to stop play soccer, and then the conflict was off. The site of the start of the problem was Cronulla and other southern beaches of Sydney – which will be familiar to anyone who’s read the novel Puberty Blues, or seen the film, and the misogynistic, tribal world they portray.

I lived in Sydney for the first 20 years of my life and never visited one of those places – Sydney is a very spread-out place, and very divided. But it was generally agreed the image the novel presented was accurate, and I doubt much has changed.

They’ll know that even among the white tribes of the southern beaches (estimated to be 90 pre cent-plus Anglo-Celtic) conflict was common. But when the “Westies” (from the poorer, far more ethnically mixed inland suburbs) try to assert their right to the public space, the conflict is likely to be even more heated.

It is probably true that race is only peripheral. Both sides have absorbed the often-destructive masculine-dominated theory of “mateship”. And that’s the real fuel.

This SMH piece is the best analysis I’ve seen.

I spent this afternoon in the company of some amazing objects, prime among them a 10.5m-long, broad and solid-looking boat. A Bronze Age boat. That’s right, a boat well over 2,000 years old, hewn from a single massive oak.

What’s more, unlike most such finds, which come out of bogs, so have spent much of their life buried, this came into the British Museum in the 19th century, when it was found being used as a bridge.

And it looks like a piece of old oak, maybe a couple of hundred years old.

The amazing thing is that no one has done any significant research on it, because there aren’t the funds. The hope is one day an interested PhD student will come along … sounds like a good idea to me!

Researching around it, I found there is something even more amazing in Dover, a sea-going Bronze Age boat. (Which I really have to see.) And the a pretty spectacular one from Fiskerton.

This was on a behind-the-scenes tour – I also saw the new icon room, of which the Prehistory and Europe Department (which is responsible for around two-thirds of the 6.5m – approx. – items in the museum). It is a brilliant setup in that the icons can be studied on slide-out trays, so that they don’t have to be moved at all.

There’s also a small but spectacular collection of European armour – including a helmet that consensus thought was probably of the Agincourt era (complete with the straw/raffia – not sure of the proper term – padding).

… Then back to reality. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the post office trying to post the Christmas stuff. You have to wonder, are they trying to put themselves out of business?

As I walk up Tottenham Court Road, accosted on all side by the wielders of brochures for cheap international phone calls, “PC modding*”, “mobile phone unlocking”, and other obscure goods and services I’m unlikely to ever to use, should I:

1. Take one from the poor shivering individual waving it under my nose, on the ground that they’ll thereby be able to get somewhere warm faster. (Since I suspect they are paid a piece rate.)

2. Refuse it on the ground that this is killing trees, wasting ink, the energy used to transport it here, etc?

* Slang for modification. (I had to look it up.)

The Second Asian History Carnival is up on Muninn, and a lovely wide-ranging selection it is. I found a post on a book setting out the Chinese Communist Party’s view on domestic exploitation particularly interesting.

(And the History Carnival will be up on Thursday – get your nominations in … )

And I should also mention that the Britblog roundup again went travelling this week, this time to a hot place in Edinburgh (shhhurely a contradiction in terms) – and nice to see a couple of women there who were not nominated by me. Don’t forget to nominate yourself this week, if you deserve it!