The inaugural Asian History carnival is now up at Frog in a Well. That old debate about whether Marco really went anywhere, except in his imagination, has a prominent place, while I was particularly taken by a post on the extensive history of slavery in Korea. I hadn’t previously seen this discussed, although the fact that a lot of the little I know about Korean history comes from visiting the North probably has something to do with that. (From that perspective, all history is glorious, and was an inevitable progression to the current moment of perfection.)

Browsing around looking for other historic bloggers as a companion for my Lady of Quality, I rediscovered a joint reading of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. From today’s:

OF THE TIME FOR STUDYING SELECTION OF SUBJECTS
Winter evenings ought to be employed by young students in looking over the things prepared during the summer; that is, all the drawings from the nude done in the summer should be brought together and a choice made of the best [studies of] limbs and bodies among them, to apply in practice and commit to memory.

OF POSITIONS

After this in the following summer you should select some one who is well grown and who has not been brought up in doublets, and so may not be of stiff carriage, and make him go through a number of agile and graceful actions; and if his muscles do not show plainly within the outlines of his limbs that does not matter at all. It is enough that you can see good attitudes and you can correct [the drawing of] the limbs by those you studied in the winter.

Nice to know they didn’t make models stand around in the cold.

Via Pen-Elayne, a fun, quick meme.

Put your first name, followed by “needs” into a Google search.

So:

Natalie needs …

“… a nightie” (No, can’t see the point.)
“… to use a stronger body action in her Samba & Rumba.” (Very probably.)
“…a guy with a big personality who can impresses her.” (Sounds like an egotist to me.)
“… to lighten up.” (Has been said before)
“… to hit the road.” (Well in a metaphorical sense, yes.)
“… to cut loose again!!” (Sounds good.)
“… watering if you want her to grow.” (Curious, but I suppose true – body 90 per cent water and all of that.)
“… to get back something of the “maniac”.” (Probably got enough already.)

Well, I had fun anyway …

The greater the levels of “popular religiosity” in societies, the worse their social health, as measured by indicators such as “levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases”. This is the conclusion of a study reported in the LA Times.

“Secular, rationalist approaches to problem-solving emphasize uncertainty, evidence and perpetual reevaluation. Religious faith is inherently nonrational. … historically, societies run into trouble when powerful religions become imperial and absolutist.”

I’d agree with all of those, and add too the importance of women being allowed to play their full role in society, thus increasing its numbers of productive members. (Something that every religion I know of fails to allow for.)

Which brings me to an excellent Joan Smith column in today’s Independent. Sadly it is hidden in the subscription service (here if you happen to have it). But read a paper copy if you can.

She’s arguing that if the ridiculous new planned legislation against inciting religious hatred comes in, there should be accompanying laws banning gender hatred, given the still rampant misogyny in British society. As she, bravely, suggests, that should deal with a significant number of religious texts.

I do keep thinking I should become a radical atheist – the problem is, of course, that a rational, balanced view of the world tends to make one neither a preacher nor a radical. But someone should take on religions – no, I’m not biased, I mean all religions.

On the recommendations of a commenter on my post on the glory days of the English detective novel, I’ve just read Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair (1948).

It has got a lot to recommend it, perhaps most of all its evocative portrait of a disappearing world (easy to see why this might have been popular just after the war). Its finest characterisation is of the small market town of Milford, “where invitations to dinner are still written by hand and sent through the post”.

The central character is Robert Blair, a stolid solicitor who went into the family firm, following an entirely conventional path, who is feeling the first stirrings of what we might call today a mid-life crisis.

The minor characters too are well-drawn. I particularly liked the severe office secretary.

“Miss Tuff was a war-time product; the first woman who had ever sat at a desk in a respectable solicitors’ in Milford. A whole revolution Miss Tuff was in her single gawky thin earnest person.”

Plotting too is fine; this is an interesting variation on the standard form: not a “who-dunnit”, but a “can we prove they didn’t do it”, after a mother and daughter, living alone in an isolated, large but run-down country home, are accused of kidnapping and holding a teenager in an attempt to force her to be their maid. (A new solution to the “servant problem”.) She, Robert is convinced, is simply covering up a sexual escapade, but can he prove it?

But, and it is a very big but, I found the politics of this novel impossible nasty – going further than even today’s Daily Mail would dare. The explanation for the girl’s behaviour is “bad blood”. Her mother was a wanton woman, and so, even though she was adopted at a young age and brought up with all possible advantages, is the girl. She can only be expected to lie, cheat, steal and break all society’s sexual rules.

I know, from my own family, that a fervent, nasty belief in “bad blood” was very prevalent in this era, so perhaps I should forgive this as of its time. Yet the theme is so central to the novel I’m unable to do so.

So I’m afraid I decline to include Tey in my list of “queens”, and I won’t be reading any more of her novels.

Carnivalesque No IX is up at Alun’s blog, Archaeoastronomy. And as well as the scheduled focus on the ancient and medieval worlds – which includes a rapping Chaucer (Good-bye, P. Diddy!) and Leif Ericson ‘s Powerpoint slides – this is a double bonus issue, with a Halloween section stretch well into the early modern, featuring as scary a collection of ghost, ghouls and demons as you’d want prancing across your pixels.