I researched a paper, and it's published.

It's called Ziusudra and the Conquering Refugee Nation. This is an in-depth look into prehistory, looking at the post-Ice Age floods, whether the Biblical character Noah really reals and how, the fate of the Neanderthals, and the origins of settler-colonialism. And just for good measure, I threw in some original etymological analysis, as one does. It's the first historical essay I've written since I gave up the ghost on my thesis, so I hope you'll check it out.

Google, get your shit together.

Just spent like ten minutes trying to make Google sign me in with the account I actually use instead of the random account Viaero gave me for my phone. Should not have been this hard.

I'm at a show at the Broker, it's all right but I'm rocking beyond nowhere near enough reality right now. I'm trying to think of some way to be productive since I'm far too sober ATM, but this was the closest thing that came to mind.

I've played a lot of chess tonight, trying out Hikaru Nakamura's hyperdefensive strategy as white and the Sicilian Defense as black. I'm getting good at the former, but I get the impression that the Sicilian is hard to play well. My ranking for live chess has improved though... I'm about 1000-1100, only about 100 points below my non-live ranking.

What else... I've been sick since Labor Day. Wouldn't be out tonight except that my friends and I made plans. This is also why I haven't done a comic in three weeks. Well, that and the thesis.

That's coming along swimmingly, though. I made my first map for the thesis this week; just a map of central Asia before Genghis Khan started breaking shit. My advisor says it's pretty good. I've seen the fairly simplistic maps that predominate the field of Mongol studies; putting out something that's got more information while being prettier and easier to read shouldn't be hard. The background in art and geography is helping me a lot. I'll try to provide a pic for the net here soon.

Speaking of random stuff helping out, it turns out Draya spent her childhood riding a Mongolian horse, which is important because they are different from other warhorses. Not as strong or fast, but they can endure twice as much. Mongol strategy often involved pretending to run away and tiring the enemy cavalry out, and then attacking. Mongol horses aren't very common on this continent, so knowing someone who grew up handling one (and dating her, no less) is incredibly lucky.

Apparently one of Draya's relatives is a translator over in Mongolia, to boot. Which gives me heart about this degree, especially if I go on for the Ph.D. Even if I don't teach, I can almost certainly travel abroad and earn a living translating stuff. My Russian skills will help with that too, as they're next door. If I can somehow learn Chinese, I'd be set.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Now that I, well, have an app for this, I may post more often.

Scottish independence.

My ancestral homeland is debating independence. Here's a Scottish-American historian's take on the whole thing.

The eve of two great independence referendums are upon the British. There is the referendum of Scottish independence, set for September 2014; and there is the as-yet-undetermined referendum on European Union membership promised by Prime Minister David Cameron in the event of a Conservative majority after the 2015 elections. Both promise to dramatically remake the body politic of the United Kingdom.

For the layman, a couple basic premises need to be established. First off, the United Kingdom is scarcely older than the United States, having been born of a union of England and Scotland in 1707. Its chief purpose for England seems to have been the facilitation of the pre-existing worldwide English Empire, and for Scotland the creation by proxy of a Scottish Empire that failed to take hold in the jungles of Darien. It should be added that Scotland was bribed and cajoled into the Union; the English actively opposed the Darien scheme and stood by as Scots, fellow-subjects of their King, were harried and killed by the Spanish. In an era where overseas empire was the only guarantee of safety in Europe, England made Union the only way to empire for the Scottish.

The Legacy of the Region 23 Complex and Wellnitz Fires.

A full day of my life later, not counting the interview times.

Thanks for everyone who helped out, one way or another!

How I Mine For Craft: The al-Ramadi Mosque and Mokattam Gardens

Welcome back! Last time, we saw the start of an Egyptian city, with ancient and medieval Egyptian characteristics.

Well, there's more.

Starting at the entrance to the bazaar and port under Mokattam Mountain, we will explore the al-Ramadi Mosque and Mokattam Gardens.

How I Mine For Craft?

I've taken up Minecraft.

I actually took up Minecraft a while back, but getting it on my laptop on Thursday night has guaranteed that my academic career is going to be sufficiently imperilled. So I might as well show you guys what's destroying my free time now!

Back when I was living with Caveman, I tried create this huge underground version of ancient Babylon, complete with artificial sunrise and everything. Making the cavern was really time-consuming, though, so I decided to not start there. Instead, I started in a desert area near a river, so I decided I was gonna rock ancient and medieval Egypt. (I say medieval because I wanna make bazaars and the Hanging Church and such.) It's not gonna be a literal copy; I'm not going to recreate the world map and such because that would be a bitch. But I'm going to make civilizations appropriate to each biome I come across, and I'm starting in Egypt.

Anyway, pics!

We're starting on the Wannabe Nile, looking at large statues of nondescript pharaohs carved into the side of a mountain. They each bear the crook and staff, symbols of royal Egyptian power, and they both have those pharaoh goatees going on.

Moments Like These Make Facebook Kinda Worth It

The last post wasn't able to post because she blocked me after that. ^_^

Ancient Levantine ancestor worship, African masks, and the origins of drama and modern Judaism.

It's nothing like you'd imagine.

Of course, whoever made these masks were not Jews; "Jews" didn't exist yet, and wouldn't for thousands of years. But it's probably appropriate to consider that the religious society that made these masks were a part of the greater religious climate of the Middle East at that time.

In those days, the Middle East was the center of the world. Civilization started there; the package of crops and domesticated animals that would conquer the world was freshly put together there at that time and place, as wheat had just been deliberately cultivated a few thousand years ago and people started living in villages, towns and then cities. It was also not a desert: most of the Middle East was forested at that time, at least the parts near sources of water, and it hadn't succumbed to the human-led processes of deforestation and desertification yet.

An Academic Journey to a New World - Part II.

While writing that last post, I was casting about for some kind of image. I take it as a point of pride that I can usually find some manner of appropriate image for most of the posts I do. While I ended up settling on that drawing of Carthage I made (it's hanging in my bedroom to this day), my first thought was to post an image of one of those Carthaginian coins with the map of the world under it that was cited in the paper.

I found the website of the guy that postulates this particular theory well enough, but what I couldn't find was a clear image of the full coin. (That guy, Dr. Mark McMenamin, isn't even a historian as it turns out, but a geologist... so he's not speaking in his area of expertise.) Anyway, I saw the coin to your left, and I saw a detailed image with a section of a that coin that looked really detailed as well as an artist's rendering of that coin, but I haven't been able to find any other instances of the coin on the internet.

However, doing a search for Carthaginian coins wasn't fruitless. These are some examples of what I found, after the jump:

An Academic Journey to a New World - Part I.

When I was an undergraduate student, I took a class called "History of the American Indian." It was taught by Dr. Hyer, who at the time was Chadron State's newest history professor, and nowadays is Dean of the School of BEAMSS here.

Back in those days, the history faculty's approach to homework was mostly no-nonsense. You did a paper, and two tests. Depending on the professor, you might have a couple other minor projects or homework besides that. I like that philosophy - it doesn't waste anyone's time, and at the end of it all, if you paid attention and did your work you had something pretty impressive you could show people. (Which is what I'll be doing shortly.)

I have my own approach to homework - I don't want to bore my professors. In my World War II class, I wrote my term paper on Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" because I was pretty sure Dr. Rankin had read a million papers about Hitler and the Holocaust and the Battle of Stalingrad already. There was nothing I could say on that score that hadn't already been said by someone a whole lot smarter than me.

But I could do unique, so I did. In this case, I chose to examine pre-Columbian contacts between the Old and New Worlds. Dr. Hyer suggested I limit my inquiries to only one possible pre-Columbian Old World society, so I chose what seemed the likeliest unproven candidate: the Phoenicians/Carthaginians.

This is something I'd read up on a bit. I'd always been an avid fan of Phoenician/Carthaginian history. When I was a little kid, I learned the Phoenician alphabet - it was probably my first act as a linguist. When I was in high school, I did a presentation on the Battle of Cannae, still studied in military colleges and considered one of the most brilliant military victories of all time. Also in high school, I drew that picture up top; it was supposed to be a representation of Carthage. I drew it from written descriptions and not pictures or maps; it has the Bursa and the two harbors connected by canal, and a statue of Dido.

Point is, I knew a lot about the subject. And I was fairly familiar with the arguments advanced in favor of Phoenician contact with the New World.

I am reposting my paper for that class, so you can all see what I wrote back then. It's after the jump.

HIstory Harvest Ad Final Take And This Time I Mean It.

After three different recording sessions, this is what we've finally got to broadcast. You'll hear it on the Alleycat and maybe some other stations if we get lucky.

Human Sacrifice to the Gods.

(WARNING: the pictures and text below get fairly graphic.)

A few months ago, my friend Tom made a post comparing the modern neoliberal system to the Aztec system of ritual human sacrifice. I don't know why, but last night I had a dream about it. It was troubling, and I couldn't sleep past 7:00 AM on a weekend when normally I sleep in 'til noon. I've been up since then, writing and drawing what comes below.

1. I dreamed I was a Tlaxcalan warrior. We fought against the Aztec Empire, and were defeated.

We were marched to Tenochtitlan, where their priests did worship to the gods. Sweet-smelling smoke billowed from the altars atop the great temples.

We will be sacrificed, and our bodies fed to Huitzilopochtli in the spirit world so that the end of the earth will be delayed. The people cheer, for they will taste our bodies in this world, and they hunger for it - they need the meat we will provide. We are foreigners to them, and defeated in battle. It is right and just that this should happen to us.

Brought him home.

Pete Seeger's dead.

He lived a great life, dying at the ripe age of 94. He committed the greatest "sin" an American ever could - being a Communist during the Cold War - and nevertheless founded folk rock and dedicated it to the antiwar movement. He was a strongly ethical person, dedicated to democracy in its most practical sense - every concert he played was one big singalong, and he fought inequality everywhere he saw it - and he finally got the recognition he deserved.

Chadron's got a relatively huge folk scene, given the population, and pretty much nothing that gets played in that would have been possible without Pete Seeger's life and work. With Pete Seeger, there's no Bob Dylan; no Kingston Trio; no Peter, Paul and Mary.

So today, I'll be listening to this song:



And this song:



And this song:



And especially this song that I was singing with some grandmothers as we marched to Student Center last week:



Rest in peace, Pete Seeger.

Real progress on homelessness, from the last damn people you'd expect.

I've tried not to be too political on this blog. Couldn't really avoid it with the government shutdown, but all my previous blogs were mainly political, and I wanted to break away from that. But this issue is near and dear to my heart; I've seen homelessness up close and personal. Some of the closest people to me were homeless once, and the general hatred and indifference of society to their plight fills me with sadness and rage all at once, so I decided to post about it.

Anyway.

Utah is the reddest state in the nation. Redder than Texas. Redder even than Nebraska or Oklahoma. It is more Republican than a white guy in a Duck Dynasty shirt taking off his gun holster to have sex with his wife on a bed made of money. Utah is so Republican that Mexicans not only don't want to immigrate there, but insisted we take it with us along with Texas and California. Utah is more Republican than saying hi to a cop on your way to a stockholders' meeting. Utah is more Republican than Sarah Palin saying anything.

Point is, you would not expect Utah to be the first state to solve homelessness. And yet.

MLK Day 'n' such.

I took part in the MLK march this year.

It's an annual thing that happens every year on MLK Day. A bunch of students and professors gather at Common Cents and then march down Main Street. The po-po show blocks off the street and escorts the marchers. Some dude with a truck blasts an MLK speech out of hugeass speakers at the head of the march, and people are given signs with quotes from the civil rights movement to hold.

I've never partaken before this year, and this year I showed up because one of my professors asked. I'm certainly not against the idea; it just seems, well, strictly educational. People take part in it to learn a tiny bit of what it would've been like back then, to assert their liberal bona-fides. And that's fine, as far as that goes - with all the oppressive anti-civil-rights shit that's transpired lately, we can't educate people about the importance of civil rights enough - but it's not an actual protest, y'know?

I was tempted to show up with a sign that read "VOTER ID = JIM CROW" but I'm glad I didn't - as soon as I showed up, my impressions
were confirmed. This isn't an actual protest, it's street theater. But even as street theater, it was all right.

First off, it's an event where you get a whole bunch of people of every race and background marching in support of civil rights in a very red area. That's better than nothing. As we marched, people got out of their houses to watch us, and there were photographers on hand.

Which brings me to the next thing - one of the dudes ahead of me was holding a sign made of wood. It was a pretty big sign. It was therefore pretty heavy, and in the ridiculous wind we had today, it was unwieldy too. I offered to help him hold it after one of his friends helped for a bit and then gave up. And together, we marched it from about Sixth Street to the Student Center. The pic is of us holding it against a strong wind.

A picture I saw on /b/...

At first blush, it's pretty disrespectful; making duckface at the Vietnam Memorial?

But look at it a bit longer, and it kinda sums up the differences between the generation before mine and the generation after it. Some of those names on that wall weren't much older than her. They were compelled by their government to fight and die half the world away. She's... well, not.

Which means, in a sense, that the world has become a better place, I think. An inevitable aspect of better circumstances is a lack of understanding of the worse circumstances that preceded it. This is why the older generation is always like "Well in my day, we didn't have X, Y and Z..." and the younger generation blows them off. The young don't understand (unless they're in a job like mine, or at least paid attention in history class) and the old are frustrated that their sacrifices have created spoiled brats that can't relate to them. It's mutual incomprehensibility... a generation gap.

It's always been thus, and always shall it ever be. The girl in the photo will probably grow up and have children, and they'll have children, and maybe one day her grandkids will do whatever childish fad is popular at the feet of the Afghan War Memorial, a war where she remembers some of her friends' friends died, and she'll be on the other side. But I can't hate her; what she does is probably out of blithe ignorance, not malice or unconcern.

Stu Plays Civ: 1312 AD - 1776 AD

(This is the final post in a series of posts about a Civ IV file wherein I tried to recreate the British Empire. The previous posts can be viewed here, here, here and here.


The Chronicles of the Kings of Britain, Part V

From the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of the British Empire (1534-1603 AD)

The British Empire had been at peace for over two hundred years when we were placed upon the throne. They were quiet years, spent developing the economies of the colonies, pacifying India, and slowly absorbing Australia through diplomacy. The Chinese colony of Tianjin in Australia was sold to the House of Lancaster for money to use against the Mongolians. The Spanish gave the realm Colonia Australia del Sur upon the marriage of our predecessor Mary and Philip I of Spain. The only remaining foreign colonies in Australia were the Arabian and Malian colonies, which we continue to offer to purchase from the current owners.

However, this peace masked tensions. The liberal democratic order, though invented by the British, was perfected abroad. As of late, the groanings of the British people grew louder and louder. The Liberal-aligned House of York and the Conservative-aligned House of Lancaster kept fighting it out for control of Parliament and therefore the succession. The Yorkists appealed to the people, promising to reform the peerages, weaken the House of Lords and abolish the property qualification for voting that our ancestors had used to restrict the franchise to the rich. The Lancastrians appealed to the gentry and the rich, often resorting to tricks like rotten boroughs. Their Parliaments were Parliaments of money, and they maintained the stagnant social order. It could have been worse, though - for all their politicking, it's not like the Yorks and Lancasters ever did battle, after all.

The final victors of that long period of electoral struggle were our ancestors, the Tudors - a minor faction of the Lancasters settled on as compromise candidates. The first Tudors extended the franchise to the middle classes, the burghers that were now scattered and prosperous throughout the Empire. However, that act led to widespread and enduring support of those same burghers for the Tories, which the Tudors were associated with.

Stu Plays Civ: Britain, 1067 AD - 1311 AD.

(This is the latest in a series of posts about a Civ IV file wherein I'm trying to recreate the British Empire. Previous posts can be seen here, here and here. Anyway, without any further ado...

The Chronicles of the Kings of Britain, Part IV

From the reign of King William I of the British Empire (1066 AD - 1117 AD)

The death of King Edward II, the Confessor, brought a brief succession crisis. Brittany, an independent duchy on the Continental side of the English Channel, has long been an ally of the British Crown, and then it came under the personal union of Edward II in 1047 AD. The personal union ended when he made us, his nephew, Duke of Brittany.

Brittany had originally been founded with the fall of Roman Gaul. As the Franks poured into the territory, so did the British from Cornwall. King Malcolm's War, which raged from 325-355 AD, saw the expansion of Breton territory all the way to Champagne. Norsemen were hired to fight the Franks, and promised lands and fiefs of their own out of the conquered lands. Our ancestors were those Norsemen who conquered Normandy.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

My buddy Nate and I have been living parallel lives in reverse ever since July 2011. We've both noted this phenomenon, and with my move, the chapter has finally closed.

July 2011: I arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado on a Greyhound. After hanging out with a friend for the night, he picks me up and we hang out with his brother for a few days at a Rennfaire, and then go to Chadron, where I have a job offer with Wreckers as security for Fur Trade Days.

I'm functionally homeless for two weeks as I take out loans to get a house that I'll share with Nate. I'm crashing on his couch, or when he's got family visiting, in his backyard. His parents are nice and I do a lot of cooking to sort of earn my keep until the stuff I mailed from Portland to myself arrives and we can get a house.

In short order, we do get a house. Technically one-bedroom, the basement can easily serve as a second bedroom. We'll eventually make the mud room (think a garage that you can't park a car in) into a third bedroom. I get the actual bedroom, Nate takes the basement. We don't know this yet, but it will be infested with wasps in short order. We will have a "Bug Board" keeping a running tally of bugs slain by each of us; at last count he was leading 127 to 6.

Nate gets a car. The first time I moved to Chadron, it was for a girl. Her parents still like me, and her dad works at one of the dealerships, and he hooks Nate up with an excellent 2001 Buick with all the stuff for $1800. We have a house, we have wheels. I need a job. He's got a job cooking at the nursing home.

Mr. Lincoln, tear down this peculiar institution.

Sevenscore and ten years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new birth of freedom, conceived in civil war, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great contest with the descendants of traitors, testing whether this freedom, or any freedom so conceived, can long endure. We are met on a day of remembrance, when the dead of Gettysburg were buried by a President who would be buried a few short years thereafter by a bullet fired against civil rights. These were not the last martyrs of freedom; the dead of Selma, of Birmingham, of every lynching and riot lie in hallowed repose with them, dead so that the great hope of our Constitution might live - our Constitution, a beautiful, bittersweet promise so long unfulfilled, but brought into the full light of glorious day by a long-suffering but unconquered people in the name of another martyred President.

We cannot hallow their graves, or sanctify their deaths, any more than their own actions have consecrated them. It is for us the living, instead, to dedicate ourselves to the struggle which they have so nobly advanced. It is ours to take from their last full measure of devotion the inspiration to stand guard around the tomb freedom's enemies have prepared it, and give it space to be born anew, phoenix-like - that all may be free from need and privation, that the riches of our continent may not be plundered and poisoned for the few, and that government by the people, for the people, and of the people shall not perish from the earth.