A Commonplace Book

So. I am listening to a performance of the Highland ballad The Bonnie House of Airlie, which is sad and moving in a George R. R. Martin sort...

When I first joined the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1975, the default tournament format was a double-elimination tournament tree bas...

I just finished Ken Macleod's Stone Canal , and enjoyed its whimsey and grandiosity. I think Macleod's political biases have led h...

The nominations for the 2014 Hugo awards include in the best novelette category, one work by the memorably odious racist sexist homophobic a...

The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was one of the great policy changes of 19th century Britain. It had the effect of lowering the incomes o...

The evening of April 26,  2014 I had my reconstruction of a medieval hoop-spread pavilion set up at Marietta Mansion i...

Thomas Picketty in his Capital in the Twenty-First Centur y seems to be arguing that if the real return on capital is greater than the real...

The recent standoff between the scofflaw deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management over the question of whether he sho...

From 1150-1350 English land returned about 10% of the purchase price each year in rent. After the plague, from 1350-1600 real returns were a...

The related chronicles of Monstrelet, Le Fèvre, and Waurin claim that the English took 1,500 or 1,600 French prisoners at Agincourt, but lik...