David Bar-David, the lemming messiah.

The precedents for, and some possible implications of, the Catalanisation of Barcelona’s cinemas. Plus some crowd-pleasing video of the Quebec language police in action. (Allez! Allez! Allez! And the hell with the economy!) All in somewhat fevered response to an article by Martin Dahms in the Tages-Anzeiger.

On this day in 1466, one Juan Sort, aged 70, was beheaded for the misappropriation of public funds. Millet is said by the auditors to have stolen around 30 million and has fessed to around 10%, but has not been anywhere near a prison, and indeed seems to think that by looking old and grey [...]

Don’t claim national origins for yourselves without very carefully considering the possible consequences.

Yo, el vaquilla, quinqui cinema, and the usual political whining.

Dead space is newish horror survival game set on board a stricken interstellar mining ship. You play an engineer fighting a polymorphic, viral infestation which turns humans into grotesque alien monsters. Reviewing it Seth Schiesel asks:
When did fear become fun?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I’ve played Dead Space, the new, delectably [...]

The Santa Majestat in Caldes de Montbui.

The excellent Mauro Baglieri writes: “The Placito Capuano or Placito di Capua is the first in a number of acts, also known as Placiti Cassinesi. They were written in early Italian between 960 and 963 A.D. : court proceedings allowing the Benedictines from four abbacies to reclaim their lands from squatters that had occupied them [...]

George Sandford has left a fascinating comment on this post, which deals with an amusing 19th century literary-historical hoax–purported correspondence between Ferdinand the Catholic and an esoteric global selection of fellow-monarchs.
George is family of the alleged editor, Brother Antonio the Goth, and thus of the Christian clan kidnapped by the Moors when they invaded [...]

Expedición de Catalanes y Aragoneses al Oriente:
Fué batalla muy terrible y sangrienta, y duró mas el alcance y el matar, que el vencimiento; porque en siendo muerto el Duque, y empantanadas las primeras tropas de la caballería, hubo gran desorden en lo restante del exército enemigo, con que fué facil el rompelle. Ganada tan señalada [...]

Dido and Hengist are remembered as early heroes of isoperimetry for having solved the challenge of maximising the area of a land grant made to them by stringing together strips of oxhide and using the resulting closed superthong to trace, respectively, a semi-circle at Carthage and a full circle at Kaercorrei.
What was news to [...]

Manuel Capdevila occasionally comments here but now has his own blog, Revised Catalonia History, whose goal is to remedy what he believes is the deliberate obfuscation of the Glorious History of the Catalan Nation and its Contribution to Civilisation and create a correct, Catalan-centric view.
One of his early claims is that the English paper [...]

Guy of Warwick is the original of the soldier-saint Guillem de Varoic in Tirant lo blanc, as Wikipedia surely soon will say. I almost drowned near where he fought the giant Colbrand as a consequence of too much water without and cider within. I hope Xavi will be wary of him.

I rather like the idea of going up the M6 one day and finding an elephant where Manchester used to be.

Apparently the four corners of a square reel used in this Huesca village in hemp yarn production represent four horses bound for France. I wonder which horses these were: those that awaited the Duke of Calabria, when he sought with three others to flee the court of King Ferdinand of Aragon, or others? (If folksy [...]

Given the spectacular contribution of Iberian merchants to the spice trade, why is it that none of my local friends will go anywhere near a lamb vindaloo?

Andrew Scull digs up and burns Foucault in the TLS:
Foucault’s account of the medieval period fares no better in the light of modern scholarship. Its central image is of “the ship of fools”, laden with its cargo of mad souls in search of their reason, floating down the liminal spaces of feudal Europe. It is [...]

Interesting bit in a NYT review of David Crystal’s The Fight For English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left (buy: USA/UK) (via Conversational Reading):
Crystal is … especially good on the Middle Ages. When printing came to Britain in 1400, English was a merry old mess. Choices had to be made, he says, and typesetters [...]

Here’s why I had a bugger of a time trying to imitate with compass, ruler and pencil the more complex designs I dug up after my first trip into parts Islamic. And it’s got a name that’s new to me and a whole host of experts, it has. (Via Stefan Geens, and do read the [...]

Look more like subtitles to me, some of em. (Via Unze Toal)