James A. Benn

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health

An old time-y illustration of a Hedge mustard.

Today is Quartidi the 14th of Ventôse in the year 234.
Ventôse is the month of wind.
Today we celebrate hedge mustard. #JacobinDay

More information on hedge mustard

Entangled Territoriesདཀའ་རྙོག་ནང་གི་ཡུལ་སྡེ། - Museum of Anthropology at UBC Closed Mondays October 15 – May 15

Join upcoming events in March such as panel discussions and curator tours for Entangled Territories: Tibet Through Images, an exhibition curated by our Assoc. Prof Fuyubi Nakamura!

If you're not able to visit in-person, enjoy an online tour hosted by Dr. Nakamura.

IWM Q 559 Watering horses at No. 5 Veterinary Hospital at Abbeville, 3 March 1916. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205072053

IWM Q 560 Surgeon, helped by the AVC troops, performing an operation on horse under chloroform at No.5 Veterinary Hospital; Abbeville, 3 March 1916. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205072054

IWM Q 561 A mare and her foal look out from a makeshift tent at No. 5 Veterinary Hospital, Abbeville, 3 March 1916. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205191381

Mar 3 1916 At No. 5 Veterinary Hospital in Abbeville, France, official war photographer Ernest Brooks takes these photos of horses being taken care of, including one horse that has been given chloroform while getting an operation

#OTD in 636: The Tang Bureau of Historiography 史館 completes five dynastic or standard histories 正史 of its immediate predecessors, History of the Liang 梁書, History of the Chen 陳書, History of the Northern Qi 北齊書 and Northern Zhou 北周書, and History of the Sui 隋書.

It's #TangRestorationDay! #OTD in 705, Li Xian 李顯 (656–710), known to posterity as Zhongzong 中宗 (r. 684; 705–10), restores the Tang 唐 after the Zhou 周 interregnum of his mother, Empress-regnant Wu Zetian 武則天 (r. 690–705). #BringBackTheTang

I am entertained by the new discourse of the rapture and end times in American politics flooding social media.

It's almost like religion departments in universities have been dismissed for decades.

Buy your local Religious Studies scholar a drink and catch up

Screenshot of moon app shows full moon

Moon update:

The sky quivers, the earth quakes before me, for I am a magician, I possess magic. I have come that I may glorify Orion, that I may set Osiris at the head, that I may set the gods upon their thrones. (PTF)

religion is still not done with you

At 85, Korea's oldest college graduate this year proves it's never too late to learn - The Korea Times With a navy cap perched above her permed brown hair and a shy smile, 85-year-old Kim Jeong-ja slowly made her way up to the podium at Sookmyung Wom...

At 85, South Korea’s oldest college graduate this year proves it’s never too late to learn
Kim Jeong-ja received an associate degree in social welfare from Sookmyung Women’s University. Her 7 years of study began when she first picked up a pencil at age 78 to learn how to read and write.

The only translation I regularly consult.

This seems to be the case.

The Daodejing. Why is it **always** the Daodejing?!

Oh, wait, of course - because the DDJ is like crack for white-guy intellectuals on the hippie-to-monarchist pipeline.

Chill with the Valley Spirit, yo — and empty the people’s minds

YouTube video by APTN News Dead Ex Girlfriends bring back punk sound through nostalgic, emotionally-driven music

Some might argue punk is dead, but a band out of Treaty 6 territory begs to differ.

The Dead Ex Girlfriends are bringing back grunge and punk through nostalgia-ridden, emotionally-driven music.

APTN News spoke with the band before their Winnipeg show.

GTA students to walk out, rally in protest of Ford’s OSAP cuts this week | CBC News This week, many high school and university students across the GTA will take action by marching, walking out or rallying in protest of the Ford government’s recently-announced reductions to the Ontari...

High school students getting involved is fairly rare. This could get interesting.

Er. . .

Screenshot from NEH webpage, text reads: "Fellowships provide recipients time to conduct research or to produce books, monographs, peer-reviewed articles, e-books, born-digital materials, translations with annotations or a critical apparatus, or critical editions resulting from previous research. Projects may be at any stage of development. NEH encourages submissions from independent scholars and junior scholars. The 2026 Fellowships competition will only accept projects for research in American history and culture and Western civilization. Competitive applications must focus on topics in the history, culture, and government of the United States in any period from the Colonial Era to the present, or topics in Western civilization from antiquity to the present."

Fun update on National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships: they have to focus on "American history and culture and Western civilization." Sinologists et al. are no longer welcome.
www.neh.gov/grants/resea...
#Sinology 🀄️📚

Oil and charcoal on canvas, abstract cubist bodies piled together. Description from MOMA site: "With its varying degrees of finish—you can see traces of charcoal and sections of blank canvas—and vast network of undulating lines and geometric shapes, Picasso seems to have obscured legibility in favor of generating a rhythmic abstraction. As if questioning the ability of painting to represent war, he created a shifting, spectral vision."

Picasso's depiction of a fascist massacre, a murdered family unceremoniously tangled together under a dining table.

[Pablo Picasso, The Charnel House, 1944-45]

#OTD: Li Chen/Yi 李忱/怡 (Xuanzong 宣宗, r. 846–59) ascends the throne. 13th(?) son of Xianzong 憲宗 and uncle of the previous three emperors, he reverses the anti-Buddhist policies of Wuzong 武宗 (r.). Called 'Little Taizong' 小太宗, he is the last capable ruler of the Tang 唐.

Hans-Georg #Gadamer, #Truth and #Method (quoted after Daniel 2006: 116): 'Thus it is possible, in #humanities other than in natural #sciences, that a researcher can learn more from a book written by a #dilettante than from that by another researcher.'

Georg von Below, On historical #periodisation (#periodization) with an emphasis on the boundary between the #MiddleAges and the #modern age (1925).

Chen's two articles in HJAS were, in fact, translated. One, "Han Yü and the T'ang Novel" (HJAS 1 1936) names J.R. Ware as the translator, the other, "The Shun-tsung Shih-lu and Hsü Hsüan-kuai Lu" (HJAS 3 1938) has no named translator but a footnote that is touching in an odd way.

speaking as a someone in the daoist side of things I am equally delighted and concerned at this. Daoist texts have been translated via AI (eg the Northern Dipper Scripture deltoi.com/zh/anonymous...).

However this translation so far involved no input from daoist practitioners at all...

Chinese Text Project The world's largest digital library of pre-modern Chinese: an open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world. The site attemp...

邁入嶄新時代? ctext.org announced today that AI translations of "all texts in the pre-Qin and Han corpus that previously lacked translations, the 25 dynastic histories, as well as hundreds of other historical, literary, philosophical and poetic works" have been added today: (1/2)

Instructions : Aligned translations - Chinese Text Project

ctext.org/instructions.... Will become even harder now to convince students that it is fully worthwhile learning Classical Chinese ... (2/2)

Sign the Petition Keep the Classical Languages Major at the University of Iowa

Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.

▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 16.58%

Blanket worn #onthisday in 1940 by Seabiscuit after winning the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap and setting a new track record in front of 74,000 ecstatic spectators in Arcadia, CA. The @latimes.com called it “the most popular victory in the history of western racing.” #OTD @uclalibrary.bsky.social

Join us for the book talk by Dr. Ting Guo (Assistant Professor of Language Studies, University of Toronto) on 𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑆𝑒𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑚, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑛 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑎 (2025).

📆 Tuesday 10 March
⏰ 2:00-2:45pm
🎞️ Auditorium, Asian Centre, UBC
Registration: hksi.ubc.ca/events/event...