Not many people will be as excited about this as I am, but I just found out that the local Unitarian Universalist Church has a lecture about “Muscular Christianity and the English boarding school system” on Sunday July 14th. I am so there. I know I have a lot of historian and/or textile-inclined friends, so I was wondering if anyone has ever heard the word “stitch” used to mean “stitched textile goods”, in contexts like, “The importance of stitch during World War II…”? I ask because it keeps being used that way in the book I’m reading: “Stitching for Victory” by Suzanne Griffith. I thought I read a fair bit of textile history and I’ve never encountered this usage before. Is it just this author’s idiosyncracy, or am Continue reading → Yarn Bombing & Its Discontents – Why do we respond so differently to paint on walls and wool on trees? I think this is the most thoughtful piece I’ve read about yarn bombing so far. Big data is our generation’s civil rights issue, and we don’t know it – They can guess your race or gender based on your taste in music, then use it to set your credit limit or your insurance premiums. This could be a problem. » The Amazons of Edwardian London: Continue reading → Cities and Citizenship: Anti-Graffiti, Part 1: Aesthetics – An interesting take on the aesthetics of the anti-graffiti movement, and how it often co-opts graffiti to its own ends. Lots of interesting example pics from Sydney. Revising The Revisionists – Excellent article about the 1898 armed coup and massacre of black residents of Wilmington, North Carolina. Reminds me of the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me”, and of course Australia’s own “history wars”. The Strongest Woman In America Lives In Poverty – This top weightlifter, on Continue reading → Me, elsewhere: this is a crosspost of something I wrote for the Australian feminist blog Hoyden About Town. If you’re interested in comments, you should check there as well as here. About a week ago, the ABC aired Utopia Girls: How Women Won the Vote, a documentary about women’s suffrage in Australia. I’d seen a few positive mentions on Twitter and Facebook, so this afternoon I went and hunted it down on iView and watched it. The documentary opens with the narrator, Dr. Clare Wright, Continue reading → Continue reading → How Headphones Changed the World – “A short philosophical history of personal music”, at The Atlantic Amanda Palmer And Steve Albini On ‘Piracy’: It Only Helps Musicians – Surprise! (NB: not actually surprising) Steve Albini “rejects the term piracy” and thinks sharing music for free helps musicians, especially those who tour and play lots of live gigs. BTW, if you’ve never read Steve’s rant about where money goes when you sign with a major label (linked from this article) then you definitely should. A respose Continue reading → Plan a Trip Through History With ORBIS, a Google Maps for Ancient Rome – How come it took three weeks for me to hear about this mapping hack to help you understand travel routes and expenses in Ancient Rome? Maps, history, digital humanities — what’s not to love? I only wish this existed for other time periods. Imagine how useful it would be for people writing historical fiction! Criminal Creativity: Untangling Cover Song Licensing on YouTube – A few interesting things here, including the little-known Continue reading → Ravelry API – Wait, what? How did I miss this. Ravelry has an API now, and they’ve been using it internally since Feb 2012, so it isn’t just an unloved add-on. (You probably can’t follow the link, which is to the Rav API forum, unless you’re a member. But anyone who might be interested in this probably is already, so…) Our real first gay president – Newsweek says Obama’s the US’s “first gay president”, ignoring James Buchanan, who was openly gay in the 19th century. Continue reading → It’s about time we went beyond “hey, knitting patterns are kind of like code” and looked more deeply at the kinds of technical skills that really make knitting like programming. Continue reading → Mitt Romney, Bully In Chief? – s.e. smith brings a solid analysis of Mitt Romney’s school “pranks” (read: homophobic bullying) and what it could mean for his possible presidency. Chumbawamba – The Diggers’ Song – YouTube – Who knew that Chumbawumba had recorded an album of songs of political rebellion from 1381-1914? Not me for sure. This is their rendition of “The Digger’s Song”, a 17th century song by the same group that Billy Bragg sings about in “The World Turned Upside Down”. MOTU 4pre Continue reading →