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    The history of the Byzantine Empire merges with the history of the original Roman Empire which it grew out of.  But although there was never a day when the eastern half of the empire announced that it was now a different entity, the story of the Greek speaking Byzantines is radically different from

January 25, 2012

Lots of people like Ron Paul. But not generally people like me. Not many Europeans have even heard of him. The maverick Republican senator only gets microscopic coverage in the news media over here, even now when he is one of the hopefuls trying to pick up the nomination for president. I am pretty much

January 23, 2012

I am afraid I know almost nothing about this, but as this is the Internet I am not going to let that stop me. Sorry this video has been removed.  I hear a production is in progress in Illinois, so hopefully some trailer will make it onto YouTube at some point.  I have just come

January 20, 2012

The Goddess Cybele praised by Julian the Apostate (thanks to Wikipedia for the image) The author of the Hymn to Cybele, Roman emperor Julian the Apostate is a one off in history. He was the nephew of Constantine, the man that introduced Christianity to the empire. But he spent most of his adult life trying

January 11, 2012

Orwell easily opposed the Nazis as a socialist modernist, using his writing for propaganda and later warning against totalitarianism. But Tolkien and Lewis faced a dilemma: both medievalists interested in paganism and mythology—the same sources the Nazis were exploiting. This forced them to retreat into coded fantasy worlds, possibly harboring syncretist beliefs they couldn’t openly express.

January 2, 2012