Links - 3rd April 2020 (1)

Sara Cockerill & Dan Jones On Eleanor of Aquitaine | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "She descends from a saint. She's got a wonderful roster of really feisty ladies who were her ancestresses. But the really dominant figure that one tends to think about is her grandfather, William the Troubadour. He was the first troubadour poet, which was a quite remarkable thing from somebody who was a Duke. He developed this, this sort of, partially rather sexual but later on rather romantic form of poetry, which he had got slightly from other regions, slightly from when he was on crusade, possibly with Spanish influences, and also with influences from the northern chansons to guess, but he then parlayed that into a distinctively Southern form of poetry and music...
[On Henry II] ‘As time wears on, the amount of power Eleanor has given seems to slide away. Quite what brings that about, whether it is clashes about the way they run the Empire, whether it's clashes about Beckett, or whether it's matters as simple as on occasions when Eleanor is left in charge of an area, there's a need for military action, and she has difficulty persuading people to act when she wants them to. Persuading her, the male barons to act as her command and Henry needs to come. Who knows which of these it is? But over time, Henry takes back more power. Just to see what to do with his sons.’
‘I mean, I was going to say, I mean this is sort of Henry all over it, isn't it? Is there anybody in his life ever that he doesn't end up falling out with at some point?’
‘His mother’"

Christmas 2019 History Quiz | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "How many dishes are there in the traditional Ukrainian Christmas dinner? The answer was a 12. There are 12 dishes in the traditional Ukrainian Christmas dinner, served as supper on Christmas Eve, each dish being dedicated to one of Christ's apostles.
Question number three, which of these is a traditional South African food? The answer was a Emperor Moth caterpillars. South Africa is home to some of the world's most unusual holiday food fare. Every December locals feast on a seasonal delicacy, the deep fried caterpillars of Emperor moths…
In 15th century Germany, you could be arrested for making what at any time other than Christmas? The answer was C. Gingerbread. In 15th century Germany, gingerbread making was such a serious undertaking that you had to be a member of a gingerbread guild to make it. The only exemptions were for personal use at Christmas and Easter...
For which festival Is it most likely to snow? The answer is B, Easter. According to the Met Office, it is more likely to snow at Easter than at Christmas. Between 1981 and 2010, December averaged 3.9 days of snow, but March had 4.2. Statistics show the earlier Easter falls, the higher the chance of snow. Easters where falling sleet or snow has been recorded at a large number of weather stations include most recently 2008 and 2013... London has had only three official white Christmases since 1975. Whereas Edinburgh has had eight…
What traditionally did you have to do in Greece after kissing someone under the mistletoe? The answer is B, marry them. A kiss under the mistletoe was considered a promise of marriage in Greek culture"

A Curious History Of Christmas | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘We found a sort of collection of Victorian Christmas cards that were actually really spiteful. The Victorian Christmas card was was commercially first produced in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole... there are some scrapbooks that survive in a museum in the Midlands that have a collection of the most weird sinister looking Christmas cards you've ever come across. Including, is our friend the Robin, including an image of a dead Robin, a child boiled in a teapot, a clown sneaking up on a policeman in order to assault him. It's kind of like a sort of Banksy Victorian Christmas card. A very-’
‘Is it along the red hot poker, he’s just jabbing him in the bum with a poker?’
‘He looks like he's going to attack him, yeah’
‘A grizzly looking snowman and a frog walking away with a dagger in his hand having stabbed another frog in the heart’
‘And stolen his wallet’
‘I mean the dead robin one's fascinating. It's a, it is a dead robin and there's nothing else right in the middle of a cream coloured card, the robin is flat on its back, winged out slightly, little robiny feet you know, raised up and it's motionless and it is an ex-robin. And at the bottom of the card,  it just says may yours be a joyful Christmas. Unlike this poor robin, I'm assuming’..
‘Christmas is as much about violence and rioting, back to our subversion, as much about violence and rioting as it is with sharing and caring. It is well known that Oliver Cronwell and his Puritans sought to abolish Christmas which they saw as a Popish superstition. They passed an ordinance by Parliament in June 1647, which threatened punishment to anyone who celebrated this festival. Now, as you can imagine, the ban didn't go down very well in all quarters. And in December 1647, many of the citizens of Canterbury defined it, taking to the streets to riot, and this is described in a pamphlet called Canterbury's Christmas, or a True Relation of the Insurrection in Canterbury on Christmas Last, and it describes how shops that stayed open on this holy day were ransacked, the mayor, aldermen and constables attacked. And the sheriff knocked down, his head fearfully broke. It was God's mercies his brains were not beat out’...
‘People getting stressed, people getting drunk, that happens quite a lot on Christmas Day and if your family ends up having a bit of a row by the end of the day, just have the reassurance that you're not alone and it's been happening for years and years and years’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dharshini David - "‘You've led the way with initiatives to tackle diversity, inclusion, harassment. Is the work done?’
‘Gosh, no, but we are definitely on the road towards it. The thing with diversity and inclusion, that people always think that somebody can come along and fix it for you. That it's about including everybody. So that definition shifts and changes all the time. I spend a lot of time with other CEOs of other organizations, and chairs of other organizations, and we are programmed as CEOs, as leaders to see a problem, identify the problems and fix it'"
This is an admission that the 'problem' will never be solved. So much for the 'myth' of the slippery slope

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘I should point that you actually take your research quite seriously. Don't you went out and rode for a while as a Deliveroo rider to see what it really was like’...
‘Much as I love my job, my job is to ultimately be a professional talker. And sometimes I have to talk even though people aren't listening, to actually go out and give a person a burger when they're hungover is really very rewarding’"

Honey, I Grew the Economy (Ep. 399) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "PHELPS: There was a question about, “Did you think that it’s important for your children to be obedient?” And it turns out that the countries where families prize obedient children, those countries are low in innovation. I love that result."

Episode 144: Chinese Calligraphy with Derek Zhang — The Art History Babes - "‘It might be a advantage for you. The reason being, you know people who know, who speak Chinese, who know Chinese characters, they would be distracted by the function, by the meaning, by the content of the calligraphy and not be able to fully embrace the visual aesthetics of this visual material in front of you. But you not knowing how to read it actually can take the advantage of not knowing’
‘We can appreciate the form and the design because we aren't trying to understand what it's saying.’...
[On calligraphy on paintings] There are three art forms... major art forms in Chinese and they, they rank as such right? Poetry,  Chinese calligraphy or the way of writing character. And then this painting. So painting is actually ranked the lowest."

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, The despair over India's failure to confront sexual violence. Why are the victims blamed? - "In Haiti, music, politics and protest often intertwine. It was a voodoo ceremony, the beating of drums and the blowing of conch shells that triggered the revolution of 1791 to 1804 when Haitians won their freedom from the French and founded the world's first Black Republic"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, The despair over India's failure to confront sexual violence. Why are the victims blamed? - "Academic conferences can be pretty dry affairs. But, there's an edge to this one... [the] World Science Forum... Usually events like these, to be frank, are yawnfests, albeit with fancy canapes. But this is Budapest, home to one of the most right wing governments in Europe, and university staff in the city have been protesting increasingly anti liberal policies and interference in their academic freedom. The illustrious guests, I find, do their best to avoid politics. Nobody wants to say the wrong thing to offend their hosts. But it's not easy when whether the irony is intentional or not, the theme of this year's conference happens to be ethics and responsibility. The elephant in the room is this. A year ago Prime Minister Viktor Orban placed a ban on a small academic field called gender studies. Just on gender studies, nothing else. Why? Why did his government pick on such a niche discipline? The answer lies in what gender studies represents. Gender scholars, most of them women, examine expressions of cultural gender norms, society's understanding of masculinity, femininity and sexuality. But here in Hungary, it's seen by those in power as an ideology, pushed by liberal progressives in the West, who talk about things like gender as a spectrum, transgender rights, gay marriage. For Orban, along with his allies in Russia and Poland, this is a threat to their central belief, rooted in Christianity that men are men and women are women. They see gender studies as an intellectual font of moral decline. The Prime Minister's actions haven't gone down well on the global stage. There's been widespread criticism. But at the conference you would never know. Only in the back rooms and corridors do I encounter whispered anger and fear... In practice, she admits, the ban won’t effect more than 50 or so students, but it has symbolic significance. Despite the protests, the truth is that public sympathy lies more with Viktor Orban than it does with the academics. Many women support their prime minister. Before the end of communist rule, women in Eastern Europe were encouraged, even forced, to work just like men. So for some, the fall of the Iron Curtain was a liberation from the yoke of labor. Women were finally free, to be housewives. Today, many Hungarians still embrace traditional gender roles, particularly in rural areas. Strengthening the family has become a priority for this government. In February, it announced that women having four or more children would never have to pay income tax. Low interest loans were offered to women who got married under the age of 40, leading to a surge in weddings this year. Traveling around Hungary, you see posters of happy couples plastered on state sponsored billboards extolling the joys of family life. But family, in this case, is one man, one woman and as many Hungarian babies as possible to boost the native stock. The message: procreation, not immigration, is the answer to the country's declining population and brain drain. The chill this has sent down the spines of Hungarian scholars is palpable on the fringes of the conference. Though the conversation is polite, a storm is raging. During a stolen moment in a quiet corridor, Attila Harvash, an economics researcher, tells me that the clampdown on gender studies is just the start. He implores me to listen with a look of pure despair. Today it's gender studies. What will it be tomorrow?"
I remember when the headlines first came out, some people were calling it fake news.

Did Hungary Really Just Ban Gender Studies? - "Hungary is not banning gender studies at all... In reality, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban did sign a decree about gender studies. Effective October 13th, the government did remove federal funding and revoked approval for the master’s program. As such, students admittedly cannot currently sign up to take the program with federal funding.However, they did not in any way address anything related to undergraduate gender studies. Moreover, the university insisted it will still teach the program to give both MA and Ph.D. degrees.Further still, the decree did nothing to address gender studies in private schools and universities. There is a clear distinction between a ban and a removal of funding; the latter does not criminalize the act in question. Hungary, clearly, did not make it illegal for someone to practice gender studies. They furthermore will not be giving anyone a punishment for doing so. A lack of funding is not punishment; it is an inaction, not a negative action.So, the claim, which Fox News, Independent, and many other organizations made, is false. Though the Hungarian government took away federal funding and support for gender studies, they did not do anything to prohibit its practice."
CNN confirms this (and notes that the programs are continuing and one is still accredited by the US). I find it weird that withdrawing accreditation and funding from a course is somehow banning it. Apparently taxpayers need to support everything. Yet when it comes to something liberals dislike (Singapore's modern fairytales), government money is somehow taken as endorsement (and that's not even a university program)

MW17 – The Global Middle Ages with Stephen Morillo | The History Network - "‘I hate the term early modern, but I won't go again on that hobbyhorse here. But yeah, I think anything before industrialization is playing by essentially the same rule set. And therefore, comparisons of medieval, classical, ancient, what I call late agrarian, which most people call early modern, that is the period of 1500 to 1800, all sort of fall under the same rule set and any sorts of comparisons you can do within those periods should work at some level’
‘You’re most well known for the doing these kind of comparisons, is the knight against the samurai, and that's often kind of interesting and there's obviously the History Channel kind of version of it, but you look at something a little more deeper'…
'I did that partly with a study of the differences in warrior suicide in Europe in Japan in the 12th century, where it's a phenomenon simply unknown in Europe in the 12th century. Knights simply did not kill themselves, at least overtly. They might lead an suicidal charge into an overpowerful enemy. But motivations there get very complicated. Whereas in Japan, that was the beginning of what I call a culture of death in which suicide played a fairly central role and interestingly I think one of the uses of suicide was that making kills in Japanese warfare brought you prestige based partly on the the prestige of the victim. So that suicide was a way both of depriving your enemies of the prestige of killing you and in the certain odd sense, you've got the prestige of killing yourself… which only works in a system that's organized according to clans instead of lineages which is the cultures of death are always embedded in other sorts of social, economic, political constructs'"