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Cover of "Aquinas's Summa Theologiae and Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Early Modern Period" by Reginald M. Lynch, O.P.

Scholastic textualities in early modernity

Approaching present-day Paris from the south, the ‘rue-Saint-Jacques’ passes through the Latin quarter near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne (Paris IV) on its way to the Petit Pont bridge that crosses to Île de la Cité near Notre Dame Cathedral. For many centuries, this was the avenue of approach to the city for travelers from all points south.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

A whale of a blog

The title of this post embodies everything I despise about cheap journalism, but the temptation was too strong, because today’s topic is indeed the origin of the word whale. I was planning the story for quite some time, and then suddenly the media informed the world that a spade-toothed whale had been washed up on South Island beach (Australia).

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Abominable mysteries

One hundred twenty-five million years ago, the earth exploded with a kaleidoscope of color with the rapid evolution of flowering plants, the angiosperms. The explosion coincided with the rapid increase and diversification of bee species, the new artists of the landscapes.

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Israel, Palestine, and reflections on the post-9/11 War on Terror

How can the United States best help Israel defend itself against terrorist atrocity? Obviously, sustaining the alliance and friendship with the United States is vital for Israel and its security. Equally clearly, the scale and nature of Israeli violence in Gaza since October 2023 has placed new and great strain on the US relationship.

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Cover image of "Life in a new Language"

Ethnographic data-sharing as community building

The open science movement has fundamentally changed how we do and evaluate research. In theory, almost everyone agrees that open research is a good thing. In reality, most researchers struggle to put theory into practice.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

More gleanings and a few English sw-words

Before I come to the point, a short remark is due. Some of our readers may have noticed that two weeks ago, they did not receive Wednesday’s post. This happened because of a technical problem, but the post “Some Gleanings and the Shortest History of Bummers,” is available.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Pudding all over the world

Quite recently, the Polish linguist Kamil Stachowski has published a paper “On the Spread and Evolution of pudding” (the source is the journal Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 141, 2024, 117-137).

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Some gleanings and the shortest history of bummers

Every English dictionary with even minimal information on word origins, will tell us that lord and lady are so-called disguised compounds. Unlike skyline or doomsday (to give two random examples), lord and lady do not seem to consist of two parts. Yet a look at their oldest forms—namely, hlāf-weard and hlæf-dīge—dispels all doubts about their original status (the hyphens above are given only for convenience).

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A listener’s guide to Sand Rush [playlist]

Writing Sand Rush forced me to watch some of the worst teen movies ever produced by Hollywood— I’m never getting that one hour of my life spent watching The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) back—but the music associated with California beaches is top notch. Almost all of the songs on the Sand Rush playlist are from a very short period in time, roughly between 1961 and 1965 (not withstanding some obvious throwback songs from the 80’s, 90’s, and beyond), when the Southern California beach culture was on display everywhere, from music album covers to movies and magazine advertisements.

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Here’s Johnny––and Bette!

New York-based talk shows in the 1970s offered plentiful opportunities for quirky young talents like Bette Midler to sing a song or two and maybe kibitz with the host, regardless of whether they had a Broadway show or film or new record to promote. Midler had none of these when her manager Budd Friedman got her booked on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson not long after she began her legendary run at the Continental Baths.

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Did the Santa Barbara oil spill save our beaches?

On 28 January 1969, a blowout on a Union Oil platform six miles off the Santa Barbara coast released three million gallons of crude oil into the ocean. As the first environmental disaster captured in technicolor and publicized across national news media, the Santa Barbara oil spill played an important role in the emergence of the modern environmental movement.

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Messy, messy masculinity: The politics of eccentric men in the early United States

For every weirdo one finds while researching the past’s forgotten personalities, there are probably two or three more just a stone’s throw away whom time did not preserve. Ben Bascom (Feeling Singular: Queer Masculinities in the Early United States) assembles a collection of once neglected but now deeply curious stories that offer the underside to more popular narratives about the founding of the U.S and what it meant—and means—to be masculine.

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