Halfway down the Danube

More filler, Captain!

Usually I fill in a little when Doug and Claudia are busy and there's a lull in the blog. Swollen tendons in my shoulder, no fun. Anyway.

Jim Henley covers the gridiron playoffs so I don't have to.

Two cool books read. Dark Shamans: Kanaima and the Poetics of Violent Death, by Neil Whitehead, a University of Wisconsin professor who survived an attack of assault sorcery in Amazonia: basically, poisoning, mind games, mutilation, and ultimately, ingesting the deliquescing flesh of the victim's corpse by a serial killer type. I've elided some of the details, and there's a reason for that. You can read an interview with Whitehead here.

The other is Benedict Anderson's long-awaited book on Jose Rizal, the great Filipino poet-novelist-opthalmologist-revolutionary-martyr, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. The first flag is this banner, which does need some explanation. Oh my people.

Paging through ornithologist-and-promoter-of-urban-legends Jared Diamond's Collapse (no link). Ugh. James B., you will owe me a drink. Hint to Jared: if you're going to use something as your primary source, you might want to mention if it comes to exactly the opposite conclusion as you do. Once is happenstance. Twice is sloppiness. The third time is enemy action.