Let’s take history back from the historians. This is the message of History for All by Hashtag History. Now, I’ve got nothing against popular culture history, so long as it bears some resemblance to actual history (which is why I can enjoy The Tudors but not Sleepy Hollow, for example). Continue Reading
On October 28, 2014, Time magazine published Jennifer Latson’s “Why Witches on TV Spell Trouble in Real Life,” a look at why the witch has become so commonplace in pop culture, as well as the long-standing morality lesson taught by studies of the historical witch-trials, which gave us the phraseContinue Reading
A few days ago, the following comment showed up on my being-retooled Wicca site: One thing I find very interesting to observe about your postings is that you’re very much a defender of Christianity. And I’m uncertain why that religion gets so much face-time on a site dedicated to Wicca.Continue Reading
I cross paths with fair amount of people very angry and jaded about religion, not merely non-religious but actively hostile toward it. One of the very common arguments is if we’d get rid of religion we’d get rid of excuses to go to war. I’m calling anthropological bullshit. War isContinue Reading
Studying both history and religion, I cross paths with a fair number of people angry and jaded about both specific religions and religion in general, and they support their position with history. Rather than simply being non-religious, these individuals are actively against it, calling it manipulative, fraudulent, and/or violent. SometimesContinue Reading
It’s amazing some of the things still taught in schools. They’re just plain wrong, but we’re so familiar with the claims it never occurs to us to double-check the facts. Today, less well-known but equally wrong stories are also constantly circulating through social media such as Facebook because people presumeContinue Reading
Medieval is a rather abused word, often being used to cover everything from the fall of the Roman Empire to…well, gosh only knows. People commonly mash it at least with the Renaissance, which comes with it a healthy sense of irony as Renaissance thinkers very actively separated themselves from medieval culture. Continue Reading
The TV show Cosmos has managed to not offend me for several weeks, and this last episode certainly didn’t offend, it merely annoyed. In its introduction to our understanding of the stars, host Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses a variety of myths surrounding constellations, particularly about the Pleiades. Among the ancientContinue Reading
Back when I worked for About.com, I made a blog post debunking some of the common myths about Easter’s connection with pagan beliefs. It gained, by far, the most comments of any post, and every year the post must show up in search engines, because I always got a newContinue Reading
I, like many of my friends, greatly anticipated the restart of Cosmos by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I like many things Tyson has done in the past, and he has a reputation for explaining sound science in language average people can understand and enjoy learning about. But he’s no historian. HisContinue Reading