Otto's Random Thoughts

I am going to Arizona on Thursday, 28 July 2005. I will be away from an internet connection for a while. I will be back here in about two we...

Dr. Camicao at Academic Splat has gotten me thinking about the future direction I would like to see for historical scholarship. I think that...

One of the very serious flaws cultivated by academic historians is moving everything down to a microscopic level. Hence you get monographs w...

On this day in 1763, Tsarina Catherine II issued a manifesto inviting all Christian foreigners to settle in the Russian Empire and receive a...

There is a reason why the US used slave labor to cultivate cotton in the years before the Civil War. It is not only backbreaking labor to ha...

I figured out how to do links. Definitely not standard issue technology for Orientalists like myself. Certainly more complicated than the ca...

Today, I got through the section of the cotton paper on Meskhetian Turks. They are a hard group to write about historically because of a lac...

I would like to thank both Camicao and Academic Coach for stopping by and leaving polite comments. Out of four people who have left comments...

I got another two pages on the cotton paper done today. I am making very good progress. I think I can get it sent off before I migrate to Ar...

I have started writing my paper for the cotton conference on 3-4, November 2005. As is standard for my writing pace, I will do a page a day ...

Now that I have posted on the ghosts of writing past and writing present I suppose I should say something about the ghost of writing future....

OK, the previous post dealt with material written and awaiting publication. Although in one case the piece in question has been in print for...

I have been trying to make sure all the projects I have in the pipeline to be published are on their way. So I have been e-mailing editors i...

The general wisdom is that the 1960s were the most radical decade in terms of political upheaval in the post-war period. It is often contras...

The Price of Occupation By Tariq Ali The Guardian UK Friday 08 July 2005 " The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation...

Alright, on the very small chance that somebody other than myself is reading this blog, here are some of the topics I will cover in the near...

These thoughts are more speculative, but prehaps somebody can shed some light on them. That is if anybody reads this blog. :-) Russian-Germa...

It has occurred to me that the brotherhoods and fellowship circles that developed among Russian-German Lutherans, Mennonites and Baptists in...

The real problem of the Russian-Germans in the USSR after 1955 was not lack of territorial autonomy. But, rather the complete prohibition on...

Well, I have been trying to make the most of my short time with the LOC. I was there 12 hours today reading up on the mass of Russian langua...