Carnivals Ahoy!

I’m slowly getting back up to speed, though I have a dose of flu on the way. At least there’ll be plenty to read if i’m stuck in bed.

The latest History Carnival is up at History is Elementary. It includes an interesting debate on history and Wikipedia at Progessive Historians.

Hot Cup of Joe hosts the latest Four Stone Hearth, the Anthropology Carnival. I’m warming to this. Oh dear. It wasn’t an intentional pun. What I meant was that the some earlier editions didn’t really interest me, not because what was in them was bad, but because I’d usually already read all the archaeology entries in them. Carl’s done a great job with the presentation and I’m finding new stuff.

One carnival I’ve really struggled with in the past is the Carnival of Bad History. The latest edition is up at Old is the New New. Again the entries aren’t bad, but it does seem a bit redundant to gather them in one place. The sort of people who read the Carnival are probably people who either understand the historical errors, or else you’re fuelling fallacies with publicity. I’m not hostile to the concept of debunking, but on a good day I’m not interested in looking for things to get annoyed about and on a bad day there’s already far too many pains without sending out for more. Rob MacDougall has done a great job with it. I love the illustrations and there are some interesting comments about “What is Bad History?” I tend to read it as it is a gateway to finding someinterestingweblogs. Perhaps that is the way to read it, to look for thoughtful authors.