The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa is easily the deadliest outbreak in the disease's known* history, having infected a suspected 1323 people and having killed 729 of them. Since it began in Guinea in February, this outbreak has caused Liberia to close its borders, caused Nigeria to begin screening passengers on incoming flights, caused … Continue reading If an Ebola vaccine were as profitable as erection pills, we’d already have one

Depending on how you count this kind of thing, the OG caliphate kicked off either in 632, when Muhammad died, or in 750, when the Abbasid dynasty took the office from its previous owners, the Umayyads. But it wasn't until 909, when the Shiʿa Fatimid dynasty declared its own caliphate in the city of Qayrawan … Continue reading The new Caliphate is really outstripping the old one

I mean, there's kind of a pattern emerging: The United Nations and the White House on Wednesday condemned the shelling of a United Nations school in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip overnight, which killed 16 people. ... The United Nations Work and Relief Agency, which runs the Abu Haseen school, issued a … Continue reading At what point are we allowed to ask if it’s deliberate?

I think Wikipedia is great. I could spend all day traipsing through obscure entries learning about this or that. It's even useful, say when you're writing about history as I tend to do here from time to time, in a couple of ways. For one thing, it's a great source for images and maps that … Continue reading If you wouldn’t cite it in a term paper, don’t copy from it for pay

Today was apparently Bob's turn to do his "liberals are the real sexists" routine. Previously: Dude, that's not the preferred nomenclature

Exhibit A: Tayyip Erdoğan would appreciate it if Turkey's Jewish citizens would denounce Israel's offensive in Gaza, but promises that they will be safe even if they don't do it. Well, that's very generous of hi--HOLY CRAP DID HE REALLY SAY THAT? “Jews in Turkey are our citizens. We are responsible for their security of … Continue reading Turkey’s being a little weird…

There's some interesting news out of Syria, where it seems some rebel faction (Lebanon's Daily Star says it includes elements of the Nusra Front, which presumably rules out Islamic State participation, but doesn't say anything beyond that) has just captured a checkpoint about 9 km outside of Hama. So what, you ask? Or maybe you … Continue reading Barrel bomb developments in Iraq and Syria

This is really going to change the media landscape:

I'm back in but still "out" in any practical sense, so once again let me direct you to another thing that somebody else wrote (via LGM). In this case it's John Judis on the history that's brought us to the current state of affairs in Gaza. Judis cuts through the "who started it" issue and … Continue reading Another excellent read: Judis on Gaza

I'm out for most of the day, but of you're interested please go read Michael Collins Dunn's great piece on how Winston Churchill helped drive the Ottoman Empire into an alliance with Germany: One hundred years ago today, Austria declared war on Serbia, lighting the fuse that within a week would transform what Bismarck had … Continue reading 100 years ago today: the Ottomans and WWI