History Carnival #30

I should have announced this when it came out on Monday, but History Carnival #30 is up at ClioWeb. Here are some of my favorite selections:

• "Methodology for the Infinite Archive" mulls the prospect of writing for a machine audience.
• "Unknown to Readers of Arabic" refutes Juan Cole's arrogant insistance that the key to improving our relations with the Arab world is translating our great works for them so they can understand us better. I don't know about Juan, but have you read any of the Arabic classics lately?
• "May Day with Heart: a Strike, a Boycott, a Holiday, a Refusal", the essay by Peter Linebaugh that I just recommended here, got the nod as well.
• "What's for Dinner?" raises some interesting questions about the Donner Party and, implicitly, about Wikipedia and historical knowledge.
• "Don't Know Much About History" and "The Importance of History" take up the Holocaust and slavery as their respective topics, confronting pop-history on the one hand and presentism on the other.
• "Tejas por los Tejanos" sparks a great discussion of the age when migrants were going the other way across the U.S. - Mexico border.
• Finally, I really enjoyed "The Half-way House" which compares the abolition of nuclear weapons to the abolition of the slave trade, as well as this spinoff debate and Caleb's follow-up, "The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons". As it turns out, I wasn't alone. These were the #1 and #2 nominated posts for the Carnival, which I encourage you all to look over in its entirety.

All in all this Carnival was decent, though not one of my favorites. I'd love to have comments posted by anyone who finds something else interesting that I neglected to mention, as well as any thoughts you have on these pieces. Have a wonderful weekend.