Sunday morning reading

colonial dentistry-- Every day this past week, J.L. Bell, over at Boston 1775, has posted a new piece on colonial dentistry. (I'm not going to link to the individual articles; see entries for March 26-31.) Very interesting (as is everything J.L. does).

I got a haircut recently. Hardly newsworthy, but I'm going to a conference next weekend, and I wanted to look good. Except this turned out to be perhaps the worst hair cut I've ever had. But even as J.L. was writing about colonial dentists, I was visiting one--well, not a colonial dentist--for my regular exam and cleaning. So at the conference, people will say, "Did you see Parker's hair? What a mess!" "Yeah, but his teeth looked good."

Civil War photos-- Retouching History has a good piece on "The Modern Falsification of a Civil War Photograph," about "a Civil War-era posed studio photograph of unidentified black Union soldiers with a white officer.... The studio photograph has been deliberately falsified in recent years by an unknown person/s sympathetic to the Confederacy. This falsified or fabricated photo, purporting to be of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards (Confederate), has been taken to promote Neo-Confederate views, to accuse Union propagandists of duplicity, and to show that black soldiers were involved in the armed defense of the Confederacy."

"inefficient" history-- Eric L. Talley, an economist at UC Berkeley, has published a disturbing study that shows the study and teaching of history to be "inefficient." He concludes that educational resources should be directed elsewhere. (hat tip, for this and the above, to Ralph Luker)

Georgia Carnival-- And while I'm referring you to other sites, let me urge you to check out the latest Carnival for Georgia Bloggers. Among the treats you'll find is The Best Wildflower Walk in Georgia, with some of the prettiest pictures I've seen in a while. I know someone who would love that waterfall.