Month: July 2014

Geneva: a Poem. (1729)

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Today, another post with some fun stuff (more fun than fungemia, at least) from my ongoing novel research… Back in the early Georgian era, pamphlets were used to do the kind of advocacy and political consciousness-raising we see going on today on Youtube and other social networking sites. One of the more famous ones–and certainly, a poem of interest to anyone concerned with the conflict between gin distillers (who were linked to free-marketeers) versus brewers (who were linked to religious and social reformers) was Elias Blunt’s “Geneva: a Poem” (1729). The full title text is: Geneva: a Poem. Addreſs’d to the Right Honourable Sir R— W—. By Alexander Blunt, Distiller. In …

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Fungemia

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This week, I’ll be posting some “fun” snippets from bits of research devoted to my current novel project.  Probably mostly of interest to people who homebrew, or are interested in yeast and brewing, brewing history, and weird cultural stuff that went on in Renaissance Europe or in Georgian England. Today? Fungemia… which is: fungal infections of the blood. Don’t worry, I don’t have any gory pictures of anything, though if you want, there are plenty of those online, only one google search away. Did you know, you can get a yeast infection in your blood? Well, you can. And even some strains of humble brewer’s/baker’s …

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Write-a-Thon Progress Report, Week 5

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Week 5 of the Write-a-thon has just ended, for me. (For me, since I’m doing my writing on a week that runs Monday-Sunday.) Here’s my weekly update! If you don’t know what this Write-a-thon is, and want to know more, see here. (While I have a few generous sponsors already, I’d still love a few more, and if you’d like, it’s easy. More info on what’s in it for you at the link above.)

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Stephen Hart’s Canting Lexicon, & More

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A very quick post, because I’m running  against several deadlines but wanted to at least add something here… For those interested in the “rogues’ cant” of Georgian England–something that interests me, though it’ll only get a certain amount of use in my ongoing project (since most of the characters aren’t criminals)–Stephen Hart has the best and most accessible canting lexicon index I’ve managed to find online. He has a bunch of pages of canting words and corresponding definitions arranged by topic or theme. The canting word lists are accessible from here. It’s a very useful resource for anyone in a position like mine, who’d like to look …

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Killer Mini-Campaign

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I’ve posted before here about using RPGs as a learning tool with students. One of the things that’s important when you do this is to (a) choose a story structure that emphasizes communicative tasks: your students should have to talk a lot, whereas combat is something they want to avoid, or something that must be coordinated when it’s absolutely necessary. That is to say, pedagogically, it’s better for students to end up having to negotiate treaties or beg for their lives than it is to have them running around doing hack’n’slash adventuring, or dungeoneering of the type epitomized in the phrase, “kick in …

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