Various and Sundry

Just Loose Your Arrows & Dig Another Ditch: A Guide to Ancient Warfare

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

One of the last times I talked about pirates, I referenced a couple videos with pirate experts. Truth be told, I love these sorts of videos where historians review films and explain how accurate or, frequently, how wildly inaccurate the films are. It’s especially fun when the historians are clearly having fun with it. Historian Roel Konijnendijk clearly has fun talking about ancient and medieval warfare, even though he’s clearly pained by certain cinematic tropes.…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Satirical Space Opera… from the 2nd Century?!?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’m always up for looking for interesting public domain works we might adapt for Jabberwocky Audio Theater, and as you may imagine, that’s meant various science fiction, fantasy, and horror works from the 1920s. But apparently, I haven’t been looking back far enough because there’s a space opera from [checks notes] Ancient Greece?!? I’ll let Austin McConnell take it from here: Now, I will disagree with the title of the video because I absolutely will…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Wondering if you can learn more about the Mongol Empire? Yes you khan!

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I know how it is. We live in excessively ‘interesting times.’ Many organizations are asking people to do “more with less.” Most importantly, despite you, like my family, being very interested in Mongolian history especially the Mongol Empire, you simply haven’t had time to brush up on the main points of this consequential, multicultural empire whose echoes have been felt ever since in world history. Well, luckily, the internet abounds in concise, informative, and entertaining…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Why are Incompetent Leaders Celebrated?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’ve been thinking about leadership over the past couple weeks in terms of how one may rise to the challenge of inspiring and motivating their teams… as well as how to avoid the Peter Principle of being promoted to a level of, well, incompetence. And when you read about leaders who were so very incompetent, you wonder why they’re often more studied than leaders who succeed… because not all of these studies come from the…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Do You Have a Flag? Minnesota Edition

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Continuing on the trend of looking back to some of the posts I referenced for my blogiversary last week, CGP Grey’s video ranking different state flags is still a great watch, but there’s Minnesota has a new flag! Alas, his videos about the initial finalists and the final design are for backers only, but you get quality critique for the final three: I long for more of the boring-blue-background-with-seals flags to be supplanted, but I…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

The Changing Landscape of Northern Virginia

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

What a difference 60-odd years makes! Well, okay, I would wonder how things wouldn’t change in 60-odd years in a particular area, but Jill Devine did an article this past December for Northern Virginia magazine that’s chock full of photographs and various milestones of how the region has changed… in many ways quite dramatically. For locals and naturalized locals, it’s sure to trigger some memories.

Continue reading

Writing

Science Fiction, Fantasy, Reality, and You

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Coming off my blogiversary post on Saturday, I was catching up on some TED/TEDx videos and one of them made me think of the originality post I talked about re-visiting within the next year. The speaker not only touches on fantasy tropes being tropes and therefore not original, but also about the not unheard of concept that fantasy helps understand reality. In fact, it’s not just fantasy, there’s science fiction as well. And I see…

Continue reading

Site Update

So, how about that decade? (It’s the site’s 10th Blogiversary)

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

It’s been 10 years since I relaunched this website. On the one hand, I find it hard to believe. Perhaps not as hard as some of you find it hard to believe. Or perhaps you’re stuck on the fact that I use the term “blogiversary,” but if you’re one of my seven or nine usual readers, you’ve come to expect that kind of thing. Anyway, the 10th anniversary is traditionally the “Tin” anniversary, which really…

Continue reading

Writing

The Layers and Nuance of Decluttering, as told by Ann Patchett

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Anyone who’s gone through a family member’s belongings after they have passed knows the many emotions it may stir. And then, for many of us, there’s all the stuff we’ve accumulated… which would not be a nice to leave someone to go through. But then what do you do with all the stuff? A longform article about this would be nice. A longform article by a novelist used to elegantly weaving sometimes conflicting, sometimes ephemeral…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

All the World’s a Stage, But How is it Managed?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Having grown up regularly attending live theater and later doing it myself, I was keenly interested in what impact COVID made during the beginning outbreak of the virus and what theaters would do afterwards. Well, now we’re in the afterwards and Angie Ahlgren has an article for American Theatre that is close to my heart, because it focuses on the “hub of the wheel” of any good theater production: the stage manager. As someone who…

Continue reading