This is one of those weird things I like: nationalism and it’s influence on historical imagination. Specifically how in the Balkans it’s impossible to talk about linguistics without talking about nationalism. Romanians claim their language has an ancient substrate from Dacian, Greeks get all pissy about the Macedonians calling themselves Macedonians, and the Macedonians get pissy when the Bulgarians claim that the Macedonians are speaking Bulgarian. And oh, how it goes on and on.

Not that we North Americans are too much better. I’m still morally convinced that in two hundred years every white man and woman will be convinced that they’re ‘Cherokee’ and that the ‘American people’ have lived on these lands since the beginning of time. Read any American history or literature textbook and tell me I’m wrong.

But it’s not always the case that Deep Sociological Insight is the sole thing to be found when reading about the influence of modern nationalism on historical consciousness. Sometimes you just get pure fun like this man from Bulgaria who

…claims to be an expert in linguistics, cryptography and transcendental analysis…

[From Gradeshnitsa tablets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

If you want more backstory, read on and follow the many links for a quick explanation. But really, I’d just like to savor the words transcendental analysis.

Climate change has caused Greenland’s ice sheet to melt increasingly fast in recent years, threatening traditional ways of life but making drilling for oil more feasible.

[From Greenland votes to step closer to independence | International | Reuters]

Prior to 1931, New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, allegedly in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed by accident, and cooked and ate it.

[From Cannibalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]