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	<title>Maktaaq</title>
	<link>http://www.maktaaq.com</link>
	<description>100% Whale Blabber</description>
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		<title>Seal Pup</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just when I think I would like to live with a harp seal pup, it becomes obvious that I already do. Ivan is a seal pup in negative.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2012/01/02/seal-pup/</link>
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		<title>2011 in Review</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last year&#8217;s year in review blog post was fun and useful. I kept referring to it throughout the year, adding some new goals halfway through. (The new goals were in my paper diary, hence not here.) Thus, here is 2011 and challenges to myself for 2012. The Bad My grandmother disappeared completely. Physically, she&#8217;s still [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2012/01/01/2011-in-review/</link>
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		<title>Party Like It&#8217;s 1558</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Another book I read a few months ago was the Catherine de Medici biography by Leonie Frieda. Great book, with plenty of the nuttiest historical nitwits in Renaissance times. The quotes below are descriptions of various parties and celebrations that the French court hosted. From page 110, here&#8217;s a description of the marriage of the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/12/01/party-like-its-1558/</link>
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		<title>The Torturable</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Earlier this fall, I read Graham Greene&#8217;s Our Man in Havana. There were some pretty good quotes but I never bookmarked them. I thought I could remember the pages. Thanks to modern conveniences, my memory is kaput. So, unless I reread the whole book, I&#8217;ll never know the gems Greene meant for us to remember. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/11/30/the-torturable/</link>
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		<title>On Being a Husk</title>
		<description><![CDATA[During the last three or four years, I have become a husk of a human. I merely survive because breathing and eating and sleeping are the easiest things to do. It seems like most of my inner life has worn away. I am numb to most things, even as I am content with the material [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/11/27/on-being-a-husk/</link>
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		<title>The Ghost Rider</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Albanian writer Ismail Kadare&#8217;s medieval police mystery novel was a lot less Agatha Christie than expected, with some supernatural shenanigans thrown into the mix. Other critics have explained the story in many other places on the internet, so there&#8217;s no need for a synopsis from me. I just want to pick out a couple of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/11/03/the-ghost-rider/</link>
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		<title>Green, Yellow &amp; Black</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A note to self from Richard Rudgley&#8217;s Barbarians: Secrets of the Dark Ages: make green ink by putting copper in vinegar or wine, scraping off the green stuff and mixing it with egg white (page 215). Yellow in the Lindisfarne Gospels came from arsenic &#8211; not likely I&#8217;ll ever be drawing with arsenic. Black was [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/06/20/green-yellow-black/</link>
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		<title>The Venerable Bede&#8217;s Math</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When the Venerable Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People around 731, historians had a tough time. Much like the Japanese calendar today, the English calendar depended on who one&#8217;s ruler was. Thus, in the patchwork England of the so-called Dark Ages, one parish might be celebrating Easter while a neighbouring one was [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/06/20/the-venerable-bedes-math/</link>
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		<title>The House of Mirth Quotes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My library copy of The House of Mirth was partly read by an enthusiastic underliner; partly only as the pencil marks stop around page 73. The underliner also provided some marginalia, most of it boring, but with some personality-suggesting bits. She (and I am entirely stereotyping here with my guess as to this reader&#8217;s gender) [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/05/28/house-of-mirth-quotes/</link>
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		<title>Mongol Speculation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Before returning Four Queens to the library, I had a quick look at Nancy Goldstone&#8217;s speculation of what would have happened if Saint Louis of France had struck up a deal with the Mongols, fellow enemies of the muslim empire: Louis was no match for the descendants of Genghis Khan&#8230;Given the history of Mongol behaviour, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.maktaaq.com/2011/04/17/mongol-speculation/</link>
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