The Job of a Historian

In a survey of modern Western civilization, I asked the students the following questions (a question and a follow up) and obtained the following answers: 
Why do we study history? "To avoid repeating past mistakes" 
What do we learn from Napoleon's invasion of Russia? "Don't invade Russia during winter" 
What is the West? "West of the Mississippi River" or Silence 
Is Russia in the West? "It depends"  
Are you Westerners? "Yes sir"
Are Chinese-Americans Westerners? Silence

Why do we mostly study the history of centralized states? Silence
Where are the poor people in history? "They are inconsequential, so we don't need to include them"

This is part of my continuing effort to define the Job of a Historian.
Lower-division survey classes are probably more important than upper-division ones because students there accept what they learn without questioning.

The Dig in Jarash, August 2008

I am second from the right, next to the Jordanian Archaeology student (you gotta admire the strength of her religious conviction, because wearing this hijab under that sun was beyond what I could bare). You cannot tell from the picture how hot it was and how dehydrated, hungry, and tired I was.

I cannot show detailed pictures of the dig site because the results have not been published yet. But here is a touristic picture of the site without identifying any architectural features.

My trip to Istanbul

I arrived in Istanbul on July the 3rd, 2008. I cannot believe it's been more than a year now. I also cannot believe that I got so much work done in ten days.
More than a month of meticulous planning paid off, all thanks to the internet.

I got off the airplane, looked for the metro, bought a ticket, and was in my hotel room (which I reserved over the internet) at Bayezit within an hour. I had a detailed map of the area (thanks to mapquest) but got lost trying to find the names of the narrow streets branching out from the main street where the tramway station was.

An Eye on Sudan

About two weeks or so separated the death of the famous Sudanese novelist al-Tayyib al-Salih and the charges of war crimes made against the Sudanese president 'Umar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.

Since Clinton's bombing of Al-Shifa pharmaceutical company in 1998, Sudan went under the American media radar to re-emerge with the problems in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first acting head of state to be charged by the ICC for war crimes. Is this a progress for international justice to be celebrated or a precedent that will be regretted even by the people who pushed so hard for it?