No, I'm still not posting. Over here at richardpanics we are still getting ground nose all over the thesis. But I couldn't let this pass by without some comment. I'm revisiting Godefridus Udemans' catchy 17th century classic, The Spiritual Rudder of the Merchant's ship, and I am flattened all over again by the man's deliberate mendacity in what he ( Read more... )

The trouble with doing a PhD is your focus is liable to get a little narrow. And not very diverting.
Thank god niemandsrose is around to fix that.

Mary Toft, who pretended to give birth to rabbits. Under intense scrutiny and producing no more rabbits she confessed to the hoax, and was subsequently imprisoned as a fraud. Which seems a bit harsh too.
("Stand back, ( Read more... )

So whswhs  has a discussion about the hockey stick model of economic development, post 1750, which has got me thinking.

If labour productivity (we could call this "technology" but let's not jump to conclusions yet) is the prime driver in economic development during this period,
and if resource scarcity/supply is basically a function of labour (that is, if ( Read more... )

So I have no idea about the validity of the teleological claims made here, regarding the destructive potential of political rhetoric, but I was startled to read that "socialist" was already a political insult in the US in 1888. I always figured it was a Russian revolution panic thing. But I confess, it's not my period and not my bag, ( Read more... )

Here's one for the kids' bookshelf: Gary Crew's Strange Objects is a Young Adult novel in which...

1. the protagonist is taken over by the spirit of a 17th century psychotic rapist and murderer.
2. the events of the Wreck of the Batavia, 1629, are recounted. These involving the murder of 120 shipwreck survivors by their fellows in a Jonestown meets ( Read more... )