Tidbit From The 10,000 Year Explosion

In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond describes this pattern in highland New Guinea, one of the last places in the world to make contact with outsiders. He wrote, “When I was living among Elopi tribespeople in west New Guinea and wanted to cross the territory of the neighboring Fayu tribe in order to reach a nearby mountain, the Elopis explained to me matter-of-factly that the Fayus would kill me if I tried. From a New Guinea perspective, it seemed so perfectly natural and self-explanatory. Of course the Fayus will kill any trespasser: you surely don’t think they’re so stupid that they’d admit strangers to their territory? Strangers would just hunt their game animals, molest their women, introduce diseases, and reconnoiter the terrain in order to stage a raid later.” Before outside contact, New Guinea highlanders spent their entire lives within a few miles of their villages, and as far as we know, none had ever seen the sea, which was just 100 miles away. It seems likely the whole world was like this in prehistory.

Today's History Lesson

"He [Robert Maynard Hutchins] pulled Chicago out of the Big Ten Conference and eliminated the school’s football program, which he saw as a campus distraction. Hutchins heaped scorn upon schools which received more press coverage for their sports teams than for their educational programs, and the trustees provided the support he needed to drop football in 1939. The decision was hailed by many, and Hutchins today serves as a model for those who argue that commercialized college sports are incompatible with the academic aims of institutions of higher learning.”

"Euclid, Archimedes and the Antikythera Mechanism"

A correspondent writes in with more about the Antikythera mechanism,

"Euclid, the geometer, flourished around 300 B.C. The Antikythera shipwreck, from which the Antikythera Mechanism came, dates from around 206 B.C. So, mathematical development was ample at the time the Antikythera Mechanism was made and this can be documented.

The Mechanism was part of the navigational equipment of a ship engaged in international commerce, as the shipwreck happened at the very outer edge of the Greek world. And so the Mechanism probably was the highest state of the art in 206 B.C. Rome destroyed the best of Greece soon after.

'In 168 BC the Romans defeat[ed] the Macedonians in the battle of Pydna. In 146 BC and 86 BC the Romans seize[ed] rebellious Corinth, killing all the men, selling the women into slavery and destroying the city as an example. When Athens join[ed] King Mithridates in another rebellion against the Romans in Asia Minor they invade[d] the city, destroy[ed] the walls and [left] with the most valuable sculptures.'

A Roma solder killed Archimedes, the Greek inventor and polymath, at the end of the Roman siege of the Greek city of Syracuse, Sicily, 214-212 B.C, just 6 years before the Antikythera shipwreck took the Antikythera Mechanism down with it."

More About The Antikythera Mechanism

A correspondent writes in about the Antikythera mechanism,

The recently-discovered Antikythera used several strands of science and technology, including astronomy, metallurgy, tool-making, mathematics (especially geometry) and mechanics. It is a fair representation of the level of science and technology in the area during that time. Naked-eye astronomy dates back hundreds of thousands of years. Its development was driven by the problem of finding one's way back from the hunt after chasing an animal for 20 miles, killing it, dressing it and finding the way back to camp by watching the sun and stars. Starting about ten-thousand years ago, the development of astronomy was driven by the problem of when to plant seeds. and knowing when the harvest would be. Back when most men hunted, most men had a fund of knowledge about naked-eye astronomy. Then it decayed. There are more Antikytheras awaiting discovery.

Switzerland

Link

"Switzerland is one of those small countries of Europe, the existence of which makes a lot more sense when you consider that the alternative would have been for one Empire to let another have control of the territory. If you want to know what I mean, consider a map of the stretch of North Sea coast stretching up from Normandy in the direction of the Baltic and ask yourself why it is that such a huge country as Germany only has a scant few dozen miles of coastline and only two or three usable ports. What is it, the man wondered, about small, independent, trade-oriented countries like Denmark and the Netherlands that has made France, Sweden and Britain so keen on protecting their independence? To ask the question is to answer it"

Different Attitudes About Debt - St. John's Church, St. Louis, 1895

I saw a letter from the Pastor of St. John's Church in St. Louis to his congregation in 1895. Here is an excerpt:

St. Louis, March 10th, 1895.

A mortgage of Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00) has been hanging over St. John's Church since 1877. It is our desire to pay it within two years, as we will celebrate the Golden Jubilee of this parish in 1898. With the church free of this burden, it will be an easy matter to manage the rest of the debt. We ask for as large a subscription, payable in one or two years, as each individual can possibly make. Even the children can promise to set aside their spare nickels during '95 and '96. [...]

James Thomas Coffey, Pastor.

$10,000 in 1895 is $275,000 today (a 94% loss of purchasing power).

"Portage: Path Dependence and Increasing Returns in U.S. History"

A correspondent comments on the paper "Portage: Path Dependence and Increasing Returns in U.S. History"

St Paul, Minnesota is where it is because it is the last big flat spot on the river before it enters a canyon and meets the first of two big falls that bar further navigation upstream. Minneapolis is where it is because it is at a big falls that provided plenty waterpower for milling flour. The two cities remain separate because Minneapolis' falls are ten miles from St Paul's flat spot. Midway between the two cities is a tall bluff providing an ideal spot for military fortifications dominating the confluence of two rivers. If these three geographical features - the falls, the fort and the flat spot - had been within two or three miles of each other, Minneapolis and St Paul would be one giant city with a single downtown.

The federal government placed one of two national arsenals at the fall line of the Connecticut River, at Springfield. This provided water power and the falls also prevented the British navy from reaching it with ships of the line. The same is true of Harper's Ferry arsenal. However, Harper's Ferry is confined by river bluffs that leave it too little flat land for a city site.

The falls or rapids at the site of the Ford dam are what divided Minneapolis and St Paul into two separate cities in the 1850s.They prevented steamboats from reaching the flat spot next to the Mississippi River just south of St Anthony Falls. The Ford dam falls or rapids were unsuitable for developing power in the mid-19th Century because the falls were too far below the level of the surrounding land for a system of belts, wheels and shafts to transfer water power to where it was needed. The Mississippi is confined by tall bluffs into a narrow canyon that leaves no flat spot where power could be used. Once electrical generation was developed, these falls or rapids could be dammed and electrical power led up the bluffs to a site where it could be used. But by then the sites of the two downtowns were established.

LBJ Did It

American Revolution Revisionism

Fascinating point from an essay on Lew Rockwell,

This is true always and everywhere throughout history – those choosing to live in relative anarchy – a state of little if any centralized monopoly control – inherently have little reason to document their own story. Such records are developed for the benefit of control and to create the desired historical narrative.

A correspondent writes in,

"[R]ecord-keeping serves two general purposes, maybe more: creating a resource to construct favorable mythology for purposes of political control, and creating a resource to construct administrative data for purposes of managing productive enterprises with increasing complexity.

An interesting counter-point to the quote above is the phenomenon of blogging. Why do people blog every stupid detail of their lives or personal interests? To create a desired historical narrative? For who? It could be an exercise in pure ego in this sense. Or maybe they just think it's entertaining to keep track of themselves.

Also, on the historical revisionism of the American Revolution-- I love it. Removing the wool from my own eyes on this subject has been a true delight over the last few years and I intend to continue it. One book I read recently was 'Plain, Honest Men', about the Constitutional Convention. It is great because it doesn't even intend to do this (it's theme is 'these guys weren't perfect, but boy, they did a helluva job despite it!') but it shows quite clearly how the people who were interested and powerful enough to attend the convention were all power hungry schemers in one way or another and far from being monolithic, selfless and unified, they were diverse, selfish (in the worst sense of the word) and completely scattered, engaged in the kind of stereotypical politicking and artificial do-see-do grab-a-partner-spin-them-round coalition building for compromise-pandering that the best (worst) of the CONgress engages in even today."

Review of The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010)

The best three hour documentary I've seen recently is The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010), about Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

It's hard to believe how seriously people took communism. Watch the Eastern European elite gathered together in the late 60s babbling nonsense about Marxism-Leninism. Will any of our elite's delusions survive 50 years? I doubt it.

Plus, there is a happy ending for dictator Ceausescu. 5/5.

A Credit Bubble Stocks correspondent writes in,

"Left-wing political leaders may always have personality disorders and/or psychopathy. Ceausescu lacked the social intelligence to know when to get out of Dodge. Low social intelligence is characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder, as is self-importance and devaluing others. Trotsky was that way, as is Obama.

Ceausescu seems to have always had a stupid facial expression, and videos of his speeches show incredibly bored audiences listening to his platitudes about increasing production and, of course, "stirring the socialist conscience of the masses."

Wartime Farm

Scott versus Amundsen

A correspondent writes in about R.F. Scott,

"Robert Falcon Scott was truly brave, but his South Pole expedition failed and ended in his death. Roald Amundsen, the first to reach the South Pole and return alive, was truly brave and truly well-organized. Scott maneuvered himself into a death trap using System D and a lack of awareness of local conditions and available tools and techniques. Amundsen made his polar trip look almost like a regular mail delivery route."

When Amundsen heard the news, he said "I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death."

Robert Falcon Scott, One Hundred Years Ago in the New York Times

To help avoid recency bias, I like to read old newspaper articles, whether Forbes magazine stories from 1930 or New York Times articles from the 1870s about states' repudiation of debt.

Reading such old stories, I notice how much the English language has changed. The language of business articles in the New York Times a century ago seemed simpler but grander, as you can see in the obituary of George Gilbert Williams or in the article about the insolvency of the Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company

Another good but sad example is the February 10, 1913 article about the discovery of Robert Falcon Scott's last camp.

"I do not think human beings ever came through such a month as we have come through, and should have got through in spite of the weather but for the sickening of a second companion, Capt. Oates, and a shortage of fuel in our depots, for which I cannot account, and, finally, but for the storm which has fallen on us within eleven miles of this depot, at which we hoped to secure the final supplies.

Surely misfortune could scarcely have exceeded this last blow!

We arrived within eleven miles of our old One Ton camp with fuel for one hot meal and food for two days. For four days we have been unable to leave the tent, the gale blowing about us. We are weak.

Writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint but to bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.

But if we have been willing to give our lives to this enterprise, which is for the honor of our country, I appeal to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for. Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman."

How devastating that England today scarcely resembles the England of Scott, only a hundred years ago.