Listening to Mary Beard on KQED Forum. Thinking “I have read some of her stuff, right?” and it appears I’ve only read SPQR, and I have absolutely no rListening to Mary Beard on KQED Forum. Thinking “I have read some of her stuff, right?” and it appears I’ve only read SPQR, and I have absolutely no recollection of doing so. ...more
❝The wreck of Endurance has been found in the Antarctic, 106 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during
Update, March 2020:
❝The wreck of Endurance has been found in the Antarctic, 106 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during an expedition by the explorer Ernest Shackleton.
A team of adventurers, marine archaeologists and technicians located the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, using undersea drones. Battling sea ice and freezing temperatures, the team had been searching for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915. ⋮ “We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said John Shears, the expedition’s leader.
The first images of the ship since those taken by Shackleton’s photographer, Frank Hurley, revealed parts of the vessel in astonishing detail. An image of the stern showed the name “ENDURANCE” above a five-pointed star, a holdover from before Shackleton bought the ship, when it was named Polaris. Another showed the rear deck and the ship’s wheel.❞
❝A century after Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance sank in the waters of Antarctica, resulting in one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration, a team of modern adventurers, technicians and scientists is setting sail to find the wreck.
❝With a crew of 46 and a 64-member expedition team aboard, a South African icebreaker, the Agulhas II, is set to leave Cape Town on Saturday, bound for the Weddell Sea. Once there, the team hopes to find the wreck and explore it with two underwater drones.❞
Hmm, I didn’t realize I never wrote a review here.
I wanted to note here that John Muir is taking a hit these days due to his racism, and link to the aHmm, I didn’t realize I never wrote a review here.
I wanted to note here that John Muir is taking a hit these days due to his racism, and link to the articles I read.
One that I read is from Atlas Obscura in 2016, so from before the current moment of reckoning: The Miseducation of John Muir. (There might be a paragraph or more missing from the center.)
The Los Angeles Times links John Muir’s legacy to that of Christopher Columbus and Father Juniper Serra. Both of those have had their statues removed from public spaces: Sierra Club calls out the racism of John Muir.
The Sierra Club’s own statement is here: Pulling Down Our Monuments. Other icons of California’s environmental history are also called out, such as Joseph LeConte. In 2015, the Sierra Club asked the National Park Service to change the name of the “Le Conte Memorial Lodge” to the “Yosemite Conservation Heritage Center” due to his white-supremecist views and advocacy of eugenics.
It would take a lot more effort to erase the legacy of those who are no longer considered worthy of respect. John Muir has been honored widely, for example. His name on many schools (especially in California), including a middle school two blocks from my home in San Francisco. He also has a mountain named after him, deep in the southern Sierras — a ‘fourteener’ near Mount Whitney. LeConte’s name is also on a nearby summit, although he misses the highly coveted 14,000-foot elevation by a few feet. LeConte or a brother has another summit in Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Resolving how, when and why we name public places to respect people isn’t going to be easy....more
The "Images of America" books are photo albums of locales scattered around the country that are of historic interest, often mostly to the people of thThe "Images of America" books are photo albums of locales scattered around the country that are of historic interest, often mostly to the people of that area. I previously read San Francisco's Bernal Heights because my mother was born and raised in that neighborhood in San Francisco, in a house built by her father and grandfather. She recognized some of the names of the folks mentioned therein.
I'd never heard of Sam's Castle until a buddy suggest we visit, so I looked into it and found this. It was a quick and enjoyable read. I especially enjoyed seeing the Lowell High School uniforms from 110 years ago — this time last year I was teaching Algebra at that storied school. And I wasn't surprised, but again marveled at how the region used to be such barren-appearing scrub and grassland. Pacifica today lies at the foot of heavily forested hills, but in those old photos there are barely any trees to be seen. The same thing is true of old photos of San Francisco. We humans do like our woodlands....more
The reference to The Heritage Of Giotto’s Geometry is that it was the artists who first pushed the transition of our perception of reality into three dimensions. The mathematicians and philosophers found it slow going, trying to overcome the great Aristotle’s conclusion, but the painters didn’t care about Aristotle and did an end-run in their effort to portray reality in new and revelatory ways in their work.
(I’ve tagged it in my academic-mathematics because it just might help motivate my “artistic” students to rethink their distaste for mathematics. Maybe? But, of course, I really should first find time to read it myself.)
It is, of course, of increasing salience as the failure of AmericaOnto my to-be-read shelf after my friend Professor Taw reviewed and rated it highly.
It is, of course, of increasing salience as the failure of America to atone for its original constitutional sin has become ever more apparent in the age of social media and pervasive self-surveillance. Things are, according to statistics, getting better — but they remain appallingly and inexcusably bad. Understanding how they got that way and what societal structures are firmly yet invisibly in place to replicate our societal conditions is a necessary step, albeit an insufficient one.
The Wall Street Journal’s thorough “Dixie’s Foreign Policy”: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dixies-f.... (Behind the WSJ paywall, but it might be accessible if you Google this search and then click through. Do it in “private browsing mode” if it doesn’t work the first time.)
The New York Review of Books’ “The Slave Owners’ Foreign Policy” looks equally thorough, but it is also behind a paywall which none of my libraries can get me through (and the via-Google trick doesn’t work): http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/...
Glowingly reviewed in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History — the most informative, if you can get access: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/... (academic paywall, some public libraries may provide it via Academic OneFile or Academic Search Complete. Check whether your library provides access to e-journals.)
First, if you want to know the history of this particular period of the Roman state, there’s apparently aThere are two good reasons to read this book.
First, if you want to know the history of this particular period of the Roman state, there’s apparently a dearth of books on that. Plenty on the changeover to an Imperial state, and on the later collapse, but not so much on the collapse of the republic. And this is a very easy and enjoyable book to read, although at times it’s just a tiny bit clumsy. If you want an authoritative book written by an actual historian, this isn’t the one for you, however. [Note: definitely not my field of expertise; if someone wants to say “there are plenty of books on that topic!” I’d welcome the correction. I’d welcome even more a pointer to the most accessible of those.]
The second reason is was the key for me, and probably has already occurred to many of those reading this. Many countries that were considered fairly “safe” democracies seem to be sliding towards authoritarianism — including, shockingly, the United States.
I already knew about the theory of anacyclosis (although I’d forgotten that name) from long-ago reading of some Greek classic or other. So while I’m dismayed that the U.S. is trending this way, I’m not among the excessively shocked. We’ve always liked our populists, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that we’re increasingly swayed by demagogues. I’m personally quite interested in why this happens to be happening at this moment in the U.S.A., but this book is more about seeking and examining the parallels that we might be facing.
I’d recommend the book for either or both reasons.
Original “preview”:
The Lawfare podcast interviewed the author, and asked him to compare and contrast the subject of his book with the current United States situation, as well as a sampling of other “storms before” that did or did not lead to critical “storms”.
The podcast blurb:
Political polarization, inequality, and corruption during the period 146 to 78 BC gravely weakened the Roman Republic in the years before its collapse. In his new book The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Late Republic, podcaster Mike Duncan explores this period and how Rome’s politics, which emerged from Rome’s success, subsequently led to the republic’s downfall. Benjamin Wittes interviewed Duncan on his new book to discuss ancient and modern populisms, the parallels between the late Roman Republic and current American politics, and the impact of demagoguery on government.
De Tocqueville is famous, at least in the United States, for his work Democracy in America. But he also wrote about his home county, and France was a De Tocqueville is famous, at least in the United States, for his work Democracy in America. But he also wrote about his home county, and France was a pretty crazy place through the nineteenth century. He was of the nobility, but (partially due to his time in the U.S.) was more attuned to the flaws and troubles of the democratic and republican forms of government than many of his contemporaries. He wrote this book, Recollections on the French Revolution, as a memoir without planning on publication, so it is frank to a sometimes brutal extent regarding the other leading figures in revolutionary France. De Tocqueville’s Recollections weren't written contemporaneously with events, but fairly soon, and with no expectation of publication.
It is unfortunate that a private diary can be subpoenaed in the United States. The law isn’t perfectly clear on that, but it seems likely that most highly-placed government officials will be too wary of that problem to write as candidly as de Tocqueville did. (He actually wrote after the events at hand, but still within just a few years.) Such a memoir of a highly positioned person provides a glimpse of inner workings which would often seem too quotidian to remember at the end of a long career, but would provide the historian, the psychologist, and even the lay reader with a clearer view of that world....more
Loading...
