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Raft of the Medusa
1816, the French naval vessel Medusa ran aground, leaving behind a huge improvised raft with 147 survivors, abandoned by the other crew who escaped on longboats. On their second night adrift off the coast of W Africa, orgy of destruction developed, precipitated by fear – people attacked each other, and attempted to break off sections of…
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Medical rhetoric
Isaiah Berlin would recognise the expert who “knows”: “Happy are those … who have, by their own methods, arrived at clear unshakeable convictions about what to do and what to be that brook no possible doubt. I can only say that those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of forms of…
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Origins of totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt “origins of totalitarianism” – panic and confusion after Great War. The collapse of imperialism as a benign ideal. Awareness of power of advertising to influence people. Democracy and liberalism became weakened. People were not to be trusted with autonomy. Hence powers given to Hindenburg before Hitler ever came to power. Fascism then set…
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Tallest tree(s) in Britain!
44m beech identified in Newtimber Woods on the Devil’s Dyke Estate (National Trust) in West Sussex, in the South Downs. This is the tallest native tree in Britain. Reading the small print, however, it looks like there’s a taller lime in Scotland somewhere, but it was planted so not “wild” – bit unfair, surely? The…
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Glagolitic script
An early Christian alphabet, introduced in Moravia (present day Czech republic, Slovakia), then spread to Croatia, Bulgaria etc. Rites had been conducted previously in Greek but it was an attempt to reach out to Slavic people, and maintain independence from Constantinople. Use continued for 1000 years in Croatia! The letters are fantastically ornate. Some eg…
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Cumbernauld
https://flic.kr/p/9GjPTo Came across this plan for Cumbernauld while searching for iconic Lanarkshire images. Sadly, no real photo of Cumbernauld really sells it as a modernist classic.
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Lanikeya
Supercluster which contains Virgo group, in which you find our local group (Milky Way but also Andromeda Galaxy). Gold formed from collision of 2 neutrino stars (themselves remnants of bigger, older stars?) Dark matter postulated because stars spinning in a galaxy spiral do not move at expected speeds, also difficult to explain formation of galaxies…
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Germ theory
Girolamo Fracastoro – from Verona, theorized that epidemics were caused by invisible “seeds”, spread by fomites (Latin for tinder), not themselves dangerous but able to enhance transfer of disease. Cf Miasma theory (bad air – like “Malaria”). Took another 100 years before Van Leeuwenhoek found microorganisms under his microscope, scepticism continued even through the 19th…
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Authenticity
People feel obliged to manufacture themselves as unique individuals, free from all the inhibitions and encumbrances of the past. Authenticity is the highest good. Not only is this impossible to achieve, but it leads to a tension that is difficult for people to resolve. Our supposed obligation to be self-created individuals is at complete variance…
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Early days of a better nation
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation” – Scottish Parliament Cannongate wall inscription. Paraphrased from Canadian Dennis Lee: “Best of all is finding a place to be in the early days of a better civilisation” in poem berating a complicit, colonised Canada.