You heard it first on Troppo. And no Charlotte, it isn’t bad that you didn’t know that the Titanic was real. Philosophers have had the same trouble for years. 
Shock: Titanic was a real ship – and it sank
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Category Archives: History
Universities generate growth . . . and always have
Medieval Universities, Legal Institutions, and the Commercial Revolution
by Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman – NBER #17979
We present new data documenting medieval Europe’s “Commercial Revolution” using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity, examining the foundation of Germany’s first universities after 1386 following the Papal Schism. We find that the trend rate of market establishment breaks upward in 1386 and that this break is greatest where the distance to a university shrank most. There is no differential pre-1386 trend associated with the reduction in distance to a university, and there is no break in trend in 1386 where university proximity did not change. These results are not affected by excluding cities close to universities or cities belonging to territories that included universities. Universities provided training in newly-rediscovered Roman and Canon law; students with legal training served in positions that reduced the uncertainty of trade in medieval Europe. We argue that training in the law, and the consequent development of legal and administrative institutions, was an important channel linking universities and greater economic activity.
A gem is uncovered: Tom Lehrer in Denmark in 1968
It’s a long way to the top – scale a cliff face under fire and take out seven machine guns on your own and another three with your platoon and then fight in Tobruk. After you make corporal, knock out three machine gun posts, two tanks and take 100 people prisoner and – after a few more battles they make you a lieutenant. Then get killed in battle.
Tom Derrick - a good man to have on your side
I happened upon this on the front page of today’s Wikipedia.
Tom Derrick (1914–1945) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC) during the Second World War. He was awarded the VC for his assault on a heavily defended Japanese position at Sattelberg, New Guinea, in November 1943. During the engagement, he scaled a cliff face while under heavy fire and silenced seven machine-gun posts, before leading his platoon in a charge that destroyed a further three. Derrick enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force in July 1941, joining the 2/48th Battalion. He was posted to the Middle East, where he took part in the Siege of Tobruk, was recommended for the Military Medal and promoted to corporal. Later, at El Alamein, Derrick was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for knocking out three German machine-gun posts, destroying two tanks, and capturing a hundred prisoners. He returned to Australia with his battalion in February 1943, and subsequently served in theSouth West Pacific Theatre where he fought in the battle to capture Lae. A year later, he returned to Australia for officer cadet training and was commissioned lieutenant in November 1944. During the Battle of Tarakan on 23 May 1945, he was hit by five bullets from a Japanese machine gun. Derrick died from his wounds the next day.
Davy Jones: RIP
On Reading Dennis Glover’s “The art of great speeches: and why we remember them”
I bought my daughter a very enjoyable book The art of great speeches: and why we remember them by my friend Dennis Glover for Christmas. The book manages the triad of rhetorical tasks very nicely – it delights as it instructs as it persuades – and so I read it too.
Be that as it may, its many examples of fine rhetoric simply confirm my existing view that there are two, perhaps three orators that I know of that stand above the pack. Dennis cites JFK, whom I’ve never liked as a speaker. I never liked him because the rhetorical tricks are too formulaic. “Let us not negotiate out of fear, but let us not fear to negotiate”. Thanks JF, but behind the cutsie juxtaposition it’s a pretty banal thought. So too, “Ask not” is no great shakes IMO. As for choosing to go to the moon because it is hard, not because it is easy, spare me. We didn’t choose to build submarines out of popcorn and use them to invade Russia, but that would have been hard too.
By contrast, as the book points out, his quintuplet “let them come to Berlin” (the last time in German) in his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech is a good example of JFK at his best and of anaphora at its best. See me slipping into the rhetoro-lingo that Dennis bathes us all in as we read his book.
The world before you could ‘friend’ someone . . .
From the 1891 Taranaki Herald