It was surprising how much I did not know about Lavoisier; and of how little importance it was. He is Saint George killing the dragon of Phlogiston in this account. Father of modern chemistry, &c. Student of heat and respiration; improver of gunpowder; hyper-efficient tax collector in the bureaucracy of the French Old Regime; academician; weekend geologist; dreamer in agriculture and economics; aristocratic gardener whose works around his Château de Frechines might plausibly be described as an experimental farm; social climber and assiduous self-promoter, whose fame could not hide him from the glinting blades of Robespierre.
A very clever man was our Lavoisier, the more charming the farther one got away from him (often I read between the lines); whose pleasure, once he took offices in the Arsenal at Paris, with a budget to do largely as he pleased, was to conduct violent experiments on anything that was lying around. His revolution in chemistry consisted of quantifying it all.
When a child, I had the evil of Phlogiston brought to my attention. It was, not from the Dark Ages as popularly supposed, but only from the end of the seventeenth century, the prevailing “settled science” on the combustible principle in the air, and other substances. It was pure theory, and surprisingly easy to kick over with a few methodical tests; notwithstanding the scientific establishment of the day kicked, screamed, and desperately resisted every attempt to displace it. Lavoisier (and Priestley in England) burnt or blew up one thing and another until Lavoisier had discovered and named Oxygen.
And so we advanced from Phlogiston to Oxygen, and incidentally to ascending in hot air balloons. Good show!
David Warren, “Phlogiston”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-05-31.
April 22, 2019
QotD: Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
April 2, 2019
The not-so-ancient extinction of Madagascar’s megafauna
At The Conversation, Nick Scroxton, Laurie Godfrey, and Stephen Burns discuss their new theory on the megafauna extinction in Madagascar just over a thousand years ago:
Giant 10-foot-tall elephant birds, with eggs eight times larger than an ostrich’s. Sloth lemurs bigger than a panda, weighing in at 350 pounds. A puma-like predator called the giant fosa.
They sound like characters in a child’s fantasy book, but along with dozens of other species, they once really roamed the landscape of Madagascar. Then, after millions of years of evolution in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the populations crashed in just a couple of centuries.
Scientists know that over the past 40,000 years, most of Earth’s megafauna – that is, animals human-size or larger – have gone extinct. Woolly mammoths, sabre tooth tigers and countless others no longer roam the planet.
What’s remarkable about the megafaunal crash in Madagascar is that it occurred not tens of thousands of years ago but just over 1,000 years ago, between A.D. 700 and 1000. And while some small populations survived a while longer, the damage was done in a relatively short amount of time. Why?
Over the last three years, new investigations into climate and land use patterns, human genetic diversity on the island and the dating of hundreds of fossils have fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of the human and natural history of Madagascar. As two paleoclimatologists and a paleontologist, we brought together this research with new evidence of megafaunal butchery. In doing so we’ve created a new theory of how, why and when these Malagasy megafauna went extinct.
Many of the forests that originally existed on Madagascar are now replaced by more open, human-modified landscapes, like this palm savanna at Anjohibe.
Laurie Godfrey, CC BY-ND
March 31, 2019
Allies Plan to Hit the Nazis Where it Hurts – WW2 – 031 – March 30 1940
World War Two
Published on 30 Mar 2019Newly appointed French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud and his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain spend the week looking for ways to harm the Germans. Not just by targeting their direct opponent directly, but also by exploring the idea of expanding the war into much bigger territory. In the meantime, the French prepare for the expected invasion and the Allies are laying the foundations of what might one time become a weapon of mass destruction.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
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Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
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Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.comA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
9 hours ago (edited)
If the Allies and the Germans follow through with all their plans, the phoney war will surely soon come to a close. But who knows what will happen. If one thing is certain, it is that they all have made plans before that never made it into reality.A community member of ours set up a new Discord Channel. Come over to discuss the war, say hi to the community or share some memes. You can join right here: https://discord.gg/D6D2aYN
March 13, 2019
How to Do Research
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 12 Mar 2019Ever wondered how exactly I make the magic happen in my deep-dive videos, like Dionysus, Aphrodite and King Arthur? Wonder no longer! Today I’m dishing out all the answers in this extra special bonus video I made in three days!
We’ve… we’ve been REALLY busy, guys. March is CRAZY.
March 11, 2019
Misery was
exurb1a
Published on 10 Mar 2019Goodbye to closed-source human history. Maybe.
The Fifth Science Paperback ► https://tinyurl.com/y5zj33s5 (you may need to change your region accordingly: .co.uk, etc)Sample story from the book (The Lantern) ► https://youtu.be/um6cGuJ4mNE
The Fifth Science Treasure Hunt:
Minimal clues will be provided in the videos below. If you happen to live in one of these countries, then all the very best of luck finding the books. They’re not hidden elaborately, just out of sight of passers-by. If you need to do any heavy lifting, trespassing, or scale walls, you’re definitely in the wrong place. Hint: strange fonts and geography.
England ► https://youtu.be/HQDeKPNUF4U
Germany ► https://youtu.be/qfKd134AETo
Bulgaria ► https://youtu.be/XLLaa7G97B8
I also make horrendous music ► https://soundcloud.com/exurbia-1
Help me to do this full-time, if you’re deranged enough ► https://www.patreon.com/exurb1r?ty=h
The rest of my books ► https://tinyurl.com/ycnl5bo3Incidentally:
So, one of the many issues I didn’t get around to yelling at you about was the line between ‘genetic disorder’ and an individual’s unique features. I’ve mentioned before I’m more or less blind in one eye and this is almost definitely a result of a mutation in my family line. And you know, given the option, I’m not sure if I’d have it removed. Or, I’d need to give it a very, very long think.
There are plenty of lovely and bizarre anomalies specific to individuals, and it’s not for me to say – or even speculate really – where the line should be drawn when it comes to one day potentially making alterations to our descendants. I’m not a public educator, philosopher, scientist, or policy maker. Just an idiot with a USB microphone. I’m not the person to talk about this stuff. So I hope you’ll forgive my glossing over of it.
February 11, 2019
Tuberculosis – A Ten-Thousand Year Battle – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 7 Feb 2019Tuberculosis couldn’t be cured and eliminated by just one person like Dr. Robert Koch, but thanks to the collective efforts of the medical community since Koch’s time — including public health initiatives and the introduction of randomized clinical trials — TB is steadily being wiped out.
Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
February 2, 2019
Curing Tuberculosis – The Hero Koch – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 31 Jan 2019Fascinatingly enough, tuberculosis was actually considered “trendy” in the Victorian era of Europe — but Dr. Robert Koch, hero of the German Empire, was convinced that he could cure it. A British writer named Arthur Conan Doyle, however, was a little skeptical, and for good reason…
Enjoy today’s extra-Extra History! Dr. Robert Koch was going to save Germany, and the rest of Europe, from tuberculosis. Maybe he would even get his own institute, like his medical rival Louis Pasteur. He knew for sure he was on to something…
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December 2, 2018
QotD: There’s investment and then there’s “public investment”
In 2003, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published a paper on the ‘sources of economic growth in OECD countries’ between 1971 and 1998 and found, to its surprise, that whereas privately funded research and development stimulated economic growth, publicly funded research had no economic impact whatsoever. None. This earthshaking result has never been challenged or debunked. It is so inconvenient to the argument that science needs public funding that it is ignored.
October 27, 2018
The Progressive case for Americans to pay higher drug prices than the rest of the world
Tim Worstall carefully explains — in full compliance with Progressive philosophy and pointing out that Trump is wrong (which is extra bonus Progressive points) — why Americans should continue to pay more for drugs that are cheaper in other countries:
Working out which drugs work and how is expensive. There’s then another expensive in actually proving this well enough to gain a licence. All in costs are in the $1 to $2 billion range dependent upon who you want to listen to. Unfortunately, once you’ve done all that and paid all that anyone could just come along and copy your drug. Which means you don’t make your $2 billion back – that in turn meaning that no one does spend $2 billion, we don’t get new drugs and we all die in ditches.
This is a classic public goods problem and the solution we use – not the only one, not even the only viable one – is patents. You get about 10 years, the time between approval and patent expiry, to make your $2 billion back. Then anyone can copy it and we all get cheap copy drugs.
For this system to work it is not necessary that everyone pay these high patent protected prices. There’s no point in trying to charge some farm worker in S Africa $10,000 a year for HIV retrovirals anyway, they don’t have the cash and demanding it will gain nothing except their death. We just need some group to pay the high prices so that drug development still happens. Everyone else can get drugs at some margin above their manufacturing, not development, costs.
So, who is it who should be carrying this cost of producing this public good? Good progressive principles tell us that it should be the rich folk. Imagine that we used some other system of drug development, maybe taxpayers cough up for it all. It’ll still be the rich doing the paying, right? So, patents, where the rich pay full freight for drugs, the poor don’t, this meets our equity criterion.
And who are the rich in this global sense, for we’re talking about a global public good here? That would be the citizens of the richest large nation, the largest rich nation, the United States of America. So, yes, Americans should be paying high prices for drugs and the rest of us shouldn’t.
Do note that we’ve used impeccable redistributionist logic to reach this conclusion. It’s only if you think the rich shouldn’t be paying to benefit the poor that this is a bad idea. Which might be why Trump is agin it but it still puzzles as to why the progressives would be.
October 10, 2018
Coming to a foxhole near you: Between 2 Wars, Q&A, and WW2 day by day
World War Two
Published on 9 Oct 2018Six Weeks of WW2 and 112,450 Subscribers later and thanks to your support there will be more.
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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvA WW2 TimeGhost Public Service Announcement with Indy Neidell and Spartacus Olsson produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
September 12, 2018
QotD: Origins of India’s caste system
In India, the notion of Hindu culture as a giant conspiracy by Aryan invaders to enshrine their descendants at the top of the social order for the rest of eternity perhaps struck a little too close to home.
But Reich’s laboratory has found that the old Robert E. Howard version is actually pretty much what happened. Conan the Barbarian-like warriors with their horse-drawn wagons came charging off the Eurasian steppe and overran much of Europe and India. Reich laments:
The genetic data have provided what might seem like uncomfortable support for some of these ideas — suggesting that a single, genetically coherent group was responsible for spreading many Indo-European languages.
Much more acceptable to Indian intellectuals than the idea that ancient conquerors from the Russian or Kazakhstani steppe took over the upper reaches of Indian culture has been the theory of Nicholas B. Dirks, the Franz Boas Professor of History and Anthropology at Columbia, that the British malignantly transformed diverse local Indian customs into the suffocating system of caste that we know today.
Now, though, Reich’s genetic evidence shows that caste has controlled who married whom in India for thousands of years:
Rather than inventions of colonialism as Dirks suggested, long-term endogamy as embodied in India today in the institution of caste has been overwhelmingly important for millennia.
This is in harmony with economic historian Gregory Clark’s recent discovery in his book of surname analysis, The Son Also Rises (Clark loves Hemingway puns), that economic mobility across the generations is not only lower than expected in most of the world, but it is virtually nonexistent in India.
Steve Sailer, “Reich’s Laboratory”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-03-28.
September 3, 2018
Montreal to host urban combat
… oh, sorry, that should be that Montreal will be hosting an experiment involving new technologies for urban combat:
Defence scientists from a number of countries will be in Montreal in mid-September to participate in an experiment to look at new technologies for fighting and conducting operations in cities.
The Contested Urban Environment 2018 experiment will take place from September 10 to 21, and involve Canadian defence scientists and Canadian Forces personnel conducting a series of technology research experiments in the city. They will be joined by participants from nations including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The experiment is being conducted in support of advancing research around how to best conduct military operations in what is being called “complex urban environments,” according to the Department of National Defence.
Postmedia reported last year that Canada will contribute to specific areas of expertise in this field, including technologies in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communications and small arms.
Canada participated in a similar experiment last year in Australia. Approximately 80 scientists from the U.S, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK took part in that experiment, which began Nov. 20 and ended Dec. 1. The Canadian contingent consisted of 10 staff from Defence Research and Development Canada. In addition, around 100 personnel from the Australian Defence Force were involved.
August 12, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – The Forgotten Plague – Extra History – #6
Extra Credits
Published on 11 Aug 2018Why did everyone forget about the flu pandemic so fast? Partly because its effects were intermingled with the death and depression of World War I, and partly because we chose to forget.
August 2, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Fighting the Ghost – Extra History – #4
Extra Credits
Published on 28 Jul 2018Philadelphia gets hit the hardest. New York fares somewhat better, but everyone is trying to keep hush-hush about a pandemic that still found its way into a children’s rhyme: influenza.
July 28, 2018
Pellagra – A Medical Mystery – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 26 Jul 2018Pellagra can cause depression, dementia, and diarrhea, eventually leading to death. Dr. Joseph Goldberger was put on the case to crack it.
