Tag: history

Molla Nasreddin

very courageous satire from central asia, a century ago.

Molla Nasreddin was revolutionary in many ways. In an era and a region where free speech wasn’t particularly encouraged, its authors boldly satirized politics, religion, colonialism, Westernization, and modernization, education (or lack thereof), and the oppression of women (Azerbaijan was surprisingly progressive on women’s issues at the time, granting women the right to vote in 1919—1 year before the United States). And with the majority of the population at the time illiterate, the magazine was a careful and clever blend of illustrations and text. And the text itself might be the most interesting of all: it was written in Azeri Turkish, rather than Russian, the language of their colonizers. The book’s editors had the unenviable task of sorting out the text: the Azeri alphabet, written with Arabic characters for nearly a millennium, was Latinized by Lenin in 1928, Cyrillicized by Stalin 10 years later, and returned to Latin following the fall of the Soviet Union.

1491

lots of lost history there

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

2022-11-23: Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward?

Only in the late 17th century did the French and the English begin to push into the heartland, engaging complex configurations of Indigenous power in contending for control of the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley. Yet even then colonial gains were precarious and provisional. By the mid-18th century, Indian rebellions had rolled back European incursions; the Spanish, the French, and the English clung mainly to the coasts and rivers. The vast interior of the continent was largely unknown to them, and the tidy lines of the 13 colonies were more aspirational than actual.

2023-09-08: Nice visualization

The year is 1518. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, once an unassuming settlement in the middle of Lake Texcoco, now a bustling metropolis. It is the capital of an empire ruling over, and receiving tribute from, more than 5 million people. Tenochtitlan is home to 200.000 farmers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, priests and aristocrats. At this time, it is one of the largest cities in the world.

Today, we call this city Ciudad de Mexico – Mexico City.

Not much is left of the old Aztec – or Mexica – capital Tenochtitlan. What did this city, raised from the lake bed by hand, look like? Using historical and archeological sources, and the expertise of many, I have tried to faithfully bring this iconic city to life.

Mob Pizza Cheese

Al Capone – who owned a string of dairy farms – forced New York pizzerias to use his rubbery mob cheese, so different from the real mozzarella produced here in New York City since the first immigrants from Naples arrived in Brooklyn around 1900.

The only places permitted to use good mozzarella made locally were the old-fashioned pizza parlors like Lombardi’s, Patsy’s, and John’s, who could continue doing so only if they promised to never serve slices.

The Information

The Information isn’t just a natural history of a powerful idea; it embodies and transmits that idea, it is a vector for its memes (as Dawkins has it), and it is a toolkit for disassembling the world. It is a book that vibrates with excitement, and it transmits that excited vibration with very little signal loss. It is a wonder.

A history of information theory. How civilization acquired software. Very interesting read.

Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live.

Middle East borders

the artificial borders of WW1 unravel.

Other “artificial states” like Libya, which was made up of 3 former Italian colonies, as well as Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia, could all disintegrate. In all of them there is serious internal tension among tribes and groups or a minority government imposed on the majority. Yemen was divided in the past and could once again split into north and south. In Saudi Arabia, distances are vast. But how is it possible to partition Jordan, where the Bedouin and the Palestinians are mingled? The redrawing of borders is not a panacea.

Voynich before Gutenberg

Scientists have carbon-dated the Voynich manuscript, a puzzling and beautiful document covered in botanical and scientific drawings. Named for the Polish-American bookseller who acquired it in 1912, its undeciphered text and purported 15th-16th century origins have long been a matter of controversy. So just how old is it? According to the University of Arizona, the sample was dated to between 1404 and 1438, making it older than previously thought; it predates the Gutenberg bible, printed in 1453.

Kinda anticlimactic

New analysis of the Voynich manuscript reveals its secrets. It’s a mostly plagiarized guide to women’s health.

Historic NYC Bars

The Bridge Café, a wood-frame building erected in 1794 in the South Street Seaport, sits in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge even though it had already been in business for almost ninety years when the bridge was finished. In addition, when it was first built, before massive land-fill projects dramatically expanded the surface area of Lower Manhattan, the East River actually came up to the structure’s foundation.