Cognitive sciences @ McGill - not sure how closely related that course was, but it was in the Philosophy department
The timing of last night’s total lunar eclipse could have been timed by a competent student of Ptolemy 1800 years ago, +/- 13 minutes (*). A wrong but shrewd model, honed on centuries of good data, can perform very well.
(*) that was my son’s final exam last year in a Babylonian astronomy class.
(*) that was my son’s final exam last year in a Babylonian astronomy class.
WaPo not on the list, though. You should have offered to do a special issue on MT for $40m.
John Cochrane…. a fat finger mistake, as his commentary makes clear.
by François R. Velde — Reposted by: Nuno Palma
The birth of coinage - c650BC, five consecutive denominations (each half of the one on the left). Lydian coins, 55% gold and 45% silver. The one on the right weighs 0.3g and could probably buy a few sheep. Not quite small change…
El archivo general de Simancas has joined the 21st c.! Now we can take pictures from our seats without limit
It’s Saturday Oct 16, 1582 and everyone in Naples is shopping for a new calendar (calendario novamente stampato). The Pope thought he could impose a worldwide copyright for the inventor, but the Catholic King told his viceroy to ignore this infringement on his jurisdiction.
Reposted by: François R. Velde
Breakthrough in payments technology: a Swedish coin weighing 19kg (1648) and a note of same value (1666).
Reposted by: François R. Velde, Roger Blum
nobody does more brutal fashion reviews than the irish
Because the conclusions are always stated in the introduction - economists are impatient readers, especially with 50-page papers.
Banco de la Nación Argentina: register of illiterate clients (with fingerprints), c1900-02. Several Turks, one Arab, one German.
Ah, so the drawings represent the shops rather than the items. That makes more sense.
How was the illiterate servant supposed to distinguish un bocal di vino from un bocal de tondo?