Early one summer’s evening in Exeter, having just dropped off a friend for his train at St David’s Station, I am returning to my car when I am hailed by an old acquaintance, Jack. Jack greets me effusively: Hi there. I’m glad I saw you. I just […]
Read more →The Great Pandemic of 1889-1890 In the Northern winter of 1889 -1890, one of the deadliest pandemics since the Black Death of the mid 14th Century swept the world. Our forebears called it the Russian Flu. Where the Black Death took three years to spread from Constantinople […]
Read more →The fashion for fact checking “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods”. – Albert Einstein, 1953 “If we are not able to ask sceptical questions, to interrogate those who tell […]
Read more →THE UNRAVELLING OF SCIENCE “Facts no longer made contact with the theory, which had risen above the facts on clouds of nonsense, rather like in a theological system. The point was not to believe the theory but to repeat it ritualistically and in such a way that […]
Read more →Aboriginal Heavy Mineral Separation Technology in the Pilbara of Western Australia More than 50 years ago I observed a heavy mineral separation technique being practiced by aboriginals in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The technique was simple, effective and probably unique. I have never seen it […]
Read more →The philanthropist of Nullagine “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” – L P Hartley The town of Nullagine, in the Pilbara region in the northwest of Western Australia, is situated 1400 km NNE of the State capital Perth, where the old Great […]
Read more →Climate change: naming of parts Reed, Henry. “Naming of Parts.” New Statesman and Nation 24, no. 598 (8 August 1942): 92. NAMING OF PARTS To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning, We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day, […]
Read more →FEAR OF FAT Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds; while they only recover their senses one by one. Charles Mackay, 1841 In 1841, Scottish journalist Charles Mackay wrote a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the […]
Read more →How to Salt a Gold Claim: Part 2 – Karpa Springs and Busang In my previous post I described my encounter in 1984 with claim salting (or at least, alleged salting). These were early days, the late 20th Century gold boom was still young, and claim salting […]
Read more →How to Salt a Gold Claim: Part 1 – Queensland Interlude Looking through a box of my old field notebooks the other day I came across one which contained a cartoon sketch I had made of an old Queensland prospector and remembered the story behind it. In […]
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