An article in the Irish Times about Ireland’s apparently poor standards of education contains a fascinating insight into the ways in which the Irish business elite set the political agenda. According to the article, Google Ireland’s vice president convened a meeting with Education Minister Batt O’Keefe and several other tech executives where they basically scolded […]
Fringe Thoughts
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Interesting article on the arrival of cultural complexity
Science has an interesting article on the development of cultural complexity in pre-historic communities. The study focuses on the role of demography in allowing for cultural complexity and comes to the rather unsurprising conclusion that increased population density also increases the levels of cultural complexity by making it harder for skills to be lost. There may also […]
The Allied invasion of France
There’s an interesting review of Anthony Beevor’s new book over on the Economist. The book investigates the Allied invasion of France during WWII starting with the Normandy landings on D-Day. Among the interesting titbits was the finding that more French civilians were killed by Allied troops than British civilans were killed during the Blitz (70,000 compared […]
Reading and taste in Enlightenment Europe
I recently read through James Van Horn Melton’s fascinating study on reading habits in Enlightenment Europe. Cheaper books and increased levels of literacy contributed to a fundamental shift in how and what people read during the 18th Century. He summarises this shift as one from ‘intensive’ to ‘extensive’ reading; i.e. whereas previously people would only […]
