The playwright in Car No 11
Amongst the doomed passengers on the Taggart Comet in Atlas Shrugged was “a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities”.
Oreskes’ errors
On 12 May 2025 the Earth Science historian Naomi Oreskes delivered a Royal Institution lecture with the title ‘Rethinking the origins of plate tectonics’. The advance publicity suggested that she was about to overturn the whole history of that theory. Was that true?
Children on a train
There seems to have been little room for children in Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’. Reportedly, when asked if ‘children’ have any ‘rights’, she replied that they don’t.
Admiral Manby announces
In October 1825, Volume XX of the Asiatic Journal carried an announcement by Admiral Thomas Manby of the probable discovery of relics of the LaPérouse. expedition. But from where did Manby get his information?
Open Access?
Posts by one of the major scientific publishers appearing recently on LinkedIn make the claim that it publishes papers Open Access without demanding Article Processing Fees. Is this really true?
Eugène Chaigneau: an unlucky life
In October 1827, a brief note appeared in the Bulletin de la Société de géographie, informing its readers of the contents of a letter, dated 17 January 1827 sent from the survey ship belonging to the Honourable East India Company. However, the 26-year-old author of the letter, Eugène Chaigneau, was French. How did he come to be on board?