The man in Bedroom F
In Atlas Shrugged, one of the passengers in the doomed Taggart Comet was a lawyer who had said, “Me? I’ll find a way to get along under any political system”. How would he have fared in John Galt’s dictatorship?
Gravity in Croatia
Every so often I trawl the internet in search of gravity information on East and Central Europe, with a particular focus on Croatia and the northern end of the Adriatic. Good maps of those areas have only recently become readily available.
The voter in Car No 12
In Atlas Shrugged, one of the people being carried to certain death on the Taggart Comet was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge. Was she justified in her belief?.
Wives at Sea
When the Uranie entered the roadstead of Port Louis, Mauritius, a British frigate was already there, and for Rose de Freycinet there was a surprise in store. She discovered the frigate captain’s wife often accompanied her husband on his voyages. Were French and British naval practices so very different in this respect?
Plate tectonics: a memoir
In 2003 the historian Naomi Oreskes published Plate Tectonics: an Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth. But what of those who were not insiders? How did it seem to them?
Revolution 1830
Following his return to France in 1829 from serving on the Astrolabe during Dumont d’Urvilles’s first voyage as expedition commander, Gaimard continued to write to his former commander on the Uranie, Louis de Freycinet. Two of his letters described the July revolution in 1830 Paris and its aftermath.