The armed libertarian
Ayn Rand thought that governments were not to be trusted, and the world would be a better place if they didn’t exist, but she still thought an army to be a necessity. More extreme libertarians disagree. They want lots of them.
Alejandro Malaspina and the first global gravity survey
Between April 1791 and January 1794, officers of Alejandro Malaspina’s mission to the Pacific measured gravity at no fewer than 17 different locations. It was the first truly global gravity survey, but how accurate was it?
The Quoy-Gaimard double act
Jean René Constant Quoy, senior surgeon on the Uranie, is something of a shadowy figure, but he did eventually write his memoirs.
Quoy and Gaimard on reefs
TRANSLATION WORK IN PROGRESS. After their return from the Uranie expedition, Quoy and Gaimard presented a paper to the Académie royale des Sciences on the origin of coral reefs. It was a significant advance on what had gone before but, because they had never seen an atoll with a central volcanic peak, there was little chance that they would achieve the insights gifted to Darwin b his observations of TAhiti and Bora Bora.
Mendocino dry
As far as the Mendocino water shortage is concerned, Ayn Rand’s former disciple Murray Rothbard has presented his own solution to a similar problem. He came, of course, to his inevitable conclusion. Free, unfettered private enterprise would deliver.
Refracted thoughts
In the past, we learned from people we respected how to do refraction surveys. Now we have committees to tell us what to do.