Category: The Calendar

#OTD 21 December – A neologist’s day

Neologisms come from many sources. An invented name, a character, an acronym, a genericization. So “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation” becomes laser and “Xerox” becomes “xerox”. Leading to the paradoxical proposition “Xerox saved itself from extinction by moving from xeroxing to laser printing”. Mass culture offers mass choice for the neologist. We might… Continue reading #OTD 21 December – A neologist’s day

#OTD 19 December – The art of art

Art is hard to nail down. The Latin “ars” is an art, a skill or a craft, so on the one hand it’s easy to see art as a human process. An “artifact” is something made – ie “factum” – by art. On the other hand, art as a human process leaves at least two… Continue reading #OTD 19 December – The art of art

#OTD 18 December – Biggest day in corporate history

18 December 1271 marks the largest corporate reorganisation in history. The great khan Kublai, chairman of the largest empire the world had seen, stepped back to a non-executive role. He did so to focus his efforts on the empire’s major subsidiary, the northern Chinese khanate. Kublai achieved this by creating the Yuan Dynasty and by… Continue reading #OTD 18 December – Biggest day in corporate history

#OTD 17 December – Faith redux

In 1521, the pope excommunicated Martin Luther and gave the English king Henry VIII the title “Defender of the Faith” for publishing a tract debunking Luther. While Luther’s invective has been a source of much study and laughter for centuries, Henry was no slouch. He called Luther an inferorum lupus or a wolf of hell… Continue reading #OTD 17 December – Faith redux

#OTD 16 December – Tea and tax

Jane Austen’s Regency characters drank tea from China. It may have been cheap tea smuggled in by Dutch traders or it may have been the legal stuff imported by the East India Company. Austen was born on 16 December 1775, two years to the day after members of the Sons of Liberty dumped crates of… Continue reading #OTD 16 December – Tea and tax

#OTD 15 December – Tomorrow is another day

Far from the battle lines, [Atlanta] and its railroads provided the connecting link between the two armies of the Confederacy, the army in Virginia and the army in Tennessee and the West. And Atlanta likewise linked both of the armies with the deeper South from which they drew their supplies. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the… Continue reading #OTD 15 December – Tomorrow is another day

#OTD 14 December – Where there’s a wall…

Walls, immigration and national security have always been part of the human experience. China’s Great Wall dates from the third century BC and Hadrian’s Wall from the second century AD. While the Berlin Wall stood for less than half a century, its image remains. President Trump’s wall with Mexico remains a lightning rod in domestic… Continue reading #OTD 14 December – Where there’s a wall…

#OTD 13 December – Transatlantic tempests

On 13 December 1577, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth, England in what would be the first circumnavigation in over half a century. During the voyage, Drake controversially accused his aristocratic colleague Thomas Doughty of being “a conjurer and a seditious person” and procured his execution for mutiny after a trial by crewmen. Beyond the precedent… Continue reading #OTD 13 December – Transatlantic tempests

#OTD 12 December – The medium becomes the immediate

There is no evidence that Nathan Mayer Rothschild received news of Waterloo by pigeon and or that he thereon made a market killing. The most we can infer is that he among other individuals received news before Wellington’s official despatch and made a profit. Whether this outsider using lawful means became an insider using unlawful… Continue reading #OTD 12 December – The medium becomes the immediate