African-American Graveyard Buried Under Upper Arlington High School

An African-American graveyard was established by a freed slave and blacksmith named Pleasant Litchford on the site where Upper Arlington High School currently stands. While some of the graves were moved when the school was built in 1955, it is unclear whether all of the graves were properly relocated.

From WOSU:

Upper Arlington School District will study whether remains may still lie beneath the high school’s campus. Superintendent Paul Imhoff said they are working with an archaeologist and plan to conduct a scan of the area to identify any graves that may not have already been cleared.

Construction of the first high school revealed the cemetery in 1955. The district moved remains they found, but it built a parking lot and possibly part of the building over the area.

Upper Arlington resident Mike Renz has encouraged the city and school district to further explore the cemetery, and he said construction of the current high school above the cemetery illustrated the community’s segregation at that time.

“You don’t handle human remains in such a casual way,” Renz said. “You don’t build buildings or parking lots over graves no matter who they belong to.”

Now, the district wants to address its previous mistakes and respectfully manage the cemetery as it tears down the old high school, Imhoff said.

“This is not a proud part of our history, but it is a part of our history, and we feel strongly that we are not going to hide from that. We’re not going to pretend like it didn’t happen,” Imhoff said. “We’re still in the process of determining what (the right thing) is, but we’re certainly dedicated to doing the right thing and honoring these people whose final resting place was on that site.”

In addition to searching for more remains, Imhoff says he expects some kind of memorial to be placed on the cemetery’s site.

Pleasant Litchford, a freed slave who came to Columbus from Virginia in 1828, established the cemetery in the 1800s. As a blacksmith, he started buying land in what is now Upper Arlington, and founded the cemetery for his family and other African-Americans who were excluded from white cemeteries.

Links for Later 9-11-18

1. The dye from the murex snail was responsible for both Tyrian purple, used in Imperial robes and tekhelet, the "perfect" blue dye of Hebrew prayer shawls.
2. Antitrust legislation rises from the dead, thanks to Lina Khan and others like her.
3. Harvard started paying its workers a living wage. Could other companies do the same?

In Search of Forgotten Colours - Sachio Yoshioka and the Art of Natural Dyeing

A compendium of four short films from the Victoria and Albert Museum:

This is a compendium of four short films with English subtitles. Sachio Yoshioka is the fifth-generation head of the Somenotsukasa Yoshioka dye workshop in Fushimi, southern Kyoto. When he succeeded to the family business in 1988, he abandoned the use of synthetic colours in favour of dyeing solely with plants and other natural materials. 30 years on, the workshop produces an extensive range of extremely beautiful colours. Mr Yoshioka generously made two gifts of naturally dyed textile and paper samples to the V&A in 2016 and 2017. The process of creating these samples was recorded for a documentary broadcast in Japan in May 2017. The programme also explored the background to Mr Yoshioka’s passion for natural dyeing and his long-standing quest to revive historical colours whose methods of making have been forgotten.

(via kottke.org)

Thomas McEvilley on Connections between Greek and Indian Philosophy

Links for Later 9-9-17

1. A collection of reviews/recaps of the new season of Twin Peaks.
2. Bruce Chatwin profile.
3. Comparing algorithms for decision statistics and machine learning.
4. Narwhals beating the hell out of cod with their tusks.
5. Searching for silphium, the prized, probably extinct Roman herb.
6. The impending death of football, as parents stop signing their kids up to play due to brain injury fears. Could not come too soon.

EP 026: Gordon White

This week I talk to Gordon White, former "weird kid", proprietor of the popular Rune Soup podcast and blog. Gordon is also a documentarian, world traveler, digital strategist and practicing magician. He's the author of three books that came out in the last year or so: Star.Ships, which we discuss in this podcast; The Chaos Protocols, which takes a heterodox view of how to handle the post-financial crash economy; and Pieces of Eight, a personal history of the Chaos Magic movement.

This interview has a twin over on Gordon's podcast, where he interviews me about the Bruno books.You can listen to that over on Rune Soup or on iTunes.

Due to technical difficulties (or spiritual interference) the original media file for this episode dropped out after the intro. Please download again now that the media file has been replaced. If there are still difficulties, please let me know in the comments or on Twitter. -Scott

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Episode Outline, Notes and Links

Links for Later 5-7-16

1. Tim and Alex Heathfield Vavilova found out that their parents were Russian spies. Now, they've lost their Canadian citizenship. Crazy story.
2. John Gardner, "Personal Renewal"
3. Delmore Schwartz, "The First Morning of the Second World"
4. Problems with John Cochrane's WSJ editorial on opportunities for economic growth.
5. Profile of Navy SEAL Charlie Keating IV, who was killed by ISIS while training Peshmerga, and who was the grandson of Charles Keating of the S&L crisis fame.
6. How to beat procrastination: do a small, concrete step toward the big, scary, abstract goal. (Raise your vision, lower the stakes strategy.)
7. Farnam Street: "What We Can Learn from the Prolific Mr. Asimov", plus Asimov on new ideas.
8. Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex reviews Albion's Seed, discusses the impact of the four early cultures of America: Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers.

History of Japan

Bill Wurtz made a rapid fire, animated, very funny history of Japan. (via Hank Green)

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 014 Renaissance Mathematicus Thony Christie

Thony Christie, historian of science and proprietor of the Renaissance Mathematicus and Whewell's Ghost stops by to talk about Galileo, Newton, the Copernican controversy, and why it was smart to believe that the Earth didn't move.

Listen on iTunes

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The story of how we came to understand that the Earth was not the center of the Universe is one of the most fascinating stories in the whole of the history of science. The debate over Copernicus' heliocentric model lasted for centuries, and was carried out by mathematicians, theologians, philosophers and scientists. Observational evidence initially favored a geocentric model, and definitive proof did not appear until long after the first precise data (captured by Tycho Brahe and compiled by Kepler) had persuaded most scientists of their truth.

Independent scholar Thony Christie takes us through the debate on this episode of Startup Geometry.

Show Notes, Links and Outline:


[0.0.16] How did you get into the study of the History of Science? Eric Temple Bell Men of Mathematics. History of Mathematics and Logic: Church’s list of formal logicians, Boole, Jevons, and others.

[0.3.50] Renaissance Mathematicus and Whewell’s Gazette/Whewell’s Ghost (Whewell pronounced “Hewell”). John Wilkins, historian of biology.

[0.6.30] What was a “mathematicus”? Fields of study: astrology, astronomy, mathematics, cartography, design of engines of war, (sun)dialing, volumetrics.

"DaVinci's Resume": Leonardo DaVinci once sent a letter describing his skills in some of these areas.

[0.14.46] Christoff Clavius. The Galileo Affair. Heliocentricity. Cardinal Barberini. Who can interpret the Bible? Cardinal Bellarmine. The difference between proof and speculation.

[0.27.00] Giordano Bruno. Miguel Serveto (Servetus).

[0.28.14] Newton. Newton & alchemy. Newton & religion. Kepler. Prisca Theologia.

[0.35.44] Interpreting Early Modern systems of thought. Lawrence Principe and William R Newman’s modern alchemical experiments. Phlogiston. Problems with turning lead into gold. (Not a problem for us, but requires a huge particle accelerator.) Roger Bacon.

[0.44.23] Newton predicted the end of the world (not before 2060). Other predictions of the end of the world. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Millerites.

[0.47.47] Discussion of the various Renaissance world systems or models of the universe. Why it’s obvious that the Earth doesn’t move. Tycho Brahe. Johannes Kepler. Gilbert, On the Magnet. How it was finally proved that the Earth does move. Chris Graney on star sizes, Setting Aside All Authority. Torricelli.

[1.00.00] The Rudolphine Tables. Not proof, but Kepler’s system fits the data, so Kepler’s model is probably right. Heliometers and elliptical orbits. Bradley, 1725, finds elliptical movement of stars due to Earth’s movement. Christiaan Huygens. The Earth bulges at the Equator and is flattened at the poles. Later confirmed by stellar parallax, Bessel, 1838.

[1.08.18] Book recommendations. Richard Westfall, Life of Isaac Newton. John Heilbron, Galileo. Chris Graney, Setting Aside All Authority. Eric Scerri, The Periodic Table. My recs: Deborah Harkness, The Jewel House. (she also rediscovered The Book of Soyga, which was part of John Dee’s library, and is a really good fiction writer.) Lost Enlightenment S. Frederick Starr.

Links for Later 10-29-15

1. Maggie Stiefvater reflects on creativity as a form of dream thievery.
2. The Turkish elections are shaping up to be quite a mess. Wishing the Turkish people all the best.
3. Ukrainian elections are shaping up to be just weird. People dressed up as Star Wars characters are winning some elections, getting arrested in others. 
4. The Republican Party's strategy "continues to assume that the government is too mean to rich people and too nice to poor people."
5. A social history of the Salem witches.
6. The soundtrack to Hamilton is on repeat at my house.
7. When Beyonce met Jonathan Groff, as told by Lin-Manuel Miranda: "Groff got embarrassed. But he said I could tell you. Next three tweets.
1.  Beyonce: Did you play the King? Groffsauce: Yes. Beyonce: I'm stealing your walk. I love your walk. Groffsauce: *inarticulate sounds*
2. Beyonce: When you turned away still facing the audience? *BEYONCE DEMONSTRATES FLAWLESSLY* Beyonce: You were your OWN turntable. Love it. 
3. And then, in Groffsauce's own words "Then the ground swallowed me up and I died happy." Thus endeth the meeting of Beyonce & Groffsauce.
4. There is no straight-male equivalent for the ecstasy of Beyonce telling you "I love your walk." ESPECIALLY for Groffsauce, walk enthusiast.
5. Bruce Lee: "Can you teach me that cool kick?" That's the closest I can approximate to what happened to Groffsauce.

Links for Later 9-4-15

1. If we regulated firearms like abortions.
2. Why the world is getting weirder.
3. Moog stopping production of the Voyager.
4. Shakespeare's father appears to have been a wealthy wool merchant & tax evader with dodgy connections. Shakespeare himself may have been the family's representative in London who did theatrical producing gigs on the side.
5. Anne Sexton, "The Truth the Dead Know".
6. Paul Romer's article "Endogenous Technological Change" introduced the concept of nonrival and excludable goods 25 years ago. Joshua Gans has a review of its impact. Paul Romer looks back.

Classics are Fun

A reblog from astinomi's tumblog:

andquitefrankly asked: 13. TRIVIA. GIVE ME ALL THE TRIVIA. please. :)

Ooh! Let’s see, here are some of my favourite bits of classical trivia (I know no other trivia). I should warn you that my idea of amusing trivia is quite… esoteric :’) (A couple of these are a little gruesome)

• Ancient Greek had a pitch accent (i.e. the pitch of the syllable went up or down depending on the accent). This mattered, because once during a performance of a tragedy, an actor got the pitch accent wrong and said ‘weasel’ instead of ‘calm sea’ and we are still laughing about it 2000 years later.
• Once during a battle between Argos and Sparta, the Argive generals told their troops to do whatever the Spartan herald shouted. The Spartan generals figured this out and ordered their troops to attack when the herald shouted ‘have breakfast’
• The tyrant Polycrates of Samos was so lucky in everything that he did that his friend Amasis, king of Egypt, advised him to get rid of the thing he valued the most. This was a golden and emerald ring (?????). Polycrates threw it into the sea. Soon afterwards, it turned up in the belly of a fish that a fisherman had caught and presented to Polycrates. Amasis said, ‘That’s it, you’re too lucky, I’m cutting off our friendship before the gods screw you over.’
• The tyrant Peisistratos of Athens married an aristocratic girl in order to form an alliance with her family, but he thought the family was cursed, so he would only have sex with her ‘not in the customary way’ and I still do not know what this means because my Greek history tutor was the most awkward person ever and would not tell me
• An Ancient Greek word for ‘extravagant dandy’ was ‘someone who is obsessed with fish’
• The Greeks described the sea as ‘wine-dark’
• Socrates didn’t wash 
• Hippocleides doesn’t care
• The great Greek general Pericles was mocked because he allegedly allowed his mistress to boss him around in bed
• It is 100% true that Plato published a serious piece of work criticising Aeschylus for making Achilles top and Patroclus bottom
• This is the what the Greeks came up with to explain intersex people: Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes & Aphrodite, was born a boy but attracted the attentions of a rather obsessive girl who tried to force herself on him. Fortunately for her, they were in a magic spring and she prayed to be joined to him always, so they were joined together in one body that was part male and part female
• In Cyprus, the goddess Aphrodite was represented with both male and female sex organs
• Alexander the Great used to get foreign kings to line up their favourite prostitutes and then he would make a big show of walking along the line and acting disinterested
• Allegedly, Alexander met the cynic philosopher Diogenes and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes said, ‘Get out of my sunlight.’ Alexander said, ‘If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes,’ and Diogenes replied, ‘If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes.’
• The Roman playwright Terence, considered by later writers to be the best example of ‘pure literary Latin’, might have been an African immigrant and is widely thought to have been a slave
• Julius Caesar annoyed the populace of Rome because he used to answer his mail during the races
• Cicero was told to change his name because it meant ‘chickpea’ and he responded that he would make it the most glorious name in Rome
• It is 99.9% likely that it is actually the case that Cicero was not let in on the assassination of Caesar because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut
• Caesar once said, ‘I know I am the most hated man in Rome, because Cicero hates me, and God knows Cicero is easy to please’
• Cicero and his brother Quintus seemingly spent an alarming amount of time chasing Cicero’s secretary around, asking for kisses
• The poet Vergil (Vergilius), for sadly modern-esque reasons, was nicknamed ‘Parthenias’ (which renders itself quite nicely as something like ‘Virginia’)
• Augustus nagged all his poet friends to write an epic about him, and when Vergil said he would do it, Propertius published a poem saying ‘THANK THE GODS: someone else is doing it - and it’s pretty good btw you should read it when it comes out’
• The poet Ovid was exiled for a ‘poem and a mistake’ and we STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS
• The emperor Augustus was teetotal and lame in one leg
• As part of his propaganda against Augustus, Mark Antony claimed that Augustus singed off his leg hair
• Augustus responded that Mark Antony was a drunken hooligan. Antony wrote a pamphlet defending himself, entitled ‘On the subject of my drunkenness’. To me this is one of the greatest losses of antiquity
• The emperor Tiberius was obsessed with pears and cucumbers
• The emperor Claudius allegedly ordered for his third wife to be executed, then got so drunk that he had to ask why she was not at dinner
• Claudius had a son who died when he threw a pear core in the air, tried to catch it in his mouth and choked
• Augustus complained that Tiberius used words in their strict etymological sense (or used literal equivalents of phrases that were used in a non-etymological sense), and the emperor Hadrian, when reading about this, commented, ‘It sounds like Augustus was not very well educated if he chose his words according to their usage and not their etymology.’
• The emperor Galba is the only Roman male who is explicitly said to have had a sexual preference for adult males (i.e. of his own age) and not boys
• Hadrian and his wife went travelling with Hadrian’s lover Antinous and an aristocratic woman named Julia Balbilla. At a tourist site in Egypt, Julia Balbilla carved a poem in the style of Sappho on a famous statue. One of my history professors said that this suggests Hadrian’s wife was a lesbian and they covered for each other
• The historian Tacitus was a keen hunter. His friend Pliny went hunting one day and sent him a letter, ‘You won’t believe it, Tacitus, I went hunting, and I enjoyed it! I took all my books and I sat in the shade by the nets and it was so peaceful, I got so much done. You should try it!’

Links for Later 6-9-14

1. China's economy has some big challenges ahead (capacity utilization is at 60%, lots of bad credit on the market, etc.) (via Marginal Revolution)
2. Syllabus for Lynda Barry's drawing class.
3. "Really, Edwin..."
4. Bishop Synesius On Dreams (De Insomniis)
5. Academics getting fed up with the highly profitable academic publishing industry.

Book of the XXIV Philosophers

Translation in progress of 12th century manuscript (pseudo-Hermes Trismegistus?), as requested by Ted Hand. List of twenty four theses about God from various philosophers (Meister Eckhardt, Thomas Bradwardine, Nicholas da Cusa, etc.). Each of the 24 theses has accompanying commentary; further layers of commentary are available in the French and German translations, which I do not currently have before me. The Latin original can be found on Markus Vizent's blog (http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/2012/10/book-of-24-philosophers.html).

Book of the 24 Philosophers – Libri Viginti Quattuor Philosophorum

Only one question remained among the twenty four philosophers: what is God? Let us agree, granted by general consent, that each of us shall in turn define God by his own proposition, extract anything that we might agree upon, and decide [upon who has the best definition]:

 

I.                   GOD IS A MONAD GENERATING A MONAD, REFLECTING THE FIRE OF LOVE BACK UPON ITSELF.

II.                GOD IS AN INFINITE SPHERE, WHOSE CENTER IS EVERYWHERE, AND WHOSE CIRCUMFERENCE IS NOWHERE.

III.             GOD IS ALL IN EVERY PART.

IV.             GOD IS A MIND, GENERATING A WORD, PRESERVED CONTINUALLY.

V.                GOD IS THAT,  WHICH NOTHING BETTER CAN BE IMAGINED.

VI.             GOD IS THAT ONE, NEXT TO WHOM SUBSTANCE IS ACCIDENT, YET IS NO ACCIDENT.

VII.          GOD IS THE ORIGIN WITHOUT ORIGIN, THE PROCESS WITHOUT VARIATION, THE END WITHOUT END.

VIII.       GOD IS LOVE, MORE OBSCURE THAN AIR.

IX.             GOD IS WHATEVER IS PRESENT WHATEVER TIME IT IS.

X.                GOD IS THAT WHICH CANNOT BE NUMBERED, WHOSE EXISTENCE CANNOT BE CIRCUMSCRIBED, AND WHOSE GOODNESS IS WITHOUT END.

XI.             GOD IS BEYOND BEING, NECESSARY, ABIDING ALONE IN ABUNDANCE, SUFFICIENT.

XII.          GOD IS HE WHOSE DIVINE WILL, POWER AND WISDOM ARE EQUAL.

XIII.       GOD IS THE ETERNAL ACTIVE IN ITSELF, WITHOUT DIVISION OR SEPARATION.

XIV.       GOD IS THE OPPOSITE OF MEDIATED BEING.

XV.          GOD IS THE WAY OF LIFE, THE FORM OF TRUTH, THE UNITY OF GOODNESS.

XVI.       GOD IS THAT EXCELLENCE WHICH WORDS CANNOT TRULY TELL, NOR THE MIND RIGHTLY DESCRIBE ITS LIKE.

XVII.    GOD IS HE WHO UNDERSTANDS HIMSELF ALONE, NOT DEPENDENT ON ANY RECEIVER.

XVIII. GOD IS A SPHERE OF MANY CIRCUMFERENCES AND MANY POINTS.

XIX.       GOD IS PERPETUALLY MOVING THOUGH IMMOBILE.

XX.          GOD IS HE WHO LIVES ALONE IN HIS INTELLECT.

XXI.       GOD IS THE SHADOW IN THE SOUL AFTER ALL LIGHT HAS DEPARTED.

XXII.    GOD IS THAT WHICH HAS NO DIVISIONS WHATEVER, WHICH HAS NO VARIATIONS, AND WHICH HAS NOTHING COMMINGLED WITH IT.

XXIII.  GOD IS THAT WHICH CAN ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH IGNORANCE.

XXIV. GOD IS THAT LIGHT WHOSE PARTS NEITHER INCREASE NOR PASS, BUT ARE GODLIKE FORMS IN THEMSELVES.

Links for Later 11-1-13

1. What is Ender's Game really about? Terrible choices in war, or child abuse?
2. The Donna Minkowitz/Orson Scott Card interview referenced in (1). Jawdropping.
3. Michael Flynn's marvelous series of articles on Galileo's role in the Copernican controversy of the 1600's begins here. Read the whole thing. One of the most fun and informative articles on the history of science in the late Renaissance/Early Modern period I've ever read.
4. Brad DeLong's scenario analysis of the US economy going forward.
5. Edward Snowden may be invited to testify on NSA spying in Germany.

Links for Later 9-9-13

1. The ormolu gilders of Paris rarely lived past 40, due to mercury fumes. They were given bread or a silver coin in a pouch in their mouth as a detection device. If they'd inhaled mercury nitrate fumes, the coin would turn "to gold". They also tried a snorkel-like mask, but all measures weree ineffective until mercury was eliminated from the process.
2. In the 18th Century, there was a newspaper called the New York Occasional Reverberator (via @ManhattanPast)
3. Demons enter our world through tinted SUV windows, angels nibble skyscraper light to stay afloat, and the Blue Lady will protect you from bullets if you know her secret name. The myths of the street children of Miami.
4. The funeral of the Empress Jose I Sarria, the Widow Norton, founder of the Imperial Court of San Francisco, WWII vet, first openly gay political candidate in America, held at Grace Cathedral this past weekend.

Links for Later 7-1-13

1. Sourcing Grigua's Prayer, as mentioned by John Maynard Keynes and Jan Smuts, "for the Lord to come himself, and not to send his Son, for this is no time for children."
2. Jason Everman, one-time Nirvana and Soundgarden bassist who joined the Army Special Forces.
3. Shrewdest business maneuvers, including Herbert Dow's method for dealing with price dumpers in the bromine market and Raphael Tudela's many-sided international trades to enter the oil & gas markets.
4. Intel's new chips: 3-D transistors, embedded lasers, up to 1.4 terabyte/sec cables, more.

The Prague Astronomical Clock

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

Photo: Andrebnu on Flickr

The Prague Astronomical Clock, built 602 years ago into the walls of the old Town Hall, expanded and rebuilt multiple times, tracks the sun, moon, zodiac, standard time, the twelve hour variable day, the calendar, and other variables, and features moving figues of the twelve apostles, cardinal virtues and vices, and animals.

For its 600th anniversary, the city of Prague put on this display.

(via The Long Now Foundation)

Quote of the Day

The rulers of Byzantium were accustomed to blinding their rivals. With ornamental eye scoops, with daggers, with candelabras, kitchen knives, and tent pegs, with burning coals and boiling vinegar, with red-hot bowls held near the face and with bandages that left the eyes unharmed but were forbidden to be removed; sometimes it was sufficient merely to singe the eyelashes, for the victim to bellow and sigh like a lion as a trained executioner pantomimed the act. Sometimes cruelty was intended beyond the enucleation itself, as when the emperor Diogenes Romanus was deposed and “they permitted some unpracticed Jew to proceed in blinding the eyes” and “he lived several days in pain and exuding a bad odor.” In 797 the empress regnant Irene blinded her son Constantine VI and caused an eclipse that lasted seventeen days. Basil II blinded fifteen thousand Bulgarian soldiers, and every hundredth man he left with one eye to lead another ninety-nine, and when these men returned home to their king Samuel he looked upon them and died. Michael V blinded his uncle John the Master of Orphans. The iconoclasts blinded the eyes of the icons.

-from "Byzantium: Their Ears were Uncircumsized"

In Harper's April, 2012

Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

The One Day Republic

Norman Davies has a fascinating book list and interview up, dealing with lost nations, past, present and most likely future. In among Poland-Lithuania and the fate of the Eurozone, there's a nice tidbit about a country with a tiny lifespan:

The past is full of everything. Great powers, obscure powers – which may have other achievements to their name. There are powers which last for centuries, but I found a republic which lasted for one day.
Goodness me. Which day?

March 15, 1939. The republic of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It was the day that Hitler marched into Prague. The Germans swallowed Bohemia and Moravia, formed a protectorate and Slovakia became a client statelet of the Reich. And the third part of Czechoslovakia, this Subcarpathian Ruthenia, was left with nobody to tell it what to do. So it declared its independence at around 10 o’clock in the morning. And by the evening the Hungarian army arrived and swallowed it up. Fortunately there was a British travel writer – or someone posing as such – there at the time who described all this.

Read the whole thing, and then buy all of the books on the list.

(via bookslut)