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benbreen
46,164karma·2,755submissions·June 2, 2014
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benjaminpbreen.com
email: breen85 [at] gmail [dot] com
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This is a cogent question and one that historians of science are currently debating. There's been a lot of debate in my own field (early modern history) about whether we can speak of such things …
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Not to mention the combination rifle/machete that Soyuz cosmonauts carried in their survival kit! http://suzymchale.com/ruspace/soysurvive.html …
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The artifact in question, to clarify, is almost certainly a 19th century forgery. But there's an element of doubt that persists, particularly because the 20th century Dead Sea Scrolls were found …
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This is interesting stuff, thanks. It's also fun to think about the remarkable advances in things like geared devices, automatons and water wheels in the Hellenistic period through to the end of …
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The environmental history of this stuff is really interesting - Elinor Melville wrote a good book about the "ungulate eruptions" following the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica: http:/…
3 pts
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Yep. The main function is to situate the reader if they get linked to a "supernote" like so: http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/party-like-its-1999-jap... …
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Here's a direct link to the Choose Your Own Adventure component: http://theappendix.net/special/the-fever
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We need more of both! I know more than one anthropologist in training whose "field work" involves lurking on online message boards and fora - guessing that online anthropology will become an…
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Very true, and licking the toads can also deliver cardiotoxins (people who really, really want to harvest the 5-MeO-DMT from them apparently "milk" their glands and then smoke it, which soun…
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My dissertation is actually about the origins of the drug trade, but I think you'd be interested in the journalist George Pendle's Parsons biography, Strange Angel, which I think does a grea…
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Fleming on the Dark Side of the Enlightenment is great, I agree. But I wouldn't say his book is trying to separate the dross of ridiculous belief from the gold of "true" science or phil…
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As the PhD candidate in question, I would have to agree that it is rambling - but I hope you wait to read my actual dissertation before judging my scholarly output as a whole! I should also add that I…