Tag: History

Various and Sundry

Is a Pirate’s Life for You? Ask the Expert!

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’m going through my final round of Netflix DVDs and this weekend’s entry was the 2012 mini-series of Treasure Island with Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver. The short version? Izzard delivers a great Silver, but the mini-series takes some odd diversions from the source material that are far from satisfying. My wife actually suggested, knowing my penchant for ranking, that I rank all the different version of Treasure Island, which is very tempting –perhaps…

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Various and Sundry

Maybe You’re More of a Luddite than You Thought…

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

On Monday, I had another discussion with folks online about machine learning being employed for creative tasks and the inevitable “it’s inevitable” angle people who stand to benefit from that automation like to promote. One of the things I brought up is that people can not want technology to be implemented in a certain way and not be anti-technology, which reminded me of the term “Luddite,” commonly used these days to describe someone who is…

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Various and Sundry

Say, what do the Brits think about July 4th?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Thanks to us living in the age of memes, I frequently see and sometimes post things like this right around this time: But what do the Brits really think these days? I mean, after all, we’ve got a special relationship with the UK that gets its own Wikipedia entry! Well, trust a Brit to break it to you gently: Note: there’s actually several YouTube videos on this subject if you really want to check out…

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Various and Sundry

The Industrial Revolution & Comparative Richness of Modern Society

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Once upon a time, before the Internet was in full bloom, my dad decided to look through the latest U.S. Army guides on countries (now known as “country studies”) and compile economic data to determine people’s standard of living in various countries based on GDP and local buying power. He did this for fun. It was how he rolled. Since I had recently been living and studying in Indonesia (and yes, my dad gave me…

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Various and Sundry

Prepare Ye the Oral History of Godspell

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’m not sure the “oral history” long-form article became more popular in the social media age, but I certainly have noticed it a lot more in the past 15 years… and I usually enjoy the pieces about seminal stage and screen productions. It’s a good reminder of how, even when we see these works that are exquisite faits accompli, they are the result of hard-working humans, who are on their own journey. So I very…

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Various and Sundry

American Presidents before George Washington

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Like a statistically noticeable chunk of Americans, my wife and I saw Hamilton this past weekend… which naturally led to us to look up the historical details of all the historical figures. One question that popped up –and really, I’m surprised this wasn’t touched on in any my history classes– was who was “in charge” of the United States before George Washington? I mean, we have that whole “Articles of Confederation” period where someone was…

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