As I think about this project of organizing “the” history of the world, I see that I face obstacles ahead. Namely, a particular challenge is that contemporary life has many more layers of details, making it much more difficult to fit it into a narrative. Before Gutenberg unleashed the god-forsaken printing press on us, civilization … Read more
Aka radiocarbon dating aka carbon-14 dating is a method is a method for determining the age of old stuff, up to about 50- or 60,000 years old. I was under the impression it was useful for determining the age of far older things, so I will have to investigate further. This method was developed in … Read more
Admittedly, I enjoy learning about recent history: visual arts and music and that sort of thing. Learning about how we _think_ the planet was billions of years before humans even existed is kinda boring to me. However, I fully believe the saying that goes something like, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed … Read more
According to Wikipedia, our planet — the first “w” in www — is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old, which frankly seems like a pretty big margin of error, if you ask me. But hey, they weren’t exactly keeping records back then! The 4.54 billion year estimate comes from many sources, which are cited in … Read more
Where are we, and how did we get here. Presumably, these questions underlie all major dogmatic religions, and it seems like nobody really knows. Extreme wealth and terror have been perpetrated because of various unfounded beliefs, and the notion that nobody really knows what we’re doing here on earth — or where earth even is … Read more