Category Archives: History

Re-reading Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative I paid too little attention to a passage in which the enslaved African is negotiating the price of his manumission in the late 1760s. I noticed the human interaction involved with his generally benevolent Quaker owner (which was what Equiano intended as an author), but glossed over the actual monetary values, simply because to my modern eyes they seemed small.

I guess I should say something about 9/11, other than what I’ve said previously about being at work that day and trying to find out where my daughter was on the last day of her New York stay (when she’d hinted she might visit the WTC as she was staying a block or two away); and about how to me it was a prophetic marker on the forthcoming judgement on Western nations, now come home to roost.

If all your friends and all my friends, most of the media and sober-minded people everywhere are to be believed, the COVID-19 crisis is an unfortunate natural bump in the road which looks likely to sort itself out fairly soon, giving us plenty of breathing space to sort out the longer-term bijou problemette that the world is dying from industrialisation and overpopulation. All will be well just so long as we decarbonise by 2030.