Aug 3, 2017 04:09 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2017 04:16 AM by C C.)
Britain's Great Tea Heist
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...me/535590/
EXCERPT: In the 1848, the nation’s obsession with tea resulted in one of the biggest thefts of intellectual property in history....
A Kerfuffle About Diversity in the Roman Empire
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/535701/
EXCERPT: In December, the BBC released on YouTube an old animated video about life in Roman Britain, which featured a family with a dark-skinned father. This depiction recently caught the ire of an Infowars editor, who tweeted, “Thank God the BBC is portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse. I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right?”
To which Mary Beard—best known as a classicist at Cambridge, and more recently known for taking on internet trolls—replied, “this is indeed pretty accurate, there's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain.” To which Nassim Nicholas Taleb—best-known for railing about epistemic arrogance in The Black Swan, and recently known for arguing on Twitter—replied: "Historians believe their own BS. [...]
Taleb went on to tweet several charts of DNA variation among modern Europeans that he presented as “data” as opposed to Beard’s “anecdotal reasoning.” And so Taleb and Beard went back and forth, back and forth.
Oh how quickly the conversation jumped from children’s cartoon to Infowars rant to genetics. [...] That genetics even came up at all in a debate about ancient Roman history is indicative of science’s stature in these fractious times. Genetics gets invoked as neutral, as having none of the squishiness of historical interpretation. But that is simply not true—as applied to Roman Britain or any other time or place in the ancient world....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/535701/
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...me/535590/
EXCERPT: In the 1848, the nation’s obsession with tea resulted in one of the biggest thefts of intellectual property in history....
A Kerfuffle About Diversity in the Roman Empire
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/535701/
EXCERPT: In December, the BBC released on YouTube an old animated video about life in Roman Britain, which featured a family with a dark-skinned father. This depiction recently caught the ire of an Infowars editor, who tweeted, “Thank God the BBC is portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse. I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right?”
To which Mary Beard—best known as a classicist at Cambridge, and more recently known for taking on internet trolls—replied, “this is indeed pretty accurate, there's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain.” To which Nassim Nicholas Taleb—best-known for railing about epistemic arrogance in The Black Swan, and recently known for arguing on Twitter—replied: "Historians believe their own BS. [...]
Taleb went on to tweet several charts of DNA variation among modern Europeans that he presented as “data” as opposed to Beard’s “anecdotal reasoning.” And so Taleb and Beard went back and forth, back and forth.
Oh how quickly the conversation jumped from children’s cartoon to Infowars rant to genetics. [...] That genetics even came up at all in a debate about ancient Roman history is indicative of science’s stature in these fractious times. Genetics gets invoked as neutral, as having none of the squishiness of historical interpretation. But that is simply not true—as applied to Roman Britain or any other time or place in the ancient world....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/535701/