Posts Tagged ‘Johns Hopkins’
“The tale is old as the Eden Tree – as new as the new-cut tooth – For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth.”*…
Mendacious politicians, duplicitous corporations, AI slop– it’s getting harder and harder to find authenticity, to get to the truth. Further to our occasional posts on misinformation in history, a look at Johns Hopkins University’s Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery, a tangible demonstration that humans have been creating fan fiction and fake news for millennia…
In “The History of Fake News From the Flood to the Apocalypse,” the course Earle Havens [see here] teaches at Johns Hopkins University, he presents undergrads with a formidable challenge. They have to create historical forgeries and then defend the authenticity of their deceptions.
Forgeries, hoaxes, and other types of literary fakery have preoccupied Havens, a rare books and manuscripts curator at the university’s Stern Center for the History of the Book, for many years now. As part of his curatorial brief, Havens oversees the Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery, available via JSTOR. It includes more than 2,000 items—rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera—and was the brainchild of Arthur and Janet Freeman, who amassed most of its holdings over a period of some fifty years. Johns Hopkins acquired the majority of the collection from the Freemans in 2011; it has continued to expand in the years since…
Sara Ivry interviews Havens: “Enchanting Imposters,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social and @saraivry.bsky.social.
* Rudyard Kipling “The Conundrum of the Workshops” (quoted by Orson Welles in his remarkable film F for Fake)
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As we grab for a grain of salt, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that the Rolling Stones made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show performing Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (and closing the show with “Time Is On My Side”).
The band’s appearance on the show generated over a million dollars in ticket sales for their fall concert tour, and despite outrage from conservative adults who disapproved of the Stones’ “unkempt” image, the group returned to The Ed Sullivan Show for another six appearances throughout the rest of the 1960s. – source
“Long life is welcome, agreeable, pleasant, and hard to obtain in the world”*…
… maybe, as recent research from Saul Justin Newman explains, even harder than we thought…
The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. In the UK, Italy, Japan, and France remarkable longevity is instead predicted by regional poverty, old-age poverty, material deprivation, low incomes, high crime rates, a remote region of birth, worse health, and fewer 90+ year old people. In addition, supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on the first of the month and days divisible by five: patterns indicative of widespread fraud and error. As such, relative poverty and missing vital documents constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records…
The paper in full: “Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud,” at @biorxivpreprint.
(Image above: source)
* Buddha
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As we long for longevity, we might send healthy birthday greetings to William H. Welch; he was born on this date in 1850. A physician, pathologist, bacteriologist, and medical educator, He was one of the “Big Four” founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the first dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the first school of public health in the country.
Welch revolutionized American medicine by demanding of its students a rigorous study of physical sciences and an active involvement in clinical duties and laboratory work. His students included Walter Reed, James Carroll and Simon Flexner.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way”*…
Each year, millions of barrels are shipped from NYC to the Caribbean. Ameena Walker unpacks the why, how, and the economics involved…
For many Caribbean communities across New York City, carefully curating barrels to ship to relatives outside of the U.S. is a relatively common practice. Fueled by an urge to provide for loved ones left back home, the Caribbean diaspora in New York, and cities around the country, meticulously source a variety of sought-after goods, intricately packing them in barrels on the cusp of overflowing and eventually mailing them overseas. The unconventional shipping method is the most affordable way to get a hefty load abroad. More than four million barrels are shipped from the northeast to the Caribbean annually, indicating a strong demand for merchandise from the U.S and a thriving business in this niche logistic sector….
The justification for using barrels to ship goods is practical. An empty 55-gallon HDPE or HMWPE drum weighs around 50 kg, but has a capacity of around 1,200 kg. Their maneuverability also plays a large part, as they can be easily stacked, rolled, or forklifted and withstand pressure and temperature changes during storage and handling….
Once the barrel is obtained, you’ll need to fill it to the brim. This is one of the more intriguing aspects of the process, as it is essential that no space is left unfilled. Practices like rolling clothes as tight as possible, stuffing the insides of footwear with additional items, removing excess packaging (e.g., taking shoes out of boxes) and shoving small items like batteries and toothbrushes into nooks and crannies ensure that not even a single crevice is left void. It’s not uncommon for someone to climb into the barrel to squish the whole mass further down, provided there aren’t any breakables or spillables inside. Virtually any item can be shipped, and it can take anywhere from a couple of hours to several months to fill a drum to maximum capacity. It’s an unspoken rule that if the barrel doesn’t require a full-sized adult to sit on top of it to force it closed, there’s room to pack more! After the drum is willed shut, it is sealed with a metal clamp and locking security cable that secures the lid and ensures its contents will not be accessed while enroute. It is then labeled on the top and side with sender and receiver’s information that should match whatever is on the shipping documents…
Despite the expansion of e-commerce, many Caribbean countries still don’t have access to simple conveniences like online shopping, making it difficult to obtain necessities. Relatives in major U.S. cities mollify this by making sure their loved ones back home get the goods they want and need, with no ocean standing in their way and no barrel packed too full…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Remittance by the Barrel,” from @awalkinny in @the_prepared.
* Proverb
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As we pack it tight, we might send gilded birthday greetings to Johns Hopkins; he was born on this date in 1795. A businessman who is largely remembered as a philanthropist, he operated wholesale and retail businesses in the Baltimore area; he built his fortune by judiciously investing his proceeds in myriad other ventures, most notably, the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) Railroad. In 1996, Johns Hopkins ranked 69th in “The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates – A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present“
His bequests founded a number institutions bearing his name, the best-known of which are, of course, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.
Although Hopkins is widely-noted as an abolitionist, recent research indicates that Johns Hopkins was a slave owner for at least part of his life.
“Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another”*…
This essay proposes a new model of personal and public wealth-building that can address the current crisis of inequality in the United States. We place contemporary American wealth inequality into its historical context by tracing how federal government policies have worked to support personal and public wealth building across three periods: the First Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century, the Second Industrial Revolution of the early 20th century, and the Information and Communication Technology revolution of the late-20th century. We then suggest a series of potential governmental policies that can help to ensure a more equitable wealth distribution in the future. Our proposed “mutualist” model of political economy would allow for the large-scale diffusion of productivity gains that may follow the installation of deployment of the next wave of general-purpose technologies. This new social contract will move beyond the welfare state’s focus on insurance toward a more radical notion of shared ownership of returns on capital via universal individual capital endowments and new public investment channels that control shares in firms and intellectual property…
Addressing inequality in the U.S.: “The Mutualist Economy: A New Deal for Ownership“– Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) and Yakov Feygin (@BuddyYakov) offer a powerfully-provocative proposal.
They join a growing chorus. See also, e.g., Louis Hyman (toward the end of this essay) and Lynn Forester de Rothschild (in this interview).
[Image above: source]
* Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, describing an ideal state
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As we rethink what isn’t working, we might send gilded birthday greetings to Johns Hopkins; he was born on this date in 1795. A businessman who is largely remembered as a philanthropist, he operated wholesale and retail businesses in the Baltimore area; he built his fortune by judiciously investing his proceeds in myriad other ventures, most notably, the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) Railroad. In 1996, Johns Hopkins ranked 69th in “The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates – A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present“
His bequests founded a number institutions bearing his name, the best-known of which are, of course, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.
Although Hopkins is widely-noted as an abolitionist, recent research indicates that Johns Hopkins was a slave owner for at least part of his life.
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