The Mortal Sea
The Mortal Sea avatar

By , on October 9th, 2012 Leave a comment   Conservation & Environment, Reviews, Social Sciences   , , , , ,  

The Mortal Sea, by University of New Hampshire maritime environmental history professor Jeff Bolster, seems to be an interesting book up many of our readers’ alley! I haven’t read it, but you can find out more about it at its Amazon page (priced for the general consumer!) and the interesting descriptive video below from UNH . . . → Read More: The Mortal Sea

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One hundred years of shipping: 1750 to 1850
One hundred years of shipping: 1750 to 1850 avatar

By , on April 16th, 2012 7 comments   Social Sciences   , , ,  

Ben Schmidt made this wonderful visualization of shipping from 1750-1850 using ship log data. (H/T Metafilter). It’s long, but worth watching. You can see the infamous Triangle Trade, the effect of the American Revolutionary War, the rise of British colonial sea power, and more. This is a must-see for any fan of Patrick O’Brian’s Master . . . → Read More: One hundred years of shipping: 1750 to 1850

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What’s in a name? Origins of the word “shark”
What’s in a name? Origins of the word “shark” avatar

By , on January 9th, 2012 11 comments   Social Sciences   , , ,  

This article is reposted from my old blog Deep Type Flow and was originally published 7/12/2010 To a recent roundup of whale shark news, I appended a sort of human interest one-liner about how “shark” is the only word in the English language that derives from a Yucatec (Mayan) Indian word – “Xoc” (pronounced like . . . → Read More: What’s in a name? Origins of the word “shark”

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