I just finished listening to the Audible version of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. The author gave me much more than simply another world history. He provided a perspective of world history that considers Central Asia at the center rather than the usual focus on Western Europe. This blog mentions some of my insights as a result of reading this book.
Want a quick lesson in vaccine technology and how different types of SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) vaccines work? This lecture in Vincent Racaniello’s Virology Course, previously reviewed is an excellent place to go for that information.
Jamie Metzl in Hacking Darwin makes the argument that a genetics arms race is in progress, and we must, as individuals, take responsibility for developing an international regulatory program. Such an effort will not be easy to build, but it is essential if we do not want unfettered genetic manipulation of humans and their descendants. Metzl writes that his purpose is to get readers to act, and so I am acting by writing to the US President.
A document from the Societe Internationale des Etudes de Créqui has provided significant information about Ahasverus de Créqui dit la Roche, a distant noble French/Dutch ancestor of mine who immigrated to Norway to fight agains the Swedish army between 1657 and 1676 shortly after the 30 years war, This ancestor may have brought the first morter to Norway for these battles with the Swedes. This provides a summary of that information provided in the reference to this blog.
Check out an excellent course in virology by one of the best podcasting scientists, Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D., Higgins Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University.
This is a short and honest review of The Florios of Sicily: A Novel by Stefania Auci. It explains both the shortcomings and what I learned from this book, including that a Florio family, an entrepreneurial dynasty actually exists in Sicily.
After reading On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, I have a clear picture of the magnitude of this work, and the challenge it must have been to make this argument when so many explained the existence of so many species on Earth as part of a ‘plan of creation’. It’s well worth reading if you have any interest in biology.
After reading The Black Calhouns I wanted to list all the violations of Constitutional rights that have been brought upon blacks since the end of the Civil War. My list ends around the approval of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, but blacks continue to experience racist behavior, lynchings, police killings, etc. I want to communicate why we must act to make amends and give restitution.
This is a review of a lecture about Rousseau by Jonathan Steinberg from his Great Courses Series ‘European History and European Lives: 1715-1914, Rousseau was a key figure in the expression of the modern enlightened man, who influenced both the American and French Revolutions and other key thinkers of the Enlightenment.
I thought it would be interesting to learn a little about the history of the land of my paternal ancestors, Sicily. For my first reading I picked a book called Sicily: The History and Legacy of the Mediterranean’s Most Famous Island by Charles River Editors. In this blog I write about the various important points in Sicilian history from 3.3 million years ago through early settlement to Ancient Greek and Roman times, and through changes from Arab to Norman to German to Spaniard to Angevin to Bourbon to Italian unification and finally to the development of the mafia. Showing the connection to migration that occurred mostly in the late 19th century.
