For Dad‘s birthday I got him a brass sextant. “Thank you, a GPS unit is one gadget that I didn’t have!”

C. Northcote Parkinson: The Law and the Profits (1960)

It is also usual in works of learning to refer, sooner or later, to ancient Athens. This book will be no exception, difficult as it is to maintain for long the reverent attitude associated with classical scholarship. The Athens admired in the classical VI Form is, of course, purely imaginary, the invention of classical philologists in whom any sense of history (or of reality) is almost completely lacking. It is well, however, to bring it in occasionally, thus lending tone to the whole book and hinting that the author went to the right sort of school (as in fact he did). Now, Athens* provides an early example of what is called democracy. . . .

*Athens became an example of democratic government at some period in the middle of the nineteenth century when that form of rule was becoming fashionable in Britain and the United States. . . .

The Head Heeb: The Sovereign Democratic Republic of Pitcairn. The most astonishing detail of this item is a correct use of the phrase eked out. (Cited, on other grounds, by Chris Brooke (The Virtual Stoa).)

Piltdown Plot — includes ‘prosecution’ and ‘defense’ of seven leading suspects

medieval Novgorod through the eyes of a child

Children’s drawings in the Middle Ages?! Even if such things were created in period, how could they have survived to the present day? After all, finger paints, magic markers, and crayons were not yet in use, paper was far too valuable of a commodity to waste on children, and refrigerator doors were unavailable for the display of Junior’s artistic genius. Most of the products of childhood inspiration probably were expressed on the ephemeral canvas of dirt or sand.

But birchbark was a different story.

(Relayed by Eric Johansson on a private list.)

U.S. Surname Distribution. (Link from James Grimmelmann.)

Most of the names I tried show an anomaly in some part of the Deep South (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana); for example, Sherwood is rarest in Alabama. Exceptions include Wheeler, about equally common in every State, and Manlove, almost unknown outside Delaware.

In today’s paper, a rare coin minted in New England.

Bonhams expects their sixpence to sell for around $33,200 to $41,500.

Those numbers struck me as a bit fishy; a bit of juggling, and I conjecture that the pound is at $1.66.