Rachel Laudan

Heike Vibrans asks a number of good questions about my earlier post on the human energy required to grind maize the traditional Mexican way before the appearance of mills beginning in the 1920s  but still not in remote villages in the 1990s. Five hours sound too much. You don’t need an almost an hour to [...]

Note. If you’ve been to this page before, I’ve now (pm 5 december) edited the figures. Many thanks Larry.   I’ve just been reading E.A. Wrigley‘s Energy and the English Industrial Revolution which I highly recommend if you are interested in the transformation wrought by fossil fuels. In passing, he gives these figures for the [...]

Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard’s father and head art teacher at the Sir Jamsetje Jeejeboy College of Art in Bombay, founded by the epynonymous Indian benefactor, reflects on the Indian peasant diet. The succulent [literally juicy from the Latin succus] food of the West, rich and full of flavour, is eaten with a closed mouth, while appreciative [...]