The Rhino’s Horn and Memory February 2, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : AncientEvery so often Beach gets a post from a reader that practically writes itself and the extent of this blogger’s work is the cut and paste button. Here is one such example that goes in the well established oral transmission tag. The correspondent and author was Indranil. Can any reader help out Indranil and his […]
Force Feeding Queens April 9, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernOne of Beach’s most able students this term did a paper on ‘cultural variance in female beauty’: the fact that what makes a woman attractive varies from society to society. This is rarely truer than with weight. After all, here should we trust the modern American model of the waspish, almost boyish woman or the […]
The Zambian Space Programme of 1962 December 4, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryOne of the problems of looking for the bizarre in history is that, after a while, you’ve read everything before: mermaid funerals in the Hebrides, tick; bats used in bombs against Japan, tick; Roman legionaries in China, tick… But then every so often something comes along that is fresh and that has completely escaped your […]
C-section by Banana Wine December 19, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBeachcombing is going to break several rules today. First, he is going to write on the same topic two days in a row: apologies, apologies, but the C-section question has even excited him out of his recent Atlantis itch. Then, second, he is writing two posts on the same day. This is in part natural […]