So I'm currently working on the first chapter of the Unsolicited Manuscript of Doom, which covers world history from the beginning (as seems required in a good universal history) to the beginning of written history. This is essentially a complete rewriting of a first draft of the introductory lecture of my old history of science course --a pointless waste of time that Kwantlen University College used to require of its Bachelors in Business Technology students.
It is, at the very least, a better chapter than it was in the first go. I guess that justifies a great deal of reading and thinking over the last 6(!) years, but it is not exactly free of the jejune: case in point, my discussion of Karl Polanyi today.

I guess I should read a great deal more Polanyi rather than theoretically-minded archaeologists genuflecting to him, but I was not aware until I looked him up in Wikipedia the other day that his grand theory of non-market societies was formulated as a contribution to the history of the 18th-19th Century transition, and that I know something about. Specifically, I know that there ain't no early modernists ever heard of Polanyi. Does that justify giving him short shrift? Probably not, but you've got to save time somewhere.

Typical Start

This is the absolute first entry in this blog. Which means that if you're reading back from the end (June, 2012, on a guess), this is the last one you will read. It has the ultimate last secret of my blogging career on it. Which means that I have to come up with the ultimate secret first. Which is stupid. And too much pressure.
Nevertheless, I have to oblige. And it's not that hard, because ultimate secrets are all enigmatic and stuff, and all I have to do is go to my schizophrenic place for that. Here goes: "grease" and "grass" not only sound alike, but are actually the same word.