I’ve given you plant food,

I’ve given you dirt;

You’ve given me nothing

But blogwatch and hurt…

Jon Rowe: Rorschach (of Watchmen fame), Allan Bloom, Nietzsche. I disagree with Jon about Leo Strauss (even though I wrote a B-minus level paper making the case for Jon’s position!) but this is definitely worth your time. And Jon’s take on Bloom and “Nihilism, American-Style” is spot on. And I think the Old Oligarch would definitely appreciate this take on Nietzsche. …My big sprawly Watchmen post is here.

Oxblog: “…Well, a really delightful new site run by Economic History.Net now lets you convert the purchasing power of sterling for any years in between 1264 and 2002 – your 1975 five-hundred quid, for instance, equate to a whopping £2,577.60 in 2002; or £41, 6s, 2d in 1900; or £65, 3s, 9d in 1800 (yes, the pound actually rose in value over the nineteenth century); £7, 0s, 11d at the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth; or even £3, 8s, 10d in 1264, the year of the Battle of Lewes and eight years after Simon de Montfort called the first Parliament at Oxford.

“Other sites on EH.Net let you do similar calculations for the U.S. dollar, compare the value of unskilled labour across centuries, and compare the UK consumer price index, and average nominal and real earnings, from 1264 to 2002.”

oxlink

Precocious Curmudgeon: More love for the wonderful first volume of Planetes. “…Juxtaposing small, human stories against the vast, empty backdrop of space, PLANETES is utterly its own creation. It isn’t just a patchwork of genres like science fiction and drama and comedy. It somehow transcends those labels. There’s clearly a very humanist vision behind this manga, and it finds wonder wherever it looks.

The art is amazing. Even in black and white, Yukimura manages to convey the scope and wonder and texture of space. At the same time, he doesn’t prettify the conditions for the people who live there. …

“And, while its characters aren’t explorers, discovery is the defining theme of PLANETES. It’s just a quieter kind of discovery that takes you from the mundane to the majestic and everywhere in between.”

Via Sean Collins.

And Jesse Walker writes: “I realize this wasn’t one of your proffered titles, but in college my friends Bryan and Laurel invented a drink called the Joseph Stalin.

“It was blood and vodka.”

Here, earlier, I asked readers to help me transform a Stalin (port and vodka, mmm) into a Stalin Malone, but I don’t recall whether I got any good recipes out of it….