Donella Meadows book Thinking in Systems is a good (but dated) introduction to feedback modeling and systems design in ecology. I've always held-out hope that Agent-Based stimulative modeling would advance sufficiently to simulate the behavior of actors governed by these broad systems patterns. And in a way that could include spatial processes in the modeling. Our computers are big enough now.🙂
Finnane & Richards in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review investigate the evidence of genocide against First Nations on the Queensland frontier 1859-1897. They argue that the impact of colonisation needs to be studied carefully using local sources. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12278
A systematic genocide? Army violence against Native Americans was greater when land values increased due to gold mining or RR building & in recessionary election years, according to economist Warren Anderson in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12283
Nuclear reactors were invented to kill people. Within a year of the first full-scale reactor coming online at #Hanford in 1944, they were the key to killing almost 100,000 people in #Nagasaki.
The internal organization of overseas empires influenced the choice of ship technology & contributed to Portugal’s decline & the 17th century ascendancy of the Dutch, according to Claudia Rei in an exciting Social Science History paper. OA https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2024.7
First millennium CE literary texts describe the peoples of the western Pyrenees as inferior & 'other' than Rome & Christianity. Asier Aguirresarobe argues in Social Science History that this narrative of alterity has influenced the development of Basque identity. OA https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2024.8
Pierre Benz & coauthors identify family strategies to preserve elite power in 20th century Switzerland using social network, kinship & sequence analysis. Other families lost influence while some lost & then regained it.
New & open access in Social Science History! https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2024.6
In a new Social Science History article Robert Lieberman argues that the study of US politics shares origins, concepts & methods with the field of comparative politics. Recognizing this helps us understand the current crisis of American democracy & governance.
Open access! https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2024.5
American military leaders were aware of the dangers of radioactive particles long before #Hiroshima or #Trinity.
On #DDay there was a special unit, Operation Peppermint, that came ashore in Normandy with Geiger Counters in anticipation that the Nazis might "pepper" the beaches with uranium particles to sicken and slow the invasion.
Militarization of radioactive particles predated fission weapons.
In 1914 H G Wells wrote "The World Set Free" which included hand held uranium bombs and delivery by aeroplane and it even had the hint of a nuclear chain reaction which wasn't properly described until the 30's.
Yes, and this book was read by Leo Szilard, who was the physicist in the 1930s who in 1935 envisioned the mechanism that would actualize such a weapon, just years before fission was observed in a lab in Germany in 1938.
Tomorrow afternoon Sydney time, join my hybrid lecture, either at #UNSW, or register on Zoom at the link below.
It will be a book talk about my book, Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (Yale 2022). The subtitles is: How millions harmed by #nuclear weapons & power have been made invisible during the Cold War & after
The internal organization of empire contributed to the choice of ocean shipping technology, Portugal’s decline & ascendancy of the Dutch in the 17th century, according to Claudia Rei in an exciting new paper in Social Science History. Open access! https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2024.7