The Off Topic Topic

[The Brain]

Legality strikes me as a not very important aspect. A number of drugs are illegal to sell, but sold they are.

[Oexmelin]

There was a thriving East African slave trade from the 7th Century onward.  they certainly had markets, just not in Zanzibar.  Zanzibar, in fact, wasn't a huge market until the 19th C, as I recall.

As far as I know, most of the slaves of the Swahili coast (estimated at 3,000 per year) were captured from raids from merchants of Yemen and Oman; the markets were located in the Arabian peninsula or the Indian subcontinent, rather than being exchanged as commodity on the Swahili coast. Zanzibar is a brain fart: Zayla is what I meant. 

[Oexmelin]

Owner then. Somebody owns those people. If they are not owned then in what sense are they slaves?

Because you encounter the same problem with ownership as you do with slavery/freedom. How would you define ownership of slaves, say, within the Iroquois League of Five Nations, or within the Natchez? Ownership, in most cultures and societies, is subject to a multitude of limitations, competing rights, and limitations.

Venice became powerful by selling slaves to the Egyptians and Byzantines and others did they not? How are those not 'goods' or 'things'?

Not everything that can be sold or bought is a good, or a thing, and the meaning of goods and things has varied over time.

In other words: our relationship to "things" and "stuff" has changed considerably since the Industrial Revolution. In a world of scarcity, and craftsmanship, there were many different qualities of goods, and in some culture, inanimate objects are even granted forms of agency. So, if we call slaves "goods", we are more often than not conjuring up our own notion of goods, as something disposable, inanimate, towards which we feel only rarely forms of attachments, and then even these forms of attachments are created from our world of overabundance.

If you want to study the slave trade as a trade, in the ways that economists reduce everything to potential commodity entering a market, then you are making economic analysis the most salient form of analysis of slavery. But, as I think can be seen, this is precisely a form of unhelpful reduction in trying to determine status of slaves, and the implications of it.

[grumbler]

As far as I know, most of the slaves of the Swahili coast (estimated at 3,000 per year) were captured from raids from merchants of Yemen and Oman; the markets were located in the Arabian peninsula or the Indian subcontinent, rather than being exchanged as commodity on the Swahili coast. Zanzibar is a brain fart: Zayla is what I meant.

I see what you are saying, and withdraw my contention.

[mongers]

RIP Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind-up radio. 

Trevor Baylis: Wind-up radio inventor dies aged 80

5 March 2018 

The inventor of the wind-up radio, Trevor Baylis, has died aged 80, the manager of his company has confirmed.

David Bunting said Mr Baylis from Twickenham, south-west London, died on Monday of natural causes after a long illness.

Mr Baylis invented the Baygen clockwork radio in 1991.

He was appointed CBE in 2015 after campaigning to make theft of intellectual property a white-collar crime.

He said chatting with the Queen at the ceremony was "like catching up with an old mate".

Mr Baylis had also worked as a film and TV stuntman and an aquatic showman.

He had been seriously debilitated, having suffered from Crohn's disease, Mr Bunting said.

Mr Baylis was previously awarded the OBE for his radio, which he designed after seeing a documentary about Aids in Africa that suggested educational radio programmes could help tackle the spread of the virus.

He had said he received almost none of the profits from the invention because people took advantage of patent laws to sell other versions of it.

In later life Mr Baylis advised other inventors on developing their ideas, and campaigned against theft of intellectual property.

Mr Bunting, who runs Trevor Baylis Brands, said Mr Baylis had no living relatives.
....

Full item here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-43290756

[The Brain]

Took advantage of patent laws? Other versions? So others sold versions that were not patented? Did he suggest that this was in any way a problem?

[Oexmelin]

Oldest message in a bottle found in Western Australia, dropped by a German ship in 1886.

A Perth family has made an extraordinary historical discovery after becoming bogged on a West Australian beach.

Tonya Illman was walking across sand dunes just north of Wedge Island, 180 kilometres north of Perth, when she noticed something sticking out of the sand.

"It just looked like a lovely old bottle, so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase," she said.

But Mrs Illman realised she had likely uncovered something far more special when out fell a damp, rolled up piece of paper tied with string.

"My son's girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out," she said.

"We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it."

The message was dated June 12, 1886, and said it had been thrown overboard from the German sailing barque Paula, 950km from the WA coast.

After conducting some of their own research online, the Illman family were convinced they had either made an historically significant discovery or fallen victims to an elaborate hoax.
An image of the world's oldest message in a bottle. The note is a form used as part of an experiment to understand ocean current

Between 1864 until 1933, thousands of bottles were thrown overboard from German ships, each containing a form on which the captain would write the date, the ship's coordinates and details about its route.

It was part of an experiment by the German Naval Observatory to better understand global ocean currents.

On the back, the messages asked the finder to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it, either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German Consulate.

The Illmans took their find to the Western Australian Museum, where assistant curator of maritime archaeology Ross Anderson conducted a series of investigations.

He determined it was a mid-to-late 19th-century Dutch gin bottle, and the form inside was written on cheaply-made 19th-century paper.

But more needed to be done to shore up the bottle's authenticity, and he contacted colleagues in the Netherlands and Germany for help.
Captain's journal confirms 'extraordinary find'

The colleagues compared handwriting samples from the form and the captain's entries in Paula's meteorological journal.

"Extraordinary finds need extraordinary evidence to support them," Dr Anderson said.

"Incredibly, there was an entry for June 12, 1886, made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard.

"The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message.

"The handwriting is identical in terms of cursive style, slant, font, spacing, stroke emphasis, capitalisation and numbering style."

Discovered 132 years after it was tossed overboard, it is the oldest-known message in a bottle in the world.

The second oldest was just over 108 years old.

Kym and Tonya Illman have loaned their find to the WA Museum to display for the next two years.

http://amp.abc.net.au/article/9518632

[The Brain]

Did they call the police?

[MadBurgerMaker]

It was part of an experiment by the German Naval Observatory to better understand global ocean currents.

On the back, the messages asked the finder to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it, either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German Consulate.

The Illmans took their find to the Western Australian Museum

Nice job ruining the experiment, Illman family.

[Ed Anger]

Sweden is buying 3 billion dollars worth of Patriot missile systems and Finland by buying the Harpoon for it's ships.

Yay us.

[garbon]

Very strange goings on in the UK. This morning I was getting adds with UK outline next to Saudi Arabia outline with the line 'United Kingdoms'

https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/the-saudi-crown-prince-is-flying-into-a-very-21st-century?utm_term=.mwV4RpPpJ2#.adDzD3d3Nj

The Saudi Crown Prince Is Flying Into A Very 21st Century PR Battle On The Streets Of London

Billboards, hashtags and online adverts declaring that Mohammed bin Salman is "bringing change" to Saudi Arabia are competing with vans branding him a "war criminal".

[celedhring]

International Women Day is a big deal today in Spain. There's a strike demanding equal pay, which is being relatively successful, and protests all over the country with way more media/social impact than I remember compared to other years.

Is it like that in other countries, or just us?

[Tamas]

International Women Day is a big deal today in Spain. There's a strike demanding equal pay, which is being relatively successful, and protests all over the country with way more media/social impact than I remember compared to other years.

Is it like that in other countries, or just us?

Not in the UK. In fact it doesn't even seem to be a (possibly sexist) custom of giving women token gifts like flowers on this day. It is in Eastern Europe, so I'll have to.

[garbon]

That's not true, Tammy. There was a big protest/celebration for IWD and suffrage centenary in London on Sunday.

[derspiess]

Seems like it's starting to pick up some steam in the US, at least on social media.