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97b638e
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Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks--a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.
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mediterranean
greece
wine
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Tom Standage |
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9d87133
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A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. --Robert Goizueta, chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company, April 1997
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history
globalization
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Tom Standage |
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e605049
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An enormous semiofficial drug-smuggling operation was established in order to improve Britain's unfavorable balance of payments with China--the direct result of the British love of tea.
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opium-wars
opium
tea
china
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Tom Standage |
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484e1d6
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The Arabs understandably did everything they could to protect their monopoly. Coffee beans were treated before being shipped to ensure they were sterile and could not be used to seed new coffee plants; foreigners were excluded from coffee-producing areas. First to break the Arab monopoly were the Dutch, who displaced the Portuguese as the dominant European nation in the East Indies during the seventeenth century, gaining control of the spic..
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east-indies
portuguese
monopoly
coffee
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Tom Standage |
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31b163e
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The inclusion of lemon or lime juice in grog, made compulsory in 1795, therefore reduced the incidence of scurvy dramatically. And since beer contains no vitamin C, switching from beer to grog made British crews far healthier overall.
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grog
naval-crews
scurvy
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Tom Standage |
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afd9546
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Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever. --Aristophanes, Greek comic poet (c. 450-385 BCE)
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Tom Standage |
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9b7b2d1
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You Americans are a very singular people," he later recalled to one of his friends. "I went with my automaton all over my own country--the Germans wondered and said nothing. In France they exclaimed, Magnifique! Merveilleux! Superbe! The English set themselves to prove--one that it could be, and another that it could not be, a mere mechanism acting without a man inside. But I had not been long in your country, before a Yankee came to see me..
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automata
conduct
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Tom Standage |
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4718197
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This original version of Coca-Cola contained a small amount of coca extract and therefore a trace of cocaine. (It was eliminated early in the twentieth century, though other extracts derived from coca leaves remain part of the drink to this day.) Its creation was not the accidental concoction of an amateur experimenting in his garden, but the deliberate and painstaking culmination of months of work by an experienced maker of quack remedies.
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cocaine
quack-remedies
medicine
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Tom Standage |
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82ac5e6
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The mouth of a perfectly contented man is filled with beer. --Egyptian proverb, c. 2200 BCE
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Tom Standage |
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24c48ec
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John Adams, by then one of the country's founding fathers, wrote to a friend: "I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes."
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john-adams
molasses-act
rum
molasses
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Tom Standage |
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368e755
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Is it any surprise that the current center of coffee culture, the city of Seattle, home to the Starbucks coffeehouse chain, is also where some of the world's largest software and Internet firms are based? Coffee's association with innovation, reason, and networking--plus a dash of revolutionary fervor--has a long pedigree.
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Tom Standage |
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868f0a3
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During the first millennium BCE, even the beer-loving Mesopotamians turned their backs on beer, which was dethroned as the most cultured and civilized of drinks, and the age of wine began.
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mesopotamia
civilization
culture
wine
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Tom Standage |
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7e1ffce
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Illness and death are not the only consequences of the lack of access to water; it also hinders education and economic development. Widespread illness makes countries less productive, more dependent on outside aid, and less able to lift themselves out of poverty. According to the United Nations, one of the main reasons girls do not go to school in sub-Saharan Africa is that they have to spend so much time fetching water from distant wells a..
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third-world
water
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Tom Standage |
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5b9cd90
|
But [Coca-Cola] was also genuinely welcomed by the servicemen in far-flung military bases: Coca-Cola reminded them of home and helped to maintain morale.
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morale
military
home
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Tom Standage |
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8e88c7c
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such a social-media environment; it is merely the most recent and most efficient way that humans have found to scratch a prehistoric itch. The compelling nature of social media, then, can be traced back in part to the evolution of the social brain, as
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Tom Standage |
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ed2a450
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Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe's coffeehouses functioned as the Internet of the Age of Reason.
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coffee-house
coffee
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Tom Standage |
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42e8b7d
|
By tracing the careers of the four members of the Philosophical Breakfast Club, Laura Snyder has found a wonderful way not just to tell the great stories of 19th-century science, but to bring them vividly to life.
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Tom Standage |
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7ea94fc
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Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
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Tom Standage |
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19369ce
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One common abbreviation used in Roman letters was SPD, which was short for salutem plurimam dicit, or "sends many greetings." This served as a greeting at the beginning of a letter, to indicate the sender and the receiver, as in "Marcus Sexto SPD" ("Marcus sends many greetings to Sextus"). Another popular acronym was SVBEEV, which was short for si vales, bene est, ego valeo ("if you are well, that is good, I am well"). Such abbreviations sa..
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Tom Standage |
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82835be
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Television's appeal is apparent from the steady increase in the average amount of time spent watching television in America, from four and a half hours a day in 1950 to five hours in 1960, six hours in 1970, and seven hours in 1990. As the number of homes with multiple screens increased, and cable and satellite television provided dozens and then hundreds of channels to choose from, the number of hours watched increased still further, excee..
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Tom Standage |
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d9a33ed
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All this will come as a surprise to modern Internet users who may assume that today's social-media environment is unprecedented. But many of the ways in which we share, consume, and manipulate information, even in the Internet era, build upon habits and conventions that date back centuries.
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Tom Standage |
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ec1fff8
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Food has a unique political power, for several reasons: food links the world's richest consumers with its poorest farmers; food choices have always been a potent means of social signaling; modern shoppers must make dozens of food choices every week, providing far more opportunities for political expression than electoral politics; and food is a product you consume, so eating something implies a deeply personal endorsement of it. But
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Tom Standage |
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b3e70a0
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A particularly important use of codes a was by banks. Worries about the security of telegraphic money transfers
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Tom Standage |
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bbfb82f
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In 1872, Western Union (by then the dominant telegraph company in the United States) decided to implement a new, secure scheme to enable sums of up to $100 to be transferred between several hundred towns by telegraph. The system worked by dividing the company's network into twenty districts, each of which had its own superintendent. A telegram from the sender's office to the district superintendent confirmed that the money had been deposite..
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Tom Standage |
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17f8a67
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The exchange of consent being given by the electric flash, they were thus married by telegraph.
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Tom Standage |
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49240a9
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But an oft-heard complaint, as companies spread their tentacles around the world and compete on a global playing field, is that globalization is merely a new form of imperialism.
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corporations
globalization
imperialism
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Tom Standage |
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7076583
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In the United States radio was centralized to maximize advertising revenue; in Britain to preserve and promote the values of the elite; and in Germany to advance Nazi propaganda. Whatever the reason, the result was the most centralized medium in history. In the United States radio listeners were gathered up by networks that saw them as consumers to be sold to; in Britain they were the masses to be instructed and improved; in Germany they we..
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Tom Standage |
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ad4bc92
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Literacy was power.
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Tom Standage |
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7aac8b4
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Paul used social media to ensure that his view prevailed, cementing the establishment of the Christian church as a religion open to all, and not just to Jews. Such is his influence that his letters are still read out in Christian churches all over the world today-- a striking testament to the power of documents copied and distributed along social networks.
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Tom Standage |
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0b6767a
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No doubt there was some time-wasting in coffee houses, as their critics claimed. But coffee houses also provided a lively intellectual and social environment in which people could meet and ideas could collide in unexpected ways, producing a stream of innovations that shaped the modern world. On balance, the introduction of coffee houses did far more good than harm, which should give those concerned about the time-wasting potential of Intern..
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Tom Standage |
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1171c36
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One writer, Gardiner Hubbard, described the American telegraph system as "peculiarly a business system; eighty per cent of the messages are on business matters... . the managers of the telegraph know that their business customers want the quickest and best service, and care more for dispatch than low tariffs. Thus the great difference between the telegraph systems of Europe and America is that [in Europe], the telegraph is used principally ..
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Tom Standage |
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bdb6ea2
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in Britain, for example, it meant that a centralized "nickname" system could be introduced. Under this scheme, companies and individuals could reserve a special word as their "telegraphic address" to make life easier for anyone who wanted to send them a telegram."
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Tom Standage |
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0205be9
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Yet the history of media shows that this is just the modern incarnation of the timeless complaint of the intellectual elite, every time technology makes publishing easier, that the wrong sort of people will use it to publish the wrong sorts of things.
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Tom Standage |
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b7cce32
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Stronger! stronger! grow they all, Who for Coca-Cola call. Brighter! brighter! thinkers think, When they Coca-Cola drink. --Coca-Cola advertising slogan, 1896
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Tom Standage |
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ddde3ae
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most of the stories in the Boston News-Letter were simply copied from the London papers.
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Tom Standage |
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03dbd06
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the Coca-Cola Company is the biggest single supplier of such drinks. Globally, the company supplies 3 percent of humanity's total liquid intake.
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Tom Standage |
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f80073c
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According to an account in Anecdotes of the Telegraph, when his request was questioned, the man ran off, "grinning a horrible, ghastly smile"."
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Tom Standage |
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fb8fff1
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these sacrifices sustained the cosmic cycle: Maize became blood, and blood was then transformed back into maize. Sacrificial victims were referred to as "tortillas for the gods."
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Tom Standage |
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c2eab47
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Chappe also had all sorts of ambitious plans for his invention; he hadn't intended its use to be so predominantly military in nature, and wanted to promote its employment in business.
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Tom Standage |
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06fc078
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Image of a Roman wax tablet, which looks very like an iPad.
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Tom Standage |
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90af9b2
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He proposed a steam-powered pneumatic tube system to carry telegraph forms the short distance from the Stock Exchange to the main telegraph office.
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Tom Standage |
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df3dcda
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Spices were certainly regarded as antidotes to earthly squalor in another, more mystical sense. They were thought to be splinters of paradise that had found their way into the ordinary world.
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Tom Standage |
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d87cba3
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There is no hope of any major increase in scientific knowledge by grafting or adding the new on top of the old," Bacon declared in his book The New Logic, published in 1620. "The restoration of the sciences must start from the bottom-most foundations--unless we prefer to go round in perpetual circles at a contemptibly slow rate."
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Tom Standage |
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eadd753
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In the computer era we have returned to the custom of scrolling through texts, but we now scroll up and down, rather than right to left as the Romans did.)
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Tom Standage |