Saturday Links
Lab meat, a history of interest, the life of a professional puzzle maker, the value and limits of logic, and more.
Good morning! In his latest fiction chronicle, John Wilson considers the art of the crime fiction series. It is currently behind the paywall. Why not support John’s excellent work (and the work of this newsletter) by becoming a paid subscriber if you aren’t already?
Patrick Galbraith on his seven-year stint as editor of Shooting Times:
The magazine was founded in 1884 by a roguish wildfowler called Lew Clement. It’s generally accepted that he only set it up in order to promote his gun dog kennels. Clement sold Clumber spaniels for 10 guineas, cockers for six, and retrievers for 15. The details are hazy but in 1906 Clement was sentenced to three years in prison or some sort of gun dog-
related fraud.He isn’t the only ST staffer who’s had a run-in with the law. My favourite historical editor came from Sligo and claimed to be a vicar and a dentist, despite there being little proof that he knew anything much about God or teeth. Ultimately, it was discovered that he was writing most of the magazine under various pseudonyms and was paying himself handsomely. The publisher was not impressed.
My run on the magazine has been less dramatic. Admittedly, when I turned up, as one sub-editor pointed out, I had no idea how to edit a magazine at all. But I did the only thing I could do. I listened to those who have written for the title for decades and then after six months, sacked half of them.
A history of interest: Jamie Martin reviews Edward Chancellor’s “polemical” The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest:
It’s striking that the earliest narratives of unmanageable debt and organised human violence coincide. The societies of ancient Mesopotamia developed numerous types of credit – to finance long-distance trade, for example, or to help struggling farmers – as well as instruments of coercion to enforce the claims of lenders. Some of these involved the pledging of oneself or one’s family as security; there were also occasional amnesties for those trapped by unsustainable obligations. The Code of Hammurabi, composed around 1750 bce, contained extensive rules about borrowing, including a limit on for how long – three years – a debtor could enslave himself in lieu of repayment.
Beyond Mesopotamia, evidence of interest-bearing loans during the Bronze Age is sparse. There is no record of interest being used in the New Kingdom of Egypt between the 16th and 11th centuries bce, for instance. But in the subsequent ten centuries it became widespread. Ancient Sanskrit texts discuss the rates lenders could charge and lay down rules about the pledging of oneself or one’s sons as security. In China, there is clear documentation of interest, at high rates, from at least the fourth century bce. The first mention in Greece is from the fifth century; thereafter, Greek drama, philosophy and history are full of stories of distressed debtors, shady lenders, and the ethical dubiousness of charging interest. In the Republic, Plato insisted that interest-bearing loans put the polis at risk of revolt by the immiserated poor.
“What is really modern?” Peter Hitchens asks. “How do we decide? My life is littered with dead or dying technologies which once seemed to me to be thrillingly pioneering and clever.”
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