Dorothy Sayers, Black Cat Cigarettes, and WWI

My second favorite novel by British mystery author Dorothy Sayers is Murder Must Advertise,* in which her dashing sleuth Lord Peter Whimsey goes undercover as an entry level copy writer at an advertising agency where evil is afoot. He solves the murder of course, because that’s the way these things happen. But he also gets…

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How Much Did It Cost?

It’s been the kind of writing day where I chase peripheral ideas, as easily distracted as a puppy that sees its own wagging tail–though hopefully more productive.* A section on the nature of queenship led me first into the Japanese Shogunate and then into the double bind of women’s voices in politics. Several (hopefully) fascinating…

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Was She Or Wasn’t She?

If you’ve been hanging out in the on-line places where history and science–and, occasionally, the history of science–intersect over the last week or so,* you’ve read articles with tiles that are variations on “a female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics”–the title of the scholarly article that first appeared in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology…

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