Category: Miscellaneous

The 1828 Election: Random Interesting Facts

The notes for this election come from Vindicating Andrew Jackson: The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two-Party System by Donald B. Cole, part of a 24-book series on presidential elections. I will post my notes on all of the other books.

Coues Eulogizes Cassin

Recently, I’ve been reading Coues’s letters, and in doing so, I noticed that his writing is heavily based on figurative language, more so than the naturalists who did not stick strictly to scientific writing. Coues’s scientific writing can be dry. However, his commentary is often as sharp and curmudgeonly as President John Adams’s, and his private letters are often filled with a poetic quality.

Education Through Video Games

I present a list of video games (isted in no particular order) that have all been crucial to my early education. I spent hours on these, rather than wasting my time with homework or TV.

Many of these games are by a single video game company: Koei. Sadly, Koei doesn’t make the same types of games like they used to. These types of games used to be much more numerous, but it seems American gamers of the 21st century avoid these games on the whole.

Were the Victorians Really Smarter than Us?

In November 2013, the journal Intelligence published a study entitled, “Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time.”