Jude Seal's Notebook

Attempts to free the Ever Given, March 2021 The blocking of the Suez Canal by the running aground of the freighter Ever Given has brought much attention to the importance of the Suez Canal as an international shipping lane.   News reports have noted that the other route – around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope – contains added risks of severe weather and piracy.   This is not the first time that the operations of the Suez Canal have been halted – and past incidents include the unusual story of what became known as the Yellow Fleet.   The 1967 Arab-Israeli War, sometimes referred to as the Six Day War, led to Egypt blocking both ends of the canal.   Debris, sunken ships, and explosives trapped ships from the UK, the USA, France, West Germany, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.   Caught in the desert winds, sand soon began to cover the ships, clinging to the metal, turning the ships to a dusty shade of yellow and giving the ships were colloquial nam...

This entry is intended as a summary of points I’ve been thinking about regarding the university system and the problems we are currently facing.   The Covid-19 (SARS Cov-2) Pandemic of 2019-20 has revealed the fault lines of academia in the UK.  Talk of mass severance of academic jobs, pay cuts, mergers, and other measures has been rife.  Is there a way to fix this system?  I’ve been thinking about this for over a year now and I have a few thoughts which might help build a better system. 1) For the government to increase the research budget and education funding generally to where it should be.  This would remove the need for tuition fees and remove the ‘business’ model which universities have been forced to follow.   University Education in all subject areas is after all a public good which benefits both society and the economy as a whole. 2) Change university admissions.  Cap student numbers – to reduce the pressure on academics to...

This article has been slightly expanded upon to provide clarification for those unfamiliar with the epidemiology of the three plague pandemics - which resulted from different strains of the same bacterium.  A few additional edits have been made for the avoidance of confusion by non-specialists in palaeopathology and the archaeology of disease, and to update the article in line with what is currently known about the recent cases in China. It was around 2:00 am when my attention was drawn to a video put out by Bloomberg Tiktok – produced by Matthew Albani and shown below.  The video is a response to news of  cases of 'plague' in China in recent weeks. Is the plague making a comeback?  pic.twitter.com/Hj6DdltGEf — Bloomberg TicToc (@TicToc)  November 20, 2019 Because it was 2:00 am I couldn’t express my initial response out loud without waking my neighbours.    Another video replete with misunderstandings, conflations, and a tone in li...