Monthly Archives: February 2012

Physical Culture for Babies

From Physical Culture for Babies (1904) by Margueritte & Bernarr Macfadden. A product of the “physical culture” movement of the 19th and early 20th century–essentially a modern-style fitness movement–Physical Culture for Babies applies the dictates of physical culture to childhood … Continue reading

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Some film genre data, 1904-1929

The obvious omission in this table is detective/mystery films, which would occupy a significant fraction of the overall whole, but IMDB, from which I took my data and which I admit is a flawed resource, breaks down such films into … Continue reading

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Rough breakdown of dime novels by genre.

Some raw data coming out of the current book: Some comments: Detective: the jump in detective dime novels 1889-1894 is entirely due to M. Sherlock Holmes. But the percentage of detective dime novels before Holmes is a reminder that the … Continue reading

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Anlu.

Guys guys guys you need to read Catherine Blackledge’s The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality. It is BAD ASS. Viz: Anlu is a traditional practice of the Kom people of West Cameroon who, significantly perhaps, still … Continue reading

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Obscure historical mysteries: Amy Johnson

Everyone knows about Amelia Earhart, of course, and the long-running (if likely baseless) rumor that she was shot down by the Japanese. But everyone’s forgotten about Amy Johnson and the (to me, at least) more interesting circumstances surrounding her death. … Continue reading

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