The opening lines of Henry V, the ‘Oh for a muse of fire’ ones, are justly famous for their beauty and literary flare.  But at the end of the day, they are basically an excuse for poor staging.  We are being told that the actors are doing their best but you’ll have to use your

Since the time of the first emperor. Augustus, there had been a rough equilibrium between the empire and the German tribes.  The empire had been too big for the Germans to defeat, but too overextended to threaten their independence.  But with the Huns now about to wipe out the Germans the position had changed.  The equilibrium

The origin of the Huns is obscure.  Gibbon traces it back to early first century when they were known as the Tanjou and lived on the borders of China just north of the Great Wall. This was not a coincidence. The Tanjou were a force to be reckoned with.  They had put together a vast

“If a thing can be said in ten words, I may be relied upon to take a hundred to say it. I ought to apologize for that. I ought to prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not. I like words – strike that, I love words.” – The Fry Chronicles   A

I was saddened, like many others, to hear of the death of Eric Hobsbawm today.  What I didn’t expect was that it would make it as a trending topic on Twitter. I think he must have been more popular than any of us realised.  

The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence Benoit Mandelbrot was one of the great innovators of the twentieth century and will be forever linked with the science he named, fractal geometry.  Fractals pop up all over the place, but one place that they can be found is in economic data.  Could you