Thoughts & Musings from James McNiven
In 1832, a son, Octave, was born to the Chanut family in Paris. When Octave was six, his father, estranged from his wife, took him and sailed to New Orleans to teach at the newly-created Jefferson College. The deepening financial crisis following the 1837 Crash led to his soon losing his job, so he took… Continue reading Octave Chanute and the Wright Brothers
It’s really pretty simple. In order for a society to reproduce itself, each woman must have 2.1 children during her fertile period, which normally lasts from, say 14-42 years of age, more or less. This is called a fertility rate, as opposed to a birthrate. A stable population fertility rate is reached by counting one… Continue reading Aging and Economies
Early in 1870, while the Wyoming Governor was away in the East, Edward Lee became the Acting Governor. He, with the legal help of one of the state Supreme Court Justices, appointed three women to vacancies for Territorial Justice of the Peace positions. The terms were shortened in order to put them on a consistent… Continue reading Wyoming, 1870 – The Accidental First Suffragettes: a Political Breakthrough for Women
In essence, the bubble problem is tied to borrowing, that is, to put it [more or less] in the words of a character in the movie Popeye, "If you lend me money for a hamburger today, I’ll pay you back on Monday". Presumably, there would be an extra charge for taking the risk, called interest.… Continue reading Just Bubbling Along
Updated from an earlier version published in May 2017 in factsandopinions.com. Like a lot of people in North America and Europe, I lived through years and years of paying attention to the Soviet Union, and later, Russia. It always seemed to me that this huge country, with the largest land area in the world, and possessor… Continue reading Why Bother with Russia?
There is a famous Army recruiting poster from World War I that shows Uncle Sam in his current ‘look’. He is sternly looking and pointing at the viewer, and the caption below him reads “I Want You For U.S. Army!” Generally, all the representations of Uncle Sam since 1917, and including the one my son… Continue reading About Uncle Sam
I have sometimes used this quip in the above title to describe what went on in much of the American land policy with respect to Native Americans. An awful lot of land was acquired from various ‘chiefs’ who were deemed by the American authorities to have had the legal right to sell property presumably owned… Continue reading ‘I Stole It Fair and Square’
You might want to follow this explanation on a map. How US 20 (America's longest highway and the subject of my book trilogy The Yankee Road) ended in Newport, or even at Yellowstone, is a complex story. First and foremost, it begins with boundaries. After the American Revolution, the British kept control over the eastern seaboard… Continue reading Boundaries
Something that seems to be left out of most accounts of travelling overland across the continent is how long it took, especially for those going west from the Mississippi River valley, and what the introduction of the railroad and then the automobile meant to the traveller. For the wagon going to Oregon, or the Mormon… Continue reading Some Rough Travel Comparisons
With the publication of Volume 3 of The Yankee Road launching August 2020 (here's a bit of the story behind US 20, America's longest highway. US 20 stretches across the United States nearly 3400 miles, from Boston to Newport, Oregon. It is a designation connecting a number of largely pre-existing roads rather than a singular… Continue reading The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
Old Professor by the Sea 