Porphyrios (whale)

The sound of sudden inhalation followed, like water being sucked down a drain. I caught a glimpse of a pinkish gray hump before it vanished beneath the murky surface. “Boto,” said Soldado as he tossed his cigarette butt over the railing. The legendary Amazonian river dolphin. It surfaced again, and this time the animal sprayed water ten feet into t

In the Americas, the human cost of Europe’s maritime imperialism was largely borne by the indigenous Amerindians and imported slaves. Overland expansion in the Old World faced tougher resistance and a harsher environment. So here the price of the Occidental breakout was a domestic regime of deepening social and political oppression, whose effects w

Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gallic diplomat, poet and inveterate correspondent in the mid-to-late fifth century, wrote to his friend, a naval commander called Admiral Namatius: I whiled away some time talking with [the courier] about you; and he was very positive that you had weighed anchor, and in fulfilment of those half military, half naval duties o

This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.