h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just a warning: this is very, er, contemporary music. In other words, I find it both boring and irritating. I am listening to it for professional reasons.

Fans of modern music, on the other hand, might enjoy it. It's a smash hit on Broadway. Since the cast recording is being made available on NPR, I thought you might as well take advantage. I hope it's available in the UK, too.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/21/440925873/first-listen-cast-recording-hamilton

Oh, what is it? It's the musical 'Hamilton', a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton, the man on the US ten-dollar bill. The story's not as dull as you think: Hamilton was killed in a duel. In Weehawken, New Jersey. (I did not make that up.) He was shot by the Vice President of the US at the time. And there was a small war that went on...

This musical is terrible history. It's what a thousand disapproving editors call 'presentism', meaning people in 1776 had better think and act exactly like people in 2015, or else...

If you like rap, you might get a chuckle out of this mishmash. But be warned: they make fun of George III. (So what else is new?)

I do like hip-hop and history!

But sort of tangentially to your journal, I went to a museum exhibition about duelling once. It was fascinating. One of the reasons the custom stopped was that pistols became a lot more accurate, and also a lot more lethal. When it became more likely that you'd wind up a cold corpse than a "wounded hero", the thing sort of lost its appeal a bit.

That reminds me of Twain's 'French Duel'. Where he suggests 'Gatling guns at 10 paces.'

...how machine guns made cannons loaded with grape shot obsolete, higher rate of fire, every ball separately aimable...