November 2021: Appearance on this website of a new four-page article - by Peter Dickson - On convict contractor John Stewart (d.1772) and salt production (near Portsea/Portsmouth), in Southern England. See John Stewart at Portsea: Convicts & Salt, by Peter Dickson ... (See also: Peter Dickson's profile at academia.edu)
As edited by Dan Byrnes of this website.
Updated: 6-12-2021: Now reading; booklists; Paul McCartney (Sir), (Edited witn an Introduction by Paul Muldoon), The Lyrics: 1956 to the present. Two vols. Allen Lane/Penguin/Random House/MPL, 2021. (See website HotM by date.) E-mail anytime to: dan@danbyrnes.com.au.
NB: These websites were designed on a tower computer and are still best seen from a tower computer, not a mobile phone or a tablet computer. For info on recent hits/pageviews see statcounter.com or this web domain at personal/opinion12.
Phone Dan Byrnes
Mobile-Australia: 0478 644 736
Dan Byrnes,
Unit 4,
145 Marsh Street,
Armidale.
NSW 2350. Australia.
A suite of websites with content ranging from Australian convict history to the personal, digests of international (old not new) news, music matters, creative writing, humour, and a spot of family history, plus some of The Future too ... not to speak of a dab of satire ...
You can also look for the following eleven separate websites ... (Some are now finished, some are not.)
About page - finished (now retired)
Lost Worlds - The Website - now closed - ie, finished. Explore history timelines and wonder deeply about the past.
Bibliographies/Booklists (Australian history) - work-in-progress
The Blackheath Connection - A major work in Early Modern Australian history _ The Blackheath Connection ... a 70+ page website on convict transportation to North America, then to Australia to 1810. Based on The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks 1758-1803++ held by Mitchell Library, Sydney. Finished -
The English Business of Slavery - a 12-chapter website book - finished
The Merchant Networks Project (A follow-up to The Blackheath Connection) - The Merchant Networks Project website (Updated from 3-9-2019, now being redesigned, merchant and commercial histories with Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens)
- finished
Merchants and Bankers Listings (history) - finished
History of Music Technology (HoTM) - work-in-progress - articles and timelines)
Poetry (Poems 1-1000) - work-in-progress
Humour - work-in-progress
Short stories and a few articles - finished
Personal Website, The - work in progress
Coming up soon: More from Larry West (of Houston, Texas, USA) on genetics of people-movements in Ancient History
Tech update: From early 2019: This website is lately made with open source web editor kit Bluefish and produced with a Linux Mint o/s V20 ...
List of usual contributors: Ken Cozens (UK, history). Peter Dickson (UK, history). Ed Matzenik (Maitland, Australia, music). Brian Robson (Bondi, Sydney, Australia, computers, Australian politics but now discontinued). Larry West (Texas, USA, affairs in general). Joel Byrnes (Brisbane, Australia, technical assistance, music modern, affairs in general). Gerry Patterson (Melbourne, Australia, affairs in general) Thanks to Dora Koops for proofreading etc. E-mailers various, inc. Sydney author Monika Allan, Michael Longmire (Virginia, USA, history). Shane Ware (Tamworth). Reggie Thomson (history). Certain of these websites (news digests various, Lost Worlds, Merchant and Bankers Listings, Merchant Networks, The Blackheath Connection, The English Business of Slavery) were closed in May 2020 due to corona virus and associated problems. NOT due to be closed are sections of this domain for feedback, poetry, music matters, family history, humour, and things personal.
Books by Dan Byrnes which these websites have inspired.
Ancient History, The Bleak. An exploration of human life from the end of the last Ice Age (c.11000BC-to-8000BC) to the present day without the Holy Books ... Now being rewritten ...
Modern history: from 1690s to 1810. The Blackheath Connection. Followed up by, and ending in 1700 The English Business of Slavery. And a new book scheduled for launching in late 2021, Merchant Networks. Explores ...
Some of Dan Byrnes' work in early Australian history has been cited in the following titles: Maxine Lorraine Darnell, The Chinese Labour Trade to New South Wales. 1783-1853: An Exposition of Motives and Outcomes. University of New England, Armidale, Australia. January 1997. Ph.D thesis.
Tom Keneally, The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Sydney Experiment. Sydney, Random House, Australia, 2005.
More to come
Current Preoccupations: Book promotion ideas. These websites; music music music. Music-handling software per Lou Farina (Tamworth), Gerry Patterson (Melbourne), Joel Byrnes (Brisbane). WWI re infantry, tanks, nurses, horses, planes. Sound = regular machine guns.
John Stewart by Peter Dickson placed on academia.edu - hits are ?
Hits to these websites. Hits were rising 1997-2008 when Facebook and other social media began to erode hit levels disastrously. The years 2008-2021 were disastrous for hits! But hit levels began to improve again from October-November 2021, to 81 daily (best figure), possibly because Facebook had modified the name of its parent company to Meta. For the future? blog = 17 on November 19, blog =17 on November 18. blog = 18 on November 17. blog = 18 on November 16. Monday November 15, domain hits were 4. Sunday, November 14, hits were 29. Saturday, November 13, hits were 81. Friday, November 12, hits were 25. November 10, hits were 41. November 9, hits were 42.
Who is linked to websites by Dan Byrnes (Other). The (English) Shakespeare family genealogical website.
Poetry by Dan Byrnes. Amazon prime carries a book of poetry by Dan Byrnes.
Stephen Davis was once head of a maritime museum at Hong Kong, where he wrote a book published eight years ago, on the Keying, a Chinese junk which made its way to England in 1849. The Blackheath Connection is listed in the Bibliography.
22-11-2021: This website and the person behind it is pro-vax and he now feels that it is about time that, world-wide, anti-vaxxers - especially those in Australia such as Pauline Hanson protesting in public - were put in their place by we pro-vaxxers ... Clearly, the numbers keep changing, but the words (like freedom) do not, and this seems to be confusing folks. .
Firstly, Anti-vaxxing is merely a wish that the current pandemic did not exist; it is a kind of wish-fulfilment. Anti-vaxxers are NOT being discriminated against, as they tend to claim. They are quite self-selecting folks who remain deeply at risk of being infected simply because they refuse to get vaccinated.
The claim that they are being discriminated against is due to ignorance, or is a deliberated misunderstanding of the facts, or worse, a deliberate lie. The anti-vaxxers are not being discriminated against, they are more likely, people who will not take wise advice about a serious medical situation and a public health matter that remains a problem precisely because it is quite new to Medical Science. The claim they are being discriminated against is as bizarre as it is illogical.
Antivaxxers for all their "political chat" are people who do not actually understand politics. As follows: Governments have a duty-of-care to and/or for people, so when a pandemic is declared - and most Constitutions of responsible nation states now take this into account - health authorities under designated authority need to slap onto society, suitable restrictions which governments and then people go along with. What is hard to understand about this?
Anti-vaxxers are also people who are unscientific fools who do not understand the scientific/medical issues to hand - nor their timing - so that not a word of real Science is to be heard at their rallies.
Anti-vaxxers are people who do not understand reality, as Mankind is a social animal (and always has been) and during a time of pandemic, people naturally infect each other - so authorities need to take steps against this. All is probabalistic and nothing is guanteed!
Anti-vaxxers are self-declared ignoramuses who are behind the Scientific eight-ball so far they are pre-Jenner (the 1780s), and so they are people who regettably - sorry, but due to the pandemic, which is now on - will just have to die from it.
The single best thing said in Australia about these issues was perhaps a question put to a recent episode of QandA: when was the ability to infect other people to be regarded as a civil right in Australia?
So how dare anti-vaxxers use their unreality to invade my space (or anyone else's) and my safety, and lie that being vaccinated is a matter of political choice. This is a misunderstanding and a lie. It's not a political matter at all! It's a matter of common-sense, Science and Medicine too and nor is it a matter of being merely anti-authority or anti-Constitutional!
Vaxxing (or not) is NOT something to be argued about, because there is a pandemic on. It is all a serious business.
What the Anti-vaxxers are really talking about is a bastardized (or, anti-Scientific) form of Probability Theory - the risk of infection and the associated role of sheer luck (say, of NOT being infected) vs wish. On which risks, see the Sydney Morning Herald story, p. 9, 22-11-2021, "Calculatiug social risks by the vaccinated with science". Against the risks of serious illness and/or hospitalization, Astrazeneca (the one I took) offers 88-94 per cent effectiveness and Pfizer offers 75-100 per cent effectiveness. Anti-vaxxing, political stunthood and/or ignorance offers ... effectiveness?
Anti-vaxxers are people who can't recognise a serious situation when it is front of them/when they are responsibly warned against it.
Anti-vaxxers then are people who should be avoided, if only because they might be infectious. But they are NOT being discriminated against because they are anti-vax; they are anti-vax because they do not understand. So the real question is, and it is international, too: what else do they not understand? The road rules? Why go to school? The social need for good basic personal hygiene? Maybe after all, Mr. Shakespear got it wrong, and the ultimate question is, then: to vax or not to vax? And if I say, that the virus itself is probably anti-vax too, am I being unfair just because I imply that the anti-vaxxers are pro-virus? Hmm?
Dan Byrnes © 1997-2021 plus contributors in their own right. All rights reserved. | Images: In-house logos and some graphics by Lou Farina and Joel Byrnes. Many photos by Dan Byrnes. Assistance with Linux technicals from Daniel Baldwin (Armidale). Past technical assistance from Owen Wigg, Brian Robson. Assistance from the 1990s with HTML mark-up work from Brian Robson of Bondi, Australia. Gerry Patterson, Joel Byrnes.