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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Public transport in Greater Manchester

Photo of a street with a tuktuk motor riksha behind a yellow bus.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm sorry, but this should really not be happening in the introduction, in the second sentence! Very sloppy editing.

Screenshot:

Introduction

The concept of black bile as a substance responsible for health and disease is an interesting topic in ancient medicine. The origin of black bile appears to have originated towards the end of the fifth century BCE, when it was defined as a fundamental substance in the body, alongside blood, phlegm and yellow bile in the Hippocratic On the Nature of Man. But, apart from this one treatise, black bile was regarded mostly as a type of waste product or was completely ignored in the medical theories of many physicians and philosophers.

'origin' and 'originated' in the second sentence are underlined.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'm using Immanuel Kant's definition of enlightenment (Aufklärung).

AUFKLÄRUNG ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstver-
schuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich
seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbst-
verschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben
nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des
Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sa-
pere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!
ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The old Chorlton-on-Medlock Townhall, site of the 5th Pan-African Congress in 1945.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Here we go. Not just student nurses, we all should be interested in rites of passage.

With its focus on the sacred and ceremonial, ritual and transitions in semi-civilised societies, coupled with criticisms levelled at van Gennep's methods, one might reasonably ask what relevance Les Rites de Passage has for nurse education in the increasingly secular twenty first century. Connections between undergraduate pre-registration nurse education and rites of passage have been made by Holland (1999) and Andre et al. (2009). Moreover, Barton (2007) contended that van Gennep's schema is an important framework for nurse educationalists, for as he explains:

a rite of passage could also feature in other important life events, such as academic achievement or attaining formal membership of an occupational group or profession. Thus, the social transitions experienced by students undergoing professional education may be compared with the staged processes of a rite of passage (p. 339).

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This paragraph is interesting to me as a historian of STM, but perhaps of limited direct relevance to student nurses? But hey, we want to understand the world!

For van Gennep, classification was significant for advancing science and offers an indication of his realist–positivist leaning. Indeed, van Gennep had little time for interpretation and metaphysics which then were concerns for his anthropological contemporaries. Nonetheless, van Gennep was concerned to situate rites of passage in context. Indeed, in his discussion of sympathetic rites he criticised anthropologists of the animistic school for neglecting the significance of context: ‘their writings are collections of parallels taken out context and divorced from ritual sequencing’ (Van Gennep, [1909]/1960, ps. 5). Arguably van Gennep's commitment to context represented a major departure in European anthropological thinking and practice of the time and this in itself is an important marker of the significance of his work.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I like this piece, and approve of teaching student nurses about big ideas and important concepts in anthropology and social science, such as Rites of Passage. 👍 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Screenshot of the first few paragraphs of an article entitled 'Big Ideas: ‘Les Rites De Passage’ Arnold Van Gennep 1909' by Tessa E. Watts in the journal Nurse Education Today (April 2013)

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Reminds me of this scene in the movie Troy.

Two llamas on what looks like a busy plaza in ancient Greece.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“Would you hold my beer for a minute,” asked Ursula K. Le Guin.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

On the way back from the boy’s basketball match in Lpool, we stopped for a late lunch at Takebon Cafe in Widnes, which you should all do if you ever pass through that town. takebon.co.uk

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I mean, I can totally understand why Mr O'Leary would want to hold this disputatio. The man's got to eat!

The comments came before an AGM in which about a third of shareholders voted against O’Leary’s latest pay deal, potentially worth €150m (£129m). The package, agreed over the summer, would give him options on 10m shares if he hits profit and share price targets and stays at the helm of the Irish carrier until 2032.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Sachsen-Anhalt's gender problem: young women are leaving; young men are staying. In one place it's 357 men per 100 women.

Map with figures showing a significant gender imbalance in Sachsen-Anhalt among to 18-29 year-old population.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

This is really very good. I think this will end up on the ‘how history can help us understand current issues in biology’ reading list.

Levin can ventriloquise clearly the difficulties that other scientists have with his work. They see the habits of the slime mould arising from “mere” physics and chemistry – just the actions and reactions of atoms, as though part of some complex but insentient clockwork. But, Levin responds, physics and chemistry lie behind any intelligent behaviour – even that shown by human brains. This has not won his critics over. “From one side,” he said, “I get angry stuff from some biologists who say: ‘Look, for hundreds of years we’ve tried to point out that life is not a machine – that life is special, that minds are special.’ And by bringing computers and molecules into it, they think that’s a licence to skew the whole thing back to the life-is-a-machine metaphor all over again.”

From the other side, scientists who regard the behaviour of cells and their molecules as pure physics and chemistry worry that imbuing them with shades of cognition, as Levin does, verges on animism – an enlivening of inert matter. Even to talk about cognition and intelligence as attributes common to all organisms is to invite the accusation of dabbling in the metaphysical waters of vitalism, the 18th-century belief in a fundamental life force, Lyon said. “It’s like they think: ‘You know, if we don’t hold the line here, these vitalists are going to be letting ghosts into the living world next.’”

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Enjoying a small town weekend in West Germany. (for the Germans on this site: Abitreffen)

View at an Eisdiele from a cafe terrace across the street.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

For weeks now we‘ve had this bottle of dishwashing liquid on the bathroom window sill. Why? It’s a mystery.

Fairy Original dishwashing liquid bottle on a bathroom window sill, next to some other containers that you’d expect in this location.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I also found David Runciman's Talking Politics - History of Ideas podcast on Fukuyama useful and accessible when I listened to it a while ago. www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-i...

Screenshot of the section on the History of Ideas website relating to Fukuyama.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The books are starting to arrive. Thanks to all who recommended!

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Yes, I know, and I am experiencing the customary late summer panic moments.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

If I was a shark I’d also bite the idiots.

Photo of influencer touching a pretty big shark. Screenshot from the article.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

[A friend just sent me a short essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which is marvelous]

Screenshot of header: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986)

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Interesting idea, worth considering, but is it just me who‘d find it confusing if both the Atlantic and the Pacific were going to be renamed the American Ocean? How about the East American and the West American Ocean?

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

This is so incredibly stupid. It hurts.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Ich habe Fachliteratur in der Handbibliothek.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Doesn't look like the decision was made by a panel. Looks like Bouke de Vries decided that he wanted to hire Cofnas, and HR approved.

Screenshot of a page in the departmental statement, unfortunately too long to copy and paste the text here.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Birmingham Moor Street, on the other hand, is very pretty.

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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I found out today that the ground breaking historian of the NHS, Charles Webster is turning 90 in October. This is a recent book with essays by him, In Times of Strife (2023) edited by Henrike Lähnemann and available digitally, #openaccess. #histmed