The Making of James Bond

Terence Young: James Bond’s Creator?

Was Sam Spade charming? Phillip Marlowe? No. Their magnetism relied upon a novelist´s scratch of the pen or a female character that was there simply to fall for the hero. James Bond in the books suffered from the same malady, but what if Young and Maibaum could come up with a different approach. What if Bond CHARMED the ladies into bed. What if Bond could be taken back to the Errol Flynn personae that Fleming truly believed he had created. Bond would be a man of action like Flynn´s Don Juan, but now, for the first time, he wouldn´t just kiss the girl then swing out the window on a conveniently placed rope. This character was spending the night. James Bond was about to become irresistible to women AND he was going to bed the female characters with handsome good looks, and charm.

The Non-Physics of Rockets

Space Stasis: What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation.

The development of rockets — driven by war and the invention of nuclear weapons, and the relationship the story has with recent economics and innovation.

The above circumstances provide a remarkable example of path dependency. Had these contingencies not obtained, rockets with orbital capability would not have been developed so soon, and when modern societies became interested in launching things into space they might have looked for completely different ways of doing so.

Before dismissing the above story as an aberration, consider that the modern petroleum industry is a direct outgrowth of the practice of going out in wooden, wind-driven ships to hunt sperm whales with hand-hurled spears and then boiling their heads to make lamp fuel.