Excerpt from nicely narrated photo "slideshow":

September 28, 2014 Nineteen Moving away from the cab towards the kerb, now. Laughing. The cab driver's watching her bottom, which I would do if I was a cab driver. She'd watched the back of his neck, he was watching her bottom. A fair exchange. Well not quite fair, perhaps, but no one ever said it was a perfect world. All Excerpts From Laurie, Hugh. “The Gun Seller.” Soho Press, 2009-09-01. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“I added enough water to turn it into just a Vaguely Familiar Grouse”

September 18, 2014 Two …the only other entertainment I could find in the flat was whisky, so I picked up a glass and a bottle of The Famous Grouse, poured myself a couple of fingers, and went into the kitchen. I added enough water to turn it into just a Vaguely Familiar Grouse… All Excerpts From Laurie, Hugh. “The Gun Seller.” Soho Press, 2009-09-01. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

What is it about the 19th century…

September 15, 2014 Introduction As the small family orchard became unprofitable, and Prohibition made cider apples taboo, people stopped propagating the old varieties. Of those thousands of nineteenth-century varieties, a mere six (Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, McIntosh) came to dominate the late-twentieth-century market. All Excerpts From Jacobsen, Rowan. “Apples of Uncommon Character.” Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"what was not consumed for drink was expected duly to turn into vinegar"

September 15, 2014 Introduction …Henry Ward Beecher, whose delightful essay on apple pie can be sampled in small servings throughout this book, described a typical mid-nineteenth-century cellar thus: “On the east side stood a row of cider barrels; for twelve or twenty barrels of cider were a fit provision for the year,—and what was not consumed for drink was expected duly to turn into vinegar, and was then exalted to certain hogsheads kept for the purpose. All Excerpts From Jacobsen, Rowan. “Apples of Uncommon Character.” Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Sailor speak: To be becalmed:

September 6, 2014 9. Animals Beneath This is the first quiet for four weeks and it is sweet, although sailors of old would dread such calm, creating a passive verb—to be becalmed—to express the malevolence they felt, as if they were assaulted by something beyond just weather and chance. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Golden ages of piracy: 1716–22, 2005–10

September 5, 2014 6. High-Risk Area What is clear is that 2005–10 was another golden age of piracy, just as 1716–22 was the golden age for Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, and colleagues. The Oxford English Corpus noted a fourfold use of the word pirate since 2007, with Somali the most common modifier. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

sailboat : sail :: cargo ship : ____

September 3, 2014 5. Sea and Suez The time and place for such considerations is approaching even while we steam through this quiet green water, a majestic daisy chain of sedate ships. I don’t know if “steaming” is the right way to describe our movement. Steaming is inaccurate, unless the black bunker smoke counts as steam. Driving sounds wrong, despite the engines. Sailing is daft. It is a small point of vocabulary, but I have time to make it into a big one in these listless days and thousands of nautical miles, so that it ends up as a grand theory about how we haven’t bothered to update our language for these modern ships; the bigger they have become, the farther they have traveled from our vocabulary. Clearly there is an empty space in my brain that needs filling. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Calling other nations "monkeys"? Seems tame for the sailor stereotype…

September 1, 2014 5. Sea and Suez …Channel 16 is a hailing channel and for emergencies. You make contact on Channel 16, then agree to switch to another channel. In practice, that doesn’t always work, particularly in calm waters and deep seas. Marius likes to listen to Channel 16 because all sorts of things happen on it. It’s the closest a seafarer gets to TV. Sometimes you hear Chinese being sung. Often you hear Indian voices yelling, “Filipino monkey!” The captain finds this unpleasantly racist, but Filipino voices often retaliate. “Indian, I can’t see you but I can smell you,” or, “Does anyone know what IMO stands for? Indian Monkey Organization.” All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Ship fuel: "so unrefined that you could walk on it at room temperature"

September 1, 2014 5. Sea and Suez Ships burn bunker fuel now, which takes its name from the coal bunkers it used to be stored in. … “Residual Fuel Oil, to give bunker its real name, is dirty but cheap. Even now that fuel is ruinously costly—$600 a ton—bunker is still the cheapest. But it is horrible stuff. It is so unrefined that you could walk on it at room temperature. Even the spokesperson for Intertanko, an association of independent tanker owners, calls it “crud,” and “one step up from asphalt.” Burning bunker fuel releases into the atmosphere gases and soot including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, black carbon, and particulate organic matter.” All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Flying the flag of convenience

September 1, 2014 4. Open Sea Port state control is supposed to be another regulatory brake on open registries. Various port authorities now issue a White List of flags judged to be responsible and a Black List of ones that are not. The Paris Memorandum of Understanding, an association of European port authorities, includes Liberia and Panama on its latest White List, as it has done for years. In the depths of the Black List, as you’d expect, swim North Korea, Libya, Sierra Leone, and Montenegro. The principle behind these lists is sound: port authorities have the power to detain unsafe ships in their ports. They home in on ships flagged to Black List countries, regularly detaining the rust buckets and unsafe ones, so that it becomes more trouble than it’s worth—and too expensive, with detention fees and lost income—to flag to poor or unstable states. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.