A collaborative guide to manga shops in Europe
Two revisions of a directory compiled for rec.arts.manga, covering shops in several European cities, including Paris, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid and Valencia. Both carry the sol.unizar.es identity.
History, culture and society
A life online · Alejandro Rivero
Atomists and infinitesimals, myths and memory, historical geography, economics, and observations about public life. These are records of what I wrote and conjectured at the time; linking an old hypothesis does not turn it into an established conclusion.
Browse the archive by subject
Alexandria and the routes taken by lost texts
A soc.history.ancient discussion about the Serapeum, translations and whether Greek works travelled east through other languages.
On the section of a cone
A note connecting a problem attributed to Democritus with the passage from finite quantities to infinitesimals.
Dream of a Christmas lecture
A speculative historical lecture on the origins of calculus, moving between Archimedes, later mathematics and a modern perspective.
Democritus as Taoist
A conjectural comparison of atomism and Taoist texts, including their chronology and later connections with mathematics and alchemy.
Ice, polarised light and molecular handedness
A longer exposition of the hypothesis connecting ice and circularly polarised light with biological chirality, following the 1997 photosynthesis question whose original link is still missing.
The Grail and the Arthurian legends
A Conjeturas essay developing the Aragón–Valencia and pilgrimage-route interpretation of the Grail stories. It continues the earlier Arthurnet interest recorded in the chronology.
Recovering routes from Ptolemy's coordinates
A proposed computational approach to historical geography: look for preferred distances in the coordinates to recover underlying itineraries. The essay recalls earlier experiments with Álvaro Capalvo and a conversation with Mariano Santander.
Leonardo's supposed bicycle
A note questioning the attributed bicycle drawing through its mechanical details, with links to the historical debate and a reference to my earlier writing on the wheel.
Reading Oliver Sacks on Guam
A reading note followed by my own correction in the comments: the suspected link shifts from birds to fruit bats. The correction is part of the record, not something to detach from the original conjecture.
Múra-Pirahã and the interpretation of folklore
A response to claims about the Pirahã, their myths and cultural history, with references to the debate. It records my interpretation, not an ethnographic finding of my own.
Prehistoria del 15M
A contemporary timeline of online organising and events preceding 15M, complementing the network-analysis papers with an informal historical account.
Cervantes and confidence tricks
A deliberately speculative companion to the other blog's essay about Cervantes and advance-fee scams, reading the plays alongside the author's captivity.
Ships, stars and mnemonic catalogues
Related texts on Homeric catalogues, constellations and catalogues of spirits as possible memory aids. The 2015 post explicitly recovers a text through a GeoCities Wayback URL; that trail remains useful for further recovery.
An electronic edition of La conquista del pan
The GeoCities site hosts a Spanish edition of Kropotkin with navigation through individual chapters. Kropotkin is the author of the book; my online activity here is its hosting and presentation.
De la concordancia de los filósofos
An essay on alchemy, experiment and the loss or concealment of practical knowledge. This preserves the broader historical argument behind the later notes about transmutation.
Bedtime prayers, the sky and ritual
A signed essay comparing Spanish and Sephardic prayers with stars, the four directions and later ritual traditions. Its proposed connections are presented as the author's interpretations.