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Tue Jan 16 10:09:18 EST 2018 Slept from eleven to seven. High of eighteen today. Half an inch of new snow. Work: - Work on MECS Done. - Talk to West Virginia about litigation hold on mail Left voicemails. - Email Roger in Florida about hand-over of assets Twenty-minute walk at lunch. Snowing a little. Not too cold. Home: - Schedule car maintenance Thursday or Friday at eleven Done. Tire rotation, oil change, multi-point inspection. Eleven on Friday. - Wish Renny a happy birthday Done. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/colonial-india-british-hedge-salt-tax > In 1878, W.S. Halsey, Commissioner of Inland Customs, reported on the state of British India’s giant hedge. The hedge had grown to more than 1,100 miles long, he wrote, long enough to stretch from Berlin to Moscow. More than half of the barrier, Halsey reported, was made up of “perfect and good green hedge” or “combined green and dry hedge.” In parts, it was 12 feet tall and 14 feet across. > > The British Empire had been working on this giant hedge for at least 30 years. It had, at long last, reached “its greatest extent and perfection,” wrote Roy Moxham in The Great Hedge of India. It was an impressive monument to British power and doggedness. One British official wrote that it “could be compared to nothing else in the world except the Great Wall of China.” > > As he reported on the extent and health of the hedge, though, Halsey knew its time was coming to an end. That same year, the empire stopped all funding for the mad project, and it was not long before the hedge had disappeared entirely. When Moxham, an English writer, went looking for it in 1996, he couldn’t find a trace. I planned to skip SEMIBUG tonight, but decided to go on the spur of the moment. Lunch: coffee, chicken shawarma bowl Dinner: chili omelet, hash brown, pineapple upside-down cake

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