In 1579 a London printer named John Charlewood published a book by Thomas Lupton called A Thousand Notable Things of Sundry Sorts. The title page promised that some of its contents were “wonderful, some strange, some pleasant, divers necessary, a great sort profitable, and many very precious.” It …
Double-entry bookkeeping is the strongest claim I can think of for something being boring and important in almost perfect proportion to each other. Nobody chooses it as a hobby. Nobody reads about it for pleasure except, apparently, me, this week. And yet it is one of the genuinely load-bearing …