Wednesday, October 4. 2006
New Sisyphus takes a look at a document from 1939 by the Reichspropagandaleitung. One excerpt from the piece: And, then, as now, "good hearted" Americans believed this: The response on the part of the American people to this New Year address shows us that they reject the plans of their president. He was told that he had no business interfering in the affairs of other countries, and Congress was told to think carefully before permitting the president to engage in foreign adventures. A national article asked if America was threatened by Hitler and if Roosevelt should force the Germans to democracy, something that has been attempted since 1917. The article concluded with these words: "Roosevelt is playing with fire."
and Congressman Hamilton Fish gave an even clearer answer. He gave a radio speech that strongly attacked Roosevelt's policies and declared that attacks by the president and his cabinet on the so-called dictators could lead only to war. All the totalitarian states that the president was attacking were occupied with their own problems, and would be for years to come. They had no thought of waging war against the United States or Latin America (Central and South America). Representative Fish said he could not be silent when the life, freedom and happiness of his nation were at risk. The time had come to put a stop to the warmongers of the New Deal, behind whom stand the war profiteers, communists and hysterical internationalists who want America to shed its blood and waste its money as the world policeman. Roosevelt's policies, Fish said, would lead to American involvement in every crisis in the entire world.
His speech was supported by the entire American press. It is also an indication of what the American people really think. The speech must be emphasized because it puts in words what the greater part of the American people think.
Why did the Nazis hate us? Rational Americans no doubt took these points at face value and sat down to think hard about how America could shore up her image in Germany, how legitimate grievances of Germany could be met with a helpful response, how the misunderstandings here could be avoided.
A fool's errand. The document continues: Why is Roosevelt doing all this?
The reason is clear. The American opposition party asked "Why this warmongering?," and gave the answer. It claimed that Roosevelt was using such methods to:
1) to conceal the embarrassing sale of the most modern American warplanes to France,
2) to divert the attention of the public from unsolved domestic problems, and
3) to provide a reason for his premature return (from the naval maneuvers), which might have some impact on Congress.
We would add a fourth point: Roosevelt is acting as the mouthpiece and puppet of international Jewry when he attacks the authoritarian states. They want to use every means to destroy the newly awakened nations.
Read the whole thing, at New Sisyphus
Thursday, September 28. 2006
 Lost on Feb. 12, 1935, the USS Macon has been found in 1000 feet of water in the Pacific. This was the last US military dirigible. Photos and story at Live Science. Image from Live Science.
Thursday, September 21. 2006
 Churchill and Global Warming?
Steve Hayward of The Commons did a speech at the American Political Science Association recently, The Use and Abuse of Churchill in History. (Found it before Powerline linked it, but those guys are SCARY FAST.) Link to the whole speech here, but here is a quote: It is worth remembering how long we waited before finally facing the challenge posed by Nazi totalitarianism and Hitler. Many were reluctant to acknowledge that an effort on the scale of what became World War II was actually necessary, and most wanted to believe that the threat could be wished away with trivial sacrifices. For several years before the awful truth was accepted, one Western leader spoke out forcefully and eloquently about the gathering storm. Winston Churchill was uncompromising in his insistence that every effort be immediately bent to the task of ensuring Hitler’s defeat. After Neville Chamberlain concluded the Munich Pact of 1938, which gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler in return for his pledge not to take over still more territory, most Britons were happy and supported the policy that later was condemned as appeasement. Churchill, however, grasped the essence of what had occurred and of the unavoidable conflict that lay ahead. From here Gore goes to quote at length the ultimate paragraph of Churchill’s Munich speech in the House, though, like the BBC’s Wilderness Years adaptation of the speech done in the late 1970s, he omits the final phrase, "as in the olden time." From here Gore continues his main theme: "Thus do we meekly acquiesce in the loss of the world’s rain forests and their living species, the loss of the Everglades, the Aral Sea, the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, the topsoil of the Midwest. . ." etc. "Bitter cups all--but only ‘the beginning of the reckoning,’ only the first of a steady stream of progressively more serious ecological catastrophes that will be repeatedly proffered to us . . ." In An Inconvenient Truth Gore ratchets up the comparison, making out skeptics of his eco-apocalypticism, or doubters of the proposed remedies such as the Kyoto Protocol, to be the moral equivalent of Nazi appeasers. Gore cites the conclusion of Churchill’s 1936 speech attacking appeasement: "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."
Friday, September 15. 2006
Today is the 90th anniversary of the first use of tanks in combat. The Brit invention, designed of course to end the stalemates of trench warfare, was first put to use on Sept. 15, 1916, in the Battle of the Somme. That machine was a Mark 1. Would like to have seen the German faces when those things first appeared on the horizon. WW1 Brit tanks came in "male" and "female" versions: the male with a big gun and a couple of machine guns, the female with several machine guns only. Speed 3 mph. Animation of the Mark 1 tank here. A brief summary of that early application here. The excellent website of the world's best Tank Museum in Bovington, UK, here. (Stonehenge is cool, but dull, and looks like the photos. The tank museum is unforgettable.) Below, a WW1 Mark V. 
Monday, August 28. 2006
This came in over the transom: 1. The first German serviceman killed in WW2 was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940), the highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps. . . . So much for allies. 2. The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress.) 3. At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was Called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika." All three were soon changed for PR purposes. 4. More US servicemen died in the Air Corps than the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions your chance of being killed was 71%. 5. Generally speaking there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane. 6. It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy.Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down. YOU'VE GOT TO LOVE THIS ONE.... 7. When allied armies reached the Rhine the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act). found the photo (hand tinted black and white) 8. German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort. 9. German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet. 10. Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans.They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army. AND I SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST.... 11. Following a massive naval bombardment 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands. 21 troops were killed in the firefight. It would have been worse if there had been any Japanese on the island.
Monday, July 31. 2006
Re-posted from Aug 29, 2005  Zulu Time, and Weather Bloggers
In the NOAA and other hurricane and weather reports, they commonly notate Greenwich Mean Time with a suffix Z (or sometimes GMT), and spoken as "Zulu". The military, aviation, and commercial shipping commonly operate on Zulu time. Why "Zulu"? The story goes back to the great navigator, mathematician, and Salem, MA sea captain Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), author of The American Practical Navigator - also known as "The Sailor's Bible" - which remains in use today. He divided up the world's time zones, one hour per 15 degrees of longitude, assigning each one a letter of the alphabet. Longitude 0, running through Greenwich, England received the Z. That story is here. Jean Lee Latham wrote the classic Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I remember fondly from 6th Grade, and which, along with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, nurtured my love and respect for the sea and ships. For weather bloggers, we like Weather Underground, and Stormtrack for big storms.
Sunday, July 30. 2006
The architectural origin of the steeple lies in the belltower, and the origin of the belltower in the watchtower. Medieval watchtowers, like this one in Umbria,  and this one in San Gimignano, the town of towers, 
used bells, guns, and fire to signal each other in time of trouble. Church belltowers, at first identical to watchtowers, were often separate from church buildings through the early renaissance. You had to place those bells up high to send out the sound. Here's a famous one, which is the belltower of Pisa's Duomo (c. 1100): 
In time, the belltowers were integrated into the architecture of church and cathedral buildings. Without clocks and watches, you couldn't be called to church or prayer - nor would you know what time it was (except for sundials) without the bells sounding across the villages and fields. And they were a regular reminder of Christ's presence during the day. (But how did the bell-ringers know the time? That's another subject.) Canterbury Cathedral (c. 1300) has the Gothic integration of tower. It took 63 men to ring its heavy bells; six men alone to ring the heaviest:  More modest English parish churches had bell towers on the roof (Holy Cross, Greenford Magna, Middlesex - much of the building c. 1500):  Puritan (Congregationalist) Meeting Houses in the US typically had no steeples, as part of their purifying their congregations from papistry, vanity, and other fanciness (no bells, no stained windows, no singing, 6-hour sermons, etc). They didn't even want to call them "churches, " and you went to "meeting", not to church, where the God of Grace played second fiddle to the God of Truth. This is the Rocky Hill Meeting House (c. 1785) in Amesbury, MA:  By the early 1800s, steeple bell towers came back into acceptance in the US, along with singing. I can imagine the debates between the stodgy old-timers and the young folks in their Building Committees. Many old New England churches are meeting houses with steeples (and pillared porticos too) added generations later, leading to steeple engineering problems in later years. Here's an example of an added steeple in Alford, MA (c. 1740): 
Belfries, containing the bells and their mechanisms (and bats), usually have/had louvers to direct the sound up and away from the church itself. Oftentimes a steeple - the tower which supports the belfry, is roofed by an elegant spire, leading to the stereotypical appearance of the 19th Century New England Congregational church - which has since been copied by all sorts of denominations including Catholics - seemingly unaware of the Puritan, anti-Anglican, anti-hierarchical, and anti-Papist theological origin of the architecture: 
We always need to be reminded that a "church" is not a building - it's a congregation of people who seek God through Christ ("whenever two or three of you are gathered together"). The building doesn't really matter, but having a special place never hurts. I think the spires are optional. Here's a nice piece on church bells. YouTube of Dylan doing All Along the Watchtower here. (with JJ Jackson, Winston Watson, and Bucky Baxter)
Wednesday, July 19. 2006
It's been a while since we posted from 
Sam Pepys' diary. Here is the excellent Diary link> He would have been a blogger. A viall is proably like a viol da gamba - like a viola. In those days, you had to make your own music. I think Sam had a thing for Bagwell's wife, but he always notes his feelings about the ladies. He was fond of his own wife, too. - Friday 17 July 1663
- Up, and after doing some business at my office, Creed came to me, and I took him to my viall maker’s, and there I heard the famous Mr. Stefkins play admirably well, and yet I found it as it is always, I over expected. I took him to the tavern and found him a temperate sober man, at least he seems so to me. I commit the direction of my viall to him. Thence to the Change, and so home, Creed and I to dinner, and after dinner Sir W. Warren came to me, and he and I in my closet about his last night’s contract, and from thence to discourse of measuring of timber, wherein I made him see that I could understand the matter well, and did both learn of and teach him something. Creed being gone through my staying talking to him so long, I went alone by water down to Redriffe, and so to sit and talk with Sir W. Pen, where I did speak very plainly concerning my thoughts of Sir G. Carteret and Sir J. Minnes. So as it may cost me some trouble if he should tell them again, but he said as much or more to me concerning them both, which I may remember if ever it should come forth, and nothing but what is true and my real opinion of them, that they neither do understand to this day Creed’s accounts, nor do deserve to be employed in their places without better care, but that the King had better give them greater salaries to stand still and do nothing. Thence coming home I was saluted by Bagwell and his wife (the woman I have a kindness for), and they would have me into their little house, which I was willing enough to, and did salute his wife. They had got wine for me, and I perceive live prettily, and I believe the woman a virtuous modest woman. Her husband walked through to Redriffe with me, telling me things that I asked of in the yard, and so by water home, it being likely to rain again to-night, which God forbid. To supper and to bed.
Wednesday, July 5. 2006
Reposted from July 27, 2005  The young Cornell engineer Willis Haviland Carrier patented his "Apparatus for Treating Air" in 1906, for industrial purposes, and it was quickly taken up by the paper industry. By 1926, Hudson's Department Store in Detroit had A/C, which was a huge draw. His technique came to him in an instant of inspiration at a train station. By 1928, residential machines first became available, and after the war they became common in new housing developments. But their appearance in movie theaters in the 40s was maybe the most dramatic event - even more important than the magical moment of color in the Wizard of Oz. The A/C alone was worth the price of the 25-cent ticket. The first air-conditioned car was the 1940 Packard.
While we must be grateful to Mr. Carrier on days like today, the downside is that his machines eliminated the traditional months-long July and August vacations to places like New Hampshire, Cape Cod, Maine, and the Berkshires, where at least nights are cool and breezy. And it eliminated the wonderful screened "sleeping porch" which late 1800s houses often located on the second floor, in the back, of course. My Great Aunt Buffie had one, and her bed got moved out there for the summer. Camping out, in town. And I suppose it made the old front porch redundant too, where you rocked and sipped beer or lemonade in your undershirt to the tune of the crickets and katydids, smoked a Lucky or two, watched the young folks promenading past, flirting and courting, and could hear, in the distance, the muted, murmering conversations of the neighbors on their porches. A/C pulled people indoors, and isolated them, I suppose, from both neighbor and nature. Not to mention its effect on high-rise buildings - A/C is right up there with Mr. Elisha Graves Otis and his elevator. Many traditionalist Yankees continue to eschew air conditioning at home, but they don't sleep very well in the summer. And they drip sweat on their paperwork. They view A/C as a weenie pantywaist luxury, unnatural and indulgent. Which it is, for sure. But what a fine and inexpensive luxury. Surely it's not a sin? Call me ambivalent about it - but I could not work without it. A major effect in the US was that it permitted the huge business growth, and population growth, of the South and the Southwest. I guess you could blame Carrier for the Red State phenomenon, in a way. You can read about the the A/C compressor and refrigerant works here, and more about Mr. Carrier here.
Wednesday, June 28. 2006
A repost from Feb, 2005: From a piece by Gelertner in Daily Standard: Benjamin Disraeli--twice prime minister of Great Britain, romantic novelist, inventor of modern conservatism--was a neocon in the plain sense of the word, a "new conservative" who began his career on the left. Conservative thinking dates to the dawn of organized society, but modern conservatism--a mass movement, a philosophy not for aristocrats and the rich but for everybody--was Disraeli's creation. That modern conservatism should have been invented by a 19th-century neocon is thought provoking. More surprising: His redefinition of conservatism is still fresh, and his political philosophy has never been more apt. Conservatism is the most powerful and electric force in the American intellectual landscape. Young people no longer discover the left and get excited; they are far more likely to get their intellectual kicks discovering and experimenting with conservatism. But what exactly do conservatives believe? How do they resolve the seeming paradox that so many conservatives revere the past yet are also progressives, determined to move this nation forward and let it grow, stretch, and inhabit more and more of its own best self? Disraeli produced a definition of conservatism that resolves the problem. It is so terse and compelling, it ranks as a milestone of political thought. He was a statesman who remodeled Europe and a thinker who examined some of the hardest of all political, social, and philosophical questions: How should democratic government work, what does party politics mean, where do the Jews fit in? I too "would lift up my voice to heaven, and ask," says the hero of his novel Tancred, "What is DUTY, and what is FAITH? What ought I to DO, and what ought I to BELIEVE?" On these and related questions, Disraeli said fantastically improbable things that would be easy to dismiss except that many of them are true.
Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, June 21. 2006
Kirsh at the New York Sun reviews a new book on Agincourt, A Victory Owed to God, by Barker. Sounds good. Where do they find writers as good and knowledgeable as Kirsh? Anyway, had to include this quote: This story shall the good man teach his son:
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers:
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother: be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England, now abed,
Shall think themselves accurst they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks,
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
(Here's the whole speech.)
Friday, May 26. 2006
 During World War II, the Japs developed a way to try to demoralize the American forces. Psychological warfare experts developed a message they felt would work. They gave the script to their famous female broadcasters generically termed "Tokyo Rose" by GIs, and every day they would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways, hoping it would have a negative impact on American GI's morale.
What was that demoralizing message? It had three main points:
1. Your President is lying to you.
2. This war is illegal.
3. You cannot win the war.
Does this sound familiar? Is it because Tokyo Reid, Tokyo Kennedy, Tokyo Pelosi, Tokyo Feingold, Tokyo Murtha, Tokyo Kerry and their ilk, have picked up the same message and are broadcasting it on Tokyo CNN, Tokyo ABC, Tokyo CBS, Tokyo NBC ... directly to our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The only difference is that they claim to support our troops before they demoralize them. Come to think of it, Tokyo Rose told our soldiers, sailors and marines she was on their side, too!
Why do they want this effort of liberation to fail? Is it purely political? Or worse? Image: One of the best-known of the Tokyo Roses (Iva Toguri d'Aquino) in prison. She was the seventh American - yes, she was an American - to be convicted of treason. She was ultimately pardoned by Pres. Ford as his last act in office.
Tuesday, May 23. 2006
Roger Sandall became curious about the domesti cation of the horse, but he found out that modern prehistorians have no interest in such grand topics, but instead are interested in guinea pigs and mammoth droppings. A wonderful piece, including rodeos and Vergil. Image: Alexander on Bucephalus, from the piece.
Monday, May 22. 2006
After the Civil War, the great general, hunter and ornithologist headed West and spurred the movement to protect Yellowstone Park. Who knew? I need to read more about "Little Phil." Image below: Sheridan on Rienzi, at the Battle of Cedar Creek 
Wednesday, May 10. 2006
Francis Fukayama takes a fresh look at his 1992 book. He remains a neo-Hegelian. Just one quote: The question is, therefore, whether the principles of liberty and equality that we see as the foundation of liberal democracy have a similar universal significance. I believe that this is the case, and I think that there is an overall logic to historical evolution that explains why there should be increasing democracy around the world as our societies evolve. It is not a rigid form of historical determinism like Marxism, but a set of underlying forces that drive human social evolution in a way that tells us that there should be more democracy at the end of this evolutionary process than at the beginning.
Take a few minutes, and read the whole thing.
Wednesday, April 26. 2006
With all of the new talk about obtaining jet fuel from coal (h/t, Classical Values), it's a good time to review the subject of Town Gas.  At the turn of the century, every town in America had a Gas Works, generally adjacent to, but on the wrong side of, the train tracks.
As the local Gas Works, coal was heated under low-oxygen conditions, producing a synthetic gas which lit town lamps since around 1800, and later stoves and heat. This gas - "synthetic gas" or "coal gas" - was mainly CH4 (methane). "Town Gas" lit the streetlights and indoor lamps of America until electrification. The chemist Bergius received a Nobel Prize in 1931 for creating a high-pressure efficient method of coal gasification and the production of liquid fuels from coal. There was worry, at that time, about the imminent depletion of petroleum resources. "Natural" gas, from petroleum wells, did not become available in the US until after WW2, when the gas pipelines began construction. Prior to that time, the gas was burned off at the wellhead. Natural gas is a mix of varying-length carbon-hydrogen compounds. Today, the longer carbon chain compounds are extracted (eg propane) and sold as pressurized liquid gas, leaving the smaller chain compounds to the pipelines - mainly methane and ethane. A neat little history of the gas business in a Connecticut town here. Basic chemistry of these compounds and prcesses here. Image: circa 1920 gas ranges. Gas ranges began to appear at the turn of the century, replacing cooking with wood, coal and charcoal. Hence the expression "Now we're cooking with gas."
Wednesday, April 19. 2006
John Kekes refreshes our memory of The Terror of the French Revolution, for which the ends justified the means. One quote: ...in declaring his aim to be a society in which “the immortal principles of equality, justice and reason” would prevail, Robespierre simply dropped liberty and fraternity, substituting whatever he regarded as justice and reason. The justification of the massacres was that those killed were enemies of the republic, counterrevolutionaries who had conspired against that equality, justice, and reason whose realization would “establish the felicity of perhaps the entire human race.” The pivot on which all turned was those principles of equality, justice, and reason, which Robespierre spelled out in a declaration that formed the basis of the Constitution of 1793. Some extracts: “Article 1. The object of every political association is to safeguard the natural and imprescriptible rights of men.” “Article 3. . . . rights belong equally to all men, whatever their physical and moral differences.” “Article 4. Freedom is the right of every man to exercise all his faculties at will. Its rule is justice, its limits are the rights of others, its source is nature, its guarantee is the law.” “Article 6. Any law which violates the imprescriptible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical.” How did Robespierre actually interpret these principles? He said: “[W]e must exterminate all our enemies with the law in our hands”; “the Declaration of Rights offers no safeguard to conspirators”; “the suspicions of enlightened patriotism might offer a better guide than formal rules of evidence.” Commenting on an execution, he said: “Even if he had been innocent he had to be condemned if his death could be useful.” In a letter advising the Revolutionary Tribunal, he wrote: “People are always telling judges to take care to save the innocent; I tell them . . . to beware of saving the guilty.”
Read it all and remember. The guy was a creepy loser. Whenever you hear "equality, justice and reason," run for the hills. It means they want to kill you: it is "rational." If someone says "freedom from the state," - go there: it means they respect the human heart and soul. As much as I like Norm Geras, I would not want to be a serf or slave on his socialist plantation. It would be soul-destroying, and could turn me into a lazy, undignified, working-the-system bum, like the blue-eyed hedonistic jerks in Sweden or the brown-eyed infants in France.
Monday, March 27. 2006
Who cares? Scooter Libby and the Potemkin Prosecution. I am afraid Fitzgerald has ruined his legal career. What is the difference between a moderate and an extreme Imam? The MSM makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. They call all of it "immigration." So I guess I can assume they support illegal immigration? Why would news media take a covert position on this? Or any position on this? Hire me, Mr. Brady. It's the honest-blogger bake-off. A ten-year contract, at $500,000/year. I will seriously consider it. Ace quotes Steyn: In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours." The Samizdata quote of the day: "You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce... and prohibit any further publication thereof... you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison... the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers" Order from Abraham Lincoln to General John Dix, May 18, 1864.
Monday, March 6. 2006
He was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A conniving pretty-boy rascal and the lover boy of both James l of England and the Queen of France.
Sunday, February 5. 2006
"Citizens assemble with the sole goal of declaring that they disapprove of the course of government. To meddle in the government of society and to speak about it is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only pleasure that an American knows...An American does not know how to converse, but he discusses; he does not discourse, but he holds forth. He always speaks to you as to an assembly." Democracy in America, 1831
Monday, January 30. 2006
The first time that this day hath been yet observed: and Mr. Mills made a most excellent sermon, upon “Lord forgive us our former iniquities;” speaking excellently of the justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors. Home, and John Goods comes, and after dinner I did pay him 30l. for my Lady, and after that Sir W. Pen and I into Moorfields and had a brave talk, it being a most pleasant day, and besides much discourse did please ourselves to see young Davis and Whitton, two of our clerks, going by us in the field, who we observe to take much pleasure together, and I did most often see them at play together. Back to the Old James in Bishopsgate Street, where Sir W. Batten and Sir Wm. Rider met him about business of the Trinity House. So I went home, and there understand that my mother is come home well from Brampton, and had a letter from my brother John, a very ingenious one, and he therein begs to have leave to come to town at the Coronacion. Then to my Lady Batten’s; where my wife and she are lately come back again from being abroad, and seeing of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw hanged and buried at Tyburn. Then I home.
Friday, January 27. 2006
We don't believe in saints at Maggie's Farm, but we do love Dylan and Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was a progressive Republican with more interests and ideas than he knew what to do with. He was always concerned about the power of industrial monopolies and "trusts," and always genuinely concerned about the farmer and the factory worker at a time when you would have to have been heartless not to be. Here's Teddy's voice, with a speech on Social and Industrial Justice, 1912.
Wednesday, January 4. 2006
 The London Blitz
Scroll down this page and check the "Bomb Damage" section, which they offer in three levels of map resolution. The preservation of St. Paul's is as remarkable as the extent of the devastation of the bombing and the V1 and V2 rockets.
Monday, December 5. 2005
Afghanistan's Railroads A Brit railroad buff named Grantham has written an interesting history of Afghanistan's railroads, which ends up being a history of Afghanistan itself. Afghanistan has been a part of "The Great Game" of international politics for a long time. At present, the country is basically a railroad-free zone. Thanks, Chris, for forwarding this piece which, without the web, almost no-one would ever read.
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