Wednesday - June 01, 2011
personal eye candy BUT … brains first …bettany hughes
This lady is for me, the ULTIMATE eye and brain candy. She isn’t a model or an actress. She a historian, and as I mentioned to Drew in an email, I’ve never seen her in a bikini. Although that might be a real treat.
Thing is, I love her passion for her subject and the way she expresses herself. The fact that I think she’s beautiful is beside the point. And she is that ok.
That by the way is something I have noticed in a number of historians and especially archeologists. They have this passion in their speech and you can tell they are deeply in love with their subject, and they manage to pass it on to others.
Well, as it happens I saw an article in the paper yesterday and although she could be mistaken (?) I must give benefit of doubt as she’s studied her subject and done research I’m not up to. Anyway, what she briefly had to say wasn’t anything I’d ever thought about. One person suggested that maybe it was the female speaking and not the historian. Personally, I doubt that. She doesn’t strike me as that type.
Naturally I found photos of her and even though my original intention was to post the little paragraph, I was so taken with the photo in the paper that I thought heck, why not post several plus the video.
This may not be your cup of tea I know. And posting stuff always leaves us open to folks asking, are you drinking or just nuts? Fair enough.
Bettany Hughes on life in AthensHistorian Bettany Hughes claims that young men in Athens really did look like Ancient Greek statues.
With their rippling six-packs, Ancient Greek statues present a somewhat idealised version of male beauty. But according to historian Bettany Hughes, men really did look like that in the days of Socrates.“They loved going to the gym. They would spend about eight hours a day in there. They had slaves, so didn’t have to work, and chose to use that leisure time making themselves into extremely ripped examples of manhood,” she explained in a fascinating talk about life in Athens 2,400 years ago.
“It was always thought that these statues must be a kind of fantasy version of young men in Athens, but they were extremely physically fit.”
Not that I’m known for ... ah ... overdoing things but ....
No photo shop and no nude poses. She’ll never make it. lol. I think she’s incredibly awesome!
BTW .... PRETTY GOOD SITE FOR HISTORY AND VIDEOS
Posted by peiper
on 06/01/2011 at 08:31 AM
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology • History •
• Comments (3)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Friday - May 13, 2011
A Beginning
For proper context, you always need the back story. What comes before sets the scene for what happens now. And as much as we all love a happy ending, without a good beginning it doesn’t make for much of a story. So here you go, the next post actually started here, long long ago. Let’s let our favorite childhood time travelers show us the way ...
“Sherman?”
“Yes Mr. Peabody?”
“We’re going to explore the origins of cooking. Set the Wayback Machine for 8000 BC.”
“Yes Mr. Peaboy! We will get there in time for lunch?”
“Shut up Sherman.”
“Yes Mr. Peabody.”
Dyoing dyoing dyoing dyoing, fwwwwooosh. Boink!
[ The scene: somewhere outside a cave, around the campfire, near twilight. Ugh and Oog, two early hunter gatherers, are making their usual dinner of scorched animal flesh on sticks and a nice raw mush of grass seeds moistened with water. It is starting to rain. ]
Oog: “Better hurry up with that meat; when the rain comes it always puts the fire out.”
Ugh: “Doing the best I can Oog. Why don’t you go stand under that big leafed tree and stay dry until I’m done.”
Oog: “Ok. Here’s your portion of grass mush. I’ll put it on this nice flat rock here by the fire while you finish up. Too bad we can’t take the fire with us under that tree, huh?”
Ping! and Ping! The seeds of two complimentary ideas have just germinated. I’d use the standard lightbulb visual metaphor, but since those won’t be invented for another 5900 years, imagine little burning torches suddenly popping into existance over their heads.
[ The scene: sometime later. A series of burnt tree trunks surrounds the cave, along with piles of ash made from bark and woven grass. Several collections of soot blackened rocks show that various houses of cards made from stone have collapsed at the worst possible times. Ugh and Oog have obviously been experimenting, but without success. Taking the fire under the tree just doesn’t work. Well, not more than once per tree. But grain mush cooked on a hot flat rock not only tastes better, it lasts longer and is even a bit portable. As the sun rises we see them, smoke blackened and heat frazzled, cooling their scorched hands in the mud by the riverbank. Truly, it is the Dawn of Man. ]
Ugh: “We almost had it that time. I thought for sure that that last stack of flat rocks was going to do it. We set a bunch of them on edge all around the fire, nice and tall, and put a big flat one across the top. That keeps the rain out, and makes a nice place to cook the mush.”
Oog: “It worked just fine until somebody had to go and pull the meat sticks out, and knocked the whole thing down. I tried to grab what I could, and now look at my hands!”
Ugh: “Lucky for us we have this nice thick mud for that. Too bad that when it dries out it’s almost as hard as rock. But it’s fun to play with. Look, I made some snakes and some flat ones that remind me of that cooked mush we eat.”
Ping! and thus pottery was invented. and Ping! again, as Oog puts “ah” and “ah” together in her mind and comes up with “uh” (actual numbers were still far in the vocabulary future). Pretty soon they’d made another pile of “rocks” for the fire protector out of mud, found that they couldn’t be moved while wet, did it again with dry mud but found that their special stack of flat rocks still fell apart when you pulled the meat sticks out, and then had the final Ping! idea of making one big round tall cylinder of mud, tapered at the top a bit to keep the rain out, and rested when dry on a couple of small rocks around the campfire. This did a great job of keeping the rain off, it got even stronger somehow once it had been used once or twice, and the opening at the top was perfect for resting the meat sticks on. You’d think they would have stopped right there, having invented the barbeque, but it still failed for cooking the seed mush. And putting a flat rock across the top somehow made the fire go out. They were at an impasse until one day Ugh, in a fit of frustrated pique, threw a handful of mush against the side of the red hot chimney they’d developed. And the mush cooked up in no time at all, light and bubbly and soft on one side, and toasted and crispy on the other.
And thus the tandoor was born. It would remain that way, essentially unchanged, an open ended fired clay tapered cylinder that fit over a fire, for the next 8000 years. Until an American got his hands on one and started thinking.
Dyoing dyoing dyoing dyoing, fwwwwooosh. Boink!
“Wow Mr. Peabody, that was great!”
“I know Sherman, it was my idea after all.”
“Yup, and for once this one wasn’t half baked.”
“Shut up, Sherman.”
“Yes Mr. Peabody.”
Posted by Drew458
on 05/13/2011 at 09:34 AM
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining • History •
• Comments (0)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Friday - April 15, 2011
It’s a Gift
Yaakov Kirschen, the author of the the Dry Bones cartoons I paste up here once in a while, has made a digital reprint of a short book he wrote 18 years ago and is giving to the world on this Friday, ahead of next Tuesday.
It’s a comic book, which means you can go through the 192 pages in about half an hour.
It’s a lovely little book that tells a very old story. You’ll laugh, and you’ll cry more than once.
and to the generation to which we now attempt to sing.
Well done Yaakov.
Click the big picture to read it as an online flip book.
Click the little picture to read it as a .pdf file.
And now I even understand why he named his cartoon and his blog what he did.
Schuldig will be back in a new Dry Bones cartoon on April 21st. In the meantime, Kirschen tells the back story to how he came to write this little gem, a graphic novel that some have called a prophecy.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/15/2011 at 10:32 AM
Filed Under: • History • Israel •
• Comments (0)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Wednesday - April 13, 2011
Food For Thought
I ran across two articles online this morning that I think are worth passing on. Both of the articles are straightforward, but both have comments that to me are more thought provoking than the articles themselves.
The first one is the NRO piece on the shelling of Fort Sumter, since yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. It tells the story with an even hand and provides a bit of background. And then the comments begin.
We did some post on the Civil War here at BMEWS once upon a time a few years back, and got a rather hot response. From those comments I remember Turtler’s the best, that history shows the South had many years - decades - of prior foot stamping and hissy fit throwing to the point of threatening secession whenever the slavery issue came up in any form. Thanks for that.
The comments on this new post at NRO are well worth reading, although there are many and some are quite long. I’m going to combine and paraphrase the few that really struck me: after the Articles of Confederation didn’t work and our new Constitution was formed, not all the citizens of all the States took national citizenship to be their primary personal identifier. They considered themselves citizens of their own State first, and after that citizens of the United States. The State’s Rights Justification crowd stills toes that line, 150 years later, as the cause of the hostilities. They point out that no central government had the right to wield the power to strip citizens, and the States that represented them, of private property - slaves - merely by legislative fiat. They point out how this preeminent statist loyalty even caused problems within the Confederacy, and use the building of railroads as an example. But then another comment points out that at some point the central Confederate government offered manumission for all slaves willing to fight for the Cause, and to me that brings down that entire house of cards, because no mention of recompense to the slave owners was made. Made in that comment; did such a thing exist in the CSA edict of the day? I don’t know, but without it the argument becomes “We’re fighting this war of secession because the federal government doesn’t have the right to tell us what to do with our own property, so we’ll form our own new government that ... um ... has the right to tell us what to do with our own property.” Interesting reading, and you can read for a long time before the trolls start to get in the way.
The second article is the Pajamas Media piece on Social Security. Yes, SS is a shell game. A Ponzi scheme. It’s an entitlement program that the Supreme Court decided 51 years ago that you have no actual right to, so in other words it’s just another tax. That’s why the money goes into the general fund, and the SS “lockbox” is full of nothing but worthless IOUs. Years ago I read a piece, an apologista I now realize, that said that FDR dreamed up Social Security as a beneficent measure, and how a greedy and evil Legislature almost immediately appropriated the funds that in theory were supposed to be set aside. At some later time I read a similar article that pointed out that setting the money aside would have done little more than just tighten up the money supply, which would have furthered the Depression the nation was in at the time. It took one of the comments in today’s article to get me to read between the lines and realize that slick old FDR - the President of whom it was said he’d never tell the truth when a lie would suffice; and we know today what a Red / Socialist he really was - really had in mind. Had the Social Security money been set aside, put under the control of an oversight group, and invested in America, we’d all be Communists now. Huh? Well, think about it. The feds take 12% of every dollar earned by every working citizen, and they invest it. How? By buying stocks and bonds to support American business. How many workers, how many years, how much money? Scores of millions of workers, for more than 75 years, to the tune of untold trillions of dollars. The federal government, through the auspices of it’s oversight group, would have controlling ownership in just about every stock on the market. Whoever ran that oversight group would have more economic power than any tyrant who ever lived. Communism through Oligarchy (and how is that any different from what we have under Obama today?) Did Congress realize this at the time? I don’t know. But it was a beggar’s choice between absolute economic tyranny and an ever fruitful Money Tree to fatten up the federal coffers. Would taking a few billion and seeding an investment portfolio for every working citizen have been a better approach? Probably. But let’s remember that those were the days before computers, and it would have taken a massive army of accountants to track the contributions and worth of the hundreds of millions of individual accounts; even if the accountatnts were poorly paid that cost alone would have eaten up most of the profits. Putting the investment effort down at the payroll level would have been easier, but any investment scheme more complex than a CD would have required those same armies of bean counters, except that they’d all be working for the brokerages. There is no easy way out of the SS mess and there is not one legislator with the guts to touch this live wire, or the ability to avoid the rabid dogpile if he were to do so.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/13/2011 at 08:36 AM
Filed Under: • Economics • History •
• Comments (0)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Friday - April 08, 2011
advertising you will never see again ….
Anyone old enough to remember any of these?
Hey, I remember part of the old BLATZ BEER jingle. I bet it’s on YT.
And how about these two below. When gay meant something else.
I’ve saved my favorite for last below the fold. Eye Candy of a different sort.
Posted by peiper
on 04/08/2011 at 12:20 PM
Filed Under: • History •
• Comments (4)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Monday - March 28, 2011
A nation divided for 2,000 years, united by Mussolini.
I read an interesting column or two this weekend, mostly about us and the war in Libya and the general crappy state of the world.
One headline read that America must acknowledge that it cannot take the lion’s share of the military burden in the coalition’s war against Libya, and at the same time remain a bystander.
They go on to refer to Obama as the Onlooker-in-Chief. They insist on knowing just what role he wants to play in this latest international screw up. It’s suggested that American prestige is on the line. Oh? Again? Could they mean we had it back for awhile and may now lose it again? Seems to me we’re always losing that damn thing.
Someone better lock it up so it doesn’t get away again.
Not surprisingly and much to our embarrassment, there seems to be new developments in the story about the rogue American soldiers killing civilians.
Drew covered that very well and so I’ll leave it there.
The Times said that Gaddifi is watching both Nato and Washington to see how to play his own hand. I don’t much see as he has one to play but then, the man has always been just a bit delusional. I say a bit only because based on how well he’d been treated up to a few weeks ago, his delusions had a good foundation.
News on radio says that Nato is now in the driver’s seat taking command yadda,yadda. The goal is the protection of civilians, we keep hearing.
So far, nobody is saying if Nato will turn on the rebels if they in turn start killing civilians in Gaddifi’s camp. Nato planes are attacking govt. troops and armoured vehicles, ahead of the insurgent advance, which has now covered a lot of ground, using pickup trucks and anything else they can get their hands on with wheels.
So, are they civilians still?
The media here continues to fan the flames with Gaddifi’s own words, albeit somewhat edited by the ministry for propaganda and public enlightenment.
That is, the Tripoli Troll said that anyone who put down their arms and stayed out of the fray would be spared. Anyone who was found with weapons would be immediately shot and there would be no mercy shown for insurgents.
Now whether to believe him is another thing. But what the media continually report each and every day and even every hour on the radio is, that he said his troops would go house to house and slaughter everyone and show no mercy. Period.
Well now, that is not what I heard at the very beginning of this little police action.
Meanwhile, another question being asked is, are we really prepared for the fall of Gaddifi? There is fear that Tripoli is more Baghdad than Cairo. Many believe that without him, the country will see a real civil war.
And finally, this bit of interesting history.
A nation divided for 2,000 years, united by MussoliniThe idea of dividing Libya into two regions – as suggested by armed forces minister Nick Harvey this week – has strong historical pedigree.
In fact, the way the civil war has split the country between a western region centred on Tripoli and an eastern region at Benghazi mirrors the situation over the 2,000 years before the Italian takeover of 1911.Historically, Benghazi is part of Cyrenaica, founded in the 7th century BC by Greek colonists around the ancient city of Cyrene.
Tripoli – 1,200 miles to the West – was, on the other hand, founded by Carthaginians, who wanted to trade with the indigenous Berber tribesmen.Over two millennia both colonies maintained their separate identities. Greek-influenced Cyrenaica developed a reputation for arts, crafts, medicine and learning while Tripoli focused on the commercial skills of its founders. The Roman historian Plutarch described the Carthaginians as ‘coarse and gloomy, submissive to those who govern them and despotic to those they govern’.
Trade – indeed all contact – between the two regions was rare; land travel over such large distances was difficult and the sea route was not favoured by the prevailing winds.Under Persian, Egyptian and Macedonian rule, the two regions stayed apart and when the Romans rolled in, they ruled Tripolitania province directly but joined Cyrenaica to their existing province of Crete.
Tripoli and Benghazi had a common language and common legal system but continued to develop separately.The East embraced Christianity until the marauding Vandals, then Arab invaders and later Ottoman Turks suppressed those who followed the religion.
Under the Ottomans, Tripoli became one of the great cities of the region, jewel of what was known as the Maghreb, or Barbary Coast. Its population was predominantly Moorish and Muslim.While the Ottoman empire crumbled Tripolitania stayed rich, largely through piracy and the slave trade, which was allowed to continue until 1890.
In 1911, Italy invaded, annexing Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and southern Fezzan as three separate colonies. Mussolini combined them in 1934 into a new country he called Libya, a Latin corruption of Libu, the Greek name for the Berbers.The country has stayed together under King Idris and Muammar Gaddafi – until now.
Posted by peiper
on 03/28/2011 at 10:37 AM
Filed Under: • History •
• Comments (3)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Saturday - March 12, 2011
Ha, some Tanks I get for all the work I do
You haven’t heard much from me this week. I’ve been busy with lots of things here at home. When I’ve been online, it was mostly working on some family genealogy research. I found a second cousin who had been a B-17 pilot in WWII and then ran an art gallery after the war. His son, my previously unknown third cousin, runs that gallery today. Boring to you, but fascinating to me. This genealogy stuff is very time consuming, even though so much of it is online these days which makes it much easier. And we got whipped again at bowling league. What else is new? And that’s 3/4 of what I’ve been up to this week that I’d bother to write about.
I was going to run a post on the IDF’s first successful combat use of their new Target/ASPRO-A vehicle defense system. I’d seen the news feed on this a week and a half ago, and I ran across a link or two to the story on other blogs.
The Israel Defense Forces Armored Corps successfully operated its new armor-defense system for the first time on Tuesday, defending a tank from an antitank missile attack on the Gaza border. On Tuesday afternoon, an antitank missile was fired at a Merkava 4 tank on the border with the Gaza Strip, near Kibbutz Nir Oz in the western Negev. The tank crew then activated the new defense system, Me’il Ruach (Windbreaker), and successfully foiled the attack.
This is actually a bit of history, it being the very first time an active automatic defense system has been used on a vehicle by any Western forces. Possibly by any forces, but there is a Soviet claim that they had a similar system that worked in combat, back when they were in Afghanistan. But you know the Soviets. They invented everything first, even water.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure this thing out, because I had some difficulty understanding how it was an different than the IDF’s similar, earlier Iron Fist system. The two are highly similar, and the tank mounted repulser guns look very much alike. While I may be wrong, I finally understood the difference to be that the repulser gun of the Target system uses something like a shotgun, while the Iron Fist system uses/used EFPs - explosively formed penetrators to do the job. That sent me down a huge research sideline, because an EFP is a variety of a shaped charge explosive, and shaped charge explosives - bazookas, RPGs, etc., are what brought the Era of Armor to a close. That seemed hugely ironic, that a giant armored tank would need to be defended with shaped charge projectors against other shaped charge projectors to which it was highly vulnerable. You see, those things don’t just blow up. They blow forward. Instead of blasting fragments in all directions, their cone shaped hollowpoint metal lined design creates a focused jet of sun-hot plasma which eats it’s way through armor in an eye blink. All of it; the latest designs can chew through armor to a depth 7 times their diameter. Which means an RPG warhead just 3” across can blast through the thickest naval armor plate ever made, with ease. So I did a whole research project on that part too, right back to a 1945 Popular Science article which explained the Munroe effect, and noted how it had been discovered in the late 19th century and then ignored by the military for nearly 50 years. Had it been put to use then, not a single one of the massively armored battleships of the WWII era would have ever been built. Not when three Cub Scouts in a rowboat could sink one, or at least seriously wound or disable it, with a boxful of RPGs.
So anyway, the Target system itself is technically fascinating because it shows just how fast and powerful computers have become. When they aren’t dragged down by Windows I mean. Target can spot, track, analyze, and if necessary defend against RPGs fired at it from only 20 or 30 feet away. Seeing that an RPG flies at just below the speed of sound, that’s mighty fast. And it can defend against HEAT rounds too, which fly faster than a speeding bullet. Pretty damn amazing. It really is a virtual shield, like the one depicted in the fanciful picture above. The other really amazing part is that the counter measure system is so minimal that there is hardly any risk even to nearby bystanders. The first time I heard the news story, it said the guys in the IDF tank didn’t even know the system had activated.
Is it scalable? Can a big one be built, a la Star Wars SDI, that will stop ICBMs? Can a tiny one be made that soldiers can wear that will deflect bullets? Time will tell.
But I put all this stuff together, and it just seemed boring. News item: one tank used a bazillion dollar system to stop one RPG in some dusty alley somewhere in the Middle East. YAWN? What I wrote here isn’t 1/10 of what I had, which covered everything, from the invention of armor and it’s entire history from tree bark and leather through iron and steel through “Harveyizing” through modern ceramic composites and depleted uranium, to defensive reactive explosives, and then on to the whole shaped explosive thing over 100 years, and a discourse on the history and future of tanks from Da Vinci to today. It was huge, but boring. Into the trash! I have to learn to try and be concise.
Speaking of tanks and their history, a guy from bowling league lent me several DVDs of early Laurel & Hardy movies, the ones done by Hal Roach. Yeah, the same Hal Roach who did the Our Gang/Little Rascals films. Ha, he even used the same tune in the Laurel & Hardy flicks.
In one of those movies, Pack Up Your Troubles from 1932, the boys get strong-armed into the Army in 1917 and go Over There. There is one scene where they’re out in No Man’s Land, in a shell crater, running back and forth like ducks in a shooting gallery, trying to get away from the explosions coming in left and right. Sitting in the middle of the crater, in perfect condition, is a Renault FT, the 3 1/2 ton mini tank the French built during the war. A real one.
The boys hide out in the tank for safety, but somebody left the engine running, Stanley leans against one of the control levers by accident, and away goes the tank. Hilarity ensues as he tries to figure out how to drive it, accidentally going up the crater and through the barbed wire, driving an entire company of Jerries out of their trench, tying them up with the barbed wire, and dragging them back to their side as prisoners. The two screw ups are heroes and get promoted. It’s actually about the funniest scene in the whole film. But what I didn’t know is that this little French chug-chug, with it’s top speed of 5mph, was actually still the US’s active duty tank in 1931. It’s little gun used the same anemic 37mm shell that the little pack cannon I wrote about last week used, because that tank served the same purpose, just wrapped in a somewhat mobile and slightly bullet-proof exterior. Here’s another picture and a video of R Lee Ermy taking one for a test ride with all his usual misinformation. That particular tank might be the American made post-war version. Amazingly enough, the FT saw active duty as late as WWII, and perhaps longer, and they keep turning up in the oddest places. Come to think of it, I’ve actually seen the one there at Rhinebeck, but I can’t remember if it was out driving around as part of the show or just sitting on display.
So there you have it. History making tanks from both ends of the time line. But no redheads. No brunettes either, but I’ve got a comparison post in the works on that one. Maybe.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/12/2011 at 10:58 AM
Filed Under: • History • Military •
• Comments (1)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Thursday - March 03, 2011
Won If By Land, And Run If By Sea
March 3, 1776
Island of New Providence, The Bahamas
A force of 250 Continental Marines and sailors under the command of Marine Capt. (future major) Samuel Nicholas land on New Providence in the British-held Bahamas and quickly seize Fort Montague [ aka Nassau ] in the first amphibious operation in American military history. The landing – largely unopposed (the British garrison spiking their own guns and fleeing) – nets for the Americans much-needed powder, shot, nearly 50 serviceable cannon, and a few mortars.
An avid foxhunter and the highest-ranking leatherneck in the American Revolution, Nicholas will lead Marines alongside Army forces in the future battles of (second) Trenton and Princeton. He is considered to be the first commandant of the Marine Corps.
“In 1776, during the war between Great Britain and the American Colonies, a fleet of eight vessels was sent by the Colonies to capture the munitions believed stored at Nassau. This force, under Commodore Ezek Hopkins, landed a detachment on the foreshore of the eastern end of New Providence and marched on Nassau.
Forts Montagu and Nassau surrendered without resistance, and the new Grand Union Flag, designed with the Union Jack and the first quarter and thirteen red and white stripes to represent the independent States was hoisted over Fort Nassau. However, most of the munitions had been shipped to Boston the day before the arrival of the American Naval Force. The invaders departed shortly after, taking with them 100 guns and the Governor as a hostage.
While it appears that there is a small debate about exactly who was in charge of the raiding force, getting invaded was SOP for lonely islands in those days. My guess is that from those 100 cannons the Colonials could salvage 50. I have no idea what kind of ransom they got for the governor. Probably a couple barrels of that sweet Bahamian rum. So it doesn’t look like they took over for very long.
Two years later, in January of 1778, Capt. John Peck Rathburn on the Continental Navy Sloop Providence, captured the place again, this time without firing a shot. You can listen to that story right here. Sometimes you really can baffle them with BS. We didn’t keep the place long that time either. This story is highly detailed, step by step by step, and takes about 45 minutes to listen to while you do other stuff.
A few years later Spain invaded the same island. Not liking that situation at all, loyalist citizen and South Carolina Militia Colonel Andrew Deveaux put his men in a couple boats, sailed down there, and kicked the Spanish out, giving the island back to the Crown. This is what happens when you invade an island ... with a Spanish “army” of about 75 guys.
In a despatch describing this exploit the gallant Colonel states:
“I undertook this expedition at my own expense, and embarked my men, which did not exceed sixty-five, and sailed for Harbour Island, where I recruited for four or five days, from thence I set sail for my object, which I carried about daylight, with three of their formidable galleys on the 14th. I immediately summoned the grand fortress to surrender, which was about a mile from the fort I had taken. On the 16th I took possession of two commanding hills, and erected a battery on each of them, of 44-, 24, 12, and 9 pounders. At daylight on the 18th, my batteries being complete, the English colours were hoisted on each of them, which were within musket shot of their grand fortress. His Excellency, finding his shots and shells of no effect, thought fit to capitulate.
“My force never, at any time, consisted of more than 220 men, and not over 150 of them had muskets. I took on this occasion one fort consisting of thirteen pieces of cannon, three galleys, carrying 24 pounders, and about fifty men. His Excellency surrendered four batteries, with about severity [seventy?] pieces of cannon, and four large galleys (brigs and snows), which I have sent to Havannah with the troops as flags.”
Colonel Deveaux’s gallant expedition brought the military history of Fort Nassau to an honourable close. The Spaniards never again returned to attack the Islands.
Personally, I think we should have kept it. But we didn’t own Florida in those days, and it wouldn’t have made sense to attach it to Georgia. Heck, I never understood why Canada got New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They could have been part of Maine, even though Maine was part of Massachusetts in those days I think, and it took another 50 years to figure out the border. The St. Lawrence makes such a great natural national border.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/03/2011 at 09:49 AM
Filed Under: • History •
• Comments (0)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Wednesday - March 02, 2011
Speak Up I Say
Before there was radar, the way to locate the enemy’s airplanes was to hear them coming. This lead to the development of some wacky looking but effective Big Ear technology. It was all aural; no microphones or any electronics.
h/t to Aunty Dhimmi
Gee, you’d think that the smarter heads would have come together, and realized that they could build the original stealth bomber, just by putting some mufflers on the engine. Alas, this is not the case. It turns out that engine noise is less than half the noise produced by a propeller driven airplane. The propeller itself creates something like thunder, as the air displaced around the end comes rushing back in. And the various bits and pieces that stick out - things like canopies, antenna, etc - each contribute to the noise. And the faster you go, the more noise they make. So maybe mufflers would have worked on black painted dirigibles in 1915, but that’s about it.
Of course, to this day, for those people inside the plane it’s even louder, to the point where flying in a small airplane is actually hazardous to your hearing. It also turns out that hanging an exhaust pipe, a muffler, and perhaps a catalytic converter onto an airplane engine sucks out a good bit of their power, and the smaller planes need every last pony just to stay above the ground. That’s a problem, because more and more countries are demanding that airplanes not be so noisy anymore.
One company, Borla Performance Systems, has developed a quiet airplane exhaust that actually increases the power of the engines. But they can’t market their product because of government regulations. Go figure.
Borla Performance Systems of Oxnard, California makes exhaust systems for everything from formula racecars, Italian exotics, and high-performance motorcycles to package delivery trucks. (In one of their biggest recent contracts, Borla has replaced all the exhaust systems, from headers to tailpipes, of the entire U. S. fleet of UPS vans.) Borla also does design and consulting work for Chrysler and Ford. Alex Borla is a pilot - a Beech Baron owner - who feels that aircraft mufflers can make a big difference, and Borla is currently experimenting with such devices.
The company has instrumented the Baron so they can run muffling tests on one engine while leaving the other one stock while making simultaneous noise measurements at exactly matched power settings (confirmed through strain gauges on the engine mounts). Problem is, Borla’s exhaust systems are too good. “We don’t employ any baffles in our automotive and motorcycle mufflers,” Alex Borla explains. “Everything is straight-through. As a result, we’re able to tune the exhaust system all the way out to the tip of the tailpipe. With a baffle-type muffler, as soon as the exhaust pulse hits the first baffle, the tuning effect is over.”
On an airplane, however, tuning the exhaust will buy you trouble. “If the product we make enhances the power of the engine, we can’t get an STC on it,” Borla points out. “I know from just looking at the manifold on the IO-520 in the Baron that I can get at least a 12 to l5 percent increase in power. Which is 30 or 40 extra horsepower, and that’s a big number. I can also bring the engine internal temperatures down and convert that horsepower gain into performance and better mileage.”
But to sell an aviation system, Borla would have to dumb down his product, “And that’s tough to do, with the patented design that we have. But the way the FAA regs are written, I’d have to almost recertify the airplane if I used it.”
This seems a shame. I’ve been up in a little Cessna, and the sound just about made me airsick. Plus the engine has no pollution controls at all, and the exhaust pipes are right in front of you . Good grief, at least run some fat open pipes back past the windows and hang a pair of glass packs on them. Get the noise and the smell behind the passengers.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/02/2011 at 05:04 PM
Filed Under: • History • Military •
• Comments (1)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Breaking News
Posted by Christopher
on 03/02/2011 at 08:45 AM
Filed Under: • History •
• Comments (1)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Monday - February 28, 2011
not certain if it qualifies as a castle but no matter, you could call this place home.
Seem to be in a history mode here.
Boo-Hoo ... I have only a few minutes and must be off to see dentist. Waaaaaaa.
My home is my castle?
This sort of thing is eye candy to me.
Take a look.
A castle to call home. There’s a catch.
For £850 a month, English Heritage is looking to rent out a three bedroom property in the grounds of Framingham Castle in Suffolk. The red house was formerly staff accommodation at the castle, which was built in the 12th century by the 1st Earl of Norfolk.
The successful tenants will have the grounds of the castle to themselves after sightseers have left for the day.
Newspaper blurb with photo did not say if any duties were involved but I doubt it if you’re paying EH. Wonder if they have internet connection to that place. Prolly only dial up. I mean, how close to the BT junction can this place be? Doubt much it’s close at all so forget broadband unless BH allows satilite hookup somewhere out of sight.
Clicking anywhere on the photo will bring you to more info on this place, as well as more pix. Interesting stuff.
Posted by peiper
on 02/28/2011 at 06:52 AM
Filed Under: • Architecture • History •
• Comments (4)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • ‘Don’t know much about History…’
1827 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transport of both people and freight. Obama would like to go back to the 19th century.
1854 - The Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. Oh the irony!
1885 - AT&T is incorporated in New York State.
1935 - DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon. Oh the fashion!
1983 - The final episode of MASH is broadcast. Alan Alda never recovers.
1993 - Waco, TX: BATF agents raid the Branch Davidian church with a warrant to arrest David Koresh. Four BATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff. President Clinton is clueless, passes to AG Janet Reno.
Posted by Christopher
on 02/28/2011 at 03:36 AM
Filed Under: • History •
• Comments (0)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Sunday - February 27, 2011
‘Don’t know much about History…’
1594 - Henry IV is crowned King of France
1797 - The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound notes.
1801 - Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress, which still annoys Eleanor Norton Holmes.
1812 - Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire. Lord Byron would approve of union protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, etc.
1939 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes violate property owners’ rights and are therefore illegal.
1951 - The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.
1973 - The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, S.D.
1974 - Screw Up Your Life People Magazine is published for the first time.
1991 - First Gulf War: President George H. W. Bush announces that ‘Kuwait is liberated.’
2003 - Rowan Williams (the Insane) is enthroned as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
Posted by Christopher
on 02/27/2011 at 04:06 PM
Filed Under: • History •
• Comments (0)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Thursday - February 17, 2011
Another Non-Merde Moment From France
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has joined the chorus. The other day, he said, “My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure.” The “it” was multiculturalism, and he was on French national television. In pronouncing multiculturalism defunct, the French president joins German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Spain’s former Premier Jose Maria Aznar and, most recently, British Prime Minister David Cameron in heaving a failed policy into history’s dustbin.
“If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France,” Mr. Sarkozy explained.
So how did the Europeans end up with multiculturalism, a multiculturalism that seems to favor Islam over other cultures? The Germans have outlawed Nazi culture. The Italians are not particularly hospitable to fascism, and as I have already pointed out, the French are appalled at cannibalism and do not even have a good word for McDonald’s or KFC. I think it started with the way they teach their history. Militarism, colonialism and racism are all prominent ingredients of European history, particularly British history. For that matter, American history also stresses these ingredients. I have been reading American college history texts, and they present an alarmingly ugly view of the Western past.
By presenting the West as repugnant and other civilizations as our prey, particularly during colonial days but also in modern times, we encourage such social pathologies as jihadism. Mr. Sarkozy says he is not going to tolerate the kind of fundamentalism in France that leads ultimately to jihadism. How is he going to achieve this without calling for a fundamental reform in how French history is taught?
There’s more to read if you want.
The very first comment is all, Hey, where’s Obama in this? How come he hasn’t figured it out yet?
Posted by Drew458
on 02/17/2011 at 11:47 AM
Filed Under: • History • Patriotism • Politically Correct B.S. •
• Comments (3)
•
Trackbacks(0)
Permalink • Five Most Recent Trackbacks:
LAAR She Blows! Part One
(2 total trackbacks)
Tracked at Planes Ideas Blog
[...] CABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEB [...]
On: 07/12/11 01:57
The Tactical Cowboy
(1 total trackbacks)
Tracked at Sights Service Blog
[...] E LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE [...]
On: 07/10/11 08:30
Nasty Dirty Money
(1 total trackbacks)
Tracked at Money Reviews Blog
[...] ONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLES [...]
On: 06/17/11 08:31
Amazing aerial images taken by daring Allied pilots on secret missions during WW 2
(1 total trackbacks)
Tracked at Hookers and Booze
peiper over at Barking Moonbat EWS found some absolutely kickass aerial photos from WWII. I grabbed this one because I’m a big fan of the movie A Bridge Too Far.…
On: 11/23/09 04:14
Clear Thinking and Straight Talk
(1 total trackbacks)
Tracked at baldilocks
Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home Read all of it--and tell every American you know to do so. (Thanks to BMEWS) UPDATE: The author of the above blog is…
On: 10/02/09 09:29
DISCLAIMER
THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.
Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
- Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.
Copyright © 2004-2008 Domain Owner
Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
RSS 2.0 
Atom 
