Paul Sellers
Published on 20 Apr 2018Episode 1 will be released on Monday 23rd of April 2018
Paul shows how to make a pair of sawhorses using the method he first learnt when he was 16. They are very useful around the shop for resawing stock and a many others uses. The sawhorses make use of a compound housing joint that ensures a solid construction.
THE TOOLS YOU WILL NEED ARE:
Knife
Square
Combination gauge (or marking gauge)
Tape/Ruler (or both)
Sliding bevel
Chisel hammer
Chisels (at least 1″)
Smoothing plane (No 4)
Tenon saw
*Handsaw
Hand drill and screwdriver or drill driver* = optional
JOINTS LIST:
Compound housing jointFor more information on these topics, see https://paulsellers.com or https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com
April 21, 2018
How to Make Sawhorses Introduction | Paul Sellers
Comments Off on How to Make Sawhorses Introduction | Paul Sellers
That time Mossad ran a resort to rescue Sudanese refugees
Join Israel’s secret spy agency! Learn all the tricks of espionage! Run an exotic beachside resort! Wait, what?
“Arous on the Red Sea, a wonderful world apart,” the glossy brochure says, pronouncing it “the diving and desert recreation centre of Sudan”
Illustrated with pictures of putty-coloured chalets on a sun-drenched beach, a smiling couple in scuba gear, and varieties of exotic fish, the advertisement boasts of “some of the best, clearest water in the world”. As night falls – “after the landscape colours have paled” – there are, it says, “breathtaking views of the heavens, aflame with millions of stars”.
Arous Village, on the fringe of spectacular coral reefs and the odd shipwreck, appears to be a diving enthusiast’s dream.
[…]
The only thing was, unbeknown to the guests or the authorities, the Red Sea diving resort was entirely fake.
It was a front, set up and run for more than four years in the early 1980s by operatives from the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
They used it as a cover for an extraordinary humanitarian mission – to rescue thousands of beleaguered Ethiopian Jews stranded in refugee camps in Sudan and evacuate them to Israel. Sudan was an enemy Arab country, and it had to be done without anyone finding out, either there or at home.
“It was a state secret, nobody talked about it,” says Gad Shimron, one of the agents who served at the village. “Even my family didn’t know.”
“For us it was a godsend. If we could get hold of this place and do it up, we could say we’re running a diving village, which would give us a reason for being in Sudan and furthermore for roaming around near the beach.”
What happened next is the subject of a soon-to be released Hollywood film called Red Sea Diving Resort. Filmed in Namibia and South Africa, it tells the story of the operation and the village. Though while it is based on true events, some of the scenes are fictitious.
[…]
While seeing to their guests by day, every so often at night a squad would leave under cover of darkness and head to a rendezvous point 10km (six miles) south of Gedaref.
“We’d tell the staff we’re going to Khartoum for a few days, or to meet some Swedish nurses from the hospital in Kassala,” says Gad.
They would pick up groups of Ethiopian Jews, smuggled out of the camps by so-called Committee Men – a handful of Beta Israelis recruited for the job.
“The Ethiopian Jews were given no notice, as we could not risk word getting out,” says Gad. “They did not even know we were Israelis. We told them we were mercenaries.”
From there, a convoy of lorries carrying dozens of bewildered refugees drove a two-day – 800km – journey, evading detection at numerous checkpoints along the way by a combination of guile, bribery and occasionally ramming their way through.
At breaks, they would try to pacify the frightened passengers.
“When we let them sit in the driver’s cabin and touch the wheel, they were in seventh heaven,” Gad says, in his book Mossad Exodus. “It was amazing to see how happy they were at sharing a piece of chewing gum among 20 children. They looked at us as though we were creatures from outer space.”
When they got to the beach, north of the holiday village, Israeli navy special forces would come ashore on Zodiac dinghies, collect the refugees and transport them a further hour and a half to a waiting naval vessel, the INS Bat Galim.
The ship then took them to Israel.
Comments Off on That time Mossad ran a resort to rescue Sudanese refugees
History Buffs: Rome Season One
History Buffs
Published on 18 Aug 2017Rome is a British-American-Italian historical drama television series created by John Milius, William J. MacDonald, and Bruno Heller. The show’s two seasons were broadcast on HBO, BBC Two, and RaiDue between 2005 and 2007. They were later released on DVD and Blu-ray. Rome is set in the 1st century BC, during Ancient Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire.
The series features a sprawling cast of characters, many of whom are based on real figures from historical records, but the lead protagonists are ultimately two soldiers named Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who find their lives intertwined with key historical events. Rome was a ratings success for HBO and the BBC. The series received much media attention from the start, and was honored with numerous awards and nominations in its two-series run. The series was filmed in various locations, but most notably in the Cinecittà studios in Italy.
Comments Off on History Buffs: Rome Season One
QotD: “Pitiless” globalism
Kathleen Parker rightly criticizes Republicans for becoming a party of angry, fear-lathered excluders (“The GOP is becoming the party of exclusion,” July 31). But when she laments “the pitiless evolutionary march of globalization” not only does she reveal her own misunderstanding of the economy, she gives aid and comfort both to GOP excluders and to Sandersnistas who suffer many of the same misunderstandings.
In what way is globalization “pitiless”? Is it because it creates an ever-growing abundance of new goods and services that consumers choose to buy? Is it in the fact that it lowers the prices of food, clothing, furniture, electronics, communications, and (for example, by expanding the sizes of pharmaceutical-companies’ markets) medicines?
Is globalization “pitiless” because it allows many desperately poor workers in the developing world to earn incomes that enable them and their families to live above subsistence? Or perhaps globalization is “pitiless” because it obliges entrepreneurs and workers in the developed world – nearly all of whom are multiple times richer (thanks to globalization!) than are the foreigners about whom they complain they must compete – to adjust their actions to the choices of the consumers whom they serve?
Globalization is no more or less pitiless than is economic competition generally and what Deirdre McCloskey calls “market-tested innovation” – the same competition and innovation that over the past few centuries crafted our current high standard of living. So unless Ms. Parker believes that it is gentle and just for rich first-world workers to prevent poor third-world workers from improving their lives – unless Ms. Parker thinks it humane for consumers to be forced to accept whatever products are offered, and at whatever prices are demanded, by existing producers rather than motivate producers to work hard and creatively to please consumers – she should not describe globalization as “pitiless.”
Donald J. Boudreaux, letter to the Washington Post, 2016-07-31.
Comments Off on QotD: “Pitiless” globalism
April 20, 2018
Disease, War and The Lost Generation I Between 2 Wars I 1918 Part 2 of 2
TimeGhost
Published on 19 Apr 2018As World War One ends the dying takes on new proportions when the Spanish Flu ravages the world. A whole generation of young people that should be starting their adult life is instead decimated at a devastating rate. The suffering at the end of 1918 will have consequences that last until this day.
Join us on https://timeghost.tv
or on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistoryHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus OlssonA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
Additional information from TimeGhost:
In the new episode of Between 2 Wars we look at death and suffering in 1918 from another source than the World War: the Spanish Flu and its effects on the young adults of the time. This is the first, but not the last episode in the Between 2 Wars series that focuses on non-military and non-geopolitical events.
To understand these decades we will look occasionally at fashion, technology, design, arts, culture and civil life in general. After all the 1920s and the 1930s is very much the time period when the world became modern in the true sense of the word.
Much of what we still consider contemporary (both things and thoughts) was created in the 20s and 30s. Already the next episode will also focus on civil life as we look at the birth of civil aviation and the radio. After that we dive right back into war with the Russian Civil War!
Comments Off on Disease, War and The Lost Generation I Between 2 Wars I 1918 Part 2 of 2
Food for thought on those “second US civil war” comments
Tom Kratman, Mil-SF author and former US Army officer responds to a Quora article titled “Why does the 2nd Amendment bother Europeans so much?” and shared some of his answer on Facebook:
More fun on Quora:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-2nd-Amendment-bother-Europeans-so-much/answer/Pietro-Del-Buono#
A Sample: And here; since you’re not apparently ambitious enough to read it, I’ll copy you what I sent Stafford on just this question:
The Viet Cong, the Taliban, and the Iraqi resistance would all, at this point in time, be terribly surprised to learn of the omnipotence of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps (retired lieutenant colonel, Infantry, former faculty of the war college, to boot; yes, I’ve had a varied and fun life). It isn’t, remember, a million citizens with arms, it’s probably over 80 million, just to begin with, most of us armed to deck out the wives, children, grandchildren, and no small number of the neighbors. I can, personally, outfit at least one short platoon while my former law firm, when I was in practice, could have fielded a company, less mortars and anti-tank, yes, to include with automatic weapons (machine guns, which are also legal here, though pricey).
How they would do this is perhaps more detailed and more bloody minded than you want, but, basically, tanks do not move when small arms dominating the roads mean they don’t get fuel delivered (no, aerial resupply is highly problematic). Neither do aircraft fly when no trucks or rail bring aviation fuel. Police, who are actually the decisive arm of counter-insurgency (see your own Sir Robert Thompson), pretty much require a disarmed citizenry to exercise control. Facing an armed citizenry willing to kill them, their risks and losses are too great for effectiveness. And then there’s sheer terror: “Nice family you have, Officer Quigley; be a damned shame if, say, you didn’t look the other way when we tell you to and they all ended up dead, don’t you think?”
Most of the US military preponderance is technological. Martin van Creveld has an interesting observation on that, which goes to the effect that high tech really only works well in very simple environments, air, open desert, at sea, and that a) it tends to fail badly when the environment gets more complex, while b) the human heart is the most complex environment of all. In other words, the forces of government would rarely know just who their enemies were in order to bring that tech to bear.
And then there’s the last aspect, an aspect, I think, Euros have the greatest difficulty understanding. Our police and armed forces are simply not reliable, over most of the country (remember, too, we have no real national police force or gendarmerie, not of any size and power, anyway) to the federal government. No, I don’t mean only the state based National Guards; the _regular_ forces actually draw most of their personnel from areas where folk revere the country and the constitution, but tend to detest the federal government. Called on to suppress a rebellion with which they by and large agreed, they’d defect in droves.Indeed, they might be at the forefront of rebellion. You may recall Obama talking about a civilian force, equal in size, budget, and power to DoD? I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that he had Pinochet and Allende in mind when he spoke those words, because he knew, deep down, that he and the left (our left, which is, of course, to the right, generally, of the Euro left) could not rule out a coup in the event of their pushing their agenda just that little bit too far.
Comments Off on Food for thought on those “second US civil war” comments
Knocking Out The Hejaz Railway I THE GREAT WAR Week 195
The Great War
Published on 19 Apr 2018While the Germans are still advancing in Flanders (Operation Georgette), the other fronts are not always quiet. In Palestine, the British forces and the Arab Revolt are taking the initiative again. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and the Arab Revolt are attacking the vital Hejaz Railway, a major transport factor for the Ottoman Empire.
Comments Off on Knocking Out The Hejaz Railway I THE GREAT WAR Week 195
Great Blunders of WWII: The Pilot Who Bombed London 3
Anthony Coleman
Published on 4 Nov 2016From the History Channel DVD series Great Blunders of WWII
Comments Off on Great Blunders of WWII: The Pilot Who Bombed London 3
QotD: Nationalism
The nationalist religion is strong. Many are ready to die for it, fervently believing that it is morally good, and factually true. But they are mistaken; just as mistaken as their communist bedfellows. Few creeds have created more hatred, cruelty, and senseless suffering than the belief in the righteousness of the nationality principle; and yet it is still widely believed that this principle will help to alleviate the misery of national oppression. My optimism is a little shaken, I admit, when I look at the near-unanimity with which this principle is still accepted, even today, without any hesitation, without any doubt – even by those whose political interests are clearly opposed to it. But I refuse to abandon the hope that the absurdity and cruelty of this alleged moral principle will one day be recognized by all thinking men.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 1963.
Comments Off on QotD: Nationalism
April 19, 2018
The mis-measurement of the digital economy
In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall explains why our current statistical model does not adequately reflect the online world’s contribution to our economy:
To give my favourite current example. WhatsApp is used by some billion people around the world for some to all of their telecoms needs. It turns up in economic statistics as a reduction in productivity.
That’s mad.
In more detail, WhatsApp is free to use and carries no advertising. That means there’s no sale associated with it. We measure consumption at market prices – a price of $0 means no consumption. Consumption is one of the three ways we measure GDP – each of the three should be the same as the other two but isn’t because lying about taxes.
The other two calculations are all incomes, or all production. Things that are sold at no price do not add to production given that we measure it at market prices.
Income, well, there’re 200 or so engineers at Facebook who work on it (I checked with Facebook itself). Say their salary is $250k a year each. Probably too low but we’ve got to use some number or other. $50 million then. That’s incomes added to GDP.
So, in our three methods of calculating GDP – they should all be the same but that doesn’t matter here – we’ve value of WhatsApp (more accurately, WhatsApp adds value of $x each year to the global economy) of $50 million. Or $0 or $0.
Comments Off on The mis-measurement of the digital economy
Lord Dunsany – The History of Sci Fi – Extra Sci Fi – #6
Extra Credits
Published on 17 Apr 2018Dunsany is arguably the “father of fantasy,” bringing to life the classic worldbuilding tropes that inspired so many authors, from H.P. Lovecraft to Ursula K. Le Guin. But his short stories and novels have sadly fallen out of memory…
Comments Off on Lord Dunsany – The History of Sci Fi – Extra Sci Fi – #6
Freedom of speech and scientific inquiry
Adam Perkins on the critical importance of free speech in the scientific world:
A quick Google search suggests that free speech is a regarded as an important virtue for a functional, enlightened society. For example, according to George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Likewise, Ayaan Hirsi Ali remarked: “Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society, and yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.” In a similar vein, Bill Hicks declared: “Freedom of speech means you support the right of people to say exactly those ideas which you do not agree with”.
But why do we specifically need free speech in science? Surely we just take measurements and publish our data? No chit chat required. We need free speech in science because science is not really about microscopes, or pipettes, or test tubes, or even Large Hadron Colliders. These are merely tools that help us to accomplish a far greater mission, which is to choose between rival narratives, in the vicious, no-holds-barred battle of ideas that we call “science”.
For example, stomach problems such as gastritis and ulcers were historically viewed as the products of stress. This opinion was challenged in the late 1970s by the Australian doctors Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, who suspected that stomach problems were caused by infection with the bacteria Helicobacter pylori. Frustrated by skepticism from the medical establishment and by difficulties publishing his academic papers, in 1984, Barry Marshall appointed himself his own experimental subject and drank a Petri dish full of H. pylori culture. He promptly developed gastritis which was then cured with antibiotics, suggesting that H. pylori has a causal role in this type of illness. You would have thought that given this clear-cut evidence supporting Warren and Marshall’s opinion, their opponents would immediately concede defeat. But scientists are only human and opposition to Warren and Marshall persisted. In the end it was two decades before their crucial work on H. pylori gained the recognition it deserved, with the award of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
From this episode we can see that even in situations where laboratory experiments can provide clear evidence in favour of a particular scientific opinion, opponents will typically refuse to accept it. Instead scientists tend cling so stubbornly to their pet theories that no amount of evidence will change their minds and only death can bring an end to the argument, as famously observed by Max Planck:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Comments Off on Freedom of speech and scientific inquiry
“Blitzkrieg” – What most people get Wrong – Myth vs “Reality”
Military History Visualized
Published on 18 Aug 2017“Blitzkrieg” is probably the most wrongly used word when it comes to Military History. Its buzzword effect is widely known. The question is what was “Blitzkrieg” actually and is it used “correctly” at all? Additionally, the question if “Blitzkrieg” was something unique to the Wehrmacht will be answered?
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
» SOURCES «
Citino, Robert M.: The German Way of War
Hughes, Daniel J.: “Blitzkrieg”, in: Brassey’s Encyclopedia of Land Forces and Warfare, p. 155-162
Ong, Weichong: “Blitzkrieg: Revolution or Evolution?”, in: RUSI December 2017 – Vol. 152 No. 6, p. 82-87
Harris, J.P.: “The Myth of Blitzkrieg”, in War in History 1995 2 (3), p. 335-352
Frieser, Karl-Heinz: The Blitzkrieg Legend
Frieser, Karl-Heinz: “The war in the West, 1939-1940: an unplanned Blitzkrieg”. In: Cambridge History of the Second World War, Volume I: p. 287-314
Comments Off on “Blitzkrieg” – What most people get Wrong – Myth vs “Reality”
QotD: The Epicurean view of the soul
The purpose of the 37 volumes of his On Nature is to free us from the fear of death and therefore from the control of priests and from the internal fears of the religion that Plato and his followers had in mind. Epicurus says:
…[W]e must recognise generally that the soul is a corporeal thing, composed of fine particles, dispersed all over the frame….
…[T]he rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed…. Moreover, once the whole frame is broken up, the soul is scattered and has no longer the same powers as before, nor the same notions; hence it does not possess sentience either.
The atoms that comprise the soul are immortal. They are passed on from being to being like the torch in one of the Athenian races. But the larger structure of atoms that is the soul of any one individual is itself mortal. Once we are dead, our atoms are recycled. Since there is nothing but atoms moving in the void, we as individuals are annihilated. After death, there is nothing; and because of that, death is nothing. Epicurus says:
Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensations is nothing to us.
After two thousand years of Christian spiritual hegemony, this may seem to many of us a gloomy doctrine. For Epicurus and his followers, however, it was a removal of the greatest barrier to happiness as they conceived it. That barrier was fear of endless punishment for the alleged sin of seeking their own happiness in life.
It may be, Lucretius says, that beating down religion is impious and the entry to a life of crime. Much rather, it is religion which has brought forth criminal and impious deeds. He lived before the most notable acts of religious mania. But he was poet enough to know the psychology of enthusiasm. In Book One of his poem, he produces one of the most striking of all denunciations of religion. He describes how, at the beginning of the Trojan War, the priests tell Agamemnon that a good passage across the Aegean required the sacrifice of his daughter. So a young girl was dragged to the altar for her throat to be cut by her own father.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum he concludes — “Such are the evils to which religion leads”
He says later, in Book Three:
Some wear out their lives for the sake of a statue or a name. Religion and its resulting fear of death can induce one man to violate honour, another to break the bonds of friendship, and to overthrow all natural feeling. It has induced men to betray their country or their parents for the sake of avoiding hellfire. For just as children tremble and fear all in the darkness, so we in the light of day often fear what is no more real. This terror must be dispersed, not by rays of sunshine nor by the bright shafts of daylight, but by the sight and understanding of nature.
It is Epicurus, he says, who brought us into this light of understanding. Do not fear the priests. Do not fear death. Pay no attention to dreams or omens. These latter have a natural explanation. The former have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact on us.
Follow the ethical teachings of Epicurus, and be happy.
None of this means, by the way, that Epicurus and his followers were atheists. They did accept the existence of gods, and were willing outwardly to conform to whatever cults were established. They only denied that the gods were immaterial, and that the gods had any interest in human affairs. Confronted with evidence for any supernatural event, they were content with insisting on a natural cause, whether or not they were able to think of one that convinced.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
Comments Off on QotD: The Epicurean view of the soul
