Quotulatiousness

August 4, 2019

The Hippo vs. the Bulldog, Göring’s War – WW2 – 049 – August 3 1940

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published on 3 Aug 2019

As the Kanalkampf comes to a close, the Battle of Britain heats up. Hitler wants Britain out of the war. But before the Germans can invade Britain, it will have to deal with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.

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Sources:
Colored portrait of Hugo Sperrle by Ruffneck88
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
IWM: HU 93055, CH 1535, CH 1533, A 18881, HU 76020
301 squadron insignia by Jakub Mikita
303 squadron insignia by Mrozo

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Blog housekeeping notes

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Sorry to anyone who tried to access the blog on Saturday morning, as it went down hard for about an hour after my WordPress statistics plug-in got holed below the waterline and had to be scuttled. I’ve been using it for several years without a problem, but somehow Saturday was the day it decided to stop working. A reader notified me on one of the social media sites that the blog wasn’t loading and I checked the dashboard to see a long list of fatal errors pop up. It looked like the initial problem was a call to a non-existent function in SQL which then caused a cascade of other uncaught errors and the blog no longer displayed for would-be readers. I switched to the troubleshooting tab and then looked at the details on the CyStats plug-in, and suddenly the answer appeared:

You may have to look really closely to see what the issue is…

I guess I’ll have to do without my old stats package now.

History Summarized: Scotland

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 2 Aug 2019

Go to http://www.audible.com/overlysarcastic or text OVERLYSARCASTIC to 500500 to get a free audiobook, 2 free Audible Originals, and 30-day free trial.

Put on your Kilt and grab some bagpipes, it’s time to talk about Scotland! From the earliest beginnings to the modern day, the Scots have had a fiercely independent attitude, and are absolutely willing to fight about it — several times, in fact.

Fun fact about Kilts, I couldn’t fit this in the video anywhere, but basically Scots used to wear these big complicated vaguely-toga-like wraps of tartan plaid starting in the Renaissance, but in the 1720s one guy said “This is too complicated, take the top part off but keep the bottom half and just attach it with a belt — and behold, the Kilt as we know it was born.

FURTHER READING: Scotland, A Concise History — https://www.amazon.com/Scotland-Conci…

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From the comments:

Overly Sarcastic Productions
1 hour ago (edited)
Blue: Spends two weeks researching, writing, and producing a video about Scottish History
Also Blue: USES THE WRONG FUCKING FLAG
Rest assured, everybody, I’m veritably mortified by how badly I messed that up.
-B

A sure-fire way to reduce monarchist sentiments – Royal celebrity slacktivism

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley offers some friendly advice to His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex:

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Titanic Belfast in March 2018.
Photo from the Northern Ireland Office via Wikimedia Commons.

Despite what some scandalized British headlines have suggested, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, has not claimed to be helping to save the world from climate change by only planning to get his 37-year-old wife pregnant one more time. “Two, maximum!” he tells primatologist Jane Goodall in an interview-cum-rambling discussion in the current edition of British Vogue, which was guest-edited by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. It was in the context of some store-bought Harry musings about the perils facing planet Earth and its future inhabitants — “this place is borrowed,” etc. — but it was presented more as a half-joke than as an earnest plan to help out the biosphere.

Good thing, too, because not long after those headlines landed we learned Harry was off to Sicily for a massive Google-sponsored climate change celebrity gabfest. Needless to say, he didn’t row there. Italian media reported more than 100 private jets and several superyachts had delivered the actors, singers, supermodels and tech magnates. All reportedly had to sign non-disclosure agreements about what went on, which is a brilliant new innovation in climate-change slacktivism: “Our climate change discussions were not only important enough to justify heroic eruptions of carbon dioxide, but so important that we can’t tell you anything about them.”

Some think it’s petty to criticize climate activists for their own emissions. I was recently taken to task by myriad correspondents, many of whom were not Liberal partisans, for suggesting that a family long weekend surfing on Vancouver Island was a strange look for a prime minister trying to sell Canadians on a carbon tax with the very future of the planet, he argues, hanging in the balance. Honestly it baffles me. Is the idea that celebrity advocacy for decarbonized lifestyles will inspire so many other people to adopt them that we should forgive the celebrities’ own excesses? If people actually take their environmental cues from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Harry Styles, Naomi Campbell and Orlando Bloom — all were reportedly in Sicily — then surely they would be far more inspired if the celebrities actually made half a personal effort.

But there will always be films, and they will always need actors, and there will always be pop music, and it will always need singers, and fame being what it is, a lot of the actors and singers will always end up being insufferable flakes. The monarchy Harry’s dad and brother are front of the line to lead isn’t nearly so immutable. No other Western royal family has managed to maintain such a conspicuously opulent lifestyle while maintaining head-of-state status and widespread affection not just on its home soil — where class remains a dominant social divider — but in many very different realms all over the world.

Whatever you think of the Royals, it’s quite an accomplishment. And a significant part of the recipe has been eschewing intellectualism and the unfortunate flights of fancy that can come with it. Prince Charles will be Britain’s (and Canada’s) first university-graduate monarch. In contrast, by some accounts, 10-year-old Elizabeth Windsor was home-schooled to the tune of just seven-and-a-half hours a week. As Ben Pimlott explains in his landmark biography of her, the goal was first and foremost to prevent her emerging as a “blue stocking” — i.e., as a female intellectual.

Mike Pekovich’s Go-To Work Holding Jigs

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

FineWoodworking
Published on 2 Nov 2016

For more information check out Mike’s article here: http://bit.ly/2fji7wX

QotD: The post-WW2 American army

Filed under: Asia, China, History, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The men of the Inmun Gun and the CCF were peasant boys, tough, inured to hunger and hardship. One-third of them had been in battle and knew what battle meant. They had been indoctrinated in Communism, but no high percentage of them were fanatic. Most of them, after all, were conscripts, and unskilled.

They were not half so good soldiers as the bronzed men who followed Rommel in the desert, or the veterans who slashed down toward Bastogne.

They were well armed, but their weapons were no better than those of United States design, if as good.

But the American soldier of 1950, though the same breed of man, was not half so good as the battalions that had absorbed Rommel’s bloody lessons, or stood like steel in the Ardennes.

The weapons his nation had were not in his hands, and those that were were old and worn.

Since the end of World War II ground weapons had been developed, but none had been procured. There were plenty of the old arms around, and it has always been a Yankee habit to make do. The Army was told to make do.

In 1950 its vehicles in many cases would not run. Radiators were clogged, engines gone. When ordered to Korea, some units towed their transport down to the LST’s, because there was no other way to get it to the boat. Tires and tubes had a few miles left in them, and were kept — until they came apart on Korean roads.

In Japan, where the divisions were supposedly guarding our former enemies, most of the small arms had been reported combat unserviceable. Rifle barrels were worn smooth. Mortar mounts were broken, and there were no longer any spare barrels for machine guns.

Radios were short, and those that were available would not work.

Ammunition, except small arms, was “hava-no.”

These things had been reported. The Senate knew them; the people heard them. But usually the Army was told, “Next year.”

Even a rich society cannot afford nuclear bombs, supercarriers, foreign aid, five million new cars a year, long-range bombers, the highest standard of living in the world, and a million new rifles.

Admittedly, somewhere you have to cut and choose.

But guns are hardware, and man, not hardware, is the ultimate weapon. In 1950 there were not enough men, either — less than 600,000 to carry worldwide responsibilities, including recruiting; for service in the ranks has never been on the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s preferred list of occupations.

T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness, 1963.

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