Timeline – World History Documentaries
Published 9 Jun 2017Check out our new website for more incredible history documentaries: HD and ad-free. http://bit.ly/2O6zUsK
Looks at the life of the Roman emperor Vespasian, from childhood to his death in 79 AD. Provides insight into the sophisticated workings of the Roman Empire.
Content licensed from Digital Rights Group (DRG).
Hector Drummond indulges in a proper “Fisking” of a recent column in the Telegraph:
We don’t have to buy into the apocalyptic angst of Greta Thunberg, on show again in Davos yesterday, to recognise that something has to be done.
He actually said “Something Has To Be Done”. How about we do a snow dance, Philip? That’s “something”.
Whether or not you are a sceptic about the impact of CO2 on the climate or question man’s involvement in producing the greenhouse gas, our energy future is a non-carbon one, like it or not.
Our energy future involves a lot of talk about non-carbon energy sources, while relying on “carbon” for a long time to come.
Virtually every government has committed to this as an overt aspect of public policy and those that haven’t, like China or the US, have a rapidly growing green energy sector poised to exploit the move to a carbon‑free future.
You mean the China that’s building coal-fired power plants at a rate of knots? That China?
Later on, the column invokes Pascal’s Wager, which Hector finds both amusing and irritating:
Seriously? Pascal’s Wager, which has been long ridiculed by most scientists and philosophers and thinkers, is now the basis for the largest and riskiest economic and political transformation in human history?
Pascal’s Wager justifies any proposed change in response to any possible threat. It’s possible that all the ducks in the world are really super-intelligent and they’re about to launch a takeover, so we need to kill them all. It’s possible that nylon stockings are eventually going to cause a nuclear explosion. Make your own ones up. The consequences of doing nothing, should these claims turns out to be true, are calamitous. In fact, they’re far more calamitous than most of the possible climate change scenarios.
Proper risk analysis, on the other hand, tells us to look at probabilities of the possible bad outcomes, not just how bad some possible bad outcome would be, were it true. The catastrophic climate change scenarios all have tiny probabilities. Even the IPCC admits that.
[…]
Then we have to look at the costs of the proposed action. The real costs, that is, not just vague claims like “Oh, moving everything to solar energy would be, like, you know, cool, my friend went to this talk once and she said that apparently solar works just as well as coal”. The costs – the real costs – are what needs be weighed against alternative courses of action.
The costs of abandoning fossil fuels are not zero. Not even remotely. Changing to renewables will be massively expensive, destroy jobs, and hinder prosperity, because they cannot provide anywhere near the energy we need. “Generate growth and prosperity” is nonsense, and Johnston should be ashamed of himself for falling for this.
Rex Krueger
Published 22 Jan 2020Make a plane for cutting perfect grooves in wood.
More video and exclusive content: http://www.patreon.com/rexkrueger
Get the Specialty Plane Bundle: https://www.rexkrueger.com/store/spec…
Get the Grooving Plane Plans: https://www.rexkrueger.com/store/plan…Tools in this build (affiliate):
Blue Kreg measuring jig: https://amzn.to/2QTnKYd
Blue Handled Marples Chisels: https://amzn.to/2tVJARY
Suizan Dozuki Handsaw: https://amzn.to/3abRyXB
Vaughan Ryoba Handsaw: https://amzn.to/2GS96M0
Glue Dispenser Bottle: https://amzn.to/30ltwoB
Orange F Clamps: https://amzn.to/2u3tp4X
Blue Painters Tape: https://amzn.to/35V1Bgo
Round-head Protractor: https://amzn.to/37fJ6oz
Nicholson Handy File: https://amzn.to/2NMwrlj
5 Minute Epoxy: https://amzn.to/37lTfjKWood Work for Humans Tool List (affiliate):
Stanley 12-404 Handplane: https://amzn.to/2TjW5mo
Honing Guide: https://amzn.to/2TaJEZM
Green buffing compound: https://amzn.to/2XuUBE2
Cheap metal/plastic hammer for plane adjusting: https://amzn.to/2XyE7Ln
Spade Bits: https://amzn.to/2U5kvML
Metal File: https://amzn.to/2CM985y (I don’t own this one, but it looks good and gets good reviews. DOESN’T NEED A HANDLE)
My favorite file handles: https://amzn.to/2TPNPpr
Block Plane Iron (if you can’t find a used one): https://amzn.to/2I6V1vh
Stanley Marking Knife: https://amzn.to/2Ewrxo3
Mini-Hacksaw: https://amzn.to/2QlJR85Plans, t-shirts, and hoodies: http://www.rexkrueger.com/store
Get my woodturning book: http://www.rexkrueger.com/book
Follow me on Instagram: @rexkrueger
In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall explains why the EU negotiators are reportedly offering a much worse trade deal to the United Kingdom than they’ve already agreed with Canada, Japan, and other trading partners:
Take, for example, this idea of Singapore on Thames. It’s trivially easy to rally the peeps against one or other relaxation of regulation. Chlorine washed chicken for example. But what about lifting the entire burden? Singapore is, after all, about 50% richer than Britain on a per capita basis. The correct question therefore is would you like a 50% pay raise at the price of shooting all the bureaucrats? Given the manner in which the bureaucrats don’t want the question even asked we have a reasonable enough guide that the answer would be yes.
Which is why the terms on offer to a Britain which could do the SonT thing are so terrible. Because of SonT succeeded it would be a death blow to the entire idea of how Europe is regulated. Lille, Leipzig and Livorno will all put up with interfering bureaucracy because that’s just the way the world is. But if Les Rosbifs become richer by half again simply by that bonfire of the regulations then the auto da fes will light up all over Europe.
So, yes, of course the EU is offering shit trade terms. They can’t allow an independent and free Britain to succeed. That we will anyway is what will bring that freedom and liberty to the continent – once again. For as so often it will be us that saves Europe from itself.
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 May 2017Available from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2qBntgB
Ian Skennerton is a leading authority on British rifles, having written extensively on Sniders, Martinis, Enfields, and more. This specific book, The Lee Enfield is the most recent iteration of his compendium of Lee-Enfield information, printed in 2007 (previous versions were The Lee Enfield Story of the 1980s and The British Service Lee of the 90s). It is an absolute wealth of information, including a large amount of original British military documents. Skennerton covers a huge array of developmental and experimental versions of the Enfield as well as the standard production models (including American, Canadian, Australian, and Indian production).
Strange WW1 modifications and accessories, grenade launchers, snipers, lightweight guns, carbines, long rifles, semiautomatic conversions, you name it — it’s all here. Unfortunately, the organization and editing leaves a lot to be desired, in my opinion. It is a book that looks magnificent when idly flipped through, but can be frustrating to use to understand the history of a gun or guns. The text often jumps from one subject to another, forcing the reader to piece together elements from different sections to figure out a coherent story.
That said, it remains an indispensable book for the Enfield enthusiast, as it has a ton of information not found elsewhere. I hope that if a new revision or edition is ever produced, Mr. Skennerton will employ the services of a ruthless editor to help him form the raw information into a more navigable history.
Cool Forgotten Weapons merchandise! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
The widely accepted narrative of modernism à la Gropius is that it was some kind of logical or ineluctable development from the Arts and Crafts movement. This seems to me utterly fantastic: it is like saying that Mickey Spillane is a logical or ineluctable outgrowth of Montesquieu. It is true that in the work of certain artists, for example Mondrian, one can see a gradual change which might be considered logical, starting from figurative landscapes and ending, via ever greater abstraction, to purely geometric shapes. But even where there is such a development, it is ultimately beside the point: it does not prove that what came later was better. Each artistic product has to be assessed aesthetically on its own merits (which in architecture includes its harmony with an existing townscape), and only someone who sees with an ideology rather than with eyes could conclude anything other than that modernism has been overwhelmingly a disaster.
Moreover, claiming respectable ancestors is somewhat at variance with equal claims to be starting from zero (as Gropius put it), but such a contradiction is hardly noticed by the grand narrative history of modernism that Professor Curl attacks and destroys.
He is not unable or unwilling to praise where it is due, though it is due rarely enough; and he is particularly effective in tracing the opportunistic ideological divagations of the modernists, whose one constant predilection was for absolute power over others. Mies, for example, was attracted to socialist totalitarianism, and his only objection to Nazism was that the Nazis eventually rejected his desire to have everything built according to his prescriptions. He left Nazi Germany because he feared his previous pro-leftism made him permanently suspect in its eyes, not because he was appalled by its brutality. If only they’d let him build! But contrary to apologists for Mies, and to a legend constantly repeated, it was not the Nazis who closed the Bauhaus but Mies himself, and he left Germany only four years after their assumption of power.
Finding refuge in America, Mies quickly perceived that the power of patronage of megalomaniac building lay with giant corporations rather than with fascists or communists and persuaded many of them to build his preternaturally inhuman and uninspired monstrosities. By a strange quirk of history, and because of mankind’s perpetual propensity to make logical errors, Mies was able to pose dishonestly as anti-totalitarian and even as a friend of freedom precisely because he had fled Nazi Germany where they hadn’t patronised him. He was fortunate that soon afterwards the United States had another totalitarian enemy, the Soviet Union. Mies and his allies were thus able to claim that his totalitarian modernism was actually a manifestation of western freedom. There are many such ironies pointed up in this book that would be delicious had they not had such appalling consequences.
Corbusier was a fascist in the most literal sense of the word, and early during the Occupation advocated the removal by force of the majority of Paris’ population because it had no business to be living there. Can one wonder that a man with thoughts like that built monstrosities?
Theodore Dalrymple, “Architectural Dystopia: A Book Review”, New English Review, 2018-10-04.
Powered by WordPress