Quotulatiousness

January 5, 2020

It’s 1941 – A World at War – WW2 – 071 – January 4 1941

Filed under: Africa, Britain, China, Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 4 Jan 2020

1941 begins with action in North-Africa and China, but Indy also takes a moment to assess the current stakes and stakeholders in the East-Asian theatre. What is sure, is that 1941 will be an eventful year!

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Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
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Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
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Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
– Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/

Sources:
– IWM: MH 2718, C 1850, E2294, E 18542, E 378, E 443, E 3721E, E 1573
– Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-783-0104-09 / Moosmüller / CC-BY-SA 3.0
– Prison by FORMGUT. from the Noun Project
– Artillery by Creative Mania from the Noun Project

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Easy Target” – Rannar Sillard
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Magnificent March 3” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “March Of The Brave 10” – Rannar Sillard
– “March Of The Brave 9” – Rannar Sillard
– “Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
2 days ago (edited)
Happy New Year to you all!! We hope you all had a great turn of the decade. We certainly have! Here’s a casual, spoiler-free statement: 1941 will be an interesting year. We are all very grateful for those who found us at the very start with the Invasion of Poland, during the Phoney War, the early fighting Northern and Western Europe and the more recent conflicts in Greece and North-Africa. Those of you who joined the TimeGhost Army and support us financially on patreon.com/timeghosthistory or Timeghost.tv deserve extra praise – as we would not have made 1941 without you! And we have BIG plans for the coming year, so please consider supporting us as well! Make history with us and join the TimeGhost Army!!

Here’s to a great 2020 and ‘interesting’ 1941.
Cheers, Joram

More from Severian about modern girls at university

Filed under: Education, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Having regaled us with shocking tales of the Basic College Girl (linked here), Severian now gets down to the not-very-salacious details of modern female mating behaviour at US colleges:

University College, University of Toronto (not one of the post-secondary institution Severian used to teach at).
Photo by “SurlyDuff” via Wikimedia Commons.

When people find out I’m retired from “higher” “”education,”” if they’re anything but rabid Leftists they usually ask me a series of questions: Why are professors such hypocritical assholes? and Is there really any point to ___ Studies? and Why do they pay the football coach umpteen zillion dollars a year to never finish higher than third in the conference? If the questioner is a man, though, and we’re out drinking, after a few martinis they always get around to: But what about … you know … the girls?

Where to start? Since there’s no avoiding prurience here let’s get one thing out of the way up front. This is TLP, not me, but it holds for coeds, too:

    These people are prone to two errors. A psychological one: fetishization; and a biological one: mistaking for beauty what is merely youth.

Taking the second first: I made the same mistake. I came to the ed biz later than most, having had a “real” job back in my other life, so when I first got to grad school I was amazed at how hot the girls were. Like everyone else I was a TA for Intro to Studies 101, but unlike everyone else I must’ve gotten the “sorority girls only” section, because every single chick in it was a knockout.

Now I’ll cop to being a little slow on the uptake, but I’m not that dumb. So I started looking a little closer — purely in the interests of science, you understand — and it wasn’t long until I realized that yeah, what I thought at first was smokin’ hotness was just youth. Back in the office I’d been surrounded by women who were equally attractive, but not equally young. A few years in a high-stress job puts a lot of miles on you.

But the other, fetishization element came into it too. Not like that, get your minds out of the gutter, let me explain:

I don’t think it ever really was, but if “coed” was a fetish its days are long past. In a country where the vast majority of people have at least a semester or two of college, not even “sorority girl” really moves the needle much. Rather, all the “fetish” stuff comes from the other side. After spending oh-god-sooooo-many hours getting harangued by the HR ladies about “sexual harassment,” even the most cynical teacher finds himself wondering what he’d do if some slinky young thing really did show up at office hours, close the door, and declare she’ll do anything to pass the class…

Which never happens, of course. I’ve never even heard of it, and I taught at lots of places, for many years, among male colleagues (and a lot of lesbians) who were desperately horny losers. The reason is twofold. The first, and most obvious, is that even if some girl really is that mercenary / sociopathic — and y’all have me on record, at great length, describing what little sociopaths modern kids are — there’s a much simpler alternative available: Straight-up bribery. But notice that’s the one thing you never even hear suggested, though it’s the easiest thing in the world. TAs get paid peanuts; I don’t know how low the bidding could’ve gone, but having seen the squalor in which lots of my fellow grad students lived, twenty bucks doesn’t seem unreasonable …

[…]

Ironically, I’d bet #MeToo and the rest of it actually result in more, not less, of this behavior. Like I always say, today’s blue-haired, nose-ringed slam poet is tomorrow’s obergruppenfuhrer, and one of the main reasons I say it is that I’ve been around a LOT of college people. Shrinking violets who need “safe spaces” everywhere very obviously long to knuckle under to power, any power. Goofy losers who suddenly find themselves with a lot of power naturally start carrying on like Heinrich Himmler. Put them together in the closest possible proximity, in a place explicitly designed to shield them from the real world, and, well, you figure it out.

Based On vs Inspired By

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

History Buffs
Published 20 Oct 2017

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QotD: Voting for President

Filed under: Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Voting for president is a lot like sex — and not just because it takes place every four years in the solitude of a semi-private booth. Both are intensely personal activities that nonetheless can have profound public consequences. We might add that both often involve drug-and-alcohol-fueled delusions and morning-after feelings of guilt, shame, and recrimination.

The Editors, “Who’s Getting Your Vote?”, Reason, 2004-11.

January 4, 2020

The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Zero

Filed under: History, Japan, Military, Pacific, Technology, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Real Engineering
Published 31 Aug 2018

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References:
[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/world-war-i…
[2] http://rwebs.net/avhistory/history/ze…
[3] http://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/im…
[4] https://www.history.com/news/the-akut…
[5] https://www.japanpowered.com/history/…
[6] https://www.warbirdforum.com/sakai.htm

Credits:
Narrator/Director: Brian McManus
Co-Director: Mike Ridolfi (https://www.moboxgraphics.com/)
3D Animations: Eli Prenten (http://eliprenten.com/)
Research: Stephanie Sammann (https://www.stephanie-sammann.com/)
Sound: Graham Haerther (https://haerther.net/)

Australia, the firebug country

Filed under: Australia, Environment, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Arthur Chrenkoff rounds up the surprisingly numerous reports of arson over the last few months in Australia:

The Green Wattle Creek bushfire moves towards the Southern Highlands township of Yanderra as police evacuate residents from Yanderra Road, 21 December, 2019.
Photo by Helitak430 via Wikimedia Commons

According to my calculations and estimates, the number of individuals around Australia whose arson has contributed to the current bushfire crisis has now passed 200.

This figure is not presented as a counter-argument to those who blame the fires on climate change. Most people (I hope) understand that trees tend not to spontaneously combust, no matter what the air temperature is; when we talk about bushfires starting naturally, we are talking about lightning strikes igniting tinder. The climate change argument posits that the more extreme weather conditions – higher temperatures, drought, etc. – make fires, however started, much more destructive and much more difficult to control and extinguish. These are debates to be had between climatologists, forestry experts and fire fighters. What is painfully clear, however, that Australia has a firebug crisis. It will no doubt be up to future royal commissions and inquiries to calculate exactly what proportion of the current loss and destruction can be attributed to human action, but I suspect it will be a significant one. Man might be making climate change, but man is most definitely making fires start.

Below, a sample of news reports from around the country for the past several months.

[…]

There are no conspiracies here. Though arson has been tried and called for before as a tool of terror, the Australian fires seem to result from the actions of unconnected individuals who are either disturbed or reckless. This is nothing new; as ecological criminologist Paul Read wrote back in November:

    A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we had known for some time — 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made …

    If I had to guess, I’d say about 10,000 arsonists lurk from the top of Queensland to the southern-most tip of Victoria, but not all are active and some light fires during winter. The most dangerous light fires on the hottest days, generally closer to communities and during other blazes, suggesting more malicious motives. Only a tiny minority will gaze with wonder at the destruction they have wrought, deeply fascinated and empowered. Others get caught up with the excitement of chaos and behave like impulsive idiots.

    As for children, they are not always malicious. Children and youths follow the age-crime curve where delinquency peaks in their late teens. Fire is just one of many misbehaviours. The great majority grow out of it. Four overlapping subgroups include: accidental fire-play getting out of control; victims of child abuse — including sexual abuse — and neglect; children with autism and developmental disorders; and conduct disorder from a younger age, which can be genuinely dangerous.

The more fires, proportionally the more arsonists. And the recent mega-fires are really bringing out all the fire bugs out of the woodwork (or into the woodwork to be more accurate). It is disturbing, but sadly not surprising or unexpected. As some have suggested already, the current crisis, with its large sample of arsonists, provides a good opportunity for more research into the psychology, motivation and behaviour of fire-starters. This might help in the future, but clearly arsonists will always be with us. The task is to make their work more difficult, for example through better management of our forests to make them less combustible. But as much as bushfires are an environmental and land management problem, as we search for solution we can’t forget that they are also a criminal one.

Blue’s Dumb History Tales #2

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, India, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 3 Jan 2020

Happy new year, have some memes.

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Looking back at the ’20s … the 1620s

Filed under: Architecture, Britain, History, Science — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest installment of Anton Howes’ Age of Invention, he takes us back to what he calls the “transformative 20s” of the seventeenth century:

St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden (built 1631-8) by Inigo Jones.
Photo by Steve Cadman via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1620s saw an upsurge in major projects to transform Britain’s landscape. Engineers from the Dutch Republic like Cornelius Vermuyden came to straighten its rivers, build canals, and even drain its marshes, converting them into pasturage and farmland — in the decades that followed, they would even begin to drain the Great Fens. The cityscapes changed too. The former theatre designer and architect Inigo Jones — by 1615 the Surveyor-General of the King’s Works — introduced classical architecture from the continent, drawing upon the rules of beauty and proportion that had been set down by Vitruvius in the first century BCE and resuscitated in Renaissance Italy by Andrea Palladio. Jones’s influence transformed England’s palaces, churches, cathedrals, and even Covent Garden square, to reflect his ancient Roman ideal.

But the environment, built or natural, would be most transformed by the experiments of a few individuals with fossil fuels. Dud Dudley, an illegitimate child of the 5th Baron Dudley, in the 1620s experimented with smelting iron with peat and coal. Dudley was not the first to do so — the patent on using coal instead of charcoal to work iron had been sold on from person to person since at least 1589 — but his experiments were among the most influential. The famous Abraham Darby, who achieved commercial success in applying coal to smelting metals in the early eighteenth century, was Dud Dudley’s great-great-nephew.

Sir Robert Mansell (1570/71–1652), by an unknown artist.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The decade also saw major new attempts to use coal as a fuel in other processes, such as glass-making. Although the patent on using coal to make glass had been around since at least 1610, by the 1620s Sir Robert Mansell had bought out the partners who owned it and was pouring a fortune into setting up glassworks at Newcastle. In this case, the transformation was institutional. Mansell’s political connections allowed him to widen the terms of his patent, such that he even tried to ban all other kinds of glass in England, regardless of whether they were made using other fuels, or even imported. Usually, patents of invention were for things entirely new, and were not supposed to interfere with existing English industries. But over the course of the 1610s, various abuses like Mansell’s came to light. King James I, eager for cash, had sold monopolies on ancient trades, as well as the new — one crony was even awarded a patent for inns and alehouses. Mansell’s patent, along with the others, was attacked in Parliament in the 1620s, and even revoked. The outcry ultimately led to the Statute of Monopolies of 1624 — the earliest patent legislation in England, which sought to regulate the royal practice of granting them. (Ironically, Mansell was so well-connected that he managed to get his controversial glass-making patent renewed and then exempted from the new Act.) The Statute of Monopolies was the only English patent legislation in force during the Industrial Revolution — there was no more patent legislation until 1852.

Finally, the ’20s saw a transformation of science. It was the decade in which Francis Bacon published some of his most significant works, on how to collect, refine, and systematise human knowledge for the good of humankind. He set out a comprehensive programme for the organisation of science and invention, with his utopian work New Atlantis setting out his ideal R&D lab – “Salomon’s House”. (Despite these high-minded aims, Bacon was also Mansell’s brother-in-law, and as attorney-general had helped draft the controversial glass-making patent. In 1621 he was convicted, fined, and even briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London for his role in the corrupt early patent system, though he appears to have been a scapegoat.)

Ivan the Terrible – the first Russian tsar I IT’S HISTORY

Filed under: History, Russia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

IT’S HISTORY
Published 14 Feb 2018

Ivan IV Vasilyevich commonly known as Ivan the Terrible was the first tsar of Russia. Did he deserve his title?

QotD: “Starchitects”

Filed under: Architecture, Europe, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In my school, the status of “Corb” (as we were encouraged to affectionately call him) as a hero was a given, and dissenting from this position was risky. Such is the power of group-think which universities are, sadly, no less prone to than anywhere else. To be fair, nobody was still plugging the megalomaniac aspect of their hero; his knock-down-the-center-of-Paris side. All those undeniably God-awful tower blocks for “rationally” housing “the people” that sprang up all over Europe in his name? Well, we were assured, they could not be blamed on Corb; it was just that his more pedestrian architectural acolytes hadn’t properly understood what he had meant. In addition to the persistence of Corb-hero worship itself, two cancerous aspects of its radical mindset have survived intact in our schools of architecture.

One is the idea that an architect aspiring to greatness must also aspire to novelty. It is this imperative to “innovate” that underpins the diagrammatic design concepts of the Deconstuctivists. There is of course nothing wrong with innovation per se; it is the knee-jerk compulsion to innovate, or “reinterpret” — as a kind of moral imperative — that is the mid-20th-century aesthetic legacy. To be fair to the profession, I would come to the defense of much innovative public and commercial architecture, most of it by architects that the public has never heard of. Tragically though, these unpretentious and unsung essays in steel, glass, and masonry have been eclipsed in the public imagination by the “starchitect” bling that is currently turning the centers of our great cities into a collection of (in James Stevens Curl’s memorable phrase) “California-style roadside attractions”.

The other cancer is the idea that building design has sociological, psychological, and macro-economic dimensions that the architect — simply by virtue of being an architect — is competent to judge. What really matters to your average architecture student is drawing — which is fine, and just as it should be, until the vain idea emerges that their drawings represent some kind of implicit vision for mankind. At my school, any student’s design presentation had to include a verbal rationale — often post hoc and invariably half-baked — of how the form, massing, and materials of the design are expressive of such imponderables as the supposed psychological “needs” and “aspirations” of the users and the wider “community” that the building is to serve. The students were simply reciting the bogus language of their tutors — in which buildings might be said to be “fun,” “thought provoking,” “democratic,” “inclusive” and other such nonsense.

Graham Cunningham, “Why Architectural Elites Love Ugly Buildings”, The American Conservative, 2019-11-01.

January 3, 2020

The Battle of Alesia (52 B.C.E.)

Filed under: Europe, France, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Historia Civilis
Published 24 Apr 2015

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Music is “The Life and Death of a Certain K. Zabriskie, Patriarch” by Chris Zabriskie. (http://chriszabriskie.com/)

Fallen flag – the Pennsylvania Railroad

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The origins and an outline history of the “Standard Railroad of the World” for Classic Trains magazine by George Drury:

The original Pennsylvania Railroad ran from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Much of its subsequent expansion was accomplished by leasing or purchasing other railroads.

Construction began in 1847. Two years later the Pennsy made an operating contract with the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mountjoy & Lancaster, and by late 1852 rails ran from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh via a connection with the Portage Railroad between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown, Pa. The summit tunnel was opened in 1854, bypassing the inclined planes and creating a continuous railroad from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.

In 1857 PRR bought the Main Line of Public Works and in 1861 leased the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mountjoy & Lancaster, putting the entire Philadelphia to Pittsburgh line under one management.

PRR also acquired interests in two major railroads, the Cumberland Valley and the Northern Central. The Cumberland Valley was opened in 1837 from Harrisburg to Chambersburg, and it was extended by another company in 1841 to Hagerstown, Maryland. The Baltimore & Susquehanna was incorporated in 1828 to build north from Baltimore. Progress was slowed because of the reluctance of Pennsylvania state officials to charter a railroad that would carry commerce to Baltimore. The line reached Harrisburg in 1851 and Sunbury in 1858. By then the railroad companies that formed the route had been consolidated as the Northern Central Railway. Pennsy acquired majority ownership of the Northern Central in 1900.

The Pennsy expanded into northwestern Pennsylvania by acquiring an interest in the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad in 1862 and assisting that road to complete its line from Sunbury to the city of Erie in 1864. The line to Erie was not particularly successful, but from Sunbury to Driftwood it could serve as part of a freight route with easy grades. The rest of that route was the Allegheny Valley Railroad, conceived as a feeder from Pittsburgh to the New York Central and Erie railroads. The Pennsylvania obtained control in 1868, and in 1874 opened a route with easy grades from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh via the valleys of the Susquehanna and Allegheny rivers. PRR leased the Allegheny Valley Railroad in 1900.

Horse shoe curve near Altoona on the Pennsylvania Railroad, circa 1874.
Photo by W.P. Mange & Co. via the Library of Congress.

But even the mighty can fall, and the PRR fell into difficult times after WW2:

During World War II Pennsy’s freight traffic doubled and passenger traffic quadrupled, much of it on the eastern portion of the system. The electrification was of inestimable value in keeping the traffic moving. After the war Pennsy had the same experiences as many other railroads but seemed slower to react. PRR was slower to dieselize, and when it did so it bought units from every manufacturer.

As freight and passenger traffic moved to the highways, Pennsy found itself with far more fixed plant than the traffic warranted or could support, and it was slow to take up excess trackage or replace double track with Centralized Traffic Control.

PRR was saddled with a heavy passenger business. It had extensive commuter services centered on New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh and lesser ones at Chicago, Washington, Baltimore, and Camden, New Jersey. It had gone through the Depression without going bankrupt.

Pennsylvania and New York Central surprised the railroad industry by announcing merger plans in 1957. The two had long been rivals, and the merger would be one of parallel roads rather than end-to-end. The merger took place on February 1, 1968 — and Penn Central fell apart faster than it went together.

PRR E8A 5803 with Train 72, The Red Bird, passing the Hartsdale, Indiana tower and crossing the NYC and EJ&E on November 26, 1965.
Photo from the Roger Puta collection via Wikimedia Commons.

“Union” – Battle of Monte Cassino – Sabaton History 048 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Italy, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 2 Jan 2020

In early 1944, as the Allies are nearing Rome, Albert Kesselring orders a defensive line the likes of which rivals some of history’s greatest fortifications. Here, with the old hilltop abbey Monte Cassino looking down on the two front, the Axis and the Allies duel it out in a bloody and tiring fight for control of central Italy…

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Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
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Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory

Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.

Sources:
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– National Portrait Gallery
– Bundesarchiv
– National Army Museum
– IWM E446, E 3020E, MH 1557, NA 12895, NA 15139, MH 6352, MH 11250, NA15141, C4363, HU 16546, NA 9807, NA 13274
– Soldiers of 100th Infantry Battalion during the Battle of Monte Cassino courtessy of Bco100bn from Wikimedia Commons
– Gebirgsjäger in position in Saltdal in 1940, Courtessy of Rudi Margreiter through Arkiv i Nordland
– Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

Magical thinking in names

Filed under: Education, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Theodore Dalrymple relates the rather odd story of a young girl’s media-publicized objection to a math problem in school and then considers the girl’s given name in the larger context:

Popular first names in the United States, 2010.
Image from Behind the Name.

My attention was also caught by the first name of the politically-correct child: Rhythm. This is not a traditional name, though not actually ugly; but her parents have evidently accepted the increasing convention of giving a child an unconventional, and sometimes previously unheard of, name. This is a worldwide, or at least occident-wide, phenomenon. In Brazil, for example, parents in any year give their children one of 150,000 names, most of them completely new, made up like fake news, and in France, 55,000 children are born every year who are given names that are shared by three or fewer children born the same year. This latter is all the more startling because, until 1993, there was an old Napoleonic law (admittedly not rigidly enforced) that constrained parents to choose among 2000 names, mainly those of either saints or classical heroes.

What does the phenomenon of giving children previously unheard-of names signify — assuming that it signifies something? I think it is symptomatic of an egoistic individualism without true individuality, of self-expression without anything to express, which is perhaps one of the consequences of celebrity culture.

I performed an internet search on the words Rhythm as a given name. I soon found the website of a group called the Kabalarians, who believe that the name given to a child determines, or at least contributes greatly, to its path through life, especially in conjunction with the date of birth:

    When language is used to attach a name to someone this creates the basis of mind, from which all thoughts and experiences flow. By representing the conscious forces combined in your name as a mathematical formula, one’s specific mental characteristics, strengths and weaknesses can be measured.

It invited readers to inquire about the psychological characteristics and problems of people with various given names. I invented a child called Rhythm of the same age, more or less, as Rhythm Pacheco. This was the result:

    The name of Rhythm causes this child to be extremely idealistic and sensitive. She will find it difficult to overcome self-consciousness and to express her deeper thoughts and feelings in a free, natural way. She is too easily hurt and offended, and will often depreciate her own abilities. Because of her lack of confidence and her sensitivity, she will go to great lengths to avoid an issue. True affection, understanding, and love mean a great deal to her, as she is a romantic and emotional youngster. Often she will resort to a dream world when her feelings are hurt. She could be very easily influenced by others, for she will find it difficult to maintain her individuality. This problem could become more predominant during the teenage years. Although there is much that is refined and beautiful about her, the lack of emotional control could bring much unhappiness, repression, misunderstanding and loneliness later in life. Tension could also create fluid and respiratory problems. Because of the sensitivity created by this name, she will find it difficult to cope with the challenges of life.

There is, in fact, a semi-serious theory of nominative determinism, according to which a name may influence a person’s choice of career: two of the most prominent British neurologists of the first half of the twentieth century, for example, were Henry Head and Russell Brain. A recent Lord Chief Justice of England was called Igor Judge. And surely it must work in a negative direction too: no poet could be called Albert Postlethwaite. However rational one believes oneself, one might also experience a frisson of fear on consulting a doctor called Slaughter — as was called the doctor and popular novelist Frank G. Slaughter.

When I first went to Africa, I encountered patients whose first names were Clever, Sixpence or Mussolini. The first of these names was presumably an instance of magical thinking, while the second two were chosen merely because the naming parents liked the sound of them. Years later, during the civil war in Liberia, I met a constitutional lawyer called Hitler Coleman, who presumably desired to live his name down by concerning himself with the rule of law.

M20 75mm Recoilless Rifle: When the Bazooka Just Won’t Cut It

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Mar 2018

Sold for $6,325.

Note that this is a rewelded action. It should be inspected by a professional before being fired (the firing footage in the video is a different example).

The M20 75mm Recoilless Rifle was developed starting in 1944 as a replacement for the 3.5″ bazooka in an antitank role. It was developed and produced in parallel with a 57mm recoilless rifle (the M18), and both entered service in March of 1945, seeing just a slight bit of combat use before the end of World War Two. It would be a mainstay of US troops in the Korean War, however, along with a 105mm recoilless rifle. The M20 fired HE, HEAT, and WP (smoke) rounds, with the projectiles weighing 20-22 pounds (about 10kg) and having muzzle velocities of about 1000 fps (305 m/s). The shaped charge HEAT warhead could penetrate about 4″ (100mm) of armor, and had an effective range of about 400 yards. The HE warhead could be effectively used out to about 1000 yards, and the gun was equipped with both direct fire and indirect fire optical sights in order to effectively use both types of ammunition.

By the Vietnam War, the M20 was on its way out, as were recoilless rifles in general — they were being replaced with wire-guided missiles for antitank use. However, the M20 remains in service today for avalanche control in many Western states — a neat repurposing of obsolete weaponry!

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