Published on 25 Mar 2017
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It’s time for the Chair of Wisdom again and this week Indy compares World War 1 helmet designs and we talk about the discrimination of Germans in the US during WW1.
March 26, 2017
Comparing WW1 Helmet Designs I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
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“It’s that old self-love double-standard again”
Julie Burchill on the recent boom in public applause for female masturbation:
There’s a bit in the Cate Blanchett TV commercial for a scent called Si that never fails to make me snigger smuttily. (Admittedly not difficult.) After we see the Radiant One being life-affirming in the rain (‘Si to life!’) and with a Significant Other (‘Si to us!’) she wanders off alone and, looking particularly glowy, stares into the camera: ‘Si to myself!’ It’s tragic, but what was clearly intended as an oath to empowerment always strikes me as a reference to onanism. I spit out my Malibu every time.
Mind you, I could be forgiven for my immature interpretation. In recent years, female masturbation has gone from being the love that dare not speak its name to the one that can’t stop moaning, gasping and screaming it — and then making pop videos about it.
[…]
We’re encouraged to admire these finger-happy females, but what would our reaction be if male crooners started singing about self-abuse and, even better, filming themselves pretending to do it in order to flog their music? I suspect the reaction might not be a million miles from one long collective ‘Ewww!’ But why is a masturbating man the subject of amusement and/or contempt while a masturbating woman is some sort of heroine? Logically, it doesn’t make sense. A woman can always get sex, whereas men often have to chase it, pay for it or go without it, so they’ve got a lot more reason to be interfering with themselves.
But now it’s the ladies, Lord love ’em, who are paying for the pleasure right through the nose, with the unstoppable rise of sex aids. And yes, that was a snooty judgmental tone you thought you heard there. I refuse to use the approved term ‘sex toys’ because it brings a creepy air of infantilism to this most adult of pastimes (an unnerving number of sex aids are made in the style of children’s playthings). I don’t know what I find more pitiable, two people, presumably equipped with the usual supply of hands, mouths and sex organs, setting about each other with bits of garishly coloured cut-price plastic to reach the realms of ecstasy, or a woman with more money than sex paying £12,000 for a vibrator that the Sunday Times described thus: ‘An 18ct-gold-plated gilded pebble… five vibration patterns with customisable levels of intensity… comes in an artisanal wooden box with gold trimmings.’ Be still my beating heart!
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QotD: Muggeridge on queues in the Soviet Union
We used to run a little contest among ourselves to see who could produce the most striking example of credulity among this fine flower of our western intelligentsia. Persuading church dignitaries to feel at home in an anti-God museum was too easy to count. So was taking lawyers into the people´s courts. I got an honourable mention by persuading Lord Marley that the queueing at food shops was permitted by the authorities because it provided a means of inducing the workers to take a rest when otherwise their zeal for completing the five-year plan in record time was such that they would keep at it all the time, but no marks for floating a story that Soviet citizens were being asked to send in human hair – any sort – for making of felt boots. It seemed that this had actually happened.
Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, 2006.
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March 25, 2017
When reality TV goes feral
In the Guardian, a sad tale of a failed reality TV show that went off the air … but the people involved were not told about it:
After a year cut off from modern life in the Scottish Highlands, imagine re-emerging to find a world where Donald Trump is US president, Britain has left the EU and Leicester won the Premier League.
For the contestants of the Channel 4 programme Eden, coming back from isolation means not just coming to terms with 2017 but also the news that their year of toil in the wilderness barely made it on to television.
The programme, which first aired in July last year, was billed as a social experiment where 23 strangers were brought to the remote west Highlands of Scotland to build a self-sufficient community away from technology and modern tools. The year-long saga would be recorded by four crew members and personal cameras.
However, only four episodes of the show – covering March, April and May – were screened, as viewing figures dropped from 1.7m to 800,000. Sexual jealousy, infighting and hunger also meant that over the year, a reported 13 of the 23 contestants left the show, though Channel 4 would not confirm the dropouts.
Despite the show being taken off air, those still toiling for survival in the wilds of the 600-acre estate on the Ardnamurchan peninsula were not informed that their ordeal had not been broadcast since August.
So much for those dreams of fame and fortune from “starring” in a reality TV show.
H/t to Colby Cosh for the link.
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If Walls Could Talk The History of the Home Episode 1: The Living Room
Published on 21 Jan 2017
First episode about the Living Room with Lucy Worsley Give a thumbs up for more episodes! 😀
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March 24, 2017
Kaiser Karl Wants Peace – The Sixtus Affair I THE GREAT WAR Week 139
Published on 23 Mar 2017
The First World War & The Death of the Habsburg Empire: http://www.boehlau-verlag.com/download/163983/978-3-205-79588-9_1_OpenAccess.pdf
Since Kaiser Karl I ascended the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire he was not happy with the progression of the war. He felt that his empire was tied to their German ally more than necessary and this week 100 years ago he was starting a process of secret negotiations for a separate peace with the Entente. At the same time the British had increasing problems at the home front and the chaos in Russia continued.
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David Fletcher’s Tank Chats #2: The Carden Loyd Carrier
Published on 27 Feb 2015
The second in a series of short films about some of the vehicles in our collection presented by The Tank Museum’s historian David Fletcher MBE.
The Carden Loyd Carrier or tankette: Designed by Sir John Carden and Captain Vivian Loyd this was a low cost, two-man Machine-Gun Carrier for infantry use. The company was taken over by Vickers-Armstrong in 1927 and the vehicle was mass-produced for the British Army in addition to a thriving export trade. Unpopular with the infantry, they were used mostly by the Royal Tank Corps as embryonic light tanks in the reconnaissance role.
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March 22, 2017
The Backbone of Total War – Trains in WW1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 21 Mar 2017
Without trains, the modern armies of World War 1 were not able to move their troops en masse. Without trains, the soldiers at the front didn’t have food or ammunition and without trains, the soldiers wouldn’t make it to the nearest hospital. Trains were the backbone of the new, industrialised war of the 20th century.
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March 21, 2017
British Weapons of World War 1 feat. C&Rsenal I THE GREAT WAR Live Stream
Streamed live 9 hours ago
Othais’ channel: https://www.youtube.com/candrsenal
In our series about the rifles and pistols today, Othais got his hands on the standard issue rifles and pistols of the British Army in World War One.
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Icelandic standup about Nordic neighbours in general and Finnish language in particular
Published on Dec 1, 2016
H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.
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Catherine the Great – V: Potemkin, Catherine’s General, Advisor, and Lover – Extra History
Published on 25 Feb 2017
Catherine had many lovers during her life, but perhaps none meant so much to her as Grigory Potemkin. Although their romance did not last a lifetime, it did form the basis of a working relationship that would change the face (and future) of Europe.
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March 20, 2017
Scotland … here they go again
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is eager to get the voters back to the polls for another go-around for Scottish independence (well, not independence-independence, but separate-from-Britain-but-desperate-to-stay-in-the-EU-independence). Stephen Daisley comments on the situation as of Saturday:
The SNP has managed to spin normally sceptical hacks the line that Downing Street was caught on the back foot by Miss Sturgeon’s Monday surprise. It’s true that the timing was news to Number 10 — received wisdom ran that the Nationalist leader would unveil her gambit at the SNP annual spring conference in Aberdeen this afternoon.
But the UK Government has known since 2014, when Miss Sturgeon’s party refused to accept their 55% to 45% defeat, that another push for separation was a matter of ‘when’, rather than ‘if’. Contingency plans have been in place for some time, both to push back a referendum do-over until after Brexit and, if need be, to fight one immediately. The Nationalists are not dealing with that nice Mr Cameron anymore.
And Theresa May’s response to Miss Sturgeon’s demand was more cautiously-worded, better thought through, than the contributions that became common from David Cameron during the first referendum. Crucially, she did not dole out a flat No; instead, she said Not Yet.
[…]
Next week, she will ask MSPs to vote for a Section 30 request, petitioning Westminster for the power to hold a second referendum. There is no mandate for the Scottish Parliament to pursue such a policy. The constitution is reserved to the UK Parliament; a party winning a Holyrood election on a manifesto of surrendering Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent or withdrawing Scottish troops from an international conflict would not be thought to have grounds for pursuing such policies.
Even if this point were conceded — it is done so from first principles by the eager constitutionalists who populate the Scottish academy — there is another flaw in the Nationalists’ argument. True, they came first in the May 2016 election and their manifesto envisioned ‘Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will’ as cause for a re-run of 2014’s ‘once in a generation’ poll. But the Nationalists failed to secure a majority of seats at Holyrood for that proposition, winning only 63 out of 129. Fortunately for the SNP, they have six to spare in the shape of the Scottish Greens, once a conscientious party of the Left but, under Patrick Harvie, a Me-Too faction for the most triangulating government since New Labour.
Every time the Nats get themselves into a jam, every time it looks like they might finally have to stop girning and start governing, up pop the six little anoraks, festooned with CND badges and brimming with good intentions, and they come to the rescue. Time after time, Mr Harvie drags the SNP out of a hole and gets nothing in return except a pat on the head. That isn’t leadership; it’s the political instincts of Lassie.
The Greens’ amening of Miss Sturgeon’s gambit is different from previous acts of handmaidenry because it breaks the party’s pledge to the voters. In the manifesto they were elected on last May, the Greens promised:
‘Citizens should be able to play a direct role in the legislative process: on presenting a petition signed by an appropriate number of voters, citizens should be able to trigger a vote on important issues of devolved responsibility. As we proposed on the one year anniversary of the Independence Referendum, this is the Scottish Greens’ preferred way of deciding to hold a second referendum on Independence. If a new referendum is to happen, it should come about by the will of the people, and not be driven by calculations of party political advantage. In such a referendum the Scottish Greens will campaign for independence.’
H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.
March 19, 2017
Crucified Soldier – RMS Olympic – Somme Cavalry I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Published on 18 Mar 2017
Chair of Wisdom Time! This week we talk about the propaganda story of the crucified soldier and the RMS Olympic.
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March 18, 2017
Catherine the Great – IV: Reforms, Rebellion, and Greatness – Extra History
Published on 18 Feb 2017
Catherine had great ambitions to reform Russia according to her own highest ideals, but she soon found that the reality of governance made those ideals difficult to achieve. She also found herself tangled in war, rebellion, and (scandalously) smallpox.
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March 17, 2017
The Tsar Abdicates – Baghdad Falls I THE GREAT WAR Week 138
Published on 16 Mar 2017
The protests that emerged in Russia this week are growing stronger and the Tsar is increasingly isolated until even his generals are pushing for his abdication. And after 300 years of Romanov rule, Tsar Nicholai II abdicates and when his brother refuses to take up the throne, the dynasty is no more. Meanwhile in the Middle East, the British are taking Baghdad effectively seizing control over a large area.
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