BBC Earth Lab
Published on 14 Feb 2013James May imparts his knowledge to let us know that diamonds aren’t that rare after all.
James May’s Q&A:
With his own unique spin, James May asks and answers the oddball questions we’ve all wondered about from ‘What Exactly Is One Second?’ to ‘Is Invisibility Possible?’
December 26, 2017
What makes a diamond priceless? – James May’s Q&A (Ep 7) – Head Squeeze
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December 25, 2017
WW1 Christmas Truce: Letters from the Trenches – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 24 Dec 2017Sponsored by World of Tanks! New players: Download the game and use the code ARMISTICE for free goodies! http://cpm.wargaming.net/ivmqe6kc/?pu…
PLUS! In the spirit of the Christmas Truce, World of Tanks has prepared a gift box for EVERY PLAYER. Redeem the bonus code: HULSE14
“Yesterday there was a fierce and terrible onslaught… of Christmas packages into our trenches.” So began one soldier’s letter home after the Christmas Truce of WWI. These letters give us a peek at the joys and sorrows experienced by troops on deployment, from the pleasure of a surprise holiday truce to the pain of being too long apart from families.
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Filling Trenches – General PoWs – Blindness I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 23 Dec 2017Ask your questions: http://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv
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December 24, 2017
Hilarious History: That Time Cadets at West Point Rioted Over Eggnog
Today I Found Out
Published on 6 Dec 2017In this video:
From the beginning, heavy drinking was fairly commonplace among the cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point (founded in 1802). In an attempt to stem this in 1826, the academy’s strict superintendent and the “Father of West Point,” General Sylvanus Thayer, began a crackdown by prohibiting alcohol on campus. As Christmas approached and the cadets realized that the prohibition would put a damper on their traditional Christmas Eve festivities that included consumption of a fair amount of eggnog, a bold few began to plan away around the problem.
Want the text version?: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…
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December 23, 2017
The team behind “The Great War” to produce a Second World War video series
Perhaps the single question Indy Neidell and the team at “The Great War” channel have been asked most frequently was whether they were planning to do a similar kind of week-by-week history on the Second World War. They have finally committed to doing so, although it will be a much bigger effort than what they’ve been doing so far. Here’s the Kickstarter intro video:
The funding effort is going well, as the latest update indicates:
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QotD: Charles Dickens’ ability to portray happiness
The thought of Christmas raises almost automatically the thought of Charles Dickens, and for two very good reasons. To begin with, Dickens is one of the few English writers who have actually written about Christmas. Christmas is the most popular of English festivals, and yet it has produced astonishingly little literature. There are the carols, mostly medieval in origin; there is a tiny handful of poems by Robert Bridges, T.S. Eliot, and some others, and there is Dickens; but there is very little else. Secondly, Dickens is remarkable, indeed almost unique, among modern writers in being able to give a convincing picture of happiness.
Dickens dealt successfully with Christmas twice in a chapter of The Pickwick Papers and in A Christmas Carol. The latter story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its ‘bourgeois sentimentality’ completely intolerable. Now in a sense Lenin was right: but if he had been in better health he would perhaps have noticed that the story has interesting sociological implications. To begin with, however thick Dickens may lay on the paint, however disgusting the ‘pathos’ of Tiny Tim may be, the Cratchit family give the impression of enjoying themselves. They sound happy as, for instance, the citizens of William Morris’s News From Nowhere don’t sound happy. Moreover and Dickens’s understanding of this is one of the secrets of his power their happiness derives mainly from contrast. They are in high spirits because for once in a way they have enough to eat. The wolf is at the door, but he is wagging his tail. The steam of the Christmas pudding drifts across a background of pawnshops and sweated labour, and in a double sense the ghost of Scrooge stands beside the dinner table. Bob Cratchit even wants to drink to Scrooge’s health, which Mrs Cratchit rightly refuses. The Cratchits are able to enjoy Christmas precisely because it only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because Christmas only comes once a year. Their happiness is convincing just because it is described as incomplete.
George Orwell (writing as “John Freeman”), “Can Socialists Be Happy?”, Tribune, 1943-12-20.
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December 22, 2017
The Armistice of Brest-Litovsk I THE GREAT WAR Week 178
The Great War
Published on 21 Dec 2017An armistice between Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia is signed this week 100 years ago at Brest-Litovsk. And right away the Germans make their intentions clear that they want to dictate the terms for the following peace negotiations. Even Great Britain is exploring peace options but is there actually peace in Russia? After the Bolshevik Coup a Civil War is looming.
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December 21, 2017
The bloody 20th century and the leaders who helped make it so
Walter Williams on the terrible death toll of the 20th century, both in formal war between nations and in internal conflict and repression:
The 20th century was mankind’s most brutal century. Roughly 16 million people lost their lives during World War I; about 60 million died during World War II. Wars during the 20th century cost an estimated 71 million to 116 million lives.
The number of war dead pales in comparison with the number of people who lost their lives at the hands of their own governments. The late professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii documented this tragedy in his book Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Some of the statistics found in the book have been updated here.
The People’s Republic of China tops the list, with 76 million lives lost at the hands of the government from 1949 to 1987. The Soviet Union follows, with 62 million lives lost from 1917 to 1987. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German government killed 21 million people between 1933 and 1945. Then there are lesser murdering regimes, such as Nationalist China, Japan, Turkey, Vietnam and Mexico. According to Rummel’s research, the 20th century saw 262 million people’s lives lost at the hands of their own governments.
Hitler’s atrocities are widely recognized, publicized and condemned. World War II’s conquering nations’ condemnation included denazification and bringing Holocaust perpetrators to trial and punishing them through lengthy sentences and execution. Similar measures were taken to punish Japan’s murderers.
But what about the greatest murderers in mankind’s history — the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong? Some leftists saw these communists as heroes. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. … The highest proof of his greatness (was that) he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.” There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called the fascist Mussolini “admirable,” and he was “deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished.”
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December 20, 2017
WW1 Christmas Truce: Silent Night – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 17 Dec 2017Sponsored by World of Tanks! New players: Download the game and use the code ARMISTICE for free goodies! http://cpm.wargaming.net/ivmqe6kc/?pu…
PLUS! In the spirit of the Christmas Truce, World of Tanks has prepared a gift box for EVERY PLAYER. Redeem the bonus code: HULSE14On Christmas Eve in 1914, soldiers in the trenches sang together across the wastes of No Man’s Land. Some were brave enough to step out of their trenches and meet face-to-face, forming an unofficial truce that lasted (with a few blemishes) until the end of Christmas Day.
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December 19, 2017
Transcaucasia in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 18 Dec 2017The Caucasus region with its many different ethnic groups and its resources was always of particular interest to the greater powers like Russia, Persia or the Ottoman Empire. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the idea of ethnic self determination and resulting national movements, the fluctuating powers situation caused by World War 1 created a unique situation for Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Armenians.
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December 18, 2017
Khosrau Anushirawan: Prince of Persia – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 16 Dec 2017Kavadh asked his allies in Eastern Rome for help getting Iran back on its feet. The Romans’ replies were not only unhelpful – they were insulting. By the time Khosrau inherited the throne, resentment and war had turned the delicate alliance with Rome into an open rivalry.
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December 17, 2017
Beer Brewing – Roger Casement – Surviving Aces I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 16 Dec 2017Ask your questions here: http://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv
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December 16, 2017
The Effectiveness of 18th Century Musketry
Old Fort Niagara Association
Published on Jan 27, 2016Scholars and historians at Old Fort Niagara strive to uncover the truth behind the musket’s true effectiveness on America’s 18th century battlefields.
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December 15, 2017
Jerusalem Surrenders – Bolsheviks Consolidate Control I THE GREAT WAR Week 177
The Great War
Published on 14 Dec 2017This week in the Great War, the British under Allenby capture the Holy City. Meanwhile the British War Cabinet beings to strategise for future offensives. In Russia, though the fighting may be over on the Eastern Front, the fight for control of the country is far from over. Before the Bolsheviks can negotiate peace with Germany, they need to establish peace within Russia’s own borders.
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QotD: Crony capitalism
First, we labor under a ubiquitous threat of being shackled by crony capitalists. [Adam] Smith wondered how internally stable a free market could be in the face of a tendency for its political infrastructure to decay into crony capitalism. (The phrase “crony capitalism” is not Smith’s. I use it to refer to various of Smith’s targets: mercantilists who lobby for tariffs and other trade barriers, monopolists who pay kings for a license to be free from competition altogether, and so on.) Partnerships between big business and big government lead to big subsidies, monopolistic licensing practices, and tariffs. These ways of compromising freedom have been and always will be touted as protecting the middle class, but their true purpose is (and almost always will be) to transfer wealth and power from ordinary citizens to well-connected elites.
David Schmidtz, “Adam Smith on Freedom” (published as Chapter 13 of Ryan Patrick Hanley’s Adam Smith: His Life, Thought, and Legacy, 2016).
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