Quotulatiousness

January 21, 2020

Amity Shlaes’ Great Society: A New History

Filed under: Books, Economics, Government, History, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In City Journal, Edward Short reviews the latest American economic history book by Amity Shlaes:

In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes revisits the welfare programs of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations to show not only how misguided they were but also what a warning they present to those who wish to resurrect and extend such programs. “The contest between capitalism and socialism is on again,” the author writes in her introduction. Despite the Trump administration’s thriving economy, or perhaps because of it, Democratic Party progressives are calling for new welfare programs even more radical than those advocated in the 1960s by the socialist architect of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, Michael Harrington. In the new schemes for wealth redistribution, student debt relief, socialized medicine, and universal guaranteed income that make up the Democrats’ political platform in 2020, Shlaes rightly sees a recycling of Great Society hobby horses — and she worries that a good portion of the electorate may be taken in by them. “Once again many Americans rate socialism as the generous philosophy,” she observes, and she has written her admirable, sobering study to make sure that readers realize that the “results of our socialism were not generous.”

Reviewing how ungenerous makes for salutary reading. After all, socialism of any stripe, whether in Russia, South America, Europe, or America, has always been an inherently deceitful enterprise. Shales captures the essence of this imposture when she describes one of its manifestations as “Prettifying a political grab by dressing it up as an economic rescue.” In totting up these receipts for deceit, Shlaes has done a genuine public service. […]

On display here are all of Shlaes’s strengths as an author: her clear and unpretentious prose, sound critical judgment, readiness to enter into the thinking of her subjects with sympathy (even when she regards it as mistaken), and, perhaps most impressively, understanding how history can help us fathom what might otherwise be obscure in our own more immediate history.

Accordingly, she describes the influence that Roosevelt’s New Deal had on Johnson, who saw it as a model for maintaining and consolidating his Democratic majorities, as well as focusing his Cabinet’s talents. “The men around Johnson,” Shlaes points out, including Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Richard Goodwin, and Sargent Shriver, “felt the weight of his faith on them, and strove hard. Vietnam would be sorted out. There would be a Great Society. Poverty would be cured. Blacks of the South would win full citizenship. The Great Society would succeed.” Yet the president’s men could not help asking “by what measures” it would succeed.

Moynihan’s answer to this question is one that still mesmerizes social-engineering elites. The Great Society would be achieved by social science. “Progress begins on social problems when it becomes possible to measure them,” Moynihan declared. Improved quantitative analysis would give the centralized power of planners a new credibility.

Whether Johnson himself ever truly believed in such claims is questionable. When aides asked the exuberant Texan what he thought of the risks of going forward with his wildly ambitious program, his reply epitomized the hubris at the heart of his Great Society: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”

January 17, 2020

QotD: The Bible

Filed under: Books, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I once had on my shelves the massive Variorum Teacher’s Edition of the Holy Bible, edited by Cheyne, Clarke, Driver, Goodwin, Sanday — all once names to reckon with — anno Domini 1881. It contained the text of the King James, unrevised. But it also contained extensive notes, alternative readings, explanatory essays and other materials to help even the reader without Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or any dialect of Syriac, to see into the text. Books like Frederic Kenyon’s Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1895) keyed into this Variorum. That book I still have, and although it is now more than a century past its “sell-by,” it continues to offer a foundation on which an intelligent, independent reader may build an understanding of all the genuine advances in biblical scholarship, since — decidedly better than any later introduction I know of.

In my former life, when I entertained grand schemes, I dreamt of publishing a multi-volume revision of that Variorum, with the latest scholarship, but attached to the same old, resonant King James text. (This project could as well have been mounted on the explicitly Roman, and similarly magnificent, Douay-Rheims.)

There are now, in print, more than one hundred alternative English translations of the Bible, and the reader who buys, say, the top twenty, to compare them, is wasting time. He could actually save time by mastering the original languages. I rather think it was the Devil’s idea, to undermine the simple Christian’s confidence in Scripture by means of multiple translations, and innumerable petty and irrelevant distractions.

The New English Bible‘s first volume, a translation into “modern idiom” of the New Testament, was published in 1961. It is dated now in a way the KJV will never be, and has in fact been succeeded by the many other “improved” — and desperately flawed — ever more “modern” editions, including those which intentionally misrepresent the original texts to keep up with the latest “gender” abominations. Yet even when it first appeared, T. S. Eliot could say that the new translation “astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic.”

That criticism holds, so far as I can see, for every modern-language “update” of scripture and liturgy. The hard truth is that the medium of contemporary language is incapable of conveying the substance we require.

Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.

David Warren, “A rant”, Essays in Idleness, 2017-12-13.

December 27, 2019

A Christmas 2.0? – Kwanzaa – December 26th – TimeGhost of Christmas Past – DAY 3

Filed under: Africa, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 26 Dec 2019

It is in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, that a young doctor of African studies decides to create his own holiday in California. Half a century later and this holiday has now become the nation-wide Kwanzaa.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Rune Væver Hartvig and Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Rune Væver Hartvig
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorization by:
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/

Sources:
valphotography https://flic.kr/p/6yoUEF
Emilio Labrador https://flic.kr/p/65sBT1
Robert Couse-Baker https://flic.kr/p/b2oyrr
Boston City Archives
From the Noun Project:
umoja by Travis Avery
kinara by Travis Avery
Human by Angelina

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “A Sleigh Ride Into Town”
Zauana – “Encountering the Unknown”
Sahara Skylight – “Streams of Africa”
Sahara Skylight – “Arriving in Ghana”
Sight of Wonders – “Wildlife Sunrise”

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
17 minutes ago
Today, December 26, our TimeGhost of Christmas Past looks back in the not-too-distant history – in fact into a time in history when some of us here were alive. See, in 1966, Dr. Maulana Karenga decides to create his own holiday in the midst of the holiday season, and, as you’ll see, the rest is history. Now, before some of you become all judgemental and begin shouting in the comment section, remember what Indy says in the video. Think twice before you write something, and please adhere to our community guidelines. And even if you have something controversial to say or not, we’d still like you to share some holiday cheer with us by supporting us on Patreon. It is because of our Patreons that we can fly back into the past and their contributions are vital. See you tomorrow!

Imagine John Lennon as a huge hypocrite

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As Mark Steyn pointed out, it isn’t hard to do:

In his Christmas sermon five years ago, the Bishop of Shrewsbury described John Lennon’s ghastly dirge “Imagine” as “heart-chilling”. Here’s what I had to say about it, and about secularism and a common culture, in the Christmas issue of The Spectator a decade earlier:

At my daughter’s school this year, the holiday concert concluded with John Lennon’s “Imagine”. The school had thoughtfully printed the lyric on the program, and the teacher, inviting the parents to sing along, declared the number summed up what we were all “praying” for. Indeed. The droning vamp began, and John’s anthem for cotton-candy nihilists rent the air:

    Imagine there’s no heaven
    It’s easy if you try
    No hell below us
    Above us only sky
    Imagine all the people
    Living for today …

Ah, that’s the message of the season, isn’t it? Back in the Sixties, John opined that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ, which was a wee bit controversial in those unenlightened times but which appears to be no more than a prosaic statement of fact as far as the music department’s priorities are concerned. These days, “Imagine” has achieved the status of secular hymn, no doubt because of its inclusive message:

    Imagine there’s no countries
    It isn’t hard to do
    Nothing to kill or die for
    And no religion, too …

Hey, happy holidays!

You may say he’s a dreamer, but he’s not. A couple of years ago, it emerged that Lennon was a very generous contributor not just to organizations that support and fund the IRA, but to the IRA itself. He could certainly imagine there’s no countries, nothing to kill or die for and no religion, too, but until that blessed day he was quite happy to support a religiously discriminatory organization that blows up grannies at shopping centres in order to get out of one country and join another. How heartening to know that, though he grew rich peddling illusory pap to the masses, he didn’t fall for it himself.

“Imagine” didn’t go over wild with the parents, who mumbled along unenthusiastically. To be honest, I’d prefer John and Yoko’s peacenik dirge, “(Happy Xmas) War Is Over”, though that might be a little premature and anyway that song suffers from the disadvantage of mentioning Xmas. On the radio you can hear “Frosty” and “Rudolph” and James Taylor’s new post-9/11 version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, but anyone with young children finds themselves exposed to a strange alternative repertoire of unseasonal favourites. My friend Tammy emerged from her daughter’s kindergarten concert in a rage: not just no Christmas carols, but no “Jingle Bells”. The only song she recognized was Lionel Bart’s spectacular melisma pile-up from Oliver!, “Whe-e-e-e-ere Is Love?”, which is not designed to be sung en masse. “They sounded like they were dying,” she fumed, before going off to beard the school board, who explained that “Jingle Bells” had been given the heave-ho on the grounds that it might be insensitive to those of a non-jingly persuasion.

December 21, 2019

Repost – The Monkees – “Riu Chiu”

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

Uploaded on 15 Dec 2015

The Monkees perform “Riu Chiu” from Episode 47, “The Monkees’ Christmas Show”.

H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

November 28, 2019

Deltic Diesel Powered Train (1962) | British Pathé

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

British Pathé
Published 13 Apr 2014

Catch a glimpse of Finsbury Park and Kings Cross station back in the day in this remarkable footage of diesel powered trains in 1962.

For Archive Licensing Enquiries Visit: https://goo.gl/W4hZBv
Explore Our Online Channel For FULL Documentaries, Fascinating Interviews & Classic Movies: https://goo.gl/7dVe8r

#BritishPathé #History #London #KingsCross #FinsburyPark #Trains

(FILM ID:165.08)

Finsbury Park and Kings Cross, London.

L/S of a row of steam train engines on a set of tracks, M/S of steam coming out of the engine. M/S of the driver and fireman in overalls climbing down from the cabin of the engine. M/S of a diesel train in a station, two staff climb into the train, they are a lot cleaner than the steam men.

Interior of the engine, one of the men turns a couple of taps before the journey. C/U of a set of gauges, C/U of another part of the engine. M/S of the driver washing his hands, he closes the folding washbasin and dries his hands. C/U of the sign ‘Max. Speed 100 M.P.H.’ M/S of the driver pouring water from a kettle into a coffee pot. He places the pot on a hot plate and sits down. C/U of his feet on the footrest. M/S of the train pulling out of Kings Cross Station. M/S from the driver’s viewpoint as the train comes out of a tunnel. M/S of two shafts rotating in the engine. M/S of the driver in the cabin, M/S from his viewpoint as the train travels down the track. M/S as the train passes through a station. Various shots of the train and driver, and various point of view shots from inside the cabin of the track as it speeds along. C/U of the speed dials. M/S from the point of view of the driver as the train speeds down the track under bridges and past a steam train going in the opposite direction.

BRITISH PATHÉ’S STORY
Before television, people came to movie theatres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the forefront of cinematic journalism, blending information with entertainment to popular effect. Over the course of a century, it documented everything from major armed conflicts and seismic political crises to the curious hobbies and eccentric lives of ordinary people. If it happened, British Pathé filmed it.

Now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world, British Pathé is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.

British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 136,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1984. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website. https://www.britishpathe.com/

November 20, 2019

Sterling Meets Owen: The Australian F1 Submachine Gun

Filed under: Australia, History, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 20 Sep 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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The Australian Owen submachine gun was once of the best overall SMG designs of the Second World War, and when Australia decided to replace them in the 1960s, the new F1 design had big shoes to fill. The basic configuration of the top-mounted magazine remained, but coupled with elements of the Sterling SMG. The F1 used a simple sheet metal tube receiver with elements welded on, and a typical open bolt, blowback operating system. The unique rear system of separating the recoil spring from the main receiver body in the Owen was not included, instead using a basic open tube and large diameter mainspring. The sights are curiously still mounted to the right side of the gun, with a thin folding rear sight and a front sight affixed to the magazine well. These simplifications did have the effect of lightening the F1 compared to the Owen, which is a nice improvement. The F1 was manufactured from 1962 until 1973, with a total of about 25,000 made. It served in Vietnam and through the 1990s, when replaced by a variant of the F88 Austeyr. All reports are that it was a perfectly adequate submachine gun, but it did not earn the affection of troops like the Owen had.

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October 30, 2019

Defending the work of Dr. Beeching

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Ever the contrarian, Tim Worstall responds to an article calling for the “Beeching Axe” cuts to the British passenger railway network in the 1960s to be reversed:

The British Railways Board’s publication The Reshaping of British Railways, Part 1: Report, Beeching’s first report, which famously recommended the closure of many uneconomic British railway lines. Many of the closures were implemented. This copy is displayed at the National Railway Museum in York beside a copy of the National Union of Railwaymen’s published response, The Mis-shaping of British Railways, Part 1: Retort.
Photo by RobertG via Wikimedia Commons.

For background, as the “Beeching Axe” is far less well-known today than it used to be, here’s Wikipedia’s introduction:

The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) were a reduction of route network and restructuring of the railways in Great Britain, according to a plan outlined in two reports, The Reshaping of British Railways (1963) and The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes (1965), written by Dr Richard Beeching and published by the British Railways Board.

The first report identified 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles (8,000 km) of railway line for closure, 55% of stations and 30% of route miles, with an objective of stemming the large losses being incurred during a period of increasing competition from road transport and reducing the rail subsidies necessary to keep the network running; the second identified a small number of major routes for significant investment. The 1963 report also recommended some less well-publicised changes, including a switch to containerisation for rail freight.

Protests resulted in the saving of some stations and lines, but the majority were closed as planned, and Beeching’s name remains associated with the mass closure of railways and the loss of many local services in the period that followed. A few of these routes have since reopened; some short sections have been preserved as heritage railways, while others have been incorporated into the National Cycle Network or used for road schemes; others now are lost to construction, have reverted to farmland, or remain derelict.

Worstall says:

[Dr. Richard] Beeching is one of the most universally hated figures in British politics, yet I have no doubt that he was that rare creature, someone working for the state who actually got things about right.

What Dr Richard Beeching mostly did was a cold, analytical report into the railways and recommended cutting large chunks of it that no-one was using. This was done because the railways were losing a fortune every year. And he mostly got it right. He assumed that we would replace trains with buses, which isn’t a bad idea at all. […]

One of the reasons I think Beeching ended up more right than he thought was the arrival of the car. Yes, cars can be environmentally damaging, cause deaths and so forth. Personally, I lean towards the bus or train as a preference. But you can’t ignore the upsides of cars.

The biggest problems with trains are connection time, flexibility and that there’s no market in there. Rail is quite poor at doing their one job: getting a train from A to B. You’d think after 150 years, they’d have it going pretty good, but crew not turning up, signal failures, electrical failures, doors not closing properly. industrial action are not that rare. The problems are certainly more common than if you drive a Toyota Corolla on the motorway to work. Your driver will turn up (because it’s you), the doors will close, the car will run pretty much perfectly. You also have no connection time in that Corolla. You turn off one road straight onto another. You can also go when you please. Middle of the night, middle of the day.

Maps originally from Losing Track by Kerry Hamilton and Stephen Potter (1985), by way of Is Your Journey Really Necessary?, 2012-12-31.
https://isyourjourneyreallynecessary.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/nice-work-if-you-can-get-there/
Click map to enlarge.

October 16, 2019

QotD: Childhood fears of nuclear armageddon

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

When I was a kid I was terrified of the End of the World. Kids heard things; older kids who’d read that ridiculous end-times tract, The Late Great Planet Earth said it foretold a struggle between the “bear” and the “eagle” and we all knew what that meant. One summer at Bible Camp I asked one of the pastors if this bear-eagle end-of-the-world stuff was true, and he said “we know not the day or the time.” You know, I thought, but you just won’t tell us.

It was 1968. On the night before the last day of camp, a counselor named Charlie Brown interrupted our sunset meeting by the shores of White Bear Lake to tell us the news: Russia had launched their missiles and they would destroy America before the night was out. It was time to get right with God.

Silence; crickets; small sobs. I’m sure no one thought much about Jesus right then. We thought about Mom and Dad and Spot and our room, where we really, really wanted to be right now, with the familiar smell of the goldfish bowl, and —

Charlie Brown guided us through some prayers. We all said Amen, and I’m sure for some it was the least heartfelt Amen we’d ever said. Then Charlie Brown said he had made up the story. Russia hadn’t launched the missiles. But what if they had? Were we right with Jesus?

Back at the barracks we were quiet and unnerved. No one wanted to go to sleep. No one wanted to talk, either. Finally John Larson, the bunkhouse bully, broke the silence. He was the mean kid. He was the one who tormented me at home, and had bothered me at camp. Nelson Muntz without the charm. John Larson expressed his simple wish to stab Charlie Brown in the stomach.

A dozen little Lutheran campers nodded in the dark: ya sure, you betcha.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2003-09-11.

September 24, 2019

1963 – The Beeching Report

Filed under: Britain, Economics, History, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

LMS4767
Published on 27 Mar 2019

September 2, 2019

What You Didn’t Know About the 1968 Machine Gun Amnesty

Filed under: Bureaucracy, History, Law, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 11 Oct 2017

Sold for $23,000.

When the 1968 machine gun amnesty was announced in the US, it was treated with widespread suspicion among gun collectors. Some thought it would merely a pretense to find and arrest owners of unregistered machine guns. Others though it was just the first step in a prohibition and confiscation of machine guns. Both of these groups would prove to be wrong, however and the amnesty was in fact a true amnesty.

In fact, the amnesty was even more substantial than people recognize even today. It was not just an amnesty for possession of an unregistered machine gun, but also pretty much any crime associated with the gun. For example, it would legalize guns that had been stolen from military property rooms, and guns with defaced serial numbers. In fact, it even allowed felons to register machine guns, and retain the legal right to own them to this very day.

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September 1, 2019

Gene Roddenberry was his own worst enemy

Filed under: History, Media, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ed Driscoll reviews the first of three volumes by Marc Cushman, relating the story behind the legendary original Star Trek TV series. Much of the first volume is apparently about the problems of getting NBC to let Gene Roddenberry back into their good graces after he humiliated the network over an earlier TV show:

Nichelle Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois on December 29, 1936. She played Lieutenant Uhura the Communications Officer on the U.S.S. Enterprise in the original series, Star Trek. Nichols stayed with the show and has appeared in six Star Trek movies. Her portrayal of Uhura on Star Trek marked one of the first non-stereotypical roles assigned to an African-American actress. Before joining the crew on Star Trek, she sang and danced with Duke Ellington’s band.
NASA photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) was a religious agnostic and left-leaning Texan who became a WWII Army Air Force B-17 pilot, then an LA policeman who wrote numerous scripts for the burgeoning television industry in the 1950s. Eventually, he graduated to producing his own TV show in 1963, The Lieutenant, purchased by NBC and built around Gary Lockwood, the future guest star of Star Trek‘s second pilot, and the co-star of another landmark 1960s science fiction achievement, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Lieutenant was for the most part a formulaic “military procedural” about life at Camp Pendleton, and featured numerous future Star Trek guest stars and cast members. However, Roddenberry, as was his wont, eventually decided to push the envelope, and put into production an episode on racism in the Marines called “To Set It Right,” with guest stars Dennis Hopper, future Star Trek regular Nichelle Nichols and future Trek guest star Don Marshall. The episode lost the support of the Marines, and the good will of NBC. As Roddenberry later recounted, “My problem was not the Marine Corps; it was NBC, who turned down the show flat … There was only one thing I could do, I went to the NAACP and they lowered the boom on NBC.”

As Cushman writes, this did not endear himself with NBC’s executive suit. “Roddenberry had won the battle … but lost the war. Despite satisfactory ratings, The Lieutenant was cancelled.” And NBC’s executives would not forget being hung out to dry by one of their product suppliers.

Even before The Lieutenant‘s only season of production was complete, Roddenberry began crafting a television show he called Star Trek. He had somehow stumbled into the perfect format for an hour-long network television series. While he admired shows such as Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and its recombinant network rival The Outer Limits for their ability to comment on American society through the metaphors of science fiction and horror, these were anthology shows, introducing a new cast each week. He knew the most successful network series were those with a recurring cast, such the many westerns that aired during the 1950s and ’60s, such as the long-running Bonanza and Gunsmoke. Viewers treated these archetypal characters almost as their own family members, which in turn encouraged them to tune in each week.

Given the networks’ love of westerns in the 1960s, it’s no coincidence that Roddenberry’s first pitch to the networks used the phrase “Wagon Train to the stars” as a metaphor to describe the show. (As Cushman writes, veteran western and science fiction writer Samuel Peeples actually coined that phrase, the first of many bits of Star Trek lore that Roddenberry would eventually co-opt and take credit for.)

It’s also no coincidence that the show’s second in command was written by Roddenberry as “a mysterious female, slim and dark, expressionless, cool, one of those women who will always look the same between years 20 and 50.” As Cushman deadpans, “To be more specific: actress Majel Barrett, Roddenberry’s lover.” (Roddenberry was also having a tryst with Nichelle Nichols; she would find her way into Star Trek‘s regular cast as well.) While the pointed-eared alien Mr. Spock was also present, he was much more in the background in Roddenberry’s first draft of Star Trek.

August 23, 2019

Sterling S11: Donkey in a Thoroughbred Race

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 26 Jun 2019

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In the 1960s, the Sterling company began to worry about the prospects of continued sales of the Sterling (Patchett) SMG, especially in light of new competitors like the H&K MP5. Its chief design engineer, Frank Waters, created the S11 as a gun to replace the classic Sterling. The S11 was based on a simple stamped/folded steel receiver, and was intended to have a lower unit cost than the Sterling. It kept the excellent Patchett magazine, but had a barrel and sights offset to the left side, and offered two separate bayonet lugs – one for the No5 rifle and one for the L1A1/FAL.

Unfortunately for Sterling, it was determined that the tooling cost would have made the S11 actually more expensive than the existing guns, whose tooling costs had been long since covered. Also, the S11 was just not a very good or very reliable design – a “donkey in a thoroughbred race” to quote one Sterling manager. This one prototype was the only example ever made, and the project was shelved in 1967 in favor of expanding into more civilian models of the original Sterling.

Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this one of a kind submachine gun! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:

https://royalarmouries.org/research/n…

You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:

https://royalarmouries.org/collection/

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August 3, 2019

QotD: The 1968 election and the schizoid break of the American media

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

… in hindsight 1968 was obviously the country’s schizoid break. The Democratic Party didn’t go completely off the rails — cf. all the candidates they ran, 1972-2004, who were the definition of anodyne — but The Media sure as hell did. 1968 was also the year of the Tet Offensive, you’ll recall, with Walter Cronkite proclaiming the war unwinnable. It doesn’t matter if Cronkite was right or not (of course he wasn’t); nor does it matter if his proclamation actually made everyday Americans lose faith in the war. What matters is that The Media believed it, with all their hearts and souls. No profession is dumber, or more addicted to singing hosannas to itself, than journalism. And then they “got” Richard Nixon, and that’s all she wrote — from there on out, The Media decided they were the country’s real rulers, and what they want, they get.

Fortunately for the Democrats, what The Media wanted and what the Democratic Party wanted were in the same ballpark for most of the next three decades. But then Bill Clinton happened, as my students would write. He played The Media’s Messiah fantasies for all they were worth, such that every bobblehead in the country was still defending him as Liberalism’s avatar even as he was governing (in the few odd moments he bothered) as Newt Gingrich’s mini-me and acting like a frat boy on nickel beer night at the strip club.

You just don’t get over something like that.

Which brings us to the elections of 2000 and 2004. Boy do these look different in hindsight! […] I knew The Media was all-in on the Democrat, like they always are. But at the time, I thought that was a tactical decision. That is, I really believed that their attacks on W. were calculated political moves, designed to drag Gore and especially Kerry over the finish line. I thought that only the Mother Jones types were delusional, Iranian mullah-style fanatics.

Nope. The Media — ALL of them — really did see W. as the antichrist, the Twelfth Invisible Hitler (as the Z Man likes to put it) come to destroy the world. So when despite all their sacrifices to Moloch the Chimperor won, The Media went full retard. Like UFO cultists who keep the faith by telling themselves only their fervent prayers staved off the apocalypse, The Media convinced themselves that only more Social Justice would do …

Severian, “The Spirit of ’68”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-07-01.

July 31, 2019

The Jaguar E-Type / XK-E Story

Filed under: Britain, Business, History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Big Car
Published on 10 May 2019

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The Jaguar XK-E or E-Type may be the most beautiful car in history. It’s certainly one of the most sought after, with cars fetching crazy prices at auction. It’s a car born out of a Le Mans-winning heritage, delivering looks with speed and handling to match, all at an affordable price. Yet somehow it had a top speed over 150mph, while also not having a top speed over 150mph!

#JaguarEType #JaguarXKE #EType

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