H. L. Mencken on anarchists
The last round of Berkeley riots reminded me of this quote from H. L. Mencken: “To the average American or Englishman the very name of anarchy causes a shudder, because it invariably conjures up a...
View ArticlePoison gas
As part of the epigraph I used to lead my novella The Time Bridge at Orion, George Orwell wrote, “Poison gas, the machine-gun, the submarine, gunpowder, and even the crossbow were similarly denounced...
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Doolittle Raid: 75th anniversary
The Doolittle raid was 75 years ago today. 80 men in 16 B-25 Mitchells took off of the USS Hornet (CV-8) on April 18, 1942 to attack mainland Japan. The Navy has a good write-up here. (These U.S....
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Two Eras
Via Rand Simberg (from whom I snagged this title) and StrategyPage, a USAF F-22 Raptor flying beside a restored P-51 Mustang painted in Tuskegee Airmen colors: USAF F-22 Raptor aircraft assigned to...
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Nice cars finish last
From 1944: Grin and Bear It — Feb 15, 1944* Civilian car production stopped within two months after December 7, 1941. But this joke works even better today with self-driving cars on the horizon. John...
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75 years ago: Battle of Midway
OldNFO Jim Curtis has a couple of posts (yesterday and today) on the Battle of Midway. It began 75 years ago, June 3 through 7, 1942. This is detailed and makes for compelling reading. And for good...
View ArticleField Marshal von Rundstedt on the Invasion of Normandy
Another anniversary: This time it’s the 73rd anniversary of D-Day — the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. It’s no surprise that the German army would have produced a report on the invasion. And...
View ArticleJames Holland reviews Dunkirk
History writer (fiction and non-fiction) James Holland reviews Dunkirk, and asks, does historical accuracy matter? This is a great piece, although long. In reality, the “Little Ships” that were the...
View ArticleStephen Baxter, Ken MacLeod and H. G. Wells
Ken MacLeod speaks with Stephen Baxter on his new book The Massacre of Mankind. The despairing title comes from a phrase in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. This is the sequel. It’s not the only...
View ArticleThe Mighty Eighth (2014)
A clip from The Mighty Eighth showing what hell it must have been flying on a B-17 mission over Germany during WWII: One obvious failing, probably mentioned before, is that military aircraft cabins are...
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