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...pel.2 Here the argument is that Americans generally believed that aircraft -- and the new connections they would create between people and peoples -- would bring about a golden age of peace and prosperity. The same could not be said of the British (at least, not in general). Having hesitantly asserted a bold generalisation, I probably ought to try and explain it. Here are some possibilities, none of them particularly compelling: Time. The First Wo...

95 Comments

...me. (And John Holman's father, also named John, had a brother named James -- Jacob?) I'm going to stop there before my brain melts! After that it was back to Truro, via Tremayne, Praze and Camborne. I wish I'd been a bit better prepared -- if I had been, perhaps I would have known about the former Methodist chapel in Praze, or found the address of the Holmans (if not my Holmans) in Tremayne from the 1841 census. But it was still very evocative to...

36 Comments

...125lb (34% all up weight), landing speed 61mph (_Flight_, 1 March 1934, 189--91) At a very conservative consumption rating of .5 lb/hp hr, it should have had a range of 429 miles per 1000lb gasoline carried. Indeed, it was originally intended to install long-range gas tanks in the KLM DC-2 and enter the new Fokker 36 in the race to compete for the handicap prize. (_Flight_, 1 Nov 1934: this is a PDF lift, so I'll suggest searching for "Albury"). T...

1 Comment

..., best individual blog, best new blog, best post, best series of posts and best writer. But there are two new categories for other forms of history social media: best Twitter feed and best podcast episode. And, even more significantly, I'm one of the judges (along with Katrina Gulliver and Shane Landrum) for two categories, best group blog and best new blog. So please make our decision as difficult as possible by nominating many excellent group an...

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...in another LaTeX post I wrote, about how to set up multiple bibliographies -- again, probably not something computer scientists have to do much of ... Good luck with your thesis (dissertation) too! Kim Belcher Writing your own style from scratch? That's crazy talk. I tried to edit the .bst that was available from students at my university and even that was a nightmare. No comments at all, ugh. Anyway, so your post saved me from that fate worse tha...

...ppelin menace and the Invisible Hand’ (2) 13 December Alien airmen and will-o’-the-wisp bridges (2) 5 December The thunderclaps of August (2) 26 November It’s that quote again — V (0) 20 November It’s that quote again — IV (0) 7 November @TroveAirBot 2 (0) 26 October It’s that quote again — III (0) 24 October It’s that quote again — II (0) 1 October Anzac and Aviator (0) 28 September Self-archive: ‘The meaning of Hendon’ (0) 19 September It’s that...

13 Comments

...ntence, I find that it really cuts against the grain to do so for academic writing. I don't think it is such a sin in writing in the humanities, but I first learned academic writing in the physical sciences, where the personal pronoun, singular or plural, is rare (though not unknown). Instead, one would use phrases like 'the present author' where in less formal writing one would say 'I'. I guess this is to avoid the academic equivalent of breaking...

2 Comments

...ory blogs are out. This time, three of the winning blogs are already on my sidebar: Digital History Hacks (Best New Blog), Chris Bray at Cliopatria (Best Series of Posts), and Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well (Best Writer). As I did last year, I’ve now added the other winners: Axis of Evel Knievel (Best Individual Blog), Civil Warriors (Best Group Blog), and Participant Historian (Best Post). [...]...

3 Comments

...etter than the offline equivalent, the central part of the user experience -- i.e. actually looking at articles and pages -- is definitely one of the best out there, even compared with Trove. Of course you have to be concerned about copyright, and you can't do much without funding; so I'm glad that the First World War years will be coming online, and with any luck the years in between too. In any case I'm sure I'll be returning to WNO frequently!...

21 Comments

...e sense of the subject. Well, I'd have to say I'm mostly guilty as charged -- but I don't see what's so wrong with that! The reference is to my post on books which historians have neglected to write. Yes, I did say academic historians, but then I'm an academic in training (whether or not I ever become one), so of course my orientation is going to be towards academic works. But more than that, on the whole I do think academic histories are better t...