[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Photographs of actual combat in the First World War are exceedingly rare, in the air as well as on the ground. Both of these are purportedly of Zeppelins flying over Britain. Are they fake or not? My answers are below. `The low down thing that plays the low down game’. […]
If you were wondering what the biggest and loudest air raid siren of all time is, then wonder no more, because it’s the American Chrysler Victory Siren, made in the 1950s. Well, I don’t know for sure that it was — I’d like to see what the Soviets had to offer — but it was
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Via Deltoid: the higher education supplement of The Australian newspaper this week has a couple of articles on academic blogging in Australia. (Choice quote from the first link: ‘A spate of studies has shown that making articles available online boosts citations by 50 to 250 percent.’) Hopefully this will encourage
My laptop is my primary workhorse, and I’ve just upgraded — a very exciting time in any computer geek’s life! On the left, my old 12″ 1.0 Ghz G4 Powerbook, “zeppelin”; on the right, my new 13″ 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook, “hendon”. Zeppelin has been a rock-solid little machine for me these last couple
This seems to be a snippet from a documentary made in New Zealand.1 The main point of it is to show a Camel and a Spitfire flying side by side, but I found the first half more interesting, about the practical aspects of flying a First World War-vintage aeroplane. For example, I hadn’t realised that
H. G. Wells. The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind. London: Macmillan and Co., 1914. The novel that unleashed atomic warfare upon the world. I actually already have a copy but it’s a modern edition, and I’d prefer to reference an original edition, where possible. Besides which, the University of Nebraska Press inexplicably changed
I’ve recently read a trilogy of novels about the next war, by Sydney Fowler Wright, a prolific but largely forgotten poet and novelist: Prelude in Prague (London: Newnes, 1935), Four Days War (London: Robert Hale, 1936), and Megiddo’s Ridge (London: Robert Hale, 1937). Only the first is a true knock-out blow novel: in 1938, after
The War Room reports the short list of names for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Black Mamba Cyclone Lightning II Piasa Reaper Spitfire II As noted at the War Room, most of these names are really, really bad, and sound like something a 12 year old boy would come up with.1 Of interest here is
[I posted this last Wednesday, but somehow, it was marked as “private” rather than “published”, so nobody saw it but me! So I’m fixing that and bumping it to the top.] The talk went off pretty well, I think — at least I didn’t hear any snoring and got some good questions at the end.
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Recently, I read a book review which has left me scratching my head. It’s by Trevor Wilson (English Historical Review, 71 (2006), 629-31) and is about, among other books, K. W. Mitchinson, Defending Albion: Britain’s Home Army, 1908-1919 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) — according to the publisher, ‘the first published
