Australia is currently experiencing a bushfire season of unprecedented extent and intensity. (See Bodie Ashton’s viral thread for some idea of the scale, bearing in mind that it was written a few days ago. Above is a satellite image from 3 January 2020 of the eastern part of Victoria and south-eastern NSW; Melbourne itself is […]
So, after a month of reposts, my celebration of Airminded’s 10th anniversary is nearly over. All that remains is the surprise which I promised, which is (no surprise!) the PhD thesis I submitted way back in 2009, for which I was subsequently awarded my PhD — after all, Airminded began life as a PhD blog.
I’m very pleased to be able to say that I have signed a book contract with Ashgate Publishing. This contract has two key components: firstly, that I will revise my PhD thesis for publication as a book; and secondly, that Ashgate will publish said book so that people can read it. A thesis is not
Let’s turn now to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Smaug’s attack on Lake-town (Esgaroth).1 In my PhD thesis I identified six characteristics of the ideal theory of the knock-out blow from the air: it would be a surprise attack, on a large scale, which would strike at the interdependent structures and civilian morale of its targets,
Part of my PhD thesis involved conceptualising the various forms of defence against aerial bombardment put forward during the thirty-odd years before the Second World War: things like anti-aircraft guns, air-raid shelters, an international air force, and so on. Something I didn’t include was what we might call spiritual air defence. Partly because I didn’t
A tweet from William J. Turkel alerted me to the possibility of using 18th century-style fonts in LaTeX. The most noticeable difference from modern typesetting is the long s, but there are different ligatures too. There are a number of ways to do it but the easiest way is with the inbuilt Kepler Fonts package.
Shirley Jacobs writes to inform me that the W E Johns Appreciation Society now has a website. It’s clearly quite an active group — there’s a magazine, Biggles Flies Again, published twice a year, and regular meetings with the next in Derby on 24 October. Via the site, one can keep up with W. E.
I started this PhD not far off four years ago. Yesterday I received my examiners’ reports, and they both recommended that I ‘be awarded the PhD degree without further examination or amendment’ (though not without criticism, I must add). So now all that remains for me to do is submit two permanent bound copies to
So, the thesis is done, if not dusted. What do I do now? The first thing to do is to earn a living. That’s now sorted, at least for the next few months; I’m doing a bit more IT work and, more interestingly, some sessional tutoring for the Arts Faculty. I last did that in
Some more navel-gazingpost-thesis analysis. Above is a plot of the number of primary sources (1908-1941) I cite by date of publication. (Published sources only, excluding newspaper articles — of which there are a lot — and government documents. Also, it’s not just airpower stuff, though it mostly is.) I actually have no idea if it’s
