I received a letter from the university today, containing a form which is ominously entitled ‘Completion Report for PhD Candidates’. I guess they are expecting to receive a thesis from me in the not too distant future! One of the things I have to finalise is the title of the thesis. According to the form, […]
OK, so I’ve poked a bit of fun at French aircraft design here from time to time, with a post on the fugliest aircraft of the Third Republic and another recoiling in horror at the aeroplane which should not be. But turnabout is fair play, and the British aviation industry has had plenty of shockers
In contrast to the King’s message to the RAF, Flight‘s reaction to the end of the war, in the same issue of 14 November 1918, seems rather grumpy. It’s true that the editorial section is rounded off, on p. 1274 (source), by a short section which expresses a certain amount of glee at the news
It’s 90 years to the day since the guns fell silent, and the bombs stopped falling. I don’t feel that I have anything particularly insightful to say, so here’s how Flight marked the occasion, by publishing the King’s message to the RAF on its front page, 14 November 1918, p. 1270 (source): THE KING’S MESSAGE
I’ve got an article in the current (November 2008) issue of Fortean Times (named, of course, after Charles Fort). It’s not at all airminded, it’s not really historical either — it has more to do with my shady astrophysicist past. It’s about the famous Betty and Barney Hill abduction incident in New Hampshire in 1961
… is who to nominate for the 2008 Cliopatria Awards for the best history blogging of the year. (Why, what did you think I meant?) There are six categories: best group blog, best individual blog, best new blog, best post, best series of posts, and best writer. Nominations close at the end of November and
No, I’m not heading for Venus, nor am I travelling back in time in the USS Nimitz. But it is the final countdown nonetheless. I’m in the last few months of my PhD, and plan to submit it in late February 2009, just under four months away. I’m on track for that, I think —
XVIII Military History Carnival is up at Chronologi Cogitationes. This month I’m picking a post from a new blog, Wacht Am Tyne, on the centenary of the first flight (powered, controlled, heavier-than-air) in Britain, which was achieved by Samuel Franklin Cody on 16 October 1908. (I had a photo of British Army Aeroplane No. 1a
LaTeX for Humans is a promising new blog, aimed at humanities-types who want to write in LaTeX, rather than Word or something equally maladapted. Since it’s a subject which I’ve written on several times before, and since switching is not easy, despite the advantages (sorry Sarah!), I’m glad to see a dedicated resource on the
So the Sudeten crisis experiment has ended. How useful has it been? I think it’s been a very different view of the crisis. It’s small-scale, not big-picture; confused, not lucid; bottom-up, not top-down (well, sorta: it could be more bottom-up). Most accounts that I’ve read are from the diplomatic-political-military point of view: Chamberlain’s decision to
