Lessons of History

It was well reported that The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman was one of JFK's favorite books. But it was also reported in David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest that JFK may have sent those 18,000 "advisors" to Vietnam as a direct result of the bullying treatment he received from Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. It's as if he didn't lean anything from Tuchman's book.

"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana

I've also long held that much of the tragedy of WW I was because military leaders failed to learn from the lessons of the American Civil War where trench warfare had it's seeds.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Tell me your first thought wasn't of CHUD.

- When History Lovers are Replaced by History Haters.

- This is why America can't have robots and other nice things.

- Sounds about right doesn't it.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The Master List - good advice. No multitasking and write everything down.

- Was China's military just hacked? If true this is a huge blow to the CCP.

- History's Personally Revealing Anecdotes.

- Great Britain is a warning. Sadly true.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- A Mine Threat? Where are the Minesweepers? A question that will bother me as well as the question of why this dog hasn't barked?

- From the archives: Brewing tea removes lead from water.

- A surge in taxes on high-earners is leading to a mass exodus. Some people never learn.

- Kevin Kelly - How to Future. When knowing history is particularly useful.

Ancient Roman Timeline

The USA is often compared to the Roman Empire. That means in comparison we'd just be up to the birth of Christ. 

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Jonathan Turley: How Trump boxed Congress in on War Powers.

- 117 AD - the maximum extent of the Roman Empire.

- VDH: Is there a Trump great game? He's not wrong.

- What will you be selling in the AI future?

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The coming revolution down south. "Will Cuba be Libre soon, and if so what happens next?"

- Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest unwittingly reveal the severity of the US surveillance state.  Admit I fell for the dog trick.

- Sports court rules disqualification of Ukrainian athlete justified.

- As strengths grow and erode. Good points.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The financial origins of the United States.

- Bad Bunny and the SCOTUS precedent that denies Constitutional rights to Puerto Ricans. Knew they were considered US citizens but article does not mention that Puerto Ricans do not pay taxes.

- The hardest part of a task.

- The greatest tension within 21st century Progressivism remains unresolved.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The financial historian. Will have to check this channel out.

- To Democrats the Save Act is political kryptonite.

- The sanctioned / stateless tanker nabbing gives - if we are willing to take.

- Newsweek: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell faces calls to be fired. People calling for Goodell to be fired are painted as fringe but as I've pointed out an empty suit could do a better job with less controversy.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Jonathan Turley on Jack Smith and Smith's disdain for the 1st amendment.

- Is the Iranian regime about to collapse?

- Some Americans say they will go without healthcare as Obamacare costs spike. First it was "If you like your doctor - you can keep your doctor" and now its "If you like your plan you can keep your plan." It was a lie all along.

- Burke's revolutionary reflection.

Sadly True

Linky Links

 Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- VDH: Can the Dark Ages return?

- The White House: Ensuring American Space Superiority.

- How the cannabis industry leveraged a big win from Trump. Feel the legal marijuana question should be handled at the state level.

- The USS Nimitz ends her watch. We should always have a USS Nimitz just like we should always have an Enterprise.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Alan Sepinwall on the Netflix acquisition of Warner Brothers.

- US effectively outsourced its most mission critical missile defense capability to Japan.

- Jonathan Turley on the Supreme Court and the separation of powers. Can't help but wonder if Justice KBJ was actually thinking of her own situation.

- The backstory to the Louisiana Purchase.

The League

"In a widely lauded speech in New York in January 1922, Fielding Yost, head coach at the University of Michigan, said that paying men to play football 'robs the great American game of its greatest character-building qualities. The ideals of generous service, loyalty, sacrifice, and whole hearted devotion to a cause all are taken away. The game is robbed of the exhilarating inspiration of achievement merely for achievement's sake.'"

This quote seems quaint given the spectacle of Lane Kiffin abandoning Ole Miss in the midst of the school's greatest achievement to sign a $13 million per year contract with LSU. And Kiffin lacks the achievement of either SEC or national championships.

"At his [George Halas] suggestion, the APFA [American Professional Football Association] changed its name at an owners' meeting in Cleveland  on June 24, 1922. 'I lacked enthusiasm for our name,' Halas wrote, because the word 'association' connoted minor league status in baseball. He suggested National Football League, explaining that baseball's National League was the sports most established, respected circuit. The other owners approved unanimously."

Some history I did not know. From John Eisenberg's The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire.

The Americans

"An air conditioning system feasible for general use would be a by product of efforts to solve certain specific problems of industry. Textile manufacturers had found that to keep their fibers soft and stretchable, to prevent the broken ends that required costly stoppage of their machines, they had to control the moisture content of the yarns. A fiber with just the right percentage of moisture was strong and pliable, and to damper the fiber properly was called 'yarn conditioning.' In 1906, when an American textile engineer invented a system for accomplishing this by controlling the humidity in the air, he called it 'air conditioning,' and the name stuck.

For air conditioning, unlike many other inventions in indoor living, the theoretical as well as the practical advances were made in the United States. The man who developed the theory, who devised the machinery, and then envisioned the human possibilities of air conditioning, was William H. Carrier." Daniel Boorstin The Americans: The Democratic Experience

Knew who invented air conditioning but not the backstory.

Archeologists Need to Explore The Sahara

Via

The Americans: The Democratic Experience

"A whole glass plant could be built on the personal knowledge of  a single glassmaker. And the main raw materials required - sand and wood for the furnace - were abundant on the eastern seaboard. As a result, glassmaking was probably the first industry established in British America. Polish and German glassmakers were brought to Virginia in 1608, followed by Italian glassmakers a few years later, and before the mid-seventeenth century, Massachusetts Bay was offering land to attract its own glassmakers. These craftsmen made bottles, lamps, tableware a few pieces of window glass, and incidentally provided some glass beads for the Indian trade. By 1740 a German immigrant, Casper Winstar, was operating a glassworks with four experienced Belgian glass blowers, to whom he added glass blowers from Germany and Portugal. His son Richard carried on the works, and in the tax troubled 1769 advertised in [Ben] Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette that 'our glass is of American manufacture - and it is of interest to America to encourage her own manufactures, more especially those upon which duties have been imposed solely to raise revenue.' Richard Winstar actually used the slogan 'Buy American manufactured goods.'" - Daniel Boorstin The American Experience

Seems timely given today's political climate.

On This Day in History

"On November 19, 1969 - Apollo program Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and forth humans to walk on the Moon." - World of Engineering

Amazing how famous Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became in history yet how obscure the third and forth people to walk on the Moon became to the common person. Like how nobody remembers the second person to break the 4-minute mile. Or the second person to break the sound barrier.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- A Wakeup Call at Whitman AFB.

- From the archives: Why did Sulla march on Rome?

- We're going to war with Venezuela aren't we.

- The other side of 60 Minutes sob story. He's not wrong.

Veterans Day

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month an Armistice was signed to end the carnage of World War I. November 11th became Armistice Day cross much of the world but Wold War II caused the day to morph into Veteran's Day instead because what's the point in honoring an Armistice agreement that wasn't adhered to?

There is a point in honoring the Veterans who fought in both these wars and others or who have worn the uniform. Recently saw this description of what makes a "veteran":

"A 'Veteran' - whether active duty, discharged, retired or reserve - is someone who, at one point at his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to 'the United States of America', for an amount up to and including his or her life."

The men and women who risk or who have given this "last full measure of devotion" are more than worthy of a Day in their honor.

By the way, that railway car used to sign the Armistice in 1918 was later used by Hitler as the venue chosen for the French to sign their surrender to the Nazi in World War II.