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Post by timothylane on Nov 27, 2019 11:01:36 GMT -8
A family gathering was going to see Khartoum after we moved to Louisville in 1966, but this was Friday night and the movies had changed at Showcase Cinemas that day. So we ended up seeing Grand Prix instead. From what I saw of Khartoum from watching a part of it recently at TCM, I probably would have liked it better.
My mother told a joke of a British diplomatic family at some imperial outpost (probably Khartoum, though it wasn't specified). The parents took their son to see a statue of Chinese Gordon martially mounted, and he was very much taken with it. He was always wanting to go see Gordon, so they took him there regularly, pleased by his patriotism. Finally there came the day when they had to move, being given a different posting. Of course they took the boy to say good-bye to Gordon. He tearfully did so, and finally they had to leave. As they did so, he asked, "Mommy, who's that man on Gordon?"
Yes, that definitely is the anthology I read. There were a number of fine stories in it, of which the Anderson one was one of the best. Zenna Henderson's "Subcommittee" is good except for one gagger moment, and Fredric Brown's "Arena" (which was loosely made into a Star Trek episode), as well as some others. (We had a Henderson collection in my college course on science fiction, and she was totally unfamiliar to me. Then I got hold of her collection The Anything Box and recognized the story.)
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 11:12:26 GMT -8
Christianity is definitely not good for pleb control because of the basic belief that mankind is sacred, made in the image of god, and not something to be used as chattel for various ambitious political psychopaths.
Yutes today have "climate change" as their state-sanctioned belief.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 11:17:34 GMT -8
I’m reading this latest book and, unlike the Shaara books, it’s not afraid to show some of the ugliness. The Shaara books are mostly about battles, courage, loss, and tactical skills of the commanders (or lack of same). But these books stayed mostly neutral as to good/bad. However, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War is full of anecdotes that give you an idea of what it was really like. Yes, the individual battles were a horror. But it was a horror shared on both sides. It kind of averaged out. And, yes, Union soldiers and some civilians could be nasty. But I get the distinct impression (and not for the first time, for sure) that those in the South were, despite the trappings of Scarlet O’Hara and fancy plantation houses, a thoroughly nasty sort of people. By and large.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 27, 2019 11:30:33 GMT -8
Yup. And it was Christianity which gave the world the idea that all men are equal. One could be a slave and still be equal to a master, in the eyes of God. This is revolutionary.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 27, 2019 11:43:16 GMT -8
Of course, that explains why leftists hate actual Christianity, as opposed to the pretend sort that follows leftist dogmas rather than actual Christian theology and morality. They seek to control the plebs as much as any other totalitarian regime.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 27, 2019 12:19:05 GMT -8
We are reaching that time of year where Christianity becomes the focus. Disingenuousness is rampant, especially amongst those who would misrepresent Christianity (often from the inside) for their own purposes.
One could forgive the honest question if he or she were to ask, “Just what is this thing called ‘Christianity’? It has so many flavors. And does ‘love your neighbor’ mean one must put up with ‘homeless’ people using the streets for their toilet? Must one believe in ‘climate change’? For that matter, must one hate ‘fags’? Must one be holier-than-thou and remind every damn one of us how we have fallen short?”
Anyone with any experience in the subject (such as: all of us) knows that the beliefs and practices run the gamut, and perhaps has also noticed that what purports to be the worship of God Almighty is often little more than disguised egotism.
I don’t have an answer. In fact, it’s usually considered a quite improper question to ask if one is “Doing it right” for in today’s culture, we are not to judge others….even while believing (supposedly) in a God who is good and thus must judge (somehow) between good and bad, right and wrong, truth and falsehood.”
As my friend, Pat, quips, it is the difficulty of coming to terms with The Gospel as in “Have you heard the Good News…you’re going to hell.”
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Post by artraveler on Nov 27, 2019 13:30:25 GMT -8
West Point really was first and foremost an engineering school. This didn't change in any significant manner until Emory Upton went to Prussia and brought back the Prussian concept of general staff with specific duties, logistics, intelligence, supply. This was a true revolution in American military thinking that all came together with WWII and George Marshall. The army changes very slowly even in the face of obvious facts. There were still calvary regiments in the 1930s. The army that Grant led had to change as did their foes. Upton is little known now as his compatriot in the navy Mahan has taken up the all the oxygen, but for ground forces, even marines, Upton is the go to source for strategy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Uptonen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Thayer_Mahan
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Post by timothylane on Nov 27, 2019 13:53:14 GMT -8
Upton got his start as a brilliant tactical officer in the VI Corps. His sudden attack on the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania on May 10, 1864 was a partially success (he captured several hundred prisoners) even though it was ultimately repulsed (partly because a reinforcing division from II Corps under Gershom Mott failed to attack). It also provided the idea for the May 12 attack that led to the Hell-on-Earth day-long battle for the salient, which became known as the Bloody Angle after that.
Incidentally, the antebellum West Point tactical instructor was Dennis Hart Mahan, father of Alfred Thayer Mahan. He introduced ideas based on Jomini. Of course, considering how they were used during the War of the Rebellion, one wonders how good a tactical instructor he was.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 27, 2019 14:26:24 GMT -8
Upgton was despondent over the slowness of the army to accept new ideas and killed himself in San Francisco. I wonder if he had lived longer his influence might have equalled Mahan by the turn of the century. Mahan,lived long enough to see his ideas on sea power carried out. The composite general staff did not come to full development until George Marshall and his followers like Eisenhower.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 27, 2019 14:50:14 GMT -8
One of Mahan's admirers was Kaiser Wilhelm II, and it led him to make sure Germany had colonies scattered about to provide coaling stations and also to seek the strongest fleet. Thus, Mahan himself had a great influence on history.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 28, 2019 9:40:38 GMT -8
This thread has now become the Civil War catch-all which is fine by me. As I continue with Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, one spy in particular — Rose O’Neal Greenhow — is noxious enough to take any soft-focus glow off of the idea of a character such as Scarlett O’Hara. This woman is obnoxious and radical in a way that is not pleasing. Meanwhile the man-woman (Emma) has just been invited to become a spy for the Union and he (she) has accepted. So we’ll see where that goes. Meanwhile, Union spy (more of a sympathizer at this point), Elizabeth Van Lew, has just arranged with Varina Davis (wife of Jefferson Davis) to donate one of her “negroes” to her household. (The thought, “That was awful white of you,” comes to mind.) It had become known that Mrs. Davis — oh, this terribly inconvenient war — was short of “servants.” The “servant” in question is Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a former slave of the Van Lew family — which had a staunch tradition of paying their slaves so that they could buy their own freedom. Mary Bowser was a free woman and a remarkable one at that. She had been educated by Mrs. Van Lew and the two were very close. And Mary supposedly had a photographic memory. She was voluntarily enlisted by Mrs. Van Lew to be inserted into the Jefferson household until needed. The description we have of Mrs. Van Lew is of an extraordinarily descent person. It’s in such contrast to some of the poisonous women of the South portrayed in this book. There are bits of writing in this book that are nice, such as this one of Grace Street in Richmond where Elizabeth Van Lew lived — just a short walk from the Southern white house: Democrats then and now: Not much different. Elizabeth Van Lew’s brother, John, had a tutor for his two children: These Southerners sound less like Americans and more like Palestinians. While rose Greenhow is a throughly noxious character, there is more charm to Confederate spy, Belle Boyd — the one ensconced in Martinsburg at the top of the Shenandoah Valley. She’s just as radical as others — and quite noxious about it. But she does come off as more of a Scarlett O’Hara with less of the darker quality of Rose Greenhow. But it’s a thin distinction, I admit. You almost can’t blame them. Security in and around Washington was extremely poor. It’s a hilarious story — basically a Chinese fire drill — when Pinkerton finally decides to arrest Rose O’Neal Greenhow and confine her to her house. Rose — no beauty to my mind, but to each his own — is able to charm the stupid Union soldiers almost out of their own pants, easily getting them drunk while she sneaks away to destroy the evidence of her spying that she had not yet been able to dispose of. In the case of her maid, she did literally charm the pants off of a soldier as a way to find out more information. When even the experts are this dense in regards to security, you have to wonder what they were thinking.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 28, 2019 10:31:32 GMT -8
Kane mentions that when they arrested Greenhow, hoping to keep it secret so that her sources would visit and be exposed, they forgot about Greenhow's daughter, who ran out in the street shouting, "Mama's been arrested! Mama's been arrested!" For some strange reason, their trap didn't net any sources. Greenhow eventually was sent South, and visited Europe. When she came back on a blockade-runner, it was run down near the coast. Greenhow was carrying a lot of hard currency, and that weighted her down so that she drowned.
D. H. Hill wrote a math text shortly before the war with math questions done as puzzles. Mostly these were neutral, but there were a modest number of anti-Yankee questions. One involved the speeds at which two Indiana soldiers fled the Battle of Buena Vista, another the year in which two New England governors sent treasonous messages to their respective legislatures, and the number of real and wooden nutmegs a merchant from Connecticut was selling.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 28, 2019 10:49:04 GMT -8
I’m sure there was demonization of the foe on both sides. But, goodness gracious, me thinks that those in the wrong must put up a tremendous bluster in order to try to put themselves on the side of the angels.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 28, 2019 17:57:38 GMT -8
Hill's math text came out before the war, but he really didn't like Yankees. He didn't even like Yankees who fought for the Confederacy, such as Ordnance Chief Josiah Gorgas. (As I recall, Freeman specifically referred to him in his discussion of Hill and the math text in Lee's Lieutenants.)
As for the wooden nutmegs, this was a long-time legend that Connecticut merchants would sell wooden nutmegs. That's why the state was often referred to as the Nutmeg State. As a tropical crop that originated in the Moluccas, nutmegs don't grow there.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 29, 2019 9:55:18 GMT -8
Nutmeg is an interesting fruit/nut. Lots of uses for it.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 29, 2019 10:09:03 GMT -8
Battles were fought over nutmeg and mace. Here is the story of a small island in the East Indies which the Dutch traded Manhattan to the English for.
I believe I wrote an ST review on a book which goes into more detail on this trade as well as the spice trade in general.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 29, 2019 10:30:07 GMT -8
I know mace is the rind of the nutmeg. I assume that's the red stringy parts around it.
I thought the Dutch traded New Netherlands for Surinam. Of course, this happened more than once. At the time, tropical colonies were much more valuable, due to sugar and spices (and, soon, coffee).
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 29, 2019 11:04:33 GMT -8
That’s really a neat bit of history and a nice continuation of the nutmeg theme. I loved this bit: It’s a particularly good trade for the British because Run Island is just a teeny island compared to the entire group of Spice Islands. Run IslandIt barely shows on this map under the Banda Islands Here's a wonderful old map from 1683: [ Original]
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 29, 2019 11:26:04 GMT -8
This is the book I was referring to earlier.
Having lived in a British Colony and former British Colony for a total of 18 years, I was particularly interested in the colonial history of South East Asia.
Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies, was my largest market for many years so I visited the country something like 40-50 times. I never made it to the Spice Islands. Bali was as far east as I got. Most of my time was spent on Java, but I did get to Sumatra a couple of times. I also made it to Sabah, previously British North Borneo, many times. From what I hear, a lot has changed since my days in the area.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 29, 2019 11:31:22 GMT -8
I'm not sure if Mr. Kung is the one on the right or the left:
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