Stack-A-Records

Twenty minutes of technology, music-history, social-history and science. Gawd, I love videos like this!
—Daz

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When Greeks Flew Kites: A Letter To Khrushchev

The BBC have recently started a monthly half-hour radio show [iPlayer or podcast] entitled When Greeks Flew Kites, in which Sarah Dunant and guests attempt to draw parallels between modern and historical events. The title comes from a half-famous 1921 Henry Ford quote:

History is bunk. What difference does it make how many times the Greeks flew their kites?

(For those who want to object that Ford actually said "more or less bunk," it turns out he said both, along with other variations on the theme.)

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Beginning with a digression, the first shot, by Mark Selby, of the two shots in this video was voted shot of the championship in the recently-finished world snooker championship. For my money, though, Marco Fu's reply is just as good, if not better. Okay, he ended up leaving a shot on the yellow, but he performed a small miracle just by hitting the damned thing.

Getting on to my topic proper, this post on northierthanthou reminded me of something which always strikes me when I see what are purported to be detailed maps of other countries. Where are the youth hostels, the churches, the pubs, the carefully differentiated single- and multiple-tracked railways, the coniferous and deciduous forests? Where are the gravel-pits (not to be confused with the sand-pits!), the bridleways and footpaths; the camping sites and historical battle sites and triangulation-points? I've seen them all on foreign maps, but never all on the same maps. How lucky are we in Britain, in other words, to have access to the Ordnance Survey map, rather than having to buy multiple specialist maps?

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Good Friday

Here, Gentle Reader, is a small miracle for you to ponder. Jesus, somehow, managed to die on a day whose anniversary changes from one year to the next. Since this would seem, on the face of it, to be completely impossible, it must—must it not?—be a bona fide miracle.

Hallelujah, this is the evidence I have long been seeking, and I have seen the light!

Ahem.

Or possibly not.

Anyways, this post isn't really about Good Friday. Or rather it is, but only in a tangential kind of way. One of my many (rather petty) grievances with culture is the way it treats history as if only three hundred and sixty-five notable things have ever happened. On November the 22nd, Kennedy was killed. On November the 5th Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the king and Parliament (and I'm still not sure whether we're celebrating his failure or lamenting it when we gather with our tooth-breaking toffee and our damp fireworks). May the 8th: victory in Europe. July the 20th: Armstrong planted his 91⁄2B into the soil of the Sea of Tranquillity. December the 25th: a woman named Mary gave birth to a child conceived in an adulterous relationship with the creator of the universe. And so on.

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Mark Steel On Oliver Cromwell

There's bombs in Belgium, the NHS is being slowly sold off to the highest bidder, the welfare state is being gradually dismantled, and Cameron wants to hand the state school system to a bunch of profiteers, religious nutcases and McCorporations…. Gentle Reader, I simply cannot bring myself to look at the news today. So here's one of Mark Steel's excellent comedic lectures, instead.
—Daz

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‘Bible Defence Of Slavery’ part seven

[Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.]

Permit me, oh gentlest of readers, to emit a small yeehaw. If pushed, I might even manage a mini-hallelujah. And definitely a large and stentorian ramen!

I reached the end of that horrible book! This, below, is the final instalment of Bible Defense Of Slavery!

There's still work to be done. When Rustiguzzi, may his bike remain forever upright, catches up with my sudden burst of productivity, there'll be errata to, erm, un-errat. The formatting for the blog version was kind of rough-and-ready; I'll be spending some time tweaking that into something I'd be proud—or at least unashamed—to let the world see, before converting to e-book formats. There's some artwork to apply (a cover-image, and a cleaned up version of the frontispiece), which is currently in Fojap's capable hands.

But the hard slog is done and dusted, may FSM be thanked!

So, okay, the content below…

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‘Bible Defence Of Slavery’ part six

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

And so we come, Gentle Reader, to the publisher's addition to the sixth edition of Bible Defense Of Slavery. It takes a more political stand than the main body of the work, presumably because by the time this edition went to press, the topic of slavery itself, and various grudges against the northern states, had become even more hot button issues. Topics range from (obviously) slavery itself, and the allegedly highly benevolent treatment of slaves, to a proposal to forcibly settle freed slaves in Liberia or elsewhere. (Liberia had been a voluntary destination for some freed slaves since eighteen-twenty, when the American Colonization Society set up a colony there.) (Because, well, blacks are okay when in slavery, and there's 'mutual respect' an' all, but free blacks are economy-draining scum no self respecting white person would want to share a society with. This, possibly, is one of the earliest iterations of 'Send 'em all back…,' a staple of racist and xenophobic rhetoric ever since. There's even a hint of 'I'm not racist but…' about it, for good measure.)

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‘Bible Defence Of Slavery’ part five

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

And so we come, Gentle Reader, to sections Thirteen, Fourteen And Fifteen of the 1851 edition of Josiah Priest's Bible Defence Of Slavery. And we also reach the end of Priest's contribution to the work, though not the end of the book, which contains 'additions' in the form of a piece by the publisher and pamphlets from several other contributors. But this does seem to be a convenient place to pause and take stock.

Firstly, the easy bit. Some advice (which I touched on in a related piece yesterday) for anyone thinking of taking on a similar project.

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A Historical Date In SF History

And here's the post I wanted to make last night.

Today in 1938 (now yesterday here, but there's ten or so hours of it left in more westerly portions of the globe), the BBC broadcast a live excerpt from Karel Čapek's play R.U.R.. For those who care about such things, this was the first, as far as is known, televised science fiction show.

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AJP Taylor: The War Lords

Here's some nostalgia for those who, like me, grew up thinking of AJP Taylor as a kind of demigod of history. Auntie Beeb are currently showing his 1976 series, The War Lords. No flashy re-enactments, no hammy dramatics; just a half-hour lecture to camera. Damn, but I miss telly like this.
—Daz

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