mike's web log

Anniversaries in IT

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 09:58:14 GMT

There have been a rash of anniversaries in the last week or so for milestones in the computer industry.

30 years

MS-DOS: 27 July 1981
IBM-PC: 12 Aug 1981

More than one person has said that the deal that Bill Gates and Paul Allen made with Seattle Computer Products to buy what was originally known as QDOS and then rewrite it as MS-DOS was one of the best business deals ever made. See a slideshow: A Quick Look At The 30-Year History Of MS DOS.

Apple had shown that it was possible to create a "microcomputer" for a mass market. IBM saw that and used its leverage in the business community to put a computer in front of every information worker in the world.

From an interview that PC-Magazine did with Bill Gates 30 years ago:

It would be nice if there was a hard disk and I'm sure the independent vendors will come and put one of those in it.[1]

[...]

It's possible to do a much better machine in a lot of ways from a hardware point of view.

[...]

This machine will be significant because it will usher in a new generation of portable software. [...] I think five years from now the amount of software and the quality of the software on this machine will be incredible.

[...]

[more]

Oh say, can you sing it?

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:40:57 GMT

Here's a little self-administered test for Americans. (Of course, non-Americans are welcome to play, too, if they want.) Sit yourself down with a blank piece of paper or a blank document in your text editor and write out the words — first stanza only — of the US national anthem. When you're done, check your answers by looking up the lyrics. (Here's one site you can use.)

How'd you do? Something like 2/3 of Americans can't get the lyrics right.

I got to thinking about this because twice in the last few weeks I've seen a sporting event at which the pre-game singer mangled the words to the anthem (most prominently, Christina Aguilera at the Superbowl).

The US national anthem presents some difficulties, I think, in a couple of ways:

The words only make sense if you know that it commemorates a siege and bombardment. What "perilous fight" are we talking about here? What's up with the "rockets' red glare"? In the second line, "what so proudly we hail'd," what does what refer to? Not that this is necessarily important, but what war is this?

The musical range, an octave plus a fifth, is at about the limit of the range for amateur singers. There's more than one reason that people applaud when singers hit that "home of the FREE". :-)

[more]

Tempest in (on) a coffee cup

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:42:11 GMT

As about just everyone on the planet knows, the logo for Starbucks is a mermaid. The coffee lady has gone through a number of transformations, from this:

To the latest design:

As an aside, just for fun I want to note that this latter design is very cleverly used to decorate Starbucks HQ in Seattle (the erstwhile Sears store-cum-warehouse), with the sea-lady peeking out from the top of the building's "tower":

Ok, so, the question du jour is where this logo came from. Corporate mythology has it that the design was "originally derived from a twin-tailed siren in an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut." Sounds plausible, right?

Not to everyone. As recounted in the Wall Street Journal blog, of all places, a graduate student at Yale who writes a blog named Got Medieval thought this sounded fishy (haha), because, for one, "there’s no such thing as a 16th-century Norse woodcut."

Long story short (i.e., edited), ...

The twin-tailed siren isn’t from a “marine book” at all. She’s from an early German printed book, Das Buch von einer Frawen genant Melusina, a translation of Jean d’Arras’s Roman de Melusine. Melusine [more]

An early example of repurposing

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:24:42 GMT

That Mozart could be a sly fellow. Music poured out of the guy seemingly effortlessly -- legend has it that the Kegelstatt Trio was written out while Mozart was waiting his turn at skittles[1] -- but maybe it wasn't as always as easy as that. And the man did have to make a living, after all.

Take, for example, the flute concerto in D. According to S. W. Bennett, on the liner notes to the LP The Virtuoso Oboe:

[T]he financially hard-pressed Mozart had an opportunity to earn some money by writing for the flute, an instrument he disliked. A Dutch patron of music and flautist, M. de Jean, commissioned in 1778 a group of flute works, which Mozart had to supply in a hurry. He brought forth three flute quartets and two flute concertos.

You're in hurry, you have some distant patron, and you don't even like the flute. So what do you do?

Of the latter [that is, the concertos] the one in D is undoubtedly the C major oboe concerto transcribed. As "almost conclusive evidence" Alfred Einstein points to the fact that in its D major flute form, the violin parts of the concerto never go below A on the G-string, indicating that the whole work was simply transcribed a whole tone upwards.

Heh. Hey, maybe he won't notice that his commissioned flute concerto is actually an oboe concerto redone to make it more flute-y. But alas, it seems that De Jean did actually notice -- per the infallible Wikipedia [more]

Of giants and fossil fuels

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:20:36 GMT

Recently I finished The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson, which is a book about the English scientist Joseph Priestley, who is best known as the discoverer of oxygen. Johnson shows how Priestley had a strong influence on both science and politics (he was a close friend Jefferson and Franklin). But Priestley also sat at a historical confluence that was conducive to, basically, Enlightenment thinking, and Johnson ties together many threads in a way reminiscent of James Burke: coffeehouses and efficient postal delivery, which fostered open and fast communication; innovations in scientific technology, which let Priestley engage in the experiments he did; the wealth of the industrial age, which indirectly provided Priestley with the time to do research; and so on.

At times the chains of connections go quite far indeed -- for example, from Priestley's simple experiment with a mint plant all the way to the field of planetary ecology. A continuing theme is energy: sunlight to feed plants, coffee to feed scientific minds, oxygen to feed animals, coal to feed the industrial revoltuion, and so on. To discuss these last two, Johnson takes a side trip way back in Earth history to the Carboniferous era, where he tells the following story.

Many of the fossils that Brongniart uncovered shared a defining characteristic: compared to their modern equivalents, they were massive. He discovered ferns the size of oak trees, and flies as big as birds. In 1880 he unearthed his most startling find: a monster dragonfly (Meganeura) with a wingspan of 63 centimeters [2 feet]. Subsequent fossils have been discovered with a wingspan of more than 75 centimeters.

[more]

Because our cause is just

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:20:53 GMT
The New York Review of Books this week has a review of a series of books about Bosnia and Kosovo, which of course also deal with the shocking brutality of the strife that began there is 1992. The article opens with the following, which doesn't need much comment, I don't think:
What unites many countries in the world, both the ones that don’t give a fig about human rights and the ones that profess they do, is their unwillingness to punish their war criminals. When it comes to accountability, instances of confronting their own guilt are exceedingly rare among nations, especially when the victims are members of some other race, religion, or country. Even international leaders concerned with situations such as the one in Yugoslavia, despite their protest to the contrary , are often reluctant to see the guilty punished since political interests usually take precedence over justice.

In addition, there’s an unwritten understanding that crimes committed by the United States and a few other Western powers go unpunished. When the International Criminal Court was launched in 2003, the Bush administration refused to join, fearing that its military and its leaders could be arbitrarily indicted by some grandstanding foreign prosecutor. But that was just dissembling. The real reason is that the United States considered itself as a country whose exceptional moral standing exempts it from accountability for the war crimes it commits. The trouble with that is that everybody else feels the same way. The belief that one ought to be able to kill one’s enemies and live happily ever after is nearly universal.

[more]

Roundup

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:20:19 GMT
You know what I wouldn't mind? A bit of sunshine. Wrong time (winter) in the wrong place (Seattle), I guess.

Fake reviews prompt Belkin apology. I guess I've just always assumed that some number of product reviews (and restaurant reviews) are by shills. (I'm usually most suspicious of the ones with the really, really bad grammar, haha.)

The #1 Song on this Date in History. What was the #1 song on the Billboard chart on the day that you were born? (Me, it was Elvis Presley, "Too Much.") [via Sarah] [18 Feb 2012: h/t to Rupert Charles for the updated link!]

What the Web knows about you. Check out the list in the sidebar of all the things the author was able to find about himself. [via ... just about everyone]

Facebook and list mania, aka "25 Things About Editors". John McIntyre's editor-specific take on the "25 things about me" meme that's been going around.

Happy Mouse Day

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:21:34 GMT
NPR is noting that today (9 Dec) is the 40th birthday of the unveiling of the computer mouse. The mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart, who is sort of personally responsible for -- or at least who envisioned -- the PC as we know it today. His prototype was made of wood:

[source]

I'm not 100% sure of the chronology of the mouse -- Engelbart applied for the patent in 1967 -- but it was on December 9, 1968 that Engelbart gave a lecture in which he demonstrated not only his proto-mouse, but the PC, hypertext, networking, and other stuff. The video isn't great, but it's an amazing glimpse into history being made. This demo might not look revolutionary today, but this was still the era of mainframes and punchcards, and it's hard to imagine just how radical this must have looked.

Here's a cite from that lecture that indicates just how forward-thinking Engelbart was:
If in your office you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?
-- Douglas Engelbart (December 9, 1968)

How not to honor veterans

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:41:06 GMT
It never ceases to amaze me how willing businesses are to appropriate any holiday for their own commercial purposes. This showed up in my Inbox recently:

Presidents' Day, well, whatever. When the Feds combined Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays to make a generic holiday, and then made it one of their Monday-based "observed"-type days off, the shine was pretty much off that particular celebration.

But Veteran's Day, for heaven's sake. This is a holiday that's about reflecting on service and on sacrifice:
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.

-- Woodrow Wilson [source]

On [this] day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves[1] to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower [source]
Free shipping, c'mon. You can't even pretend that that's anything but blatant hucksterism. If they really wanted to observe Veteran's Day, they could try the two minutes of silence that is observed at 11:00am in many places to remember the fallen of WWI. Like, shut down the Web site for two minutes and post a tribute to veterans for those two minutes. Yeah, right. That [more]

Shakespeare's editors

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:17:48 GMT
A short while ago, a guy strolled into the Folger Library in Washington, D.C., which is one of the, or the, preeminent repository of Shakespearean stuff. He wanted to know if the First Folio he was carrying was the real item. As it happens, it was; it was a volume that had been stolen 10 years ago from the University of Durham in England. The dude is currently a guest of the state in the UK while they sort out the story.

The First Folio is an edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, plus some other plays. That the First Folio exists at all is unusually good luck; that we have so many copies, doubly so. Much of the work of other Elizabethan playwrights has vanished, since their work was either never written down, or written down and not printed, or printed but lost. As Bill Bryson points out in his Shakespeare Lite study:
Only about 230 plays survive from the period of Shakespeare’s life, of which the First Folio represents some 15 percent, so Heminges and Condell saved for the world not only half the plays of William Shakespeare, but an appreciable portion of all Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
The First Folio was printed after Shakespeare’s death, but it was assembled by people who had worked with him. This gives you an idea of what we might have had:
To aid recollection, they had much valuable material to work with—-prompt books, foul papers (as rough drafts or original copies were known) in Shakespeare’s own hand, and the company’s own fair copies.
[more]

The Golden 50s

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:27:46 GMT
The nostalgic spot that the good ol' 50s have in American culture has some economic justification. In some ways, it was indeed a golden age. Charles Morris, writing in The Trillion Dollar Meltdown:
Birth rates dropped sharply during the Depression years, so the generation of men entering the labor market in the 1950s was an unusually small one and was much in demand. The pay gap between young workers and older workers therefore became unusually narrow, facilitating early marriage and family formation. All measures of social disruption, like crime rates, dropped like a stone. Earlier marriage and greater economic security also made couples more willing to have children.
Thus, the 50s of "Leave it To Beaver" and the great explosion of the American suburbs, so fondly remembered, were the result of unique social conditions. These circumstances were not (and are not) the norm.[1]

Moreover, the very benefits that the 50s brought to the US carried with them the seeds of their own destruction:
When the boomers reached school age, elementary schools everywhere were forced onto double and triple sessions; it was even worse in the suburbs, where schools had to be built from scratch. As they hit their teens, juvenile delinquency moved to the top of the social agenda. Struggling to cope, police forces became more selective about the behaviors that elicited an intervention, a process that Daniel Patrick Moynihan later called "defining deviancy down."
And so on.

[more]

Happy Birthday, Dad

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:16:00 GMT
By some calendars, today's is George Washington's birthday[1]. Washington was commander-in-chief of the ultimately victorious Continental Army, the first president of the United States, the image on the dollar bill, the "Father of the Country."

The figure of Washington is so lost in the mists of myth that most people don't really know that much about him. Even in his own day, for the citizens of the new republic he had among the founding fathers an aura of being above the sublunary businesses of founding and running a country. Per Joseph Ellis:
Throughout the first half of the 1790s, the closest approximation to a self-evident truth in American politics was George Washington. A legend in his own time, Americans had been describing Washington as "the Father of the Country" since 1776--which is to say, before there was even a country.
Among the so-called founding fathers, Washington stands out in a kind of curious way. The Revolutionary era produced (and was the result of) a truly exceptional cadre of political thinkers -- Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton -- who had vast and insightful knowledge of Enlightenment philosophers of their own age, like Locke, and who were well acquainted with political history from the times of Athens, Rome, and beyond. Washington was of a different type. Gordon Wood explains:
[more]

Lincoln by his contemporaries

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:58:28 GMT
Today (Feb 12 -- just barely made it!) is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, President #12, widely regarded as one of, if not the, best of the American Presidents. Lincoln is credited with saving the Union by pursuing and winning the bloody American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a document that brought to an end the most divisive issue left over from the formation of the nation, namely slavery.

Lincoln is on the penny. He has an awesome memorial in Washington DC, where a considerably larger than life representation of Honest Abe sits overlooking the Reflecting Pool on the mall.

In addition to his political achievements, Lincoln is considered one of the most literate of our chiefs, on a par with Jefferson. Schoolchildren learn (learned?) the Gettysburg Address, a two-minute speech that in about 275 words described the essence of the war that was not yet over and of Lincoln's dedication to its cause.[1] (It also birthed two phrases that virtually every American knows: "Four score and seven years ago" and "government of the people, by the people, and for the people.") Words from the Gettysburg Address and from the Second Inaugural Address[2] are carved into the marble of the memorial.

But as usual, history is funny. It's election season, so what better book to be reading than A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House [more]

The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:04:40 GMT
Reading history has many rewards. One is learning things that you either didn't know, or as often happens to me, that you thought you knew but ain't necessarily so. Another reward is that history writers can be an unexpectedly entertaining lot. For example, consider this informative passage from Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal:
A month before Second Continental Congress assembled [in May 1775], British troops fired, at Lexington in Massachusetts, on some American armed "minute men." Although eight Americans were killed, the British discovered to their no doubt horror, that American farmers and backwoodsmen did not fight fair. Instead of wearing bright red uniforms, visible for miles around, they tended to hide behind trees, bushes, and rocks, and, if nothing else, America was extraordinarily rich in these rustic objects. Where British soldiers strutted into battle in well-drilled ranks, the Americans slouched from bush to protecting wall and then, invisibly, fired at will. They were like ... well, no other word for it, indians.
Dang. This put in motion some events that ultimately had a profound effect on American history, altho not in the way that was initially intended.
This sickening discovery was swiftly relayed back to London. King George III, who had made the monumental mistake of learning English, was very much the head of the war party, and so, more in anger than in sorrow, he dropped the mask of Mr. Nice Guy.[1] He would now use his indians, some thirty thousand German soldiers, mostly from Hesse, a Rhineland province bordering his family's Hanoverian place of origin. The Hessians turned out to be more generally effective than the American or, indeed, the British troops.
[more]

It's all about the Hamilton(s)

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:08:48 GMT
Yesterday (1/11) was the birthday of Alexander Hamilton, who was born either in 1755 or 1757. Hamilton belongs to that pantheon known in the US as the "founding fathers." His inexact birthdate somewhat indirectly illustrates one of the great achievements of the America of colonial times; as has been noted many times, people rose to prominence (indeed, to an exalted status) who in the normal course of British society of the time would have gotten not much of anywhere. For example, Washington was a relatively undistinguished middle-level officer in the British Army; Franklin was a printer.

Hamilton had the most humble roots of all. He was a bastard child born in the West Indies (hence the question about his birthdate), whose early opportunities were denied by the then-notable fact of the circumstances of his birth, and who was moreover later orphaned. Nonetheless, he was extremely bright, educated himself as best he could, and was noticed and sent to New England to further his studies. He ended up joining the military on the side of the rebels, where his ambition and success eventually landed him the position of assistant to Washington in the Continental Army. From then on he moved in the circles of the movers and shakers of the American Revolution.

When people opine what the "founding fathers would have thought" -- generally followed by a sentiment critical of some aspect of the modern US -- they pretty much never have Hamilton in mind. Washington is associated with an early and practically mythological beginning of the executive branch, and Jefferson is the demigod worshipped by the folks who believe fervently in (for example) states' rights and those who are generally suspicious of government withal.

[more]

Happy Birthday, DC-3

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:44:16 GMT
The Douglas DC-3, aka the C-47, in Britain called the Dakota, sometimes called the Gooney Bird, had its maiden flight on December 17, 1935, which makes it 72 years old. The DC-3 is one of the most successful airplanes ever built. Its long range helped make airline travel practical. The DC-3 was one of the first (tho not the very first) airplane built primarily out of metal, replacing the wood-framed-and-doped-fabric airplanes that had evolved out of the Wright Flyer and the many models of airplanes developed during World War I. About the only thing that was still old-fashioned about the DC-3 was that it was a "tail-dragger" -- its third wheel was at the back, and when it was on the ground, the plane sat at a pretty steep angle.

[Credit]

[Credit]

The DC-3 had a large capacity and it was extremely hardy, which made it interesting to the military. Even tho the plane was theoretically obsolete by WWII, it nonetheless saw service in that war as the C-47 ("C" for "cargo") -- fleets of C-47s shuttled paratroopers on D-Day. After the war, the plane continued to find utility for the military, and saw service in the Berlin Airlift and beyond. In Vietnam it appeared in one of its more unusual incaranations as "Puff the Flying Dragon," where its large cargo capacity (for tons of ammunition) and slow flying speed made it an ideal flying platform for the GE minigun.

[more]

Pearl Harbor

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:52:02 GMT
Today is Pearl Harbor Day ... on December 7, 1941, the American naval fleet based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked in a preemptive strike. The Japanese military hoped to neutralize American forces in the Pacific long enough for the Japanese to secure various strategic goals, including supplies of oil. It was a calculated gamble that in the end, of course, did not pay off. By the kind of luck on which history turns, the fleet was not all docked at the time; three carriers -- the Lexington, the Enterprise, and the Saratoga -- lived to fight another day.

The more notable outcome of the attack was that it brought the US into WW II; up to that point, altho the US had favored the Allies, the country was still technically neutral. That changed within days, and the US war machine was set into motion.

In many ways, the US entered the war relatively unprepared -- much of its equipment was old and outmoded, and the military was woefully undermanned. However, the Japanese military planners had been correct; the US naval fleet was the key to military dominance in the Pacific. In the end, the Pacific campaign relied on the Navy for its "island-hopping" strategy that involved invading and securing one important island after another, in brutal battle after brutal battle. As at Pearl Harbor, the American forces got some lucky breaks that altered the course, if perhaps not the oucome, of the war. Not only did a few of the most important ships survive the Pearl Harbor attack, but at the Battle of Midway in 1942, the surviving carrier fleet, due in part to a couple of additional strokes of good fortune, won a decisive battle against the Japanese navy, which thereafter was on the defensive.

[more]

Creating the 747

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 07:21:59 GMT
Not long ago, whilst perusing books at Costco I ran across the book 747: Creating the First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation. I like reading about technology, plus I seem to collect noun books. Sold.

The author is Joe Sutter, who was the chief engineer for the 747 project. He details his background (he grew up watching planes take off and at Boeing Field), some company history, and the story of the 747 itself.

It's interesting to read about the perilous history of the plane, and for that matter, the company. Boeing repeatedly made huge, company-threatening bets to create planes that changed the industry. I had no idea, for example, that the 707, designed in 1952, was so innovative in its day -- the first really successful jet airliner, and the plane that established the basic design of commercial jets.

Once jets were established, airline companies started asking for planes that could go faster and longer. For a time, everyone thought that the next thing in commercial aviation would be supersonic jets. All the cool kids at Boeing were busily working on the glamorous SST project. That was still years away, tho, so Boeing decided to create a plane that would satisfy the airlines until the SST rolled out. Because this plane was just an interim project, it had low priority at Boeing.

[more]

Edison and the development process

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 12:19:14 GMT
I recently finished a book about -- hold on to your hats, this is thrilling! -- the early history of the electrical system in the US. Specifically, it's about the epic battle between Edison Electric (now GE) and Westinghouse to determine whether we would have DC or AC flowing through our houses. Edison had pioneered DC and stubbornly stuck by it, even as the advantages of AC became clearer and clearer. (The fundamental advantage of AC, should you care, is that it can be transmitted long distances; DC is impractical beyond a few miles.)

To bolster support for DC, Edison went on a kind of disinformation campaign about how much more dangerous AC supposedly was. He illustrated this with scare stories about electrocution, which he helped along by doing electrocution experiments with various hapless animals, up to the size of a horse. The odd-bedfellow aspect of the story is that Edison ended up being the technical champion of using the electric chair for executions, in spite of actually having originally been against capital punishment. (The electric chair was considered early on to be a humane form of execution.) Anyway, the book is Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, by Mark Essig. Very interesting for those who like that kind of thing.

I shall not bore you (more) with any of this. Today I want to cite two bits of the book that I found interesting quite independently of your obvious lack of interest in electrical technology. (Wake up!)

Specifically, the description of Edison's lab and of his development process seemed familiar. This is about the development of the light bulb, which Edison pre-announced several years running:
[more]

Roundup

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:52:58 GMT
Stuff I've run across.

Why marketing should make the user manuals! The Creating Passionate Users blog muses on jazzy marketing vs. boring manuals. (Also previously discussed here on this blog.)

19 pieces of "advice" for entering 1Ls. The Superannuated1L blog proposes how to get through your first year of law school. (Or, I add, through most of life.)

Revenge on Stingrays. "... concerned that the rays, which are usually docile creatures, were being hunted and killed in retaliation for [Steve] Irwin's death."

I like like. Matthew Baldwin aka defective yeti manages, like, the world's most compact disquisition on like. Excerpt (and summary): "Call it the 'Past Approximate.' If someone tells you they once ate fourteen eggs in one sitting, you recognize that is a boast; if someone says they ate, like, fourteen eggs, you know instinctively that the number was probably closer to five."

Why the _______s Hate the _______s. A non-denominational, trans-national guide to ... uh, pretty much most of human history.

Pluto mnemonic device contest. Actually, the results. Jason Kottke ran a contest to come up with a mnemonic for the order of the planets, now that Pluto no longer counts. One of the runners-up: Many Very Earnest Men Just Snubbed Unfortunate Ninth Planet.

[more]

Apocalyptic Day

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 11:01:04 GMT
Today is 6-6-06, and all morning I've been hearing on the radio about the apocalyptic overtones of triple six. But leaving such numerological foolishness aside, today does commemorate something that, to my mind, is strangely overlooked: today is the anniversary of D-Day, the day in 1944 on which Allied forces launched an assault on "Fortress Europe." As one Web site says:
The invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 exists as the largest build-up and movement of soldiers in the history of mankind. It also marked a significant turning point in the second World War, one that would aid in the eventual defeat and downfall of Hilter's armies.
The movie "Saving Private Ryan" was based on the experiences of some soldiers during the invasion, but of course D-Day has featured prominently in hundreds of movies. A very fine movie about WWII was "Patton"; although Patton himself did not have a command during the invasion, it was still an important part of the story.

[more]

Cinco de Mayo

Fri, 05 May 2006 01:27:39 GMT
Today is Cinco de Mayo, which has become a pan-Hispanic holiday in the U.S., something like the latino version of St. Patrick's Day. Some people mistakenly believe that this is Mexican Independence Day, perhaps. It's not, tho -- that's September 16.

Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday, but it's not the biggest one by any means. The place it's particularly important is in the Mexican city of Puebla, which was the site of a battle that took place on May 5, 1862. Mexican troops defeated a French expeditionary force that was intent on taking Mexico City.

How exactly a day commemorating a military victory (in a war that was ultimately lost) came to be such a big deal in the U.S. is sort of mysterious. It's been adopted by folks from all over the Spanish-speaking world as Fiestas Patrias, a celebration of Hispanic pride. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's not as if most other holidays haven't become unmoored from their putative origins and adapted into something that better suits the celabrants.

So happy Cinco de Mayo! Raise a glass to our southern neighbors and to the many ways in which we in the U.S. have uniquely benefited from the contributions of Mexican culture -- in language (savvy, mesa, macho, patio, siesta), food (chile, salsa, tacos, others too numerous to list), dress (sombrero, rebozo, huaraches), sport (rodeo), music (conjunto, norteña, mariachi, marimbas, maracas), dance, holidays (Dia de los Muertos, Cinco de Mayo), art (Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, pre-Columbian native work), literature (Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Zaid, Laura Esquivel), film (Dolores del Río, Anthony Quinn, Los olvidados, Y tu mamá también, Amores Perros), ancient culture (Aztecs, Mayas), hospitality (Mazatlán, Cabo, Cancún, and everywhere in between), and plenty more.

[more]

The March of Folly, Part 4

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:43:54 GMT
More cites from Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. (For background, read the intro post.)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Executive War 1964-68 (Part II)

The war was turning nasty with napalm-burned bodies, defoliated and devastated croplands, tortured prisoners and rising body counts. It was also becoming expensive, now costing $2 billion a month. [331]

In the American forces, short-term one-year tours of duty, intended to avoid discontent, prevented adaptation to the irregular jungle warfare, thereby increasing casualties since the rate was always highest in the early months of duty. Adaptation never matched circumstances. American fighting tactics were designed in terms of large troop formations making use of mobility, and in terms of industrial targets for the exercise of air power. Once in motion the American military machine could not readjust to a warfare in which these elements did not exist. The American mentality counted on superior might, but a tank cannot disperse wasps. [333]

[more]

The March of Folly, Part 3

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:42:51 GMT
Another slice o' cites from Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. (For background, read the intro post.)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Executive War 1964-68 (Part I)

Johnson felt he had to be "strong," to show himself in command, especially to overshadow the aura of the Kennedys, both the dead and the living. He did not feel a comparable impulse to be wise; to examine options before he spoke. He lacked Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking. Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contra-indications. [311]

No one in the Executive branch advocated withdrawal, partly in fear of encouragement of Communism and damage to American prestige, partly in fear of domestic reprisals. And for another reason, the most enduring in the history of folly: personal advantage, in this case a second term. [303]

Enormity of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis. To let North Vietnam win would give incalculable encouragement to Communists everywhere, erode confidence everywhere in the United States and arouse the right at home to political slaughter. [312]

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The March of Folly, Part 2

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:42:10 GMT
Continuing with my folly-ful collection of citations out of Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. (For background, read the intro post.)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
"Married to Failure" 1960-63

One thing was left out of account -- the other side. War is polarity. What if the other side failed to respond rationally to the coercive message? Appreciation of the human factor was not McNamara's strong point, and the possibility that humankind is not rational was too eccentric and disruptive to be programmed into his analysis. [288]

All the talk was of "winning the allegiance" of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble. [289]

Asia presumes an obligation of citizens to obey their government; Western democracy regards government as representing the citizens. There was no meeting ground nor likely to be one. But because Vietnam was a barrier to Communism, the United States, impervious to the obvious, persisted in trying to make Diem's government live up to American expectations. The utility of "perseverance in absurdity," Edmund Burke once said, "is more than I could ever discern." [290]

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