sawyl | Entries tagged with history

As Martin Kettle noted in a thoughtful piece in on the Guardian site a few days ago, every battle, given enough time, moves from remembrance to history, regardless of how important it was to us at the time. By way of an example, he points out that the anniversaries of the battles of the Hundred Years War are not marked by either side.

And where there are exceptions, such as Agincourt whose six hundredth anniversary falls to today, they own more to Shakespeare's Henry V and the brilliant speech he puts into Henry's mouth than anything else:

Professor A.M. Boyd's article from 1958 on the hazards of not wrapping up well is a pure delight. The coy descriptions of fashion are quite charming:

I have seen many girls in nylon stockings, or even bare legs, and short skirts shivering in bus queues. These girls, I am told by my assistants, wear practically nothing under their skirts. They are therefore virtually unprotected in cold weather from the hips downwards.

I love that coy, "I am told by my assistants...", comment. It roots the article so perfectly in its time. As does the following comment about men's fashions:

Erythrocyanosis frigida is not seen in men on account of the protection of tweed trousers and underpants.

One suspects that, were the Prof writing today, the article would contain a hearty condemnation of the wearing of shorts in midwinter. Or maybe not, given the inroads made by heating technology — and global warming — over the last half century.

Current Music: Bruckner - Symphony No. 7

Spent the morning haunting the decayed gothic ruins of JES trying to diagnose a JCL error and the afternoon wandering the dusty plains of assembly land. It was like I'd been transported back in time to the days of the Thatcher–Reagan love-in or something.

Current Music: Giles Swayne - Magnificat

The following works under genuine AT&T Korn shell, but fails under pdksh:

v=0
echo 1 | while read p
do
v=1
done
echo $v

I'd attribute this to the usual ksh lossage if wasn't for the fact that bash does the same thing. Could it be that it's AT&T in the wrong and pdksh in the right? That'd be a first.

Current Music: Bartók - Bluebeard's Castle

According to an article in today's Graun, Stonehenge is unlikely to make it it as one of the seven new wonders of the world. They suggest that the situation might be improved were someone to write a song about the standing stones without realising, perhaps, that someone has already done it. Yes, the only song that can save this glorious pagan icon for posterity is Stonehenge by Spinal Tap, although, on second thoughts, that might actually explain the lack of international enthusiasm...

Current Music: Elgar - Cockaigne Overture

I've learned a new fact today. According to the Guardian Guide, the Third Reich placed restrictions on side show chimpanzees in order to prevent them from giving the nazi salute. Talk about peculiar.

Current Music: The PM Programme

In an attempt to put the thrill back into dinosaur wrangling, Big Blue have been hosting a jamboree in the conference centre at work. It's been amusing to watch the delegates, their suits and ties marking them out from the more casual attire favoured the majority of the locals, wandering round in little groups talking earnestly about the latest greatest features to be added to MVS — a working editor, perhaps? — amazed to discover they're not alone and that their deep, nagging suspicions that they're the last mainframe sysprog in the world are not — yet, at least — true.

Current Music: Elgar - Symphony No. 2

Denis MacShane, in his enthusiastic review of Rites of Peace by Adam Zamoyski, notes describes the primary method of diplomatic negotiation used in 1815: the revenge shag. Thus, he says:

Zamoyski almost loses count of the number Metternich slept with. Talleyrand did an Alan Clark by sleeping with a mother and her daughter. Tsar Alexander took his revenge on Metternich (who opposed the Russian desire to incorporate Poland as a Russian province) by sleeping with his mistress.

Before wryly commenting:

Such S&F diplomacy was hard work. Alas from my years as a Foreign Office minister, it seems such fun is rarely had by diplomats today, except in outlying posts such as Uzbekistan.

Sounds surprisingly readable, for a book on diplomacy...

Current Music: Schumann - Genoveva Overture

I've just discovered that BBC7 is repeating the excellent dramatisation of War and Peace that Radio 4 first ran a decade or so ago. Hearing it again, I remember how much I liked Simon Russell Beale as Pierre Bezukov and made me realise how much his performance has coloured my reading of the novel — my mental image of Pierre and my idea of how his voice sounds are both based on Russell Beale.

My colleague, whose computing experience dates back to the days of the Ferranti Mercury, has pointed out that a load of really cool photos of some much loved (and in some cases, much disliked) old computers are now available on the web.

Current Music: Jonathan Harvey - Come, Holy Ghost

Today's Guardian article on Pope Benedict XVI featured a sidebar on bad popes of past. The most amusing was John XII:

And in what was a low point for the sexual morals of the papacy, in 954 the 18-year-old John XII, the son of a previous pope, took office and turned the Lateran - the papal palace before the Vatican - into a brothel, and was ultimately murdered a decade later by an outraged cuckold who found him in flagrante with his wife.

I knew I should have opted for the black and not the red...

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Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Entries tagged with history

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian...

Wraping up warm

Retrocomputing

Read loop lossage

Vote henge

Control that chimp!

Precambrian computing

Diplomacy in days of yore

War and Peace dramatisation

Historic hardware

Bad popes

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August 2018

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