If You're Really Bored...
History for Bored People
A couple books for those of you that think history is dull.
For those of you that roll your eyes while listening to purists like myself having intellectual spasms every time a new Historical Epic comes out, Hollywood History of the World by George MacDonald Fraser is a delightfully light and witty tour through Hollywood’s historical epics from “1 MillionYears BC” to “Apocalypse Now” pointing out what they got right and what they got wrong without condemning them outright (unless they happened to be really, really bad). Any book that includes "Carry On Cleo" in an overview of History can't be all bad.
Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet is a fun and interesting view into the lives of ancient Roman tourists by following in their footsteps around the Mediterranean. Mr. Parrottet accompanies his travels to Pompeii, Sparta, the Nile and such with first person accounts, both licit and il-, of tourists of the ancient world, religious, recreational, hedonistic, sexual. Believe me, this book proves there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the travel industry and human nature while providing a fun window into the Ancient World.
And one of the greatest introductions to History EVER: The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy. This is a series of brief vignette’s covering the greatest figures in history, from Choeps to Miles Standish in extremely human terms.
“Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu (Cheops) was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon.”
“Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous. He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time. He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?”
“Attila was now sixtyish. His mind was weakening and he decided to marry again, as he had been terribly misunderstood the first three hundred times.”
Cuppy humor is of the dry British wit type, heavy on sarcasm and irony, and though occasionally yes he does chose the more lurid sources (and yes, people could be quite lurid back in the day), everything in the work is based on meticulous research. Reading the footnotes is essential.
"*Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since."
If you’ve ever thought History was dull and dry and “who cares?”, this book will definitely change your mind.
Underwater Tourism
It’s not up on their site yet, The Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the B-29 that crashed into Lake Mead during a testing mission in 1948 that the National Park Service is opening up to divers. This is probably the only B-29 submerged in the U.S. and it’s sound like a spectacular dive. This highlights the Submerged Resources Center, previously the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit or “SCRU” which is what happens when you let divers run amuck with Government funding ;). Not only does the SRC take care of water in the National Park Service in the U.S. but also wrecks in U.S. Territorial waters all over the world. The taste you get in this article is expanded on in Daniel Lenihan’s book Submerged. The article in the Smith reminded me of one of the chapters in Submerged in which they dove on the Nagato, the famous flagship of Admiral Yamamoto in which he lead the Pearl Harbor Attack which was sunk in Operation Crossroads Test Baker at the Bikini Islands (a witness said that the entire crew on deck of the one of the attending American ships spat in the water as she sank) in order to ascertain whether or not the radiation had dissipated enough to open it up to sport divers. The ship had flipped upside-down, but the bridge broke off and remained relatively intact and accessible to divers.
Submerged is an excellent introduction to the field of underwater archeology, not only informative but extremely readable and entertaining, outlining the serious, the sublime and silly (one dive on a WWII Japanese Submarine wreck off the Aleutians in which he suddenly realized he was sitting on a live torpedo includes all three) that one encounters in this line of work. I think it’s very cool that the NPS is thoroughly studying each site and opening it up to the public, though I have misgivings about damage to the site (there are idiot souvenir takers in every field) and monitoring the skill of those diving on the sites. 170 feet down is too deep for your average sport diver new to helium mixes and one of the SRC more gruesome duties (which is also covered in Submerged) is body recovery. I guess you just have to chalk it up to personal responsibility and Natural Selection.
Anyway, an interesting article and a fun book for those interested in the field, or some plain real life adventure.
When Life Gives You Lemons...
After all the excitement this weekend, Robby Gordon has placed his helmet up for bid on E-Bay for Hurricane Katrina Victim Relief. Yes, that is the famous helmet in question, now signed by both Robbie and Michael Waltrip. There was some sad confusion with fake bidders, but the helmet has gone back up and is going for 51K at the time of this posting. Either there are some really devoted Robbie Gordon fans or there are a lot of people in the sport that want to take a poke at Mikey Waltrip. :D Perhaps drivers need to be throwing more stuff. :D Ward Burton once chucked his fire retardant booties at Dale Jr. (and I understand he also threatened to shoot him *chuckle*) and Elliott launched his helmet in a perfect pitch at the center of Ryan Newman’s windshield (over traffic even). Wonder how much they would fetch?
Gregg Biffle has also started up an auction for the Furry Victims of Katrina
There's Advantages to Disadvantages
I’ve been working on getting my credit report cleaned up for my student loan applications and I realized there is a great advantage to having poor credit. You never have to worry about identity theft.
“Look, it’s my Social Security Number! See! See! It will do you NO GOOD! No GOOOOOD! BwaHAHAHAHAHA!”
Now I have to fret.
:D
"Sinister, Sinister, Sinister-Dexter-Sinister..."
A couple books for those of you that think history is dull.
For those of you that roll your eyes while listening to purists like myself having intellectual spasms every time a new Historical Epic comes out, Hollywood History of the World by George MacDonald Fraser is a delightfully light and witty tour through Hollywood’s historical epics from “1 MillionYears BC” to “Apocalypse Now” pointing out what they got right and what they got wrong without condemning them outright (unless they happened to be really, really bad). Any book that includes "Carry On Cleo" in an overview of History can't be all bad.
Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet is a fun and interesting view into the lives of ancient Roman tourists by following in their footsteps around the Mediterranean. Mr. Parrottet accompanies his travels to Pompeii, Sparta, the Nile and such with first person accounts, both licit and il-, of tourists of the ancient world, religious, recreational, hedonistic, sexual. Believe me, this book proves there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the travel industry and human nature while providing a fun window into the Ancient World.
And one of the greatest introductions to History EVER: The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy. This is a series of brief vignette’s covering the greatest figures in history, from Choeps to Miles Standish in extremely human terms.
“Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu (Cheops) was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon.”
“Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous. He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time. He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?”
“Attila was now sixtyish. His mind was weakening and he decided to marry again, as he had been terribly misunderstood the first three hundred times.”
Cuppy humor is of the dry British wit type, heavy on sarcasm and irony, and though occasionally yes he does chose the more lurid sources (and yes, people could be quite lurid back in the day), everything in the work is based on meticulous research. Reading the footnotes is essential.
"*Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since."
If you’ve ever thought History was dull and dry and “who cares?”, this book will definitely change your mind.
Underwater Tourism
It’s not up on their site yet, The Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the B-29 that crashed into Lake Mead during a testing mission in 1948 that the National Park Service is opening up to divers. This is probably the only B-29 submerged in the U.S. and it’s sound like a spectacular dive. This highlights the Submerged Resources Center, previously the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit or “SCRU” which is what happens when you let divers run amuck with Government funding ;). Not only does the SRC take care of water in the National Park Service in the U.S. but also wrecks in U.S. Territorial waters all over the world. The taste you get in this article is expanded on in Daniel Lenihan’s book Submerged. The article in the Smith reminded me of one of the chapters in Submerged in which they dove on the Nagato, the famous flagship of Admiral Yamamoto in which he lead the Pearl Harbor Attack which was sunk in Operation Crossroads Test Baker at the Bikini Islands (a witness said that the entire crew on deck of the one of the attending American ships spat in the water as she sank) in order to ascertain whether or not the radiation had dissipated enough to open it up to sport divers. The ship had flipped upside-down, but the bridge broke off and remained relatively intact and accessible to divers.
Submerged is an excellent introduction to the field of underwater archeology, not only informative but extremely readable and entertaining, outlining the serious, the sublime and silly (one dive on a WWII Japanese Submarine wreck off the Aleutians in which he suddenly realized he was sitting on a live torpedo includes all three) that one encounters in this line of work. I think it’s very cool that the NPS is thoroughly studying each site and opening it up to the public, though I have misgivings about damage to the site (there are idiot souvenir takers in every field) and monitoring the skill of those diving on the sites. 170 feet down is too deep for your average sport diver new to helium mixes and one of the SRC more gruesome duties (which is also covered in Submerged) is body recovery. I guess you just have to chalk it up to personal responsibility and Natural Selection.
Anyway, an interesting article and a fun book for those interested in the field, or some plain real life adventure.
When Life Gives You Lemons...
After all the excitement this weekend, Robby Gordon has placed his helmet up for bid on E-Bay for Hurricane Katrina Victim Relief. Yes, that is the famous helmet in question, now signed by both Robbie and Michael Waltrip. There was some sad confusion with fake bidders, but the helmet has gone back up and is going for 51K at the time of this posting. Either there are some really devoted Robbie Gordon fans or there are a lot of people in the sport that want to take a poke at Mikey Waltrip. :D Perhaps drivers need to be throwing more stuff. :D Ward Burton once chucked his fire retardant booties at Dale Jr. (and I understand he also threatened to shoot him *chuckle*) and Elliott launched his helmet in a perfect pitch at the center of Ryan Newman’s windshield (over traffic even). Wonder how much they would fetch?
Gregg Biffle has also started up an auction for the Furry Victims of Katrina
There's Advantages to Disadvantages
I’ve been working on getting my credit report cleaned up for my student loan applications and I realized there is a great advantage to having poor credit. You never have to worry about identity theft.
“Look, it’s my Social Security Number! See! See! It will do you NO GOOD! No GOOOOOD! BwaHAHAHAHAHA!”
Now I have to fret.
:D
"Sinister, Sinister, Sinister-Dexter-Sinister..."
posted by KiplingKat | 6:13 PM
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