Category Archives: History

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Obama The Aloof Heart

11 Comments

This says it all:

I’ll make a deal with Obama. If he finds the people responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, or American slavery still alive and malicious, we’ll bomb them too. In the meantime, how about we start telling the truth about the Islamist terrorists who are right now literally enslaving young girls as sex objects, slaughtering anyone who doesn’t think like them, acquiring territory in the Middle East, and threatening attacks on the US and Europe? History professors can blather on ad nauseam about events 1,000 years ago, but Presidents are supposed to focus on the here and now. Skip the ignorant and hypocritical lectures, and do your job.

He doesn’t seem to know what his job is.

Obama The Aloof Heart

[Sunday-morning update]

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[Sunday-afternoon update]

[Mid-afternoon update]

Some history of the Crusades for those who (like Obama) are historically ignorant, from Claire Berlinski.

History, Popular Culture

Sid Caesar

6 Comments

RIP.

Most people are probably too young to know who he was, but he was a comedy genius, of my parents’ time.

[Update Saturday morning]

OK, so I was a year late with the announcement. I was on an airplane just following Twitter links, and didn’t check the date. Worth remembering anyway.

History, Popular Culture

The Ukelele

1 Comment

A history.

My dad had one, with a Burl Ives book.

When I was growing up, we pronounced it Youkuhlaylee, but as the article points out, Hawai’ian is the most phonetic language in the world (because the written language was invented to be so by the missionaries). So the proper pronunciation is (as the article notes) Ookaylaylay. Also, Honolulu is Hohnohlooloo, not Hahnahlooloo, which is the popular mainland haole pronunciation.

Administrative, History

Heading Home

20 Comments

In an hour or so, I’m heading up the coast for the day to see Caesarea, then this evening, back south to Ben Gurion to go through the supposed lengthy flight check in, then a 13-hour flight to Philly, then a layover, then a five-hour flight back to California. Not looking forward to any of it, other than the initial sightseeing.

Anyway, probably off line until at least early Saturday morning, eastern time. I may use wifi on the flight to LA, if I’m sufficiently conscious.

[Saturday-morning update]

Well, I seem to be sufficiently conscious (despite not really having gotten anything resembling sleep for over 36 hours). From the plane over eastern Tennessee, heading west.

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History, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Remembering Auschwitz

4 Comments

It’s a little surreal to be in Israel (for my first time) during the seventieth anniversary. But considering the past (and the subsequent almost complete loss of all the Jews in that country), it was touching and poignant that Poland allowed Israel to do an overflight of that now-sacred ground. I’m sure they wish they’d had that kind of military capability seventy years ago. It would have been a bombing run on the chambers and ovens.

Israel Flyover of Auschwitz

History, Political Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Space Anniversaries

22 Comments

Yesterday was the 48th anniversary of the loss of three astronauts on the launch pad, in preparation for the Apollo missions. A child of the space age, I remember it particularly well, because it occurred the day before my twelth birthday. A little over nineteen years later, on my actual birthday, Challenger was lost. I recollected it on the sixteenth anniversary of the event.

Today is the twenty-ninth anniversary of that tragedy, and while I commemorate it, I also celebrate the completion of my sixtieth trip around the sun, over eight thousand miles from home. I’m in Israel to attend a conference named after Ilan Ramon, an Israeli hero who died a dozen years ago on February 1st, when Columbia disintegrated in the skies over east Texas. That anniversary coming up with Sunday, by which time I’ll be home, if all goes according to plan, to celebrate with friends and family, but also grieve for the losses. Yet as I point out in my book, such losses are inevitable, and necessary, perhaps even at a faster rate than once per generation, if we wish to accomplish much greater things than we have in space over the past six decades since my birth.