..i do wonder about S H Steinberg's dismissal of the term Thirty Years War as being a misnomer since this period was actually a succession of wars in a European rather than a purely German context, & lasted 50 years not 30, namely 1609-1659. Well, the historians can argue if they like, but even though the conflict between the two Great Powers of the day, the Hapsburg dynasty's empire & Bourbon France & her allies, didn't cease with a sudden jolt with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, it seems that it was that treaty that sealed the fate of the so-called Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (which Voltaire snidely remarked was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire) by dismembering the dying 'body' into 230-something more or less sovereign states of varying sizes which were nonetheless German in language & culture
And i've found at least one reference to a Second Thirty Years War here, which seems a fairly broad outline of the period 1914-1945. I can't help wondering about the origin of the term referring to the European conflicts of 1618-1648, since the 1914-1945 hostilities (both 'official' & 'unofficial') were preceded by the Moroccan Crises (1905,1911) & the First & Second Balkan Wars.
Maybe it's just the period in which i grew up that sparked my enduring interest in Germany between the two World Wars. Even when i was a kid at primary school, we knew the dates not only of the 'recent' World War, 1939-1945, but also its predecessor, 1914-1918. And the battle that we were told about was not the drawn-out grimness of Gallipoli, but the slaughter of the First Battle of Passchendaele where New Zealand soldiers suffered their worst ever defeat. I wondered why New Zealand had gone to war against Germany twice within 30-odd years, & also if there might be another monstrous war 25-30 years after my father's war, & if so what would happen then. This almost did not bear thinking about, because we were now in the age of the Nuclear Bomb, which turned the whole strategy of war in the air upside down. From being vulnerable to repeated levels of unacceptable losses, typically 5% or more, bomber forces had now graduated to being able to sustain a 95% loss rate & still succeed in annihilating their targets. The books that considered possible nuclear war & its after-effects were the likes of Neville Shute's "On The Beach", Walter M Miller Jr's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" & Michael Swanwick's "In The Drift". Scary, too, was the phrase "Thinking the Unthinkable", referring to a cold-eyed view of a possibly 'winnable' nuclear war by Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation. Nonetheless, it's a phrase i approve of!! Someone has to look the future, however bleak, squarely in the eye, but if you mention certain topics to some people, they spit the dummy & abuse you for even raising the subject. Science & science-fiction (the real kind) writer Arthur C Clarke accused such people of suffering from failure of nerve and/or failure of imagination..
It's late now, as in stupid-o'clock on Sunday morning, & my brain seems to have stopped fizzing - i might even be able to get some sleep! Failing that, i'll just keep reading British historian Dame C V Wedgwood's immensely readable "The Thirty Years War", the 'first' one that is.. And as she points out, the unfinished business of a fragmented Germany reverberated down to "the explosive forces of liberal nationalism in the nineteenth century and illiberal nationalism in the twentieth".
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
I knew I should've gone straight home..
..but i really wanted a nice relaxing sit-down, read something interesting, & then go home. The trouble is, my brain is now bouncing around inside my skull coz it's full of caffeine & sugar!
'The Governors' Cona coffee is cheap & good, so i sat there drinking & reading until i started get talkative inside my head & had to go home before i started boring some hapless listener with whatever my current interest happened to be - in this case European history, & in particular the Thirty Years' War (ca.1618-1648).
Why have i labeled this 'Life'? 'History' makes sense, but 'Life'?
Well, yes, actually. What happened in Germany in that period of European history had repercussions right down to the 20th century, to 2 enormously destructive World Wars, the second of which was more or less the result of the unconscionable blunders made by the victors (?) in the first. I read of one historian who described those two wars as the Thirty-one Years War - as i recall (?) he was German & therefore directly affected by the aftermath of the Great War, as the first of them is often called. Whether he actually lived through the precarious existence of the ill-fated Weimar Republic i don't actually know (if i could recall his name i could look him up using what 'New Scientist' magazine calls the Famous Web Search Engine, or FWSE - we all know what that is but for some reason they aren't allowed to say the name in print, not sure why!). Nonetheless, the aftermath of WW1 was a disaster for Germany, & subsequently for the rest of the world. As W H Auden put it:
"I and the public know
What every schoolboy learns
That those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return"
And, sad to say, in Germany's case, this was true. She was made to shoulder the sole blame for a war that was the result of an unstable European concoction of alliances, treaties (some kept from the public eye), nationalistic aspirations, colonial land-grabbing, & an arms race that was epitomized by the British political slogan "We want eight, & we won't wait!" - a reference to the advent of the Dreadnought class of heavy fighting ships that rendered their predecessors militarily obsolete because of their major reliance on very large (15-inch, i think) heavy naval guns which could out-shoot any of their smaller adversaries' weaponry. Not only was the war guilt unfairly assigned, but the war reparations broke Germany financially - never mind the vehement criticism of the opinions of an economist who was involved in the post-war 'negotiations' at a very high level & predicted trouble ahead in his report entitled "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace" - John Maynard Keynes was not popular with certain jingoistic elements of the 'victorious' nations. A certain Adolf Hitler had no trouble convincing a defeated & demoralized Germany that her army had been 'stabbed in the back' by the Allies, & while this had little currency in 1923 when Herr Hitler & his fellow Nazis were jailed for attempting a coup d'etat that failed, the Great Depression & the misery that followed `the Crash of 1929 had the German public grasping at the straws of restoration of German national pride &, in particular, Hitler's own take on German unity.
The result was, almost inevitably, the Second World War, from which my own father returned with what is now called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - even as a small child i recall seeing him with the 'shakes' but the culture of the day did not see him as an injured war veteran - he had trouble seeing himself that way! Only years later, with the help of his more assertive RSA comrades did he finally obtain the War Pension i feel should have been his from the day he was demobilized. That's life, huh??
.
'The Governors' Cona coffee is cheap & good, so i sat there drinking & reading until i started get talkative inside my head & had to go home before i started boring some hapless listener with whatever my current interest happened to be - in this case European history, & in particular the Thirty Years' War (ca.1618-1648).
Why have i labeled this 'Life'? 'History' makes sense, but 'Life'?
Well, yes, actually. What happened in Germany in that period of European history had repercussions right down to the 20th century, to 2 enormously destructive World Wars, the second of which was more or less the result of the unconscionable blunders made by the victors (?) in the first. I read of one historian who described those two wars as the Thirty-one Years War - as i recall (?) he was German & therefore directly affected by the aftermath of the Great War, as the first of them is often called. Whether he actually lived through the precarious existence of the ill-fated Weimar Republic i don't actually know (if i could recall his name i could look him up using what 'New Scientist' magazine calls the Famous Web Search Engine, or FWSE - we all know what that is but for some reason they aren't allowed to say the name in print, not sure why!). Nonetheless, the aftermath of WW1 was a disaster for Germany, & subsequently for the rest of the world. As W H Auden put it:
"I and the public know
What every schoolboy learns
That those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return"
And, sad to say, in Germany's case, this was true. She was made to shoulder the sole blame for a war that was the result of an unstable European concoction of alliances, treaties (some kept from the public eye), nationalistic aspirations, colonial land-grabbing, & an arms race that was epitomized by the British political slogan "We want eight, & we won't wait!" - a reference to the advent of the Dreadnought class of heavy fighting ships that rendered their predecessors militarily obsolete because of their major reliance on very large (15-inch, i think) heavy naval guns which could out-shoot any of their smaller adversaries' weaponry. Not only was the war guilt unfairly assigned, but the war reparations broke Germany financially - never mind the vehement criticism of the opinions of an economist who was involved in the post-war 'negotiations' at a very high level & predicted trouble ahead in his report entitled "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace" - John Maynard Keynes was not popular with certain jingoistic elements of the 'victorious' nations. A certain Adolf Hitler had no trouble convincing a defeated & demoralized Germany that her army had been 'stabbed in the back' by the Allies, & while this had little currency in 1923 when Herr Hitler & his fellow Nazis were jailed for attempting a coup d'etat that failed, the Great Depression & the misery that followed `the Crash of 1929 had the German public grasping at the straws of restoration of German national pride &, in particular, Hitler's own take on German unity.
The result was, almost inevitably, the Second World War, from which my own father returned with what is now called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - even as a small child i recall seeing him with the 'shakes' but the culture of the day did not see him as an injured war veteran - he had trouble seeing himself that way! Only years later, with the help of his more assertive RSA comrades did he finally obtain the War Pension i feel should have been his from the day he was demobilized. That's life, huh??
.
What an amazing story! The 6502 chip..
One of my working-life mottos was (& still is):
Never do anything by hand if you can get a machine to do it for you!
And i stand by that - i learned it the hard way while trying to foot it in heavy manual jobs with guys the size of All Black forwards with hands almost bigger than my head. These guys could casually pick things up & walk away with them - i had to think! And be on good terms with the fork-lift/crane driver!
So when i read this account of the design layout of the MOS6502, i was gobsmacked. The guy who did the layout made not a single mistake in a design involving 3510 transistors (modern CPUs have several hundred million) & he did it all by hand!!
We take a great deal for granted in our Age of Technology, not least the idea that we can boot up our capabilities with machinery of various kinds that make hitherto difficult jobs easier (& faster) & in some cases practically impossible jobs possible.
Somewhere in my messy house is a little book about the humble screw-driver (yes, & it's an interesting story too). Along the way, the author delves into the history of screws, nuts & bolts (once made by hand to fit each other & tied together with string because they were unique & not inter-changeable) & the engineers who revolutionized manufacturing (the word itself is now a bit of a misnomer because it's derived from the Latin meaning 'made by hand').
For more on the MOS6502 tho', read about this account by Brian Bagnall.
Never do anything by hand if you can get a machine to do it for you!
And i stand by that - i learned it the hard way while trying to foot it in heavy manual jobs with guys the size of All Black forwards with hands almost bigger than my head. These guys could casually pick things up & walk away with them - i had to think! And be on good terms with the fork-lift/crane driver!
So when i read this account of the design layout of the MOS6502, i was gobsmacked. The guy who did the layout made not a single mistake in a design involving 3510 transistors (modern CPUs have several hundred million) & he did it all by hand!!
We take a great deal for granted in our Age of Technology, not least the idea that we can boot up our capabilities with machinery of various kinds that make hitherto difficult jobs easier (& faster) & in some cases practically impossible jobs possible.
Somewhere in my messy house is a little book about the humble screw-driver (yes, & it's an interesting story too). Along the way, the author delves into the history of screws, nuts & bolts (once made by hand to fit each other & tied together with string because they were unique & not inter-changeable) & the engineers who revolutionized manufacturing (the word itself is now a bit of a misnomer because it's derived from the Latin meaning 'made by hand').
For more on the MOS6502 tho', read about this account by Brian Bagnall.
New Year New Year!
No, i'm not making any New Year Resolutions - they don't work anyway..
(i s'pose i could try getting out of bed earlier).
What i would like to do is get my house tidied before summer's over;
get that leak in the hall roof fixed
(instead of a collection of buckets that need emptying now & then);
de-junk the place & organise the stuff i want to keep;
fix the leak in my old hot-water header tank & set it up as a rain butt
(instead of buckets out on the deck collecting rain from a spouting leak);
grow more (& better - as in "better cared for') pot-plants..
As for pot-plants, i'd really like ones that attract bumblebees - i love watching them!
If i'm walking down my front path & i see one on a flower i have to pass, i'll stop & watch so as not to disturb her in her work.
And that footpath would easier to negotiate if it weren't overgrown with grass & weeds. A few weeks back, i broke out the grubber i'd bought months previously & chipped all the weeds out of the middle of the path. I can now drag a wheely-suitcase full of damp washing up to the house without busting a gut.
Fixing my broken washing-machine would be better tho' - turned it off at the wall-socket coz i was in a hurry; nasty graunching noise as the spin-cycle brake clamped full on &, i suspect, broke or dislocated the drive.
Bought an old golf-trundler from the city landfill's recycling centre (for $4!!), which i hope to use for lugging stuff up from my car, which lives permanently on the street, about 50 metres & 2 flights of steps from my front door! Mind you, it's good exercise shouldering stuff up & down but it plays hell with my back! And when you have a walking-stick (aka cane) in one hand it's harder still; i've slipped & taken a header more than once on the way down to the street, so addressing the deck clutter would help, too.
Notice anything about the list above?
I haven't used the words must, should or ought to at all. I used to have a real problem with mental list-making - i'd see something that could do with being fixed/tidied/junked & without even verbalising it i'd be making mental notes: must do something about that, must do something about that, & it drove me bonkers!! I'd end up lying on my bed watching TV & refusing even to think about 'all the things that had to get done'!
Result? Nothing got done, things piled up, washing in the laundry basket, dishes in the sink, junk-mail on the floor, & stuff i brought home dumped inside the front door (except for food - that got put away), because i'm not physically fit enough to luggin shopping bags & the like up to my house without feeling knackered by the time i get to the front door - i just drop everything & lie down for a while, then forget about it..
I'm slowly working my way thru the chaos by saying to myself "Hmm, now if i wanted to tidy that up, i should probably start by doing.. .. .." & it works! I don't wind up going bonkers, & i do get whatever-it-was actually done! It's great!
.
(i s'pose i could try getting out of bed earlier).
What i would like to do is get my house tidied before summer's over;
get that leak in the hall roof fixed
(instead of a collection of buckets that need emptying now & then);
de-junk the place & organise the stuff i want to keep;
fix the leak in my old hot-water header tank & set it up as a rain butt
(instead of buckets out on the deck collecting rain from a spouting leak);
grow more (& better - as in "better cared for') pot-plants..
As for pot-plants, i'd really like ones that attract bumblebees - i love watching them!
If i'm walking down my front path & i see one on a flower i have to pass, i'll stop & watch so as not to disturb her in her work.
And that footpath would easier to negotiate if it weren't overgrown with grass & weeds. A few weeks back, i broke out the grubber i'd bought months previously & chipped all the weeds out of the middle of the path. I can now drag a wheely-suitcase full of damp washing up to the house without busting a gut.
Fixing my broken washing-machine would be better tho' - turned it off at the wall-socket coz i was in a hurry; nasty graunching noise as the spin-cycle brake clamped full on &, i suspect, broke or dislocated the drive.
Bought an old golf-trundler from the city landfill's recycling centre (for $4!!), which i hope to use for lugging stuff up from my car, which lives permanently on the street, about 50 metres & 2 flights of steps from my front door! Mind you, it's good exercise shouldering stuff up & down but it plays hell with my back! And when you have a walking-stick (aka cane) in one hand it's harder still; i've slipped & taken a header more than once on the way down to the street, so addressing the deck clutter would help, too.
Notice anything about the list above?
I haven't used the words must, should or ought to at all. I used to have a real problem with mental list-making - i'd see something that could do with being fixed/tidied/junked & without even verbalising it i'd be making mental notes: must do something about that, must do something about that, & it drove me bonkers!! I'd end up lying on my bed watching TV & refusing even to think about 'all the things that had to get done'!
Result? Nothing got done, things piled up, washing in the laundry basket, dishes in the sink, junk-mail on the floor, & stuff i brought home dumped inside the front door (except for food - that got put away), because i'm not physically fit enough to luggin shopping bags & the like up to my house without feeling knackered by the time i get to the front door - i just drop everything & lie down for a while, then forget about it..
I'm slowly working my way thru the chaos by saying to myself "Hmm, now if i wanted to tidy that up, i should probably start by doing.. .. .." & it works! I don't wind up going bonkers, & i do get whatever-it-was actually done! It's great!
.
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