Timewasters!

Got some time to kill? These tests will keep you busy for a half hour!

Presidents: I got 42/43.

Simpsons Characters: I got 60/63.

BCS Conference Colleges: I got 72/73.

In the comments, I'll tell you which ones I missed for each test. No cheating!

Loose ends

1. My wife knew of my love for John Adams prior to our marriage, so she has no excuses now. (She didn't know of my secret affection for Johannes Gutenberg though.)

2. Yes, my family is probably going to be wealthy some day. If that day comes, however, I'd like to think that I'll retain enough self-awareness to refrain from flaunting it under the guise of complaining about the commute to my second home to a poor 25-year-old law student.

3. Diablo II had a powerful ability to bring roommates together. I hope III can do the same.

4. Nick the Stick was only absent from my sweet allegory because I couldn't think of a historical fuigure from that period who would try to walk from Farley to Knott and end up on the other side of a lake. John Burgoyne, maybe?

5. Jake took his first steps the other day. It's a dizzying, terrifying experience to watch.

Lies! All Lies!

Only I know how it truly went down.

While our esteemed Rico certainly presents a plausible version of events, the perfect linkages in his construct surely should make the discerning reader leery of accepting his version of events. The regrettable lack of Nick the Stick is merely the first in a series of gaping holes. I might also point out that the Wierema and Pontzer areas of Smash Bros. were largely separate save for the occasional reunion game. While the regular player of need hardly be reminded, our less practiced readers might not be aware that Samus' Up B is Falcon's best friend. Without the incapacitation provided by this nigh un-blockable move, the 10 second windup on our avian commander's punch renders it all but useless. Finally, I might add that Rico is not only wrong on the particulars but offers a strangely static vision of Smash Bros. history. As the records clearly show, while my play with Samus was unorthodox, it was undoubtedly the most effective style of play for that character. As I progressed to Falcon and Donkey Kong, rarely was I absent from the fray. The bizzare complaints of a certain roommate and Pontzer that my characters threw too much are otherwise inexplicable.

Oh, one more thing. Rico's analysis of the Ponz is spot on.

Today's Smash Bros. History Lesson

Reflecting on John Adams, I can't help but notice the parallels between the Continental Congress and my college experience playing Smash Bros. (Spare me the criticism. If something can't be reduced to a Smash Bros. analogy, it's not worth studying.)

We would routinely play two-on-two team battles. Whenever Big Jim and I would team up, I would inevitably be Captain Falcon, the bombastic and badass brawler. Jim, on the other hand, would choose Samus, the archetype of a jobber. Naturally, I would do the heavy lifting for the team, shouting "Show me your moves!" and "Falcon Punch!" all along the way. Jim, of course, would allow me to take a two-on-one beating just so he could stay in the corner and charge up his Big Shot. Despite my demands to "Get in the fray!" the most assistance I could hope for would be the occasional Up-B. Then, at the end of the fight, just as I was about to complete my heroic one-on-two victory, Big Jim would come in, fire one Big Shot, and steal my kills.

So it was in the Continental Congress. While John Adams was up fighting for independence on the floor of Congress every day, Jefferson sat on his hands like a scared little boy. Adams would take a beating from opponents of independence such as John Dickinson, and Jefferson would remain silent, providing virtually no assistance. Once Adams had heroically swung Congress to vote for independence, Jefferson hopped in, wrote the Declaration, and stole all the glory.

To fill out the analogy, Wierema has to be George Washington, always ready for a fight but smart enough to find one on good terms. And clearly Pontzer is the French: only fighting when it suits his own interests, prone to spectacularly violent disasters, and far, far too effeminate.

John Adams

Mrs. Rico bought me John Adams, the HBO miniseries, for Father's Day. Thus far, we've watched the first two parts of the seven-part series, and I'm surprisingly conflicted.

On the one hand, it's truly brilliant television, a rare feat in the days of I Survived a Japanese Game Show and Celebrity Family Feud, (on ABC and NBC last night, by the way). Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are simply phenomenal as John and Abigail Adams. They both perfectly capture the profound intellect, surprising warmth, and deep love of the Adamsseses. They also capture the couple's personality quirks without descending into the slightest bit of caricature. The series is very well produced, largely maintaining historical authenticity with small and acceptable embellishments for dramatic purposes. (My only complaint thus far is that Washington looks much too old. He was only 42 at the time of the First Continental Congress, and the actor portraying him is 55. Giamatti, by contrast, is 41, while Adams' was 38 in 1974.)

As you may already know, I'm a huge early American history buff, so it's really exciting to be able to watch my favorite historical moments captured so beautifully. Already we've seen Henry Knox, the 300-pound bookseller turned Continental Army engineer, transporting British cannon through hundreds of miles of wilderness aided only by field animals. All my favorite quotes and moments from the pre-war period have been used, and there are so many additional scenes I'm already anticipating. Plus, it's great to see how captivated my wife is by the series, even if she's getting a huge crush on Washington. (Can you blame her?)

And yet, on the other hand, I'm slightly jealous that Adams is being shared with the wider world. I've always felt a special connection with Adams, and I've always identified so closely with him, warts and all. I like to think I share his virtues (service, self-sacrifice, a passionate love of his wife, an eagerness to debate and fight for his beliefs) as well as his flaws (stubbornness, arrogance, pride, an occasional need to be coddled, a tendency toward feeling unappreciated). David McCullough notes in his stupendous biography of Adams that he is, in a sense, America's forgotten founding father, often confused with Sam Adams and generally unappreciated and underrated. While I'm happy he is getting the appreciation and publicity he richly deserves, I always kind of relished the idea that Adams was my founding father.

Great Moments in French History

1. While reading an article in our French for Reading course, a History PhD student mis-translated a sentence because he was unaware that Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.

2. Our teacher, a sixth year French lit-crit student, learned during our class that the crown prince of France was known as the Dauphin.

Am I taking crazy pills, or is our educational system breaking down?

Unifying Theory of British Culture

1. The British like tea.

2. The British have bad teeth.

3. Brushing your teeth makes your tea taste bad for hours afterwards.

Conclusion: The British have bad teeth so that their tea will taste better.

QED

Election Hijinx, Shenanigans, and Tomfoolery

Start here. Lee Atwater was a Democratic bogeyman when Karl Rove was still wetting his political diapers. There's a reason people still talk about Willie Horton.

What Else Floats on Water?

A friend and commenter sent me this little tidbit from the Smithsonian Magazine:

Think of this. The most distinguished graduate college at Oxford is All Souls, founded in 1438 and popularly alleged to number among its Fellows the cleverest men and women in England. Once in every hundred years this eminent company celebrates something called the ceremony of the mallard, when it commemorates the fable of a wild duck supposed to have flown out of the foundations when the college was being built. After a good and vinous dinner those academics perambulate the premises looking for the shade of that bird, carrying sticks and staves, led by a Lord Mallard in a sedan chair with a dead duck on a pole, climbing to the roof and singing a gibberish song—Ho, the blood of King Edward, by the blood of King Edward, it was a swapping,
swapping mallard.

When in 2001 they celebrated the ceremony of the mallard for the umpteenth time, they printed a booklet about the occasion. On its cover they quoted a contemporary commentator (me, as it happened!) to the effect that no event in Europe could be sillier, "not the most footling country frolic or pointless Anatolian orgy."

Poker: A Metaphor for Life

Teddy Roosevelt and the Square Deal:

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have.

He would later expand on this idea:

When I say I believe in a square deal, I do not mean to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing.

This is about as close to my personal political philosophy as any 100-year-old quote can come. And just for good measure, here's some more TR:

Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Indeed.

The absurd elevation of sports

On Sunday Night Football, sideline reporter Andrea Kremer just noted that at Tony Dungy's daughter's college (Spellman University, an all-female, historically black school), professors compare Dungy's coaching of a Super Bowl champion with Martin Luther King being put in jail and African-Americans gaining voting rights.

Really? We're going to trivialize one of the most important civil rights achievements of the last century and the most important African-American leader ever by comparing them to a football game?

War, What Is It Good For?

Well, studying for one thing.

In a remarkable coincidence, Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent column over at City Journal on the need for a great study of military history. He has two main points. The first is utilitarian:

A wartime public illiterate about the conflicts of the past can easily find itself paralyzed in the acrimony of the present. Without standards of historical comparison, it will prove ill equipped to make informed judgments. Neither our politicians nor most of our citizens seem to recall the incompetence and terrible decisions that, in December 1777, December 1941, and November 1950, led to massive American casualties and, for a time, public despair. So it’s no surprise that today so many seem to think that the violence in Iraq is unprecedented in our history. Roughly 3,000 combat dead in Iraq in some four years of fighting is, of course, a terrible thing. And it has provoked national outrage to the point of considering withdrawal and defeat, as we still bicker over up-armored Humvees and proper troop levels. But a previous generation considered Okinawa a stunning American victory, and prepared to follow it with an invasion of the Japanese mainland itself—despite losing, in a little over two months, four times as many Americans as we have lost in Iraq, casualties of faulty intelligence, poor generalship, and suicidal head-on assaults against fortified positions.

It’s not that military history offers cookie-cutter comparisons with the past. Germany’s World War I victory over Russia in under three years and her failure to take France in four apparently misled Hitler into thinking that he could overrun the Soviets in three or four weeks—after all, he had brought down historically tougher France in just six. Similarly, the conquest of the Taliban in eight weeks in 2001, followed by the establishment of constitutional government within a year in Kabul, did not mean that the similarly easy removal of Saddam Hussein in three weeks in 2003 would ensure a working Iraqi democracy within six months. The differences between the countries—cultural, political, geographical, and economic—were too great.

Instead, knowledge of past wars establishes wide parameters of what to expect from new ones. Themes, emotions, and rhetoric remain constant over the centuries, and thus generally predictable. Athens’s disastrous expedition in 415 BC against Sicily, the largest democracy in the Greek world, may not prefigure our war in Iraq. But the story of the Sicilian calamity does instruct us on how consensual societies can clamor for war—yet soon become disheartened and predicate their support on the perceived pulse of the battlefield.

The second is a question of piety:

Finally, military history has the moral purpose of educating us about past sacrifices that have secured our present freedom and security. If we know nothing of Shiloh, Belleau Wood, Tarawa, and Chosun, the crosses in our military cemeteries are just pleasant white stones on lush green lawns. They no longer serve as reminders that thousands endured pain and hardship for our right to listen to what we wish on our iPods and to shop at Wal-Mart in safety—or that they expected future generations, links in this great chain of obligation, to do the same for those not yet born. The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, should escape that terrible knowledge.

Read the whole thing of course, Hanson, when writing on the war in Iraq is often repetitive; however, that doesn't take away from his skill as a writer.

It's Almost as Good at TV!

Here's some Frontinus for you all. Everyone needs a little Frontinus in his life. Book II 5.31:

When Sertorius was encamped next to Pompey near the town of Lauron in Spain, there were only two tracts from which forage could be gathered, one near by, the other farther off. Sertorius gave orders that the one near by should be continually raided by light-armed troops, but that remoter one should not be visited by any troops. Thus, he finally convinced his adversaries that the more distant tract was safer. When, on one occasion, Pompey's troops had gone to this region, Sertorius ordered Octavius Graecinus, with ten cohorts armed after the Roman fashion, and ten cohorts of light-armed Spaniards along with Tarquinius Priscus and two thousand cavalry, set forth to lay an ambush against the foragers. These men executed their instructions with energy; for after examining the ground, they hid the above-mentioned forces by night in a neighbouring wood, posting the light-armed Spaniards in front, as best suited to stealthy warfare, the shield-bearing soldiers a little further back, and the cavalry in the rear, in order that the plan might not be betrayed by the neighing of the horses. Then they ordered all to repose in silence till the third hour of the following day. When Pompey's men, entertaining no suspicion and loaded down with forage, thought of returning, and those who had been on guard, lured on by the situation, were slipping away to forage, suddenly the Spaniards, darting out with the swiftness characteristic of their race, poured forth upon the stragglers, inflicted many wounds upon them, and put them to rout, to their great amazement. Then, before resistance to this first assault could be organised, the shield-bearing troops, bursting forth from the forest, overthrew and routed the Romans who were returning to the ranks, while the cavalry, dispatched after those in flight, followed them all the way back to the camp, cutting them to pieces. Provision was also made that no one should escape. For two hundred and fifty reserve horsemen, sent ahead for the purpose, found it a simple matter to race forward by short cuts, and then to turn back and meet those who had first fled, before they reached Pompey's camp. On learning of this, Pompey sent out a legion under Decimus Laelius to reinforce his men, whereupon the cavalry of the enemy, withdrawing to the right flank, pretended to give way, and then, passing round the legion, assaulted it from the rear, while those who had followed up the foragers attacked it from the front also. Thus the legion with its commander was crushed between the two lines of the enemy. When Pompey led out his entire army to help the legion, Sertorius exhibited his forces drawn up on the hillside, and thus baulked Pompey's purpose. Thus, in addition to inflicting a twofold disaster, as a result of the same strategy, Sertorius forced Pompey to be the helpless witness of the destruction of his own troops. This was the first battle between Sertorius and Pompey. According to Livy, ten thousand men were lost in Pompey's army, along with the entire transport.

Some notes. The battle took place in 77 BC. The third watch is around 9:00 AM. A cohort was composed of 480 men, and legion was made of ten cohorts. The Romans, and their similarly armed and trained Spanish counterparts, would have had a chain-mail shirts, bronze helmets, long oval shields, a javelin, and a short stabbing sword. The light armed soldiers would have had a number of javelins, a small shield, and maybe the helmet. The cavalry had a few javelins, a longer sword, a helmet, and some kind of armor on their chest (metal or leather). Oh, and no pants. Except for maybe of the Spanish. But then they were barbarians.

So. Sertorius is brilliant, yes? It's not everyday that you get to cut down two Roman legions with hardly a casualty. Incredibly detailed and well thought out plan and some brilliant execution. But there's more than that. Luck was involved too. The ambush worked so well that no Roman, if any survived uncaptured, was able to get back to warn Pompey or Laelius of the size of the ambush. Pompey must have been expecting the kinds of ambushes he put up with over the nearer foraging ground. Bad assumption. Laelius, then, was meant command a relief force and not a force capable of independent action. The Romans had an inherent to dislike of skirmishers and cavalry and consequently had very few in their armies. Pompey would have sent a sizable contingent of cavalry and skirmishers with foragers to, you know, ward off an ambush. Since these were already dead, not that he knew that, and since he would have kept the majority of those kinds of troops with him in case Sertorius offered battle, it's most likely that Laelius marched out without any supporting force at all. Remember he was supposed to be leading reinforcements. That Priscus' cavalry could flank him so easily is pretty good evidence that I'm right. The result, then, was pretty much set in stone.

That being said. Here's the image that's staying with me. Sertorius must have been watching the initial force of foragers in case it was bigger than usual and he had to call off the ambush. Seeing as it was the normal contingent, he would have signaled the go-ahead. Since the first battle took place under the trees, he wouldn't have been able to see anything, though he would have been confident of success. I can't imagine the feeling he had when he saw Laelius' men march out of Pompey's camp. Seeing them without enough numbers and without sufficient cavalry and skirmishers, he would have known that the first engagement was an unqualified success and that is was highly probable that every single one of them was going to die. Then, after the inevitable result, he got to watch Pompey make preparations to march out, knowing that he would be able to counter that too and that all Pompey could do was sit back and take it.

Dark stuff. But fascinating.

The true purpose of the internet

The Shakespearean Insulter!

"Thou infectious malmsey-nosed flap-dragon!"

Also, 200 posts!

If It Wasn't for That Noble Porpoise . . .

Herodotus is not the most conventional of historians. Being the "Father of History," that's not really too surprising. The current consensus seems to be that he rather uncritically recorded the stories he was given as he traversed the Mediterranean. Fact and fiction are inextricably bound together. Stories like Arion and the dolphin, for example do little to help his claim to authenticity:

This Periander, who apprised Thrasybulus of the oracle, was son of Cypselus, and tyrant of Corinth. In his time a very wonderful thing is said to have happened. The Corinthians and the Lesbians agree in their account of the matter. They relate that Arion of Methymna, who as a player on the harp, was second to no man living at that time, and who was, so far as we know, the first to invent the dithyrambic measure, to give it its name, and to recite in it at Corinth, was carried to Taenarum on the back of a dolphin.

He had lived for many years at the court of Periander, when a longing came upon him to sail across to Italy and Sicily. Having made rich profits in those parts, he wanted to recross the seas to Corinth. He therefore hired a vessel, the crew of which were Corinthians, thinking that there was no people in whom he could more safely confide; and, going on board, he set sail from Tarentum. The sailors, however, when they reached the open sea, formed a plot to throw him overboard and seize upon his riches. Discovering their design, he fell on his knees, beseeching them to spare his life, and making them welcome to his money. But they refused; and required him either to kill himself outright, if he wished for a grave on the dry land, or without loss of time to leap overboard into the sea. In this strait Arion begged them, since such was their pleasure, to allow him to mount upon the quarter-deck, dressed in his full costume, and there to play and sing, and promising that, as soon as his song was ended, he would destroy himself. Delighted at the prospect of hearing the very best harper in the world, they consented, and withdrew from the stern to the middle of the vessel: while Arion dressed himself in the full costume of his calling, took his harp, and standing on the quarter-deck, chanted the Orthian. His strain ended, he flung himself, fully attired as he was, headlong into the sea. The Corinthians then sailed on to Corinth. As for Arion, a dolphin, they say, took him upon his back and carried him to Taenarum, where he went ashore, and thence proceeded to Corinth in his musician's dress, and told all that had happened to him. Periander, however, disbelieved the story, and put Arion in ward, to prevent his leaving Corinth, while he watched anxiously for the return of the mariners. On their arrival he summoned them before him and asked them if they could give him any tiding of Arion. They returned for answer that he was alive and in good health in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was doing well. Thereupon Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the vessel: the men, astonished and detected in falsehood, could no longer deny their guilt. Such is the account which the Corinthians and Lesbians give; and there is to this day at Taenarum, an offering of Arion's at the shrine, which is a small figure in bronze, representing a man seated upon a dolphin.

While I certainly don't suggest that we take this account as the gospel truth. We should probably give Herodotus a little more credit. After all strange things do happen. Really strange things. Almost unbelievable . . .

Some Unrelated History

I thought I'd pass on a link to The Polish Military Historical Site that my sister sent me about a large scale reenactment of the Battle of Olszynka Grochowska conducted yearly on the anniversary of the engagement February 25. The website even says that they use live powder and horses. That's dedication. Since Polish history is not the hot discipline it once was, I thought I'd post a summary of the battle from Wikipedia:

The first months after the outbreak of the November Uprising saw no hostilities between Poland and Russia. Both the Polish commander Józef Chłopicki and Russian tsar Nicholas I were hoping for a peaceful solution to the conflict. However, none of the sides could propose a satisfactory compromise and in on January 25, 1831, Nicholas was deposed of the Polish throne.

This was seen as a de facto declaration of war and the Russian Army under Hans Karl von Diebitsch was ordered to enter Poland and crush the rebellion. The Russian army entered Poland on February 4 and started a fast advance towards Warsaw. Despite several minor battles and skirmishes, in which the Russian army suffered significant losses, the advance could not be stopped by the Polish forces, both numerically and technically inferior.

On February 24 the Russian Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw in two columns. Initially Diebitsch was planning an all-out assault on Warsaw on February 26. However, the successful Polish counter-attack in the Battle of Białołęka, in which the 13 500 men strong Corps of General Ivan Shakhovskoy was defeated and forced to retreat, made Diebitsch change his plans and attack earlier than planned.

The Polish counter-attack in the area of Białołęka on February 24 surprised the Russians. In the early morning of February 25, after both units taking part in the Battle of Białołęka were on the verge of breaking after a night-long city fight, the Poles threw in the reserve 1st Infantry Division under General Jan Krukowiecki. The Russians started a retreat and the Poles started a pursuit, but the Polish advance was halted after an hour.

The sound of the nearby battle made Field Marshal Dybich change his plans and order an assault on Polish positions 24 hours earlier than planned. At noon the I Corps and the Corps of General Grigoriy Vladimirovich Rosen were ordered to assault the Polish 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions (Generals Skrzynecki and Żymirski, respectively) in the woods east of Grochów. At the same time the Corps of General Pahlen was ordered to outflank the Poles from the south and strike through the lines of the Polish 4th Infantry Division of General Szembek.

Although the Russians had numerical superiority and better equipment on their side, the Polish lines were well-hidden in the woods and the Russian artillery had difficulties helping the advancing infantry. Despite numerous assaults, both the woods and the Grochów-Gocławek road was still in Polish hands by dusk. After suffering heavy casualties, the Russians withdrew from the battlefield. However, the Poles also lost large part of their forces and were unable to organise a successful pursuit.

Here's a picture of the man playing the Russian general Diebitsch. An interesting side note on the differences among the Slavic languages, the Polish reenactment site spells his name "Dybicz."