Category Archive: HISTORY
Mendeleev, Vodka, Peas and Quizzes
Dmitri Mendeleev (born on this day in 1834) was real good at chemistry. Mendeleev neatened up the nascent Periodic Table and so facilitated the discovery and proper classification of further elements. He saw it all in a dream which may, or may not, have owed something to 40% vodka. I was not real good at chemistry. I had Mendeleev with his Hydrogen and Helium confused with Gregor Mendel with his flies and peas. But I did learn this one thing which has held me in surprisingly good stead in quizzes. It is a mnemonic for the first twenty elements – two scientists who worked together late…
Continue Reading →Vietnam / Iraq
South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places, June 8, 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. The terrified girl had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The children from left to right are: Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. Behind them are soldiers of the Vietnam Army 25th Division. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
While recently reviewing The Deer Hunter, we strayed In Country, a tangled thicket where the eternal skirmish over Vietnam carries on. Now it is held-up as a mirror to military madness, and as a parable for the incursion / invasion of Iraq. But whereas the strategic argument for Gulf War II remains opaque to this day despite inquiry after inquiry, I suggest that the escalation in Vietnam, as at 1965, is different to the events of 2003 by a substantial degree, rendering most modern comparisons between the two erroneous. The late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s formed the middle age of the Cold War (a…
Continue Reading →The Deer Hunter
(Dir. Michael Cimino) (1978) How war tears a small, close-knit community to shreds. Beer-drinking buddies from a steel town in Pennsylvanian hinterland, totally committed to going off to fight in Vietnam, all black-and-white in a world of grey, find themselves traumatised, humiliated, chewed-up and spat out, coming home completely changed and with a darker world-view. Cimino’s best (one might say, only decent) film is a remarkable, potent effort, one tending to galvanise heated reactions in the viewer. There have been objections to its length. Certainly, the initial wedding ceremony and celebrations are long but whilst The Varnished Culture generally much…
Continue Reading →Daphne Gum – A Celebration
Yesterday, on the eve of her 100th birthday, TVC was honoured to join Daphne Gum MBE OA and family in a sumptuous afternoon tea celebration. Today, the 24th January 2016, Miss Gum is celebrating this milestone with friends in her care facility. Miss Gum is acknowledged world-wide for her contribution to the welfare and education of children, particularly children with cerebral palsy. To us she is Auntie Daphne, a staunch, cheerful and purposeful influence in our lives. To read more about this pioneering woman, see Lesley’s updated Wikipedia article, “Daphne Lorraine Gum” go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Lorraine_Gum Note: Sadly, Daphne Gum passed away on 28 February 2017. She touched and enlivened a…
Continue Reading →Mein Kampf is Back
(photo by Heinrich Hoffmann, 1927)
Hitler’s 1927 double-volume book of hate is back. Out of copyright, the feeling is that it should be out there, to stand as an example of the dangers of messianic self-belief [as H.R. Trevor-Roper put it], excessive unification movements (e.g. the pan German movement and lebensraum to the east) and racial purity (and vilification). William Shirer noted “it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe. For whatever other accusations…
Continue Reading →