On October 11, 1798, John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia that

Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

But are we still a moral and religious people? In “The Real American Founding: A Conversation,” professors of politics David Azerrad and Thomas West help us answer that question.

In the fifth lecture of that course, titled “Morality and Virtue,” professors Azerrad and West discuss the fact that government always legislates morality, but what that morality consists of depends on the beliefs of those who make the laws. The nature of the legislative power is to tell people what they can and cannot do, what is right and wrong.

In the Founders’ understanding, they believed that government ought to support true morality and virtue. That is, morality and virtue grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God, from which they derived man’s natural rights and duties.

The Founders also believed that the laws of nature and of nature’s God, along with the natural rights and duties derived from them, were in accord with their Christian beliefs. Government therefore ought not to be hostile to Christianity, but rather should support it with laws that are friendly to it and encourage its flourishing among the citizenry.

[Abraham Lincoln] helped fell trees to build a large river raft to carry farm goods down a local river and then the treacherous Mississippi to New Orleans. There, they took the raft apart and sold the logs to build houses in the first bustling big city the future president had ever seen.

Lincoln then walked the nearly 800 miles back to central Illinois. //

The 1860 presidential election has always seemed like a political presidential watershed to me. //

That was the first national confrontation between the two major parties that have shaped American politics ever since and endure today. That's because their ideologies and platforms have been – shall we say – malleable, adapting adeptly to society's changing times, interests, and priorities and starving third parties of lasting issues.

The Republican Party was created in Wisconsin in 1854 around the dominant issue of the day, slavery. In its first presidential contest, the anti-slavery GOP carried the day with Abraham Lincoln as nominee. //

When slavery split Democrats into northern and southern wings in 1860, that election became a four-way race. The northern Democrat was old friend Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas, who fared the worst.

There were 33 states then. Douglas won one of them, Arkansas. Lincoln needed 152 electoral votes. He got 180 from 18 states with only 39.7 percent of the splintered popular vote.

Welcome to the White House, Mr. President. Until 1933, Inauguration Days back then were in March. By March of 1861, seven states had seceded. Five weeks later, Confederates started the Civil War in South Carolina.

In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all enslaved people in the South.

As an attempt to begin national healing, for his 1864 reelection, Lincoln chose as his vice-presidential running mate a southern Democrat, Sen. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.

That’s the only time a U.S. political party has nominated a bipartisan national ticket. It worked for the election. But not so well after, when GOP Congress met Democrat president. Post-presidency, Johnson became the only president to later serve in the Senate.

Lincoln’s second inauguration came outside the Capitol with John Wilkes Booth reportedly watching from nearby. Like much of what the self-educated Lincoln wrote, the speech was full of humanity, grace, and humility, and far shorter than today's wordy promise agendas salted with calculated applause lines:

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds…

The ensuing celebration lacked Lincoln’s favorite food, chicken fricassee. But the 250-foot-long buffet table was laden with veal, venison, quail, oyster stew, and six flavors of ice cream, including Lincoln’s favorite, vanilla.

Twenty-five days later, the Civil War ended as the deadliest conflict still in U.S. history.

Thirty days after that inauguration, the Lincolns went to a play at Ford’s Theater. It was Good Friday.

Allegedly to see the performance better, the president’s bodyguard, John Parker, left his post outside the Lincolns' box. But he wound up in a nearby saloon.

Confederate sympathizer Booth had no trouble sneaking in behind the president with his .44 Derringer. The bullet entered the left side of Lincoln’s head, passed through the brain, lodging just behind the right eye.

The 56-year-old president, who had maintained the Union but would lose three of his four sons to illness, never regained consciousness and died the next morning.

(In a bizarre twist, Lincoln's eternal rest was interrupted 12 years later by a band of grave robbers who successfully absconded with the presidential corpse for some weeks, seeking ransom for the kidnapped body. Which explains why Abraham Lincoln now rests in a Springfield memorial in a coffin sealed within two tons of cement and steel.)

mopani Retired Professor
11 hours ago
I predict that, unlike Joe Biden in 2017, she will not show up.

BTW, has this happened before, were a failed Presidential candidate was required to certify the election victory of their opponent? If so I would like to run a comparison.

ECoolidge19 mopani
11 hours ago
Yes it has. The year 2000. Al Gore against George Bush Jr. Gore was Clinton's VP

Retired Professor mopani
8 hours ago
Although that most recently happened in 2000, 1968 is the closest analogy. Humphrey was LBJ's VP, and he bypassed the primaries to get the nomination at the convention after LBJ unexpectedly dropped out at the end of March, due to his overwhelming unpopularity caused by the Vietnam war. Humphrey wound up with the nomination by default after RFK's assassination in June (does any of this kind of rhyme with current events?).

After Humphrey lost to Nixon in November, LBJ spared Humphrey the embarrassment of having to certify his own loss on January 6, 1969, by sending him out of the country on some contrived diplomatic mission. Thus, the Constitutional duty of opening and counting the electoral votes fell to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Richard Russell of Georgia, who was indubitably the greatest U.S. Senator of the 20th Century. Uncle Dick may have secretly enjoyed it. Although he was a lifetime [conservative, Southern] Democrat, he also had an excellent working relationship with Nixon, going back to the latter's own tenure in the Senate twenty years earlier.

Were Trump to win next week (please, Lord!), the same scenario would be repeating itself, and VP Harris would have the delightful duty of certifying her opponent's election. I think Biden will want to rub her nose in it, so he won't let her off the hook like LBJ did for Humphrey. However, even if she renigs reneges on her Constitutional duty, the certification process will still go forward, presided over by the President Pro Tempore, who I assume at that point will be Sen. Grassley of Iowa.

This current election is crazy, but I could make the case that 1968 was even crazier. Go read up on it and LMK what you think.

Gone are the glory days of the Boeing 747, the 'Queen of the Skies'. The first commercial double-decker aircraft flew in 1969, and though several are still flying today, only a few airlines operate the type on commercial passenger flights. According to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, there are only four airlines operating 747s this month: Air China, Korean Air, Lufthansa, and Aeroflot. //

In October 2014, 33 airlines operated 747 passenger flights, and British Airways (BA) had the most. Ten years ago, 12,171 747 flights were scheduled worldwide, more than 2,000 of which were operated by BA. More than half of BA's 747 flights were to and from the United States (US). //

Data shows that in October 2014, 1,112 flights were scheduled to and from the US on BA 747s. This included 11 cities and more than 350,000 seats. It should come as no surprise that the busiest 747 route was from Heathrow to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York. Ten years ago, there were 215 flights scheduled in each direction to JFK on 747s, up to eight flights in one day.

Mass storage has come a long way since the introduction of the personal computer. [Tech Time Traveller] has an interesting video about the dawn of PC hard drives focusing on a company called MiniScribe. After a promising start, they lost an IBM contract and fell on hard times.

Apparently, the company was faking inventory to the tune of $15 million because executives feared for their jobs if profits weren’t forthcoming. Once they discovered the incorrect inventory, they not only set out to alter the company’s records to match it, but they also broke into an outside auditing firm’s records to change things there, too.

Senior management hatched a plan to charge off the fake inventory in small amounts to escape the notice of investors and government regulators. But to do that, they need to be able to explain where the balance of the nonexistent inventory was. So they leased a warehouse to hold the fraud inventory and filled it with bricks. Real bricks like you use to build a house. Around 26,000 bricks were packaged in boxes, assigned serial numbers, and placed on pallets. Auditors would see the product ready to ship and there were even plans to pretend to ship them to CompuAdd and CalAbco, two customers, who had agreed to accept and return the bricks on paper allowing them to absorb the $15 million write off a little at a time.

Unfortunately, the fictitious excellent financial performance led to an expectation of even better performance in the future which necessitated even further fraud.

Joshua says:
September 29, 2023 at 10:38 am
Indeed, certain black/white models were of fine quality.
And their power suppliers weren’t such a Russian murks, either (see Junost TV internals juck).
Whoever wanted to get a large, but pure b/w TV back in late 20th century simply had to give them a try.

By the time, West Germany had stopped production of big b/w CCIR TVs and had focused on PAL color TVs.
So even West Germans had to think about importing a b/w TV from GDR.

Also interesting: The GDR was about the last county still operating pure b/w transmitters.
That’s because SECAM had reduced b/w quality, even if the source material didn’t have color. So pure b/w programme were being aired in plain CCIR norm, not SECAM.

Joshua says:
September 29, 2023 at 10:45 am
What’s also notable, East German products were also being used by us West Germans.
They were sold via Quelle catalog, albeit with their origin being hidden.

Which is kind of sad, because we had no problems using GDR appliances.
Their RG28 mixer wasn’t worse than our Krupp model.

In general, GDR products weren’t made with planned obsolescence in mind yet, because the GDR didn’t even thought about such business practices (too naive, I suppose).

So yes, a lot of West Germans grew up with East German products, either knowingly or unknowingly.

The tip of the ice berg was that many gifts from West German relatives were from Quelle catalog. So East Germans literally got their own products back, depending on how we see it. :)

milldude says:
September 29, 2023 at 12:07 pm
The “lack” of planned obsolescence was not out of naiveté, but born out of necessity. The scarce resources and low production volumes meant long-lasting products came naturally. Also, in the “Planwirtschaft” system theory, if there would be no further (or rater, reduced) need of a certain product, the state-owned factorys just would reduce output of that good and produce something else instead. There was also an extensive recycling system for glass and metal containers, much like we have today.

Joshua says:
September 29, 2023 at 2:29 pm
Yes, but GDR had produced twofold, as far as I know.
a) for own use, to satisfy the needs of the people
b) for export, to make good money (D-Mark)

Usually, it was the way that the norm that the ‘good’ products were sold for export and the stuff with small defects (scratches etc) was sold in GDR to the own people.

Same goes for sweets and chewing gum. The export version was being sold in a shiny package, while the version for the people was sold in a dull package.

Officially, the explanation was that this was a trick, to fight capitalism with its own weapons. Unofficially, it was clear that the own people were less being worth to the regime.

Dude says:
October 1, 2023 at 12:18 am
GDR was a Potemkin village of the soviet system in the first place, so the quality of products was higher for the show of it.

Otherwise the soviet system was searching for the lowest “socially necessary” cost. The reason why soviet products were built so robust was because of a quirk of the accounting system: not money but kilometer-tonnes. People had production quotas, which could be filled more easily if you put unnecessary amounts of material in the design. Whether the product actually works – who cares?

It’s thus interesting on more than one level to find a promotional film from the mid 1970s showcasing VEB Fernsehgerätewerk Stassfurt (German, Anglophones will need to enable subtitle translation), the factory which produced televisions for East Germans. It provides a pretty comprehensive look at how a 1970s TV set was made, gives us a gateway into the East German consumer electronics business as a whole, and a chance to see how the East Germany preferred to see itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0xMK6UZBys //

The film is at pains to talk about the factory as a part of the idealised community of a socialist state, and we’re given a tour of the workers’ facilities to a backdrop of some choice pieces of music. References to the collective and some of the Communist apparatus abound, and finally we’re shown the factory’s Order of Karl Marx. As far as it goes then we Westerners finally get to see the lives of each genosse, but only through an authorised lens.

The TVs made at Stassfurt were sold under the RFT East German technology combine brand, and the factory continued in operation through the period of German re-unification. Given that many former East German businesses collapsed with the fall of the Wall, and that the European consumer electronics industry all but imploded in the period following the 1990s then, it’s something of a surprise to find that it survives today, albeit in a much reduced form. The plant is now owned by the German company TechniSat, and manufactures the latest-spec digital TVs. //

As a juxtaposition of how a communist TV factory saw itself, have a watch of a capitalist one doing a bit of self-promotion.
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/29/retrotechtacular-1950s-televisions-were-beasts/#more-287834

The 51 Factory has been established with the goals of supporting the legendary P51 Mustang, British Spitfire, and other Rolls Royce or Packard Merlin powered aircraft of the WWII era.

These superb aircraft powered by 1650 cubic inch, over 1500 hp, liquid cooled V-12 engines, represented some of the most advanced technologies of the day, and most certainly greatly contributed to the allied victory, both in the Pacific, and in Europe.

The fighters developed in WWII are the pinnacle of piston engine, propeller driven aircraft performance. Even today, the fastest piston engine aircraft in the world are modified WWII fighters with Rolls Royce/Packard Merlin V-12’s, as seen at the annual Reno Air Races.

Yesterday was Columbus Day, a holiday in honor of an important man who did something important. However, under Joe Biden's misrule, it has been rebranded into a travesty called "Indigenous People's Day." No one is sure what the day is about. Most Americans ignore it while the left enters into a bacchanalia of America-bashing and virtue signaling.

I have a great deal of problems with this new commemorative day because I can't really figure out what we are honoring with that celebration. The contributions made by the aboriginal peoples of North America to American or world culture are exceedingly small. A handful of words — canoe, moccasin, squaw, etc. — have passed into common usage. There are a modest number of burial mounds and some rock glyphs to record their passing. None of the American Indian tribes had developed metallurgy or the wheel. Mathematics and even a rudimentary means of writing were unknown for the most part. Warfare was endemic and brutal, and frequently had the objective of genocide. Slavery was part of the culture of most Indian tribes, as was ritualized torture, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In short, I find very little admirable about American Indian culture — the documented variety, not the maudlin, Dances With Wolves fake culture the left imagines existed — and can't think of any reason Americans, of all ancestries, have to be sorry that it is a thing of the past. //

Indigenous People's Day is just another assault on America by people who hate the country. Yesterday's statement by Kamala Harris is a prime example of the left and a large number of the America First crowd fetishizing anyone the US has bested economically or militarily.

Yep, Europeans destroyed Stone Age tribal societies mired in superstition and bloodletting and built the greatest nation on Earth. We won, you lost, deal with it.

Historically, and especially from the national identity and unity perspective, Indigenous People's Day makes much less sense than Antebellum South Day. //

3. The American flag is dipped in submission. This is not done.

4. The flag that remains upright is that of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. This is another one of those anomalies that demonstrate just how fake this stuff is. American Indians never had the industry to make flags, and they didn't use flags, so this is just cultural appropriation. The irony of the victory ceremony being conducted in American English, Custer's native tongue, can't be overlooked. //

Ethnic pride is great, but it can't be at the sake of an American identity. If that is where you are headed, trust me when I tell you that you aren't going to like where the path you are following is going to take you. //

Laocoön of Troy idalily
3 hours ago
Winston Churchill: Nations...which go down fighting rise again, and those...that surrender tamely are finished.

Darkest Hour (2017)

In June 1924, a British mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory and a young engineering student named Andrew "Sandy" Irvine set off for the summit of Mount Everest and disappeared—two more casualties of a peak that has claimed over 300 lives to date. Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's was never found—until now. An expedition led by National Geographic Explorer and professional climber Jimmy Chin—who won an Oscar for the 2019 documentary Free Solo, which he co-directed—has located a boot and a sock marked with Irvine's initials at a lower altitude than where Mallory's body had been found.

The team took a DNA sample from the remains, and members of the Irvine family have volunteered to compare DNA test results to confirm the identification. “It’s an object that belonged to him and has a bit of him in it,” Irvine’s great-niece Julie Summers told National Geographic. "It tells the whole story about what probably happened. I'm regarding it as something close to closure.” //

A Chinese climber reported stumbling across "an English dead" at 26,570 feet (8,100 meters) in 1975, but the man was killed in an avalanche the following day before the report could be verified. //

phat_tony Ars Centurion
18y
302
Subscriptor
It would certainly be amazing if anything is ever found that makes it conclusive whether or not they made it. For anyone familiar with the details, it is entirely plausible that they did make it and beat Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay by 29 years. It's just impossible to tell if they died on the way up or the way down.

One bit of - admittedly entirely inconclusive - evidence is that George Mallory had a photograph of his wife with him in his pocket which he intended to leave at the top if he made it. When his body was discovered in 1999, the photo was no longer in his pocket.

Now, who knows. Maybe when things got desperate, he needed something else from his pocket and just floundered desperately for it with frozen hands, beyond caring that the picture of his wife fell out and blew away when he was near death. Or after his fall, his body was broken and death was imminent, but he wasn't quite dead and pulled the photo from his pocket to look at as he died, then it blew away. Who knows? The missing photo is far from proof. But it's some indication he may have made it.

It'll be amazing if that camera ever turns up, with film that can still be developed, and it has a picture from the summit. //

RSwan Smack-Fu Master, in training
2m
1
Selethorme said:
IIRC there's some contention that the Chinese got to the top of the mountain first (before the known Edmund Hillary summiting) and the camera would prove whether or not Mallory and Irvine got there first.

You can get to Everest from the Nepal side, or the Chinese/Tibetan side. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay (can't forget him) climbed the Nepal side (they did it first). Mallory and Irvine tried the Chinese side. The Chinese are the first known to successfully climb the Chinese side. That was a Communist party effort. If Mallory and Irvine did successfully climb Everest from the Chinese side, that would mean the Chinese are no longer the first to climb Everest from the that side. In theory that would mean a loss of prestige to the Chinese if you believe those sort things. //

arjalon Ars Centurion
12y
345
llanitedave said:
More Everest climbers die on the descent than on the ascent. About 56%.

To be expected. People think climbing to the summit is the hardest part.

The hardest part is that the whole mountain is trying to kill you. People are exhausted on the way back down and are careless as the physical exhaustion/limitations catches up. Saying "Failure is not an option" is not accurate in places where failure and death is the default. Survival is an option.

While active, the natural reactor generated fission waste byproducts similar to those produced by modern nuclear reactors at power plants. This provided some useful evidence for the scientists, who found that the radioactive waste products created by this natural process, including those with million year half lives, have decayed away. The byproducts have also barely moved - according to the US Department of Energy, the plutonium “has moved less than 10 feet from where it was formed almost two billion years ago.”

This means that when the Oklo reactor was discovered in 1972, the fission products had been harmlessly lying in the same place for around a billion years.

Also, in the hundreds of thousands of years it has operated as a nuclear reactor, Oklo has never had a meltdown or explosion. Scientists found that “the combination of aluminium phosphate grains to trap radioactive materials and the groundwater to regulate the reaction allowed for an extremely safe reactor.” Mother Nature knows best.

So next time someone tells you that solar and wind are the only ‘natural’ forms of energy generation, tell them about the natural reactors in Gabon. I’ve yet to hear about solar panels and wind turbines sprouting up naturally and generating electricity without human intervention anywhere in the world in the history of our planet. The blunt truth is that nature created fission well before humans were capable of building nuclear reactors. If that isn’t a clear definition of ‘natural’ energy, I don’t know what is.

Sonia Purnell’s just released biography of Pamela Harriman, Kingmaker, attempts to be fairer to its subject than previous biographies. As the subtitle implies, Harriman led a “Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue,” and there is a lot in here about the subject’s early role as a courtesan. Whatever the details of that role, it was far in the past when I came to know and work with Ambassador Harriman on issues of international importance.

During my last four years in the FBI, I worked with dozens of U.S. ambassadors. I served as the Legal Attaché (“Legat” in Bureau jargon) at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. However, for the FBI and the DOJ, our office had wide regional responsibility. We handled the business of the Justice Department with 26 countries in Africa. So, I dealt with a wide variety of our ambassadors at posts large and small.

“Political” ambassadors are often criticized as dilettantes who buy their appointments with large campaign donations. They are contrasted with career ambassadors, who rise through the ranks of the State Department. I have quite a different impression. The political ambassadors, coming from various roles in American society, saw their mission as representing the United States as a whole, while career ambassadors narrowly protected the interests of the State Department, to the exclusion of other agencies.

When I was first assigned to the embassy in Paris, it was led by an ambassador who understood and valued what the FBI could do. Yes, she was a substantial fundraiser for President Bill Clinton, who appointed her, but she demonstrated a love for her adopted country. Pamela Churchill Harriman, a British-born aristocrat, had become the U.S. ambassador to France just months before my arrival in June 1994. //

That is how we happened to set up a luncheon for a group of federal judges.

At that luncheon, Thomas S. Ellis III, a federal district judge from the Eastern District of Virginia, discussed the World War II Normandy landings. Tom Ellis was recommending a new book. He mentioned a specific finding by the author, concerning a key Allied decision.

Ambassador Harriman responded, “No, that was Ike’s call.”

Judge Ellis persisted. “This author says …”

The ambassador: “Oh, no, Omar Bradley told me it was Ike’s call.”

A look of recognition came over Judge Ellis’s face: He realized he was in the presence of someone with firsthand knowledge of World War II.

Pamela Churchill Harriman was truly a remarkable woman. Once married to Winston Churchill’s only son and the mother of Churchill’s only grandson, she was in the room when many of the key decisions of World War II were made. For the next half century, she would continue to meet influential men, be they from London, Washington, or Hollywood. //

Thomas J. Baker is an international law enforcement consultant. He served as a FBI Special Agent for 33 years in a variety of investigative and management positions facing the challenges of crime and terrorism. He is the author of "The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy."

In April 1991, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave the Alexander Meiklejohn Lecture at Brown University, in which he explored the idea of the U.S. Constitution.

“Unlike any other nation in the world, we consider ourselves bound together, not by genealogy or residence but by belief in certain principles; and the most important of those principles are set forth in the Constitution of the United States,” Justice Scalia said.

Referring to the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1787, Justice Scalia added,

When else has a government been established, not by conquerors dividing up the spoils, or even by political parties parceling out the power, but by a four-month seminar consisting of many of the most erudite and politically experienced individuals in the nation?

The justice went on to remind his listeners why it’s critical each generation of Americans learn, know and love our Constitution.

“[The U.S. Supreme Court] cannot save the society from itself – because in the last analysis the Court is no more than the society itself,” Justice Scalia said, adding,

The Constitution will endure, in other words, only to the extent that it endures in your understanding and affection.

The Islamic Republic imposes strict rules on Iranian life. This extended photo collection shows Iranian society prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and, it’s obvious that Iran was a very different world.

It was also a world that was looking brighter for women. And, as everyone knows, when things get better for women, things get better for everyone. After the revolution, the 70 years of advancements in Iranian women’s rights were rolled back virtually overnight.

Published 1997
Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff

The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location. The Internet represents one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure. Beginning with the early research in packet switching, the government, industry and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology. //

In this paper,3 several of us involved in the development and evolution of the Internet share our views of its origins and history. This history revolves around four distinct aspects. There is the technological evolution that began with early research on packet switching and the ARPANET (and related technologies),

At the start of WWII, the US armed forces used various means for enciphering their confidential traffic. At the lowest level were hand ciphers. Above that were the M-94 and M-138 strip ciphers and at the top level a small number of highly advanced SIGABA cipher machines.

The Americans used the strip ciphers extensively however these were not only vulnerable to cryptanalysis but also difficult to use. Obviously a more modern and efficient means of enciphering was needed.

At that time Swedish inventor Boris Hagelin was trying to sell his cipher machines to foreign governments. He had already sold versions of his C-36, C-38 and B-211 cipher machines to European countries. He had also visited the United States in 1937 and 1939 in order to promote his C-36 machine and the electric C-38 with a keyboard called BC-38 but he was not successful (1). The Hagelin C-36 had 5 pin-wheels and the lugs on the drum were fixed in place. Hagelin modified the device by adding another pin-wheel and making the lugs moveable. This new machine was called Hagelin C-38 and it was much more secure compared to its predecessor.

In 1940 he brought to the US two copies of the hand operated C-38 and the Americans ordered 50 machines for evaluation. Once the devices were delivered, they underwent testing by the cryptologists of the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service and after approval it was adopted by the US armed forces for their midlevel traffic. Overall, more than 140.000 M-209’s were built for the US forces by the L.C. Smith and Corona Typewriters Company. (2) //

‘Report of interview with S/Sgt, Communications Section 79 Inf Div, 7th Army’. (dated March 1945) (51):

"The US Army code machine #209 was found to be something that hampered operations. It would take at least half hour to get a message through from the message center by use of this code machine and as a result the codes of particular importance or speed, for instance mortar messages, were sent in the clear."

Also, from the ‘Immediate report No. 126 (Combat Observations)’ - dated 6 May 1945 (52): ‘Information on the tactical situation is radioed or telephoned from the regiments to corps at hourly or more frequent intervals. Each officer observer averages about 30 messages per day.………………The M-209 converter proved too slow, cumbersome and inaccurate for transmission of those reports and was replaced by a simple prearranged message code with excellent results’.

Sabin Howard is the foremost practitioner of, and authority on, Modern Classicism.

Sabin Howard is sculpting the National WWI Memorial, a 58' long bronze relief to be installed in Washington DC in 2024.

anon-fkq1
15 hours ago
Enough with the manufactured controversies. My Gen-Z kids are working hard. The Gen Z kids where I work do 60-70 hour weeks during tax season. They still can't afford decent housing. Why is that?

If we want to point fingers then let's ask some questions:

If everything was so fricking awesome with the boomers, etc., then why did the country go to absolute crap under their watch?
When did divorce become a thing? Oh, the 70's? Who were the adults at that time? - hmmm not X'rs, Millennials or Gen Z, so who does that leave?
When did single parenting become a thing? That's right, you guessed it, the 70's.
What generation were the latch key kids? Oh yeah, Gen-X. Who were their parents?
Which generation said, "never trust anyone over 30?" Yep, that's right, the ones who still won't relinquish power in their 70's and 80's.
You get the idea.

Maybe we should all just shut up about generations. Every generation has great people and awful people. It is the human condition

“Light is everything,” says the sculptor. And, all at once, it is.

You see light as if for the first time. Not as some condition of simple illumination, but as the maker of solids, the hand, the hammer and the chisel, the creator. You see it sifting down from the ceiling and sneaking through the glass doors, cascading from the two big windows up front, the long room filled with it in every angle and on every surface, the whole place swelling with daylight pouring through the glass bricks out back. Iron light, straw light, light bright as brass, sun-yellow light corkscrewing from the skylights to settle across every unfinished face and figure. Light gathering in the folds of the uniforms, washing the boot tops and the rifle barrels, radiant, hard as marble, soft as lambswool, painting the floors, drifting into the corners like snow, sleeping in the shadows. Light on every body—indifferent light, animating light, sanctifying light.

The sculptor is Sabin Howard. While his tools and materials suggest Howard works in clay and bronze, his true medium is light. And this sculpture, A Soldier’s Journey, years in the making, will serve as the centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. When complete, Howard’s immense frieze will tell the story of an American reluctantly answering the call to war—a deeply personal and individual story and the grand symbolic story of the nation all at once. Across five scenes and 38 larger-than-life-size human figures, it will be nearly 60 feet long and ten feet high. And it may become the greatest memorial bronze of the modern age.

RACISM CREATED GUN CONTROL

The first law to prevent the carrying of concealed weapons appeared in Kentucky in 1813. Very few people owned handguns back then, but many had knives. And the large Bowie knife was becoming quite popular at that time. Whites in the South feared blacks, so they outlawed the concealed carrying of any weapon, including knives.

The Democrat Party, which owned the south for generations, were afraid of slaves, freed blacks and abolitionists (i.e. Republicans) carrying Bowie knives. To maintain power over these Americans, Democrat politicians, state by state, outlawed concealed-carry. By 1850 every Southern state had made it illegal to carry any kind of concealed weapon.

Today, Democrats are still afraid of the masses. They cannot gain complete power over us so long as we own weapons. Should Harris/Walz somehow cheat their way into power, Americans can expect them to accelerate the war on the Second Amendment that Democrats have waged for decades now.