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.

The first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today.

Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the inner motives and secret decisions of each side and details the deadly stockpiles that remained unsecured as the Soviet Union collapsed. This is the fascinating story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and a previously unheralded collection of scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies changed the course of history.

Buchanan documents, as have others before him, that both the First and Second World Wars are primarily the product of wretchedly incompetent management of international relations on the part of Britain, France, Germany, and others. //

Most readers, myself included, will not buy all of Buchanan's arguments. Regarding the fecklessness of European diplomacy, and the causes of the First World War, I think that Buchanan is on solid ground. Other researchers before Buchanan have found the First World War to have been an avoidable tragedy that the European states should have been able to avoid. Buchanan's Second World War arguments are somewhat more problematic. //

Buchanan makes a pretty good case that Hitler was an opportunist, and that he was not without justification in seeking return of the Sudetenland and of Bohemia. Had he stopped there, and negotiated return of Danzig without war (which Buchanan says would have happened absent the British guaranty) we might be living in a very different world. Who can say?

Personally, I still think that Hitler was determined to fight a bloody war against Russia and persecute the Jews and other nationalities and ethnicities that he hated. Ultimately, it seems that Hitler was bound to fight such a war, but Buchanan makes some case that the world might have been better had Germany and Russia fought their war without the Western Allies being involved. Each reader must decide for him or her self. I don't accept this thesis. //

Mr. Buchanan's most insightful analysis is at the very end of this piece. He argues, as discussed above, that inept European diplomacy in which Great Powers went to war for non-vital reasons, was the cause of the World Wars. He then contrasts this with US diplomacy from World War I to the end of the Cold War. During this time American leaders refused to be easily drawn into conflicts and joined the World Wars only in their latter stages (particularly the First) thereby avoiding in significant degree, the horrendous casualties that many others suffered. Even more significantly, once America became the leading world power, American diplomacy repeatedly avoided war-starting confrontations by refusing, not without anguish, to fight wars for non-vital interests to America. Hence America's refusal to fight wars over Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, or even the Cuban Missile Crisis. The contrast between the success of America in winning the Cold War without a World War (albeit with some sizable errors such as Vietnam) and European fecklessness in managing to start two world wars in 25 years, is stark. This is a truly fascinating insight which in my opinion is the major contribution of this book.

Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer took a trip down memory lane this week by building a functioning PDP-11 minicomputer from parts found in a tub of hardware.

It's a fun watch, especially for anyone charged with maintaining these devices during their heyday. Unfortunately, Plummer did not place his creation in a period-appropriate case, and one might argue he cheated a bit by using a board containing a Linux computer to present boot devices.

https://youtu.be/GJfeli6H_dc

Plummer's build started with a backplane containing slots for a CPU card, a pair of 512 KB RAM cards, and the Linux card – a QBone by the look of it. Also connected to the backplane were power, along with some halt and run switches.

The QBone is an interesting card and serves as an example of extending the original hardware rather than fully relying on emulation. ... In Plummer's case, he used it to provide a boot device for his bits-from-a-box PDP-11.

Once connected and with a boot device mounted, Plummer was able to fire up the computer with its mighty megabyte of memory and interact with it as if back in the previous century.

The TMS9900 could have powered the PC revolution. Here’s why it didn’t. //

The utter dominance of these Intel microprocessors goes back to 1978, when IBM chose the 8088 for its first personal computer. Yet that choice was far from obvious. Indeed, some who know the history assert that the Intel 8088 was the worst among several possible 16-bit microprocessors of the day.

It was not. There was a serious alternative that was worse. //

So why aren’t we all using 68K-based computers today?

The answer comes back to being first to market. Intel’s 8088 may have been imperfect but at least it was ready, whereas the Motorola 68K was not. And IBM’s thorough component qualification process required that a manufacturer offer up thousands of “production released” samples of any new part so that IBM could perform life tests and other characterizations. IBM had hundreds of engineers doing quality assurance, but component qualifications take time. In the first half of 1978, Intel already had production-released samples of the 8088. By the end of 1978, Motorola’s 68K was still not quite ready for production release.

And unfortunately for Motorola, the Boca Raton group wanted to bring its new IBM PC to market as quickly as possible. So they had only two fully qualified 16-bit microprocessors to choose from. In a competition between two imperfect chips, Intel’s chip was less imperfect than TI’s.

Einstein dedicated his time between 1905-1915 to develop general relativity (GR). It seems strange to me that no other physicists attempted to tackle this problem in this ten-year period. After all, developing a relativistic theory of gravity superseding Newton's should have been the holy grail of physics at that period. How come none gave it a shot?

I have this romantic idea about the lost writings of Epicurus that perhaps somewhere at the bottom of the Aegean Sea there still lies a ship sunken in Ancient Greek times with copies of the philosopher's writings stored in some waterproof amphorae (or something like that). Maybe one day they will resurface as was the case with the Antikythera wreck and mechanism, or maybe they won't and the ship and its remaining contents will just dissolve into enlarging entropy. Personally, I would certainly welcome their discovery most dearly ...

Now my question is along similar lines but more concrete in terms of known history: What were important instances of historic documents (or other artifacts) that were thought lost (e.g. with the library of Alexandria) or that were inaccessible at the time (e.g. in Soviet Russian archives) and that led to significant new historic understanding when new developments occurred and copies became available (perhaps surprisingly)?

I recently heard a story about John Wesley giving way to a stubborn man while on a narrow bridge: in short, Wesley was riding his horse on a bridge, while a man who was known to be a critic of Wesley was riding the other way. The bridge was too narrow for both, so the man said, "I never make way for a fool!" Wesley responded, "I do", and backed his horse out so the man can cross.

This was interesting, so I decided to look it up.

William Sheridan Allen

Use of arsenic sulfides for yellow, orange/red hues adds to artist's known pigment palette. //

Since 2019, researchers have been analyzing the chemical composition of the materials used to create Rembrandt's masterpiece, The Night Watch, as part of the Rijksmuseum's ongoing Operation Night Watch, devoted to its long-term preservation. Chemists at the Rijksmuseum and the University of Amsterdam have now detected unusual arsenic-based yellow and orange/red pigments used to paint the duff coat of one of the central figures in the painting, according to a recent paper in the journal Heritage Science. It's a new addition to Rembrandt's known pigment palette that further adds to our growing body of knowledge about the materials he used.

As previously reported, past analyses of Rembrandt's paintings identified many pigments the Dutch master used in his work, including lead white, multiple ochres, bone black, vermilion, madder lake, azurite, ultramarine, yellow lake, and lead-tin yellow, among others. The artist rarely used pure blue or green pigments, with Belshazzar's Feast being a notable exception. (The Rembrandt Database is the best resource for a comprehensive chronicling of the many different investigative reports.)

Shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1974, French performance artist Philippe Petit stepped out from the roof of the World Trade Center’s South Tower and onto a one-inch thick cable, stretching 140 feet across to the North Tower.

With no safety net or harness, all he had was a balancing pole for company – and a drop of 1,360-feet and certain death below him should he make one wrong step.

Philippe Petit, a young Frenchman artist tight rope walker, gave the most spectacular high-wire performance of all time.
6
Petit performed the act shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1974.
Polaris

“I was a little anxious on that first crossing because we never checked how strong the anchor point was on the other side,” Petit tells The Post. “It wasn’t great, to be honest, but it was good enough.”

Audacious, dangerous and entirely illegal, Petit’s wire walk was called the ‘artistic crime of the century’ and was years in the planning. Using covert surveillance and endless subterfuge, Petit managed to smuggle a huge amount of equipment up the 110 floors of the South Tower before his friend and collaborator, Jean-Louis Blondeau, fired a cable across to the North Tower using a bow and arrow.

He even chartered a helicopter so he could take aerial photographs of the rooftops of the Twin Towers.

He was released without charge on the condition he perform a free show for children in Central Park. //

He also found himself in the Guinness Book of World Records, much to his annoyance.

“My art cannot be defined by numbers or records but the irony is I unwittingly found myself in it whether I liked it or not,” he said. “I never I wanted to be in it alongside people who can eat 10 pizzas in a minute.” //

“Here in America I am called a daredevil or a stuntman, like I’m Evel Knievel on a motorbike or Harry Houdini, but nothing could be further from the truth. My art is not death-defying, it is life-affirming.

“I want to inspire people and to believe they can move mountains. I want them to look up without fear.

“I am a poet in the sky.”

Of Captain Teach Alias Blackbeard

Edward Teach was a Bristol man born, but had sailed some time out of Jamaica in privateers, in the late French war; yet though he had often distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage, he was never raised to any command, till he went a-pirating, which I think was at the latter end of the year 1716, ... //

Being asked the meaning of this, he only answered, by damning them, that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.