Everybody knows
TVTropes is the best and most
time-
killing-est way to learn about the clichés and archetypes that permeate modern media. But dear reader, there is
so much more. Enter
Useful Notes. Originally created as a place for tropers to pool factual information as a writing aid, the subsite has quietly grown into a small wiki of its own -- a compendium of crowdsourced wisdom on a staggering array of topics, all written in the site's signature brand of lighthearted snark. Though it reads like an irreverent and informal Wikipedia, its articles act as genuinely useful primers to complex and obscure topics alike, all in service of the project's five goals: "To debunk common media stereotypes; to help you understand some media better; to educate, inform and sometimes entertain; to promote peace and understanding (maybe); and... to facilitate world domination." Sounds about right. Click inside for bountiful highlights... if you dare.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 26, 2010 -
43 comments
Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online:
"Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 23, 2010 -
7 comments
In the scale of its intensity, its destructiveness and its horror, Stalingrad has no parallel. It engaged the full strength of the two biggest armies in Europe and could fit into no lesser framework than that of a life-and-death conflict which encompasses the earth. - The New York Times, February 4, 1943
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Oct 27, 2010 -
61 comments
He was... "...the meanest, toughest, most ambitious S.O.B. I ever knew but he'll be a hell of a secretary of state." -- Richard Nixon
Alexander Meigs
Haig, Jr.,, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, who served US Presidents Nixon (as a military adviser, deputy assistant for national-security affairs, and chief of staff), Ford (chief of staff), and Reagan (secretary of state),
has died at the age of 85. Haig
commanded a batallion during the Vietnam War (where he was seriously wounded), managed the White House during the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, and was himself a former Presidential candidate.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 20, 2010 -
40 comments
Economic crisis, mounting national debt, excessive foreign commitments -- this is no way to run an empire. America needs serious strategic counseling. And fast. It has never been Rome, and to adopt its strategies no -- its ruthless expansion of empire, domination of foreign peoples, and bone-crushing brand of total war -- would only hasten America's decline. Better instead to look to the empire's eastern incarnation: Byzantium, which outlasted its Roman predecessor by eight centuries. It is the lessons of Byzantine grand strategy that America must rediscover today.
posted by jason's_planet
on Jan 25, 2010 -
38 comments
The Soldier in later Medieval England is a historical research project that seeks to 'challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453'. They've compiled impressive
databases of tens of thousands of service records. These are perhaps of interest only to specialists; but the general reader may enjoy the
profiles of individual military men: these run the gamut from regional non-entities like
John Fort esquire of Llanstephan ("in many ways a humdrum figure" though once accused of harbouring a hostile Spaniard!) to more familiar figures such as rebel Welsh prince
Owain Glyndŵr, who began his soldiering,
as did many compatriots, in the service of the English king. Between such extremes of high and low we find, for example,
Reginald Cobham, who made 6,500 florins ransoming a prisoner taken at
Poitiers and rests eternal in a splendid tomb; and various
men loyal and rebel who fought at the bloody
Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
posted by Abiezer
on Dec 5, 2009 -
15 comments
Field Force to Lhasa 1903-04 Captain Cecil Mainprise accompanied General Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Tibet in 1903. He wrote 50
letters home which trace the expedition’s progress into Tibet. Read this insider's account on the day they were written some 105 years later. Final post is 18 November 2009.
[Via]
posted by Abiezer
on Apr 4, 2009 -
8 comments
The Victorian Web is your one-stop resource for England in the Victorian era (1837-1901). The site is much too extensive to give but a flavor. It is divided into 20 categories, including
Technology,
Gender Matters,
Economic Contexts,
Authors,
Political History,
Theater and Popular Entertainment,
Science and
Genre and Technique. Here are a few examples of the articles inside:
Inventions in Alice in Wonderland,
The Role of the Victorian Army,
Earth Yenneps: Victorian Back Slang (and a
glossary of same),
Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Philosophy of Androgyny, Hermaphrodeity, and Victorian Sexual Mores,
Evolution, progress and natural laws and, of course,
Queen Victoria.
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 28, 2008 -
10 comments
Embrace the Suck. Intensive military activity creates an incubator for slang. By bringing together people from geographically diverse backgrounds, putting them into stressful circumstances, and teaching them
a new language of jargon and acronym, the armed forces create fertile ground for new idioms - many of which return home in civvies when the conflicts are over. In the
Civil War,
World War I and
World War II, in
Korea and in
Viet Nam, servicepeople created or popularized now-familiar terms like
shoddy, hotshot, cooties, tailspin, fleabag, face time, joystick, SNAFU, FUBAR, flaky, gung ho, no sweat, flame-out, and many,
many others.
Now, the
GWOT brings us
a new generation of
'milspeak'. Military columnist
Austin Bay has published an early collection of
neologisms from Gulf War II. On NPR,
Bay explains what The Suck is, how to identify a
fobbit, and why Marines look down on the attitude of
Semper I.
posted by Miko
on Mar 31, 2007 -
66 comments
Razzle Dazzle Camouflage
"During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats, which were sinking allied shipping at a dangerous rate. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing. Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship's course. The British called this camouflage scheme 'Dazzle Painting.' The Americans called it 'Razzle Dazzle.'"
posted by hall of robots
on Nov 4, 2005 -
31 comments
Oveta Culp Hobby and the Women's Army Corps. Early in 1941 Congresswoman
Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts (the first woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives) met with General
George C. Marshall, the Army's Chief of Staff, and informed him that she intended to introduce a bill to establish an Army women's corps, separate and distinct from the existing
Army Nurse Corps. Rogers remembered the female civilians who had worked overseas with the Army under contract and as volunteers during World War I: serving without benefit of official status, they had to obtain their own food and quarters, and they received no legal protection or medical care. Upon their return home they were not entitled to the disability benefits or pensions available to U.S. military veterans. Rogers was determined that if women were to serve again with the Army in a wartime theater they would receive the same legal protection and benefits as their male counterparts. After a long and acrimonious debate, the following year the bill was finally approved by Congress and signed into law by FDR.
Oveta Culp Hobby, chairman of the board of the Houston Post, was
appointed as Director of the
WAAC.
(more)
posted by PenguinBukkake
on Sep 4, 2005 -
4 comments
The damage wrought by the construction of an American military base in the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon must rank as one of the most reckless acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory. And all the more so because it was unnecessary and avoidable... but given that it was, the US authorities were very aware of the warnings of archaeologists of the historic importance of the site. Yet, as a report by Dr John Curtis of the British Museum makes clear, they seem to have ignored the warnings. Dr Curtis claimed that in the early days after the war a military presence served a valuable purpose in preventing the site from being looted. But that, he said, did not stop "substantial" damage being done to the site afterwards not just to individual buildings such as the Ishtar Gate, "one of the most famous monuments from antiquity", but also on an estimated 300,000 square metres which had been flattened and covered in gravel, mostly imported from elsewhere. This was done to provide helicopter landing places and parking lots for heavy vehicles that should not have been allowed there in the first place...Cultural vandalism.
Months of war that ruined centuries of history.
American graffiti.
posted by y2karl
on Jan 15, 2005 -
62 comments
The Pacific Wrecks Database is an impressive collection of information about lost and found WWII wrecks in the Pacific. The site is a little hard to navigate (I suggest using the past news archives and the direct links in the description slug on the first page, rather than the drop-down menu,) but the content is worth the trouble. Essays from veterans, discovery tales, photographs, maps, and more await.
posted by headspace
on Sep 10, 2004 -
3 comments
naval-history.net :: yet another fine example of how the web can help one man or woman with a true passion for a subject go from a hobbist to a published expert. Be sure to read the dedication to his dad at the top of the page.
posted by anastasiav
on Jul 16, 2004 -
1 comment
Sex and PsyOps. An interesting look at sexual propaganda throughout modern military history. Unfortunately slightly censored, but a good look into what may or may not have been an effective demoralization tool.
posted by eas98
on May 19, 2004 -
25 comments
On the night of April 27th, 1805,
US Marine Lt. Presley O'Bannon
led a ragtag army of Greek, Arab and Berber mercenaries in a desperate charge
into the teeth of the fortifications of
Derna, Tripoli
(now Libya). The
defenders inexplicably turned and ran, leaving behind loaded cannons which,
turned around, secured victory for the US in its first land battle in the old
world.
In recognition of his bravery, Lt. O'Bannon was given a
sword by Hamet
Karamanli.
William
Eaton
(no, the other
William Eaton
) had led O'Bannon,
six other US Marines, and the five hundred odd mercenaries across six hundred
miles of North African desert in order to replace the usurping
Pasha
of Tripoli, Yusef, with the rightful heir, his pro-American older brother
Hamet.
Shortly after the battle, Yusef reached a peace with Col. Tobias Lear, the
American Consul to Tripoli, and hostilities between the US and Tripoli ceased. Eaton, O'Bannon, and
Hamet Karamanli, along with the Marines and most of the Greeks, departed
aboard American warships, leaving the Muslim mercenaries behind in Derna.
Unpaid.
posted by hob
on Jan 7, 2004 -
11 comments
Take a peek at this military timeline. And let's figure that the time from when Johnny, sergeant, age 25, gets home from fighting the war and tells 5 year old Junior about the experience to when Junior, Major/Lt.Col, grows up and wants to CAUSE a war, averages 30 years.
Now let's do some math...starting with the French and Indian War, 1754-1763. Add 30-ish years (21). American Revolution, 1775-1783. Add 30-ish years (38). War of 1812, 1812-1814. Add 30-ish years, numerous Indian wars. Add 30-ish years. American Civil War, 1861-1865. Add 30-ish years (37). Spanish-American War, 1898. Add 30-ish years (19). America in World War I, 1917-1918. Add 30-ish years (25). America in World War II, 1942-1945. Add 30-ish years (20). Vietnam War, 1964-1973. Add 30-ish years, and it's the turn of the millenium....it's now.
We haven't learned from 250 years of this cycle, and there's no reason to think we've learned anything since. I didn't count the Gulf War cause it wasn't much of anything, and I know the numbers are a bit forced...but I think this trend is worth discussing.
posted by taumeson
on Dec 3, 2002 -
44 comments
Almost sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the battlefields of
Western Europe,
Scandanavia,
Russia and the
Pacific continue to reveal poignant relics of the men who fought and died. These links may be of interest to anyone with even a passing interest in military history.
posted by Doozer
on Oct 25, 2002 -
7 comments
If This Be War. This essay by a military historian puts the current muddle of conflicted opinions about war into historical perspective with startling clarity.
Thanks to the Little Green Footballs weblog. I find interesting stuff there every day.
posted by Tubes
on Oct 25, 2001 -
10 comments
