July 2012 - Richard M. Langworth

Baseball: The Amazin’ Nats

28 July 2012 Comments 0 Comments

In 2012’s greatest baseball success story, the Washington Nationals went 60-40 on July 28th, having won more games as they won all year in 2008 and 2009. In the National League they’re first in pitching, tied for second in fielding, and seventh in hitting, although in the last month their batters have been on fire.

Tied with the Yankees for the best record in baseball, the precedents fall weekly. 2012 is supplanting 2005 as the best year since baseball returned to Washington. The Nats are now about five games better than they were at this time in 2005, when they dove from first to last place in the second half.…

Read More Read More

Straitjacketing Churchill (and the Truth)

19 July 2012 Comments 0 Comments

LONDON, JULY 19TH— In what were described as “guerrilla raids,” BBC Channel 4 “straitjacketed” the statues of four widely admired Britons: Churchill and Florence Nightingale in London, Charles Darwin in Shrewsbury and Samuel Johnson in Lichfield.

Each figure was “restrained” in a bespoke strait-jacket which had the mental illness they are reputed to have had stamped across it. Churchill’s was labeled DEPRESSION.

The straitjacketing was carried out to promote Channel 4’s season of prime-time programming challenging mental health stigma and discrimination, “4 Goes Mad,” which started on Monday 23 July. The stunt was also captured as part of a short film aired on Channel 4’s “Random Acts.”…

Read More Read More

Churchill’s “V-Sign” and the Peace Symbol

14 July 2012 Comments 3 Comments

I was wanting to find out about the two-finger gesture in the picture. It appears to be either the earliest peace symbol, and/or rabbit ears? The “crow foot” peace symbol predates Churchill’s V-sign by four or five centuries. Its current form was popularized by Picasso in the World Peace Conferences of the 1950s, when it was alleged to represent the Christian cross upside down and broken, the symbol of a Communist peace. Wikipedia has an interesting discussion.

I’m not sure where Churchill picked up his two-finger V-sign (palm facing out), but he certainly popularized it during World War II. …

Read More Read More

Churchill’s “Infallibility”: Myth on Myth

10 July 2012 Comments 10 Comments

Mr. Daniel Knowles (“Time to scotch the myth of Winston Churchill’s infallibility,” (originally blogged on the Daily Telegraph but since pulled from all the websites where it appeared), wrote that the “national myth” of World War II and Churchill “is being used in an argument about the future of the House of Lords.”

Mr. Knowles quoted Liberal Party leader Nick Clegg, who cited Churchill’s 1910 hope that the Lords “would be fair to all parties.” Sir Winston’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames MP, replied that Churchill “dropped those views and had great reverence and respect for the institution of the House of Lords.”…

Read More Read More