Month: July 2012

Baseball: The Amazin’ Nats

Baseball: The Amazin’ Nats

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)

Straitjacketing Churchill (and the Truth)

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

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

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

Churchill’s “Infallibility”: Myth on Myth

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

RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks

Links on this page may earn commissions.