The internet today brought me this Youtube clip, which shows old Bertie being interviewed in 1959 (and therefore at the age of 87) on a BBC show called “Face To Face“.
I quite like his advice for people a thousand years hence.
Tag: history
Up there with Obi Wan
I was recently pointed at an article in the Telegraph about how Druidry has just been recognized as a religion in the UK. The article ran with headline “Druidry recognised as religion in Britain for first time” and subhead “Druidry has been recognised as an official religion in Britain for the first time, thousands of years after its adherents first… Read more →
In which the web helps me explain…
I sometimes find, when talking to my contemporaries, that some of what has become my personal vernacular over the years refers to things that aren’t really part of the common & general knowledge, for one reason or another. One such term is the “Rube Goldberg machine“–I’d say that less than 10% of the people who I drop that term around… Read more →
Aside
I am very, very pleased by the news that the entire Bletchley Park archive–millions of documents–are going to be digitized over the next few years. While I suspect the vast, vast majority of the documents won’t be of interest to me at an individual level, it will be a wonderful resource for researchers, and hobbyists. (And make no mistake, the fact that people all over the world will have access to the archive electronically dramatically alters the potential for both researchers and hobbyists to actually do that.) And those people will comb through the digital information to extract things–both individual documents, and aggregate results–that I would be very interested in. Generally speaking, I’m in favour of digitizing almost every document store, but as a long time cryptogeek, I’ve got a special place in my heart for Bletchley’s history.
Better Late Than Never: An Apology For Africville
Listening to tonight’s news I see that the city council in my just-recently-not-city have ratified a deal to formally apologize for the pretty shockingly racist destruction of Africville. If you’re not from Halifax, the odds are you don’t know what this is all about. A capsule summary would be that there once was a community, called Africville, on the Halifax… Read more →
Any Excuse For A Toast
As a former resident of Nova Scotia, I believe it is within my remit to raise a glass today and toast the 247th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years War. Among other things, the treaty essentially saw the French hand over claims to Canada–particularly Nova Scotia and Cape Breton (then called Ile… Read more →
Aside
Is it weird that part of my “keeping in touch with Halifax” plan involves watching what the Nova Scotia Archives publishes? And if not, would it then be weird for me to have spent a lot of time today looking at wartime recipe books? The Atlantic War Fund Club of Halifax’s Favourite Recipes (1940) and the Wartime Economy Book Of Recipes For 1945 were both recently posted, and I seem to be weirdly fascinated with them.
Aside
I have enough Australian friends that I usually don’t bother to trot out the tired old “nation of criminals” joke/insult (although I do like Moran’s “it’s a jail” line–but I can’t deliver it like he can). I’m tempted to do it this once, though, just to provide some kind of segue to linking to some vintage Sydney mug shots. Look at those shots–those are some characters, man.
