Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Today In Wyoming's History: A Bicentennial: Waterloo
Friday, June 18, 1915. Wanted, Horses. War expands in Mexico.
The prices were good too.
The Allies ceased offensive operations in the Battle of Artois.
Emiliano Zapata orders all of his senior officers to report for duty.
There were now effectively three armies in the field. One under Villa, which was contesting Obregon, who was allied to Carranza. A second Carranza army under Pablo Gonzáles Garza that had just been formed by Carranza. And, finally, the Zapatistas. None of the leaders of these armies was the de jure head of the Mexican state.
The Motion Picture Directors Association was formed in Los Angeles.
Last edition:
Thursday, June 17, 1915. Navy to Mexico, Bryan says chillax on war prep, French try to take Vimy Ridge.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Thursday, June 17, 1915. Navy to Mexico, Bryan says chillax on war prep, French try to take Vimy Ridge.
Last edition:
Tuesday, June 15, 1915. Killing the Armenians of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party.
Lex Anteinternet: Expatriates: Looking at it a bit differently.
Lex Anteinternet: Expatriates: Looking at it a bit differently.: Okay, I know that this is a history blog, and it's now been running so long as research for a book, that it's becoming historical i...
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
“Lindbergh (The Eagle of the USA) / “Lucky Lindy” – Jack Kaufman 1927
Holscher's Hub: One of the old ones, still being used.
Studebaker pickup truck from the early 1960s. Actually being used by a fisherman, much as it was originally intended to be.
The FDA to ban trans fats
Trans fats are a largely artificial fat.
This blog, as we all know, theoretically focuses on historical matters. In that context, we've occasionally touched on food.
There isn't a shortage of fat in the food of the Western world, and there never really has been, save for periods of wartime. That's not actually true of the entire globe, as there were some fat starved regions of the globe even relatively recently. I doubt that's the case now.
Artificial fats have come about relatively recently. Margarine was the big early one, and was an alternative to butter. For some reason, and I don't really know what it was, my parents had switched to margarine when I was a kid and I grew up with it. I didn't switch to butter until I was married, as my wife liked butter and it really is much better. Anyhow, I understand margarine gained ground in the Great Depression, probably due to cheaper cost, and World War Two, when there were fat shortages. I dimly recall butter being really expensive during the 1970s as well, which might be the reason that we went to margarine.
Now, we're such aficionados of butter that we buy Irish butter, which his super.
Anyhow, good riddance on industrial fat. And perhaps that should lead us to ponder the nature of industrialized food to a greater extent.
Lex Anteinternet: Concepts of Race
Back in November, 2014, I wrote this entry on concepts of race.
Lex Anteinternet: Concepts of Race: The way that things ought to be, and at that age typically are. But beyond that, chances are these two young girls are actually of t...In that I noted that our concepts of race are actually quite phony. Over time, what's considered a race at one time has changed and the same cultural demographic is not considered a race later on. The Irish and the Italians, for example, were once actually considered to be another "race", but certainly are not now.
Well, this has come into the news, although not in the more analytical fashion that we addressed it here, due to the story of Rachel Doleza. Doleza was working, apparently fairly successfully, for the NAACP and representing herself as black. She isn't. She isn't genetically anyhow.
In an interview she recently gave, she essentially claims a sort of "blackness" by way of "self identification".
This is a very curious recent development. People have always self identified as things that they actually are, and which particularly matter to them. So, for example, people have identified themselves as "Irish Catholics' or "Norwegian Lutherans" as these identifiers reflect a cultural and religious identity that matters to the. But you can't really identify yourself as something you flat out aren't. That's delusional.
But it's become interestingly popular, which says something about how phony the culture has become in some ways. And here Doleza may be doing us a huge favor.
Delusional self identification has become enormously popular of late. There are authors who will use a self identifier like those noted above when their own personal lives show those connections to be very thin. Beyond that, I'm fairly certain that the positions of those who have same gender attractions has become such a cause celibre, no matter what you think of it one way or another, that there are those who self identify in that category who actually don't have the attraction. And now we see men self identifying as the opposite gender, and vice versa, to the extent that they actually seek surgery to cause that appearance. In northern Europe, that required a person to have to undergo psychological evaluation before such a surgery is performed, but in the US it does not, in spite of the massive level of severe depression associated with the surgeries and the fairly demonstrable examples of a change in the person's views upon receiving the psychological analysis.
This is really an interesting phenomenon in that in an era when things "natural" are celebrated, this is deeply unnatural. People who are supposedly unhappy with their gender still have the DNA that they were born with, and that's their natural gender.
Race is trickier, as in actually the genetic differences between "races" don't even exist in some circumstances and are purely cosmetic where they do. Race is more of a cultural identifier than anything else, but you can't really run around claiming an cultural identifier that's phony. Can't be done.
And it's pretty darned insulting too. Here, ironically, things were once so bad for American blacks that light skinned American blacks would sometimes attempt to pass for "white". Those days are thankfully over. But it sure doesn't do current blacks any favors when people run around trying to falsely claim that identifier.
Let the whining commence
Monday, June 15, 2015
Tuesday, June 15, 1915. Killing the Armenians of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party.
The Turks hung twenty activists with the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party in the Sultan Beyazıt Square of Constantinople.
The victims included Armenian leaders Paramaz, Aram Achekbashian, and Kegham Vanigian.
The party still exists.
British and Canadian forces captured the front line northwest of La Bassée, France but were then pushed back by German grenades and a shortage of ammunition.
French aircraft raided Baden and Karlsruhe, Germany.
Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia died at age 56 of ill health, his condition having worsened due to World War One due to the stress of having close family members in the army. After his death his diaries revealed that he had been a tormented homosexual.
Last edition:
Sunday, June 13, 1915. Fighting in what became Poland, and is now part of Ukraine. There's a reason for Grape Nuts.
Automotive Transportation III: Motorcyles
Motorcycles were also comparatively cheap to make and they were fast (and dangerous). They therefore had, right from the onset, all of the attributes they do now. They were cheaper than cars (or could be), they were very versatile and could go anywhere. They were fast. And they were dangerous. They appealed to many of the same people to whom they appeal now, and many of the same things we associate with them now, even racing, existed from nearly the onset.
They did, however, have a wider appeal in certain quarters than they do now. This was the case for a variety of reasons, with a significant one being that cars were enormously expensive prior to Henry Ford depressing the price. Even Ford, however, didn't depress the price of cars uniformly and globally, so in some regions of the globe the motorcycle, in spite of its one passenger, open air, two wheeled disadvantages, became competitive with cars. This was particularly the case in Europe, which caused there to be a lot of early manufacturers of motorcycles in Europe.
The fascination with motorcycles lead quite quickly to their consideration as a service vehicle, and even before World War One various armies began to experiment with them in this capacity and police forces adopted them as an alternative to horses and cars. World War One saw widespread use of motorcycles, and while we don't think of the Great War in this fashion, World War One may really be the high point of the military motorcycle, as the vehicle was sufficiently fully developed to offer any advantage then that it would later, which was not true of the automobile. At any rate, all sorts of use, and experimentation, with military motorcycles was seen during World War One.



Cause I'm gonna take a ride with you
We're going down to the Honda shop
I'll tell you what we're gonna do
Put on a ragged sweatshirt
I'll take you anywhere you want me to
First gear (Honda Honda) it's alright (faster faster)
Second gear (little Honda Honda) I lean right (faster faster)
Third gear (Honda Honda) hang on tight (faster faster)
Faster it's alright.
Just a groovy little motorbike
It's more fun that a barrel of monkeys
That two wheel bike
We'll ride on out of the town
To any place I know you like

Technologically, motorcycles bear a striking resemblance to the original product, although there have been advances in the engines and a belt has replaced the chain, and there have been other changes as well. Still, they very closely resemble the original products.
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Postscript
But wait, you didn't touch on motor scooters! Aren't they motorcycles?
It was really after World War Two, however, when we start to really think of scooters. This is partially due, at least, to the introduction of the Vespa after World War Two. Somehow, a major reconsideration of the Italian culture in the US occurred in the 1950s, and the Italians went from being considered backwards and destitute to being the coolest thing ever. This must have been a very odd experience for Italians, who went from being treated as cowardly peasants to the global standard setters for style in less than a generation, and who found that they were suddenly admired on everything, and this included their vehicles. Vespas, a light scooter, were regarded as very cool.
Not too surprisingly, the Vespa craze died off, but it's revived in recent years and the popularity of scooters with it. Now, once again, scooters are very common. A while back on a trip to Denver they were literally everywhere, although I'd personally live in fear of driving one in that big city.
While mentioning scooters, I probably ought to conclude with the other species in this genus, and there are few. Minibikes are one. These are simply miniature motorcycles that were designed for children. These tiny motorcycles were hugely popular in the 1970s, but they've passed by the wayside now, and even though they still exist, they aren't as common as they once were, and I'm glad. They always struck me as really dangerous.
"Trikes", motorized three wheeled vehicles are also closely associated with motorcycles, probably because they were often originally built from one. They're offered commercially now and you see variants of them around. They're a vehicle I know very little about, other than that they've been around for quite awhile and are popular to some degree with those to whom motorcycles appeal, but who don't want a two wheeled vehicle.
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Related threads:
Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries.
Automotive Transportation II: Cars.
Air Transportation.
Horsepower
Riding Bicycles.
Rail Transportation
The Rise and Decline of the SUV
Water Transportation
Walking
Courthouses of the West: Federal Courthouse, Sheridan Wyoming
Now no longer a courthouse, but a private building. Featured here on an earlier thread on that topic.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Sunday, June 13, 1915. Fighting in what became Poland, and is now part of Ukraine. There's a reason for Grape Nuts.
The Central Powers attacked Lemberg, which became Polish after the war as Lviv, and which is now part of Ukraine as Lvov.
Saturday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: B'nai Israel Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah
Friday, June 12, 2015
Overall readership
Overall readership here:
United States
|
57760
|
Russia
|
4948
|
France
|
2892
|
Germany
|
2423
|
Ukraine
|
1957
|
China
|
954
|
United Kingdom
|
923
|
Turkey
|
762
|
Poland
|
621
|
Canada
|
542
|
More people from the Ukraine have stopped in here than from Canada? That's odd.
And Russia is a (distant) number two?
Hmm. . . sort of deflating statistics in some ways.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
The "Avengers", seriously?
And by that, I mean serious press. Serious film critics are reviewing it seriously. In some quarters, it's receiving some (well deserved, by what I'm reading) critique on its symbolism. The movie, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, is apparently a big cinematic deal.
Well, I say. . . seriously?
Just skip it.
I'm simply stunned that a movie based on Marvel's comic book characters merits any serious consideration and that anyone over twelve years old is interested in it. Marvels super heros? You know that they're aimed at a segment of the adolescent male demographic, don't you?
Maybe because I never liked these cartoons in the first place (I was never into comic books), but the real world and serious fiction are more than interesting enough to capture the imagination of any adult mind. That movies based on adolescent pulp are now big budget affairs for people who are presumably out there working, voting and raising families is simply mind boggling.
There are those who argue that the entire culture has been suffering from delayed development, and we've reached a point where adolescence now stretches out a good decade longer than the teen years. The fact that movies like this are now regarded as a big thing is pretty good evidence that they're stretching out longer than that.
Friday, June 11, 1915. The murder of Christians at Mardin.
Capuchin Friar Blessed Leonard Melki was murdered along with other Christians, including Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, by Ottoman troops at Mardin.
Included in the murdered was Blessed Ignace Maloyan, Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Mardin.
The French advanced 550 yards at Neuville-Saint-Vaast, France.
British and French forces took control of all garrisons around Garua, German Cameroon.
Last edition: