Background Radiation

Long Memories

Bullet Points: 

** (Fox) California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to change the Constitution to curb gun rights. Fed up with inaction on gun control, Newsom unveiled a proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution on Thursday that would implement “commonsense” gun safety measures he claims have widespread bipartisan support.

** “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (LOTR)

** Truth in numbers. Contrary to what you hear every day. “The long-term trend is clear: Back in 1955, two years after the end of the Korean War, military spending including veterans affairs constituted 69.3% of federal spending whereas “human resources” was about 21.8%. Today military spending is 17.6% and human resources are 64.8%, the two nearly completely switching places.” — I guess it’s the need for more equity hires from the inner city.

** RR – This momentous occasion is the first of its kind in over half a century for Rolls-Royce. “This is a historic moment for Rolls-Royce – it’s the first time in 54 years the aero-engine manufacturer has tested a brand-new engine architecture and is proof of what can be achieved when industry and Governments work together,” the company stated in its press release.

The success of these preliminary trials signals the viable potential of the suite of technologies embedded in the UltraFan demonstrator. The revolutionary engine has demonstrated a 10% efficiency improvement over the Trent XWB, which is presently the world’s most efficient large aero engine in service.

** UK cannon makers in Decline (h/t Claudio) The UK may need to cannibalize stored Challenger tanks and AS90 howitzers to source replacement barrels for platforms sent to Ukraine as no manufacturing capability currently exists to manufacture large cannon barrels. In peacetime, these vehicles and artillery systems fire very few rounds, not only to save money but also due to the introduction of simulation and static trainers, so they have a long life. The life of a barrel is dictated by the type and number of rounds fired. For a rifled tank gun, for example, this life is around 500 rounds.

Royal Ordnance Factory Nottingham (above) was the sole source manufacturer of cannon barrels in England but it closed ROF Nottingham was finally closed in 2001 and the armaments manufacturing capability transferred to the BAE Systems Land Systems plant at Barrow-In-Furness, Cumbria, but they don’t make cannon barrels. The UK apparently thought that a peace dividend would last forever.

Templars vs Muslims

“The Assassins were a radical group of Shi’ite Muslims who practiced terrorism against their enemies. If a leader, usually Muslim, opposed them, they murdered him. In 1173, the Old Man of the Mountain, leader of the Assassins, sent a peace envoy to Amalric, the Crusader King of Jerusalem, proposing an alliance. On his way back from the conference with the King, the Assassin envoy was attacked and killed by a band of Templars who were led by a one-eyed knight named Walter de  Mesnil. What was the background of this event?

King Amalric demanded De Mesnil’s arrest, but Eudes de Saint-Amand, the Master of the Temple at the time, refused, saying that he would send De Mesnil to the Pope for judgment, instead. Amalric had De Mesnil arrested, anyway, but died before he could take the matter further. The regent to his successor, Raymond Ill of Tripoli, declined to continue negotiations with the Assassins. Raymond’s father had been the victim of the Assassin attack in 1152 which initially provoked the Temple’s anger. In response to Raymond ll’s murder, the Templars had successfully invaded Assassin territory in northern Syria. For the next century, the Assassins paid tribute to the Templars. more here.

What is it to be British (history destroyed?)

An insightful article discussing the amalgam of historical and ethnic factors that came to define what it means to be British and how inane it is to try to deny those factors in examining any national identity anywhere.

Quote: “The construction of national identity itself is remarkably historically contingent and often retrospective; the greatest literary work of the Old English/Anglo-Saxon period is Beowulf, an oral heroic poem whose survival (in one burnt copy) is pure happenstance and whose regional associations locate its origins far away in the Jutland that divides modern-day Denmark rather than the eastern coast of England, among whose descendants the poem was performed and preserved. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, perhaps the finest and most quixotic piece of medieval English poetry, is itself a one-off fusion of northwestern Midlands Anglo-Saxon poetics with Norman French chivalric traditions: The result is quintessentially English, just as Beowulf is English yet in a different, earlier way, and just as in later eras the works of Shakespeare and his successors become something more, something British.”

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