One Giant Bummer for Mankind

Neil Armstrong has taken his last giant leap off this mortal coil and joined the Space Program Invisible.

Sleep well, flyboy. You’ve earned the rest.

Update:  NBC Reports the Death of Neil Young.  Oops.  While I’m sure Neil Young spent plenty of time in the 60’s high as a kite, possibly even on the moon, he’s still alive and kicking.

Controversial Blogger (not this one) Looks for New Home

Carlos Miller of Photography is not a Crime has received an eviction notice from Pixiq.

After almost two years of blogging on Pixiq, I received notice that my services would no longer be needed, meaning I have to find a new home for Photography is Not a Crime by next month.

Carlos doesn’t hold a grudge, and in fact, seemed to see it coming.

I knew this day would come, even when I signed an agreement with Barnes and Nobles, which owns Sterling Publishing, which owns Pixiq.

But I hold no resentment. No anger. No ill-wishes against Pixiq.

Given his equanimity, I’ll refrain from calling the people in charge of Pixiq a bunch of sniveling, ass-kissing, pathetic weenies that wouldn’t know a socially important blog if it walked up and kicked them in their non-existent testicles.

Of course, considering I’m basically a huge coward myself, I can’t blame them too much.  Still, I’ll miss the blog.  On the other hand, unless I’ve completely misjudged Mr. Miller, we’ll see a new site very soon.  When that happens, I’ll be sure to link to it.  It’s a very interesting and important blog, and I’m looking forward to many more years of him pissing off police that do a shitty job.

RIP Sir John Keegan

The field of military history lost a giant this past week with the passing of Sir John Keegan.  I had many of his books and read each of them many times over.  The link is his Telegraph obituary, and the details can be found there.  I’ll just use this space to give some very brief recollections of his work.

The Face of Battle put him on the map as an author.  It was an imminently readable  book comparing and contrasting three battles that happened over the course of 500 years.  It’s all the more interesting a read because of his frank admission of his limitations.  A History of Warfare, while not quite as readable, was a very well-thought and ambitious attempt to move beyond Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is merely the continuation of politics by other means.

Overall, I find The Price of Admiralty my favorite work.  I consider myself a (strictly amateur) naval history buff, and I believe this was the book from which I caught that particular bug.  The book itself is reasonably short at 300-someodd pages, but the  crispness of his writing allowed him to pack it with huge amounts of knowledge about the weapons, personalities, strategic situations, and of course, the actual battles.  Yet it is still a very understandable and readable book.  The chapter on the Trafalgar is first rate, and I have yet to read anything on the Battle of Jutland that adds much more to what I first absorbed here.

He was a great scholar and an excellent writer.  He will be missed.