Wordy rappinghood

I read a lot. And every couple of years I hit a new word, not a technical term or jargon but an actual “normal” English word that I don’t recognise. Today’s word was contumacious, meaning to “actively defy authority”. Sure it’s archaic but since the book it came from is a history of the Thirty Years War I forgive the author for his use of “sesquipedalian terms”.

The death notice for Colour Sergeant William Birchall

Published in the Reporter 6th October 1917.
BARDSLEY SOLDIER.
Sgt-Major W. Birchall Dies from Wounds.
It was with much regret that the people in Bardsley learned this week that 350051 Sergeant-Major WILLIAM BIRCHALL, Manchester Regiment, T.F. C Coy 1/9th battalion, had passed away as the result of wounds received whilst serving with the forces in France. News that he had been wounded in the right leg came through to his wife and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Birchall, of Bardsley, last week, and on Wednesday morning of this week a letter came from the Rev. G.M.Wheeler, Church of England chaplain, stating that he never recovered from his collapse, and passed peacefully away to his rest and reward. By all who knew him in Bardsley, Sergeant-Major BIRCHALL was respected and beloved for his kindliness and ever present desire to do a good turn to anyone in need of it. He joined the Volunteers 17 years ago. He visited New Zealand after his sister’s death, which took place at her uncle’s in Dunedin, and whilst he was away he joined the Dunedin City Guards. He was away rather over 12 months, and on his return he entered the Territorials. He was colour-sergeant when they were called up for service in August 1914, and went to Egypt and the Dardanelles. During that campaign he was slightly wounded in the chest. Later he came to France. He was there wounded in the neck by a piece of shell, and on recovery rejoined his regiment, and removed with them to Belgium, where he was wounded on the 16th September, sustaining a compound fracture of the right leg. He died on the 25th September, and was buried in the military cemetery near the clearing station by the Church of England chaplain, Re. G.M. Wheeler. He was 36 years old. The family are associated with Bardsley Church and School, and are much asteemed in the village. He leaves a wife, Mrs Edith Brichall, of 27, Ann St, Roslyn, Dunedin, New Zealand, and two children, a boy and a girl. (William Birchall is buried in the Mendinghem Military Cemetery).

As a side note I have Williams medals.

Who writes this shit?

I really don’t know who does these “studies” but apparently Godzone has been determined to the world’s least corrupt country. I dunno, this sounds suspiciously like a “there was this study” study but here you go.

Can I point out that I am utterly corrupt?

Book reviewed: Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

My wahine left me unattended in Chapters the other day and in a vain attempt to appear less obsessed about Nazi’s I bought this book on, well it’s not economics, it’s really a couple of guys who decide to pick some really large data sets, like the results of the Chicago public school system SAT’s or the Japanese Sumo Federation fight results or even names registered for new birth in California, and go mining for interesting causality or correlation.

I had hoped this book would be a little more “in depth” than it was but it ended up being an awful lot of anecdote and short on hard facts. There were some interesting outcomes, I know a lot more about Real Estate Agents now than I did before working my way through this book.

But, being written for the masses, the book has it’s shortcomings and feels more like a series of Salon articles stacked together and bound. Each chapter sits individually and doesn’t build a central theme or argument. I always find books like this a bit pappy and unsatisfying. Good in the bathroom.

Book reviewed: Lost to the West : The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth

The Byzantine Empire. All I knew about this was some of the beginning from a book on the fall of the Roman Empire that I read last year and the end from a book on the 4th Crusade that I read about three years ago. Now I know a shit load more but you know, fucked if I can recall much from this book. The trouble with reading a book about an empire that stretches over 1,000 years is that all the Constantine’s and Julian’s merge together. Now I am buggered if I can remember if Constantine IV was an ass or if that was Constantine VII.

I did learn about Belasarius, what a jumbo package of manslaughter he was! And now I know that the Roman empire didn’t actually fall until the 15th Century, go figure. Add to that the stuff about how St. Cyril taught the Russians to write, how byzantine came to mean sneaky and corrupt and how Greek Fire is not the same as Greek Fashion and I judge taking the time to read this book as not a complete waste of my life. Bueno!

Sparta!!! For the lulz

Book reviewed: The Age of Lincoln by Orville Vernon Burton

I approached this book with some hesitation, primarily because of my innate distrust of anyone who uses three names, like Orville Vernon Burton. Two names dude, there are people out there with just one, like Cher or Seal who could do with a little restraint on your part.

This book came from the $5 table at my local supermarket and if it wasn’t for the fat guy with more than 8 items in the “quick” checkout I probably would never have read it. What a shame that would have been. About the only U.S. history I have bothered to read is Revolutionary War and Woodrow Wilson onwards. There is a big gap of 150 years there that has only been, for me, broken by a 3 volume history of the Civil War by Shelby Foote.

This book focuses on the years between about 1840 and 1900, centered on Lincoln and the Civil War of course, but covering all of the Reconstruction as well as the reactionary politics and rail road ethics that came to define the last half century before 1900. I learned a whole lot about American history that I never knew before, how the negro (as they were called) gained the vote and then steadily lost it, how the Democrat Party turned from being the slavery party of white supremacists into the liberal left that it is today. What a dance. Great book, well worth the $5. Perhaps even worth $10.

Book reviewed: Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg 1943 by Keith Lowe

I don’t know if it was because this was the first book I read using my Sony Reader or some inherent fault in the book itself but I found this account of the fire raids on Hamburg to be an unsatisfying effort.

The author has tried his best to stitch together survivor accounts from both the RAF bombers and the poor bloody Germans to get that “there” feeling in his story but it doesn’t work. The book is lacking in detail and it just feels like he tried to make a 700 page book out of a 50 page story. Maybe it’s the fact that the fashionable way to write these accounts nowadays is to get interviews with the low level combatants hasn’t helped him here because there’s just too few of them left in any condition to recount their experiences.

Additionally I found the book too ready to assign feelings of remorse or horror to the Allies which just isn’t borne out by other books I have read. From my experience the fliers were just thinking about how to survive their 30 op tours to really give two shits about the civilians they were incinerating below. This book felt like revisionism and to tell you the truth, I wish the Sony Book Store had a better return policy.

Wish you were here

So it’s true!