Posts by Sam F
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Hey, you still have time to beat me to reading the third book in the trilogy (came out last year IIRC).
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For those who haven't read it yet I'd highly recommend Richard Evans' The Third Reich in Power (2005). It's Book 2 of Evans' trilogy on the Reich (the other two volumes deal with the origins and wartime functioning of the Nazi state, respectively).
It's a readable, historiographically up-to-date chronicle of society and everyday life in Germany from 1933 to 1939. And an example of historical 'nit-picking' done right that doesn't distract from the tragedy, but puts you face to face with it.
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Danyl McLauchlan comments on the English ad storm-in-teacup, and it's TVNZ that comes out worst of all:
[From the Herald:] A TVNZ spokeswoman, Andi Brotherston... said the creative unit at TVNZ chose Mr English partly because of the pun on his name in the series’ title “Plain English”.
‘Plain English’. Boy, that’s quite an Algonquin Round Table they’re operating over there at the TVNZ ‘creative unit’. Apparently Labour don’t accept this excuse but I find it utterly, horribly plausible.
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I know the Calder a little and was surprised at his comments (assuming they were indeed his).
If the Herald office is like some offices I've known, leaving an unlocked, unattended computer logged into any forum can be an embarrassment waiting to happen, depending on your coworkers...
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I may be biased as someone who's spent a bit of time working with historical detail, but I don't think it's necessarily unhealthy to be interested in the minutiae of a subject like WW2, as long as you can actually snap out of it and link all that stuff back into the broader picture somehow.
I've sensed in this thread that pretty much all participants have been able to juggle numbers and statistics for argument's sake without losing sight of the overall issue. And with a subject as laden with appalling human suffering as WW2, it's hard sometimes not to shy away into details in refuge from the horror of it all.
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I have some difficulty erasing the image of you guys all gathered around your map with little toy soldiers and whatnot
Oi, whatever anyone says, Risk is a perfectly acceptable game for consenting adults.
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My absolute favourite bit:
And these ‘sporadic patrols’ of yours. Let me guess. You have a few mates round, drink a few beers, shout at each other about coconuts, and then somebody says, “HEY! Let’s go on, y’know, patrol-thing!” And you stumble around a few blocks scaring old ladies until you get tired and go home. Alone, because you’ve been wearing the same matted black fisherman’s rib jersey since 1987 and no woman will go near you. No, you prefer to hang out with ‘the boys’. Have you considered… no, perhaps we’ll leave that for another session.
This is precisely how it will have been going down. Magnificent piece Emma, thank you.
Also, of possible interest: the pisstake blogsite of the National Frunt.
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So tell us, Brickley, how exactly does one use an apostraphe?
Apostrafing: hit-and-run assaults on minor issues of punctuation, delivered from on high.
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The Russian Reversal survives and thrives but of course many of its internets aficionadoes can't remember the USSR at all, yet alone Yakov...
... colour me guilty in this respect, as I can only just remember seeing the USSR on globes at school and being told by teachers "um, well that's not actually there anymore, we'll get some new maps soon"...
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What is the poet said, "I contain multiples"? We all do.
Multitudes... and yes, Song of Myself is one of my favourite poems ever.
The microTaj should make for an interesting landmark on the way into town.