History

How Air Superiority Over Nazi Germany was Really Won

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I sometimes write history posts on the Quora.com site.   I did that yesterday with   Colonel Hubert “Hub” Zemke’s “Fighter Pilot Conspiracy” in the Combined Bomber Offensive that I’ve mentioned in a previous post here on Chicagoboyz.
This is the cover of Col. Hubert “Hub” Zemke’s book “Zemke’s Wolf Pack” on the exploits of the 56th Fighter Group in the Combined Bomber Offensive.   Zemke is pictured under his P-47D.
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Effectively, starting from July 1943, Zemke organized an expanding mutiny to 8th Air Force commanding General Ira Clarence Eaker’s orders that USAAF fighters stick close to the bomber stream.
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By it’s end, the Zemke’s Mutiny had an international cast of hundreds that included the signals intelligence spooks of the RAF and elements of the following USAAF organizations: the VIIIth & IXth Fighter Commands, three USAAF fighter wings, and a large number of the 8th and 9th Air Force’s fighter groups under those wings and the signals section of 8th Air Force Headquarters AJAX.
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The story of how this came about and ended is at this link:
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https://www.quora.com/Why-were-P-38-fighters-not-used-more-as-heavy-bomber-escorts-in-Europe-early-in-WW2-given-their-2-200-mile-range-and-40-000-feet-ceiling/answer/Trent-Telenko?__filter__=&__nsrc__=2&__snid3__=5139187351

Labor Day Rerun: Technology, Work, and Society

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Here is an intriguing book concerned with the exponential advances in technology and the impact thereof on human society.  The author believes that the displacement of human labor by technology is in its very early stages, and sees little limit to the process.  He is concerned with how this will affectindeed, has already affectedthe relationship between the sexes and of parents and children, as well as the ability of ordinary people to earn a decent living.  It’s a thoughtful analysis by someone who clearly cares a great deal about the well-being of his fellow citizens.

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Summer Rerun: Jeff Sypeck’s Gargoyle Poems

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…which were inspired by the gargoyles of the Washington National Cathedral, were published in book form in 2012.  I was reminded of these poems by the dreadfully destructive fire at Notre Dame.

The book includes 53 poems accompanied by black-and-white photos of the gargoyles and grotesques. These poems are really good…one of my favorites is  A Mother Consoles her Daughter.

You can get the book via the usual on-line sources, the National Cathedral Store, or directly from Jeff’s blog, at this page.

Seth Barrett Tillman: Conlawprof and Climate Change

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Interesting observations:

On August 18, 2019, on Conlawprof, Professor BBB wrote:
 

Your note reveals a common misunderstanding of the predictive models. First, the models tend to under-predict. That is, the observed macro-effects exceed what the models predict. The models and reports also tend to under predict global temperatures. (The IPCC noted that “the [observed] level of warming in 2017 was 0.15 °C0.35 °C higher than [predicted] average warming over the 30-year period 19882017.”) [citing: ]

 
I note that Professor BBB adds the word “predicted”. It is not in the original quotation. I checked the original quotation in IPCC5, and it struck me—generalist though I am—that he had inadvertently inverted the meaning of the quoted material. But not being expert, and realizing that different minds might reasonably disagree about such things, I promptly wrote my friends at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Secretariat…

Seth links to a paper he wrote whose abstract includes this passage:

Legal academics and the public are fascinated by both constitutional text and the processes by which it is interpreted. The precise role for legal academics in the interpretation of such charters is controverted. Doctrine and case law as established by the courts remain the core of academic legal discourse. Case law is, after all, the object about which doctrine is based, built, and extended. But the interpretation of constitutional text through case law comes with costs — it seems to lack democratic legitimacy, and where unconnected to text and history, it has a tendency to fence out (even the well-educated) the public. On the other hand, when legal academics shift to text and history, their work gains populist credentials, but, at that point, the legal academic risks his privileged position. For the legal academic has no monopoly, or even highly developed expertise, with regard to textual exegesis or the best use of historical materials…

Substitute “scientists” for “legal academics”, and “climate data” for “text and history”, and there might be some kind of parallel here.

Retconned America – The 1619 Project

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It appears that this week, the New York Times, the so-called paper of record, upon whom the self-directed spotlight of smug superiority ever shines has now taken that final, irrevocable step from the business of reporting news and current events, matters cultural and artistic to becoming a purveyor of progressive propaganda. Of course, as characters in British procedural mysteries often say, ‘they have form’ when it comes to progressive propaganda; all the way from Walter Duranty’s reporting on famine in the Soviet Union through the drumbeat of ‘worst war-crime evah!’ in coverage when it came to Abu Ghraib, and the current bête noir or rather ‘bête orange’ man bad. It seems that it has now become necessary for the Times to make the issue of chattel slavery of black Africans the centerpiece, the foundation stone, the sum and total of American history. Everything absolutely everything in American history and culture now must be filtered through the pitiless lens of slavery.

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