Hooray for History Fans!

And I mean fans in the fangirl/fangent/otakuish sense. Hmm. I just realized something. I used "fangent" to mean a tangent indulged in by fans (a more random and less canonical relative of the fan theory) but when paired with fangirl, it could also be a gentleman who is a fan. This all makes me very happy.

BUT!

Not as happy as this web comic, which I stumbled across by way of Twitter (because random steampunk tidbits soothe my fevered brow better than actual sleep {my brow is fevered because I recently became a computer teacher, while keeping my part-time job at Barnes and Noble.})

It reminds me in a way of Five Fists of Science, but, dare I say(?) better. I feel that there should be a question mark in the previous sentence, so I put one in. And I do dare say it, because FFoS is pretty entertaining, but kind of meh. Any hoo, "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" is about Charles Babbage, creator of the first computer, and Ada Lovelace, creator of the first computer program. Apparently they fight crime? It's fantastic.

Even more fantastic (but actually less fantastic inasmuch as it's actually true) are all the links to Primary Source Documents by about the protagonists. I dare not start clicking on any more of them tonight or I really won't get any sleep. And then I won't be able to set up the computers for next week's classes. Maybe I should give the middle school kids a project later to research the history of computers on the interwebz. Whoever can go back the farthest gets a prize.

Of course, depending on how broadly one defines computers, there were even earlier examples of machines that used basic logic, but not to do math. So, since a computer ought to compute, the Difference Engine was the first one.

WOOOOOOO-

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.wildwildwestcon.com/

That is all.

A good point and another reason I like steampunk

So there's this blog I recently found out about called Xerposa, where they gather all kinds of wonderful steampunk things together for your reading pleasure. For example, they have a list of steampunk bands (I only knew about Abney Park, Unextraordinary Gentlemen, Prof. Elemental, and Vernian Process), a continuing debate about hydrogen versus helium in airships (obviously in a steampunk setting hydrogen is best, but some people can't be reasoned with - I mean, helium wasn't even discovered until 1903!) and short articles on various crafts/fashions/items to lust after (including cufflinks made by yours truly! I feel so famous!) They even gathered up a few handy steampunk-looking fonts. They're so helpful.

There are also articles about steampunk itself, as a subculture, and as a literary movement. I like this one especially. It's about time. And I have found this to be the case in a lot of steampunk writing - I think it's because they are trying to tell the story of a world and the setting and characters are detailed enough that they are pretty realistic. Also, steampunks tend to be geeks, and so are their characters, and they have too much cool shiny explody stuff to tell you about to waste time moping about abuse in their backstories.

The Way to a Woman's Heart

(well, mine anyway)

Skywriting! I'm just putting it out there that any man who proposes to me in skywriting will win my hand in marriage*. If he is the pilot who does the writing, that gives him a bunch of bonus points.

Having gone to the airshow on a windy day and a not windy day, I was thinking about smoke and aerobatics. Which led me to think about skywriting. I think this is a fantastic craft, which apparetnly is making a bit of a comeback! I was informed today that I missed seeing some skywriting over my own town a couple of days ago. It's just as well, since the prop wash from my saffron-colored airship would mess up the letters....

Here is an educational film strip from 1935 about skywriting.




*Some exclusions may apply.

I want to go!

So I started following Steampunk World's Fair on Twitter (I know, I'm sorry, but hopefully I've somewhat redeemed the medium by writing all my tweets like a telegraph?) and all it has done is tantalize my brain and make me dream of steampunk fun. It's not as though such things will ever happen in Arizona again... The Grand Western Steampunk Festival, formerly known as Wild Wild West Con, may or not happen next year. I'm still holding out hope.

But Steampunk World's Fair looks amazing! They have so many events and performances, including a midway full of circus acts! Just like a proper World's Fair!

Sigh....

Monuments and Poetry

Mischievous, laughing boys, who grew

To quick manhood to be 'The Few'

Who flew above all human call

Through Summer's height to Autumn's fall,

Infring'd the sanctity of space

In freedom's name-and died in grace;

Falling like leaves upon the Weald

To russet-spot on English field,

Their brief, gay, valiant season spent

For us. Our task, their monument,

Nature herself has taken o'er

And has decreed for evermore,

'The Few' shall be remembered by

White chalk marks in a summer sky

That's one of my favorite poems. It's about the Battle of Britain but I don't know who wrote it. Nature may provide a fitting monument with vapor trails, but people have also built an amazing memorial to the battle. It's in London. I actually saw this at night, but it was not lit up and I didn't know what it was - just some walls with bronze statues. I wish I had seen the whole thing:

The story about is happening in each panel is awesome too. Monuments should be representational and realistic. It tells the story better, and the story is what people remember.
Here's another good poem:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941

He wrote that after flying a Spitfire for the first time. Awesome, huh? Here's a whole bunch of poems about flying.

I like this one:

An airman is always quite free, sir.
To land with a bump or a greaser.
Any old clunk,
can land with a thump,
But pro's go for smoothie crowd pleasers.

— Anon.

And this one:

The Co-pilot
By Keith Murray (Capt Colonial Airlines).
Written in 1941 and first published in October 1942 in
"The Airline Pilot" the monthly magazine of US ALPA.

I am the co-pilot, I sit on the right,


It’s up to me to be quick and bright;


I never talk back for I have regrets,


But I have to remember what the Captain forgets.

I make out the flight plan and study the weather,


Pull up the gear, stand by to feather;


Make out the mail forms and do the reporting;


And fly the old crate while the Captain is courting.

I take the readings, adjust the power,


Put on the heaters when we’re in a shower;


Tell him where we are on the darkest of night,


And do all the bookwork without any light.

I call for my Captain and buy him cokes;


I always laugh at his corney jokes;


And once in a while when his landings are rusty,


I always come through with, "By gosh it’s gusty".

All in all I’m a general stooge,


As I sit on the right of the man I call "Scrooge";


I guess you think this is past understanding,


But maybe some day he will give me a landing.

I have an mp3 of a different version that I think flows a little better, but this apparently is the original.

Diesel Punk. Meh.

I really don't know how I feel about diesel punk. I suppose all on it's own I like it. It's the future that steampunk becomes, followed by raygun gothic. I love the Rocketeer, and Tale Spin. I love heavier-than-air flying machines as much or more than aerostats. But something about it leaves me cold.

I think there are two things about it. The first one is that's it's 20th Century. Sometimes steampunk depresses me a little, because those people in their shiny goggles and lovely clothes and expressions of wonderment are going to have to get to the 20th Century eventually, with its WWI, and its International Style architecture. The 70s happen.... I'm not a fan of alternate history, so there's no help for it.

Still, I find WWI fascinating, and not just because of the aviators. Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series is a really cool fictionalization/steam/dieselpunkification of it. It has a bunch of the bad stuff in it, but it still retains a sense of worth-whileness and optimism and honor that most WWI stories don't manage. It was a human endeavor, fought with new machines and on a huge scale (although, honestly, hasn't anyone ever heard of the Seven-Years-War? That was really the first World War). Poetry came out of WWI.

Then there were the 20s and 30s. The golden age of aviation, an amazing era of exploration and prosperity (well, the 20s) and just a pretty cool time in general, unless you lived in the Weimar Republic... Strangely, there's not a lot of diesel punk in this era (Talespin and Rocketeer being notable exceptions, although the Rocketeer edges into WWII)

Freaking WWII. Now, I also, find WWII terribly interesting, but overdone. The History Channel, back when they showed history programs, knew of no other wars, and neither do game designers. Or diesel punk fans. My other problem with diesel punk is the fans. They are far more nitpicky than your typical steampunk, going on and on about this and that uniform and tank and gun and whatever. That's all well and good (I will geek out about military hardware all day long) but they ought to be nice about it, like steampunks. Where a steampunk will say "Ooh! What's that? That's awesome! Did you make it up? It's REAL? To wikipedia!" a diesel punk will be more like "They didn't have that yet."



That's the whole point of whatever punk! You cram cool shiny things together and try to figure out how they would work. It's supposed to be fun.

With some very well-done exceptions (most of which are not WWII settings), it seems like a lot of diesel punk is just WWII with more metal, a darker setting O_O and less human spirit. Where steampunk magnifies the heroic and creative person in an era that stood a chance of overshadowing people, diesel punk grinds and mechanizes the individual, rather than telling their stories.

It's all this:



and none of this.

No climbing Pointe du Hoc, no Audie Murphy, no Battle of Britain. Just CG models of extra big tanks, guys in gas masks, and hot SS dominatrices. Now, I know the SS had the snazziest uniforms in the war, and we all know how I feel about jodhpurs, but come on! Poetry came out of WWII too, but I'll save that for later.

Here's the example of nitpicking that prompted this post, a comment on my Talespin AMV, which I had described offhandedly as "baby's first steampunk". The comment was this (caps in the original):

Talespin is DIESEL PUNK as its defined using 30s era equivalent technology, clothing, and terminology. Most notable are Internal Combustion engines and Vacuum tube based electronic technology.

Sure, technically that's true. But who cares? Apparently I do, since I was annoyed enough to write a whole post about it. Anyway, "baby's first diesel punk" doesn't sound as good, and is not as understandable to most people. Maybe that's why diesel punk fans have a chip on their shoulder. They want to get out from under a genre that is all mushy and vague and anything-goes.

While we're over analyzing a cartoon, I might point out that Don Karnage's airship is like the one in Master of the World, which is Jules Verne. At 0:18 in the video you can see the steam engines on the side propellers, and they never specify what powers the upward-pointing rotors. I always figured it was either a later edition he added using piston engines, or else they run off the steam engines too, either using an electric turbine, or a simple belt drive. In the show, the Iron Vulture doesn't even make a typical airship noise (droning propellers) but rather the chugging of a steam engine. Many of his crew also wear older clothes - top hats, for example. He's a bit of a throwback in the setting of the story. The awesome level of detail Disney put into the show means you actually can tell how the tech works, and the pirates, at least, are still a little steampunk.

Is that the point of my video? No. the point is that Talespin is awesome, and Abney Park is awesome.

How cool was this guy?!?

Super cool! Felix Nadar, aka Gaspard-Félix Tournachon was pioneering photographer, baloonist, and all-around geek. He was friends with Jules Verne, and he liked heavier-than-air flying machines.

That is all.

A Stab at Good Grooming and the Fantastic Sapeurs of the Congo!

I almost forgot about this commercial from the Superbowl (there are so many things I tried to forget....) but this is a good post on it over at dandyism.net. The answer is obvious though. Andre. The other two guys look a bit unsavory. But then again, I love a man in a boater hat. You wish I was kidding.


Ok, maybe not every guy in a boater...

I very much approve of anything that gets a chap's face furniture a little neater, although caution must be used to ensure that it doesn't get too thinned-out. Not many people can pull off a pencil mustache.

Also, this article about Les Sapeurs in the Congo is pretty interesting, although I found the implication that normal dandyism does not emphasize manners to be a bit strange. From revolutionaries like the Chaps to ordinary (but stylish) men like Tim Gunn who don't really consider themselves dandies, manners are a big part of being a proper man. Anyway, the gentlemen in the 7th and (especially) 8th pictures in the article look fantastic. Hooray for dandyism! May it sweep the globe.

Here are more pictures! These guys are awesome, and the photo essay tells a bit about their culture as well. They seem like really nice people, as well as stylish. It will start playing music, but it's very pleasant music.

Coming up: 3 (yes 3!) movie reviews.

Architectural Abomination!!!!!!

or, the planned Eisenhower Memorial, or, a perfect illustration of what I was on about in my last post.


They are planning to put a memorial to President Eisenhower in Washington DC, right in the middle of all the beautiful classical buildings and monuments, but the planned design is anything but beautiful. The design they chose was by postmodern "artist" Frank Gehry, and it consists of huge, 80 foot tall metal posts with screens stuck up on them. Right in the middle of DC. Blocking the view of the Capitol Building. The only image of Eisenhower will be a statue of him as a barefoot farmboy in Kansas. It says nothing about the great leader he became, nothing about the world he protected in WWII, and helped to forge in the early days of the Cold War. It erases the idea of virtue and the ideals that human beings should be inspired to when they see monuments to great men. Call your congressmen and senators today!

There is an alternative - the National Civic Art Society has hosted their own contest to design a better memorial, and they have stunning results. Any one of these monuments would be a wonderful addition to the scenery of Washington DC, and be a fitting tribute to a president who shaped America's greatness in the 20th Century perhaps more than any other until Reagan. So, again, call your congressmen, email them, do whatever it takes.



Now, there is more going on here than just an aesthetic abomination that should never get zoning approval in an historic location, and never would in a civilized part of America. There are ideas at play, and it must have Ike spinning in his grave. See, the style of the proposed monument is postmodern, and shows a lot of the international style (i.e. Marxism). It is not suitable for a Cold Warrior and should not be built.