The critical decision was not to call the new decimal currency the pound. The pound was an option: Cyprus already had a decimalised pound, for example. But that option wasn’t taken. As indeed it wasn’t taken in the other dominions. Canada, for example, went decimal and dollar in 1858. Decimal because My God, do you […]
Like everyone else said, that’s why you try to have a sane Secretary of Defence. Anon mentioned Nixon during Nam: Anonymous’ answer to If a president decided to go rogue and wants to nuke a country, what would happen? Anon doesn’t mention Nixon during the death throes of his presidency, when Schlessinger his SecDef was […]
That is a very good question, Dan. I look forward to many more from you! I’m pleasantly surprised that you’ve asked me, but I’ll run with that. With Ambrose’s biography of Nixon as my guide. The Kitchen Debate was an impromptu kind of affair, that both Nixon and Khruschev had a blast doing. Nixon was […]
User, how do I repay you for your following me, and for your exquisite sensitivity with the English language? With a joke answer. TISM: a humorous band of the 80s–00s in Australia. Its membership overrepresented by English teacher types. They had a poem about Wilfred Owen, who at the time featured in the Year 12 […]
I am not 45. OK, I *am* 45, but I don’t particularly care to act it. I act either 60, or 20, depending on circumstances. And I suspect it was ever thus. I mean, do 45 year olds draw this? Dimitra in the lab by Nick Nicholas on Gallery of Awesomery Or write this? Nick […]
The goatee, of which I am a proud if unkempt bearer, is a GenX thing. I adopted it in 1995, when they were everywhere, and I have stubbornly held on to it since—although by default it is nowadays surrounded by 9 pm stubble. 1995 2009 2016 “Disaffected Gen-X’er” and “goatee” go together in the Googles, […]
Stuff I want to know more about in boldface Dixieland Jazz Country Blues I got 7 CDs of anthologies, just need to rip them now Grateful Dead, Phish, those kinda guys I don’t think I’ll get it, but humour me James Brown Hendrix Chicago before they turned into mush Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd Love the […]
Stuff I already know: West Side Story. Not quite a musical, is it. My Fair Lady. Perfect musical, and astonishingly faithful to the play. Sweeney Todd. And Assassins. I don’t know other Sondheim pieces, but I’m sure they are excellent as well. Wicked. My wife’s fave, and I did not expect to fall in love […]
As a guide to contributors, this is what I already know in music, and what I’d like to know more of. The latter is in boldface. Classical Music. Perotin Stuff between Perotin and Ars Subtilior Ars Subtilior Stuff between Ars Subtilior and Corelli Liked Byrd. Freaked out by Vincenzo Galilei. Liked Schutz. Corelli Bach, Bach, […]
Let’s try a more historically informed attempt at an answer. The USA within the Anglosphere had a very early strain of resistance to British authority, which made it a Republic. Ireland had an even earlier strain of of resistance to British authority, which made it a Republic a lot later. Most erstwhile colonies and dominions […]