Friday, March 14, 2014

Wiki Tab Clearing...

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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Lion in Winter - one of my favorite movies, quite obviously a screen adaptation of a play, but I love the topic and there are some great lines.

Paraphrassed:

Future King John: "He has a knife!"
Queen Eleanour of Aquitaine, sharply "It's 1156, we ALL have knives"

Scene in a dudgeon:
Henry II looking at his traiterous sons (Future King John, Future Richard Lionheart, etc...), holding s sword over his head
.
"I, Henry Duke of Normandy, King by England grace of god, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, "etc.,.. .... ....., "do sentence you to death."


9:22 AM, March 14, 2014
Windy Wilson said...

Anonymous, was that in a high dudgeon? ;)

Now I'm going to have to dig out my copy of "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" to see if the Battle of Minorca was one of those simulated. If it was as one-sided as reported, I doubt it, since it doesn't then contribute to playability.

11:42 AM, March 14, 2014
Ancient Woodsman said...

Wow. Emmett Dalton was shot 23 times...and lived? That there is one interesting story.

Folks should remember that he was an armed bad guy at the time. Good justification for the "why do you need 'x' number of rounds in a magazine?" question.

12:22 PM, March 14, 2014
Kristophr said...

Bronx Grape?

Jebus, there hasn't been that much farmland in the Bronx since the Revolution ...

12:38 PM, March 14, 2014
Kristophr said...

Windy:

Avalon Hill did sometimes give up on playability for historical reasons.

France 1940, and Midway both came with lopsided and nearly unplayable historical scenarios, as well as playable what-ifs.

( The historical Midway scenario is nearly impossible for the US player ... the Japanese player has two big bits of data they didn't historically have, knowledge that the US fleet was already there, and the number of US carriers )

12:42 PM, March 14, 2014
Kristophr said...

OK then ... the last two genetically pure Bronx Grape vines are in California.

California, where New Yorkers go to retire: Same shit, better weather.

12:45 PM, March 14, 2014
Angus McThag said...

If that's all the gun fights the old west had I eagerly await all the changes to the gun laws causing us to go back to it.

Each one of those should have a number indicating how many times it was depicted in film or television.

12:46 PM, March 14, 2014
Drang said...

So, was this all one WikiWander, or just a bunch of more-or-less random pages open?

1:28 PM, March 14, 2014
Critter said...

Shrub beverage? As in....a shrub? why are we trying to save this?

1:42 PM, March 14, 2014
Anonymous said...

Been years since I saw The Lion in Winter. Was one of the movies we worked into our homeschooling curriculum in High School. The line I best remember (maybe due to maturity at the time) was:
John: "If I was to catch fire, nobody would even piss on me to put it out!"
Richard (I think): "Let's strike a flint and find out."


Regarding the Ark of Taste, it's interesting that the American Rabbit is on the list. We used to be inundated with rabbits until one of our neighbors started putting food out for foxes and treating them as pets. Didn't see rabbits for a few years until we slaughtered 15 foxes or so and almost as many raccoons after they started killing our chickens and ducks.

Equilibrium reinstated and biodiversity returning thanks to superior firepower.

1:47 PM, March 14, 2014
global village idiot said...

I sure hope the Bergamot orange is preserved - I lurves me some Earl Grey...

gvi

2:16 PM, March 14, 2014
hillbilly said...

There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.....

Rome...it's where they keep the Pope.

I want to die.
You know, if you wait long enough, it will happen....






2:24 PM, March 14, 2014
Anonymous said...

List of Old West gunfights: So, a few weekends in Chicago, more-or-less.

6:37 PM, March 14, 2014
NotClauswitz said...

My sister played Henry's mistress Alais in her High School theater's version in '74 - and after that it was all-mistress, all the time with her - then she ran away from home for two weeks and shacked up with a merchant sailor in San Francisco. Uncle and Grandpa found the location and with a shotguns brought her underage ass back. Sometimes I wonder...

8:22 PM, March 14, 2014
Cincinnatus said...

Lion in Winter is great film.

Lousy history ... but great film.

9:10 PM, March 14, 2014
markm said...

Windy Wilson: The British navy often won against much longer odds than that, although more often against Spanish ships or the post-revolutionary French than the French Navy of this period. They didn't hang Admiral Bing for withdrawing from a fight they recognized as unwinnable without losing a ship, but because in their opinion he might have won if he'd pressed the attack, the French had made mistakes, and the British had not - and his duty was to _try_ to win as long as it was possible.

Yes, hanging Bing was definitely an overreaction; he only gave up the fight for that day, so he could mend the problems with his squadron and come back. It was also arguably inconsistent with the dismissal of Matthews a few years earlier for being too aggressive, breaking the line of battle formation to chase down a weaker squadron before it got away, and losing. And against Spaniards! I recall some discussion of these two cases (I think it was these) in one of Patrick O'Brian's books; Captain Aubrey's opinion was that they cashiered Matthews for breaking the line and hanged Bing for maintaining it. But at least in the Wikipedia accounts, both admirals handled their formation badly, so the battle was lost before all their ships came into range. Which might be grounds to fire an admiral, but not to hang him...

12:31 PM, March 15, 2014
markm said...

I don't think that list of old west gunfights is all-inclusive, but it does tend to show that the west wasn't all that wild. I've long suspected that there were more "wild west" gunfights in the movies in any two years from the introduction of the talkies up to when Hollywood nearly abandoned the genre in the 1970's, than there was in 50 years of the old west. And in the last years of Hollywood westerns, I think there was more blood in a single movie such as "The Wild Bunch" or "The Quick and the Dead" than there was for real in the bloodiest decade after the Civil War.

Which makes me wonder if the reason the market for westerns faded was not that the public lost interest, but that they don't make them like they used to. The best-known 1950's Western was High Noon, with over an hour build-up to one gunfight, and fewer fatalities than a weekend in the people's republic of Detroit, MI. Would decent folk prefer to watch Will Kane, who avoids killing as long as possible, or The Man with no Name, who's a short step from a mad-dog killer? I mean that without any disrespect to Clint Eastwood; IMO, Clint's problem was that Hollywood had lost all understanding of decent folk.

1:05 PM, March 15, 2014
Anonymous said...


Also, a Lion in Winter features a a side character William Marshall, "The" Marshall of the late Anglo-Norman Empire, and one of my favorite historical figures.

1. Taught Richard Lionheart how to fight, in later years Richard backed down rather than try his luck.
2. Was undefeated in over 500 single combat tourneys ( not the pansy late medieval kind, this kind you won, you got the armour, the horse and losers stuff. VERY profitable.
3. Was voted MVP so often in melee tournaments that it was embarrassing.
4. _Lead_ heavy Cavalry charges into his 70's once bare headed so people could see who it was.
5. Died in his bed, with multiple fine sons and beautiful wife as a major magnate and marcher lord.
6. When he told King John off for his incompetence and went over swear fealty for his now-french possessions after the fall of Normandy, and King JoHn asked for a champion "to avenge the insult" NOT A SINGLE MAN stepped forward. ( The Marshall was right, the king was wrong, also the marshall had a reputation and so did King John.)
7. Speaking of his reputation, at least one battle was just called off when the French Commander saw who was leading the Anglo-Normans. "Crap, it's him, let's go home we're screwed."
8. When he died not only did the English court go into mourning, but so did the French King and his court. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. It was international News.

Chevalier Sans Peur et Sans Reproche

4:33 PM, March 16, 2014

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