The Welsh And The Sheep

 History, Humour  No Responses »
Feb 202016
 

2012-05-19-sheep standing guard.small

The whole Welsh carnally like sheep thing is pretty funny? Plenty of opportunities for jokes in there. But do you know where it comes from?

Unfortunately I don’t have a source for this (I’m a bad historian!), but I do remember reading it from a respectable history book.

In medieval times, there were two crimes you were likely to be charged with if you were caught in possession of sheep you didn’t own back then. One charge (sheep stealing) was dealt with by the King’s courts and dealt harshly with any property crime – sheep rustlers could and frequently were hung for stealing sheep.

The other charge (unlawful carnal knowledge of a sheep) was dealt with by the Church courts who were somewhat more lenient, and the punishment was more likely to be a fine or a short imprisonment.

Anyone with half a brain would opt for the Church courts, and it seems from the records that the Welsh picked up on this legal loophole very rapidly. After all being known as a sheep-shagger is somewhat preferable to being hung.

70 Years After Hiroshima

 History  No Responses »
Aug 082015
 

It is approximately 70 years since the first nuclear fission bomb to be dropped was delivered to Hiroshima.

Which is obviously a terrible thing to have occurred. The death toll (approximately 80,000) from a single weapon was astronomical, but when you compare it with other incidents where civilians were killed in war (such as the Nanjing Massacre when between 40,000-300,000 Chinese were killed) it becomes a little less "special".

Yet those other massacres seem to be less well remembered despite many having a death toll comparable to Hiroshima (or Nagasaki). There is a series of conventions on the conduct of war (the Geneva Conventions) that includes provisions for prohibiting attacks on civilians.

However these provisions seem to be optional and widely ignored by military leaders and their political masters whenever it becomes inconvenient.

Radiation poisoning is one aspect that would seem to make Hiroshima "special" but there are other incidents where civilians continued to die after the initial attack :-

  • Civilian victims of gas attacks during WWI which continued well after the war (in the region of 200,000).
  • Victims of delayed action munitions such as minefields and cluster bombs. 

Even the notion that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so terrible that it should never be repeated does not make these incidents unique – gas attacks during WWI inspired the complete prohbition of chemical warfare (which worked out so well).

But Hiroshima is special; it is special to the victims, the victims' families, and the survivors. But that sort of special also applies to all of the other massacres of civilians; they are all special to those personally involved in them. And to be frank they should be special to everyone who believes that civilians should not be targets in warfare.

It is special in another way – it is probably unique in the effect on the Japanese governments past, present, and hopefully future in the sense that the government is opposed to warfare.  

Is Britain A Christian Nation?

 General, History, Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Apr 222014
 

In short: No.

The word nation refers to the people within the country (and technically outside too – at least those who share their identity), so the religion of a nation is the sum total of the religions of all the people within that nation.

According to the last census, approximately 60% of Britains put themselves down as “Christian”, which means that on the surface 40% are not Christian (and nearly 25% of the total are “not religious”).

But there is quite a good chance that a significant proportion of that 60% are not fully Christian in the sense that it may be easiest just to say “Christian” when asked without really meaning it. Particularly in smaller communities (and there’s still a fair number left), a lot of community social life is associated with the church.

And a lot of older people will remember a time when choosing “Church of England” was the closest you could get to choosing “No religion”.

But even if 60% of the population is Christian, then we still cannot say that Britain is a Christian nation – too many people belong to other religions or none at all and claiming that we are a Christian nation excludes those others.

But is Britain a Christian state?

Well yes, and no.

The Church of England is an established church; whereas the Church in Wales, and the Church of Scotland are not. Meaning that if you live in England there is an official state religion but in other parts of Britain there is not. To add to the confusion, the Church in Wales is a daughter church of the Church of England.

But whilst the Church of England is an established church, most of the rights and privileges of an established church have been stripped away over the years. The remaining rump of rights is rather negligible with one exception – the head of state is also the head of the Church of England.

But the monarch has rather less power in reality than in practice. The current queen could in theory dissolve parliament at any time she chose; in practice parliament is most likely to ignore her wishes. Similarly if the queen were to start interfering with the Church of England, the Archbishop is likely to politely but firmly ignore her.

Similarly being a member of the Church of England does not in practice give you any special advantages; nor does a non-member suffer any significant disadvantages. The only disadvantage I can think of is that if I were somehow to become a candidate to become the next king, I would be excluded from the succession because I’m not a Christian; but there are other far more significant obstacles.

But is our culture influenced by Christian values? That is an impossible question to answer unless you specify which values and allow me to point out that many so-called Christian values are in fact values shared by anyone without regard to religion.

We do have a Christian past. And a pagan past. And many other influences from the past. All of which influence the values of Britons today.

How Old Is The Internet?

 Computing, History  No Responses »
Jan 172014
 

There is no clear answer to the question of how old the Internet is. For different definitions of the “Internet”, there will be different starting dates.

For instance, it is commonly held that the pre-cursor to the Internet – ARPANET – could not be called the Internet. And it is true that ARPANET was not the same as today’s Internet even at the lowest possible level. But there is a commonality to ARPANET standards through Internet standards – the very first RFC (issued in 1969) to one of the very latest (RFC7115) are all part of the same body of work.

And whilst the overwhelming majority of ARPANET era standards have been superceeded, there are a few that are still valid today. For example, an early standard for the names of hosts which restricts what characters can be used is still valid and (for example) restricts the names that can be used in email addresses – see RFC608 (it has been updated but the essential restrictions remain).

The next milestone in the history of the Internet came when the older NCP protocol was replaced with TCP/IP in 1982 (actually the “flag day” was 1st January 1983); this immediately raised the possibility of joining networks together and to route between them. Previous to this, different networks had gateway machines which were connected to two (or more) networks. Before the Internet took off, there were more than a few precursor networks – MERIT, JANET, BitNET, …; all of which used different network protocols.

Gateway machines would typically only gateway certain kinds of application traffic from one network to another; typically email was the bare minimum leading to services which would send information via email – at one point you could even “browse” the web using email!

Routing on the other hand allowed end to end communication so it was possible to use applications directly.

The next milestone was allowing commercial traffic on the Internet. The earliest networks were founded for research purposes by the American military or academic organisations, and prohibited commercial traffic Until the core networks allowed commercial traffic we wouldn’t have seen the Internet as we see it today.

There are plenty of other milestones – some would include the foundation of the world wide web (in 1991 and not 1993) as one of the most important. I don’t; simply because it was something that was bound to happen in one way or another.

The Unknown War Memorial

 General, History  1 Response »
Nov 102013
 

There is war memorial near to where my parents live which is a little bit special. It is a memorial put up by local people, but unlike other it is not a memorial to the local people who died in the first world war (which were later amended to include those from the second world war) but to commemorate all those young men who marched past on their way to the battlefields of the first world war.

You see, the place where it is overlooks what is now the M3 but used to be a smaller road leading to the same place … the port of Southampton which was the embarkation point of so many young men heading to the battlefields of the first world war.

Shawford Down War Memorial

Whilst it is no grand memorial, it does deserve to be a little better known.

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