Black Hero on the High Seas

William Tillman faced a brutal choice: slavery or death.
He was steward and cook aboard the merchant schooner S.J. Waring, about 300 tons, bound for Montevideo, Uruguay with an assorted cargo. Three days out from port, July 7, 1861, and one hundred fifty miles from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, at lat. 38°, long. 69°.

Tillman's vessel was boarded by men from the rebel privateer Jeff Davis. 

They declared the schooner property of the Confederate States of America. The Civil War was less than four months old.          

Line engraving published in Harper's Weekly, 1861, 

depicting the recapture of the schooner

S.J. Waring by William Tillman

.
The rebels ransacked the vessel and ordered Captain Smith, the ship's master, to haul down the Stars and Stripes. He was then taken to the privateer. Tillman was told that he, like the ship, was southern property and that he would be sold into bondage when the ship reached its new destination.
The confederates put a five man prize crew on Tillman's ship and turned her south, toward Charleston. Now, each day at sea beat down on Tillman like a hammer. An overwhelming sense of dread, however, was gradually replaced by iron-willed resolve. Tillman, in concert with a handful of passengers, hatched a bold plan.

VFR to EWR

Jerseyites know this route; they've looked up and seen the planes getting in line for landing, they've looked down and tried to spot their favorite White Castle... here's what the pilot sees.

Shaka Zulu -- A Richmond Reincarnation

In 2009 Virginia Commenwealth University hired a Kenyon College scholar (magna cum laude, history and social science) as head basketball coach. Oh, he had some b-ball cred, too; an academic All-American at Kenyon, Smart began his coaching career in 1999 as an assistant at California University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned his Master's Degree. Afterwards, he was hired as Director of Basketball Operations at the University of Dayton. From there he went on to become an assistant at the University of Akron for three years, Clemson University for two, and the University of Florida for one.  With Smart at the VCU helm, urban VCU (it's right in the center of Richmond)  has risen from regional athletic obscurity to national basketball prominence. Coach Shaka Smart (yes, he's named after that famous Zulu warrior) has compiled a 131-44 record, employing what he calls a 'havoc' style of play, an aggressive, upbeat tempo that has placed VCU in the top three teams for steals and turnovers in the past three years, and earned them a rarified Final Four berth in the 2011 NCAA March Madness and tournament bids and success every year since.  Smart squashed rumors (and offers!) of his moving on and up by signing an eight-year extension at VCU.
Smart fields a team that is superbly coached, rigorously trained, and instilled with team esprit; for the last two years the VCU basketball varsity has worked through Navy Seal exercises, becoming such physical specimens that they seem to own the last ten minutes of every game.

Watch the Rams!!!

Tennyson's 'Valley of Death' comes back to bite us

Russo-British skirmish in the Crimea

Surprise surprise, the whole ethnic sludge pot that is the Crimea is the result of England and France nosing around in Russian business and entering the Crimean War in the mid-19th century. And just to put the really stupid icing on it, the war was essentially driven by religion -- who controlled what in the Holy Land ( You think maybe we should stop calling it that?) 

You can read about the ins and outs here, but for today's lesson, what's important is the war transformed the region. Because of battles, population exchanges, and nationalist movements incited by the war, the present-day states of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and regions such as Crimea and the Caucasus all changed in small or large ways due to this conflict. And don't think for a nano-second that this isn't an arrow in Putin's quiver!
But let's end on a fun note. The war in the Crimea -- specifically the Battle of Balaclava -- prompted Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', a stirring poem immortalizing a near-suicidal charge by the English cavalry in that battle. Read the poem here.
The fun part? James Bosworth was a young Brit who survived the infamous charge. He returned home and worked for the British Rail Service; some 50 years later he died in that service, in an accident. His epitaph reads:

Though shot and shell around flew fast,
On Balaclava's plain,
Unscathed he passed, to fall at last,
Run over by a train.

Being horny has its limits

It’s August in Australia, and a small, mouse-like creature called an antechinus is busy killing himself through sex. He was a virgin until now, but for two to three weeks, this little lothario goes at it non-stop. He mates with as many females as he can, in violent, frenetic encounters that can last up to 14 hours. He does little else.

A month ago, he irreversibly stopped making sperm, so he’s got all that he will ever have. This burst of speed-mating is his one chance to pass his genes on to the next generation, and he will die trying. He exhausts himself so thoroughly that his body starts to fall apart. His blood courses with testosterone and stress hormones. His fur falls off. He bleeds internally. His immune system fails to fight off incoming infections, and he becomes riddled with gangrene.

He’s a complete mess, but he’s still after sex. “By the end of the mating season, physically disintegrating males may run around frantically searching for last mating opportunities,” says Diana Fisher from the University of Queensland. “By that time, females are, not surprisingly, avoiding them.”

Soon, it’s all over. A few weeks shy of his first birthday, he is dead, along with every other male antechinus in the area.
The fun part of this little ditty was, for me, the questioning of the long-held conclusion (by masculine scientists) that this poor little guy was sacrificing himself for the survival of the species, literally dying so that others might live. Dr. Fisher submits contrary evidence that the little bugger is just horny. It's his diet!
You can read the whole paper here.


Excerpted from an academic paper by Diana O. Fisher, Christopher R. Dickman, Menna E. Jones and Simon P Blomberg. edited by James H. Brown, University of New Mexico and approved August 29, 2013.  I added my two cents at the end. (Italics)

Inside Crimea: A Jewel in Two Crowns

Inside Crimea: A Jewel in Two Crowns

(It's a long read, but this isn't Fox or MSNBC.)

To remember the sacrifice of fallen soldiers is viewed as a holy duty in Sevastopol, which endured a 247-day-long siege by Hitler's army in 1941-42. Yuri Perov, a Ukrainian naval cadet, takes the bus to his barracks after rehearsal for the Victory Day parade.

30 Days and Counting...

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Dame Edna