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Hey all, we’re doing a Fireside this week! For this week’s musing, I thought it might be worthwhile – this being a frequent space for military history – to offer a brief outline of professional military education (PME) in the United States, which is to say the various stages by which US officers are academically … Continue reading Fireside Friday, May 30, 2025 (On Professional Military Education) →
This week, we’re doing another ‘silly’ topic, but this being me, it is a silly logistics topic, because – as the saying goes – amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. So we’re going to be professionally silly this week and talk about the logistics of vehicle warfare in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting, in part because … Continue reading Collections: The Logistics of Road War in the Wasteland →
This week we’re going to do something a bit silly, in part because I have to prepare for and travel to an invited workshop/talk event later this week and so don’t have quite the time for a more normal ‘full’ post and in part because it is fun to be silly sometimes (and we might … Continue reading Collections: Alexander Goes West (A Silly Counterfactual) →
This week we’re looking at a specific visual motif common in TV and film: the arrow volley. You know the scene: the general readies his archers, he orders them to ‘draw!’ and then holds up his hand with that ‘wait for it’ gesture and then shouts ‘loose!’ (or worse yet, ‘fire!’) and all of the … Continue reading Collections: Why Archers Didn’t Volley Fire →
More in history
September 11, 1961 So I came across another "stash" of old Weekly Readers that I am going to share for the next few weeks. I have written before how these tiny newspaper appeared in our classrooms every week during the school year (and the summer too). I really love how our progress in the space race was filtered down to school aged children.
In 1907, the Wiener Werkstätte art movement produced a set of 12 prints featuring different Variety acts. These Varieténummer – Vaudeville performances – were both madly daring and fanciful. Mac Bull from Philadelphia (Act 11) would drive his car around a rainbow. A. Lucci the Famous Hunger Artist (Act 3) had gone 132 days without … Continue reading "12 Variety Acts by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1907" The post 12 Variety Acts by the Wiener Werkstätte, 1907 appeared first on Flashbak.
Does life have meaning? Brought into the vast and guideless world with a brain bent on understanding, we struggle with randomness and even despise it. Yet the meaninglessness appears repeatedly in art—a desperate attempt to understand, perhaps? In this whirlwind of unpredictability, we like to believe that at least our behavior is something we […]
Hey all, we’re doing a Fireside this week! For this week’s musing, I thought it might be worthwhile – this being a frequent space for military history – to offer a brief outline of professional military education (PME) in the United States, which is to say the various stages by which US officers are academically … Continue reading Fireside Friday, May 30, 2025 (On Professional Military Education) →
Yesterday, after a six-month hiatus, Banksy’s official Instagram account unveiled a new public mural: a small lighthouse on a beige building facade. The mystery of the mural’s location has since been solved. Its intended meaning, however, is still up for debate. Banksy Unveils Latest Mural in Marseille When Banksy posted images of […]
