From McMurdo Sound to Flanders Fields | Hacker News Reader

From McMurdo Sound to Flanders Fields

nathangoldwag.wordpress.com

16 pointslermontov11 comments

> The First World War did not arise from a vacuum, it was merely the accumulated atrocities of a century of Imperial expansion, turned inward in a final paroxysm of violence as the Great Power system of the 19th century imploded under the weight of its own contradictions.

A stupid and historically ignorant thing to say. The "Great Power system" avoided a general war for 100 years, but every system needs some maintenance when conditions change. "Germany going from a collection of principalities to the most powerful nation in Europe" was one of those conditions. The Ottoman Empire decaying was another.

It was not "the accumulated atrocities of a century of Imperial expansion" that brought on the Great War.

This reminds me of The Mountains of Madness, written in 1931.

Back then, Antarctica was still a huge "black box," where anything could live (Cretaceous-era civilizations, for instance).

One thing that has come from our modern day, is that there's very few places left, that are truly "Here, there be dragonnes."

The glass half full view for those who crave mystery is, in the past 20 years we have definitive evidence that there are as many or more planets in the galaxy as stars. And while we can't actually set foot on those planets, we can certainly explore them in other ways.

Good point, but we've basically had Science Fiction, since we discovered planets (I think it goes back to the 1700s).

I want a dragon, dammit!

> we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal. — Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctica 1910-1913

What a quote!

Ernest Shackleton was a cat killing failson: https://buttondown.email/jjw/archive/ernest-shackleton-cat-k...

Heh. I'd first learned about the Archangel campaign because one of the US' WWI propagandists had listed all the places their work had been distributed — including Arkhangelsk.

[according to my grandmother, the Whites in our area made it out via Transsib to Vladivostok, through Shanghai, and thence to North America]

It is always possible to trash-talk people who actually do things.

Sure the brits in general were full of self-confidence and stiff upper lips and lacked competence, but that includes most of them.

Scurvy was not well understood at the time, most other polar explorers avoided it, not with lime juice, but by eating raw meat.

Not using skis were a huge mistake by all of the brits, but it was just not part of the culture. Norwegians grew up on them.

Same with dogs, it takes a lot of competence and energy to train, you can not do that at a whim.

Schackleton is still the most successful among the british in my opinion, and a hero.

Scott though...

He killed a lot more dogs and horses than cats.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of that particular style of pop-history article myself. I much prefer an article written by someone who is capable of doing research and interpreting sources.

There's been this trend recently of "hold historical figure up to modern society's standards and then declare them terrible when they don't". This article not only continues that trend, but worse, it makes up new modern values to hold him up to that modern society also does not measure up to.

It doesn't actually make the case that the fact that Shackleton was in any way "worse" than his contemporaries, and claims that him using his connections to fund antarctic expeditions was somehow a personal failing as though someone could just write a grant for a ship back in 1902.

It's less a historical piece and more reads like some freelance advertiser's attempt to make an article they can just spam into any discussion about Shackleton so that they can drive traffic for themself.

To be fair, I don't think TFA is written to be taken seriously. It is more like a comedians roast.

But still, it reminds a lot of rumours without base that spread over e.g. twitter. For example of presidential candidates.

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