The Physics of War: From Arrows to Atoms by Barry Packer, Book 1 of 2023

My first book of 2023 is one I was reading off and on through most of last year. It is an odd book that is more history than science, but not history of science. It is a history of weapons that has some very simple physics added to the descriptions to show how the weapons work.  

In its pages are brief origin stories of weapons, such as the long bow and the hydrogen bomb, with some details about the science behind them.  

If you are looking for a history of weapons with a little of the physics of how they work, this book is just what you have been looking for.  If you are looking for details of the science that underpins airplanes, bombs, and missiles, the references in the index will point you to deeper treatment of individual weapons.  

One very helpful aspect of the book is reading about the pace of weapons development and how rapidly those weapons changed war.  The first gatling gun, the predecessor of the machine gun, was developed in the mid 19th Century. Very little was done with it for a couple of decades, then at the beginning of the 20th Century the multi-barrel gatling gun had developed from a large horse-drawn-carriage weapon to a compact, deadly single-barrel weapon that could be fired by two soldiers.  The slaughter of World War I was in part set up by the machine gun which forced stagnant warfare and massive use of cannons.

The first aircraft flew in 1903. By 1916, both sides in World War I had fighter and bomber aircraft over the battlefields.  The first lumbering tanks rolled to battle at 3-5 mph at the end of that war. 

Two decades later tanks were fast, mobile and massed in thousands for invasion covered by swarms of bombers.  The war ended when those bombers dropped the first atomic bombs.  Radar and espionage get their due in this brief history with a nod to drones at the very end. 

Interesting history of weapons with a sprinkle of physics.  

 

From Arctic Norway to Israel to South America, Pandemic Travel

 

Bodo, Norway, at 2am on June 21 this year.

In the three pandemic years ending this month, I have traveled to twenty-one countries on four continents. I was going to write about traveling this year, the third year of COVID-19, but decided that travel this year is a continuation of the strange travel during all of the pandemic. Since February of 2020, I visited twenty-one countries, seven countries for the first time: four in 2020, three in 2022. 

A Ferrari at the Museum of the 24-hour race at LeMans

From Arctic Norway on the summer solstice to winter in Israel to equatorial Bogata, Columbia, to southeast Poland, to the Republic of Georgia, I made eight trips overseas between February of 2020 and December of this year. 

The cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. I visited in 2017

In the three years before the pandemic, from 2017 to 2019, I was in twenty-nine countries, twenty of them for the first time.  Over the six years from 2017 to 2022, I was in thirty-nine different countries, twenty-seven for the first time, on five continents (I haven't been to Australia since 2000). 

Half of the countries I visited for the first time were part of a five-week trip in 2017. It was my first trip to Eastern Europe. I rode a bicycle from Belgrade, Serbia, to Lviv, Ukraine. On that ride I passed through nine countries. After the ride I visited Israel, Monaco and Sweden for the first time, plus returning to nine more countries I had visited before.

In his book Doom Niall Ferguson says he was warning colleagues in late January 2020 that a real pandemic was coming from China and would sweep the world. He was ignored.  He and his colleagues went to the annual Davos conference in early February--the attendees were dismissive.  It was the flu. It was a replay of SARS from the early 2000s.  Ferguson was right. The Davos consensus was wrong.

My February-March 2020 trip was haunted by the looming pandemic. I arrived in Europe February 12, landing in Paris.  I took a train to Darmstadt, Germany, where I met my friend Cliff. We flew from Frankfurt to Israel by way of Rome.  In the Rome airport we were escorted through the terminal by a woman who could have been a Drill Sergeant.  

Of all of Europe, the pandemic was at its worst in Italy. We just made our connecting flight and flew to Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem we stayed inside the walls of the Old City.  We heard that a whole plane of Korean tourists was sent home because of COVID on the plane.  We continued with our tour plans. A week later, I flew to the Republic of Georgia. Cliff flew home. 

I was supposed to visit Kyiv next, but went straight to Athens instead because of COVID reports in Ukraine.  I was supposed to visit Rome after Athens, but stayed in Athens a full week, taking a fast car trip to North Macedonia and Bulgaria. After Athens was supposed to be Rwanda.  But then I thought it would be more difficult to travel from Africa if COVID got worse. So I went to the Pyrenees for a few days, then back to Paris.  

America closed its borders on Friday the 13th in March 2020. Paris started closing around me. My ticket home was for the 17th and was cancelled on that day. I decided to wait and not join the tens of thousands of people trying to return to America on full planes and customs lines a mile long. 

There are worse places to be stuck than Paris.  It turns out bakeries are an essential service in France. I had lovely bakery takeout food to eat while I rode the empty streets of Paris.  My plane left on time and not crowded after all.  JFK airport was empty on the 17th of March. I made a one-way car rental and drove home.

Since the vaccine became available, travel in other countries meant changing rules at each border. But the rules were clear and people complied. Poland and the UK were very relaxed. Germany required masks on trains and planes right up to September of 2022. Brazil still mandates masks on public transportation. 

Outside the U.S. I could know what the rules were and expect those around me would follow the rules. In America, every boundary was a new policy. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I live, COVID policy was different in the city than in the rest of the county. It was true all over the country. 

I had no trouble with COVID policy outside America. But inside America, the erratic policy led me to stay away from Red States, except one trip to see the Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 race track in Texas.

For me, traveling in Red State America was the risk not worth taking. Through 2021 and 2022, the anti-vaxxers clogged hospitals. People who needed other treatments could not get care in facilities overwhelmed with idiots. 

When I first heard about the pandemic, a doctor I respect very much said the pandemic would last three years then we would start living with it. He was right. In the coming year, I expect COVID will be in the background in most of the free world. The countries ruled by tyrants, not so much.

  

My Top Seven Books of 2022

Every year in the current century I made a list of the books I read.  This year, I went further and wrote a blog post about every book as I completed it: except the last three that I have not yet written about. That list of essays is below the Top Seven List: 

5. A Dance with Dragons: A Game of Thrones, Book Five by George R.R. Martin. I watched all eight seasons of Game of Thrones before the pandemic. I decided to read the books during the pandemic. Like two branches of a tree, the books and the series get farther apart the higher they go. The cliff-hanger ending of Book 5 (published in 2012) has been hanging for more than a decade waiting for the final (maybe) volume in the series. I really want to read the next one and am hoping the author stays healthy enough to finish it. Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

4. Unflattening by Nick Sousanis. A graphic book that is part science, part math, part philosophy and very entertaining.  Sousanis said in presentation I watched that he wanted to explore how best to use words and images to present the world. The result is fun to read and a unique view of the dimensions in the world around us. Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

3. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler by David I. Kertzer. If I were ranking the books that made me feel the most sad, this book would be Number 1. It is based on Vatican archives opened in 2020 that reveal the church has been lying about Pope Pius XII and his reprehensible record since he became Pope in March 1939. The book is well-written, deeply researched and puts the opulence of theVatican in a dark shadow. Pope Pius XII never condemned the Nazis or the Fascists or even said the word Jew during the entire war. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer 

2. (tie) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman. The deeper that every science goes, the stranger the world is. This brief book explains that the interaction of light and electrons is the basis of all that we call reality except gravity and nuclear reactions. That's a lot. Feynman is fun, engaging and shows his readers a world where, on the atomic level, a Rocky Mountain is no more solid than a summer breeze.

2. (tie) 1776 by David McCullough. This book is amazing. The story of the that pivotal year, beginning in triumph, filled with military defeat in the middle, punctuated with the glory of the Declaration of Independence, then ending in Triumph in Trenton and Princeton. The story is all in this book. I loved reading it.

2. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. In the first paragraph of the preface this book, published in 2015, says Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine. And if he is successful in Ukraine, Moldova is next. The book is fascinating, taking each region of the world in turn and saying what is good and bad from the perspective of geography. Marshall says the best place to live is in a country bordered by two oceans and two peaceful neighbors with half of the navigable rivers in the world. Read this book and understand the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the looming threat to Taiwan and many other active and potential conflicts around the world.

1. Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander by David Cordingly is my favorite book of 2022. I loved the Master and Commander  series of novels and read all 21. Captain Cochrane was the inspiration of the series.  Here is the full text of my blog post:

Life really can be stranger than fiction.  In the case of Lord Thomas Cochrane, the actual man behind the Captain Jack Aubrey of the "Master and Commander" novels and the "Captain Horatio Hornblower" novels, real life is more dramatic and more tragic than the characters in the novels.  Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander by David Cordingly, tells the real life of a truly great military commander.

I have not read the Hornblower series, but I read all 21 of the "Master and Commander" series.  The real Cochrane had more wild and dangerous battles against incredible odds than Jack Aubrey did in all 21 novels. Aubrey has a lot of flaws, but is overall, a better man than the real Cochrane, who was, especially later in life, greedy, suspicious beyond all reason, conspiratorial, and vengeful.

But the great things he did are simply amazing.  Brazil became a free country because of several audacious battles in which Cochrane defeated the Portuguese Navy--at the time, still a powerful European navy.  He also won battles that led to independence for Chili, especially an amazing battle at Valpariso, and Peru. 

The whole time I read this book, I was comparing the novels and the life in my mind.  In the Epilogue, Cordingly wonders how Cochrane would be remembered if he had died at 34 years old, before all of the scandals that led to dismissal from the Navy and imprisonment.  The real Cochrane lived till 84, declaring his innocence and making great claims of money due him from many battles for several nations. Anyone who goes into old age rehearsing grievances after a life of true greatness would certainly be better off dead.  

Near the end of the book Cordingly describes the lives of Cochrane's children.  His older sons ran up huge gambling debts. One was dismissed from the Army. Another went into hiding from his creditors under an assumed name. The sons of great men (I suppose the daughters of great women are similarly afflicted) are notorious for dissolute lives.  In the history of Rome, the worst emperors were the sons of the greatest emperors.  

But the accounts of Cochrane capturing a 50-gun Spanish warship with a 16-gun sloop made me want to go back and re-read Patrick O'Brian's wonderful novels. Or maybe I will give the Horatio Hornblower novels a try. 

----------

The rest of the books I read this year:

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America by Stephen Bullivant

Poems in English by Samuel Beckett

Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide by Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh

Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy

C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis

Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard

The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil

Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz

Essential Elements by Matt Tweed

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud 

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum, Book 47 of 2022

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism 

by Anne Applebaum

This book has been on my shelf for more than a year. I heard Anne Applebaum speak, bought the book, and kept meaning to read it. At the beginning DecemberI finally read it. It was even better than I expected.  

The book covers the period from the beginning of the current century to the pandemic. She traces the rise of the authoritarian right across Europe and the world following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  For the first decade democracy swept Eastern Europe. Between 1991 and 2000 the trend was toward more democracy in more places.  

Then the euphoria cooled and the right wing started to rise again.  In Russia the 1990s were chaos and poverty under President Boris Yeltsin. He was followed by Vladimir Putin who remains in power today. 

In Hungary and Turkey, right-wing governments are creeping toward dictatorships but are already well along in stifling freedom for their citizens.  By 2020, Poland was well along in establishing a religious-based right-wing government.  

The UK voted for Brexit. Trump won election in 2016 and tried a dozen different ways to overthrow the 2020 election. In France fascist Marine LePen got thirty percent of the vote. A fascist-adjacent government took over in Italy and German has seen a rise in right-wing activity.

The book was published before the Russians invaded Ukraine so some of the dire trends of 2021 were stopped in 2022. Poland has become the center of shelter for Ukrainians and the transit point for NATO weapons going to Ukraine. Hungary and Turkey remain authoritarian but are suddenly marginal.  Sweden and Finland are joining NATO. The NATO alliance is resurgent in the wake of Russia's invasion. 

China is rapidly becoming more authoritarian and threatening Taiwan, but they are holding Russia at arms length. 

Twilight of Democracy is an important book to see the how the world was moving right in recent years. I am very glad I read it.

First 46 Books of 2022:

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America by Stephen Bullivant

Poems in English by Samuel Beckett

Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide by Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh

Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy

C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis

Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard

The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil

Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz

Essential Elements by Matt Tweed

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud 

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America by Stephen Bullivant, Book 46 of 2022

 

I read this book after listening to an interview with the author.  He is writing about the rise of the "Nones" in America:  the people who check None when asked about their religious affiliation.  After listening to the podcast, I disagreed with him about the cause of the rise of the Nones.  

Now I think he is right.  

Bullivant says the rise of the Nones was caused by the end of the Cold War. I thought it was caused much earlier and only became evident at the end of the Cold War.  

Bullivant and a team of researchers interviewed people across America about their religious affiliation or not.  When they talked about when and why they believed, and when they changed their mind, Bullivant's thesis made more and more sense.  

The national survey data certainly  support the end of the Cold War as the point that the rise of the Nones began. From the 1960s through the 90s a steady six to nine percent of Americans identified as Nones. In the 1950s it dipped down to two percent. Any survey data before that was at five percent or below.  

Since the late 90s, identification as None has risen to twenty percent in the most conservative polls, near thirty percent since the beginning of the pandemic in some estimates.  That is a big change.

The trend in America from a culture of belonging to individualism has been documented in many places--think of Bowling Alone. Bullivant shows that America standing against the world of Godless Communism after World War II had a real effect on religious identification. 

Bullivant carefully shows that the demise of religious affiliation varies greatly among different churches. Mainline protestant churches have lost the most members by every measure, but Catholic churches have also declined rapidly in some areas in this century. Evangelicals seemed immune for a while but are also losing members in recent decades.  Even Mormons are becoming Nones at a rising rate.

The stories of individual Nones and Believers illustrate the trends Bullivant points to. It's a well written entertaining look at a major cultural shift in America. 

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America by Stephen Bullivant

First 45 Books of 2022:

Poems in English by Samuel Beckett

Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide by Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh

Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy

C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis

Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard

The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil

Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz

Essential Elements by Matt Tweed

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud 

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Deutsche Panzer Museum: World War II Self-Propelled Guns

During World War II, the German Army made many self-propelled guns (SPGs) based on all of their main battle tank chassis designs: The Panzer MkIV, Panther and Tiger all had SPG variants. They used a variety of main guns. 

The Deutsche Panzer Museum displays all of the variants that could be restored by their staff.

 

A Visit to the Orangerie in Paris

Almost a year ago, I was in Paris and visited the Orangerie Musee on the north bank of Seine  in the Tuilleries Garden. The featured exhibit was the work of David Hockney in his pandemic year in Normandy.

Vogue  magazine wrote about the exhibition:

Normandy through David Hockney's eyes at the Musée de l’Orangerie

Four years after the exhibition devoted to him at the Centre Pompidou, David Hockney is coming to the Musée de l'Orangerie from October 13, 2021 to February 14, 2022. From the window of his house in Normandy, the painter tells of the tireless cycle of nature and the long-awaited arrival of spring.

The successive lockdowns of the past few months have had many facets, whether they be boring, solitary or creative. For David Hockney, this period brought the opportunity to create a titanic work, conceived over an entire year spent in France. Since 2019, the British artist has been living in Normandy, in a quiet house with a garden that he can observe from his window. He then had the idea of using this peaceful view to create his next work. No sooner had the cycle begun than the first lockdown in March 2020 was announced. Gone were the Californian swimming pools, with the painter choosing to devote himself to an atmosphere rooted in the French landscape. Armed with his iPad, David Hockney sets about representing the changes in nature, and its colours and textures. His inspiration? The seventy-meter long Queen Matilda Tapestry, which he observed during his visit to the Bayeux Museum. This frieze relates the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy, and makes the 83-year-old painter want to tell the story of the arrival of spring.

Spring will always come back

The ban on going out, gathering in groups, or crossing borders will never change one thing: the world continues to turn and the seasons continue to pass. Confined to his house in Normandy, David Hockney created a frieze painted on an iPad, measuring eighty meters in length and depicting the unchanging renewal of nature. While our modern world stands still, digital painting allows Hockney to quickly and accurately create more than a hundred images. From the nuanced shades of green in the trees to the flow of the river in its bed to the pop of flowers that spring with the arrival of the warm weather, the exhibition A Year in Normandy reminds us that after humanity, the world shall remain. Displayed in the main gallery of the Musée de l'Orangerie, the frieze is reminiscent of Claude Monet's water lilies, which are housed in the same building. While the museum continues to keep the details of the event secret, we can expect a visit to the Pays d'Auge through Hockney's eyes, as seen in the intimate tour My Normandy, organised by the Lelong Gallery a few months ago. This artistic return is already considered to be the most anticipated exhibition of the year. 

While there, I also saw some of the water lilies paintings of Claude Monet done at the gardens in Giverny. 

Paintings by Claude Monet

The street just outside Musee Orangerie