Yap

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.  
Dostoyevsky

Arctic Sea Ice Coverage

    
  Made by: Andy Lee Robinson

A really nice data visualization of Arctic Sea Ice from 1979 - 2013.  Bonus that they used a circular layout that looks like the North Pole.  Also, the data is compelling.  That's a lot of ice gone in a very short period of time. 

Yap

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
Douglas Adams

Sunstone

A very determined group of researchers has found an example of the previously legendary Viking sunstone used for navigating while the sun was obscured by clouds or below the horizon.  The best and most concise article I've seen is this one at The Economist.  If there were a Nobel Prize for Archeology, this team would win it.

Stalingrad Map Project

Here is another map of the Battle of Stalingrad.  It shows dispositions on a divisional basis on November 18, 1942, the day before Operation Uranus.

I can't find a definitive document showing the Orders of Battle or unit locations.  This map is interpretive, synthesizing  information from the sources below. A spreadsheet with my complete Order of Battle is here.  SVG version of the file is available here.

Sources:

Books and Articles

Author	Title	Notes
Alexei V. Isaev	Stalingrad The Volga no land for us	Soviet forces and tanks
Antony Beevor	Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege	Most widely cited Order   of Battle
Wikipedia	Red Army order of battle at the Battle of Stalingrad	Useful
Wikipedia	Axis order of battle at the Battle of Stalingrad	Not particularly useful
Staldata	Staldata.com	Axis and Soviet Orders of Battle & force strength
Wolf Höpper	Against the Flood - Operation Uranus (I)	German tank numbers
Joel S. A. Hayward	Stopped At Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe And Hitler's Defeat In The East 1942-1943	Bases used for Airlift
Akhil Kadidal	Stalingrad Pocket	Really good maps and annotated photographs

Maps

Title	Source	Notes
OKH Situation Map Nov 18 42	WW2 Photos Maps	Axis forces locations   Fantastic Site! Jpg is here.
OKH Situation Map Nov 18 42 2	WW2 Photos Maps	Axis forces locations   Fantastic Site! Jpg is here.
S4231 Summary of combat operations in Stalingrad	Armchair General/RIIAWW2	Red Army locations  Excellent map
S4239 Operations in Stalingrad area	Armchair General/RIIAWW2	Red Army locations
S4251 Combat operations of the South-Western, Don and Stalingrad Fronts	Armchair General/RIIAWW2	Red Army locations

Notes:

• There are more units listed in the Order of Battle than appear on the map.  I didn't place any unit on the map unless I could find it in one of the source maps.
• In conflicts between locations on the OKH map and the Soviet maps, I used the Soviet map.   The Germans had not picked up the Uranus build-up, so the Soviets had much better intelligence at this time.
• I could find no information on the strength of the 8th Italian Army, or Soviet 6th and 3rd Guards Armies.
• Unit lines are thicker or thinner based on strength and density.  These are characterizations, not precise measurements. 
• Unit strengths are shown in the layers in the SVG version of the map.  These are based on the Order of Battle spreadsheet linked above.  The spreadsheet includes notes on the units shown on the map.
• The base map is derived from the OKH maps.  I do not know the map projection.
• Please feel free to comment on any inaccuracies!  You can help to make the map better.  I'm particularly interested in proper place-names.
• The license is Creative Commons, share alike, attribution, non-commercial.  You can do anything you like with the image except use it to make money, claim property rights over your derivative images, or not provide attribution.  I encourage anyone to use or change the map.  I do not consider classroom use commercial.  Like all my images, anyone who would like to use the image for commercial purposes should contact me and I can give you a custom license at a reasonable rate.

YAP

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.  
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

WW2

 
Stalin and Ribbentrop shake hands after the signing of the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact with the scary looking Shaposhnikov laughing it up in the background, Moscow, August 23, 1939.

Stalin died 60 years ago today.  He had a stroke in the night, and lay in a pool of urine on the cold floor of his dacha for hours until he was dead.  Beria made sure nobody went in to help him until it was too late.  Not that I'm expressing sympathy.  The world became a better place when he died.  My thoughts about Stalin in a previous article.

This is a revealing photograph, a rare instance of Stalin letting his guard down.  It shows a greedy wolf contemplating a huge meal.   In this case, the meal was Stalin's favorite: Poland.  Significantly, the photo exists because it was taken by a German photographer brought along to the signing by Ribbentrop.  A Soviet photographer would have destroyed the negative rather than risk showing the great leader in an unflattering light.

There is a continuing debate in Russia about what to think of Stalin.  Some praise him for his wartime leadership.  Others condemn him because of his ruthless terror.  Both are right, though I think his crimes far outweigh his achievements. He was, however, the essential man in World War II.  Had he lost his nerve in the summer and fall of 1941, the Germans would have won the war.

Edits for clarity. 

Update:
Stalin did actually lose his nerve in July.  As the enormity of his errors became clear to him, he left the Kremlin and hid out at his dacha for two weeks.  When a delegation came to ask him to return, he thought they had come to arrest him.  But he did go back to work, and by the end of July or early August, his nerve returned.  It never wavered again.

Also, looking at the photo, it occurs to me that Stalin is looking at Poland, and Ribbentrop is thinking, "You took the bait.  We will destroy you."

YAP

There are three teams with swear words in their name: Arsenal, Scunthorpe and Manchester Fucking United #notbitterhonest
Stephen Fry on Twitter today.

YAP

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.  
Friedrich Nietzsche

The Novel Coronavirus

    Peter Kohama/MCT/Landov, via NPR

There is a novel SARS-like Coronavirus stalking the Middle East.  There have been 10 identified cases since Summer 2012, five of them fatal.  So-far, there have been 5 cases in Saudi Arabia, 2 in Jordan, 2 in the UK (one of them Qatari) and 1 in Germany, also someone from Qatar.  It seems to spread from person to person, but with difficulty.  Scientists think the virus comes from bats.  There is some concern that a mutation might occur that makes the virus much more communicable.  One to keep an eye on.  You know, if you don't have something more immediate to worry about and you are tired of worrying about global warming and asteroids.

One odd thing is that the news outlet covering the outbreak most often is... The Toronto Star.  Not normally known for hard hitting science reporting.  But they have featured every new development on their (web) front page.  Way to go Star!

My Pix

    Icy twigs in Humber Bay Park East, Toronto.

Squid Update!

    That's a fucking big squid.

Yap

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it. 
Bill Hicks

My Pix

    Ice and snow at Humber Bay Park East, Toronto

Yap

War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts. 
Napoleon Bonaparte

Staals Staap Pleeze

Apparently a real screenshot from last night's Leaf's Hurricanes game.

WW2

    Photo by Georgi Velma T-34, Stalingrad February 1943.  That's the Univermag on the left.

The battle of Stalingrad ended 70 years ago today.  70ish years before that was the Paris Commune.  70ish years before that, Nelson was famously disobedient at Copenhagen.

Explain That Science

Yap

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. 
Niels Bohr

Fun Facts To Know and Share

    Wrigley Field, Labour Day, 1988

The last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (1908), the Ottoman Empire was still in existence. via Trivials

If someone had offered a bet that fall that a black man would be elected President before the Cubs won again, would you have taken it?

Stalingrad Map

      click image for big

Here is a data visualization showing Soviet and Axis deployments on November 18, 1942.  It illustrates the German Sixth Army's focus on the the city of Stalingrad, and the Soviet build-up on the more weakly held flanks south and west of the city.  The next day, the Soviets attacked with complete surprise.  From that day, it was downhill almost all the way to Berlin.  Thus November 18, 1942 was the high water mark for the Third Reich.

UGH!  The way the image is saved here makes it unreadable.  For a better version, I've uploaded it to Flickr.  Click on the image to go there.

YAP

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em. 
Yogi Berra

Yap

The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love. 
Margaret Atwood

Crayons For Grownups

Heat Wave

Its a hot summer in Australia.  So hot that government meteorologists have had to add two new colours to the heat maps.  Previously, the scale stopped at 50 degrees.  Now it goes to 54 degrees.  The world is getting hotter.

Article is here.

Yap

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? 
J. B. Priestley

Yap

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. 
Niels Bohr

Meme Watch

PIX

The International Space Station floats serenely above a hazy Earth.

Note:  Its floating serenely at a speed of 27.7 km/sec

Yap

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal. 
Bill Cosby

Great Moments In Parenting

Fredricksburg

    The view south from Fredricksburg, in the spring of 1864.

On December 13, 1862, a bitterly cold day,  about 40,000 Union soldiers marched down the road on the right and tried to take the ridge in the background.  There were 3,000 Confederates behind a stone wall along a road running right across the center of the image.  And another 3,000 with artillery on top of the hill.  They held off the Union all day.  The two white houses in the center left are on this side of the road.  So is the white building in the dead center distance.  Wave after wave of Union Infantry formed up beyond the stream on the left and tried to cross the open ground towards the road.  None made it.  Later in the afternoon, they tried it against the hill on the right of the road.  No luck there either.  It became a disaster that still haunts the US Army.

And who was responsible?  My favourite idiot, General Ambrose E. Burnside.  Recently promoted to commander of the Army of the Potomac, the general spent the day on the other side of the Rappahannock, having not actually laid eyes on the field itself.  All afternoon he sent more and then bigger units to accomplish the impossible. The ridge could not be taken, and the Confederates knew it.  His generals pleaded with him to stop, but he insisted.  Things finally ground to a halt when darkness came.   This was his trademark, focusing on one small tactical objective to the exclusion of everything else, like winning the battle.  He used idiotic piecemeal tactics to boot, resulting in terrible casualties.  Exactly the same mistake he made at Sharpsburg three months earlier.  Except then he wasn't in charge of the whole army.  Burnside may not have been the worst general of all time, but he was in there pitching.

That evening, when the scale of the disaster became apparent, Burnside tried to blame those same generals that had pleaded with him a few hours earlier.  Lincoln wasn't buying it and fired him shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, that was not the end of his military career.  It took another year and a half before Lincoln finally got rid of him.  Burnside went on to become a successful politician, serving a term in the Senate.

Update Dec 21:
Thinking about it some more, what Burnside did at Sharpsburg, Fredricksburg and the Crater was to focus not on some random tactical objective, but on the one tactical objective he couldn't solve.  Then he threw everything he had at that objective.  And still didn't solve it.   At Sharpsburg it was the bridge.  At Fredricksburg the stone wall, and at the Crater, the crater.

The other thing worth mentioning is that this is photograph is almost unique.  There are few other contemporary photographs that show the key part of a battlefield.  In this case, it shows about 20% of the entire field, but this is where all the action was. 

Here is another view from across the Rappahannock, behind and to the left of the camera position in the photo above.

In this photo, you can see the stone wall.  It runs along the base of the hill on the right hand side, and can be clearly seen as a light line through the center and left at the base of the hill.

Many thanks to Blogger John Hennessy.  His site is what excellent amateur history looks like. 

Merry Christmas

Yes, I ran this last year.  And yes, I will run it next year too.

Meme Watch

Bohr In New York

When Niels Bohr and his son visited the US in 1944, they were placed under surveillance.  This is one of the reports from when they were in New York.  They apparently gave him the codename Nicholas Baker.  Click for big image.

Pix

         Rosa Parks, December 1, 1955