The BBC reports (“Ascension remembers Falklands war”) on a ceremony for the anniversary of the Falklands War.

A commemoration service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War has been held on Ascension Island.

The British South Atlantic territory was used as a staging post for the military task force sent from the UK after Argentina invaded the Falklands.

Some 200 islanders and visiting dignitaries were at St Mary’s Anglican Church to mark Ascension’s role.

Interestingly the article also reminds us of some of the strategically placed remnants of the British Empire, such as Ascension Island itself.

Situated approximately half way between the UK and the Falklands, Ascension Island became a key logistical base for troops heading for the war.

The first British air attacks of the conflict were launched from Ascension Island on 1 May 1982 when RAF bombers made the 8,000-mile round-trip to target Port Stanley airfield.

Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC today, widely regarded by Apple-fanatic critics and bloggers as lackluster, was not exactly disappointing to me because I saw it as more of a “maintenance-release” keynote than anything else.

June’s big Apple news, of course, is the iPhone and, since it’s already been publicized that the launch date is June 29th, all that was needed today was for Jobs to fill in the gaps. He told us it would be available at 6pm, and he sketched out Apple’s model for supporting third-party “apps.” Necessary information, but nothing earth-shattering.

Similarly the Safari 3.0 beta availability for Windows as well as MacOS seems to fall squarely on the side of “good” but not “great” news. Apple seems to be doing a lot with Safari as a browser, app, and platform (?), making it central to the iPhone, establishing its connection to Dashboard in Leopard with the web-clip, make-your-own-widget capability, and having it do a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff in the new version of Mail and other apps.

The Windows XP and Vista release of Safari is something which was staring the tech community in the face, but no one I read prior to the keynote predicted it. Safari’s always straddled the fence between open source and proprietary, so it doesn’t seem like it would have taken a significant amount of effort to build a version of it that would run under Windows. (Absolutely not meant to trivialize any Apple programmers’ work, just a comment on the organizational resources and cost to port this app.) Right now it seems a little odd that Apple would enter the “browser wars” (v. 2.0), especially since Firefox will most likely be the victim if Safari on Windows gains any traction.

Is there a master plan behind Safari on Windows? I hope so. Will it convince some more switchers, again, hopefully. Right now I’m stuggling to understand the “why” behind this move, but if it’s a “maintenance pre-release” for some to-be-announced Apple software, hardware, or internet service, then perhaps it will end up being one of those things that 1-5 years from now changes the computer world like iTunes for Windows did when “hell froze over” and Apple released its “first” Windows app.

As a practical usability matter, I’m curious to see how well Safari 3.0 (Mac and Windows versions) are going to perform on the sites where Safari currently has difficulties. These are mostly websites built using poor, non-standards-compliant code, and/or Micro$oft backend stuff. Hopefully Apple has taken the opportunity with 3.0 to make the browser work even with those websites that expect IE’s buggy-ness. Otherwise the Windows user experience with the new browser will be frustrating at times, and this will only make Apple look bad (even though, of course, the problems really lie with bad website designers and/or Micro$oft).

This observation carries over to the speed question, which Jobs touted as one of the key Safari advantages in his speech. Safari was shown to be significantly faster than IE and Firefox. Its speed advantage over Firefox on Mac is well-known and is not a surprise. Part of this is due to the skill and expertise of Apple programmers, and some of it is due to the fact that Firefox maintains more compatibility with broken websites and components. Does Safari’s speed edge on Windows come from it being better written software or does it come from Safari only agreeing to work with well-written, standards-compliant websites?

The MacOS X Leopard final preview seemed like the biggest “maintenance release” aspect of the keynote. There were some “new” features that had not been publicly shown before, but there weren’t that many of them and they could not qualify as earth-shattering. Leopard still looks great, fast, worth the $129 for the “premium” version (Jobs joked that $129 was the price for the “basic” “home” “premium” and “ultimate” editions, of course, there is only one desktop Leopard version unlike Vista). There also looks to be a lot that will help developers write beautiful and useful apps. And it looks really fast.

The UI enhancements looked subtle, but good. “Brushed metal,” we were informed, is “gone” from the desktop / Finder. The opacity and transluscence of many more elements looks nice, and seems to emphasize the desire for technology and computers to be unobtrusive. So score there…

Of course, just as “brushed metal” fades away from the Mac desktop, it appears slightly tweeked and without explanation as the new unifying element of Apple’s website. When the site was taken down during the keynote, the expectation was that there would be some sort of new hardware product, something to buy. Instead, the website got its own “maintenance release” which saw its navigation bar updated from its 2001-2002 vintage “Aqua” look to something more similar to a 2004-2005 vintage “Brushed Metal” appearance. Of course, the website is more solid gray, the “brush” lines aren’t there.

The Apple website looks good, and the partial redesign was long overdue. So nothing really “wrong” there, but, as with so much else today, nothing really game-changing either.

Overall, I’ll admit to some disppointment, because I expected more “new” stuff, and instead it was generally a “maintenance release” keynote. But I won’t go so far as some, who are already selling derisive t-shirts: http://www.macmerc.com/news/archives/4028 to commemorate the speech.

I am left wondering about the regular iApps - it’s been a few keynotes now without any mention of iLife, iWork and all their real and imagined subsidiary applications and features. They deserve a maintenance release too, and I hope that something cool is in the works for them and that we won’t have to wait 6 months or more to find out about it.

One of Napoleon’s swords sold at auction for a record amount, according to the BBC.

A gold-encrusted sword used by Napoleon has been sold at auction in France for 4.8m euros ($6.4m).
Auctioneers said the sword, used in battle some 200 years ago, achieved a world record for Napoleon memorabilia.

The sword, which belonged to eight of the emperor’s descendants, was believed to be the last of Napoleon’s blades in private hands.

“It’s a world record for a souvenir of the emperor, for a sword and for a weapon in general,” auction house spokesman Bernard Croissy said.

The article goes on to describe some of the history of the sword and the origin of its design. Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign has received a significant amount of attention from historians, in part because of the clash of cultures that it represented. Also, it led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

The inspiration for the sword’s design is said to have come during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.

He noticed that the swords used by the Arabs, which were also curved, were very effective in cutting off the heads of their French enemies.

The French general is said to have carried the sword into battle at Marengo in June 1800 - before he became emperor - when he launched a surprise attack to push the Austrian army out of Italy and seal a victory for France.

After the battle, Napoleon gave the sword to his brother as a wedding gift and it was then passed down the family through the generations.

The sword was declared a national treasure in 1978 and, while it may be sold to a foreign buyer, they must have a French address and keep it in France for six months a year.

The complete article from the BBC: “Napoleon sword sells for millions”

I downloaded and installed the JumpBox version of MediaWiki today, and I was totally impressed with how easy it was to set up and use. JumpBox packages certain open source server software packages, like MediaWiki and WordPress, along with all of the dependencies that are required to run them. With virtualization software like Parallels or VMWare, setting up the software is as simple as double-clicking the JumpBox package.

The end result is that software that would have required a web server to operate can be simply installed on a desktop or laptop computer without needing to download and install a bunch of random components and potentially screw up your primary operating system.

I have a MediaWiki-powered wiki running on a web server of mine, but I am only using it to track my own academic research notes. Wiki markup, along with the ability to automatically save multiple versions of documents, is what appeals to me, not the ability to have many collaborators access and edit the documents. I see myself using a JumpBox MediaWiki implementation as a mirror of the server-installed wiki. If I’m someplace without an internet connection I can still work on my wiki as if I was online.

I’m downloading the JumpBox versions of Trac and Joomla! right now and I plan to give them a try next. Trac is open source software for bug tracking and trouble tickets that is used mostly by software developers. My plan for it is much less ambitious. I’d like to see if I can adapt its project management capabilities to academic research that I’m doing. Instead of following “bugs,” “fixes,” and “releases” I want to see if Trac helps the process of planning research and writing.

Joomla is a widely used content management program that runs on a variety of web servers and allows users to have different levels of access, add / remove content, etc. I’m interested in playing around with this software to see what its capabilities are to potentially recommend it to people I know.

JumpBox gives me the ability to sample all of these server programs without a lot of hassle.
The idea of using virtualization and packaging server based programs for use on personal computers is a really neat concept and so far my experience is that JumpBox has implemented it really well.

A Canadian company announced that they will donate 100,000 copies of the computer game Civilization 3 along with a special game module designed to simulate Canadian history. According to GameSpot.com:

Developed by Toronto, Ontario-based media firm Bitcasters, HistoriCanada simulates scenarios from Canada’s past, allowing gamers to take control of one of its European or aboriginal cultures to relive history, or change it in the process. In addition to the core gameplay (which builds off of Civilization’s social, economic, and military simulations), HistoriCanada also includes artwork, text, and short video clips on a wealth of topics as a result of cooperation with The Canadian Encyclopedia and Historica Minutes.

A Bitcasters representative told GameSpot that sponsor and distribution details are still being finalized, but 20,000 copies will be sent directly to high schools by Canada’s National History Society, where teachers will be able to use it in extra-credit assignments and otherwise experiment with the game in the classroom. The remaining 80,000 copies of the game will distributed directly to 12- to 18-year-old students through mail or retail outlets, likely by an as yet undetermined sponsor.

I loved the Civilization series of games when I was a teenager, mostly but not exclusively because of my interest in history. Although the strategy aspect of the game made playing on a computer-generated “random” world exiting, playing the real historical scenarios always appealed to me more. I really envy the students who will get to play the game as part of their history curriculum.

My only reservation, of course, is the issue of how accurately the game scenarios have been constructed. For instance, in the regular game’s “technology tree” a player can advance in knowledge of technologies that end up completely anachronistic to their civilization’s history (Incan stealth bombers and Russian AEGIS cruisers, to give a couple examples, always amused me). Not to mention the “wonders of the world” that a player could build given the requisite technological advances. I would always laugh when I read something across the screen like “Shakespeare’s Theater has been built in Paris,” “The Hanging Gardens have been built in Boston,” etc.

I hope that the developers of the Canadian history mod have been sensitive to spacial and cultural considerations in addition to temporal ones. If the “civilizations” are limited to Canadian cultural groups, then hopefully they’ve been sensible enough to only make certain technologies or wonders available to certain players. Counterfactual history is useful to an extent, but there are some counterfacutals that are so completely “wrong” that they would serve only to teach the students a really screwed up version of history.

For instance, if the game gave players the impression that native societies were on more or less equal footing with settler and immigrant civilizations, the result would be that a clever student game-player might end up “winning” as a native civilization. Of course, history in Canada, the United States, Australia, and other settler colonies is full of examples of smart, clever indigenous people going against the dominant trend of their peoples’ mistreatment, disenfranchisement, etc. at the hands of European immigrants. But it would be a disservice to students to teach them that history could have gone radically differently if only the natives had made a few different choices. All of this is speculation on my part, because I haven’t played the game mod for Canada.

The complete story from GameSpot: “2K donates Canada-specific Civ III mod to students”

All Things Considered on NPR has a piece about how initially reluctant publishers are beginning to change their minds about Google’s Book Search feature. I was particularly interested in the statistic that Google has digitized over a million volumes in a couple of years. It is possible to imagine them being able to achieve the goal of digitizing all the world’s books in another five to ten years. Technically speaking, they obviously can do it. Whether or not there will be legal or business orientated roadblocks and objections seem like the potential stumbling blocks.

The other really interesting fact was the representative from Oxford University press who remarked that in the past one and a half to two and a half years “321,000 times” people clicked their books to link to the press’ website and purchase them. The key point, he said, “We spent nothing to do that. That’s why we’re a big fan of this program.”

The complete story on NPR’s website: “Publishers Warm to Google’s Book Search”

Two reviews of a book by Lucy Riall on Garibaldi suggest that Riall’s important contribution to the existing literature on Garibaldi, the Risorgimento, and Italian Unification is the way that she shows how effective Garibaldi was at creating his own heroic image.

John Dickie writes:

Lucy Riall’s approach is sober and succinct. She lets the drama of episodes such as the defence of the doomed Roman Republic in 1849 and the expedition of the Thousand in 1860 speak for itself. Garibaldi is shown to be a military leader of genius, and a sincere and audacious patriot. Those who met him were charmed by his physical presence and by his humble but easy manner. Women threw themselves at his feet, and he had no compunction about taking advantage.

But he was also - and here lies the originality of Riall’s book - an astute and astoundingly successful manager of his own image. Garibaldi really was a hero; Riall’s persuasive case is that he was acting out a heroic script.

The Garibaldi persona had several components. Part was chivalrous outlaw, part long-haired romantic genius and part the honour-bound avenger of melodrama. There was more than a touch of the gaucho, too: Garibaldi’s signature poncho and his relaxed horsemanship dated back to his adventure-filled exile in South America.

Then there was religion: he appeared to be the Italian redeemer willing to sacrifice himself to free the nation from subjection. Garibaldi’s speeches played skilfully on these traits, which were more than just matters of style. The expanding press were greedy for stories that converted politics into parables of good against evil.

According to Riall, the real way that Garibaldi made Italy into a nation was not only through force and political efforts but through the creation of patriotic stories that “not only made Italy, but made Italy convincing.”

The complete review by John Dickie in The Daily Telegraph: “Spent bullets and stained bandages”

The other review, by Adam Zamoyski, makes a slightly different point about the creation of the national myth.

There never was a glorious coming together of the ‘nation’ to throw off the shackles of foreign oppression. Unification was the result of an often tawdry interplay of the competing schemes of various intellectuals and revolutionaries on the one hand and the opportunistic manoeuvring of the house of Savoy on the other, helped along by the brutality of the Habsburg administration, the incompetence of the Bourbons of Naples, the anachronism of the Papal States and the often delusional support of British public opinion.

All of this deconstruction leaves the void of explaining exactly how Italian Unification took place. Raill, according to Zamoyski, tackles this question and answers it in terms of public relations.

In this impressively researched, authoritative, intelligent and thoughtful book Lucy Riall sets out to get to the bottom of how and by whom Garibaldi’s image was constructed and, by extension, how the whole Risorgimento myth was foisted on a gullible world.

She identifies Italian Romanticism and its most famous product, Giuseppe Mazzini, as the source. A ground-breaker in terms of political PR, Mazzini deployed the power of Romantic literature to conjure the image of a nation oppressed, and used the tragic tussles of young Italian intellectuals with the ham-fisted and brutal rulers of their country to build this image into a cause. From his exile in London, where he came to rest in the 1830s, he orchestrated pointless risings which he would then write up in legendary manner.

Zamoyski emphasizes how much the creation of nationalist myth was tied to the changing role of the press in European society during the 19th century. This contingent and mutually constitutive relationship is the driving force that propelled the successful development of myth.

The press was just then undergoing a revolutionary change of its own. As readership expanded to embrace less educated classes, politics and history were increasingly represented as living theatre, which required heroes and villains. Garibaldi was a godsend in the circumstances, and he was delivered to an eager public as the physical embodiment of the resurgent Italian nation (which still did not exist in the consciousness of 90-plus per cent of the peninsula’s population).

The legend of Garibaldi developed a life of its own. While he went back to shipping guano across the Pacific, publicists and journalists churned out ever more intimate and sensational material on him. By the time he entered the fray on behalf of Italy once more, in the war of 1859-60, history unfurling had become a spectator sport for the literate masses. Garibaldi played out his part in the full glare of publicity, and his picaresque Sicilian expedition was one of the most publicised, and misrepresented, episodes in European history.

Despite the fact that all his subsequent endeavours were embarrassing failures, the propaganda needs of the Italian cause turned him into a kind of saint, and a bizarre iconography sprang up based on Christian practice and prayers. The legend had taken over from reality.

The idea of legend taking over from reality because of the interplay between the press, the subject, and the story is not a new or a unique theme. It is an important one because it appears not just in isolated cases, but in many different contexts around the modern world. One of my favorite films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, makes the same point in the American West.

The complete review by Adam Zamoyski in The Daily Telegraph: “The hero of italian unification?”