User:ThoughtIdRetired

Yes, but...

Yes, but... is it right?

People will criticise you for going off on a tangent....

but those who don't go off on tangents keep going round in circles.

Things I wish I could remember without having to look them up

Quotations

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."Upton Sinclair

"Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic." Thomas Szasz

"They never taste who always drink;
They always talk, who never think." Matthew Prior

"Arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum aspiciet baccam ipse nunquam —
The industrious husbandman plants trees, not one berry of which he will ever see." Cicero

"By exertion too long continued, the mind as well as the body becomes enervated, and incapable of enjoyment; as it has been known in some, who, travelling through Borrowdale in a morning, would not overlook the most trifling object; yet, in the latter part of the same day, have passed the most interesting scenes on Wast Water, without making any other inquiry than, “How far is it to the inn?”"

“An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes that can be made, in a narrow field.”— Niels Bohr

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing”—Socrates

Military History

"...the normal frontage for a division fully supported by artillery is 5 to 8 miles..."

Other stuff

" Life rafts clearly failed to provide the safe refuge which many crews expected. Seven lives were lost in incidents associated with rafts of which three were directly attributable to the failure of the raft and the yachts which these seven people abandoned were subsequently found afloat and towed to harbour. However 14 lives were saved in incidents in which survivors took to rafts from yachts which have not been recovered. Many crews used rafts successfuliy to transfer from yachts to helicopters or other vessels. It is asking a great deal of any very smali craft to expect it to provide safe refuge in conditions which overwhelm a large yacht but this is what life rafts are expected to do."

Useful finds

‘However plausible on paper’, Alexander Sutherland wrote, Lord and Lady Stafford’s stated plans for their Highland property were ‘in the highest degree illusory’. Some of Kildonan’s tenants, he commented, possessed more livestock, especially cattle, than many farmers in England. No one in that position could ‘be reasonably expected to feel his condition “improved” by [virtue of his] being transferred to a situation . . . where he is limited to two acres of cornland and grass for two cows’. This was a point which the Marquis of Stafford, his wife, James Loch, William Young and their apologists – whether in 1813 or later – never managed convincingly to refute. Nor were they able to deal satisfactorily with Alexander Sutherland’s scornful dismissal of their much-repeated claim that, once installed on Strathy and Armadale crofts, the Strath of Kildonan’s former cattle-rearers could instantly be transformed into fishermen. Hunter, James. Set Adrift upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances (Kindle Locations 2017-2024). Birlinn. Kindle Edition.

Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances: Homicide, Eviction and the Price of Progress"

Debate within the management of the Sutherland estate over the amount of famine relief that the estate had had to provide in recent history.

"The Countess of Sutherland and her advisers were genuinely astonished at this response to plans which they regarded as wise and benevolent." Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances (Kindle Locations 2985-2986). Birlinn. Kindle Edition. (This refers to the Kildonan riots.)

James Hunter interview - here he states that the Sutherland Clearances was not the most brutal. [[1]]

References

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