Some extra notes on the show:

The Digital Deli’s excellent posting on the history of the show and its cast; very much worth a read. (PDF version )

Other logs and listening locations:

• Old-time.com (txt)
• Otr Network Library (real streaming audio links)
• Freeotrshows.com (streaming mp3 links)
• Waybackradio (mp3links to various shows up on the Internet Archive, but interestingly organized)

I’ve been a great fan of radio drama for a long time, and if you were to look through my MP3 player and the burnt CDs in my car, you’d see BBC drama, old time radio and the like.  I got a real love for it as a kid, and as it’s drifted in and out of my life, the real problems have been availability – of the programs and for time to listen to them!

One of my great faves in such matters, the 1950-1953 noir drama Night Beat,  has been saved as MP3s at the Internet Archive,  (better quality set here) and is very much worth listening to.

As to a mystery; while I was listening to Night Beat episodes, I’d hear something like ‘transcribed from Hollywood’, and I was totally puzzzled; my understanding of the term refers to ‘transcriptions of TV programs -> a written record of what the people said and did on the show’.

After a bit of digging, the answer was that it meant ‘pre-recorded in a studio on special vinyl-like disks and played on the network for the actual broadcast later’ – a system used in the days before audio tape was in common studio usage.  Huh!

Just a followup note here from me on a topic broached earlier in my LJ version of the journal about the Chinese explorer Zheng He.   I was gassing on about ‘we need fresher AH situations’ and Steve Silver brought up the idea of Zheng He’s expeditions finding Australia and colonizing it (as it would have looked pretty empty to the Chinese).

I said at the time:

Yes. I honestly think that one of the areas of AH that has been horribly ignored in AH is the Indian Ocean (traffic, littoral area, and so on) as a source of material.   And, for that matter, the whole Zheng He expeditions in general. I have a copy of what can best be called ‘Chinese National Geographic’ (in Chinese, of course) with a profusely illustrated issue on that topic – breathtaking stuff. (Just happened on it in a Chinese-language bookstore in Westmont, IL.)

Setting aside that the bookstore isn’t there anymore, and yes, I do prowl bookstores…the magazine in question had this Zheng He stuff in their November 2007 issue, complete with poster / map.  (Here’s stuff about their new English-language version, which I subscribe to.)  I was recently very pleased to see that Mere’s Social Studies book has a good part in it about Zheng He’s voyages!

The real-life issues about Zheng He’s voyages are interesting indeed; how far did he go, where did he go, the size of the fleet – and why the Ming didn’t follow up on his voyages in any substantive way.  I strongly doubt the story advanced by Gavin Menzies that Zheng He went to Australia, but as an AH, sure.

• (scholarly pdf on the Australia connection)
• (scholarly pdf on the trade diplomacy of Zheng He)

The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times – not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading.  It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff.

Tastes run like this for entertainment:

MERE: Could watch the Disney Channel endlessly as mind candy until her brains ran out her ears.    For fun reading, she likes fantasy stuff; I try to steer her to less trashy authors, though fantasy isn’t really my bag.   Some historical novels, some slice-of-life kids’ books.  She reads at a whole lot higher level than her age group, and she’s in AT math and English.  Right now, she’s reading the third HARRY POTTER book and loudly complaining about how much got left out in the movie.   Wait till she reads the rest…

SUSAN: Her reading list has involved a lot of sub-sub-genre stuff – mostly odd mystery books based around dogs or knitting, etc.  She’s now into two new-to-her Sara Paretsky books – BLEEDING KANSAS  (which is modern day) and GHOST COUNTRY.  She will read alternate history stuff, but she shares my distaste for stuff that masquerades as AH, such as CC Finlay’s latest stuff.  She accidentally picked up one of those from my donate-to-the-public-libray pile, and did a WTF. 

She’s also taken to using her MP3 player a lot for audio books, especially when in the car or commuting.

CONNIE: Really good historical novels, history works that are very readable and some biographies; she recently has been reading Ted Kennedy’s TRUE COMPASS cover to cover as fast as she can.   Occasionally, something new-agey inspirational.  One hole: she has a strong aversion to Roman history; I’ve tried to get her to read Falco mysteries or McCullough’s First Men in Rome series, and she won’t hear of it.  Not sure why.

ME: Alternate history (because I have to read everything in the genre, pretty much, for the Sidewise Awards).  Historical novels and histories.   he occasional mystery or fantasy book; THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA was my most recent hot-stuff fantasy, and my favorite book of all time is LORD OF THE RINGS.  (I like epic fantasy stuff, and not the stuff that is too weird (GORMENGHAST) or watered down (Shannara series, Thomas Covenant) to deal with.  Throw in science stuff of all sorts; my to-read pile includes a ton of research on climate and history and whatnot for the ice age and since.

The last leper colony in Europe, the Tichilesti (founded in 1928) is still going in Romania.

Sadly enough, the disease isn’t done for quite yet.  Elements in its rise and fall may be found in the slave trade and in the spread of tuberculosis. (See here for TB’s history.)

Leprosy appears to have originated in East Africa, and spread to Asia and Europe before reaching West Africa, and then the Caribbean and South America.

Online search references for the Quran and the Bible;  the Quran part has both the Arabic and three English translations, and the Bible one has a BUNCH of different translations, most NOT English (which has around 20 different versions).

Note that the authoritative version of the Quran is the Arabic one, of course.  And this is the relevant text from the Book of Armaments.  (See also the Rabbit of Caerbannog.)

An online, detailed map of Henry VIII’s London and Westminster.   (pre 1530s)

Add in an 1801 map of the area, with some country detail.  Also, an 1801 London map, and a 1799 one.

The lives and times of the Bosonid Dynasty in France, founded by the great Boso himself, with Bivin of Gorze, the fighting abbot Hucbert, Liegardis and Hugh the Black.  They married into the Carolingians, and did VERY well for themselves as small-time local nobles who went right up the ladder through their connections (mostly through marriage).

(taken from the teabagger protest in DC this weekend)

Lesson #1: Anyone who is not a Republican is not a Marxist.  Really.

Lesson #2: The last Czar in Russia gave up the throne in 1917, and the Russian Communists took over Russia in 1918; I don’t think you understand that there were no Czars in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I’ve never heard of Czar Brezhnev.

…also, there’s no ‘czars’ in the US federal government, except in the pens and imaginations of press writers who deemed some person a ‘czar’, just like there was no ‘Star Wars’ DOD program by that name – headline writers thought that the namess were cool.

I will admit that a ‘abstinence czar’ is indeed a funky title, and I don’t know what the punishments would be for breaking his rules.   (Though the one that Dubya appointed resigned over his hookers…dude, just say no, OK?)

Lesson #3: Inflating the numbers of a rally by a factor of 25-30 (making 50-60 thousand marchers become 2 million) and lying about the source of the information is right up there with declaring to the ladies that your tallywhacker is 53 inches long, and that Obama wants to kill your grandma.  Wait…

I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all.  But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to a limited cell of rumors and scares will support all sorts of wild stuff out of ignorance and fear, and fail to take this sort of thing apart and think it all through.

Nutballs in American political life were there from the beginning – look at the nastiness during the Adams and Jefferson administration, under Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and so on.  There’s been two big red scares (right after the first and second World Wars), and a lot of people fighting anything that smells like change.

They fought immigration from ‘those people’ – first non-English speaking Europeans, then non-Protestants, non-Europeans, and so on.  They fought changes in the laws to give anyone voting and citizenship rights…removing rules that kept Catholics, non-property owners and the like off the voting rolls.  Not to mention non-Christians.  And letting people who aren’t our kind into office?  Oh!

They fought taxation of any kind.  They fought any kind of consumer protection, including drug safety and food safety.  They fought public schools.  They fought paper money, banking, lending, interstate commerce, the internet and highways, and practically everything that they considered despicable progress.    They fought separation of church and state, because they desired their religion’s rules to trump everyone else’s.

They fought medicine and science and public health.  They fought innoculations, public water systems and sanitation laws. They fought educational reform; if the Bible and a switch were good enough for them, it was good enough for you.

They fought slavery in favor of indentured servitude (think serfs, and they were white and British) because they hated foreigners, and then fought against freedom for the black slaves that came over to America against their will, and they fought homesteaders.  And yes, there were fanatics like John Brown who fought against slavery but didn’t give much of a damn who died in the process, and bushwhackers like Quantrill and Jesse James who killed and laid waste in the opposite direction.

They fought freedom of expression and gun ownership by other people who didn’t fit their mind of real people.

They closed their eyes to intolerance, poverty, hate, misery, ignorance and want, out-scrooging every Scrooge.  They become stooges, in many cases, for much more moneyed and wanna-be-powerful interests.  And very often, those interests proceeded to screw the ignorant over just as much and thoroughly as anyone else, because the powerful who used them didn’t care who got worked over.  They fought reforms of banks and recoveries from panics and recessions and depressions because they felt that the government shouldn’t help anyone.

They become shills, endlessly repeating total nonsense.  They get sucked into buying tons of extra ammo and gold and survival equipment by scare merchants who advise them that the Boogie Man is right around the corner – or become dittohead drones to people who advise them to trust Nobody But Them aginst All Those Commies Out There.

Here’s a sampling of some; cut to avoid disturbing your stomach.  I remembered plenty of this from my own experience, and had to do a little research to give specifically connected links.

I have no problem with political debate.  I have every problem with organizing people to shut down political debate with threats and screaming.  And it deeply bothers me to see how many people don’t think before they act, vote or rant about whatever.

I know Marxists, and nobody in the Administration’s top is a Marxist, unless your definition has no connection to real life.   I see people rant at town halls about the evils of socialized medicine, and go home and thank God for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and never realize the problem with this.   I see people gripe about potholed roads and collapsing bridges and about how there should be no local taxes and never get the connection that no taxes = no public anything.

And I am tired of politicians who lie through their teeth for political power, regardless of the cost to all but their buds – whether it’s Richie Daley trying to tapdance about how the Olympics won’t cost Chicago anything, or the GOP leadership / politicians refusing to  care about anything but trying to destroy Obama  as a lesson to the rest of us and pandering to the most whacked out elements of their base.  That was the reason why I left the Republican party years ago; I believed in government’s role for the general good, and in things like honest government for the general good, and the GOP leadership stopped doing that.

When environmental protection comes down to ‘don’t worry, the rapture is coming’, I can’t support that.

Dame Vera Lynn, still around and reminiscing.  Great stuff, especially for those who follow the period.  She’s got a autobiography coming out…

“It did remind me what things were like, though. I was living in a grass hut some of the time, with two buckets outside the door. On one occasion I had to sleep on a stretcher balanced on two kitchen chairs. It wasn’t glamorous. I took one frock but I couldn’t wear it because of the mosquitoes, so I would wear a combat uniform with the sleeves rolled down instead. I was on my own except for my pianist and 6,000 soldiers. Had no female companions. No hairdresser. No make-up. Well, I gave up on the make-up because it just ran in the intense heat. All I could use was lipstick. I would shower with a bucket where I could. No hairdryers, of course, so I would wash my hair and it would frizz up straight away because of the humidity.”

Coming Anarchy also highlights multiple historical places with the same name; Albania, Iberia, Alexandria,  various African nations, and Guinea.  They don’t have one for Galicia, but they ought to.

From the Coming Anarchy site: projected maps of Europe in the future and the former Yugoslav areas, along with their tag on microstates.  Personally, I strongly doubt some of this; France has been doing a thorough stomp of its minority groups (linguistics-wise, especially) for the last 100+ years to Make Everyone Parisian, and the Bosniak Muslims don’t seem to have a place in that partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina.  And there’s a war *right* there.

Mr. Whyte is deeper into all this than I am by a wide margin.  Most likely in these de-evolutions, I think, are Scotland, the Spanish ones and a breakup of Belgium between Flemish and Walloons.   (I’m  a mild Francophile and a much stronger Nederlands-ophile, so…)

(I will also note that I think that the French central government’s attitude on quashing linguistic minorities is terrible, and I hate it.)

Just for the fun of it, here’s their posts on rearranging other areas:

• Central Asia (essentially breaking up Afghanistan and Pakistan)
• Middle East (see also here)
• Malaysia / Phillipines / Indonesia (my readers in Singapore probably have some thoughts on this) (see also this on Sarawak and this on Thailand)

Two prominent Cook County politicians who are black will be running in the next election for President of the Cook County Board; this article discusses how that could split the black vote in the election and let Candidate #3 in the door, a reverse of what happened when Washington beat Byrne and Daley for the Mayor’s seat in 1983.

I remember that election and the aftermath very well, as I was marrying the daughter of a prominent Chicago city official a month after the election (we’re long since divorced), and the fuss that was all around at that time.   Since then, I’ve learned a lot about Chicago area politics, and I imagine this will be a true battle of the dinosaurs.

US Air Force missile launch site converted over into a state park site in North Dakota; wanna go visit the silo and play twist-the-key?  (Multimedia tour online)

The missile site, about three miles north of Cooperstown and about 70 miles northwest of Fargo, is one of a handful of U.S. locations that commemorate the Cold War. The National Park Service operates a former Minuteman II launch center and missile silo in South Dakota. In Arizona, historic preservationists operate a former Titan nuclear missile site.

My usual noble call in the case of ‘too many of the Same Thing in the alternate history genre’ is usually responded to with ‘yeah, well, this stuff you sneer at sells, so there.’

And you can’t argue sales.  People do the same old same old because they’re trained to and it’s familiar to them.   WW2 is plenty fresh in a lot of minds, and the US Civil War is bloody, recent, and captures the imagination of an awful lot of US readers (who have large amounts of cash combusting in their pockets and damn little understanding of the rest of the world’s history).    And Rome and the Aztecs capture the imagination from a zillion sword and sandal conqueror movies and the blood-and-pyramids stuff of Cortez.

They’re quick, easy referents, and people understand them, sorta.  I’m not sure how well Germans and Australians dig our (USA’s) Civil War, but I’ll hold off on that for now.

First: If you MUST write in those areas, do something REALLY fresh.    Write about Rome collapsing early to Carthage.  Write about the CSA disintegrating after the Civil War.  Write about a WW2 where the Japanese decide to strike hard at Australia early, and about guerrilla Aussies fighting the Japanese in the far outback.

Second:  Avoid the tropes by eliminating the action.  No Civil War.  No WW2.  Why? What happened?  Out of all of those efforts to kill Hitler before the one, one does the trick, and the chaos that results…

For whatever reason, Columbus doesn’t make the trip, and France or the English are the first to encounter the Aztecs.    Or have the Aztecs never make it worth the Spanish effort to invade, because there’s no golden there-there.

While I’m notorious in AH circles as someone who insists that a AH story be (1) A GOOD STORY and (2) have some historical basis, not to mention (3) be one simple Point Of Divergence, not a whole mess of them (I can deal with some cascade effects, but not simultaneous stuff) – I give a lot of latitude to someone who gets those points clearly covered.

Some famous AH works don’t fit those rules, really.  The most common is the time-travellers-come-back-and-yoink-with-the-past…such as THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH and ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME.  Both involved near-present types who introduce themselves and their tech into a ‘past’ world, but I can deal with the way it’s presented, even though the time travel in neither one is ever explained in a reasonable way.

Another failing in AH stuff is a sheer lack of imagination!  The number of things I have seen cross my desk as a Sidewise judge or in general that revolve around the following topics – to the point of making one want to slam the next one up across the room and into the recycling bin – drive me nuts.

No, I’m talking about Robert McNamara, one of my particular historical nemeses, considering the number of important things that he messed up, destroyed or ruined. Not to mention the uncountable dead.

I’m looking at a point in the history of the Kingdom of Qin during the Warring States period that would have most easily short-circuited the Qin efforts to conquer the other kingdoms and establish an empire.  Suggestions welcome.

What I’m looking at is that the idea of China as a unified imperial state is nowhere near a certain thing, and that it was just as possible to see something more akin to the European states of the middle ages all over what is now considered the ’standard’ territory of China.

Yes, I know I’m considered to be a real bug about such things, especially in alternate history fiction….

For my Swedish and Swedish-American readers in particular: Does THE EMIGRANTS / THE NEW LAND (Utvandrarna / Nybyggarna) strike you as real, as something that sounds/feels/is right in regards to the Swedish emigration to North America? (Others are welcome to throw in their comments as well.)

For anyone else: What movies have struck you as particularly good or bad (especially the good ones) in regard to the research / historicity of the period, people and so forth?