There’s a fascinating rumble going on at Tim Worstall’s place about legal status of certain battlefield practices. Here’s the quote from a Telegraph article that Tim set it off with:
Lt Col Glyn Harper, a professor at the New Zealand army’s Military Studies Institute, who co-authored the book, In the Face of the Enemy, said that on one occasion Sgt Hulme donned a German paratrooper’s smock, climbed up behind a nest of enemy snipers, and pretended to be part of their group.
“He shot the leader first, and as the other four snipers looked around to see where the shot had come from, Hulme also turned his head as if searching for the shooter,” the book says.
“Then he shot and killed two more.” He shot the other two as they tried to leave.
“Hulme deserved the VC for his outstanding bravery, but he shouldn’t have done what he did in disguising himself.”
Other academics have supported the book’s claims. Peter Wills, the deputy director of the Centre for Peace Studies at Auckland University, said Sgt Hulme’s actions were “unsanctioned murder”.
One of the ads I saw on Tim’s site while reading this is for the “digital” version of the Guardian which seems to be a sort of online facsimile of the printed edition that you can browse for a fee. Yes, it includes the photos and layout, but for many of us it lacks an essential part of the appeal of the paper version: the option to throw it (three-or-four times a day) into the far corner of the room in which you are reading it, shouting, “Fuck off!”
[…] Pootergeek: One of the ads I saw on Tim’s site while reading this is for the “digital” version of the Guardian which seems to be a sort of online facsimile of the printed edition that you can browse for a fee. Yes, it includes the photos and layout, but for many of us it lacks an essential part of the appeal of the paper version: the option to throw it (three-or-four times a day) into the far corner of the room in which you are reading it, shouting, “Fuck off!” […]
Chortletastic.
I find that your blog also lacks this option. I therefore print it out before reading. Such action carries the additional benefit that I can subsequently wipe my arse on it.
But PooterGeek does offer all of its readers the opportunity to cut its author down to size with their superior knowledge, more rigorous logic, and finer wit—as you have so elegantly demonstrated, Blah.
Oh dear. I always knew that one of the risks of superstardom would be that my more obsessive admirers would be tempted to use my image as a prop during masturbation, but until now I had failed to visualise the sordid possibilities in detail. You do know I wasn’t legal when that photo was taken? Or maybe that’s what… Oh dear, oh dear.
Brilliant – I thought it was just me who had fits of physical rage with the guardian and independant! for us TV owners, a similar reaction often occurs at the watching of the Channel4 news and the Beeb’s Question Time.
Maybe Im just becoming a grumpy old man…