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English Village to be Invaded in Spybot Competition

A village in south-west England will shortly be swarming with robots competing to show off their surveillance skills. The event is the UK Ministry of Defence’s answer to the US DARPA Grand Challenge that set robotic cars against one another to encourage advances in autonomous vehicles. The MoD Grand Challenge is instead designed to boost development of teams of small robots able to scout out hidden dangers in hostile urban areas. [Read more.]

You have to get to the third paragraph to learn that the village is in fact a mock East German village built for urban warfare training during the Cold War. Insert Prisoner reference here.

Cross-posted from Old is the New New. Comments welcome.

More Matters of Great Historical Import

(Cross-posted at Cliopatria.)

I know this was linked in the last Carnivalesque, but I don’t think a solution has yet been found. The American historical profession must step up to the plate if we are to call ourselves historians: Why are there so many peeing dogs in historical prints of the American Revolution?

The Bowery Boys, a great weblog about Big Apple history, celebrates the arrival of Grand Theft Auto IV: Old People Beware with the history of New York City in video games from Donkey Kong on down.

In “The Paranoid Style is American Politics,” Reason, 24 April, Jesse Walker turns not to Richard Hofstadter but Bernard Bailyn to survey paranoia in American politics from the Jacobin pawns of the Illuminati to the current presidential contest between the lesbian assassin of Vince Foster, a secret Muslim Communist Republican, and a brainwashed puppet of the Viet Cong.

In “Well, it’s very bad history!” TV writer and producer Denis McGrath reviews HBO’s John Adams and makes a sensitive case for emotional truth over strict accuracy in historical film.

And what do you think was “the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise”? According to Clay Shirky, it was the sitcom. The equivalent technology for the previous century? Gin! (Hat tip to Sharon Howard and my non-blogging buddy Sean.)

Cross-posted from Old is the New New. Comments welcome.