I wrote:
"I will ignore all ideas and new works and engines of war, the
invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvement
I see no further hope." - Julius Frontinius, chief military engineer
to the Roman Emperor Vespasian, 1st century A.D.
That's supposed to be "I will ignore all ideas for new works . . ."
To take a similar example from last week's news, NASA just closed
down their $4 million per year Institute for Advanced Concepts office
in Atlanta. As far as I know, this was their only venue for
researching "space elevators . . . exotic propulsion systems and
miniature robots for exploring Mars." In other words, from now on
they only plan to use German rocket technology invented in the early
1940s. This is called slamming the door on the future. See:
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/news/stories/2007/03/24/meshnasa0324a.html
The quotes from Frontinius and the others come from the book Cerf,
C., "The Experts Speak." Here is another gem:
"Most improbable and more like one of joules Verne's stories."
- British Adm. Sir Compton Dombile reacting to the story "Danger!" By
Sir Arthur Colin Doyle , in which Doyle warned that England was
susceptible to a submarine blockade by a hostile nation, 1914.
Note that England nearly lost WWI because of the German submarine
blockade, mainly because of bungling and ineptitude, such as delaying
the use of convoys. Twenty years later during WWII, the British
military officers repeated nearly every mistake they had in WWI. See:
Gray, E. A., "THe U-Boat War 1914-1918," 1994:Leo Cooper
Note also that during 1942, the U.S. officers and civilian leadership
repeated most of the mistakes made by the British in anti-submarine
war, plus they added several new mistakes that only Americans would
make, such as leaving the lights on along the East Coast, especially
in Florida. This back-lighting extended a few hundred kilometers out
to sea, covering most of the active shipping lanes, making it dead
simple for the German U-boat captains to find and target U.S. ships.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The Germans later called it
"the Happy Time." In 8 months they sank 609 ships, losing only 22
U-boats. At that rate, they would have won the war in a walk.
History teaches us that stupidity has always been common.
- Jed
