The Intemperate Engineer, Adrian Vaughan (Allan)

Drawing on the letters and diaries of Isamabard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), published here for the first time, this biography follows his development through his railway engineering projects and reveals the private man behind the public figure, challenging the ‘Brunel myth’ that has presided since 1957.  
Lesley Blanch, Anne Boston (John Murray)
Lesley Blanch, author of The Wilder Shores of Love, died in 2007, aged 102. This biography draws on publishers’ archives, unpublished journals and interviews to tell the story of the life of the British writer.
The Fireside Conversations, Lawrence W. Levine and Cornelia R. Levine (University of California Press)
Following his decision to close all American banks, two days after his inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt began his series of Fireside Chats, during which he used the intimacy of radio to share his plans directly with the people. This book charts the period from 1933 to 1938, setting each of the Fireside Chats in context and reprinting a selection of the letters that the president received from a huge variety of ordinary Americans.
Inside Room 40: The Codebreakers of World War 1, Paul Gannon (Allan)
This study of the codebreakers of the First World War provides an account of the Zimmerman affair, when the decoders of Room 40 successfully decoded a German proposal to Mexico to join them in declaring war on the USA, and profiles the key figures who went on from Room 40 to work at Bletchley Park, including Dilly Knox, Alastair Denniston and Nigel De Grey.

Discovery of Ancient City of Mahenjodaro and Harappa

The year was 1922. Initial forays in delving into India’s past began when Dr R D Banerjee found the ancient city of Mohenjodaro (literally, `city of the dead’) in Larkana district of Sindh, now in Pakistan.

A little later, archeological remains of another city, quite similar in planning and age, were dug up by Sir Daya Ram Sawhney in Harappa, in the Montgomery district of the Punjab. Sir John Marshall, who was the then chairperson of the Archeology department, decided this was a thing well worth looking into. Under his supervision, teams of archeologists worked in other areas of the Sindh and Baluchistan provinces of present Pakistan. What they came up with astounded the world.

The Post Maurya Period

In the post Maurya period, three dynasties jostled, came and went with astonishing speed on the Magadhan throne.
The first among these were the Sungas, under whom the country made certain progress.
The Sunga rulers were also quite successful in checking foreign invasions. Art and culture also flourished considerably under the Sungas who were particularly known to be great patrons of both.
They were followed by the Kanvas who were almost like a blip in the scene of Indian history, lasting only 45 years in all. The other important dynasty of this Post-Mauryan confusion was the andhras or the Satavahanas.

According to traditional sources, they were apparently Dasyus (as opposed to Aryans) from south India. Even in Ashoka's time, this dynasty had risen to quite a bit of prominence along the southwest regions.
We are told that it had 30 kings, however we get to names only with Simukha (235-213BC), who has been credited with founding the dynasty although his claim is in dispute – by historians that is. Simukha himself, one presumes, is now beyond caring. One of the most famous rulers of this dynasty was Sri Satkarni (194-184BC), who had a kingdom covering almost all of south India, down to the andhra region and around with his capital as the present Aurangabad.

Collaborationist French Trains

During the German occupation of France, the French train company SNCF helped to transport over 75,000 Jews to German death camps. Now bidding to win a deal to build high-speed trains in California, Kathryn Hadley explains how the SNCF has been forced to fully explain its role in the Holocaust.This week, on Tuesday January 25^th, the president of the French train company SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français), Guillaume Pepy, and the mayor of Bobigny, Catherine Peyge, signed an agreement to work together to transform the town’s former goods train station into a memorial to Holocaust victims. In 1943 and 1944, twenty-one convoys departed from Bobigny in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris, transporting over 22,400 Jews, interned in Drancy deportation camp, to German concentration camps. On Tuesday, the SNCF officially handed over the site to the town of Bobigny and agreed to help finance the construction of a memorial.
During the Second World War, the SNCF participated in the transportation of over 75,000 Jews to German death camps. Over the past years, the company has gradually been forced to research and explain its role in the Holocaust. The SNCF has been put on trial several times. In 1996, it published a report outlining its role and responsibilities during the Holocaust; four years later, it officially opened its archives to the public. On December 13^th, 2010, the SNCF signed an agreement with the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris to support the memorial in its development of educational material and activities. In return, the memorial agreed to assist and support the SNCF in its historical research.
The SNCF made the news again at the end of 2010 as it is one of the main companies bidding to win a deal to build several high-speed trains in California. As part of the bid, the Californian state government has insisted that the SNCF agrees to fully disclose its archives relating to the Second World War and to outline a series of measures to compensate the families of the victims. In response, the SNCF recently launched a website in English which includes a section about the company’s history, notably during the Second World War.
The introduction to the ‘Heritage’ section of the website outlines how:

‘Because we are new to America, many people are not yet familiar with SNCF. It is understandable that they may have questions about us and our history. In particular, questions have been raised recently about the company during the World War II era, when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied France. In this section you will find information about our earliest days, the war years, and post-war periods.’

It also explains that ‘over the years, SNCF has demonstrated its determination to shed light on the various aspects of its history during World War II. It initiated the examination of its past in a spirit of full disclosure and transparency.’
The website describes the German occupation of France as a time of ‘struggle for the French who had to fight for their very survival while often also struggling with questions of conscience.’ It explains how, in accordance with article 13 of the Armistice agreement, the SNCF was placed under the control of the German authorities; ‘the constraints imposed by the Nazi occupying forces on SNCF were horrific.’

OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, Allan Metcalf (Oxford University Press)

From its birth as a joke in a newspaper article in 1839 to its global success as the word with which all non-Americans are familiar, this study traces the evolution of the word OK – how it was coined, what it stood for, and the extent of its influence.
Daily Life during the Reformation, James M. Anderson (Greenwood)
Drawing on eyewitness accounts, this study explores the lives of ordinary people from 1517 and 1648 - the conditions in which they lived and died, their roles in the unfolding events of the Protestant Reformation and the Reformation’s effects on them.
Stride Toward Freedom, Martin Luther King, Jr. (Souvenir Press)
The first UK edition of Stride Toward Freedom, Martin Luther King’s autobiography and account of the start of the Civil Rights movement, first published in the US in 1958.
Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature, Emelyne Godfrey (Palgrave Macmillan)
A study of crime fighting from the seldom explored viewpoint of the civilian city-goer in the period of the 1850s to the First World War, when, although rates of violent crime were generally declining, there remained a fascination with physical threat and personal protection.

Violence during ITBP appointment drive in Bareilly

The applicants started protest after they were denied any facilities by the ITBP and the district administration.

The violence started this morning after there was huge rush at the ITBP center on the Bareilly-Agra road and the youths were not allowed to enter the center for physical test.

More than one lakh youths from 11 states have gathered in the city since yesterday for appearing in the test for selection of about 400 ITBP constables.

The youths, coming from several parts of the state and country, fought pitched battle with the police in which several youths and policemen were injured.

The youths also pelted stones at the Doordarshan Kendra and other government buildings. Several vehicles were damaged, while 5 Roadways buses, were burnt by the protestors.

Police has already taken several youths in custody for the violence.

DIG/SSP of Bareilly Prakash D said the situation was turning normal as the youths were being pacified and asked to return to their places.

He also blamed the ITBP for the violence as they have not informed the district police about such huge turnout of youths for the test.

Yesterday too, the youths had clashed with the farmers in which 20 people were injured.

Intel Core i7-970 latest news roundup

Core i7-970 is the second six-core desktop CPU planned by Intel. The first six-core Intel processor for consumer market, Core i7-980X, was launched in March of this year. The 980X was an Extreme Edition with 3.33 GHz core frequency and unlocked clock multiplier, and, like all Intel Extreme CPUs, it was not cheap (read: very expensive). Similar to the i7-980X, the i7-970 model is also going to have six cores, 1.5 MB of L2 memory (256 KB per core), 12 MB of L3 memory, and include HyperThreading and Turbo Boost technologies. The differences of this CPU from the i7-980X are locked clock multiplier and lower core frequency - 3.2 GHz. The i7-970 microprocessor will be offered in tray and box versions, with tray part number AT80613005490AD and box part BX80613I7970. Production S-spec number for the CPU is SLBVF, and qualification sample has QDF number Q4EZ. Both production parts and qualification samples have the same B1 stepping. Picture and CPU-Z screenshot of the Q4EZ sample were posted a week ago in this forum. A month ago TweakPC.de ran various benchmarks on the CPU, and compared it with Core i7-980X and AMD Phenom II X6 1090T CPUs:
TweakPC benchmarks
As expected, the i7-970 was a bit slower than the 980X in majority of the benchmarks, but faster than the Phenom II X6 1090T.
Official price for the Core i7-970 CPU is not known yet, although many hardware news sites reported $562 introduction price. Qualification samples of this CPU are available on eBay, so if you have $800 to spare and if you do not want to wait for possibly cheaper production part, you can buy a sample from this auction.
At this time only one motherboard manufacturer posted support information for the CPU. A few days ago MSI website was updated to add support for the Core i7-970 to X58 Platinum and X58 Platinum SLI motherboards.
The i7-970 microprocessor is scheduled for the third quarter, but exact date is not known. We think it could be launched in July, and there are a few reasons for this. First, from the past experience we know that MSI support information for forthcoming Intel processors is posted reasonably close to their launch date. Second, recent Product Change Notification 110118-00 (PDF file) from Intel refers to a change in Core i7-970 boxed processor's fan design. According to the PCN, clients will receive boxed processors with the new fan no later than July 5, i.e. the stores will start stocking the CPUs before the second half of July. And the last reason - information about this model was posted on a website of one of Intel distributors, and they don't post information like that well in advance.