Where is the Random Thread of Randomness stuff that doesn't belong in other threads thread?

[CaptainWacky]

 

[Volpone]

Bond drinks his martinis with a lemon peel because in the books Felix Leiter points out that olives take up a lot of volume in the glass so 2 fat olives means less booze than a skinny lemon peel.

 

[Dr Dave]

 

[Volpone]

I'm almost done rereading "Battle Cry of Freedom," my almost 600 page book on the Civil War and I have decided to declare GEN William Tecumseh Sherman Patron Saint of Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes. The way the author tells it, he fought a fairly conventional (if excellent) war up to Atlanta, but since the Confederate armies were no match for the Union armies by that point they were mostly limited to attacking rear areas, and wrecking communication, transportation, and supplies. Sherman decided he would have to withdraw if he continued to fight conventionally because his supply line was extended too far in enemy territory. So instead of fighting the troops that were harassing his rear areas, he just cut loose and plundered everything he needed and burned everything he didn't need, basically unopposed, from Atlanta to the sea. Then he hooked a left and did the same thing through the Carolinas.

 

[Volpone]

Oh, the other thing that's been rolling around in my head from that book: According to the author, North Carolina was the last state to secede--and almost didn't. One of the hitches in a second Civil War today is, while the division is similarly high, the geographic arrangement isn't contiguous. You'd have the West Coast--a lot of the coastal areas--maybe Colorado, literally all over the map. So that sort of makes me wonder how the Civil War would've panned out if North Carolina *hadn't* seceded. There would've been this big chunk of Union, smack dab in the heart of the Confederacy. The Confederate capital of Richmond would've been practically surrounded by Union territory and Virginia would've been almost cut off from the rest of the Confederacy.