Quotulatiousness

October 11, 2014

WW2 Japanese balloon bomb discovered in British Columbia

Filed under: Cancon, History, Japan, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:05

Wayne Moore on the recently discovered remnants of a unique Japanese weapon that was used to bomb the North American mainland during World War 2:

Remains of Japanese balloon bomb in BC

Seven decades after thousands of “balloon bombs” were let loose by the Imperial Japanese Army to wreak havoc on their enemies across the Pacific, two forestry workers found one half-buried in the mountains of eastern British Columbia.

A navy bomb disposal team was called and arrived at the site Friday in the Monashee Mountains near Lumby, B.C.

“They confirmed without a doubt that it is a Japanese balloon bomb,” said RCMP Cpl. Henry Proce.

Japanese balloon bomb illustration“This thing has been in the dirt for 70 years …. There was still some metal debris in the area (but) nothing left of the balloon itself.”

The forestry workers found the device Wednesday and reported it to RCMP on Thursday.

Proce, a bit of a history buff himself, accompanied the men to the remote area and agreed that the piece appeared to be a military relic.

The area was cordoned off and police contacted the bomb disposal unit at Maritime Forces Pacific.

It was a big bomb, Proce said. A half-metre of metal casing was under the dirt in addition to approximately 15 to 20 centimetres sticking out of the ground.

“It would have been far too dangerous to move it,” Proce said. “They put some C4 on either side of this thing and they blew it to smithereens.”

Canada’s “six-pack strategy”

Filed under: Cancon, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

A report by Jeff Schogol in Defense News on Canada’s relatively trivial contribution to the fight against ISIS:

Canada’s participation with airstrikes in Iraq will free up U.S. aircraft for use in Syria, said Canadian military expert Christian Leuprecht. Historically, Canada has deployed six aircraft to support joint operations, said Leuprecht, who has dubbed the approach “Canada’s six-pack strategy.”

“When there’s a party, you’ve always got to bring something, so you bring a six-pack,” said Leuprecht, associate dean in the Faculty of Arts at the Royal Military College of Canada. “This is what we deployed to Libya. This is what we’re deploying over the Baltics to defend and survey the NATO airspace over the Baltic states.”

The U.S. and Canadian militaries have worked well together for years through the North American Aerospace Defense Command, Leuprecht said.

“Because Canada integrates on the interoperability piece — in command and control, logistics, intelligence, common targeting functions — so seamlessly with the U.S., Canada is always a highly desired partner because the transaction costs are so incredibly low compared participating of many other NATO allies,” Leuprecht said.

“[French] society is corrupted and doesn’t have any moral principles”

Filed under: Books, Europe, France, Media, Russia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:47

The Guardian‘s Catherine Shoard on the reception Gérard Depardieu received from a “conservative” Russian politician:

Gérard Depardieu’s move to Russia had the effect of making the actor repent sexual activities conducted in Europe, a conservative Kremlin politician has said.

Reacting to the publication of Ça s’est fait comme ça, Depardieu’s memoir in which he discusses stints of employment as a grave robber and a male prostitute, Vitaly Milonov expressed sympathy for the actor.

“It wasn’t easy for him in France,” he told Russian newspaper MK. “There, society is corrupted and doesn’t have any moral principles.”

“I view Gérard’s book as sort of repentance, confession of old sins. Now that he breathed in the purifying air of Mordovia, all that filth left him. He sincerely repents what he was forced to do in his youth in France. He wants to live in a new way, without all that filth.”

Display of naval flags on Her Majesty’s Canadian ships

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:40

From the Royal Canadian Navy’s website:

RCN flag positions

Canadian Naval Ensign
The Naval Ensign is flown at the masthead while at sea, or at the stern when alongside, moored or at anchor.

Canadian Naval Jack
The Naval Jack is flown at the bow when alongside, moored or at anchor.

Commissioning Pennant
Flown from the masthead, the Commissioning Pennant is hoisted on the day a warship is commissioned and is displaced only by the personal flag of the Sovereign or senior officer when embarked.

QotD: The economies (and dis-economies) of scale

Filed under: Business, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

We are the heirs of the Industrial Revolution, and, of course, the Industrial Revolution was all about economies of scale. Its efficiencies and advances were made possible by banding people together in larger and larger amalgamations, and we invented all sorts of institutions — from corporations to municipal governments — to do just that.

This process continues to this day. In its heyday, General Motors employed about 500,000 people; Wal-Mart employs more than twice that now. We continue to urbanize, depopulating the Great Plains and repopulating downtowns. Our most successful industry — the technology company — is driven by unprecedented economies of scale that allow a handful of programmers to make squintillions selling some software applications to half the world’s population.

This has left us, I think, with a cultural tendency to assume that everything is subject to economies of scale. You find this as much on the left as the right, about everything from government programs to corporations. People just take it as naturally given that making a company or an institution or a program bigger will drive cost efficiencies that allow them to get bigger still.

Of course, this often is the case. Facebook is better off with 2 billion customers than 1 billion, and a program that provides health insurance to everyone over the age of 65 has lower per-user overhead than a program that provides health insurance to 200 homeless drug users in Atlanta. I’m not trying to suggest that economies of scale don’t exist, only that not every successful model enjoys them. In fact, many successful models enjoy diseconomies of scale: After a certain point, the bigger you get, the worse you do.

Megan McArdle, “In-N-Out Doesn’t Want to Be McDonald’s”, Bloomberg View, 2014-10-02.

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