Quotulatiousness

November 2, 2014

Pre-game program in Minneapolis

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:11

The Washington Redskins are in Minneapolis today to face the Minnesota Vikings. Both teams have 3-5 win/loss records and both are coming off wins last weekend. However, this weekend’s pregame festivities will include protests against the Washington team name:

People who want Washington to abandon the Redskins nickname are taking their protest to the streets.

After a rally at David Lilly Plaza, several hundred people are marching through the University of Minnesota campus to TCF Bank Stadium, where Washington plays the Minnesota Vikings. Four men banging a traditional drum and women carrying a banner reading, “No Honor in Racist Nicknames or Imagery” are leading the March to the stadium, about a mile away.

“Today it’s going to stop,” Clyde Bellcourt, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, said before the march began.

Update:

Harper – “We will not be intimidated”. Reality? We’re intimidated.

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

The recent fatal attacks on Canadian soldiers on Canadian soil provoked a strong verbal reaction from the PM. Yet the actions of military commanders directly contradict what Mr. Harper said:

After the recent Islamist outrage in Ottawa, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “let there be no misunderstanding. We will not be intimidated.”

[…]

Over in Canada after the latest atrocity, military personnel have been requested “to restrict movement in uniform as much as possible.” That request came from Rear Admiral John Newton, Commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic.

So the Canadian military’s response to Islamist aggression in Canada is to instruct military personnel to take off their uniforms. Is that defending our Western way of life? How is it “not being intimidated” when you are afraid to walk your own streets in your country’s uniform?

If Prime Minister Harper meant what he said about “not being intimidated”, was this not precisely the time to insist that Canadian values be respected by all citizens? As the Canadian journalist Mark Steyn commented:

“If we have to have dress codes on the streets of free societies, I’d rather see more men like Corporal Cirillo (the murdered Canadian soldier) in the uniform of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders — and fewer women in head-to-toe black body bags. — I’m tired of being told that we have to change to accommodate them.”

It’s safe to just ignore the World Economic Forum’s report on pay gaps

Filed under: Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:37

In Forbes, Tim Worstall looks at how the World Economic Forum came up with their scary conclusions that the pay gap between men and women won’t disappear until 2095:

And that’s it: no, really, that is what they’re basing, in its entirety, their estimations of the gender pay gap upon. They asked a few people whether they thought that men and women got roughly the same pay for roughly the same sort of job or not and that’s it. This isn’t cutting edge data science to put it very kindly indeed.

For when we go off and look at the messy details of the gender pay gap we find that we’ve not really got one, not in the industrialised countries. Once we correct for the obvious things like hours at work, years in the workforce, educational background and so on we find that the mythical gender pay gap (that “women earn 77 cents to every $ men do”) simply disappears. There might be a small residual, a few percent, left in there but not enough that we can really notice. And quite apart from anything else it’s actually illegal to pay men and women different amounts for doing the same job (if on the basis that the different pay is purely as a result of their being men or women that is).

So, no, we shouldn’t be taking this report or finding seriously. And there’s more than just the fact that they’re using a survey to measure that gap. For of course the printing of this report will lead to, as the other incorrect claims about the gender pay gap do, a certain circularity of reasoning.

Ask someone: “Are men and women paid equally?” And they’ll start thinking about whoever it was that said that 77 cents line, recall that last year the WEF said that gender pay inequality was very bad indeed. So, now we come to asking them the same question for the next WEF survey and their answer will be influenced by the cacophony of voices that have been telling them how bad the gender pay disparity is. Including, obviously, last year’s WEF report that said so. It’s entirely circular and self-reinforcing.

Really, we shouldn’t be taking this stuff seriously.

Cast for Dad’s Army film

Filed under: Britain, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:02

Forces TV has details on the cast members in the in-production movie based on the old British TV series Dad’s Army:

The cast of the new Dad’s Army film has been revealed in the first official photos from the film set. Prominent UK acting talent have signed up including Bill Nighy, Catherine Zeta Jones, Sir Tom Courtenay, Sir Michael Gambon and Blake Harrison from the Inbetweeners.

Dads Army movie

The film version of the classic sitcom is being filmed in Yorkshire and features Zeta-Jones as a glamorous journalist who becomes suspected of being a spy for the Germans.

The original series ran from 1968 to 1977 with a film being made by the original cast in 1971.

QotD: The town of Reading

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

We came in sight of Reading about eleven. The river is dirty and dismal here. One does not linger in the neighbourhood of Reading. The town itself is a famous old place, dating from the dim days of King Ethelred, when the Danes anchored their warships in the Kennet, and started from Reading to ravage all the land of Wessex; and here Ethelred and his brother Alfred fought and defeated them, Ethelred doing the praying and Alfred the fighting.

In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a handy place to run down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant in London. Parliament generally rushed off to Reading whenever there was a plague on at Westminster; and, in 1625, the Law followed suit, and all the courts were held at Reading. It must have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and the Parliament.

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), 1889.

Powered by WordPress