Quotulatiousness

September 10, 2009

Random links

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:43

A few links that I found interesting or amusing:

  • It was 70 years ago today. Then: “Parliament will decide.” Now: “we require that military deployments … be supported by the Parliament of Canada.” Chalk one up for Mackenzie King, as he was right then and Stephen Harper is right to follow his precedent.
  • Let’s all hear it for “Open Mike” Duvall, former California Republican state representative. Everyone needs standards, and Duvall sets a very low one indeed.
  • The Minnesota Vikings cut WR Bobby Wade (in spite of him having taken a big pay cut to stay with the team this season) and replace him with former Philadelphia Eagles/New England Patriots WR Greg Ellis (who played for Brad Childress).
  • Wi-Fi Isn’t the Best Way to Network…Right?
  • The CBC shocks us all . . . and decides to broadcast a program that offends certain groups in Quebec.
  • Two Royal Marine officers traverse the Northwest Passage in an open boat.
  • Thinner is not cheaper: the paternalistic urge to get us all to lose weight won’t make healthcare any less expensive.

Oh, and last, but not least, “The Guild” Season 3, Episode 2 (belated H/T to Ghost of a Flea for bringing it to my attention):

<br /><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&#038;vid=bdab0fe5-ecc7-4f5e-a946-feefa45d531b" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 2: Anarchy!">Video: Season 3 &#8211; Episode 2: Anarchy!</a>

British army gets some new kit

Filed under: Britain, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

In what the British government is announcing as a boost for British industry, the PBI are getting some new equipment:

  • Thermal sights will be provided for rifles, marksman’s weapons and light machineguns. These can be used to detect hidden enemies and bombs while on patrol, and function even in total darkness – when the regular light-amplifying night vision gear now in use doesn’t work. This stuff is already in use by some units, and is considered good by our sources.
  • New Lightweight Day Sights will be provided, replacing the SUSAT* sights which came in when the SA80 weapons were introduced during the 1980s. SUSAT was very popular in its day (unlike the SA80s, which were only sorted out twenty years later in a German factory), but according to our sources the new sights are much better, offering improved field of view and a clearer picture. “A gleaming bit of kit,” we’re told.
  • The new thermal scopes, in a popular bit of good sense, have open Close Quarter Battle Sights mounted on top of them. This means that a soldier in a close-up gunfight doesn’t need to peer through a scope as he shoots, and lose track of what’s happening around him. This gets the thumbs up as well.

It’s typical in situations like this — regardless of the country involved — for the politicians to view any military spending as being primarily to serve political ends, rather than military ones. This often means choosing a less capable piece of equipment if it can be produced in a key state/province/constituency even if it costs more than a competing product. Unusually, this doesn’t appear to have been the case this time:

Overall, then, most of the gear is necessary and popular. Refreshingly, the MoD seems also to be breaking with tradition and simply purchasing stuff from the firms best able to supply it rather than trying to use the buy to subsidise UK industry. Despite minister Quentin Davies’ assertion at DSEi that the FIST cash will “support the British defence industrial base”, actually it seems that at least half the money will go to overseas firms.

The grenade fire-control gadgets and the commanders’ target-marking binos (two of the most expensive systems) are to come from Switzerland, for example. Swiss provider Vectronix say they’ll be making 92 million francs on the deal, about £53m — more than a third of the total spend, and that’s without allowing for prime contractor Thales’ cut off the top. The new day-sights, another pricy piece of kit, will come from Canada and the periscopes from Israel. The only substantial UK buy is the thermal sights, from Qioptiq.

More than you probably wanted to know about gender

Filed under: Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

By way of John Scalzi’s Delicious bookmarks page, a thoughtful explanation of what people mean by ‘gender’ and why it is different from ‘sex’:

I have been asked at various times what people mean by “gender” and why it is different from “sex’. Also I’ve been asked to explain the multitudinous types of “trans” people, and why they often seen to be at each other’s throats. Hopefully I can traverse the various minefields involved without offending too many people, but sadly there are so many different perspectives out there that I’m bound to offend someone. My apologies in advance.

So, gender, what is it? Many people still think that gender and sex are the same thing. People, animals, even objects in many languages, are either male or female, one or the other, a very simple binary choice. Sadly life is never that simple. I’d like you to consider four different ways in which things are viewed as masculine or feminine.

Biological sex

That’s easy, isn’t it? People have one sort of dangly bits or the other. You either have XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes. You either produce sperm or eggs. Simple.

Well, no. Biology is a fickle thing. Many people are born with ambiguous biology. I don’t just mean genuine hermaphrodites, though such people do exist. All sorts of things can happen to us in the womb, and thereafter, that make our gender difficult to determine by physical tests. These conditions are known as “intersex”, and there are an enormous number of different ones. The Intersex Society of North America has a fairly comprehensive list of them together with data on how common they are. It is reasonably certain that as many as 1 in 1000 people have an ambiguous biological sex in one way or another, and as people get old and parts of their body wear out that can increase significantly.

I guess they can update RFC1149 now

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

I guess that this story means they’ll have to update the old RFC 1149: Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avia:

Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery — but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles — in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm’s slow internet speeds.

Beatlemania? I’ll sit this one out, thanks

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:20

Stephen Robb looks at those poor, unenlightened barbarians (like me) who aren’t just wetting themselves with joy over the release of the remastered Beatles collection:

James Bond apparently hated The Beatles.

In Goldfinger, he advises Jill Masterson that “drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees” is “as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs”.

The Bond girl’s own verdict on the Fab Four, unfortunately, is not recorded before her untimely demise on the inside of a coating of gold paint.

That was 1964, when 007 may have felt threatened by that year’s global success of The Beatles’ first movie, A Hard Day’s Night.

I’m not a “hater” . . . there are a few Beatles songs I still like, but of the (quick check on the iPhone) 2254 songs currently residing in my collection, zero of ’em are by the Beatles. If I want to hear ’em, there’s plenty of “oldies” radio stations (real and virtual) offering them on regular rotation.

And I always liked that line from “London Calling“: All that phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust.

Criminals get creative, use “reality TV” ruse

Filed under: Europe, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

Apparently, “reality TV” does have a use: it allows criminal gangs to kidnap women and sell their pictures on the net:

Turkish military police said today that they had stormed an Istanbul villa to rescue nine women held captive after being tricked into believing they were reality TV show contestants.

The women were rescued on Monday from the villa in Riva, a summer resort on the outskirts of Istanbul, according to a spokesman for the military police in the region who carried out the raid. He said the women were held captive for around two months, but refused to provide further details.

The women were led to believe they were being filmed for a Big Brother-type television programme, according to the Dogan news agency and other news reports. Instead, their naked images were sold on the internet by their captors.

Given what could have happened, these women seem to have gotten off quite lightly . . . and it raises the question of whether this has been done/is being done in other areas.

Magna wins the competition for Opel

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Germany — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:49

The German government has settled on Canada’s Magna as the winner in the bidding for Opel (GM’s European presence, including Britain’s Vauxhall):

Earlier, there had been rumours that GM could be planning to try to keep control of its European arm.

Magna was the German government’s preferred bidder. The decision must be approved by the Opel Trust, which is due to hold a press conference shortly.

Magna has pledged to keep all German plants open.

“I am very pleased about the decision that’s been made and it is along the lines that the federal government has been advocating,” Chancellor Merkel said.

“But it’s also along the lines that the employers and the employees of Opel wanted.”

GM_Europe

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