Mark Frauenfelder has the book to give to your child before going to the airport:
Got to start ’em early . . . by the time they’re full-grown, they’ll accept any intrusion from government officials as a matter of course.
The original version (in French) is here.
The Economist sums up the arguments in favour of retaining the Harrier over the RAF’s preferred Tornado:
Francis Tusa of Defence Analysis, a newsletter, reckons that retiring the much more maintenance-heavy Tornados instead of the Harriers would have saved £4 billion-5 billion, while keeping Ark Royal going would cost only about £120m a year. He adds that getting out of the strike-carrier business for ten years means that critical skills will be lost. Others, including the letter’s authors, fear that the “carrier gap” will mean Britain loses the ability to carry out autonomous expeditionary missions. Among other things, that would, they say, leave the Falkland Islands (and their valuable oilfields) vulnerable to attack.
What appears to have changed the new (and inexperienced) National Security Council’s mind at the last moment was the air force’s claim that the Tornado was more effective than the Harrier in Afghanistan. It is odd that this was regarded as a clinching argument, as there are more than enough jets in Afghanistan. It is true that in terms of range, payload, speed and its ability to hit moving targets, the Tornado wins. On the other hand, the Harrier can operate from makeshift landing sites, is more flexible and reliable and could easily be equipped with the advanced Brimstone anti-tank missiles carried by the Tornado. And for five months of the year in Afghanistan, when the weather is hot, the Tornado can only take off with a similar weapons load to the Harrier.
The RAF’s enthusiasm for the Tornado is understandable. It does not have to share it with the navy (the Harrier is operated by a Joint Strike Wing) and it needs a lot more people to operate it (saving air-force jobs). Mr Tusa suggests a sensible compromise that would still save billions of pounds: get rid of half the Tornados, keeping 60 until they are not needed in Afghanistan; retain 20 Harriers for carrier duty until their replacements arrive in 2020; and accelerate the deployment of the strike version of the Typhoon. Time for a rethink.
I’m all in favour of improving the visibility and availability of Ontario’s VQA wines in other markets, so this news is both good and infuriating simultaneously:
A couple of weeks ago the Government of Ontario announced the opening of an all-VQA wine store in China (in the city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province). Oh happy day — now the Chinese can drink (and copy) all the Ontario icewine they want . . . but this begs the question: why should the Chinese have an advantage that we Ontarians do not? Do the Chinese drink more Ontario wine? Why is it so important that China get the opportunity to drink Ontario wines that folks in Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury can not?
I have nothing against the Chinese getting their hands on our wine; I’m glad to see a country embrace our wines as so many of us have embraced their food. But seriously, why should folks living in China have more and better access to Ontario wines then those of us living in the actual province. When I first heard the news, all I could say was an incredulous, “Seriously?” Has Ontario really become, as wine writer Dean Tudor puts it, every time he mentions Ontario, “a have not province”? When it comes to our own wine industry it keeps getting more and more “have not” and won’t get.
See what I mean? Great that they’re opening outlets in a new foreign market, but we still can’t get that kind of opportunity to buy here at home? All-VQA stores have been discussed (and rejected) before, but they’re apparently a great idea for foreign markets.
Update: Fixed the broken link.
From the folks at BoingBoing:
New revelations on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a secretive global copyright being privately negotiated by rich countries away from the UN: ACTA will require ISPs to police trademarks the way they currently police copyright. That means that if someone accuses you of violating a trademark with a web-page, blog-post, video, tweet, etc, your ISP will be required to nuke your material without any further proof, or be found to be responsible for any trademark violations along with you. And of course, trademark violations are much harder to verify than copyright violations, since they often hinge on complex, fact-intensive components like tarnishment, dilution and genericization. Meaning that ISPs are that much more likely to simply take all complaints at face-value, leading to even more easy censorship of the Internet with nothing more than a trumped-up trademark claim.
Zombie explains the weird and distorted results of gerrymandering:
Not every state redraws its district lines according to gerrymandering principles. Some have independent supposedly bipartisan commissions to do the job. But most states, alas, leave it up to power-hungry politicians. Republican, Democratic, it doesn’t matter: given half a chance they will gerrymander the hell out of their constituents. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it, because the system is self-perpetuating: the politicians we elect through these gerrymandered districts (and that includes state-level gerrymandered districts) are the ones making the rules, and they’re not likely to give up their grip on the controls.
Adding to the craziness: There are federal rules in place to ensure that ethnic minorities don’t get completely disenfranchised by racial gerrymandering, so states often have to also incorporate race into the mix, going to extreme lengths to create districts populated mostly by this-or-that racial group — federally mandated “packing.”
What makes things complicated is that not every state is consistently under the control of the same party census after census. So while the Republicans in a given state may have gerrymandered the district boundaries after the 1980 census, the Democrats may have had a majority after the 1990 census and counter-gerrymandered the existing districts; in 2000 a divided legislature may have argued over and re-re-counter-gerrymandered those districts, and so on. The end result is often what we see today: ludicrous, labyrinthine district boundaries that are the detritus of decades of back-and-forth gerrymandering attempts.
Although this is a generally informative article, a bit of careful juxtapositioning is required:
End of the article: “Is this the end of real democracy?”
Start of the article: “Gerrymandering is not a new phenomenon. It’s been around since the very beginnings of our nation, so long that one could fairly say that the United States has been built on the principle of gerrymandering. The very first congressional districts were somewhat gerrymandered, and it’s been downhill ever since. The phenomenon was finally noticed and properly named in 1812“
A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
It’s all very well to pass restrictions on the peons, but when those restrictions are applied to your aristocratic self, you’re apparently entitled to rant:
Britain’s anti-terror chief launched an astonishing attack on airport security staff after they stopped her taking a banned amount of liquid onto a plane.
Home Office minister Baroness Neville-Jones, in charge of national security, was en route to a Washington summit when she was found to have an over-sized aerosol can in her bag.
[. . .]
The Baroness was ticked off by border staff, who did not recognise her. But she took offence when they told her how important security is.
The 71-year-old Baroness, known for being haughty, ranted: “Of course I know how important it is, I’m the Security Minister.”
It’s so tedious to have to put up with back-chat from the peasantry, isn’t it?
I never thought I’d read an article in the Guardian calling for the privatization of a state asset:
Opposition politicians and commentators accused Italy’s government of neglect and mismanagement today over the collapse of the 2,000-year-old House of the Gladiators in the ruins of ancient Pompeii.
Some commentators said the Unesco world heritage site should be privatised and removed from state control. La Stampa newspaper ran a story headlined “Pompeii — the collapse of shame,” echoing national opinion over the cultural disaster.
The stone house, on one of the site’s main streets and measuring about 80 sq m (860 sq ft), collapsed just after dawn yesterday while Pompeii was closed to visitors. The structure was believed to have been used as a club house by gladiators before they went to battle in a nearby amphitheatre.
[. . .]
“Precisely because it belongs to all humanity, its management should be taken away from a state that has shown itself incapable of protecting it,”
[. . .]
Approximately 2.5 million tourists visit Pompeii every year, making it one of Italy’s most popular attractions. Art historians and residents have for years complained that the sites were in a state of decay and needed regular maintenance. Two years ago the government declared a state of emergency for Pompeii but it lasted only a year.
Roberto Cecchi, under-secretary at the culture ministry, said there had been no effective, continuous maintenance at Pompeii in half a century. Breaking ranks with his ministry, he said stop-gap, ad hoc measures, such as the appointment of commissioners, which attracted flashes of publicity, were no substitute for the constant monitoring worthy of a world treasure.
To be fair, the Guardian is merely reporting on the calls for privatization, not explicitly endorsing them, but even that is shocking enough.
Sue Barrett took a photo of this sign in Brisbane, Australia:
The Lincolnshire school authorities have decided to allow local schools the choice of including the study of paganism with the existing study of religions:
If you’re looking to improve your child’s chanting skills or enhance their moon dancing, Lincolnshire may soon be the place to go — as the county decided this week to let individual schools decide on the teaching of pagan doctrine.
At present, some six world religions are studied in that County’s schools.
According to the minutes of a meeting of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (Sacre) the county’s RE advisor fed back the results of her investigation into Paganism.
I’m not a fan of teaching any religious beliefs in any public school, but if you’re going to cover any of them, you can’t exclude one arbitrarily. “Paganism”, in this instance is a superset of Druidry, which is now officially recognized as a faith (that is, all Druids are pagans, but not all pagans are Druids):
This makes 2010 a very good year for UK Paganism, following the recognition of druidry as a religion in Britain for the first time in October, when the Charity Commission accepted it as a faith and gave it the charitable status afforded to other religious groups.
Critics — who have been slow off the mark so far on this issue — may also be relieved to learn that modern pagans, unlike ancient druids, are more concerned with focussing personal energies through ritual than human sacrifice. Then again, that allegation was laid by the Romans, who also accused early Christians of eating babies.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the British government announced that they were giving up on being a country with a navy and just wanted a medium-sized coast guard retiring HMS Ark Royal and eliminating the Harrier VTOL aircraft from service. Even if the current Admiralty staff were willing to go along with this, some retired admirals point out that it’s a risky decision:
A group of former Royal Navy chiefs urged the government today to reverse its decision to scrap the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the fleet of Harrier jets, which they described as “the most dangerous of the defence cuts” announced by the coalition.
In a letter to the Times, the former commanders said the cuts would leave the oil-rich Falkland Islands open to a fresh Argentinian attack “from which British prestige … might never recover”.
The signatories, who include former navy chief Lord West and admiral of the fleet Sir Julian Oswald also said they believed David Cameron had been badly advised before agreeing to the measures, which they said “practically invited” Argentina to attempt to inflict a national humiliation on the British on the scale of the loss of Singapore in 1942.
Of course, the administration of the Falkland Islands knows that any hint of agreement with the dissident admirals is likely to be punished by the government and is rushing to distance itself from any taint:
But a spokesman for the Falklands government said it was not concerned that defence cuts would leave the islands vulnerable to attack. “The Falkland Islands government is satisfied and grateful for the levels of defence on the islands which are suitable to maintain an effective deterrent,” a spokesman said.
Update: Lewis Page thoroughly agrees with Julian Thompson’s letter to the Times:
Harrier could still use Kandahar runway if half of it were blocked by Taleban action; can use any make-shift landing site; has a response time of less than 10 minutes, as against 30 [for the Tornado]; performs better in hot weather; requires fewer ground crew; and has better availability.
Harrier can deliver close air support of ground forces anywhere from the existing carriers … [it] has nearly twice as many airframes provided with precision-guided ground attack capability [as Tornado]; will not require a further £1.4 billion to re-engine in 2014; and can remain in service until 2023 without significant investment.
The existing Tornado force will cost, over 10 years, seven times as much to keep in service as Harrier …
The decision to axe the entire Harrier force is strategically and financially perverse.
The letter is signed by former Royal Marine major-general Julian Thompson, who should be the best-known of the signatories. Thompson commanded the UK’s Commando brigade, mostly made up of Marines (reinforced for the occasion by troops from the Parachute Regiment) during the Falklands campaign, when it acted as the primary unit in the victorious land fighting.
By way of Ilkka’s blog, a new look at the plight of the grad student:
Everyone is familiar with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her stage model of coping with grief popularly known as the five stages of grief. What you may not know is that Kübler-Ross actually developed her theory as a graduate student, basing her conception of the process of loss on the experiences one goes through over a grading weekend.
In coping with grading, it’s important for graduate students and young professors to know that they are not alone and that this process takes time. Not everyone goes through every stage or processes the reality of grading in this order, but everyone experiences some version of at least two of these steps.
Read the whole thing.
Adrian MacNair gives a couple of examples of how to manipulate your reader into a sympathetic view of someone who isn’t actually a victim:
In the first instance we have a story about a court pondering whether a person can agree in advance to unconscious sex. It’s not a particularly edifying piece of news as it discusses an Ottawa court case involving a kinky couple who were involved in sex involving asphyxiation.
Although the article focuses on the court’s upcoming ruling of “sexual autonomy”, a quote from a woman’s legal advocacy group, and the background details of the alleged assault, we only learn in paragraph nine about an extremely important detail:
“The woman took her complaint to Ottawa police two months after the alleged assault, when she was seeking custody of the couple’s toddler.”
Two months after the fact, while embroiled in a custody battle. Sounds like something that could have been delivered a little higher in the story. Indeed, one could rewrite it in such a way that implies this parent is using the legal system in a manipulative way that challenges sexual autonomy just to win her kid.
The second case involves the new parents who “lost their seats” on a flight:
And then we get to salient information in paragraph 11. The couple arrived through security 20 minutes before takeoff, and then decided to run their baby [to] the bathroom because he soiled his diaper. This diaper changing took so long that apparently the airline gave away their seats to standby. Sorry, so sad. Too bad.
Journalism students are taught to find a hook or an angle to make the story of interest to the largest possible audience, but these two cases sound like the story is actually being distorted to fit a pre-decided agenda.
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