Quotulatiousness

January 22, 2011

The increasing cost of fighting pirates

Filed under: Africa, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:51

Far from solving the problem of piracy in the Indian Ocean, the costs have increased dramatically:

The Somali piracy problem is not going away, despite years of efforts by an every-growing international anti-piracy patrol off the East African coast and the Indian Ocean. Since 2005, the average ship (and crew) ransom has increased over ten times (from $150,000). Thus overall cost of Somali piracy has increased to more than $5 billion a year. Most of the cost is from addition expenses for ships staying at sea longer as they avoid going anywhere near Somalia. This has cost Egypt over 20 percent of the traffic through the Suez canal, which amounts to over a billion dollars a year in lost revenue. The anti-piracy patrol costs nearly a billion dollars a year, but most of the extra costs hit the shipping companies, and their customers, who pay more for ships spending more time at sea, or the expense of additional security measures.

The problem is that piracy is a gamble, but a better gamble than anything else on offer for would-be pirates. A small vessel, a crew willing to fight, and some inexpensive weapons can be translated into a multi-million dollar jackpot. International navies on patrol rarely do more than scare off attempts, so the risk to the pirates is still low even when a patrol is in the area. Given the situation on land, it is logical for pirates to continue attacking ships passing the Somali coastline.

Russian drama: Defense Minister disses AK-47

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:06

The Russian Defense Minister just stirred up a controversy that could only be equalled here if the Prime Minister called hockey a pansy frou-frou game:

Apparently, Russia’s Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, opined publically that the Kalashnikov and Dragunov SVDs sniper rifles, are “morally outdated.” To add insult to injury, he intimated that he’s considering replacing the weapons with something else. Let’s just say this didn’t play well in the Russian equivalent of the Borscht Belt. In fact, “firestorm of controversy” would be a pretty accurate depiction of the ensuing fireworks.

Evidently, Russians are a prideful people. And they take a lot of pride in Kalishnikov’s Greatest Hit of 1947. The AK-47 has withstood the test of time, doing exactly what it’s designer set out for it to do — function as a rugged, all-purpose weapon that was cheap to build, easy to use, and would run even if you filled it full of mud. Accuracy was not really high on the list of objectives, but I understand from people that know far more about the AKs than I, that they are far more accurate than most people believe.

[. . .]

So for Mother Russia, their very own Defense Minister dissin’ the AK would be like Jeff Cooper bitch-slappin’ the 1911, and throwin’ in a little trash talk against John Moses Browning, to boot. But the times they are a-changin,’ and I’m not so sure Anatolovich doesn’t have a valid pointsky.

The venerable 1911 and AK-47 bear more than a passing comparison. They are both well-established, respected designs. They are both manufactured by multiple armories. And they both have several features that are seen in a modern context as design flaws at worst, and in desperate need of an update, at best.

I’ve posted on the reputation of the AK-47 before.

QotD: Sikhs, the kirpan, and the courts

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Quotations, Religion, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

The [Supreme] court didn’t find for the appellants on the grounds that “the kirpan is not a weapon”. Indeed, all parties to the suit accepted the premise “that the kirpan, considered objectively and without the protective measures imposed by the Superior Court, is an object that fits the definition of a weapon.” The court found for the appellant because the school board’s zero-tolerance policy towards weapons, based largely on fears that the presence of a knife would somehow allow spooky negative vibes to propagate throughout the school, did not constitute a minimal infringement upon the rights of a religion that happens to insist upon the carrying of a weapon. (Anyone who has studied the remarkable history of the Sikhs can only be surprised that they don’t carry about five of them.)

I hate to break it to Nav Bains and to admirers of leading comparative-religion scholar Michael Ignatieff, but reciting “It’s not a weapon” won’t give us a magic wormhole we can all leap through to avoid debates over religious accommodation in public services. As I understand matters, and I am perfectly prepared to receive instruction on this point, the whole point of the kirpan is that it’s an avowedly defensive weapon. The reference books, including those written by Sikhs, tell us that it is worn precisely to signify and reinforce the Sikh’s wholly admirable preparedness to protect his faith, his community, and innocent human life. I suppose I could have added the words “just as a handgun might be”, but that would send altogether too many of my readers scrambling for the Preparation H.

Respectable efforts to establish a modus vivendi on the kirpan in secured public spaces can’t begin with evasion if they hope to be successful (and certainly it sets a terrible precedent for evasion to be designated courage). I’ll add that the problems are not really all that thorny for those of us who have never consented to fanaticism about security theatre or to cretinizing “zero tolerance” of blades in schools

Colby Cosh, “That non-weapon sure is pointy”, Maclean’s, 2011-01-21

January 21, 2011

Remaking Red Dawn as a metaphor for US fear of China

Filed under: China, Economics, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:59

David Harsanyi notes the remake of the 1980’s movie Red Dawn with the Chinese taking the place of the original film’s Soviet and Cuban troops:

Doubtlessly, the remake will be entertaining and offer a far more plausible plot line than the original — seeing that the Chinese, well, they have a proper army. Producers will almost certainly capitalize on a growing alarmism regarding China’s growth. Few issues, in fact, can bring right and left together in this polarized world of ours than a shared knowledge that China is bad news.

Now, the American populace can typically be divided into two categories: 1. Those who don’t care one whit about foreign policy. 2. Newspaper editors.

So before Chinese President Hu Jintao was here meeting with the president, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal and explained what we think about the topic.

Apparently, 47 percent of those he surveyed cited China as the world’s top economic power. (Only 31 percent properly identified it as the U.S., which has an economy nearly three times the size.) Another Pew survey from last year found that 47 percent of us consider China’s growth a “bad thing” for the United States. A new CNN poll found that 58 percent of us believe that China’s “wealth and economic power” are a threat to the U.S.

I’m certain our relationship with China is layered with international complexity and fraught with danger. But why would we fear the aspects of China’s ascendancy — its “wealth and economic power” — that pose the least threat to United States? Unlike ideological clashes, economic competition can be mutually beneficial. A country with real economic wealth is typically free and doesn’t look kindly on radical behavior. Suicide bombers rarely drive top-of-the-line BMWs.

I have a long history of doubting the stated size and growth of the Chinese economy and therefore feeling that the “threat” they pose is overstated. Overall, the economic growth in China is a good thing, both for China and for the world economy, but there’s still too much malignancy from the “bad old days” of the command economy that haven’t been properly dealt with. China is big, and getting bigger, but will face severe problems the longer these historical artifacts remain unexamined and unresolved.

If you are finding Firefox to be much slower lately, uninstall the Skype toolbar

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:51

I’ve been using Firefox as my main browser for a few years, and it generally works well for me. In the last month or so, however, I’ve noticed it being much slower. Some of that problem may have been caused by the Skype toolbar:

Mozilla has blocked a Skype toolbar add-on for its Firefox browser, after blaming the extension for causing 40,000 crashes last week.

The open source outfit said it vastly slowed down webpage-loading times.

The crash-prone add-on downed Firefox 3.6.13 — which is the current stable version of the browser — far too much, grumbled Mozilla.

“Additionally, depending on the version of the Skype Toolbar you’re using, the methods it uses to detect and re-render phone numbers can make DOM [document object model] manipulation up to 300 times slower, which drastically affects the page rendering times of a large percentage of web content served today (plain English: to the user, it appears that Firefox is slow loading web pages),” it said.

I started using Firefox as my default browser around the time they introduced tabbed pages (which every browser has offered for years now). I also use Opera, Chrome, and (unwillingly) IE for specific purposes. If the Firefox performance issues aren’t resolved when they release the new version 4.0 next month, I’ll consider switching to Chrome as my primary browser instead.

Not your granddaddy’s binoculars

Filed under: France, Military, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:21

Strategy Page reports on some new kit for the French army:

The French Army is buying 1,175 new electronic binoculars for its troops. The JIM LR 2 looks a little different than your traditional binoculars. There are four, instead of two, round glass windows in the front, and the usual two eyepieces in the back. The controls are electronic, not mechanical. Batteries are required. The zoom equipped stabilized binoculars also include infrared (night vision) electronics, as well as a laser rangefinder (max range of 5,000 meters) GPS, digital compass, a laser designator (max range of 10,000 meters), and communications systems to transmit coordinates of targets. The binoculars can also record video and still images. Weighing about 3 kg (6.7 pounds), one battery charge lasts four hours. Individuals can be detected at 5,000 meters and identified at about 900. Vehicles can be spotted at 8,600 meters and identified and 1,700.

The new binoculars look more like a militarized eye testing unit from your opthalmologist:

Curious about firearms in movies? This site will answer your questions

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

Not the prettiest site in the world, but certainly one of interest to movie firearm fans — the Internet Movie Firearms Database. Brad Kozak at The Truth About Guns raves about imfdb.com:

Here is the website I’ve been wondering about, wondering as in “why in the HELL doesn’t this kind of resource exist?” One that would tell me exactly what kinds of guns are in a given movie. How were they used? Modified? Abused? What’s real and what’s fantasy? (Hey Jared . . . ever seen what Hollywood thinks about your pansy-assed 33 round mags? THEY’VE got magazines that never need reloading!)

This site may have all the visual charm of the Drudge Report, but for hard-core data on films and firearms, this site is all that and a side o’ fries. And it’s not just text either. Movie stills, frame grabs — this site done got the goods, homey. And not only do they cover movie firearms, in depth, they also cover the tech specs on the firearms themselves. My first visit, and I felt like I was a kid again, on my first visit to Toys ‘R’ Us. I mean, talk about a one-stop shop for getting all my burning questions answered. Waaaay cool.

[. . .]

If you were to ask me about how I enjoy movies, you’d see a clear and distinct division between the time that I was largely clueless about guns, and the time that began learning about them. Call it “B.E. and A.E.” (Before Enlightenment and After Enlightenment.) Before my education began, I had some inkling that movies regularly exaggerated the number of rounds that could be fired without reloading, the accuracy of a gun at a long distance, and the effects of guns in the wild (acoustics, ear protection, et cetera). But I had that “willing suspension of disbelief” thing going on, and it just didn’t matter to me. After my education began, I was filled with questions — is that a Springfield XD? Where do you find a 50-round magazine that fits within the grip for a 1911? (Or my fave:) How can you shoot a bullet and force it to make a 360º trajectory (in the movie WANTED.) Thanks to imfdb.com, now I know.

H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

Have you ever asked yourself if you should work for free?

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:38

If so, Jessica Hische can help you figure out the appropriate response:


Click to see full image (NSFW language)

H/T to Tim Harford for the link.

Alfred Kahn, godfather of deregulation

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

An obituary at The Economist for one of the key players in the deregulation of American business that was critical to solving the economic malaise of the 1970s:

WHEN everyone else at the airline counter for the flight from Hicksville to Washington was sighing, checking their watches and using their elbows on their neighbours, Alfred Kahn would be smiling. And later, cramped in his seat between some 20-stone wrestler and a passenger whose “sartorial, hirsute and ablutional state” all offended him, snacking from a tiny packet of peanuts that had cost him a dollar, he would sometimes allow the smile to spread under his Groucho Marx moustache into a big, wide, gloating grin.

For Mr Kahn had made this crowd and packed this aircraft. His deregulation of America’s airlines in the 1970s opened up the skies to the people, for better and worse. And though, being an economist, he could not help muttering about the imperfection of societies and systems and the absurdity of predictions—and though, being an inveterate puncturer of himself, he would demand a paternity test if anyone called him the father of the deregulated world—his adventures with airlines led on to the freeing of the trucking, telecoms and power industries, and heralded the Thatcherite and Reaganite revolutions.

When he took over the Civil Aeronautics Board for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 air travel was regulated to the hilt, with prices, routes and returns all fixed and aircraft, which could compete only on the number of flights and the meals they served, flying half-full. Mr Khan, furiously resisted by companies, pilots and unions, removed the rules. As an academic, author of “The Economics of Regulation” in two stout volumes, he was eager to see those elusive and fascinating things, marginal costs, brought into play: to let prices follow the constantly shifting value of an aircraft seat as demand changed or departure time loomed, or indeed as shiny new jet planes depreciated above him, just “marginal costs with wings”.

January 20, 2011

In case you weren’t worried enough about the rise of China

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:23

The Wall Street Journal rounds up the leading indicators of the current “USA sliding down the ladder” worries:

Of all the differences between dictatorship and democracy, probably none is so overlooked as the ability of the former to project strength, and the penchant of the latter to obsess about its own weakness.

In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik and the U.S. went into a paroxysm of nerves about our supposed backwardness in matters ballistic. Throughout the 1980s Americans lived with “Japan as Number One” (the title of a book by Harvard professor Ezra Vogel, though the literature was extensive) and wondered whether Mitsubishi’s purchase of Rockefeller Center qualified as a threat to American sovereignty.

Now there’s China, whose President is visiting the U.S. this week amid a new bout of American hypochondria. In an op-ed last week in these pages, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center noted that a plurality of Americans, 47%, are under the erroneous impression that China is the world’s leading economy. News reports regarding Chinese military strides, or the academic prowess of Shanghai high school students, contribute to Western perceptions of Chinese ascendancy. So does the false notion that Beijing’s holdings of U.S. debt amounts to a sword of Damocles over Washington’s head.

Oh, we nearly forgot: Tough-as-nails Chinese mothers are raising child prodigies (a billion of them!) while their Western counterparts indulge their kids with lessons in finger-painting.

There you go, more than enough to keep you up late tonight worrying about the inevitability of China’s rise to top economic dog in the pack. Of course, most of it is misinterpretation of the facts, but you can worry about it if you want.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

QotD: The ongoing retreat of freedom of speech in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:04

It used to be there actually had to be a violent protest before public institutions caved in and cancelled controversial events. That was unjustifiable, too. Police and officials should always seek to protect law-abiding speakers and organizers from the angry mob. Those who seek to disrupt events just because they disagree with the speakers should be the ones inconvenienced, not those exercising their constitutional rights.

Now, though, it seems the mere whiff of protest is enough for officialdom to bow to would-be protestors’ demands. Get together a group of unhinged radicals or zealots in someone’s rumpus room, make a couple of angry phone calls and — poof! — you can get your way and silence free speech and free assembly. Organizers, especially those connected with public institutions such as universities, museums and galleries, apparently care not a whit about free expression or individual choice. Their first instinct is to crater to protestors; let the forces of oppression and extremism have their way. Forget about preserving democracy and open debate, officials will act as the forces of censorship want.

Some of this has to do with the increased anger and vehemence of protestors, no doubt. In recent years, young lefties in particular have convinced themselves that only their positions are fact-based and only their positions can save the world. All other opinions are lies, as well as being threats to mankind and the planet. Therefore they are justified in any action they take to stymie opposing views, which they also believe are unworthy of free speech protection. They truly believe they are doing a public service when they shout down speakers or force the cancellation of events by smashing windows or jostling attendees outside the doors.

Lorne Gunter, “We’ve become a wimpy state, as well as a nanny state”, National Post, 2011-01-20

A theological breakthrough

Filed under: Humour, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:39

DarkWaterMuse found a bit of net litter that suddenly became the trigger for a profound religious revelation.

I stumbled across this today:

Ya, it’s an old landmark bit from the internet’s past life but has anybody considered the implications?

Not to spoil the suspense for anyone, but the implications really are staggering.

Diagnosing USB issues

Filed under: Americas, Religion, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

Having problems with your USB connections? Have faith! No, really:

A Brazilian Christian sect has allegedly sought to exorcise the Universal Serial Bus (USB) because its symbol resembles a pitchfork, favoured sinner-spiking implement of one Old Nick, esq.

Well, they do say the Devil has the best tines…

The cult in question, which calls itself Paz do Senhor Amado — “Peace of the beloved Lord” — says, not surprisingly, that this clearly Satanic symbol should be cast out. Or at least unplugged.

Bluetooth, however, is fine, Paz do Senhor Amado preacher Welder Saldanha, told Brazilian site Bobolhando, because blue is the colour of Jesus’ eyes.

This is not the powder you were hoping for

Filed under: Humour, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:59

This is bound to show up in some “stupid criminal tricks” roundup:

Florida cops have cuffed a burglary gang who broke into a house and stole the ashes of the owner’s father, believing they were illicit narcotics.

The victim returned to her Silver Springs residence to discover she was short of a few items, including electronics and jewellery. Rather more disturbing was the absence of the ashes of her departed dad, and those of her two Great Danes.

[. . .]

“It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine,” local Fox News reports.

Once the penny had dropped, the master criminals ditched their booty, which police are trying to locate.

January 19, 2011

Hollywood gets exposed to “the nihilism of the British way”

Filed under: Britain, Humour, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 16:55

Did you watch the Golden Globes awards the other night? I didn’t, but I rather enjoyed watching Ricky Gervais do his introduction (courtesy of YouTube and literally hundreds of contributors). It may be one of the larger gaps between image and reality . . . the way Americans think Brits talk and how they slag one another off:

Anyone from anywhere can be cruel, anyone from anywhere can be witty, but there is something particularly British about cruel wit. John Lennon, with his withering remarks about Ringo Starr (“Not even the best drummer in The Beatles”) and the avant-garde (“French for bullshit”), had it. Writers past (Evelyn Waugh) and present (AA Gill) have it. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, has it, and gets into political scrapes when he flaunts it.

The anything-goes approach applies as much to everyday conversation as it does to comedy, where the subject of British irreverence has been analysed to death (and where America has plenty of acid-tongued geniuses itself). It feels natural to those of us who grew up with it, but British banter — the playfully barbed conversational style adopted by groups of friends in bars, offices and even classrooms up and down the country — can baffle and perturb foreigners. It is especially jarring when set against the popular image of Britain as a more decorous and civil place than most. Even tamer badinage in this country can, to a foreign ear, sound like enmity. The moment the ice is truly broken between two newly acquainted Britons is when one teases the other about something. Reginald D Hunter, an American comedian who does most of his work over here, says Britain is the only country where people will introduce you to a friend by saying “This is my mate Barry, he’s a bit of a twat.”

America is a land of Regency etiquette in comparison. So much so that it pays any Briton to be a bit more mindful of what he says and how he says it when enjoying the company of Americans (with the exception of fervently Anglophile Americans who, judging by friends of mine who fit that description, are caustic conversationalists). The rules are just different. For example, the c-word, which in Britain has lost much of its toxicity, remains a no-no.

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