The season ended just the most appropriate way possible: with a loss featuring dumb penalties, inconsistent play, and a not-quite-NFL-record-setting sack total from Jared Allen, the only Viking going to the Pro Bowl this year.
Tom Pelissero is predicting some swift changes in the coaching staff now that the season is done, almost certainly starting with the firing (or demotion) of defensive co-ordinator Fred Pagac:
Walter Russell Mead has a textbook example of finding the cloud to every silver lining in the pages of the New York Times:
A worthless desert in South Africa, largely inhabited by drought-stricken sheep and a handful of marginal farmers, turns out to contain rich natural gas reserves that could bring a new wave of economic growth to South Africa and provide huge numbers of well paying jobs for poorly educated workers.
The New York Times, of course, is wringing its elegantly manicured hands. And why not? The soil of the Karoo desert is “fragile,” and the extraction of the natural gas will involve fracking. What will happen to the sheep?
The Times finds a local farmer who is worried about exactly that.
“If our government lets these companies touch even a drop of our water,” [the farmer] said, “we’re ruined.”
Ruined! By wicked natural gas companies feeding the world’s hydrocarbon addiction. The farmer in question has a herd of 1400 sheep. (It was 2000 last year before a drought forced the slaughter of 600.) One somehow suspects that the farmer will find some other way to make money when the district becomes a major gas producing center. And, worst case, roughnecks eat a lot of meat.
That the Times chooses the lonesome shepherd to lead off one of the best good news stories around these days speaks volumes about the gloomy Gus mindset at the Paper of Record. Why can’t this be a good news story? Will a gas boom save South African democracy, for example? Will new economic opportunities transform the lives of tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of poor black South Africans? Will the huge increase in South Africa’s natural gas supply reduce the country’s carbon footprint? Is there anything in the geology to suggest that other poverty stricken parts of Africa might also be similarly blessed? How are local leaders planning the spend the windfall: better schools? better hospitals?
Australia’s job market is very tight, and the military is feeling the pinch. Strategy Page explains how the military is coping:
Noting that Britain was downsizing its armed forces, and cutting loose a lot of experienced personnel, the Australian Navy has sent recruiting officers to Britain to see if there would be interest among some of these former (or soon-to-be former) British sailors in joining the Australian Navy. The navy is particularly interested in obtaining personnel with technical skills. Years of low unemployment in Australia (partly because China is buying so many raw materials) has caused a shortage of engineering and technical specialists in the navy. The mining companies have been luring away a lot of technical personnel with higher pay and better working conditions. As a result, for example, the navy only has crews for three of its six submarines.
For over two years now the navy has been recruiting foreigners who possess needed technical skills. Australia is a nation of immigrants, and the admirals point out that recruiting a foreigner is cheaper than training an Australian to do these tasks. But sending recruiters to foreign countries is a new angle. Australia has also been offering navy jobs to sailors from Canada, New Zealand and the United States. All four foreign nations share a common language and, in general, culture with Australia. Moreover, sailors from these foreign nations have gone through similar security vetting. The recruiting offers are being sweetened with quick granting of Australian citizenship after less than a year of service.
The latest Lexington column is entitled “Ron Paul’s big moment”:
People who say that politicians are all the same may be in for a surprise next week. Heading the polls in Iowa, whose caucuses on January 3rd mark the true start of the Republican race for a presidential candidate, is a 76-year-old libertarian from Texas with a worldview so wacky and a programme so radical that he was recently discounted as a no-hoper. Even if he wins in quirky Iowa, Ron Paul will never be America’s president. But his coming this far tells you something about the mood of Republican voters. A substantial number like a man who wants to abolish the Federal Reserve, introduce a new currency to compete with the dollar, eliminate five departments of the federal government within a year, pull out of the United Nations and close all America’s foreign bases, which he likens to “an empire”.
How did such a man rise to the top of the polls? One thing to note is that his support has a ceiling: in no state do more than about a third of Republican voters favour him, though in Iowa’s crowded race that could be all he needs. Also, liking the man does not require liking his policies. During the candidates’ debates of 2011, Mr Paul won plaudits for integrity. Where slicker rivals chop, change and pander, the rumpled Mr Paul hews to his principles even when they are unpopular. Unlike Newt Gingrich, who seldom misses a chance to play on fears of Islam, Mr Paul insists on the rule of law and civil liberties and due process for all—including suspected terrorists. Unlike Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, who adore Israel and can sound impatient to bomb Iran, Mr Paul has no great love for the Jewish state, even though this hurts him with the evangelical voters of Iowa. He opposed the Iraq war from the start and wants America to shun expensive foreign entanglements that make the rest of the world resent it.
Macro Man runs down a selection of words and phrases which became common last year:
We are nearly at the end of 2011 and another year of mayhem behind. We will be judging our 2011 Non-Predictions and trying to dream up some new ones for 2012 in the next fortnight or so but this week we have been able to get some long needed admin done. With it came a realisation that even if the financial industry is suffering the creative management community has been in full swing dreaming up new terms and phrases to camouflage the blindingly obvious. The evolution of ‘management speak’ means some phrases die and some survive and flourish. TMM really don’t know what determines the success of one term or phrase over another other than, as with the arts, adoption and patronage by the most respected in the field. TMM hope that this year’s rash of newcomers all die off naturally but we would like to help with a shove into their deserved obscurity.
TMM have noticed that every cause nowadays needs an “Awareness” campaign and though we feel that “doing” is of much greater importance than “awaring”, we will go along with the fashion and launch a Management Talk Awareness Week with the list of phrases and terms we have found most irksome this year.
So here are TMM’s top ten annoying phrases of 2011 (even if some are older) that we would like to see the back of.
“Hi, I hope all is well. We have identified a need to internalise our ideation of the requirements of the Stakeholder Community before we reach out to them.”
Oh, well: finished the season tied for 33rd spot in the AoSHQ pool. If the Vikings had developed the habit of covering the spread, I’d have finished at least ten spots higher in the pool. I’m reminded of the very first football pool I ever entered (I won third prize, which slightly more than repaid my weekly contributions): the winner knew almost nothing about football but she decided her picks based on the colour of the teams’ uniforms or the interest she had in visiting the two competing cities. I should say also that she won in a walk: several points ahead of the number two player who was a football fanatic (I don’t know if he ever really got over the loss).
√ Detroit 41 @Green Bay 45
√ San Francisco 34 @St. Louis 27
√ @Miami 19 New York (NYJ) 17
∅ @Minnesota 13 Chicago 17
√ @New England 49 Buffalo 21
√ @New Orleans 45 Carolina 17
∅ @Philadelphia 34 Washington 10
√ @Jacksonville 19 Indianapolis 13
∅ Tennessee 23 @Houston 22
√ @Atlanta 45 Tampa Bay 24
√ Baltimore 24 @Cincinnati 16
√ @Cleveland 9 Pittsburgh 13
∅ @Denver 3 Kansas City 7
∅ @Oakland 26 San Diego 38
√ @Arizona 23 Seattle 20
∅ @New York (NYG) 31 Dallas 14
This week: 10-6 (8-8 against the spread)
Regular season: 152-104 (120-126 against the spread: 10 pushes)
Powered by WordPress