Quotulatiousness

July 28, 2012

“Beevor’s book stinks”

Filed under: Books, History, Japan, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Yes, the headline is taken out of context. Here’s the context:

Granted, we already knew that World War II was brutal. What, then, can Beevor add to this horridly familiar tale? Or, stated differently, do we need another history of that war? Yes, we do. While the war itself remains a constant, the way it is viewed evolves according to changing moral perceptions. In late 1945, for instance, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal decided to suppress evidence of cannibalism in order not to traumatize the families of soldiers who died in Japanese prison camps. Beevor thinks that this once-taboo story needs now to be told. He’s probably right. His skill lies in telling it without descending into gratuitous horror.

The challenge that confronts historians is how to convey the immensity of total war without losing sight of singular torment. Too often, the grandeur of great battles smothers the suffering of the individual. Soldiers become battalions that attack on faceless flanks. “One death is a tragedy,” Stalin famously remarked. “A million deaths a statistic.” In the grand narrative, human beings disappear. War is thus sanitized; Stalingrad and Normandy are re-created without the detail of men and women screaming in agony. That is how some readers like it — war without the carnage and putrefaction, without the dismembered limbs and torn faces.

But that is chess, not war. Good military history should stink of blood, feces and fear. Beevor’s book stinks. It reconstructs the great battles but weaves in hundreds of tiny instances of immense suffering. War is presented on its most personal level. We learn not only of the vanity of Gen. Mark Clark, the cruelty of Gen. George Patton and the stupidity of Gen. Maurice Gamelin, but also of the terrible misery endured by what the poet Charles Hamilton Sorley once called “the millions of mouthless dead.” Very few heroes emerge, because heroes are too often cardboard constructs. Detail adds nuance and dimension, clouding characteristics worthy of worship. “Say not soft things as other men have said,” warned Sorley to those who wanted to remember war. Beevor constructs a true picture by avoiding soft things. The book brims with horror, but so it should.

Feschuk’s Olympic opening ceremony highlights

Filed under: Humour, Media, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:23

I didn’t watch the opening ceremonies, but I did enjoy Scott Feschuk’s twitter updates during the festivities. He’s collected some of them along with the appropriate photos for Maclean’s:

Clocking in at three hours and 45 minutes, the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Games featured many remarkable moments and tophats. Here’s a selection of just a few of the images that captivated the world when the world wasn’t busy asking, “Did they seriously just play a song by Frankie Goes to Hollywood?”

[. . .]

[. . .]

[. . .]

Tweets from Vikings training camp

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:57


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Premier-speak for Dummies (that is, voters)

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:14

Andrew Coyne provides the beginnings of a Premierspeak-to-English dictionary:

When the premiers decry the absence of federal “leadership,” similarly, they do not mean they want the federal government to actually lead anything. They want it to follow: to do exactly as they say, notably in matters of funding. Some other terms in the provincial lexicon:

Unilateralism. “We are in a period of unilateralism on the federal government’s part,” Charest complained, citing the health care funding decision (in premierspeak: ultimatum). Ottawa is said to be acting “unilaterally” when it spends federal money as it pleases, that is without consulting the provinces. Provinces, on the other hand, insist on the right to spend federal money as they please. For example, when Charest took delivery of $700-million in federal funds offered up in the name of fixing the “fiscal imbalance” and used it instead to cut taxes, that was not unilateralism. See: federalism (profitable).

Negotiations. The federal government, says Ghiz, “did not want to sit down with the provinces to negotiate on health care.” But what was there to negotiate? Negotiations imply a give and take; each side brings something to the table, and offers them in exchange. The provinces bring nothing to these “negotiations.” They do not offer anything in exchange for more federal money. They simply demand it.

Co-operative federalism. When the feds agree to do as the provinces say (see: leadership), or more properly when the provinces agree to let them. Manitoba’s Greg Selinger: “We remain very committed to the notion of co-operative federalism.”

Matt Gurney: The LCBO and the “social responsibility” joke

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Following-up yesterday’s post on the call to break up the LCBO’s monopoly, Matt Gurney points out that the “social responsibility” claim is a farce:

It’s impossible for the LCBO to really pretend that its primary goal is to prevent Ontarians from drinking when it advertises heavily in print and broadcast media and has periodic sales and events to introduce consumers to new products. You’d think that would be enough to kill the social responsibility argument, but apparently not.

But there are plenty of other things that do. If Ontario believed that it had a social responsibility to directly control the sale of potentially harmful and addictive substances, why are cigarettes sold in every convenience store, milk mart and gas station in the province? Cigarettes kill an estimated 13,000 Ontarians every year. It’s completely inexplicable that this deadly substance can be sold by non-government monopolies while less lethal substances are tightly controlled under the banner of social responsibility. If the only way to ensure that alcohol is consumed in a socially responsible way is to have the province control its sale, why doesn’t that apply to tobacco? What about the two products is different in such a way that makes one OK for convenience stores and one not? This is the unanswered question that drives a stake through the heart of the social responsibility argument. Either the booze controls aren’t about social responsibility or the province is massively dropping the ball on the smokes. Which one is it, guys?

And it’s not like Ontario is somehow blind to the problem of smoking. During the tenure of Premier Dalton McGuinty, the province has cracked down on smoking in any number of ways, including but not limited to outlawing smoking in restaurants and bars (even those with specially ventilated smoking areas), making it illegal to smoke in a car containing a child (including, memorably, even if the child is a teenager who is also smoking), and forcing convenience store owners to cover up their cigarette displays, lest a child see a brightly coloured box and become a tobacco addict by default. All of these steps clearly demonstrate that Ontario is aware of, and concerned about, smoking. Yet I can still buy a pack at my local convenience store. Hmm.

July 27, 2012

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 15:14

My weekly community round-up column at GuildMag is posted. This week’s collection is full of reports from the final beta weekend event and lots of official ArenaNet content plus the usual assortment of blog posts, podcasts, and videos from the Guild Wars 2 fan community.

The Ottawa Citizen calls for breaking up the booze monopolies

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Wine — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Ontario has an odd relationship with alcohol sales. Beer sales are controlled through a protected monopoly (The Beer Store, formerly known as the Brewer’s Retail), while liquor sales are mostly through the government-owned LCBO stores. There are a few exceptions: Ontario wineries are allowed to sell wine at the winery, and craft brewers can also do retail sales at the brewery. Certain privileged large wineries are allowed to sell their own products (not all of which are actually Ontario wines) through a limited number of retail stores, usually co-located with grocery stores.

An editorial in the Ottawa Citizen makes a good case to blow up the current system and take the government out of the retail sales market altogether:

There are two main arguments defenders make for protecting the LCBO from any more competition.

The first is that only a government-operated retail chain can keep alcohol out of the hands of children. That argument is so weak it barely deserves a response, yet it never seems to die. As mentioned above, private operators already sell alcohol, and must follow the rules. Corner stores sell cigarettes, which also have strict rules governing the age of the purchaser. And private stores are already selling alcohol under the LCBO banner, especially in areas where the population doesn’t justify a stand-alone LCBO store.

Under a good enforcement regime, with stiff penalties for non-compliance, private operators have every incentive to follow the rules.

The second argument is that the LCBO is a money-maker for the government, so most private-sector competition must remain illegal.

It’s an honest argument, but that’s about all it has going for it. Would we allow the state to tell private store-owners that they couldn’t sell, say, chairs, or T-shirts, because the government needs to corner that business?

The government should have the power to tax. It should have the power to restrict sales to minors, and set rules to enforce that. It should not have the power to elbow Canadians out of certain industries. Not only is this an unjustified use of the powers of the state, but it reduces competition, and the innovation that accompanies competition.

Marni Soupcoff agrees with the Citizen‘s editorial stance:

The Beer Store and the LCBO do a decent enough job that most Ontarians don’t get more exercised about their forced dominance than grumbling a bit here and there. That’s a shame because the anti-competitive nature of the laws keeping beer and wine out of grocery and convenience stores is truly antithetical to a free society, particularly when the health and safety concerns are so bogus. The laws also end up having the pernicious consequence of conditioning Ontarians to expect their government to limit their consumer choice, and businesses their freedom, which makes us more likely to accept further encroachments down the road.

That’s an abstract argument on which to base a campaign for a policy change. The better talking point might be the one U.S. libertarian writer Jacob Sullum raised last year in article about state liquor monopolies: if they were really that good at serving customers, they’d have no reason to exist. The point of government retailing alcohol is supposed to be to make the nasty stuff less accessible. If the government retailer is putting out glossy magazines glorifying the joys of wine and food pairings and offering fancy tasting rooms and convenient store hours, hasn’t it defeated its own (dubious) purpose? In the LCBO’s case, it seems particularly absurd that a marketing director in charge of “Food & Drink & Visual Merchandising” gets paid almost $140,000 a year to entice customers to consume a product deemed too dangerous to be sold in a Sobey’s.

Bruce Arthur calls for moderation in regard to the London Olympics

Filed under: Britain, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

In the National Post, Bruce Arthur tries to encourage all of us, in spite of our memories of what British journalists were saying about the Vancouver Olympics, to avoid being nasty about the London games:

But perhaps we in Canada should restrain ourselves, as a nation. Perhaps we should take the higher road. That is, unless the higher road is crammed with traffic in this built-for-horses-and-carriage town. Or the tube is down again.

The Brits did not treat Canada kindly two years ago, it’s true. The Guardian said Vancouver could be the Worst Games Ever three days in, and they based the assessment on refunded snowboard tickets rather than on the preventable death of an athlete. The Guardian also called our glowing totem poles a collection of ice penises, and even the BBC announcer cocked an eyebrow, as it were. The Times of London called us cursed, while the Daily Mail mocked the escalation of the budget. They were, to be honest, kind of jerks about it.

But that doesn’t mean that Canadians should stoop to a similarly savage brand of mockery, beginning with the Opening Ceremony. It doesn’t mean we should make fun of the leaked details of the event, starting with children in hospital beds, which doesn’t seem terribly festive. It doesn’t mean we should make fun of the fact that Muse will apparently play, and even if they do not, that the official song of the Olympics by Muse is a grating, strutting, whining, overcompensatory sneer of a song.

Twitter joke trial comes to the correct result, eventually

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

Kelly Fiveash at The Register on the Twitter “bomb threat” case:

A bloke found guilty of tweeting a “menacing” joke about blowing up a UK airport has had his conviction quashed by the High Court today. A collective sigh of relief was heard moments later from comedians addicted to the micro-blogging website.

Paul Chambers, 28, was waiting to fly from Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport to Belfast to see his girlfriend, whom he met on the social networking site, when snow closed the airfield and delayed his flight.

He vented his frustration in a series of tweets to his squeeze Sarah Tonner, now his fiancee, including a suggestion that he had considered “resorting to terrorism” to ensure he could visit her.

[. . .]

Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Griffith Williams said in the High Court today that the facts needed to be considered in context, pointing out that the tweets had clearly appeared to be a reference to the airport closing due to adverse weather conditions.

“There was no evidence before the Crown Court to suggest that any of the followers of the appellant’s ‘tweet’, or indeed anyone else who may have seen the ‘tweet’ posted on the appellant’s time line, found it to be of a menacing character or, at a time when the threat of terrorism is real, even minimally alarming,” the High Court heard.

US admiral calls for more “trucks” and fewer “limousines”

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

The Economist reports on a recent article in the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings by Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations:

The “luxury-car” platforms designed in the last days of the cold war (and which still dominate much military procurement) have not adapted well to changes in security and technology, he says. Such platforms must always carry the sophisticated equipment to defeat a sophisticated foe. Yet much of this may be irrelevant to the navy’s typical missions in the past 20 years: counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, mine-clearing, maritime patrolling and carrier operations in support of counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the cost of building new platforms and the need to keep them in service for 30 to 50 years or even longer, Admiral Greenert wants them to be more like “trucks”: with plenty of space and power to accommodate different payloads. Some of the Pentagon’s oldest platforms have turned out to be much better trucks than their successors.

Because of its sheer size, its reserve electrical power and its small number of integral systems, at least compared with newer aircraft-carriers, the 50-year-old USS Enterprise has proved more adaptable than modern, densely packed designs. Unlike them, it has the space, storage and power-generating capacity to carry new aircraft types and new systems.

The same is true of the stalwart B-52 bomber. It first flew 60 years ago. It is now expected to stay in service until 2045. Conceived as a strategic bomber after the second world war, it has been recast many times. It is now proving to be a cost-effective platform for the latest precision-guided “stand-off” weapons (meaning those fired from afar). It is also more dependable than any of its more advanced successors.

Another advantage of high-tech payloads over platforms stems from Moore’s law: the doubling of computer-chip speed every two years or less. This embarrasses military planners. Even their latest and fabulously expensive equipment often lacks the processing power of cheap consumer gadgets. It takes at least 15 years to bring a new ship or aircraft from design to completion. That can be eight or more cycles of Moore’s law.

If Boris wasn’t mayor of London

Filed under: Britain, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

Lawsmith imagines what Boris Johnson would write about the London Olympics “major international sporting event” in a “certain major city in the UK” if he were not mayor:

I can imagine his perfect article in this alternative history in my dreams. Written in the Spectator and littered with self-deprecation, references to dead or fictitious Greeks, Liverpool and wiff-waff, Boris would have danced across the pages as he gleefully excoriated the Labour administration for the absurd idea of inviting a bunch of prima donna athletes and bureaucrats, most of them foreign, to compete in an outdoor stadium during the coldest, wettest summer in British history.

He might have pointed out that all this would take place in Newham, a place not altogether unlike Portsmouth and, in any case, one most Londoners consider more alien than Paris, with among the highest incidence of robbery and assault in the entire city. He might have joyfully foretold the pain and suffering of millions of income taxpayers on account of the shut-down of major roads and TfL advising know-nothing tourists to hop the tube at rush hour to make the 10 AM events, and seriously questioned the wisdom of erecting a steel wall around Hyde Park for an entire summer before fouling it up beyond recognition.

In our alternative history he would have savaged, rather than prodded, the implementation of widespread censorship undertaken by a hit squad of intellectual property ninjas; he would have lamented the fact that our police were arresting “marginal” (i.e., possibly innocent) suspects – living, breathing, thinking people – on terrorism charges which they might not be able to prove. If he had really driven it home, he would have pointed out that, under normal circumstances, those arrests would never have been made. He would also have asked why nobody seems to care.

By this point, his oeuvre would have been the most hilarious political essay ever written. He would flay alive in full public view the pathetic, uncritical, fawning news-media industry which crafts its Olympic stories with all the creative flavour of an oak plank, their proxy world to escape from our own inadequacies where professional athletes become “heroes” (seriously, find a different word), washed-up “heroes” become “legends,” and civil liberties violations and government largesse are completely ignored.

July 26, 2012

Wreck of WWII U-boat may be 100km up the Churchill River

Filed under: Cancon, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

CBC News on the possible discovery of remains of a German WW2 submarine in Labrador:

The German government says it is possible, but added that it would be “sensational and unusual,” that a submarine could have ended up so far inland.

“We do know that German U-boats did operate in that region,” said Georg Juergens, the deputy head of mission for the German Embassy in Ottawa.

He notes that a Second World War-era, battery-operated weather station was found decades after being left in Labrador by a U-boat. It is now on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

“We must brace ourselves for surprises,” Juergens told CBC News, while stressing that the submarine has yet to be positively identified.

More than a dozen U-boats may still be unaccounted for, he said.

If the mystery find is proven to be a submarine wreck, the German government does not favour bringing it to the surface.

“That would be against our tradition and our naval customs,” Juergens said. “This site then would be declared a war grave at sea.”

He said Canadian policy dovetails with German policy on such matters.

According to Juergens, the Newfoundland and Labrador government is now involved in efforts to authenticate the possible wreck.

The “international sporting event” in “the capital of the United Kingdom”

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

Dahlia Lithwick explains why we all need to be careful how we refer to a certain large organized sports extravaganza happening in a major city in England:

At the London Olympics, we’re seeing unprecedented restrictions on speech having anything to do with, erm, the Olympics. There are creepy new restrictions on journalists, with even nonsportswriters being told they should sign up with authorities.

Then there’s the London Olympic Games and Paralympics Games Act 2006. The law was originally aimed at preventing “over-commercialization” of the games, but it seems to have unloosed something of a Pandora’s box of speech suppression. Provisions triggering worries for protesters include sections regulating use of the Olympic symbol “in respect of advertising of any kind including in particular — (a) advertising of a non-commercial nature, and (b) announcements or notices of any kind.” The law further seems to authorize a “constable or enforcement officer” to “enter land or premises” where they believe such material is being produced. It also permits that such materials may be destroyed, and for the use of “reasonable force” to do so.

[. . .]

But it’s not just the Olympic rings that are being protected; it’s also Olympic words. As Nick Cohen recently observed, the “government has told the courts they may wish to take particular account of anyone using two or more words from what it calls ‘List A.’ ” Those words: Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, and twenty twelve. And woe betide anyone who takes a word from List A and marries it with one or more words from “List B”: Gold, Silver, Bronze, London, medals, sponsors, summer.

Spectators have been warned they may not “broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the Internet,” making uploading your video to your Facebook page a suspect activity. Be careful with your links to the official Olympic website as well.

Should Travels with Charley be filed in non-fiction or fiction?

Filed under: Books, History, Media, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:53

Bill Steigerwald talks about his research into John Steinbeck’s famous Travels with Charley and what was eliminated from the manuscript before it went to press:

Three weeks before I left on my trip to retrace John Steinbeck’s steps in Travels With Charley in Search of America, I did something no one in the world had done in four years. I went to the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan to read the first draft of the book. The handwritten manuscript — along with a typed and edited copy — has been stored at the Morgan like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark for almost 50 years.

Few scholars, graduate students, or critics had bothered to read it. If they had, the Travels With Charley myth — that for 11 weeks Steinbeck slowly traveled alone, camped out often, carefully studied the country, and told readers what he really thought about America and its 180 million people — might have been debunked decades ago.

[. . .]

The edits to the first draft mostly make sense; a lot of extraneous details and long-windedness on Steinbeck’s part are cut. But excising material about Steinbeck’s regular liaisons with his wife Elaine in fancy hotels, his stay with his good friend and failed presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, and his outright contempt for Richard Nixon serve another purpose. The casual or romantic reader is left with the impression that Steinbeck was alone and on the road most of the time, when in fact he was neither. By the time Viking Press was done marketing the book as nonfiction and dressing it up with excellent but misleading illustrations by Don Freeman, the Travels With Charley myth was born and bronzed. The book was an instant and huge bestseller. Critics and reviewers, followed by several generations of scholars, never questioned the book’s nonfiction status.

Patrick Reusse: Stop being optimistic, Vikings fans

Filed under: Football, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:35

Getting up on the curmudgeonly side of the bed, Patrick Reusse explains why he does not understand the modern Viking fan with an optimistic viewpoint:

The age for sincere emotional involvement with a sports team is 12. Anyone whining over the result of a game before that is a crybaby destined to grow up with few friends.

Which means, if you were 12 on Jan. 11, 1970, the last cheery moment you had about the eventual fate of the Vikings came before that afternoon’s kickoff of the fourth-ever Super Bowl.

Minnesotans as a whole were never more certain of anything than that the Vikings’ magnificent defense would stifle the Kansas City Chiefs and provide a pro football championship in only the third season of Bud Grant’s coaching tenure.

The final was Kansas City 23, Vikings 7. A couple of months later, NFL Films released a highlight tape from the game, complete with Chiefs coach Hank Stram cackling and ridiculing the Vikings throughout his team’s decisive upset.

It was a wound that never healed for Vikings fans that were at least 12 that day, and are now 54, older, or dead.

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