Quotulatiousness

October 22, 2013

Dahlia Lithwick on smelling like a teenage boy for a week

Filed under: Humour, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:21

It’s not just a scent … it’s a lifestyle:

When I first told my husband that I was planning on wearing only Axe men’s products for an entire week, his answer was a foreshadowing of things to come: “You’re planning on wearing that stuff to bed every night for a week? Man. Axe really does work. It’s only been a few minutes and look, you’re already single again … ”

[…]

Despairing of any kind of social response that wasn’t either threats of a formal legal separation from my husband or subtle nostalgia from mothers of former Axe users, I decided to trot out the stuff at the last night of Slate’s annual retreat in September. Having sprayed it liberally all over my body on the night of the big promlike party, I watched my roommate — Slate’s Dear Prudie — actually flatten herself up against a hotel room wall and slide uneasily down the hallway, in the manner of that poor cat being chased by Pepé Le Pew. Almost immediately upon my arrival at the festivities I was accosted by three female Slate colleagues who spontaneously observed that I smelled completely amazing. I was briefly thrilled at the enthusiastic response, until I realized that I didn’t really want my someday teenaged sons to ever be quite that amazing-smelling to women in their 30s and 40s. One colleague said it brought her right back to whatever it is that happened in the back of a truck when she was herself 14. The silence was slightly less awkward than after the pants-spraying story the week before.

China’s not-so-foolish consistency

Filed under: China, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:22

The Naval Diplomat reminds us about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quip about “foolish consistency” being “the hobgoblin of little minds” and makes the point that China’s consistency may not qualify as foolish at all:

Last week Mark Stokes and Russell Hsiao of Project 2049 Institute published a longish report profiling the PLA General Political Department. Like all good analysts, Mark and Russell telegraph their thesis at the outset, subtitling the monograph “Political Warfare with Chinese Characteristics.”

A term that pops us repeatedly in the text is the “three warfares,” namely legal, psychological, and media warfare. The Heritage Foundation’s Dean Cheng appears to have been the first to look into the concept in a serious way. I did some research on it a couple of years back. To oversimplify, Chinese officialdom — not just the diplomatic apparatus but also the PLA — has undertaken a concerted effort to bend opinion among various target audiences. International law and the media are two channels through which it influences these audiences, prosecuting psychological operations.

In one sense, the three-warfares concept is innocuous. Any government worth its salt tries to project a favorable image abroad, swaying popular and elite opinion in its interests. That’s what public diplomacy is all about. But the notion of three warfares waged constantly, in peacetime, by all arms of the Chinese Communist regime, including a far-from-apolitical military, should give foreign observers pause. It bespeaks a combative temperament toward the wider world, and a single-minded zeal toward messaging. In all likelihood, ulterior motives are at work even in routine interactions with mainland interlocutors.

The Vikings’ Josh Freeman era begins with a painful loss to the Giants

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

From the moment he was signed, some Viking fans were eager to see what former Tampa Bay quarterback Josh Freeman could do. Last night, those same fans were introduced to the notion that a quarterback can’t magically make up for an entire offseason of practice, drill and team familiarity. Freeman stood tall in the pocket to deliver downfield throws, but those throws were far too often over the heads or out of reach of his intended receivers … timing and route accuracy were both in short supply. Freeman was only intercepted once, but the Giants had other opportunities to pick him off over the course of the game.

All of the problems the Vikings have displayed on the field up to this point were pretty much unchanged despite the change at quarterback: the defence gave up far too many yards and stayed on the field far too long, and Adrian Peterson was not able to get the rushing game going (although he had been on the injury report with a hamstring issue this week). If Marcus Sherels hadn’t scored his second career kick return touchdown, the Giants would have blanked the Vikings. Unfortunately, Sherels also had a few key errors, including coughing up the ball near the Vikings goal line on a punt return. Defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd also had a bad special teams outing, fumbling the ball on a kickoff return (the Giants kicked short to keep the ball away from fellow rookie Cordarrelle Patterson).

1500ESPN‘s Andrew Krammer:

Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave said the game plan was going to be simple for quarterback Josh Freeman, who made his first start in a 23-7 loss on Monday Night Football against the previously winless New York Giants.

The end result left many saying he was set up to fail.

Simplicity took a bad seat to ineffective as Freeman threw 33 incompletions, dropping his league-low 43.5% even further during his first outing as a Vikings quarterback.

A member of the team for just two weeks, Freeman looked rusty as he hadn’t played since Sept. 22. However, in his last game as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer, Freeman completed just 19-of-41 passes in a loss at New England.

Struggles aside, it was obvious from Freeman’s midseason signing that the Vikings wanted to evaluate him as their potential long-term answer. But that philosophy was taken to the extreme on Monday night as Freeman threw 53 passes to running back Adrian Peterson’s 13 carries.

Phil Mackey:

On Sept. 4, prior to the start of the regular season, FootballOutsiders.com – one of the top football analytics sites on the web — projected the Minnesota Vikings as the team most likely to pick No. 1 overall in the 2014 draft.

Football Outsiders gave the Vikings a 4.9% chance to make the playoffs and a 0.1% chance to win the Super Bowl.

We all laughed.

While the Jacksonville Jaguars are leaders in the clubhouse to pick No. 1 overall, nobody should be laughing anymore at the notion that the Vikings are one of the worst teams in the NFL. Not after the embarrassment we saw on Monday night in front of a national audience.

Consider this: The previously winless New York Giants averaged 2.0 yards per carry and 4.9 yards per pass on offense. Eli Manning needed 39 passes just to reach 200 yards. The Giants also fumbled four times, were hit for 72 yards in penalties and handed the ball 18 times to Peyton Hillis, who they signed off the street on Wednesday. Check that. Hillis was actually volunteering as an assistant coach at a high school in Tennessee last week.

And the Giants looked like the 1999 St. Louis Rams standing next to the Vikings.

Everyone deserves to be ripped here.

Jim Souhan at the Star Tribune:

Last time the Vikings played in New Jersey, their quarterback spent most of his postgame interview answering questions about sending illicit texts.

Monday night, the Vikings visited Jersey again, and this time it got embarrassing.

To be a Vikings fan these days, you need a gallon of Pepto-Bismol and a Hazmat suit. Winless in the United States this season, the Vikings might be the worst team in the NFL that does not reside in the state of Florida.

They have failed to look professional in consecutive weeks, and in unpredictable fashion: by imploding at home against an unremarkable Carolina team, then looking unfamiliar with the concept of offensive football on Monday night against a terrible Giants team.

Their 23-7 loss buried memories of their 2012 playoff appearance and transported them back to 2011, when they won only three games and began another desperate search for a franchise quarterback.

Worse, these kinds of losses transport them back to 2010, when they got their coach fired in the middle of the season.

They might be searching for a coach and quarterback this winter. Or by November.

QotD: They We were better people in those days…

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Food, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Back in the bad old days, before Pierre Trudeau saved Canada from the horrors of fiscal solvency and smallish government, school children, mostly girls, were taught something called home economics. The theory, terrible quaint though it sounds, is that since most women would become homemakers they should be prepared for that role. Some, no doubt, came from good homes where dutiful mothers ensured that their daughters knew how to cook, sew and deal with troublesome infants. Some did not come from good homes. Part of the point of public education was to make sure that all girls knew how to cook nutritious food for their families. More broadly it was to ensure that all children acquired life skills along with whatever algebra and Shakespeare they could pick up.

That was one of the goals of public education. Educating a self reliant, sober and decent citizenry. Not rationalizing every vice and undermining the founding tenets of Canadian society. There was plenty of propaganda, but it was mostly propagating positive values. A tad parochial and silly by our standards, but not without its merits. It was not a platform for allowing anti-capitalist and anti-industrial zealots like David Suzuki to pontificate.

If there is a problem with “food insecurity” it’s because many Canadians, especially among the lower classes, lack basic life skills. That, not incidentally, is why most are in the lower class. If the Pakistani cab driver with a scant English vocabulary can feed and cloth his family with some decency, what does that say about the Mackenzies who have been here since Simcoe? Some of the poor are poor because they’re physically or mentally incapable of fending for themselves. In an advanced society they comprises only a small fraction of the working age population. Much of the poor in Canada are poor because they exhibit poor behaviour.

Most of the long-term poor, this excludes those who are simply suffering from temporary misfortune, think in a much different way than those in the middle class. The long-term poor are short-range in their thinking. Their savings rate is close to non-existent. They can’t resist instant gratification, like junk food or gambling. This also extends to their sexual lives. They exhibit a strong tendency toward highly unstable short-term relationships based on fleeting desire. The notion of a long-term, emotionally stable relationship is either alien or absurd.

Richard Anderson, “Thinking of the Children”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2013-10-21

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