Click image to see full-size infographic at SMBC
November 6, 2013
“…the only real Doctor was William Hartnell”
In the Telegraph, Tim Stanley discusses the original Doctor Who:
Everybody has a favourite Doctor, but the only real Doctor was William Hartnell. No one else came close to matching his authority and scariness. He was genuinely alien.
Hartnell the man was born in poverty to a single mother in 1908. His career took off in the 1940s, playing hard men and soldiers in cop shows and sitcoms. He was spotted by producer Verity Lambert playing a rugby talent scout in This Sporting Life and offered a part in a new sci-fi show called Doctor Who in 1963. Bill was reluctant at first to work on a mere kids programme — but it turned out to be rather more special than that.
The genius of that early series was that it was pitched perfectly between children and adults; it’s a testament to how much more “adult” children were treated back then. The real focus of the plot were two teachers, Ian and Barbara, who follow a precocious pupil home and find that she’s living in a police box. The police box turns out to be a time ship (rather roomier on the inside than out) and her “grandfather” — the Doctor — is less than thrilled to meet them. In fact, he’s so furious that he shuts the doors, presses a button and kidnaps them. Compare that with present-day Who where the Doctor only ever meets young women with regional accents who he instantly wants to bed but can’t because — I don’t know — he’s impotent or something. Everything about 60s Who was way more mature and sinister.
To be honest, Hartnell’s stories can be tough to re-watch. Each serial ran for upwards of 12 episodes a time, some of the scripts were plodding (I challenge you to sit through The Space Museum without slipping into a coma) and the effects shockingly poor. The Web Planet featured a cast of gay butterflies on strings, dancing ants and grubs on rollers that occasionally crashed into the camera. Bill sometimes let the side down by fluffing his lines (When invited to climb a hill: “My dear, I’m not a mountain goat and I prefer walking to any day.” Awkward pause. “And I hate climbing”). There are moments when he looks lost and helpless before the cameras, the line on the tip of his tongue but he can’t remember if it’s “Daleks” or “cabbages”.
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Taiwan suffers espionage leak
Strategy Page on the most recent intelligence coup by the Chinese military:
Taiwan recently admitted that it had suffered some serious damage when it discovered that one of its air force officers (identified only as “Major Hao”) sold many technical details of the new E-2K AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft to China. Hao did it for money, and Taiwanese counterintelligence found over a dozen other Chinese intel operatives during the investigation that uncovered the E-2K leaks. Since the E-2K contains mostly American technology and is based on the E-2C use on American aircraft carriers, this intelligence disaster is going to cost America a lot as well. Since China now knows the details of how the E-2 electronics work, they can develop better ways to deceive and disrupt E-2 operations.
Earlier this year Taiwan received the last two of four E-2K aircraft from the U.S., where they have been sent for upgrading to the E-2C 2000 standard. The first two E-2Ks were sent in 2009. The upgrade cost about $63 million per aircraft. Taiwan bought two E-2Ks new in 2006 as well.
The Taiwanese E-2K is very similar to the American E-2C, which is being replaced with a newer model. In 2010 the U.S. Navy received its first E-2D aircraft. This is the latest version of the E-2 Hawkeye radar aircraft that was originally introduced in 1964. The two engine, 24 ton E-2 was never produced in large quantities (fewer than a hundred are in use). Six years ago the E-2 fleet reached a milestone of a million flight hours.
[…]
The U.S. usually does not export the latest versions of electronic equipment. Thus the Taiwan leak means the older American E-2C is compromised but not (to a great extent) the most recent E-2D model. But the Taiwanese are justifiably afraid that there will be even more reluctance by the United States to sell Taiwan the latest versions of anything because of the successful Chinese espionage efforts in Taiwan. Then again, maybe not. That’s because that espionage works both ways. The Taiwanese have been very successful using the same tactics (offering cash or using blackmail and other threats) against the Chinese. While the American and Taiwanese tech is more valuable (because it is more advanced) it’s useful to know the details of the best stuff the Chinese have.
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It’s a bad season so far, but it’s not the worst (yet)
A new post at the Daily Norseman goes digging through the dumpster for comparisons between this year’s struggling team and the very worst in franchise history. Despite what we’ve seen on the field this year (and the awful stench of some of these losses), CCNorsemen says that the 1984 “vintage” was indisputably the very worst Viking team ever:
The 2013 Vikings have had a disappointing season to say the least. With a rash of injuries hitting star players on both offense and defense, a struggling quarterback(s), and a defense that couldn’t stop a bored kindergarten class from learning to add and subtract, even if they shouted that it was time for recess, this team looks bad. Add in a coaching staff that makes questionable calls each and every week, and we now find ourselves staring at 1 win and 7 losses to start the year. This ties a franchise record for worst start to a season set in the inaugural year of 1961, and then matched again in 2011. And it begs the question, are the 2013 Vikings the worst team in franchise history? That question is definitely an open one until the season is finished. However now that the 2013 season is exactly half over, I wanted to dig through the archives of Vikings history to see just how bad this team really is compared to some of the bad teams we’ve had in the past. Fair warning: this is not a topic for the overly optimistic fan or the faint of heart. I will be drudging up the worst of the worst here, so read on…if you dare.
[…]
The date was January 27th, 1984. Bud Grant retired as head coach of the Vikings, and Les Steckel was promoted from offensive assistant to head coach, the youngest in the NFL at the time at age 38. Tommy Kramer was our quarterback in 1984, and he had a propensity for being injured. He started the first 8 games of the season completing 52% of his passes and throwing for 1,556 yards 8TDs and 8INTs on his way to a pretty mediocre 72.3 passer rating, along with TEN fumbles in 9 games. He injured his shoulder and only started 1 more game that year. Wade Wilson and Archie Manning split the remainder of the starts (yes, just like 2013, we had three different starting QBs in 1984). On the whole, Kramer had an ANY/A rating of 4.86 and a QB rating of 70.6. Wade Wilson was even worse in relief with a 2.16 ANY/A rating and a passer rating of 52.5. Manning was only marginally better with an ANY/A of 2.65 and a passer rating of 66.1. It was a pretty abysmal year for quarterback efficiency, although it’s tough to compare those numbers to today’s standards. But compared to 1984 standards, Kramer ranked 19th out of 30 in ANY/A with Dan Marino and Joe Montana leading the league in that metric with 8.94 and 7.93 respectively. Kramer was 23rd out of 28 in passer rating, with Marino and Montana again leading the league with 108.9 and 102.9 ratings respectively.
Our leading rusher in 1984 was a fullback named Alfred Anderson (who?) who ran for a pretty pedestrian 3.8 yards per carry and got only 773 yards on 201 attempts with 14 starts (48.3 yards per game), he also had 8 fumbles on the year. Ted Brown was the only other RB that carried the ball for any significance that year (442 yards on 98 carries for 4.5 yards per attempt). Our leading receiver in 1984 was Leo Lewis a 4th year player who played in all 16 games but only managed to start 5 of them. He racked up 830 yards on 47 receptions, his career best. Mike Jones was the only other notable receiver notching 591 yards in an otherwise forgettable career. For comparison, this was the year that Eric Dickerson broke the single season rushing record with 2,105 rushing yards, averaging 131.6 yards per game. Walter Payton had an incredible year rushing for 1,684 yards on 381 attempts, good for 105.3 yards per game. Art Monk and Ozzie Newsome lead the lead in receptions in 1984 with 106 and 89 respectively. But it was Roy Green, Dickerson’s teammate on the Rams, who lead the league in receiving yards with 1,555.
On defense we scored 1 TD for the entire year. We recovered 0 fumbles and our leading sack artist collected a whopping 5 sacks on the year (right defensive end Randy Holloway). The only bright spot (if you can call it that) was that the team recorded 11 total interceptions (but 0 passes defended). As was mentioned earlier, this was the worst ranked defense in points allowed and yards allowed in 1984.
So, 1984 was a team truly without any bright spots. Offense, Defense, Special Teams…it didn’t matter, it was all bad. Head Coach Les Steckel was fired immediately following the 1984 season, and Bud Grant was re-hired as the Vikings head coach. And with largely the same personnel, Bud Grant improved the team record to 7-9 with a margin of victory of -13. Jerry Burns took over in 1986 and the team had four consecutive years of a winning record. So, good coaching staffs can really turn a team around. Just ask the Kansas City Chiefs who are witnessing a pretty remarkable turn-around with a new head coach and new quarterback this season.
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November 5, 2013
Camelot? Not so much…
Gene Healy thinks that after fifty years, it’s time we stopped pretending that John F. Kennedy was a great president:
In a December 1963 interview, the president’s widow gave a name to the Kennedy mystique, telling journalist Theodore White of Jack’s fondness for the lyric from the Lerner and Loewe musical about King Arthur: “Once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”
Much more than a “moment,” Camelot has proven an enduring myth.
JFK places near the top 10 in most presidential ranking surveys of historians, and in a 2011 Gallup poll, Americans ranked him ahead of George Washington in a list of “America’s greatest presidents.”
Kennedy’s murder was a national tragedy, to be sure, but an honest assessment of his record shows that our lawless and reckless 35th president was anything but a national treasure.
[…]
Indeed, JFK rarely let legal specifics deter his exercise of presidential power. At his behest in 1961, the Internal Revenue Service set up a “strike force,” the Ideological Organizations Project, targeting groups opposing the administration.
In 1962, outraged that American steel manufacturers had raised prices, he ordered wiretaps, IRS audits and dawn FBI raids on steel executives’ homes.
In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning national security journalist Thomas E. Ricks opined that JFK “probably was the worst American president of the [20th] century.”
In foreign policy, Ricks said, “he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco.”
True enough, after being buffaloed into the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation by the CIA, Kennedy helped bring the world to the brink of thermonuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis — not because Soviet missiles in Cuba altered the strategic balance of power (they did not), but because, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted, the missiles were “politically unacceptable” for the president.
Moreover, Kennedy’s aura of vitality and “vigah” depended on deliberate lies about his medical fitness for office: “I never had Addison’s disease … my health is excellent,” JFK told a reporter in 1961.
As Kennedy biographer Richard Reeves notes, JFK, who “received the last rites of the Catholic Church at least four times as an adult,” was “something of a medical marvel, kept alive by complicated daily combinations of pills and injections,” including a psychiatrically dangerous cocktail of painkillers and amphetamines regularly administered by celebrity physician Max “Dr. Feelgood” Jacobson.
Update, 6 November: Nick Gillespie assigns the blame (for the still-going hagiography) on the boomers in a piece titled “JFK Still Dead, Baby Boomers Still Self-Absorbed”
Indeed, by the early 1970s, what American over or under 30 didn’t agree with the sentiments expressed in a 1971 New York Times Magazine story on youth politics co-authored by Louis Rossetto, the future cofounder of Wired magazine? “John F. Kennedy, one of the leading reactionaries of the sixties, is remembered for his famous line, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,’” seethed Rossetto and Stan Lehr. “Today, more and more young people are instead following the advice of [author] David Friedman: ‘Ask not what government can do for you… ask rather what government is doing to you.’”
But boomers were so much older then, they’re younger than that now, right? Despite the raft of revelations not just about governmental abuses of power generally but those involving JFK specifically, boomers just can’t quit him (or their airbrushed image of him) as their own mortality comes into focus. Here’s Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott, known for an “artful nastiness that’s long disappeared from his peers’ arsenal,” still going weak in the knees for Jack:
I remember the light at the end of the school hallway reflecting off the floor as word went round and the weight in the air the days after. For kids my age, it was like losing a father, a father who had all of our motley fates in his hands…
As Splice Today’s Russ Smith — himself a boomer old enough to remember where he was when Kennedy was shot — notes, this is pure overstatement: “It wasn’t ‘like losing a father,’ and to suggest so is an affront to all the children who actually did lose their own father at a tender age.” Smith, who as the founder of the Baltimore and Washington City Papers and The New York Press knows a thing or two about reader appetites, is “betting that most of these books bomb, mostly because for most Americans those tumultuous days in 1963 are ancient history. Kennedy’s assassination might as well have occurred in the 19th century. Save for ascending and budding historians, where’s the audience for yet another encore of Camelot?”
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Lake Michigan’s carrier fleet
I’d never heard of the US Navy’s carrier training ships that operated on Lake Michigan from 1942-45, so this link to a thread at Warbird Information Exchange from Roger Henry was of great interest:
This thread may give you a nice idea of what that exercise was all about. Many interesting images to study here and quite possibly of interest to those who are involved with the restoration of aircraft that have been recovered from the Lakes. I have also included a page from my dad’s logbook showing his 1st thru 8th carrier landings on the USS Wolverine in July 1944. Sources are the NMNA archives, Library of Congress photo archives, LIFE image archives.
This will be a large photo thread in a few parts so we’ll start with the two principal ships.
WIKI: USS Sable (IX-81) was a training ship of the United States Navy during World War II. Originally built as the Greater Buffalo, a sidewheel excursion steamer, she was converted in 1942 to a freshwater aircraft carrier to be used on the Great Lakes. She was used for advanced training for naval aviators in carrier takeoffs and landings. One aviator that trained upon the Sable was future president George H. W. Bush. Following World War II, Sable was decommissioned on 7 November 1945. She was sold for scrapping on 7 July 1948 to the H.H. Buncher Company.
The steamship Greater Buffalo before it was converted to the USS Sable (IX-81).
Overhead view of the training aircraft carrier Sable (IX 81) underway on Lake Michigan with an FM Wildcat making a deck launch from the flattop 1945
I was initially surprised that both training carriers were converted side-paddle steamers … I’d have thought the extra costs in converting to propeller drive would make them less-than ideal conversion subjects — you can clearly see in the second image that they left the side-paddles in place, so the main cost of conversion was the construction of the flight deck and repositioning the smokestacks to the starboard side (no hangar deck, elevators, or catapults in evidence):
WIKI: USS Wolverine (IX-64) a side-wheel excursion steamer built in 1913—was originally named Seeandbee, a name based upon her owners’ company name, the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Co.[4] She was constructed by the American Ship Building Company of Wyandotte, Michigan. The Navy acquired the sidewheeler on 12 March 1942 and designated her an unclassified miscellaneous auxiliary, IX-64. She was purchased by the Navy in March 1942 and conversion to a training aircraft carrier began on 6 May 1942.[5] The name Wolverine was approved on 2 August 1942 with the ship being commissioned on 12 August 1942.[5][6] Intended to operate on Lake Michigan, IX-64 received its name because the state of Michigan is known as the Wolverine State.
The steamship Seeandbee before it was converted to the USS Wolverine (IX-64)
A view of the USS Wolverine (IX-64) while underway in Lake Michigan 1942
And given that almost all the pilots were still learning their trade — these were training ships, after all — there were more than a few mishaps:
USS Sable (IX 81) showing a TBF hanging over the side after crashing during carrier qualifications on Lake Michigan.
FM-2 Wildcat after crash onboard USS Sable
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Just add lawyers and stir
Coyote Blog on the problem with the latest anti-discrimination law:
In reality, this is how it works: Suddenly, as owner of the company, one finds a lawsuit or EEOC complain in his lap, generally with absolutely no warning. In the few cases we have seen in our company, the employee never told anyone in the company about the alleged harassment, never gave me or management a chance to fix it, despite very clear policies in our employee’s manuals that we don’t tolerate such behavior and outlining methods for getting help. There is nothing in EEO law that requires an employee to try to get the problem fixed via internal processes.
As a result, our company can be financially liable for allowing a discriminatory situation to exist that we could not have known about, because it happened in a one-on-one conversations and the alleged victim never reported it.
What I want is a reasonable chance to fix problems, get rid of bad supervisors, etc. A reasonable anti-discrimination law would say that companies have to have a grievance process with such and such specifications, and that no one may sue until they have exhausted the grievance process or when there is no conforming grievance process. If I don’t fix the problem and give the employee a safe work environment, then a suit is appropriate. The difference between this reasonable goal and the system we actually have is lawyers. Lawyers do not want the problem to be fixed. Lawyers want the problem to be as bad as possible and completely hidden from management so there is no chance it can be fixed before they can file a lucrative lawsuit.
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QotD: Accumulated bureaucratic turkeys
Anyone with family or friends in the civil service hears about the hours wasted on bureaucratic wrestling with the guy who spends his energy crafting strategies to get you to do his work. My favorite came from a doctor in a prestigious department at a state hospital whose secretary threw out most of his mail, including all of the invitations, because answering it was too much work. He ended up getting his wife to come into the office and act as his unpaid secretary, because firing or replacing the secretary was way too much trouble.
I am not slamming all civil servants as lazy lackwits; these stories come from good civil servants who are endlessly frustrated by the obstructive and destructive minority. Turkeys in government are like prizes on Wheel of Fortune: Once you win one, it’s yours to keep. They can’t be fired, and they rarely quit; the best you can do is wait for a chance to transfer them somewhere else.
Because of the Universal Law of Turkey Accretion, the quality and effectiveness of a government agency’s personnel are likely to peak very shortly after that agency is established. HHS has been around for a long time, and so has its IT staff. Which means it has more than a few turkeys. Or, as David Cutler put it in a 2010 memo to Larry Summers, “The agency is demoralized, the best people have left, IT services are antiquated, and there are fewer employees than in 1981, despite a much larger burden.”
Megan McArdle, “Get Rid of Obamacare’s Turkeys”, Bloomberg.com, 2013-11-04
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November 4, 2013
Law, the military, and the media
Sir Humphrey debunks a recent story in the Telegraph which makes a big deal about the British military hiring more lawyers at the same time as they are disbanding front-line units:
The Forces have always needed effective legal support, and arguably the tiny number of military lawyers provides an utterly vital capability. Its not just about the provision of support to people who understand the arcane intricacies of a military law system which is very complex, and very different to our normal law — though this is extremely important. It’s about the provision of people who bring a vital advisory role to Commanders on the ground, and the wider MOD.
[…]
Similarly, once the direct fighting is over, UK troops often find themselves operating in a very strange environment — one only has to look at Iraq in the aftermath of the initial war fighting phase to realise that its not a clear cut place to operate. The advice offered by in theatre legal personnel can often make a huge difference in helping commanders understand their freedom to operate, and what genuine constraints may affect them. For instance, on a single tour in Iraq, units may have found themselves conducting everything from searches, checking for IEDS, detaining known individuals through deliberate operations, and then engaging in combat — quite possibly in the same day. The requirement for modern troops to adapt very quickly to all manner of situations places a huge burden on them — it is important that they get the best possible guidance to know they are acting correctly. Certainly in this authors experience on both TELIC and HERRICK, the LEGAD advice was often one of the most critical parts of any potential operation.
The same lawyers provide vital services back home — in the Royal Navy for instance, there are a range of in house experts on the Law of the Sea, international maritime disputes and territorial waters and the like. This may sound questionable, but when the RN is daily conducting counter piracy and counter narcotics operations across the globe, or sailing in possible maritime flashpoints where different nations have very different interpretations of maritime boundaries, having a good legal understanding on hand of the art of the possible is absolutely vital.
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“…almost half of all firearms discharges by police officers involve the shooting of a dog”
Even if you’re not a dog lover, this story from Charles C.W. Cooke should get you upset:
A Google search for “dog shot by police officer” returns countless stories from across the United States. YouTube, too, is full of harrowing videos. There is even a website, the bluntly titled “Dogs That Cops Killed” blog, which seeks to “collect a few of the innumerable instances of police officers killing dogs” and to push back against the “wars on drugs, peace, and liberty.”
This unlovely trend has claimed the attention of Patrick Reasonover, a libertarian filmmaker in California who is currently raising money for a proposed documentary, Puppycide, through the crowdsourcing service Kickstarter. “We’re excited by this one,” Reasonover tells me, “because on so many issues — the War on Drugs, for example — it’s impossible to move the ball. You can feature the problems with the drug war, but there are so many embedded interests that one documentary isn’t really going to solve the problem. With this issue, however? We feel that it could.”
Around eight months ago, Reasonover began to notice the proliferation of online videos of police officers shooting dogs. “People were going nuts about it,” he recalls. “There were tons of views on these things. We had dogs and we were disturbed, so we thought we’d reach out and start contacting some of the victims.” In doing so, he quickly learned that the news reports and the published footage were only the beginning of the story. Because police departments don’t keep easily accessible records of dog shootings, it is hard to gauge the scale. A recent review of public records by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals concluded that almost half of all firearms discharges by police officers involve the shooting of a dog. But nobody really knows.
Indeed, even animal-rights activists aren’t fully aware of the numbers in their communities. “They would tell us that there were, say, five news stories on these dogs that got shot,” Reasonover says. “But through my digging and persistence I found out that actually, you know, 22 were shot and no one ever knew.” One thing led to another, and he discovered that “there is a set of people who are working across the nation, through lawsuits or legislation or appealing to the Justice Department.” As part of his project, Reasonover is hoping to file Freedom of Information Act requests in all major cities and jurisdictions in the U.S. and to get hold of all firearm-discharge records. From that, he hopes to assemble a better list.
It may make brutal reading. A recent lawsuit in Milwaukee filed by a woman whose dog was killed forced that city to compile its records. “They found that a dog was shot every seven days,” Reasonover says. “Just in Milwaukee.” And, unless something changes, the number will only continue to rise. “Over the course of the past forty or fifty years, dogs have moved from the barnyard to the back yard to the bedroom,” Ledy Vankavage, the senior legislative attorney at Best Friends Animal Society, has observed. In the meantime, the drug war has been ratcheted up, terrorism has become a pressing concern, and, as Radley Balko has so distressingly chronicled, the police have become increasingly militarized. “You have this recipe for these police entering our lives more and more and more,” Reasonover explains. “The dogs are there, and so they are killed.”
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QotD: Software quality assurance
The fundamental purpose of testing—and, for that matter, of all software quality assurance (QA) deliverables and processes — is to tell you just what you’ve built and whether it does what you think it should do. This is essential, because you can’t inspect a software program the same way you can inspect a house or a car. You can’t touch it, you can’t walk around it, you can’t open the hood or the bedroom door to see what’s inside, you can’t take it out for spin. There are very few tangible or visible clues to the completeness and reliability of a software system — and so we have to rely on QA activities to tell us how well built the system is.
Furthermore, almost any software system developed nowadays for production is vastly more complex than a house or car — it’s more on the same order of complexity of a large petrochemical processing and storage facility, with thousands of possible interconnections, states, and processes. We would be (rightly) terrified if, say, Exxon build such a sprawling oil refining complex near our neighborhood and then started up production having only done a bare minimum of inspection, testing, and trial operations before, during and after construction, offering the explanation that they would wait until after the plant went into production and then handle problems as they crop up. Yet too often that’s just how large software development projects are run, even though the system in development may well be more complex (in terms of connections, processes, and possible states) than such a petrochemical factory. And while most inadequately tested software systems won’t spew pollutants, poison the neighborhood, catch fire, or explode, they can cripple corporate operations, lose vast sums of money, spark shareholder lawsuits, and open the corporation’s directors and officers to civil and even criminal liability (particularly with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley).
And that presumes that the system can actually go into production. The software engineering literature and the trade press are replete with well-documented case studies of “software runaways”: large IT re-engineering or development projects that consume tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, or in a few spectacular (government) cases, billions of dollars, over a period of years, before grinding to a halt and being terminated without ever having put a usable, working system into production. So it’s important not to skimp on testing and the other QA-related activities.
Bruce F. Webster, “Obamacare and the Testing Gap”, And Still I Persist…, 2013-10-31
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Vikings lose to Cowboys in last-minute TD drive
The 27-23 result won’t surprise anyone who saw any Viking games earlier this season, although the score was closer than you (or the bookies) might have expected. With so many key players missing in Minnesota’s secondary, the Cowboys were supposed to keep the scoreboard numbers spinning, but the game was close right down to the final drive. It’s that final drive — where the Vikings couldn’t force a stop — that has been the signature of this year’s team.
With yesterday’s loss, the Vikings have now matched the worst start to a season in franchise history (1-7 was also the 1961 team’s opening record) — and will host Washington on Thursday night for an attempt to make it their worst all-time start. Adrian Peterson had his best performance in over a month, rushing for 140 yards and one touchdown on 25 carries. Christian Ponder’s last-gasp Hail Mary fell short, but his stats were respectable: 25 of 37 for 236 yards, one touchdown and one interception (82.7 QB rating) and a rushing TD of his own. Kicker Blair Walsh had his first career missed extra point after Peterson’s TD run, but the single point didn’t make any difference in the final result. It may have influenced the coaching decision to punt rather than attempting a 54-yard field goal later in the game (post-game, Leslie Frazier said that Walsh’s hamstring injury was the actual reason for not trying the long FG).
Over the course of the game, the Vikings lost even more players to injury, with right guard Phil Loadholt suffering a concussion, tight end Kyle Rudolph injuring his ankle on his touchdown reception, nose tackle Letroy Guion had a shoulder injury, and cornerback Xavier Rhodes being injured in a collision with linebacker Chad Greenway. Rhodes attempted to return to the game, but left after just one play.
At The Viking Age, Dan Zinski says this “has become a nightmare sort of season”:
For a minute it looked like the Vikings might pull off a stunning, draft-position-ruining upset over the Cowboys. The Vikings were trailing 20-17 early in the fourth when Adrian Peterson went into full-on beast mode, ripping off a 52-yard run to put Minnesota in scoring range, then hitting paydirt on an absolutely filthy tackler-dragging monster of an effort. By force of Peterson’s will alone the Vikes took a 23-20 lead, then watched their kicker Blair Walsh miss the extra point to keep the Cowboys within a field goal.
But momentum quickly swung back in the Vikings’ favor when on the ensuing Cowboys possession A.J. Jefferson picked off Tony Romo on a sideline pass. The Vikes had a chance to ice the game away there but came up short and elected to punt rather than have Blair Walsh try a 54-yard field goal. Was this the right move? Walsh has hit plenty of 50-plus yarders in his young career, but he’s also had hamstring problems, and he had just missed a PAT wide right. Leslie Frazier did not have faith in his young kicker to boot it through and rather than give the Cowboys good field position he elected to pin them.
In the end it wouldn’t matter. The Cowboys got the ball back with plenty of time and did what you were almost certain they would. Tony Romo worked the ball rather easily down the field against the Vikings’ defense and the Cowboys were finally able to stick it in when Romo hit Dwayne Harris on a 7-yard TD pass. The Vikes got the ball back in decent field position after a short kickoff but were unable to get into position and had to settle for a Christian Ponder final-second hail mary that fell well short.
The Daily Norseman‘s Eric Thompson says the Vikings played their best game of the season yesterday:
I know the headline sounds like it was something from The Onion Sports or Sports Pickle, but it’s sadly true.
When you think about it, Sunday’s game against the Cowboys was the best of both worlds for the two major camps of Vikings fans. On one hand, you have the #TankForTeddy, #MissionMariota, #SuckForTheDuck, and #JohhnyFootballGoesToMinnesota fans that know the season is already lost and don’t want any pesky wins screwing up our 2014 draft position. They were satisfied because the Vikings lost again. On the other hand you have the fans that can’t stand the team laying down and getting blown out every week. They were satisfied because the Vikings actually played pretty well against a division leader on the road.
I get that many Vikings fans that don’t mind the losses since it could eventually lead to a better future for the team: better draft picks, new coaches, an overhaul of a largely inept roster. But you guys realize that we’re only halfway through the season, right? Are you sure that you can endure eight more weeks of this crap? Because I certainly wouldn’t mind a win or two sprinkled in with all the misery.
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Living in a Surveillance State: Mikko Hypponen at TEDxBrussels
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November 3, 2013
The problem of fake gurus
Shikha Dalmia on Hinduism’s thus-far unresolvable problem with fake gurus:
Hinduism, unlike Christianity, is not an organized faith with settled dogmas, an established church and a priestly hierarchy handing down truths worked out top-down as in Catholicism. Nor does it prescribe a strict and elaborate code of law as Judaism’s torah and Islam’s sharia.
Rather, it is an open-ended faith that has a core goal — experiencing the God within and releasing oneself from the cycle of birth and rebirth — but no set prescription for achieving it. It simply calls upon believers to overcome their inner demons and find their own unique path to enlightenment. But a good guru, who has overcome the vices of ordinary mortals and reached a higher state of consciousness, can greatly accelerate the journey.
The effect of such radical openness, on the one had, is that Hinduism has produced an “absolutely staggering” body of “scientific, faith-based and experience-based knowledge,” notes Josh Schrei, a religion writer. Diametrically opposed paths for achieving inner bliss have been explored: asceticism and materialism; intoxication and sobriety; sensuality and celibacy; solitude and communion.
On the other hand, Hinduism’s spiritual laissez faire means that it lacks the inner resources of other religions for quality control. Unlike monotheistic faiths, Hinduism is not preoccupied with policing superstition, idolatry, and heresy. Literally anyone with a formula for enlightenment—and the charisma to sell it — can hang a shingle saying “guru inside” and wait for the flock to arrive. (This was perfectly captured by the recent documentary Kumare in which an Indian American born and raised in New York, moves to Arizona feigns a guru accent, invents some mumbo jumbo, and quickly acquires a devoted following.)
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Matt Welch and his waking-up nightmare
Matt didn’t wake up comfortably this morning:
My wake-up nightmare was better than yours: Was forced to read aloud a Harlequin history of the torrid love affair between Ayn Rand & Soros!
— Matt Welch (@mleewelch) November 3, 2013
This was read at a meeting of the Fresno City Council. According to the history–which seemed suspect–the lovers met in Nazi Germany.
— Matt Welch (@mleewelch) November 3, 2013
The two had commandeered Hitler's secret boats to conduct daring explorations and build miles-long oil platforms off the coast of Belgium.
— Matt Welch (@mleewelch) November 3, 2013
I was reading this under duress, because of a drug kingpin/local grandee who was about to set Fresno City Council on fire with golf balls.
— Matt Welch (@mleewelch) November 3, 2013
The pictures in the slideshow of the young Soros were hilarious–basically the Eraserhead movie poster, but with white hair and insane grin.
— Matt Welch (@mleewelch) November 3, 2013
Moral of the story: Daylight Savings Time is just WRONG.
— Matt Welch (@mleewelch) November 3, 2013
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