Quotulatiousness

January 21, 2014

George Orwell – confessed pamphlet addict

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

The British Library has posted an interesting short item on their Untold lives blog about George Orwell’s pamphlet collection:

George Orwell’s collection of mostly political ephemera was an important barometer of the social changes of the 1930s and 1940s, and a measure of his influences during those decades. While Orwell’s personal papers went to University College London and the National Archives, his miscellaneous materials are held by the British Library. Totalling over 2700 items, a full inventory of Orwell’s collection of pamphlets is now available via the British Library’s website.

Orwell was not a writer of ‘bestselling’ books until the end of his life, after the Second World War. He became known as a journalist, a critic of other people’s writings and a word-portraitist of the landscape of politics. It is likely he never passed up the opportunity to acquire pamphlets of any persuasion. He wryly observed in The Tribune that the pamphleteer’s road was paved by a “complete disregard for fairness or accuracy” (8 December 1944). Perhaps the most appealing aspect of his pamphlets collection is that he wasn’t Hoovering them up to form a George Orwell Archive; he considered them as a spectrum of thought that was deserving of preserving.

[…]

Orwell’s heaps of pamphlets informed his writing, both fiction and non fiction. He took pride in his squirrelling-away of pamphlets, “political, religious and what-not”. In 1949, he estimated that this hoard numbered 1200-2000, but even the higher figure was an underestimation. He wrote that “a few of them must be great rarities” and they were “bound to be of historical interest in 50 years time.” In line with most of his considerations, he wasn’t wrong.

Coming soon – ShapeShifter’s “polymorphic” defence against malware

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:11

In The Register, John Leyden discusses a new start-up’s plans for defending websites against hackers:

Startup Shape Security is re-appropriating a favourite tactic of malware writers in developing a technology to protect websites against automated hacking attacks.

Trojan authors commonly obfuscate their code to frustrate reverse engineers at security firms. The former staffers from Google, VMWare and Mozilla (among others) have created a network security appliance which takes a similar approach (dubbed real-time polymorphism) towards defending websites against breaches — by hobbling the capability of malware, bots, and other scripted attacks to interact with web applications.

Polymorphic code was originally used by malicious software to rewrite its own code every time a new machine was infected. Shape has invented patent-pending technology that is able to implement “real-time polymorphism” — or dynamically changing code — on any website. By doing this, it removes the static elements which botnets and malware depend on for their attacks.

Jean Chrétien’s long service award

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

The former PM is being honoured (in Toronto, of all places) for 50 years of public service. I wasn’t a fan (to say the least) while he was in power, but as an old Mark Steyn column points out, he was a much more talented political survivor than his successor:

Back in the early eighties, during the back-and-forth over patriating the Constitution, Jean Chrétien is said to have walked into Buckingham Palace and been greeted by the Queen with a cheery “You again!”

Him again! Who’d have thought we’d miss him? You can thank Paul Martin for that. It took Mister Competent, the genius budget-balancer, the supposed real brains of the operation, smoothly urbanely fluent in at least two more official languages than his predecessor, to reveal da liddle guy as a towering colossus. Mr. Martin, so ruthless and efficient in plotting and manoeuvring to seize the crown, never gave a thought to what he would do with it once it was on his head. In the final chapter of his new book, M. Chrétien reveals that, with Sheila Fraser’s report on the sponsorship scandal looming, he offered to stay on a few weeks and take the hit for it on his watch. But Martin was in a hurry, and wanted the old man gone. And so he came roaring in, and all the stuff that never stuck to the wily Shawinigan ward-heeler stuck to King Paul like dog mess on his coronation robes – Adscam, Flagscam, Earnscam, Crownscam, Alphonso Scammiano, the Royal Scamadian Mounted Police — until the new broom swept himself into a corner and wound up running against the legacy he’d spent the previous decade claiming credit for.

What would Chrétien have done? He’d have said, “Waal, da scam is da scam and, when you got da good scam, dat da scam. Me, I like da scam-and-eggs wid da home fries at da Auberge Grand-Mère every Sunday morning. And Aline, she always spray da pepper on it. Like Popeye say, I scam what I scam. Don’ make me give you da ol’ Shawiniscam handshake …” Etc., etc., until it all dribbled away into a fog of artfully constructed incoherence, and the heads of the last two journalists following the story exploded, and he won his fourth term. If you follow the headlines, Chrétien’s memoir supposedly “blames” Martin and “rips” Martin and “blasts” Martin. But, of course, ripping and blasting isn’t the Chrétien style, and this amiable book could use a bit more of it. Telling the tale from election night in 1993 in his A-frame on Lac des Piles to his final walk from the Governor General’s office through the grounds of Rideau Hall and into private life, My Years As Prime Minister is a rewarding read if you’re prepared to do a bit of decoding. Thus, throughout the text, his preferred designation for his successor is “my successor” (“Unfortunately, when my successor took too long to make up his mind …”, etc.). In Britain, Edward Heath used to refer to Margaret Thatcher as such, because her very name used to stick in his craw. So the formulation, intended as condescension, sounded merely pathetic: Mrs. T. was the consequential figure and Sir Ted was merely the flop warm-up act. By contrast, Chrétien pulls the condescension off brilliantly. It’s a cool sneer — and, for a successor distinguished only by his conspicuous lack of success, wholly deserved: say what you like about Kim Campbell, but she didn’t spend her entire adult life scheming for the role of designated fall guy.

[…]

Is he a nice guy? I like to think not. I’m a nasty piece of work myself, and I always had a sneaking affection for the rare public glimpse of Chrétienite viciousness — the moment when he seized that Toronto Star reporter by the wrist and snarled “Get outta da way!” (I believe, after two months waiting for wrist surgery, the journalist was eventually treated in Buffalo, and, after a federal retraining course, now works happily as a tour guide at the Museum of Canadian Literature in Shawinigan.) But that’s the p’tit gars: he got everyone outta da way — Martin, Mulroney, Campbell, Manning, Day, Clark, Charest, Bouchard, Parizeau … No one will remember NEPAD or any of the other acronymic global-summit-fillers he claims credit for, but he kept the Liberal show on the road, which, as “my successor” discovered, is a lot harder than it looks. In his own autobiography, Paul Martin would be ill-advised to try to respond in kind.

What The Three Musketeers owes to real history

Filed under: Books, Europe, France, History, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:56

Boyd Tonkin discusses some of the real historical incidents that Alexandre Dumas drew upon for his fiction:

In September 1784, an unpleasant incident took place at M. Nicolet’s fashionable theatre in Paris. A young, aristocratic man-about-town, born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), had escorted to the play an elegant lady whose family also came from the West Indies. Dashing, handsome, the son of Count Davy de la Pailleterie might have seemed the ideal squire for the evening. Save, in many eyes, for one thing. He was black — notably dark-skinned, the mixed-race youth had a slave mother — and his companion white.

At Nicolet’s, a white West Indian officer, Jean-Pierre Titon de Saint-Lamain, decided that it would be good fun to insult the count’s black son. First, he pretended to mistake the young man of colour for the lady’s lackey. Then, after an affray, Titon’s henchmen forced the victim to kneel in front of his assailant and ask for pardon. Soon the police arrived and took both men into custody. Statements were taken, but no further action followed. In 1786, the humiliated colonial boy forsook his life of leisure to embark on a military career. He enrolled in the Queen’s Dragoons under a surname not his father’s. Instead, he chose the identity of his slave-born mother: Marie-Cessette Dumas.

[…]

By the early 1850s, this Alexandre Dumas had become not only the famous novelist but, arguably, the most famous Frenchman in the world. At this point, garlanded with international fame and quickly spent riches, he wrote his memoirs. Dumas the novelist adored and hero-worshipped his father, who had died in 1806 but left indelible memories. The first 200 pages of My Memoirs deal with General Alex; in fact, Dumas abandons the narrative of his own life at the age of 31. But in his version of the contretemps at Nicolet’s, the strapping young Alex picks up Titon and chucks him into the orchestra pit. This is a feat of derring-do worthy of… well, worthy of a musketeer.

[…]

Dumas relished his life, and the privileges and pleasures that his mythic tales earned. He made and lost fortunes as quickly as he wrote bulky novels. He meddled in revolutionary politics first in France and then in rebellious Italy (where he founded a paper called The Independent). He ran through perhaps 40 mistresses and sired (at least) seven children with them. His published works comprise 300 volumes and 100,000 pages. After packing around five lives into one, he died after a stroke in 1870 — the same year as Charles Dickens, whose A Tale of Two Cities pays its own tribute to the style of the comrade with whom he dined in Paris. If living well is the best revenge, then Alexandre made the bigoted society which had tried to humble General Alex kneel to him.

H/T to Jessica Brisbane for the link.

Update, 4 February: A.A. Nofi reviews The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss.

Reiss […] fits Dumas into his times and his social environment. So we get a look at the brutalities of slavery and racism under the Ancien Régime and later during the supposedly enlightened French Republic. We see the dying days of the Bourbon monarchy, the Revolution that finished it off, and the rise of Bonaparte’s empire, which brought things part way back to their start again. Reiss also gives us little portraits of many individuals; the general’s family, of course, but also soldiers and rulers such as Carnot, Kleber, the Neapolitan and French royals, Lafayette, and others, including Bonaparte, who would become Dumas’ nemesis. Finally, Reiss looks at how the count’s life shaped that of his son and influenced the latter’s novels, noting traces of the senior Dumas in some of the younger’s characters, notably Edmund Dantes of The Count of Monte Cristo.

The book has some flaws. Reiss betrays a certain over-fondness for Revolutionary France, failing to see its dark side. He neglects the corruption of French officials, both at home and in occupied territories, the widespread plundering of supposedly “liberated” peoples, the slaughter of dissidents, and the widespread atrocities committed by French troops, which often sparked resistance from the very people the Revolution claimed to be liberating. There are, however, flaws common in treatments of the era, and Reiss is commendably more critical of Napoleon, who also tends to get a favorable press.

The Black Count, which was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in biography, is an excellent work, well-crafted, with a flowing narrative that makes for an easy read.

January 20, 2014

A Rickspeak decoder for the Mike Zimmer introductory press conference

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

At the Daily Norseman, Ted Glover provides a highly informative translation of what was said — and what was really meant — at the Vikings’ press conference to introduce new head coach Mike Zimmer:

Rickspeak is a complicated, evolutionary form of communication that takes years, if not decades to master. And yes, we’ll completely ignore that fact that Spielman has been here less than a decade. Shut up.

So, how is Mike Zimmer in the ways of Rickspeak? Let’s break down some of what he said during the introductory presser, shall we? Now, we won’t break down the whole press conference (you can read the entire transcript here if you like), because it was over half an hour long. And, as always, what Rick or Mike actually said will be quoted first, and then what they probably meant will be interpreted below. There’s some NSFW language in here, because Mike F@#$% Zimmer, yo.

[…]

Q: Have you decided on your coordinators yet?

What Mike Said: No. We are still working on the staff situations on everything right now. We are going to announce the entire staff at a later time when we get them all finished.

What Mike Meant: I know exactly who I want, chucklehead. I’m not going to tell you, though.

Q: When you look at the roster you inherited, how do evaluate the situation and the players you now have?

What Mike Said: I am a big believer in when we get out here in the field show me what you can do. I don’t ever want to pre-judge a player from what I see on film because I do not know what the previous coaches have told them and I have my own ideas on the way I want to do things.

What Mike Meant: I don’t know what the hell was going on here before, but on film it looked like a combination Clown Show and Kabuki Dick Dance Theater. When I get these guys out on the field, I’m going to be watching them, because I’m pretty sure the previous coordinators didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I’ll fix it, too.

“Most psychologists are not capable of organising a quantitative study”

Filed under: Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

An interesting article by Andrew Anthony in the Guardian talks about an assault on the “mathematics of happiness”:

“Not many psychologists are very good at maths,” says Brown. “Not many psychologists are even good at the maths and statistics you have to do as a psychologist. Typically you’ll have a couple of people in the department who understand it. Most psychologists are not capable of organising a quantitative study. A lot of people can get a PhD in psychology without having those things at their fingertips. And that’s the stuff you’re meant to know. Losada’s maths were of the kind you’re not meant to encounter in psychology. The maths you need to understand the Losada system is hard but the maths you need to understand that this cannot possibly be true is relatively straightforward.”

Brown had studied maths to A-level and then took a degree in engineering and computer science at Cambridge. “But I actually gave up the engineering because the maths was too hard,” he says, laughing at the irony. “So I’m really not that good at maths. I can read simple calculus but I can’t solve differential equations. But then neither could Losada!”

He went back over Losada’s equations and he noticed that if he put in the numbers Fredrickson and Losada had then you could arrive at the appropriate figures. But he realised that it only worked on its own terms. “When you look at the equation, it doesn’t contain any data. It’s completely self-referential.”

You might even call it the “hockey stick model” of psychology.

Following much negotiation, Brown, Sokal and Friedman had their paper accepted by American Psychologist and it was published online last July under the only slightly less provocative title of The Complex Dynamics of Wishful Thinking [PDF]. Referring to the bizarrely precise tipping point ratio of 2.9013 that Fredrickson and Losada trumpeted applied to all humans regardless of age, gender, race or culture, the authors — in fact Brown, in this sentence — wrote: “The idea that any aspect of human behaviour or experience should be universally and reproducibly constant to five significant digits would, if proven, constitute a unique moment in the history of the social sciences.”

The paper mounted a devastating case against the maths employed by Fredrickson and Losada, who were offered the chance to respond in the same online issue of American Psychologist. Losada declined and has thus far failed to defend his input in any public forum. But Fredrickson did write a reply, which, putting a positive spin on things, she titled Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios [PDF].

She effectively accepted that Losada’s maths was wrong and admitted that she never really understood it anyway. But she refused to accept that the rest of the research was flawed. Indeed she claimed that, if anything, the empirical evidence was even stronger in support of her case. Fredrickson subsequently removed the critical chapter that outlines Losada’s input from further editions of Positivity. She has avoided speaking to much of the press but in an email exchange with me, she maintained that “on empirical grounds, yes, tipping points are highly probable” in relation to positive emotions and flourishing.

“She’s kind of hoping the Cheshire cat has disappeared but the grin is still there,” says Brown, who is dismissive of Fredrickson’s efforts at damage limitation. “She’s trying to throw Losada over the side without admitting that she got conned. All she can really show is that higher numbers are better than lower ones. What you do in science is you make a statement of what you think will happen and then run the experiment and see if it matches it. What you don’t do is pick up a bunch of data and start reading tea leaves. Because you can always find something. If you don’t have much data you shouldn’t go round theorising. Something orange is going to happen to you today, says the astrology chart. Sure enough, you’ll notice if an orange bicycle goes by you.”

XKCD on the problem with attempting to automate tasks

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:47

xkcd_automation

I’m not a programmer, although I’ve spent much of my working life around programmers, which is why I recognize the pattern so well: I’ve seen it in action so often.

The few times I’ve needed to create a program to do something (usually a text transformation of one sort or another), this has been exactly the way the “labour-saving” automation has gone. My personal version of the chart would have an additional phase at the beginning: I have to begin by learning or re-learning the tool I need to use. I learn just enough of how to use a given tool to do the task at hand, then the knowledge atrophies from lack of use and the next time I need to do something similar, the first priority is figuring out the right tool and then learning the same basic tasks all over again.

I started out with REXX when I was a co-op student at IBM. Several years later, I needed to convert a large set of documents from one markup language to another on a Unix system and that meant learning (just enough) shell scripting, sed and awk. A few years after that the right tool seemed to be Perl. In every case, the knowledge doesn’t stick with me because I don’t need to do anything with the language after I’ve finished the immediate task. I remember being able to do it but I don’t recall exactly how to do it.

Sounding the alarm over the endarkenment

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:55

I must not have been paying attention, but according to Jamie Bartlett, we should be terrified of a “dark enlightenment” that is sweeping the internet:

Since 2012 a sophisticated but bizarre online neo-fascist movement has been growing fast. It’s called “The Dark Enlightenment”. Its modus operandi is well suited to today’s world. Supporters are dotted all over the world, connected via a handful of blogs and chat rooms. Its adherents are clever, angry white men patiently awaiting the collapse of civilisation, and a return to some kind of futuristic, ethno-centric feudalism.

It started, suitably enough, with two blogs. Mencius Moldbug, a prolific blogger and computer whizz from San Francisco, and Nick Land, an eccentric British philosopher (previously co-founder of Warwick University’s Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) who in 2012 wrote the eponymous “The Dark Enlightenment”, as a series of posts on his site. You can find them all here.

The philosophy, difficult to pin down exactly, is a loose collection of neo-reactionary ideas, meaning a rejection of most modern thinking: democracy, liberty, and equality. Particular contempt is reserved for democracy, which Land believes “systematically consolidate[s] and exacerbate[es] private vices, resentments, and deficiencies until they reach the level of collective criminality and comprehensive social corruption.”

So, according to this report, we should be terrified of a bunch of basement-dwelling maladjusted would-be techno-feudalists. The question that immediately springs to mind is “why?” We’re told that they’re “neo-reactionary”, “racist”, and “sexist”. We need to be afraid of them because they have the power to … well, nothing. He’s sounding the tocsin of alarm because he’s discovered that there are people who are wrong on the internet!

Update, 3 February: Scharlach created an affinity diagram of the Dark Enlightenment movement, grouped according to their major themes.

Click to see the original post.

Click to see the original post.

Update, 4 February: ESR‘s take on the affinity diagram linked above.

Just looking at the map, someone unfamiliar with the players would be justified in wondering if there’s really any coherence there at all. And that’s a fair question. Some of the people the map sweeps in don’t think of themselves as “Dark Enlightenment” at all. This is notably true of the light green cluster marked “Techno-Commercialists/Futurists” at the top, and the “Economists” connected to it in yellow.

If I belonged on this map, that’s where I’d be. I know Eliezer Yudkowsky; the idea that he and the Less Wrong crowd and Robin Hanson feel significant affinity with most of the rest of that map is pretty ludicrous.

Note, however, that one of only two links to the rest is “Nick Land”. This is a clue, because Nick Land is probably the single most successful booster of the “Dark Enlightenment” meme. It’s in his interest to make the movement look as big and various as he can manage, and I think this map is partly in the nature of a successful con job or dezinformatsiya.

In this, Land is abetted by people outside the movement who are well served by making it look like the Dark Enlightenment is as big and scary as possible. Some of those people lump in the techno-futurist/economist group out of dislike for that group’s broadly libertarian politics – which though very different from the reactionary ideas of the core Dark Enlightenment, is also in revolt against conventional wisdom. Others lump them in out of sheer ignorance.

So, my first contention is that Nick Land has pulled a fast one. That said, I think there is a core Dark Enlightenment – mostly identifiable with the purple “Political Philosophy” group, but with some crossover into HBD and Masculinity and (possibly) the other groups at the bottom of the map.

For the record, I don’t think I’ve got a dog in this fight … I only recognize the names of nine of the linked sites, and most of those are of the recognize-the-name sense, not the familiar-with-the-content sense.

Addressing commonly held beliefs about the First World War

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:37

BBC News Magazine has an article by Dan Snow discussing some commonly held beliefs about the First World War:

3. Men lived in the trenches for years on end

Front-line trenches could be a terribly hostile place to live. Often wet, cold and exposed to the enemy, units would quickly lose their morale if they spent too much time in them.

As a result, the British army rotated men in and out continuously. Between battles, a unit spent perhaps 10 days a month in the trench system, and of those, rarely more than three days right up on the front line. It was not unusual to be out of the line for a month.

During moments of crisis, such as big offensives, the British could occasionally spend up to seven days on the front line but were far more often rotated out after just a day or two.

4. The upper class got off lightly

Although the great majority of casualties in WW1 were from the working class, the social and political elite was hit disproportionately hard by WW1. Their sons provided the junior officers whose job it was to lead the way over the top and expose themselves to the greatest danger as an example to their men.

Some 12% of the British army’s ordinary soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers. Eton alone lost more than 1,000 former pupils – 20% of those who served. UK wartime Prime Minister Herbert Asquith lost a son, while future Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law lost two. Anthony Eden lost two brothers, another brother of his was terribly wounded and an uncle was captured.

[…]

7. Tactics on the Western Front remained unchanged despite repeated failure

Never have tactics and technology changed so radically in four years of fighting. It was a time of extraordinary innovation. In 1914 generals on horseback galloped across battlefields as men in cloth caps charged the enemy without the necessary covering fire. Both sides were overwhelmingly armed with rifles. Four years later, steel-helmeted combat teams dashed forward protected by a curtain of artillery shells.

They were now armed with flame throwers, portable machine-guns and grenades fired from rifles. Above, planes, that in 1914 would have appeared unimaginably sophisticated, duelled in the skies, some carrying experimental wireless radio sets, reporting real-time reconnaissance.

Huge artillery pieces fired with pinpoint accuracy — using only aerial photos and maths they could score a hit on the first shot. Tanks had gone from the drawing board to the battlefield in just two years, also changing war forever.

January 19, 2014

TV as a form of birth control

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:59

There’s been some noise made about how the “reality TV” show 16 and Pregnant has influenced teens to such a degree that the teenage pregnancy rate dropped by a significant figure. Nick Gillespie has a few questions about the claims:

Television: Is there anything it can’t do?

After decades of being slammed by bluenoses, bureaucrats, and Bruce Springsteen for sexing up and dumbing down the masses, it turns out that the small screen has accomplished what no amount of promise rings, Twilight movies, or mandatory banana-on-a-condom classes have managed to do: reduce the number of teenage births.

At least that’s what the authors of a widely discussed new study say. In “Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing,” (available online for the low, low price of $5.00 from the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Melissa S. Kearney (University of Maryland) and Phillip B. Levine (Wellesley College) write “The introduction of 16 and Pregnant along with its partner shows, Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2, led teens to noticeably reduce the rate at which they give birth.” According to their calculations, the shows are responsible for “a 5.7 percent reduction in teen births in the 18 months following [their] introduction.”

[…]

The study is far less interesting for the specific claims it makes about teen birth rates than it is as a variation on persistent attitudes toward cultural production and consumption redolent of Frankfurt School anxieties over media’s impact on the proletariat. In many ways, “Media Influences on Social Outcomes” is simply the latest echo of the idea that TV, music, movies, novels, and the like don’t simply move audiences to laughter, tears, or contemplation but compel them to act in particular ways.

In other words, we’re all just mindless, easily brainwashed dupes who are being programmed by our media.

In more doctrinaire versions of Frankfurt School analysis, the producers of content are drivers and audience members are, well, just passengers along for the ride. To their credit, Kearney and Levine aren’t nearly so deterministic, even though they are quick to ascribe causative power to a particular set of programs.

In 2002’s Is Art Good for Us?, University of Tulsa professor Joli Jensen refers to this sort of thinking as an “instrumental view of culture.” It presumes “that art is an instrument like medicine or a toxin that can be injected into us and transform us.” This view, says Jensen, “is very tempting because if certain kinds of culture cause bad things in society, then you can change that culture and fix society.” The instrumental view implies formal or informal commissars that must oversee and direct cultural production, making sure more “good” art is made. After all, you are what you read, or watch, or hear. Morally suspect art leads to crime, chaos, and bad behavior.

Vikings hire Norv Turner as OC

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

It’s been widely rumoured that Norv Turner would be hired as the new offensive co-ordinator, but the deal was still being negotiated. At The Viking Age, Dan Zinski exults that former OC Bill Musgrave has been replaced:

After three years of infuriating Viking fans with his over-conservative playcalling, Bill Musgrave is officially out as offensive coordinator in Minnesota. He will be replaced by some guy named Norv Turner, who I hear has a pretty decent track record as an OC (head coach … that’s another matter).

It’s not entirely official yet, but the word is that Norv has signed up to be Mike Zimmer’s top offensive assistant, and that George Edwards will be defensive coordinator.

Zimmer has indicated that he will be heavily involved himself in designing the defensive scheme and may call plays, so Edwards’ responsibilities may be somewhat more limited than a normal defensive coordinator’s.

It doesn’t always work out when head coaches try to run the defense or offense themselves, so we’ll see if Zimmer ends up sticking with that plan.

Norv comes over from Cleveland where he spent a year as offensive coordinator. Under Turner, Josh Gordon became one of the top receivers in the league, and Jordan Cameron developed into one of the better tight ends. With guys like Brian Hoyer, Brandon Weedon and Jason Campbell playing quarterback.

Norv will have raw materials to work with in Minnesota as well. The Vikings sport one of the game’s most exciting young receivers in Cordarrelle Patterson and one of the better young tight ends in Kyle Rudolph.

Guild Wars 2 Community Event Calendar

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:00

I’m hoping that this will be the last time I need to temporarily host any GuildMag content as we should have the site up and running at the new host very soon.

This post is intended to help you to publicize your guild or alliance event, and as long as your event is open to the whole Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 community, we’ll list it here. Send us the details at community@guildmag.com and we’ll get it out to the fan community (given that we only do a weekly wrap-up, try to send the information at least a week in advance).

  • On the official Guild Wars 2 forums, Foghladha.2506 posted on the topic Great Tyrian Adventure: Legendary Edition: “The Gaiscioch Family, host of Sanctum of Rall’s fan favorite Great Tyrian Adventure, announced plans for it’s third season of the public community event. This 12 week season is dubbed “Legendary Edition” and will feature over 100 prize giveaways including the legendary Bifrost to one of its lucky participants. The season is set to launch on Saturday, January 11th, 2014 at 11:00 AM Server Time (Pacific).”
  • On the official Guild Wars 2 forums, KitOnlyHuman.6807 posted on the topic Rookie Camp [Bi-Weekly Event]: “Rookie Camp is a lore focused event designed to be fun, educational, and an immerse experience to remember. Originally a concept for new players wanting to learn the game, and for those wanting to meet new friends, Rookie Camp will be conducted twice a month with the premise of becoming a soldier, following the character Commander Bloodclaw, and fighting the woes of Tyria in an ongoing battle! Low and high levels, new and old players, roleplaying or not, this event is open for everyone! Hosted by MadCast Gaming on Sanctum of Rall. For more information, feel free to message KitOnlyHuman.6807 and/or Cakeisalie.1976 in game! January 18, 2014 – 8:00p EST”
  • vVv Gaming — Kings of The Mists 2. “I am proud to present you with the second Guild Wars 2 PvP tournament hosted by [vVv] Vision. Valor. Victory. Guild from Fort Aspenwood, Kings of the Mists 2. This is an open invite tournament for all the teams in Guild Wars 2, to come have fun and support Guild Wars 2 PvP scene. Tournament will be commented by none other than John ‘Blu’ Mullen and Will ‘Sireph’ Abreu on the official vVv Gaming Twitch Channel. This will be a one day tournament starting on Saturday February 1st at 12:00 pm EST (09:00 am PST). Team captains will be required to sign in their team between 11:20 pm EST (08:30 am PST) and 11:50 pm EST (08:50 am PST). Failure to sign-in their team on time may result in losing their reserved spot in the tournament.”
  • Reddit — [Events] Weekly Map Exploration. Wednesday 9pm EST (NA) – Sorrow’s Furnace. “For a couple of weeks now, /u/jereklo and I have been adding lore/story of the area we’re exploring, while doing these exploration events. People seem to enjoy it, so if it’s something that interest you, and you already have completion, you’re welcome to join us too. I’ve been hosting Map completion every Wednesday at 9PM EST on Sorrow’s Furnace (NA). Here’s our schedule”

QotD: Ethics in Washington D.C.

Filed under: Government, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:02

I came across a very fine quote from a retired Marine COL Doug R., “In the perverse environment that is Washington the degrees of unethical behavior make the mere liar the most honorable man in the room. Some of the whores think they are nuns.”

Allen B. West, “Robert Gates and ‘whores who think they are nuns'”, AllenBWest.com, 2014-01-18

Obamacare opponents ruthlessly parody the efforts of supporters

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:51

Those who are still opposed to President Obama’s healthcare program will go to any lengths to ridicule and belittle both the program itself and the people who support it. Here, for example is one of the nastiest attempts to drag Obamacare into the public eye in as negative and mocking a fashion as possible.

I’m either on drugs, or the administration is this helplessly stupid. The Tell a Friend — Get Covered campaign, better described as “a tourist trap off Route 66,” began a six-hour live-streamed event Thursday afternoon that was advertised to “include stories, tips, helpful information and other details related to national health care options.” Really, it was as if the audio-visual club got wasted on malt liquor and hijacked public access television.

Get Covered, a partnership among state healthcare exchanges and the Obamacare missionary Enroll America, expertly fails to cater to young people. Its circus began Thursday with a dance-off between Richard Simmons and the contortionist Nathan Barnatt, overseen by the star of an Internet show whose premise is “drunk cooking.” How this is supposed to entice a 27 year old to pay $200 a month for health insurance, or even talk about it, is a question for the gods.

“What’s he doing?” Simmons exclaimed as Barnatt began to shake his body wildly.

“He’s extending his livelihood! That’s what he’s doing!” Hannah Hart, your host and creator of My Drunk Kitchen, responded in an endorsement of cardio.

Oh, c’mon. Is this seriously going to be one of those D-grade infomercials in which the participants force every line back to the bottom one?

“His moves are telling us something,” Barnatt whispered as Simmons took his turn.

“They are, and I think they’re saying, ‘Be flexible about your health insurance options,’” Hart responded.

Yes. Yes, it is.

Oh. Sorry. Apparently this isn’t a sleazy disinformation scheme by opponents. It’s a “good faith” advertising effort by supporters. Carry on, then.

January 18, 2014

British army unit diaries from WW1 now online

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Rather than the diaries of individual soldiers (as the original title of the video suggests), these are the formal day-to-day action records of battalions and regiments of the British army. A proportion of the diaries from the First World War have been digitized and are available on the internet:

Published on 15 Jan 2014

Diaries describing life during the First World War by British soldiers have been digitised and can be read online.

As part of the organisations centenary programme the National Archives is publishing the first batch of unit diaries from France and Flanders.

One soldier from the 4th Division, 1 Battalion Somerset Light Infantry in 1917 describes one occasion of gunfire: “The Germans quickly got their artillery into position, and a considerable amount of shelling was experienced. Our casualties in this engagement were slight.”

Another entry by Captain CJ Paterson, one of the First Battalion’s soldiers describes the horrendous reality of life in the trenches:

“As I say all should be nice and peaceful and pretty. What it actually is is beyond description.

“Trenches, bits of equipment, clothing (probably blood-stained), ammunition, tools, caps, etc., etc., everywhere.

“Poor fellows shot dead are lying in all directions. Some of ours.”

“Everywhere the same hard, grim, pitiless sign of battle and war. I have had a belly full of it.”

Maria Miller, Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, said: “The National Archives’ digitised First World War unit diaries will allow us to hear the voices of those that sacrificed their lives and is even more poignant now there are no living veterans who can speak directly about the events of the war. This new online vehicle gives a very public voice to some of these soldiers, through which we will be able to hear their thoughts and feelings.”

You can read the online war diaries on the National Archive website here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-­war

Records for the Canadian Corps (which fought as part of the British army) are in the process of being digitized, according to the Library and Archives Canada website.

War diaries are a day-to-day description of unit activities for army units in active service, and contain information about unit location and the military operations in which it may be involved. The diaries rarely mention individuals by name, with the exception of some references to officers.

[…]

War diaries for the Army in the First World War (RG 9 IIID3) are being digitized and can be viewed online by using the Advanced Archives Search. Records not yet digitized are available on microfilm.

  • Select Finding Aid Number in the pull down menu, and enter: 9-52
  • Enter a keyword, for example, the unit name or battalion number: “102nd” or “Royal Canadian Dragoons”
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