Quotulatiousness

March 8, 2014

“If you would like a refund, please contact a fan of my work directly for your money”

Filed under: Business, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

Reason‘s Brian Doherty reports on a fascinating Kickstarter campaign by comic artist John Campbell:

For those who think Ayn Rand was just crazily overwrought in the “unrealistic” characters she created to dramatize the anti-capitalist mentality, you might want to see this addendum to the Kickstarter page of comic artist John Campbell, who raised over $50,000 on Kickstarter to publish a book of his comics Sad Pictures for Children.

He got tired of having to mail the books he promised, apparently (believe me, I know that’s a drag) and so decided to burn a copy for every person who asked about where the book they’d been promised was.

The page has a video of him doing the burning.

He has elevated the annoyance of mailing 127 packages to an anti-market rant of marvelous proportion. Excerpts, though whole thing is worth reading, after he talks about how rich people he knew as a kid mistreated a pet rat:

    I got a lot of requests from backers to get books sent before Christmas, which I was able to do for some people. I could not do this for other people before leaving for the holidays, and many of them asked for refunds.

    I refunded them with money I got from selling the original art I made for my webcomic from 2009-2012. This was money I planned to ship orders with. After this happened, I could have made another update explaining I had issued refunds and then tried to sell more things or asked for more shipping money. Instead I thought for a long time about what has been happening…

    If you would like a refund, please contact a fan of my work directly for your money. This is where the money would come from anyway. I am cutting out the middle man.

Vikings re-sign quarterback Matt Cassel

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:54

Taking some pressure off the Vikings’ requirements in the upcoming draft, yesterday they re-signed Matt Cassel to a two-year, $10 million deal. Cassel had voided the optional second year of his original contract to test the free agency waters. Clearly the right decision for him, as he’ll be making a fair bit more than the $3.7 called for in that contract. ESPN‘s Ben Goessling has more:

Now, the Vikings at least have their much-discussed bridge to the future, whatever that is. If they don’t get a quarterback in the first round of the draft, they can at least take one in a later round and let him compete for the job with Cassel, knowing they can probably survive if he’s not ready to play right away. And if they choose to look toward a 2015 quarterback class that could include Oregon’s Marcus Mariota and UCLA’s Brett Hundley, they could have Cassel’s hand at the helm for 2014.

Let’s be clear about what Cassel is, and is not. He is the most reliable quarterback on the Vikings’ roster at the moment, after turning in more solid performances than bad ones in a goofy year at quarterback in Minnesota. He is not the kind of QB the Vikings will build around, and his two-year deal reflects that. He’s had two good full seasons as a starting quarterback — in 2008 for the Patriots and 2010 for the Chiefs — and has been mediocre in the full-time role otherwise. But the Vikings were never asking Cassel to be a long-term solution at the position. They were simply hoping he could drive them from here to their next quarterback without banging the car up too badly. He should be able to do that, and now, the Vikings don’t have to head into the rest of the spring staring at a gaping hole at the NFL’s most important position.


MINNEAPOLIS – DECEMBER 15: Matt Cassel #16 of the Minnesota Vikings warms up prior to an NFL game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Mall of America Field, on December 15, 2013 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Tom Dahlin/Getty Images)

RCN’s Joint Support Ships behind schedule and over budget

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:07

Terry Milewski reports on the state of Canada’s shipbuilding program for the Royal Canadian Navy, and it’s not pretty:

An internal government memo obtained by CBC News shows that all four parts of the government’s huge shipbuilding program are either over budget, behind schedule, or both.

Written Oct. 7 last year by the deputy minister of national defence, Richard Fadden, the memo shows that three of those four programs also face “major challenges” of a technical nature, as well as difficulties lining up skilled manpower to get the ships built at all.

The memo, released to the CBC following an Access to Information request, leaves little doubt that Canada’s crippled supply ship, HMCS Protecteur, won’t be replaced before the year 2020.

The spectacle of the 46-year-old Protecteur, Canada’s only supply ship in the Pacific, being towed into Honolulu after an engine-room fire has thrown the lack of a replacement into sharp focus. Although there’s a plan to build two new supply ships, there’s no sign the work will even begin until late 2016. That means a new one won’t enter service until the end of the decade.

JSS and AOPS building status March 2014

A chart summarizing the state of the shipbuilding effort uses green and yellow squares to indicate where those problems are — the green meaning, on track, and yellow meaning, trouble — and there’s a lot of yellow.

For the Joint Support Ships — that’s the pair of supply ships — the chart shows trouble with both the schedule and the price. The memo explains that this means the program is up to 20 per cent behind schedule and up to 10 per cent over budget.

As I’ve said many times before, the Canadian government is managing to get the least possible bang for the buck on shipbuilding because they view the shipbuilding program as a regional economic development scheme (and a way of funneling money to marginal constituencies) rather than as an essential part of keeping the RCN properly equipped. It’s pretty obvious in this case:

Take the supply ships. “Yellow” suggests they’re over budget, but doesn’t indicate what the budget should be. But comparisons with Canada’s allies could raise eyebrows even further.

Britain, for example, opted to build its four new naval supply ships much more cheaply, at the Daewoo shipyard in South Korea. The contract is for roughly $1.1 billion Cdn. That’s for all four. By contrast, Canada plans to build just two ships, in Vancouver, for $1.3 billion each. So Canada’s ships will be roughly five times more costly than the British ones.

But there’s a twist. Canada’s supply ships will also carry less fuel and other supplies, because they’ll be smaller — about 20,000 tonnes. The U.K. ships are nearly twice as big — 37,000 tonnes. Canadians will lay out a lot more cash for a lot less ship.

MMO Female Armour Bingo card

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:35

At Bikini Armour Battle Damage, a handy Bingo card for your MMO:

Click to download the PDF version

Click to download the PDF version

As a special present for Bikini Armor Battle Damage first anniversary, I present to you: Female Armor BINGO!

Feel free to use as a reference to quantify how ridiculous any female armor is.

edit: Updated the link into downloadable PDF!

Breakdown of all the squares under the cut.

For the record: the game refers to the context of wearing skimpy “armors” for battle (any other context, like cosplay, is excluded)

Update: There are a couple of follow-ups that deserve your attention, too: Let’s address the controversy, shall we? and Female Armor BINGO Rhetoric Edition.

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