Quotulatiousness

March 23, 2014

Joe Webb signs with the Carolina Panthers

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Sad to see him go, but happy he’s at least getting a chance to play quarterback for another team. He was never going to be a franchise quarterback, but it’s difficult to say he ever really got a fair chance with the Vikings. As Ted Glover puts it, “The Joe Webb Era Is Dead. Long Live The Joe Webb Era”:

The semi-legend, who became part super hero, part mythological woodland creature, and part mediocre quarterback and receiver, has a vocal minority of support as strong as any fringe roster guy in NFL history. Earlier this evening he was signed by the Carolina Panthers as a backup to Cam Newton. The Panthers find themselves in need of quarterback depth now that Cam Newton will miss most, if not all of the off-season, due to ankle surgery. According to NFL.com, the Panthers ‘love his skill set’, and like the idea of having another athletic quarterback in the mix behind Newton.

Wait, I could swear I’ve heard a coaching staff rave about his skill set before. I know I have. I JUST KNOW IT.

Of course, Carolina also released WR Steve Smith, and they suddenly find themselves in need of wide receiving depth, too. And with Captain Munnerlyn now on the Vikings, maybe the Panthers need a guy who can return punts, or kicks.

Joe’s done that before, too.

The Vikings installed what they called the “Blazer” package to showcase Webb’s wildcat skills, but it was a remarkably limited package that only seemed to work the first time … because it was totally predictable after you saw it run once: there were no significant variations or options. That’s not Webb’s fault, that’s the fault of the previous offensive co-ordinator and his lack of creativity (or unwillingness to trust Webb with more responsibility, perhaps).


MINNEAPOLIS – NOVEMBER 7: Joe Webb #14 of the Minnesota Vikings runs a route during an NFL game against the Washington Redskins at Mall of America Field, on November 7, 2013 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Tom Dahlin/Getty Images)

Update: Arif Hasan says goodbye to Joe:

Reasons to cheer for him: Joe Webb is a fantastic person with a great attitude. I’ve never heard Webb complain about getting jerked around or being put in a poor position to succeed, despite ample oppurtunity to and didn’t just do what his coaches asked of him — he embraced it enthusiastically. It’s also difficult to forget his more amazing moments, like against Detroit, Philadelphia and Chicago. In some ways, it’s always easy to cheer for a player that gave you so many electrifying moments. He was very probably misused and certainly hurt for not being able to develop as a player with one position. Perhaps sitting behind an offense built for a running quarterback in Carolina will help him better use his exciting skill set.

Reasons to cheer against him: He hasn’t been very good. In all honesty, the great moments he had weren’t sustainable or reasons you could count on him for the future, and he produced one of the worst quarterback playoff performances of all time. Despite a career completion rate lower than 50% and yards per attempt lower than even Christian Ponder’s, he somehow found himself in quarterback controversies a bit too often. Maybe not his fault, but definitely something that inspires some resentment.

Verdict: For. Unless you really, really dislike Carolina, it’s hard not to cheer Joe Webb on. If Cam Newton gets injured and Webb leads the Panthers to the playoffs (or better), that will give us confirmation that the old coaching staff was terrible, and it feels good to be right. For all of his faults, he was probably misused in Minnesota. That isn’t to say he was a good football player, but when he was on the field, the ways he was used were suboptimal. Last thing: it’s kind of cool that Spiderman and Superman are paired together.

Isn’t it Ironic: Government Surveillance Version (with Remy)

Filed under: Government, Humour, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Published on 20 Mar 2014

Remy updates the Alanis Morissette hit for a certain senior senator from California.

Approximately 2 minutes.

Written by Remy. Video and animation by Meredith Bragg. Music performed, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Ben Karlstrom.

For full text, links, downloadable versions and more, go to: http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/03/20/remy-isnt-it-ironic.

Lyrics:
A Senator lady
Got the news one day
The country’s being spied on
by the NSA

So she went out defending
on each TV set
but when she found out she’d been snooped on
she got all upset

And isn’t it ironic?
I mean, don’t you think?

It’s like you’re at Chris Brown’s
and there’s punch in the fridge
or if The Bachelor
passed a geography quiz

Learning Ted Kennedy
happened to be good at bridge.
And who would have thought?
It figures.

Senator, this may surprise you
and the irony bites
but Congresspeople ain’t the only ones
with 4th Amendment rights

It’s like a minimalist
who does their laundry
with All
or if Woody Allen liked to watch
Kids in the Hall

it’s like FDR
got locked in a Honda Accord
a cheap healthcare plan
that you just can’t afford

If Oscar Pistorius
really hated The Doors
and who would have thought?
It figures.

I heard the government
is sneaking up on you.
Life has a funny, funny way
of calling you out
calling you out.

March 22, 2014

The “narrative”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:10

Wilfred McClay noticed the increasing use of the term “narrative” over the last few years:

We have this term now in circulation: “the narrative.” It is one of those somewhat pretentious academic terms that has wormed its way into common speech, like “gender” or “significant other,” bringing hidden freight along with it. Everywhere you look, you find it being used, and by all kinds of people. Elite journalists, who are likely to be products of university life rather than years of shoe-leather reporting, are perhaps the most likely to employ it, as a way of indicating their intellectual sophistication. But conservative populists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are just as likely to use it too. Why is that so? What does this development mean?

I think the answer is clear. The ever more common use of “narrative” signifies the widespread and growing skepticism about any and all of the general accounts of events that have been, and are being, provided to us. We are living in an era of pervasive genteel disbelief — nothing so robust as relativism, but instead something more like a sustained “whatever” — and the word “narrative” provides a way of talking neutrally about such accounts while distancing ourselves from a consideration of their truth. Narratives are understood to be “constructed,” and it is assumed that their construction involves conscious or unconscious elements of selectivity — acts of suppression, inflation, and substitution, all meant to fashion the sequencing and coloration of events into an instrument that conveys what the narrator wants us to see and believe.

These days, even your garage mechanic is likely to speak of the White House narrative, the mainstream-media narrative, and indicate an awareness that political leaders try to influence the interpretation of events at a given time, or seek to “change the narrative” when things are not turning out so well for them and there is a strongly felt need to change the subject. The language of “narrative” has become a common way of talking about such things.

One can regret the corrosive side effects of such skepticism, but there are good reasons for it. Halfway through the first quarter of the 21st century, we find ourselves saddled with accounts of our nation’s past, and of the trajectory of American history, that are demonstrably suspect, and disabling in their effects. There is a view of America as an exceptionally guilty nation, the product of a poisonous mixture of territorial rapacity emboldened by racism, violence, and chauvinistic religious conviction, an exploiter of natural resources and despoiler of natural beauty and order such as the planet has never seen. Coexisting with that dire view is a similarly exaggerated Whiggish progressivism, in which all of history is seen as a struggle toward the greater and greater liberation of the individual, and the greater and greater integration of all governance in larger and larger units, administered by cadres of experts actuated by the public interest and by a highly developed sense of justice. The arc of history bends toward the latter view, although its progress is impeded by the malign effects of the former one.

QotD: The “B-word”

Filed under: Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

To me, the Ban Bossy campaign is one of those unnecessary feel-good, pat-yourself-on-the-back schemes that puts lipstick on social media’s most dubious achievement, the sanctification of rampant self-promotion disguised as content. You could say it’s the Facebook-ization of feminism.

There’s even product placement. You can go the Ban Bossy website store and buy a Ban Bossy T-shirt, mug or tote. There’s even a Ban Bossy case for your iPhone 5. (Insert your own snarky Apple joke here.)

Big names — Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, Melinda Gates — share inspirational quotes, to which no reasonable person could object because all of the edges have been blunted.

If ever there is a sign of the feminization of America, it could be that one Ban Bossy celebrity spokesman is former Gen. Stanley McChrystal. That’s right, the former head of NATO command in Afghanistan — whose swagger and irreverent attitude toward the Obama White House was so pronounced that he had to resign — has been reduced to piggybacking onto a campaign that exhorts little girls not to let themselves be stereotyped and suggests that teachers conduct “no interruptions” conversations so that every child has a chance to speak.

A wartime general wants to ban bossy? Why even have an army?

Debra J. Saunders, “Sheryl Sandberg, how about banning bossy billionaires?”, SFGate.com, 2014-03-19

Variations on Bach

Filed under: Japan, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

Classic FM has a collection of 10 videos which use Bach’s music in varied ways, including this rather charming forest xylophone performance as an ad for a Japanese mobile phone:

Uploaded on 4 May 2011

Very nice music from a very long xylophone in the forest.
No CG or tape-cut. Four days spent.
This is for a newly launched cell phone of NTT Docomo, the largest mobile service provider in Japan. Shell of the new phone is wood and their idea is to use domestic woods that are produced after preservative maintenance of Japanese forest.
ドコモのサイトでステキな映像発見。

Music: “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, by Bach
Cannes Lion Award Winner 2010

H/T to Samizdata for the link.

Turkish Twitter users work to circumvent the government’s ban

Filed under: Europe, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

In the Guardian, Constanze Letsch reports from Istanbul as users of Twitter actively flout the government’s peevish ban of the online service:

Turkish users of Twitter, including the country’s president, have flouted a block on the social media platform by using text messaging services or disguising the location of their computers to continue posting messages on the site.

In what many Twitter users in Turkey called a “digital coup”, Telecom regulators enforced four court orders to restrict access to Twitter on Thursday night, just hours after the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vowed to “eradicate” the microblogging platform in an election speech.

The disruption followed previous government threats to clamp down on the social media and caused widespread outrage inside and outside Turkey. In a first reaction to the ban, Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European commission, tweeted: “The Twitter ban in #Turkey is groundless, pointless, cowardly. Turkish people and intl community will see this as censorship. It is.”

Štefan Füle, EU commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, said in a statement: “The ban on the social platform Twitter.com in Turkey raises grave concerns and casts doubt on Turkey’s stated commitment to European values and standards.”

The hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey quickly rose to the top trending term globally. According to social media agency We Are Social the number of tweets sent from Turkey went up 138% following the ban.

Night Bombers, 1943

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Published on 30 Dec 2012

A unique record of the nightly air raids made on Germany during World War II. Archive colour footage from No. 1 Group, Royal Air Force operating Avro Lancaster bombers, in action, winter 1943. In the winter of 1943, RAF Bomber Command was sending massive raids almost every night into the heart of Germany. This is the story of one of them, an attack on Berlin. Although certain scenes had to be re-created for technical reasons, make no mistake, the raid is a real one and there are no actors.

Made by Air Commodore H.I. Cozens while station commander at Hemswell. This is the Only known colour record of the Bomber Command during WWII documenting a bombing raid targeting Berlin.

Another great find from the folks at Think Defence.

March 21, 2014

Kate Bush announces series of concerts in London

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:23

The Daily Mail describes it as a residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in London:

Kate Bush is to return to the stage in London — 35 years after she retired from touring after just six weeks on the road.

She will play a 15-date residency at the Hammersmith Apollo which was the venue for a celebrated concert film she made in 1979.

The 55-year-old made a surprise announcement about the shows — to be called Before The Dawn — on Friday morning, with the first taking place on August 26.

Bush talked about a desire to return to playing live in an interview three years ago, saying she would love to play again before she became ‘too ancient’.

She was just 20 when she completed The Tour Of Life after topping the charts with Wuthering Heights the previous year.

Over the years, theories about her absence from the stage have included her perfectionism, a fear of flying and the death of one of the tour crew, lighting director Bill Duffield, during a show.

But in a rare interview with Mojo magazine in 2011 to mark her comeback, she explained that her years of silence on the touring circuit were simply down to the sheer exertion of the ordeal.

‘It was enormously enjoyable. But physically it was absolutely exhausting,’ she said.


LONDON – 12th MAY: English singer Kate Bush performs live on stage at Hammersmith Odeon in London on the penultimate date of her European tour on 12th May 1979. (Photo by Peter Still/Redferns)

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:26

My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. The Battle for Lion’s Arch has come to a close and we’re now getting information about some significant changes coming in April’s Feature Pack release. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.

GuildMag logo

Calgary mayor trolls reporter

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:14

Calgary’s mayor Naheed Nenshi was asked for his reaction to the resignation of Alberta Premier Alison Redford. The conversation went in odd directions, according to the Calgary Herald‘s Jason Markusoff:

Let’s start this transcript of Calgary’s mayor reacting to Alison Redford’s resignation with the last question I threw to him, as a just-in-case query: Will you run for Alberta PC leadership?

We didn’t get the pat “no” I expected. We got Naheed Nenshi talking about “Albertans,” even though three-quarters of [them] aren’t in his jurisidiction:

    “Seriously? There will be lots and lots and lots of opportunities to talk about lots and lots and lots of different people. I can tell you regardless of whatever role I’m in personally, I will take a very serious part in this next election, always fighting for the interests of Calgarians and Albertans.”

Let’s rewind, then, to the beginning of his statement.

    Obviously what has happened tonight will be covered as a political story, and it is a political story. But I also want to remind everyone that this is also a human story.

    It’s about a real person, a good person, a person who loves this province and and has worked and made incredible sacrifices… And it’s the story of a system that takes someone like that and chews them up and spits them out. And I think that’s what we really need to remember today. Alison Redford is a good person. A good person who has tried to do great things for this province, who has had amazing dreams and amazing ideas for what we can do together as a community.

    Every one of us who goes into public service knows that it can be a tough job. Every one of us knows you’ve got to have a thick skin, sometimes people say really cruel things about you on the Internet. But I think all of us as Albertans need to really think about what has happened over the last several weeks. And what that means to how we get great people to be politicians, how we get great people to enter into public service.

    The partisanship under that dome in Edmonton is what leads to this. And I hope that whoever the new premier will think hard about how we make sure that what happens under that dome isn’t just for party and caucus, as we heard over and over again in the premier’s statement today, but it’s about people. It’s about Albertans. It’s about how we do the best for all citizens of this great province.

A follow-up post the next day indicated that perhaps Nenshi wasn’t quite ready to make a play for the premiership:

Dave Taylor of Newstalk 770 got the third kick at this question, when Nenshi made his monthly appearance on the AM station’s afternoon call-in show. I think most reasonable people will take this as a “No” from a mayor who enjoys pestering this reporter.

    I mean look. What’s real here is let’s not get into the handicapping of who’s who and what’s what. It’s way too, way too early. We’re going to have over the next months – You know what I’ve always said about party politics.

    Plus as I always say I’ve got the best job in the world at the moment, certainly in Canada. And I just got reelected to it so let’s see ow I do at it. I really don’t like by-elections. I don’t think that one should force that on people. And I got lots of work to do. Is that coy enough? I figure I have to be coy otherwise poor Jason Markusoff’s head won’t explode.

Byzantium’s secret weapon

Filed under: Europe, History, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

Military History Now had a guest post from Κonstantinos Karatolios talking about the Byzantine secret weapon known as “Greek Fire”:

The thousand-year Byzantine Empire could not have survived through the centuries without its powerful military. But Constantinople’s mighty army and navy didn’t just keep enemies at bay, they also helped it to expand into new territories and ultimately dominate the whole of the Mediterranean for hundreds of years. Of course, while the Byzantines’ stunning battlefield success was in part a by-product of military knowledge inherited from the old Roman Empire, it was also born out of new tactics and weaponry. One example of this is Greek fire. Also known as thalassion pyr, skeyaston pyr and medikon elaion, this incendiary liquid, which could be squirted or hurled into the ranks of an enemy, was perhaps the most fearsome of all of the empire’s armaments. Its use, whether on land or sea, verges on legend and yet almost all we know about Greek fire remains clouded in mystery. We are sure of one thing however — it was used with devastating effect throughout the whole course of the Byzantine Empire.

Here are nine little known facts about Greek fire.

I think there’s a typo in the list, as it mentions the first recorded use of the weapon by Anastasios I in 541, which was actually the middle of the reign of Justinian I. Anastasios I reigned from 491 to 518.

Vikings continue to add depth to defensive line

Filed under: Football — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:16

It’s been an unusually busy free agency period for the Minnesota Vikings, as they announced another signing yesterday: former Chicago defensive lineman Corey Wooton. This is the fourth addition to the DL, joining fellow newcomers Linval Joseph, Tom Johnson, and Kheeston Randall. Wooton’s first career sack was the hit that ended Brett Favre’s career on the icy turf of TCF Bank Stadium in 2010 (co-incidentally, the same venue the Vikings will be calling home for the next two years). It’s a one-year $1.5 million deal for Wooton, and he’ll likely be backing up Everson Griffen and Brian Robison at defensive end (but he has taken snaps at defensive tackle in Chicago).

Before the latest signing, Arif Hasan drew up the likely depth chart:

Vikings Depth Chart 3-20-14 (Arif)

All the new signings leave the Vikings with a reported $12 million for further free agency signings and their 2014 draft class.

The Dambusters Raid – Full Documentary

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Published on 20 Apr 2013

On May 17th, 1943 the Royal Air Force carried out one of the most remarkable raids ever undertaken by any aircrew. On that night a squadron of Lancaster heavy bombers flew at low level across a blacked out Europe, towards the four great dams that delivered water and power to the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr. The aircrews had been trained for months to carry out this most daring and courageous of raids. Against a storm of anti-aircraft fire, they calmly flew their bombers in across the reservoirs, holding a specific height and speed, to deliver their strange cylindrical bouncing bombs, to explode against the face of the dams, and blow great holes in them. The factories of the Ruhr were crippled. 1300 German civilians died, and 53 aircrew were lost. For the very first time this programme explores both sides of a raid that has become an epic in the history of World War 2.

H/T to Think Defence for the link.

March 20, 2014

Jim Flaherty’s legacy

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:10

The federal finance minister announced his resignation the other day. This had been rumoured for quite some time, as Jim Flaherty had been having health issues for the last couple of years. He’s at least for the time being remaining as my local MP (full disclosure: I coached two of his sons in soccer several years ago). He wasn’t going to be my MP in the next parliament, as my village is being moved to a different riding under the new boundaries. At Gods of the Copybook Headings, Richard Anderson tries to find the right words to say goodbye:

Writing valedictory posts is always a bit tricky. You have to strike a balance between showing the bad that is the obvious at the moment with the good that might be visible only in hindsight. It be must admitted that Jim Flaherty was not a bad finance minister, a minister who surrendered to every short-term political demand of the cabinet. Nor was he a great one charting a new course for Canada. He didn’t shift the goal posts, like Michael Wilson did for Brian Mulroney or Paul Martin did for Jean Chrétien. Big Jim minded the shop better than the other guys would have. Among midgets he was a giant.

The Flaherty years consisted of digging a gigantic hole and then carefully filling it back in. Modest surpluses, massive deficits and then a projected modest surplus. To quote the old poem: “Always he led us back to where we were before.” The net result is that we have a somewhat larger national debt than if we’d balanced the books for eight straight years. Not good but not too bad either.

[…]

As for Big Jim? Well he was one of the best Liberal finances minister of the last hundred years.

Such a well-placed barb. So artistically planted. And so true.

Today in misunderstood income inequality stats…

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:20

Tim Worstall pokes fun at a recent Oxfam report that claims that Britain’s five richest families own more than the bottom 20% of the population:

I read this and thought, “well, yes, this is obvious and what the hell’s it got to do with increasing inequality?” Of course Gerald Grosvenor (aka Duke of Westminster) has more wealth than the bottom 10 per cent of the country put together. It’s obvious that the top five families will have more than 20 per cent of all Britons. Do they think we all just got off the turnip truck or something?

They’ve also managed to entirely screw up the statistic they devised themselves by missing the point that if you’ve no debts and a £10 note then you’ve got more wealth than the bottom 10 or 20 per cent of the population has in aggregate. The bottom levels of our society have negative wealth.

[…]

Given what we classify as wealth, the poor have no assets at all. Property, financial assets (stocks, bonds etc), private sector pension plans, these are all pretty obviously wealth.

But then the state pension is also wealth: it’s a promise of a future stream of income. That is indeed wealth just as much as a share certificate or private pension is. But we don’t count that state pension as wealth in these sorts of calculations.

The right to live in a council house at a subsidised rent of the rest of your life is wealth, but that’s not counted either. Hell, the fact that we live in a country with a welfare system is a form of wealth — but we still don’t count that.

Doing this has been called (not by me, originally anyway) committing Worstall’s Fallacy. Failing to take account of the things we already do to correct a problem in arguing that more must be done to correct said problem. We already redistribute wealth by taxing the rich to provide pensions, housing, free education (only until 18 these days) and so on to people who could not otherwise afford them. But when bemoaning the amount of inequality that clearly cries out for more redistribution, we fail to note how much we’re already doing.

So Oxfam are improperly accounting for wealth and they’ve also missed the point that, given the existence of possible negative wealth, then of course one person or another in the UK will have more wealth than the entire lowest swathe.

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