Jon, my former virtual landlord sent along an interesting link:
An introduction by David and Ben Crystal to the ‘Original Pronunciation’ production of Shakespeare and what they reveal about the history of the English language.
May 9, 2014
Shakespeare: Original pronunciation
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This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. ArenaNet has continued to be unusually quiet since the release of the April Feature Pack, but last week’s release of the Chinese version of Guild Wars 2 is undoubtedly keeping them very busy indeed. In addition, there’s the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
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QotD: Real history and economic modelling
I am not an economist. I am an economic historian. The economist seeks to simplify the world into mathematical models — in Krugman’s case models erected upon the intellectual foundations laid by John Maynard Keynes. But to the historian, who is trained to study the world “as it actually is”, the economist’s model, with its smooth curves on two axes, looks like an oversimplification. The historian’s world is a complex system, full of non-linear relationships, feedback loops and tipping points. There is more chaos than simple causation. There is more uncertainty than calculable risk. For that reason, there is simply no way that anyone — even Paul Krugman — can consistently make accurate predictions about the future. There is, indeed, no such thing as the future, just plausible futures, to which we can only attach rough probabilities. This is a caveat I would like ideally to attach to all forward-looking conjectural statements that I make. It is the reason I do not expect always to be right. Indeed, I expect often to be wrong. Success is about having the judgment and luck to be right more often than you are wrong.
Niall Ferguson, “Why Paul Krugman should never be taken seriously again”, The Spectator, 2013-10-13
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Vikings make two moves in first round of the draft
The Vikings were busy in the NFL draft once again, as “Trader” Rick Spielman swapped first round picks with Cleveland to select linebacker Anthony Barr (gaining an extra pick in the process), then traded two later round picks for Seattle’s number 32 (the last pick in the round) to select quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. The Barr pick surprised me, as I thought middle linebacker would be a much higher priority, but you could make the case that Barr was the best athlete if not the best overall player available at that spot.
Linebacker Anthony Barr #11 of the UCLA Bruins sacks quarterback Jared Goff #16 of the California Golden Bears at the Rose Bowl on October 12, 2013 in Pasadena, California. Photo by Stephen Dunn, Getty Images.
Barr was one of the top linebacker prospects, despite only having played two years at that position. It’s expected that he’ll take Chad Greenway’s position on the strong side, while Greenway moves to one of the other linebacking spots.
Teddy Bridgewater of the Louisville Cardinals poses with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after he was picked #32 overall by the Minnesota Vikings during the first round of the 2014 NFL draft. Photo by Elsa, Getty Images.
For quite a long time in the run-up to the draft, Teddy Bridgewater was seen as not only the top quarterback prospect, but even as the top overall pick until he had a bad outing at his Pro Day, and then his stock began to drop. Each of the three top quarterbacks were linked to the Vikings in many mock drafts, but Bortles was off the board before the Vikings were on the clock, and Manziel was drafted (by Cleveland) in the second half of the round. I had thought the Vikings were more interested in Bridgewater, but many reported that the Vikings had attempted to get back into the first round to get Manziel, but that Cleveland’s extra first round pick meant they couldn’t top that offer without giving away too much. Personally, I doubt that as Manziel would have been the worst fit of the top three in Norv Turner’s offensive scheme — the skills Manziel offered were not the ones that Turner values the most in a quarterback.
One of the most impressive stats on Bridgewater is his performance against the blitz: a 70.1 percent completion rate averaging 11 yards per attempt, for 15 touchdowns and only 1 interception. That’s head-and-shoulders above the other “top two” quarterbacks. However, Rick Spielman said that there’s no expectation that he’ll start right away, and that he’ll be given time to develop behind Matt Cassel. The coaching staff will determine when he’s ready to step up.
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The 1964 trial of Jack Ruby
The Toronto Sun shares a portion of Peter Worthington’s Looking for Trouble (now available as an e-book) dealing with the trial of Jack Ruby. Worthington had been in the room when Ruby gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Ruby trial was pure showbiz. While the witnesses and characters who surfaced during the trial were Damon Runyon, the judge and lawyers seemed straight out of Al Capp and Dogpatch. Judge Joe B. Brown’s legal education before he was elected to the bench consisted of three years of night school 35 years earlier. In Dallas he was known as Necessity – “because Necessity knows no law.”
[…]
One day as a stripper who worked at Ruby’s nightclub called Little Lynn (who was over nine months pregnant at the time), was waiting to testify, seven prisoners in the connecting county jail grabbed a woman hostage and fled. They had fashioned a pistol of soap, pencils and shoe polish, persuaded guards that it was real, and made their break, witnessed by some 100 million viewers.
Little Lynn fainted and Belli prepared to play midwife. A BBC reporter on the phone to his office was describing the action and repeatedly swore to his editors that he was neither kidding, nor had he been drinking. “Listen, you bloody fools, this is America, this is Texas … any bloody insane thing is possible here!”
The next day, the New York Daily News ran an eloquent black headline: “Oh, Dallas!”
The jury returned in 140 minutes with a guilty verdict. In Texas, where the juries set the penalty, they opted for the electric chair.
Belli returned to San Francisco in disgust. “I shall never return here; it’s an evil, bigoted, rotten, stinking town.”
As it happened, Ruby died three years later and won a form of immortality and a place in criminal and political legend.
And as for conspiracy theories, the flaw is that Oswald was an ideologue, a semi-literate left-wing extremist, while Ruby wouldn’t know what an ideologue was unless he did a strip-tease for him.
To choose two such perfect foils on which to base a presidential murder plot challenges credulity. There has been so much official deceit, perjury, rationalization and cover-up that the deeds seem […] more sinister than they actually have been.
We will probably never know the truth.
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