Quotulatiousness

August 26, 2014

Echoes of Star Trek in The Last Ship

Filed under: Media, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

In his weekly football column, Gregg Easterbrook usually manages to include lots of non-football stuff, like this:

Sir, I Have Applied My Lip Gloss, Sir! On TNT’s summer ratings hit The Last Ship, about a virus apocalypse that kills most of humanity, when the titular vessel stops at a naval base and aerial recon shows everyone ashore is dead, the XO says, “I don’t like the looks of this.” Really! Then the captain goes along with the landing party, just like on Star Trek. Half the plots on the many Star Trek serials boiled down to this formula:

1. Crew notices something interesting.
2. Captain leads away team that investigates.
3. The thing is not what it seemed! Captain is in grave peril.
4. Remainder of the episode is a rescue mission.

The Last Ship has followed this formula, with its captain several times leading landing parties. At one point a three-person shore party has walked far into the Nicaraguan jungle in search of a rare monkey; two of the three persons are the captain and XO. In another episode, the captain leads a party checking out a derelict fishing boat that might have a clue about the plague destroying the world. Oh no, it’s a trap — he’s captured by the Russians, and the entire next episode is a rescue mission. Scriptwriters: Captains of ships, whether Earthbound or interstellar, do not lead landing parties. Any captain stupid enough to assign himself to a landing party should be relieved of duty!

The 2012 ABC seagoing potboiler Last Resort took considerable liberties with United States Navy vessels. The submarine that was the show’s focus carried both strategic nuclear missiles and cruise missiles (U.S. subs have one or the other), had commando teams (no strategic submarines are equipped to dispatch Marines) and possessed a Star Trek-style invisibility cloak that made it disappear from radar and sonar. The titular vessel in The Last Ship, a Burke-class destroyer with the fictional name Nathan James — it even gets a fictional designation, DDG-151 — is reasonably similar to actual Burke-class destroyers.

The James is depicted as having emergency sails, able to launch two of these — a real boat type but one found on assault ships, not destroyers — and having a main gun that can hit small moving targets, which would allow the James to clean up in any naval gunnery competition. But mostly the ship is realistic, except in that the entire crew is really good-looking.

Female personnel have served on United States surface combatant vessels for about 20 years and on submarines for about two years, so the show’s depiction of a casually mixed-gender complement is accurate. But the women of the James, on active duty aboard a warship during the apocalypse, wear eye makeup and lipstick. Don’t they know loose lips sink ships?

That was one of the things about all the Star Trek shows that bothered me: the captain, first officer, and often chief medical officer being the default configuration for any kind of work away from the ship (along with a few expendable redshirts for brief, tragic death scenes). I don’t know if it’s a carry-over from historical fiction of the Napoleonic wars, where Captain Hornblower seemed to be spending half his time at sea leading boarding parties or cutting-out expeditions, but even then he usually left his first lieutenant in command of the ship in his absence.

Political labels and low-to-no-information voters

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:50

Jim Geraghty discusses why political labelling is so limited in helping get your message across when you’re talking to potential voters who aren’t political junkies:

Liz Sheld, examining some Pew survey results and confirming our worst suspicions, that a significant minority of the electorate walk around believing that certain political terms mean the opposite of what they really do:

    Looking just at the first question, which Pew has used to determine whether people who say they are libertarians actually know what the term means, 57% correctly identified the definition of “libertarian” with the proper corresponding ideological label. Looking at the other answers, an astonishing 20% say that someone who emphasizes freedom and less government is a progressive, 6% say that is the definition of an authoritarian and 6% say that is the definition of a communist.

As E. Strobel notes, “The term ‘low-info voter’ is inadequate… More like ‘wrong-info voter’.”

Perhaps when we’re trying to persuade the electorate as a whole, we have to toss out terms like “conservative” or “libertarian.” Not because they’re not accurate, but because they represent obscure hieroglyphics to a chunk of the people we’re trying to persuade.

Tax inversions: “Canada, it would seem, is the new Delaware”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Food — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:04

In Maclean’s, Jason Kirby looks for reasons why Tim Hortons is interested in a deal with Burger King:

For starters, let’s consider Burger King’s motivation for buying Tim Hortons. It is not looking for synergies. Don’t expect to see Burger King roll out twinned stores, with one counter selling Whoppers, the other Timbits, as per Wendy’s strategy when it owned Tims. Instead, Burger King wants to avoid paying U.S. taxes. If the deal goes ahead (no agreement has been finalized) Burger King will achieve this through what’s known as a “tax inversion.” It would buy Tim Hortons, then declare the newly merged company to be Canadian. And because companies in Canada enjoy a lower corporate tax rate than those in America — 15 per cent in Canada compared to an official U.S. rate of 35 per cent — Burger King’s future tax bills could be a lot smaller.

Canada, it would seem, is the new Delaware.

So Burger King is buying Tim Hortons, but in doing so, the combined Tim Hortons and Burger King will be financially engineered to be Canadian, at least on paper. A statement released by the companies following the Wall Street Journal‘s initial report on the deal said Burger King’s largest shareholder, 3G Capital, a Brazilian private equity firm, would own the majority of the shares of the newly created company. And you can be sure any tax savings will flow back to shareholders in the form of higher dividends.

It’s clear what’s driving Burger King to pursue this deal. But there’s been far less attention paid to the question: what’s in this for Tim Hortons?

According to Tim Hortons, the answer — as it unceasingly has been for the past two decades — is the pursuit of international growth. In the statement from Tim Hortons and Burger King, the companies said the coffee chain will have ”the potential to leverage Burger King’s worldwide footprint and experience in global development to accelerate Tim Hortons growth in international markets.”

Update: Kevin Williamson points out that relatively few US companies actually relocate to other countries now, but that the number is clearly increasing and knee-jerk reactions to that by politicians may well make it worse.

There are trillions of dollars in U.S. corporate earnings parked overseas, and progressives want the government to shove its greedy snout all up in that, denouncing “corporate cash hoarders” and blaming un-repatriated corporate earnings for everything from the weak job market to chronic halitosis. Harebrained schemes for putting that corporate cash in government coffers abound. So the current balance could quite easily be tipped. And after years of ad-hocracy under Barack Obama et al., U.S.-style “rule of law” may not be as attractive as it once was. A few more arbitrary NLRB decisions or political jihads from the IRS could change a few minds about the value of U.S. law and governance.

The question isn’t whether you can bully Walgreens out of its plan to move to Switzerland. The question is whether the next Apple or Pfizer ever puts down legal roots in the United States in the first place. Right now, the friction works in favor of the United States, but there is no reason to believe that that will always be the case. You think that Singapore wouldn’t like to be the world’s banking or pharmaceutical capital? That Seoul lacks ambition? That the Scots who brought us the Enlightenment can’t run a decent system of law and property rights? Burger King is not talking about moving to some steamy banana republic for tax purposes, but to stodgy, stable, predictable, boring old Canada. Boring and predictable looks pretty good if you’re Burger King, especially when the alternative is unpredictable and expensive. Unpredictable and expensive is what you date when you’re young and stupid — you don’t marry it.

Update the second:

Vikings announce first round of roster cuts

Filed under: Football — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:57

All NFL teams begin their training camps with up to 90 players, but begin the regular season with only 53 players on the roster (and up to 10 players on their practice squads). Yesterday, the Vikings announced 14 of the required 15 cuts, including a couple of surprising moves. Inline update: today, the team announced they’d released tight end Mike Higgins, leaving 75 players on the roster. The final cut-down is due by Saturday afternoon.

Safety Mistral Raymond and cornerback Derek Cox had both been starters in earlier seasons, but Raymond had struggled to stay healthy, while Cox was unable to regain his earlier high standard of play. Raymond was waived with an injury settlement, but Cox was just released. Here is the current roster (pending one final move), with rough first, second, and third team designations (this isn’t official, but it’s based on the unofficial roster from the team).

Colour coding: Free agent signing, Drafted in 2014, Undrafted free agent in 2014, Waived, cut, or left team.

Position Starter(s) Backup(s) Third/Fourth string: On the bubble Notes
OL LT-Matt Kalil 75
LG-Charlie Johnson 74
C-John Sullivan 65
RG-Brandon Fusco 63
RT-Phil Loadholt 71		 LT-Antonio Richardson 78 (UDFA)
LG-David Yankey 66 (R)
C-Joe Berger 61
RG-Vladimir Ducasse 62 (FA)
RT-Mike Remmers 67 (FA)		 RT-Austin Wentworth 79 (UDFA)
RG-Jeff Baca 60
C-Zac Kerin 59 (UDFA) 		C-Josh Samuda (FA) was waived due to injury in an organized team activity and then placed on injured reserve.
RT-Matt Hall (UDFA), waived 25 July.
LT-Kevin Murphy, LG-Pierce Burton (UDFA) cut 25 August.
QB Matt Cassel 16 Teddy Bridgewater 5 (R) Christian Ponder 7  
TE Kyle Rudolph 82 Rhett Ellison 85, Alan Reisner 87 (FA), Chase Ford 86   Chase Ford activated off PUP, 25 August.
A.C. Leonard (UDFA) waived 6 August.
Kory Sperry (FA) cut 25 August.
Mike Higgins (FA) cut 26 August.
RB Adrian Peterson 28 Matt Asiata 44
Jerick McKinnon 31 (R)		 Joe Banyard 23, Dominique Williams 43 (UDFA)  
FB Jerome Felton 42   Zach Line 48 Line and even Felton may be on the bubble, as Norv Turner’s offence usually doesn’t have much role for traditional fullbacks.
WR Greg Jennings 15
Cordarrelle Patterson 84		 Jerome Simpson 81
Jarius Wright 17
Adam Thielen 19
Rodney Smith 83 		Kain Colter 13 (UDFA), Donte Foster 2 (UDFA), Jerome Simpson may be facing a multi-game suspension from the league.
Lestar Jean (FA) waived (injured) 12 June. Waived from IR, 5 August.
Kamar Jorden (FA), Eric Lora (UDFA), Ty Walker (FA), Andy Cruse (FA) cut 25 August.
DL DE-Everson Griffen 97
NT-Linval Joseph 98 (FA)
UT-Sharif Floyd 73
DE-Brian Robison 96		 DE-Scott Chrichton 95 (R)
NT-Fred Evans 90
UT-Isame Faciane 76 (UDFA)
DE-Corey Wooton 99 (FA)UT-Shamar Stephen 93 (R)		 UT-Tom Johnson 92 (FA), DE-Justin Trattou 94,
NT-Chase Baker 91		 DE-Spencer Nealy waived 23 July.
DE-Rakim Cox (UDFA) waived 4 August.
Linval Joseph slightly injured in shooting after 1st preseason game, expected back by early September.
UT-Kheeston Randall (FA), DE-Jake Snyder (UDFA), DE-Tyler Scott (UDFA) cut 25 August.
LB WLB-Chad Greenway 52
MLB-Jasper Brinkley 54 (FA)
SLB-Anthony Barr 55 (R)		 WLB-Brandon Watts 58 (R)
MLB-Audie Cole 57
SLB-Gerald Hodges 50		 WLB-Michael Mauti 56, WLB-Larry Dean 51,
MLB-Mike Zimmer 59 (UDFA)		 SLB-Dom Decicco (UDFA) placed on IR and SLB Justin Jackson claimed off waivers from Detroit.
CB Xavier Rhodes 29
Captain Munnerlyn 24 (FA) 		Marcus Sherels 35
Jabari Price 39 (R)

Shaun Prater 27

 Josh Robinson 21, Kendall James 40 (R), Julian Posey 38 (FA) Kip Edwards waived 2 June.
Derek Cox (FA), Robert Steeples cut 25 August.
S FS-Harrison Smith 22
SS-Robert Blanton 36		 SS-Kurt Coleman 20 (FA)
SS-Jamarca Sanford 33		 FS-Andrew Sendejo, Chris Crocker 25 (FA), SS-Anton Exum 32 (R) Chris Crocker signed 4 August. SS-Mistral Raymond waived/injured 25 August. FS-Brandan Bishop (FA) cut 25 August.
P Jeff Locke 18 N/A    
K Blair Walsh 3 N/A    
PR Marcus Sherels 35* Adam Thielen 19*, Jarius Wright 17*, Kain Colter 13* (UDFA)    
KR Cordarrelle Patterson 84* Marcus Sherels 35*, Adam Thielen 19*, Captain Munnerlyn 24* (FA)    
LS Cullen Loeffler 46 Audie Cole 57*, Michael Mauti 56*    
Practice Squad        

Cut-down dates are 26 August (to 75) and 30 August (to 53). Practice squads can be assembled 24 hours after the final cuts are made (to allow waiver wire pickups and roster adjustments). Practice squad increases from 8 to 10 this year.

* Already listed on the roster at main position.

Coach Mike Zimmer also confirmed that Matt Cassel had won the quarterback competition and would be the starter in the regular season. This was pretty clearly the way the coaching staff expected it to be, as Cassel had taken almost all the first-team snaps through training camp and had started each of the first three preseason games. Teddy Bridgewater did well, but not well enough to unseat the veteran.

The Bridgewater Underground reacts to the setback:

It was a fitful sleep, the kind where you fall asleep and then awaken; 20 minutes here, 45 minutes there. There was a feeling of uneasiness across the land, and plans were in motion should the Thing We Feared Most come to pass. At times like this, when a man is alone with his thoughts, it’s tough to not play events in your mind again, over and over. Am I doing the right thing? How will history remember us? Can I make it until morning before I have to get out of bed to pee?

Just as I was falling back to sleep, the phone rang. A phone call this late at night/early in the morning was rarely good news, and as the phone reached five…six…now seven rings, I knew that there was nothing left to do but answer it.

“Please, let this not be what I think”, I thought to myself as the word hello passed my lips.

For a moment, just enough time to make me think that this was a wrong number, or even a butt dial, there was silence on the other end. But then, just as hope began to rise in me, it was dashed. Dashed like a Brett Favre pass over the middle in the NFC Championship game.

“The long sobs of Spergeon Wynn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.”

Click. I didn’t even get a chance to acknowledge.

No. It’s happened. They did it, didn’t they?

I waited for a second to let the phrase that would key the revolution sink in.

The long sobs of Spergeon Wynn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.

No. Please, no.

It happened. Matt Cassel is the starter, and Teddy Bridgewater will ride the pine. The great thing about the Teddy Bridgewater Underground is that no underground cell can be traced back to another. My phone, as were all of the phones in The Underground, was encrypted to the point that even the NSA would have problems locating and tracing it. As long as calls were kept under a minute, and code words were used, messages could be passed freely, almost defiantly, to the rest of The Underground.

QotD: Bonfire of the humanities

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

About 15 years ago, John Heath and I coauthored Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, a pessimistic warning about where current trends would take classics in particular and the humanities in general. It was easy enough then to identify the causes of the implosion. At the very time the protocols of the universities were proving unsustainable — more expensive administrators and non-teaching personnel, soaring tuition hikes, vast non-instructional expenditures in student services and social recreation, more release time for full professors, greater exploitation of part-time teachers, and more emphasis on practical education — the humanities had turned against themselves in the fashion of an autoimmune disease.

For example, esoteric university press publications, not undergraduate teaching and advocacy, came to define the successful humanities professor. Literature, history, art, music, and philosophy classes — even if these courses retained their traditional course titles — became shells of their former selves, now focusing on race, class, and gender indictments of the ancient and modern Western worlds.

These trendy classes did the nearly impossible task of turning the plays of Euripides, the poetry of Dante, and the history of the Civil War into monotonous subjects. The result was predictable: cash-strapped students increasingly avoided these classes. Moreover, if humanists did not display enthusiasm for Western literature, ideas, and history, or, as advocates, seek to help students appreciate the exceptional wisdom and beauty of Sophocles or Virgil, why, then, would the Chairman of the Chicano Studies Department, the Assistant Dean of Social Science, the Associate Provost for Diversity, or the Professor of Accounting who Chaired the General Education Committee worry about the declining enrollments in humanities?

[…]

If the humanities could have adopted a worse strategy to combat these larger economic and cultural trends over the last decade, it would be hard to see how. In short, the humanities have been exhausted by a half-century of therapeutic “studies” courses: Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Environmental Studies, Chicano Studies, Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, and Gay Studies. Any contemporary topic that could not otherwise justify itself as literary, historical, philosophical, or cultural simply tacked on the suffix “studies” and thereby found its way into the curriculum.

These “studies” courses shared an emphasis on race, class, and gender oppression that in turn had three negative consequences. First, they turned the study of literature and history from tragedy to melodrama, from beauty and paradox into banal predictability, and thus lost an entire generation of students. Second, they created a climate of advocacy that permeated the entire university, as the great works and events of the past were distorted and enlisted in advancing contemporary political agendas. Finally, the university lost not just the students, but the public as well, which turned to other sources — filmmakers, civic organizations, non-academic authors, and popular culture — for humanistic study.

Victor Davis Hanson, “The Death of the Humanities”, VDH’s Private Papers, 2014-01-28

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