Published on 7 Sep 2015
“What would have happened if the Schlieffen Plan had succeeded? Find out on AlternateHistoryHub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jNjJueYnLI
The Schlieffen Plan was the blueprint for Germany’s army to avoid a two-front war with Russia and France. It was supposed to be the solution for a quick victory against arch enemy France by invading Belgium and the Netherlands to circumvent French defenses. Helmut von Moltke adapted the original plan by Alfred von Schlieffen and ultimately failed when the Germans were beaten at the Battle of the Marne. Indy explains the numerous reasons why the Schlieffen Plan was doomed to fail. “
September 8, 2015
The Schlieffen Plan – And Why It Failed I THE GREAT WAR Special feat. AlternateHistoryHub
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Pessimism and doom-mongering still sells books and movies
Gregg Easterbrook reviews The End of Doom by Ronald Bailey:
Outside your window, living standards are rising, crime is declining, pollution is down, and longevity is increasing. But in pop culture, we’re all doomed. The Hunger Games films have been box-office titans, joined by World War Z, Interstellar, The Book of Eli, Divergent, The Road, and other big-budget Hollywood fare depicting various judgment days. Over in primetime, the world is ending on The Walking Dead, The Last Ship, The 100, and Under the Dome.
The same outlook obtains in nonfiction literature. Books that foresee doomsday — Collapse by Jared Diamond, The End of Nature by Bill McKibben, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett among them — win praise from commentators and sell briskly. Books contending that things basically are fine don’t do as well. One might think that optimism would be marketable to contemporary book buyers, who live very well by historical standards, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Readers prefer material that depicts them dwelling in the final generation. Perhaps declining religious belief in Armageddon has been replaced by an expectation of some natural-world version of the event.
Into this adverse market steps The End of Doom by Ronald Bailey, an impressively researched, voluminously detailed book arguing that the world is in better shape than commonly assumed. Bailey deflates doomsday by showing that human population growth does not mean ecological breakdown; that food supply increases faster than population and probably always will; that, far from depleted, most resources are sufficient to last for centuries; that air pollution in the United States is way down; and that cancer is in decline.
Specialists will argue about some of the studies Bailey cites to support these contentions. So much environmental research exists today, for example, that one can find a study to prove practically anything. But in the main, Bailey’s selection of research is fastidious and convincing.
Bailey spends too much time, though, on discredited trendy bleakness from the 1960s and 1970s — such as Paul Ehrlich’s global-famine predictions and the 1972 Club of Rome report. One can practically hear dead horses saying, “Stop flogging me.” The End of Doom redeems itself with a clever chapter on how precautionary principles boil down to this rule: never do anything for the first time. “Anything new is guilty until proven innocent,” Bailey writes, but he goes on to chronicle how many new ideas denounced as dangerous turned out instead to make life less risky.
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Liverpool’s mysterious Williamson Tunnels
On the BBC website, Chris Baraniuk covers what we know about the series of 200-year-old tunnels in Liverpool:
Of all the engineering projects that ever took place in the industrial centre of Liverpool – like the world’s first exclusively steam-powered passenger railway – the building of the Williamson Tunnels in the early 19th Century must be the most mysterious. The patron of the tunnels, tobacco merchant Joseph Williamson, was extraordinarily secretive about their purpose. Even today, no one is sure exactly what they were used for. Nor does anyone know for sure even how many of the tunnels there are, scattered underfoot beneath the Edge Hill district of Liverpool in northwest England.
Meanwhile, for centuries, the tunnels had been buried. They were filled in after locals complained of the smell – apparently the caverns were long used as underground landfills and stuffed with everything from household junk to human waste.
As time went by, the tunnels passed from knowledge to myth.
“A lot of people knew about the tunnels, but that was as far as it went – they just knew about them or heard about them,” explains Les Coe, an early member of the Friends of Williamson Tunnels (FoWT). “It was just left at that. But we decided to look for them.”
[…]
Those who have worked on the tunnels have now developed a new, somewhat more satisfying theory. Bridson points out a series of markings in the sandstone that he says are indicative of quarrying. There are channels to drain rainwater away from the rock while men worked, blocks out of which sandstone could be hewn, and various niches in the walls where rigs were once likely installed to help with extracting the stone, commonly used as a building material.
Bridson believes that before Williamson came along, these pits in the ground already existed. But it was Williamson’s idea to construct arches over them and seal them in. Properties could then be built on top of the reclaimed land – which otherwise would have been practically worthless.
If this was the case, then in terms of land reclamation, Williamson was way ahead of his time, says Bridson. The work may well have hastened the development of an area that, without this innovation, would have been left unused for many years.
Williamson also was enterprising in his design. Simply filling the trenches in would have taken too long in the early 1800s, thanks to the limitations of transport, so Williamson used arches instead. And as Bridson notes, he was doing it years before the great railway tunnels and bridges of England were ever built. The arches “are still standing 200 years on with virtually no maintenance,” he says. “Apart from the ones that have been damaged, they’re still as solid as the day he built them. So he must have known what he was doing.”
H/T to Ghost of a Flea for the link.
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Helpful wine pairings for parents
The Rambling Redhead offers wine pairing advice for parents:
1. Riesling pairs perfectly with an explosive poopy diaper.
If your newborn baby had an explosive bowel movement, leaving your hands literally shit-stained from the yellow substance we call “poop”, we suggest chugging a glass of Riesling immediately. Riesling is refreshing, tends to be sweet and has a low acidity level. You’ve handled enough liquid that smelled of pure acid today, so kick back and enjoy this smooth, light wine that usually possesses the smell of apples. How lovely.
2. Chardonnay goes great with a middle schooler’s attitude adjustment.
If your middle-school child, let’s call her Megan, gave you non-stop attitude today and yelled the words, “You’re the worst parent ever!” or “Why can’t you be cool, like Addison’s mom?!” then you would most likely benefit from a good buzz. We recommend Chardonnay for your drinking pleasure this evening. Chardonnay has been described as tasting sweet like various melons and has a subtle creaminess. Subtle creaminess sounds divine. Megan’s insults sound annoying.
[…]
5. Pinot Noir goes well with dented or scratched vehicles.
If your teenager was involved in a minor “fender-bender” today (aka – she backed her new car into your car that was parked in the driveway) then we recommend a Pinot Noir. This wine is very delicate and fresh, unlike your daughter, whose sole purpose in life seems to be attempting to destroy all of the cars you own. The tannins in this wine are very soft, making it the opposite of bitter. Nobody needs a dry wine when their daughter is constantly participating in a real-life game of bumper cars…. you’re already bitter enough, thanks to her.
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September 7, 2015
Vikings add practice squad members for 2015
As with the regular season roster, there is usually some churn on the practice squad over the course of the season as players sign to the Vikings’ 53-man roster or other team rosters or the the team decides it needs to add more depth in this or that area of current weakness. As of Sunday evening, the following players were offered spots with the practice squad:
- DL B.J. Dubose
- OG Isame Faciane
- WR Isaac Fruechte
- S Anthony Harris
- DL Zach Moore (waived by the New England Patriots)
- LB Brian Peters
- FB Blake Renaud
- LB Brandon Watts
- RB Dominique Williams
- OL David Yankey
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New Lanark
In The Register, Bill Ray takes a geek’s-eye-view of the town of New Lanark, a key place in the early industrial revolution:
Nestled in the Clyde Valley the village owes its existence to the falls that were harnessed to refine raw cotton sent in from the colonies: a picture-postcard image from a time when Britain was the factory of the world.
But for all its industrial heritage New Lanark is a long way from being a typical “dark satanic” mill, as it marks the end of that time and the dawning of a better age.
Visit the village today and you can see the big machines that kept the empire running. Enormous water wheels; later supplemented by steam engines, connected by belts and ropes to machines which turned raw cotton into usable thread and fabric. However, it’s not industrial history that is celebrated at New Lanark, rather a social revolution, and one driven by one man whose ideas created the working life as we understand it today.
The man was Robert Owen, who, in 1799, bought New Lanark and immediately embarked on his “grand social experiment”. His radical ideas, such as refusing to employ children, providing medical insurance, and educating the workforce, were ridiculed by his competitors who couldn’t see the value in teaching children, let alone adults. But Owen believed that industry should serve the betterment of all men, not just those who owned the factories.
It worked too, rather to the surprise of his peers. New Lanark was a successful mill and profits rose steadily under the beneficent command of Owen. It could be argued, perhaps, that New Lanark would have been even more profitable without the social agenda, but every afternoon at five we should all be grateful for his reforms that made our working lives what they are:
“Eight hours daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep”
Not that the workers at New Lanark did quite as well as we do; their working day ran ten and a half hours, but once mealtimes had been deducted it was approaching eight and certainly much better than the conditions in other mills around the country.
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Arguments Against International Trade
Published on 25 Feb 2015
In this video, we discuss some of the most common arguments against international trade. Does trade harm workers by reducing the number of jobs in the U.S.? Is it wrong to trade with countries that use child labor? Is it important to keep a certain number of jobs at home for national security reasons? Can strategic protectionism increase well-being in the U.S.? Join us as we discuss these common concerns.
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QotD: The Crusades
So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression — an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.
Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity — and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion — has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.
With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt — once the most heavily Christian areas in the world — quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.
Thomas F. Madden, “The Real History of the Crusades”, Crisis Magazine, 2002-04-01.
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September 6, 2015
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels
Aidan Moher on approaching the Vorkosigan cycle of novels by Lois McMaster Bujold:
Every reader has a bucket list — oft-recommended writers you keep hearing about, whose books sound absolutely perfect, who, for some reason, you never seem to get around to reading. For years, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series hovered near the top of mine. The science fiction saga has been going strong for nearly 30 years, since the publication of Shards of Honor in 1986, and, to this day, remains a mainstay on the Hugo Award ballot every time a new volume is released. With several million books sold, Bujold is one of the most beloved and popular science fiction authors of the modern era, and, now that I’ve finally read Shards of Honor and its sequel, Barrayar, I’m beginning to understand why — though it wasn’t my first brush with the series.
An explanation is in order. The Vorkosigan series has a number of entry points. Many readers begin with The Warrior’s Apprentice. Set 17 years after the conclusion of Barrayar, it features a young soldier named Miles Vorkosigan, and many of the characters introduced in Shards of Honor. Confusingly, it was published after the latter but before the former, which themselves were published eight years apart. Miles, the main protagonist of the series, is like an adolescent Tyrion Lannister: he’s constantly pushing against the expectations of a military society that judges him for his physical disability, and uses his wit and ingenuity to climb out of the deep holes he often digs for himself. The book is fun and quick, with a preference for dialogue over exposition, but the economy of world-building left me feeling a bit lost. With some urging from ardent Bujold fans, I retreated back a generation and picked up Shards of Honor, which focuses on the first meeting between Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan, Miles’ parents. I immediately adored it.
Cordelia and Aral’s first meeting, as ostensible enemies stranded together on an inhospitable world, is anything but romantic, though perfectly suitable once you get to know them. During a time of upheaval and interstellar war, the two have become lofty citizens and heroes of their respective planets (Beta Colony and Barrayar) without intention nor desire to do so. While the plot revolves around an escalating war between Beta Colony and Barrayar over a planet called Escobar, the bulk of the narrative, and the novel’s true strength, lies in its characters.
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How the Division of Knowledge Saved My Son’s Life (Everyday Economics 3/7)
Published on 24 Jun 2014
In this video, Professor Boudreaux explains how the specialization of knowledge helped his two-year old son overcome a life-threatening illness. The science of medicine has enjoyed significant progress since the 19th century thanks to the vast size of the market and demand for health care services. Despite his foresight, Adam Smith never could have imagined the degree of expertise held by some of today’s medical specialists.
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Vikings cut down to “final” roster for 2015
Here’s how the Vikings’ cut-down went down … compared to my initial guess from yesterday for who’d make the 53:
- QB (3) — Teddy Bridgewater, Shaun Hill, Taylor Heinicke
- RB/FB (4) — Adrian Peterson, Jerick McKinnon, Matt Asiata, Dominique Williams, Zach Line
- WR (6) — Mike Wallace, Charles Johnson, Jarius Wright, Stefon Diggs (R), Adam Thielen, Cordarrelle Patterson
- TE (4) — Kyle Rudolph, Rhett Ellison, Mycole Pruitt (R), Chase Ford
- OL (9) — LT Matt Kalil, LG Brandon Fusco, C John Sullivan, RG Mike Harris, RT T.J. Clemmings, C/G Joe Berger, T Austin Shepherd, C/G Zac Kerin
- DL (9) — RDE Everson Griffen, NT Linval Joseph, UT Sharif Floyd, LDE Brian Robison, DE Justin Trattou, DT Tom Johnson, DT Shamar Stephen, DE Scott Chrichton, DE Danielle Hunter
- LB (6) — WLB Chad Greenway, MLB Gerald Hodges, SLB Anthony Barr, LB Audie Cole, LB Eric Kendricks, LB Brandon Watts, LB Michael Mauti, Edmond Robinson
- CB (5) — Xavier Rhodes, Terence Newman, Captain Munnerlyn, Trae Waynes, Jabari Price (suspended for first 2 games, won’t count against roster), Marcus Sherels
- S (4) — Harrison Smith, Robert Blanton, Andrew Sendejo, Antone Exum
- P (1) — Jeff Locke
- K (1) — Blair Walsh
- LS (1) — Kevin McDermott
I actually didn’t expect Williams to make the team, but I thought he was a better option than Zach Line, who did make the team.
I said this is the most likely position the team might fill from the waiver wire … instead, they traded with San Diego, giving up a 2016 sixth round pick for OT/OG Jeremiah Sirles)
I didn’t see Watts or Mauti being waived, but there was a logjam of quality linebackers and not all could be retained on the roster. Mauti is especially surprising given his prowess on special teams.
There will likely be a change or two before the kickoff of the first regular season game, but this should be pretty much the team the Vikings will play 2015 with. Practice squads can be formed once the waiver period expires for players who were cut from their teams on Saturday. Among the players I expect to see the team sign to the practice squad are C Tom Farniok, G Isame Faciane, RB Dominique Williams (or RB Joe Banyard … I don’t think both will make it), FB Blake Renaud, WR Isaac Fruechte, LB Brian Peters, CB Josh Thomas, and S Anthony Harris. The team isn’t restricted to the players they had in their own training camp, so a couple of signees could be players nobody in Minnesota has heard of.
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QotD: Picking wild fruit
One afternoon in the course of a climb we emerged upon a plateau, where we lingered perhaps too long, eating more fruit than may have been good for us; it was so plentiful around us, so varied. We commenced with a few late strawberries, and from those we passed to raspberries. Then Harris found a greengage-tree with some early fruit upon it, just perfect.
“This is about the best thing we have struck,” said George; “we had better make the most of this.” Which was good advice, on the face of it.
“It is a pity,” said Harris, “that the pears are still so hard.”
He grieved about this for a while, but later on came across some remarkably fine yellow plums and these consoled him somewhat.
“I suppose we are still a bit too far north for pineapples,” said George. “I feel I could just enjoy a fresh pineapple. This commonplace fruit palls upon one after a while.”
“Too much bush fruit and not enough tree, is the fault I find,” said Harris. “Myself, I should have liked a few more greengages.”
“Here is a man coming up the hill,” I observed, “who looks like a native. Maybe, he will know where we can find some more greengages.”
“He walks well for an old chap,” remarked Harris.
He certainly was climbing the hill at a remarkable pace. Also, so far as we were able to judge at that distance, he appeared to be in a remarkably cheerful mood, singing and shouting at the top of his voice, gesticulating, and waving his arms.
“What a merry old soul it is,” said Harris; “it does one good to watch him. But why does he carry his stick over his shoulder? Why doesn’t he use it to help him up the hill?”
“Do you know, I don’t think it is a stick,” said George.
“What can it be, then?” asked Harris.
“Well, it looks to me,” said George, “more like a gun.”
“You don’t think we can have made a mistake?” suggested Harris. “You don’t think this can be anything in the nature of a private orchard?”
I said: “Do you remember the sad thing that happened in the South of France some two years ago? A soldier picked some cherries as he passed a house, and the French peasant to whom the cherries belonged came out, and without a word of warning shot him dead.”
“But surely you are not allowed to shoot a man dead for picking fruit, even in France?” said George.
“Of course not,” I answered. “It was quite illegal. The only excuse offered by his counsel was that he was of a highly excitable disposition, and especially keen about these particular cherries.”
“I recollect something about the case,” said Harris, “now you mention it. I believe the district in which it happened — the ‘Commune’, as I think it is called — had to pay heavy compensation to the relatives of the deceased soldier; which was only fair.”
George said: “I am tired of this place. Besides, it’s getting late.”
Harris said: “If he goes at that rate he will fall and hurt himself. Besides, I don’t believe he knows the way.”
I felt lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to. Besides, not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down a really steep hill. I thought I would see if I could revive the sensation. It is a jerky exercise, but good, I should say, for the liver.
Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, 1914.
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September 5, 2015
Raising the minimum wage also means raising prices for many retailers
Louis DeBroux on the plight of some marginal businesses in California who are seeing lower support from their customers as they raise prices to ensure they can keep paying their current employees at the new mandated minimum wage:
Earlier this year, labor unions in Los Angeles whipped up low-wage workers into a frenzy with demands for a minimum “living” wage of $15 per hour. They achieved their goal and the $15/hour wage bill was signed into law. This was supposed to be a huge victory for the workers (though, it should be noted, within days of the law going into effect, the same labor unions that lobbied for the $15/hour minimum wage were lobbying government for an exemption for union companies, so that union companies could pay well below the new minimum wage).
Even so, some California business owners decided to show solidarity with the cause of low-wage workers, significantly increasing their starting wage of their own volition.
Vic Gumper, owner of Lanesplitter Pizza (with stores in Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville, California), voluntarily raised wages for his employees to between $15 to $25 per hour. In order to cover the cost of the higher “living” wage, Gumper began advertising $30 “living wage pizzas” to his customers, which include patrons from the Pixar Animation Studios and biotech companies located near his shops. In doing so he declared these pizzas “sustainably served, really … no tips necessary”.
The result? Sales have dropped by 25% as liberals in these communities have balked at having to pony up more money for the pizzas. The hit has been so significant that Gumper has had to close during lunch hour at several locations (think about that…a restaurant that has to close during LUNCH because it can’t afford to stay open!).
Gumper says that “The necessity of paying a living wage in the Bay Area [which has one of the highest costs of living in the nation] is clear, so it’s hard to argue against it, and it’s something I’m really proud to be able to try doing…At the same time, I’m terrified of going out of business after 18 years.”
There really isn’t a free lunch … if you use the power of government to raise the costs of doing business, either the local businesses pass on that increased cost by way of the prices they charge to their customers or they economize by reducing their labour costs (and the number of employees they support). A more drastic solution is going out of business or moving out of the jurisdiction: neither of which is typically considered during the legislative process.
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