Quotulatiousness

August 31, 2016

Teddy Bridgewater’s 2016 season is already over

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:58

The team confirmed that Teddy Bridgewater’s injury is a full ACL tear and a dislocated left knee, so he has no chance to return to the football field this season. Fortunately, there was no nerve or arterial damage so Teddy is expected to make a full recovery. The estimated recovery time for injuries like this ranges from nine months to a year, so the Vikings have to expect that he won’t be able to play until perhaps early in the 2017 season, so the team will have to ensure that they have enough quarterback depth on the roster to cover a month or more next year.

Tom Pelissero wrote this for USA Today:

As the Minnesota Vikings awaited test results to confirm what they already knew, that a gruesome knee injury had ended quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s third season before it began, coach Mike Zimmer promised that his team wouldn’t spend long mourning.

“We’re not going to stick our heads in the sand,” Zimmer told reporters shortly after Bridgewater crumpled to the ground in Tuesday’s practice, untouched, leaving teammates to curse and pray before an ambulance took him away. “We’re going to figure out a way. Everyone can count us out if they want, but I think that’d be the wrong thing to do.”

Are the Vikings good enough as a team to carry out their Super Bowl hopes with 36-year-old journeyman Shaun Hill in Bridgewater’s place?

[…]

There may be opportunities to add an experienced quarterback as final cuts approach Saturday, though probably not an immediate starter. The Vikings have another young QB they like, a first-year pro from Old Dominion named Taylor Heinicke, on the active/non-football injury list, and he could get a look down the line if Hill stumbles. But that’s in the distance for now.

Zimmer made clear his chief focus now is preventing players from believing their season just went down with their quarterback.

“Hey, my wife passed away seven years ago, right? It was a tough day,” Zimmer said. “The sun came up the next day. The world kept spinning. People kept going to work. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

Sports writers have been imagining scenarios for the Vikings to follow, including outright fantasies like the Chicago Bears trading their backup quarterback within the division for a price the Vikings would be willing to pay. Quarterbacks currently unemployed or about to be (the next round of roster cuts are due on Saturday) are proffered as the solution, but the problem is really that the supply of quality starting quarterbacks is much less than the demand. There are 32 starting quarterback jobs and 32 backup jobs, but there are not enough qualified players to fill the starting roles, much less the backups. Minnesota knows this all too well, having had mediocre quarterbacks galore on the roster over the last few decades. Aside from Brett Favre’s last great season, Randall Cunningham’s last great season, and the too-few glory years of Daunte Culpepper, the Vikings have not had even an above-average quarterback in a quarter century. Teddy Bridgewater was the answer to the team’s prayers. Until yesterday. And he still might be … in 2017 and beyond. But for this year, it’s Shaun Hill’s job to lose (at least until Taylor Heinicke gets off the NFI list or Fran Tarkenton gets a full-body rejuvenation).

Hill was brought in to be a mentor to Teddy, and perhaps play a game or two in injury relief. At his age, neither he nor the team was expecting him to play a full season as the starter and it’s unreasonable to expect he’ll be able to do that (unless the improvements to the offensive line really have been nothing short of miraculous). Heinicke won’t be cleared to return to practice for at least a few more weeks, and while he showed great things in the 2015 preseason, he’s never thrown a pass in a regular season NFL game and will need several weeks to get back into shape. Andrew Krammer reported that Heinicke is a few weeks ahead of schedule on his recovery and could be back as soon as three weeks from now.

Joel Stave is the only other quarterback still on the roster and was probably not going to make the 53-man roster. Now he’ll be the number two until Heinicke is healthy and ready to play. Brad Sorenson was briefly on the roster until he was released yesterday, and some sources indicate he’s on his way back to Minnesota to re-sign with the team once he clears waivers. But Sorenson is also inexperienced and can’t be the answer to the Vikings’ quarterbacking woes.

As for all the other available quarterbacks right now, Arif Hasan puts it best in his response to Adam Caplan’s suggestions:

I think Colby Cosh has nailed this explanation

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Remy: This is CNN

Filed under: Humour, Media, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 29 Aug 2016

Remy is back to highlight what CNN considers news.

Written and performed by Remy. Music Mastered by Ben Karlstrom. Shot and Edited by Austin Bragg.

About 2 minutes.

Subscribe to Reason TV’s YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new material go live.

LYRICS:

Finally, what has gotten into Russia’s top Olympian?
Needles, apparently.
More on that later as we yield for Breaking News.
Ed? Thank You.

Breaking news that’s horribly tragic
and if your children are watching, we warn you, it’s graphic
our lead story tonight atop the report
was Donald Trump eating chicken with a knife and a fork?

Plus, this Trump supporter is 11 years old
so what are his thoughts on the — are you reading the scroll?
who he thinks is best fit to lead us
and would he have voted for Obamacare he was a fetus?

Look, I really don’t mean to step on your staging
but it seems like there’s war and some battles are raging
reporting the news — is that not our vow?
You know what, you’re right. I’ll cover it now

Well the war continues (yes!) on Twitter as planned (no…)
between Donald Trump and a Littleton man
The fighting is fierce, no sight of the end
follow it all on our app — you’re watching CNN

What I mean’s while we’re reading these trivial mysteries
people are dying, we’re losing our liberties
They’re inside our…wow…isn’t that banned?
Inside our hardware. I understand.

They could be in your phone at this very moment
Pokemons! This town is Pokemon Go-ing
Plus, this expensive beer — how hoppy’s the taste?
Fareed Zakaria is here to copy and paste.

Look, I really just think that there’s stuff that we missed
Like, holy crap, is that true? Does that list exist?
Cover the news. Shake up the ranks.
Yes! Do that. I’d lost my way. Thanks.

Well it’s a hidden document upon which fates swing
Fortune cookie fortunes — who’s writing those things!?
Plus, a man with no parachute just took a dive
in today’s most newsworthy instance of one flung from the sky

I know this is tough so forgive the belittling
Rome is engulfed and we’re sitting here fiddling
executive orders, economy stuttering
these are the stories we’re sitting here covering?

War in Afghanistan, hurt in Iraq
you’d need $5 foot-longs for Turkey this bad
Can we cut his mic?

Well, the war on whistleblowers continued today
we’ll update the condition of that Little League referee
Plus, it took the Olympics by storm, but what is it like to cup someone?
Josh Duggar is in the studio…

QotD: A scientific explanation of “the munchies”

Filed under: Health, Quotations, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Besides making a bongo drum sound inexplicably magical and enhancing a person’s ability to talk nonsense for extended periods of time, generations of cannabis smokers will recognise the “munchies” as one of the drug’s most reliable side-effects.

Now scientists have shown that the insatiable urge to eat after smoking is caused by cannabinoids hijacking brain cells that normally suppress appetite. The study suggests that cannabis causes the brain to produce a different set of chemicals that transform the feeling of fullness into a hunger that is never quite satisfied.

Scientists believe the findings, which illuminate a previously unknown aspect of the brain’s feeding circuitry, could help design new drugs that would boost or suppress appetite at will.

Tamas Horvath, who led the work at Yale University, said: “By observing how the appetite centre of the brain responds to marijuana, we were able to see what drives the hunger brought about by cannabis and how that same mechanism that normally turns off feeding becomes a driver of eating. It’s like pressing a car’s brakes and accelerating instead.”

Hannah Devlin, “Reefer research: cannabis ‘munchies’ explained by new study”, The Guardian, 2015-02-18.

August 30, 2016

Bridgewater injured in practice as Vikings announce first roster cuts

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:33

I began compiling this list of initial cuts the other day, but rather more disturbing news hit the wires a short while back: Teddy Bridgewater was injured during the afternoon practice:

The Minnesota Vikings canceled their practice Tuesday after quarterback Teddy Bridgewater suffered an apparently serious injury in a non-contact drill.

The Vikings asked reporters to leave the field area and to gather in the media room, where coach Mike Zimmer is expected to address Bridgewater’s injury.

Players removed their helmets and gathered around Bridgewater as the third-year quarterback was examined by medical personnel. An ambulance later drove onto the field.

If they called an ambulance, they’re clearly taking no chances with Bridgewater’s injury. The team obviously won’t have any definite information until the initial tests are performed — and head coach Mike Zimmer has been extremely cautious about sharing injury information with the media this year, so we may not hear anything concrete for a while. Zimmer will hold a press conference at 4 Central time to provide an update on Bridgewater’s condition.

Roster cuts so far…

All NFL teams have to reduce their rosters to 75 players under contract. As I mentioned in an update to the game report from Sunday’s contest with the Chargers, the Vikings are looking for a trade partner for centre John Sullivan. No trade offers materialized, so unfortunately Sullivan has been cut.

  • RT Austin Shepherd 74 – Shepherd was a bit of a surprise cut this early, but he’d clearly been pushed down the depth chart by off-season free agent signings and didn’t do enough in training camp to stick around for another season. He should be eligible for the practice squad, but going in the first round of cuts may mean the team is no longer interested in developing his skills.

  • RG Sean Hickey 66 (FA) – This wasn’t a surprise, as I hadn’t seen his name mentioned in training camp round-ups or game reports, so he didn’t catch the eyes of the coaches during the month he was on the team.

  • QB Brad Sorensen (FA) – Sorenson was a late addition to the roster, only being signed to the team nine days ago. His cut was one of the easiest to predict.
  • WR Marken Michel 9 (UDFA) – Another player who didn’t register in the coverage of camp or the first three preseason games, which is usually a strong indicator that they won’t find a roster spot. Arif Hasan’s take:

    • Michel looked good in spurts at camp, but his cut was easy to predict just from his playing time. He took two snaps on offense all preseason, behind the rarely seen Moritz Böhringer and Isaac Fruechte. His eight special teams snaps didn’t make up for the difference.

    An interesting athletic talent that looked good with the ball in his hands at Massachusetts, Michel couldn’t generate that same quickness as a route-runner and he doesn’t have the size or speed to hang his hat on another trump card.

  • LDE Theiren Cockran 67 (UDFA) – Cockran’s name came up a few times during the OTA sessions, but faded from view once training camp got underway.

  • DT Claudell Louis 74 (UDFA) – Louis was a long-shot, having only been signed to the roster in late July. Arif Hasan thought Louis had a good camp performance:

    • After recently having earned his U.S. citizenship, it would have been a nice followup for Claudell Louis to make an NFL roster. Unfortunately, without seeing a single snap in three preseason games despite being healthy, Louis couldn’t make his case in live play. It’s a shame, because I thought Louis actually had a good camp despite being a late camp signing who found himself on the roster after Heinicke found his foot in a door.

    Still, he was behind several rounds of defensive tackles — not just the starting pair of Linval Joseph and Sharrif Floyd, but Tom Johnson/Shamar Stephen, Kenrick Ellis/Toby Johnson and nickel rotations that included Scott Crichton and Zach Moore.

  • LB Terrance Plummer – Plummer has been through this before, as he was signed to the roster early in the off-season, released in April and then re-signed early in August.

  • CB Melvin White 31 (FA) – White’s release was announced on the August 25. The Vikings have a number of potentially very good young corners (Rhodes, Waynes, and Alexander), so White had too steep a hill to climb to make the roster.
  • TE Brian Leonhardt 87 (FA) – Another player who hoped to join a very good tight ends group, but was unable to show more potential than last year’s holdovers or 2016 draft pick David Morgan. Arif Hasan:

    • The gap between the top three tight ends in camp — Kyle Rudolph, MyCole Pruitt and David Morgan — and the bottom two — Kyle Carter and Brian Leonhardt — is enormous. Add to that the fact that Rhett Ellison is expected to contribute as early as week one (once taken off the PUP list in the offseason, one cannot be PUP’d for the regular season for the same injury), and it’s difficult to see how Carter or Leonhardt could have contributed.

  • WR Terrell Sinkfield 16 (FA) – Sinkfield was also competing at a crowded position and was unable to show enough to encourage the coaches to give him one more game where he might be able to show enough to stay on the roster.
  • C John Sullivan 65 – It’s sad to see Sullivan released after a very good career with the Vikings. He was drafted in 2008 and took over the starting centre position in 2009. After missing all of last year on injured reserve, he was unable to recapture the job from Joe Berger and the team was unable to find a trade partner before the cut-down deadline. Rick Spielman wrote of Sullivan:

    • “Our entire organization appreciates everything that John Sullivan has done for this franchise. Sullivan led our team, not only with how he played the game, but also with how he handled himself in our community. We wish John Sullivan and his family nothing but the best as they move forward.”

  • S Antone Exum Jr. 32 – Exum has all the physical gifts but never quite seemed to get the mental side of Mike Zimmer’s defence.
  • DT Scott Chrichton 95 – Much was expected of Chrichton, but he was never able to get on the field enough to show what he was capable of doing.
  • WR Troy Stoudermire 1 (FA) – As with Sinkfield, he was buried too far down the wide receiver list to get enough playing time.
  • G Mike Harris has been moved to the reserve/non-football injury list.

The Invention And Development of Submarines I THE GREAT WAR Special

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Published on 29 Aug 2016

Submarine warfare is one of the lasting impacts of World War 1. Especially the unrestricted submarine warfare by the German navy was a big problem for the British supply routes. But the development and improvement of submarines was not a German story at first.

The Brothers Gracchi – II: Populares – Extra History

Filed under: Europe, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 13 Aug 2016

Tiberius Gracchus took up the cause of land reform, determined to restore property rights to the average citizen and curtail the abuses of the rich. But another tribune vetoed his proposed law, so Tiberius began to fight back with his own veto and ground the government to a halt. At last, he held a special vote to remove his opponent from office so that his land reform bill could pass. ____________

Tiberius Gracchus returned from war to find a Rome where soldiers reaped no rewards for their service, and the rich worked all the farmland with slaves who were the spoils of war. Determined to fix this, he took up the cause of land reform. His first goal: to restore the ager publicus, or “public land.” Tradition held that some of the land won in war would always be set aside and distributed to the citizens, with no one allowed to hold more than 500 acres of it, but the rich had ignored that law so long that no one even tried to enforce it. Tiberius got himself electrd as tribune and wrote a law that didn’t punish the rich, just asked them to surrender their illegally held land after the state paid them for it. Nevertheless, the richest of the rich accused him of trying to foment a revolution. They tried and failed to turn the people against Tiberius, but when his law passed anyway, they recruited one of his fellow tribunes to veto the law. Tiberius responded by drafting another, harsher version of the law – only to see this one vetoed also. He began using his own veto in retaliation, refusing to let any other law pass and stopping the senate from withdrawing money from the treasury. Government ground to a halt. Roman government had always relied on the responsible use of powers that were now being abused, and the snowball began to roll downhill. Tiberius took the unprecedented measure of holding a special vote to get his opponent, Octavius, removed from office by popular vote. Despite Octavius’s efforts to hold out, the people voted with Tiberius: Octavius was stripped from office and barely escaped from the Campus Martius with his life after an angry crowd turned on him. But at last, with no more opposition from Octavius, the agrarian reform law proposed by Tiberius Gracchus passed.

QotD: The proper reaction to an Olympic bid for your city

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Sports — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Local boosters frequently argue that the Olympics will produce a wave — a veritable tsunami — of economic benefits. The reality, as the Economist says, is that “prudent city governments should avoid the contests at all costs.” This does not really capture it. Prudent city governments should run screaming from any proposals to host the Olympics, and napalm the spot where the proposals were found, just to be safe.

Megan McArdle, “The Olympics Don’t Have to Be a Disaster”, Bloomberg News, 2016-08-10.

August 29, 2016

Vikings beat San Diego Chargers 23-10 in third preseason game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Sunday’s grand opening of the new U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis was carried on Fox, so I was able to watch the game between the Chargers and the Vikings from the comfort of my rec room, rather than just following my Twitter feed for live updates. As with all preseason games, there were good and bad aspects, but the third preseason game tends to be the one that teams take quite seriously and usually play their starters for most of the first half. The first round of roster cuts come up very soon — teams have to get down to only 75 players on Tuesday — so this is professional do-or-die time for a lot of players at the bottom of the roster sheets.

For the Vikings, a few starters were held out for the game, including current NFL rushing champ Adrian Peterson (who hasn’t had a meaningful preseason snap in several years), left tackle Matt Kalil, defensive end Everson Griffen, middle linebacker Eric Kendricks, and cornerback Xavier Rhodes. In a bit of a surprise, the starting centre was Joe Berger instead of the veteran John Sullivan (Berger is also a veteran player, but played all of last season at centre after Sullivan was injured).

The first drive of the game was quite encouraging for Vikings fans as the team drove efficiently down the field before the drive stalled in the red zone and they had to settle for a Blair Walsh field goal. Teddy Bridgewater showed that he has some athletic moves on a 22-yard scramble and Jerick McKinnon got a 35-yard gain on the same drive.

The second Vikings drive came quite soon as Harrison Smith intercepted a Philip Rivers pass off a deflection by Trae Waynes, but the team still couldn’t capitalize and came away with only a second field goal.

On San Diego’s next possession, the Vikings dialed up a big blitz but missed running back Melvin Gordon who ran 39 yards for the Chargers’ first score. Backup middle linebacker Audie Cole hit Rivers just as Gordon got the ball and safety Michael Griffin whiffed on Gordon in the open field. After the game, head coach Mike Zimmer said the blame was on him for a bad defensive call.

The Vikings’ next drive ended prematurely as tight end Kyle Rudolph had the ball stripped after a nice throw from Bridgewater and the Chargers were able to recover. San Diego briefly increased the lead on a field goal with about 2:28 left to play in the first half, and then Teddy Bridgewater put on a passing clinic with consecutive passes of 19, 22, and 27 yards and a touchdown to Kyle Rudolph. The two-point attempt after that failed, so the Vikings took a 12-10 lead into the halftime break. Bridgewater finished the half with a stat line of 12-of-16 for 161 yards and a passer rating of 127.3 (down from his 158.3 rating from the first preseason game).

The next points scored were a bit of a mess as tight end MyCole Pruitt took a Shaun Hill pass close to the goal line and then fumbled the ball. The ball was advanced into the end zone by a Chargers player and wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson recovered the fumble for a Vikings touchdown. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. First round pick wide receiver Laquon Treadwell caught a pass from Hill for the two-point conversion, moving the score to 20-10. Later in the fourth quarter, Blair Walsh scored another field goal to make the final score 23-10.

In defensive action, former Clemson teammates Mackensie Alexander and Jayron Kearse each secured an interception:

For the second time this preseason, college teammates Mackensie Alexander and Jayron Kearse each grabbed interceptions. Kearse was in the right spot at the right time to take in an overthrown Mike Bercovici pass. Alexander, after dropping an INT opportunity two plays prior, made an impressive interception in the end zone on a pass from Bercovici to Rasheed Bailey. Alexander and Kearse both played for Clemson and both were selected in last May’s draft – Alexander a second-round pick and Kearse a seventh-rounder. Another young defensive back impressed, as well, with Waynes registering a pass breakup and also finishing in good position on other passes thrown his way.

Of course, after doing something really good on the field, Mac Alexander then went over to taunt the San Diego bench, drawing a well-deserved unsportsmanlike conduct penalty:

A dictionary example of a “rookie mistake”.

The Vikings will host the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday in their fourth and final preseason game, after which all teams have to cut down to their 53-man rosters (practice squad players can be signed 24 hours after the “final” rosters are announced). Even more than the second half of the third preseason game, expect pretty much the entire fourth game to be filled with players desperate to attract the attention of coaches in hopes of latching on with a team (their own or some other team … getting into the NFL on a roster is what matters). Translated, this means don’t expect to see any star players take the field for more than token efforts this coming week: no rational coach is willing to risk star players getting injured in utterly meaningless snaps this late in the preseason (and should be strongly criticized if they do).

Update: Tom Pelissero is reporting that the Vikings are looking to trade John Sullivan, and it now makes sense that he didn’t get into the Chargers game.

Debunking “the 1950s as some sort of golden age of progressivism”

Filed under: History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

James O’Brien selects a few imaginative historical myths for debunking:

Here are a few facts about U.S. life 60 years ago, in 1956:

  • The top tax rate was largely irrelevant. The average household income in 1956 was about $4,800. Only 8 percent of families earned more than $10,000 per year. The 91 percent top tax rate (and that really was the top tax rate – a holdover from World War II) kicked in at $400,000 for married couples, or the equivalent of about $3.2 million today). While few individuals made that much money in 1956, people who did earn large sums of money could deduct everything from interest on auto loans to sales taxes, and could – and did – structure things so that their income was funneled through tax shelters at much lower rates.
  • There was a lot less money overall. Adjusted for inflation, that $4,800 average household income would be about $42,000 today. That is roughly 20 percent less than current average household income of about $53,000. Even in 1956, when a Harvard education cost $1000 per year, $400 per month hardly afforded a riotous existence for a family of four. One of the most striking things about 1956 was how little people at the top of their professions earned. Yogi Berra – the highest paid player in Major League Baseball that year – received $58,000. That would be a little over $500,000 today, essentially minimum wage by MLB standards.
  • Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP were about the same as they are today. Since 1945, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have fluctuated within a fairly narrow range of 15 to 20 percent. The state of the economy, not tax rates, has determined how much the government takes in. Despite the high marginal rates of the 1950s, the tax intake as a percentage of GDP was just 16.5 percent in 1956. It was 18 percent in 2015, so we are actually taking in more, rather than less money, although we are spending it in many new and different areas.
  • Government spent less on everything but defense. The U.S. Federal budget for 1956 might best be described as “Spartan”, not in the sense of being frugal (although it was that) but in the sense of being primarily devoted to preparations for war. In the Cold War climate, defense spending soaked up 60 percent ($47 billion) of the total $76 billion Federal budget – about three times the current percentage — and spending on “social programs” was essentially nonexistent. There was no Department of Education, and total Federal spending on education was just $1.5 billion. Healthcare expenditures were just $1.0 billion; there was no Medicare, (which now represents 15 percent of the total Federal budget), no Medicaid, and certainly no Obamacare. The Interstate Highway Program – so beloved by liberals – was conceived as a defense spending measure and was designed to be self-funding through diesel and gasoline taxes.
  • Opportunities were anything but equal. Racial discrimination was rampant and gender bias was everywhere. Many fields were essentially closed to women and to people of color, while quota systems deterred talented Jewish students from pursuing careers in fields such as engineering and law. We can argue all we want about white privilege in 2016 but in 1956 it was endemic, and bred not just economic but social and cultural inequality.

When we look at the United States in 1956 we see a country with high (but largely irrelevant) marginal tax rates, no social programs to speak of, and a massive defense budget. With Europe still recovering from World War II, the economy is strong, and companies are willing to spend and hire. The country’s focus, however, is not on the welfare of its people, but on its survival in a grim ideological and geopolitical struggle with a ruthless and determined opponent. Those who portray the 1950s as some sort of golden age of progressivism are writing historical fiction, not history.

The 1950s for the United States (and for Canada) were, to borrow a notion from John Scalzi, run in “easy mode” — in game terms, the lowest difficulty setting. There was no peer-level competition in manufacturing or even in services and this provided profit levels that allowed both corporations and workers to enjoy unrealistic long-term conditions that finally came to an end in the gas shocks of the 1970s, after the devastated economies of the defeated Axis powers finally were able to compete again. Twenty-five years of minimal competition left the major corporations totally unable to cope with even minimal competitive pressures from overseas … but willing to use whatever political levers were available to try to quash those foreign upstarts.

But as the courtiers of King Canute were finally obliged to accept, even the King can’t order the tide to recede when it’s convenient.

QotD: Conflating the Hobbesian and Rousseauvian views of mankind

Filed under: Government, History, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[…] there is a second, possibly more important source of the man-as-killer myth in the philosophy of the Enlightenment — Thomas Hobbes’s depiction of the state of nature as a “warre of all against all”, and the reactionary naturism of Rousseau and the post-Enlightenment Romantics. Today these originally opposing worldviews have become fused into a view of nature and humanity that combines the worst (and least factual) of both.

Hobbes, writing a rationalization of the system of absolute monarchy under the Stuart kings of England, constructed an argument that in a state of nature without government the conflicting desires of human beings would pit every man against his neighbor in a bloodbath without end. Hobbes referred to and assumed “wild violence” as the normal state of humans in what anthropologists now call “pre-state” societies; that very term, in fact, reflects the Hobbesian myth,

The obvious flaw in Hobbes’s argument is that he mistook a sufficient condition for suppressing the “warre” (the existence of a strong central state) for a necessary one. He underestimated the innate sociability of human beings. The anthropological and historical record affords numerous examples of “pre-state” societies (even quite large multiethnic/multilingual populations) which, while violent against outsiders, successfully maintained internal peace.

If Hobbes underestimated the sociability of man, Rousseau and his followers overestimated it; or, at least, they overestimated the sociability of primitive man. By contrasting the nobility and tranquility they claimed to see in rural nature and the Noble Savage with the all-too-evident filth, poverty and crowding in the booming cities of the Industrial Revolution, they secularized the Fall of Man. As their spiritual descendants today still do, they overlooked the fact that the urban poor had unanimously voted with their feet to escape an even nastier rural poverty.

The Rousseauian myth of technological Man as an ugly scab on the face of pristine Nature has become so pervasive in Western culture as to largely drive out the older opposing image of “Nature, red in tooth and claw” from the popular mind. Perhaps this was inevitable as humans achieved more and more control over their environment; protection from famine, plague, foul weather, predators, and other inconveniences of nature encouraged the fond delusion that only human nastiness makes the world a hard place.

[…]

In reality, Nature is a violent arena of intra- and inter-species competition in which murder for gain is an everyday event and ecological fluctuations commonly lead to mass death. Human societies, outside of wartime, are almost miraculously stable and nonviolent by contrast. But the unconscious prejudice of even educated Westerners today is likely to be that the opposite is true. The Hobbesian view of the “warre of all against all” has survived only as a description of human behavior, not of the wider state of nature. Pop ecology has replaced pop theology; the new myth is of man the killer ape.

Eric S. Raymond, “The Myth of Man the Killer”, Armed and Dangerous, 2003-07-15.

August 28, 2016

German War Aims – War Economy I OUT OF THE TRENCHES

Filed under: Europe, France, Germany, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Published on 27 Aug 2016

It’s time for the Chair of Wisdom again and this week we talk about the German war aims and the war economy.

Avoiding the “sexist hellhole of traditional publishing”

Filed under: Books, Business — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

“Passive Guy” comments on an article in the Guardian where a female author relates her experiences of submitting the same cover letter and sample pages to 50 agents, receiving only two responses when she used her real name, but 17 when she used a male pseudonym:

The OP [original poster] admits sexist agents included both men and women. PG doesn’t know of any formal studies, but he would bet the majority of agents are women. And the majority of editors working at publishers and acquiring books are women.

There’s only one logical conclusion – female authors should avoid the sexist hellholes of traditional publishing and self-publish. Starve the biased beast. Male authors should do the same thing in a show of solidarity.

QotD: Religious opinions

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world. The minute a new one is launched, in whatever field, some imbecile of a theologian is certain to fall upon it, seeking to put it down. The most effective way to defend it, of course, would be to fall upon the theologian, for the only really workable defense, in polemics as in war, is a vigorous offensive. But the convention that I have mentioned frowns upon that device as indecent, and so theologians continue their assault upon sense without much resistance, and the enlightenment is unpleasantly delayed.

There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly. If you doubt it, then ask any pious fellow of your acquaintance to put what he believes into the form of an affidavit, and see how it reads … “I, John Doe, being duly sworn, do say that I believe that, at death, I shall turn into a vertebrate without substance, having neither weight, extent nor mass, but with all the intellectual powers and bodily sensations of an ordinary mammal; … and that, for the high crime and misdemeanor of having kissed my sister-in-law behind the door, with evil intent, I shall be boiled in molten sulphur for one billion calendar years.” Or, “I, Mary Roe, having the fear of Hell before me, do solemnly affirm and declare that I believe it was right, just, lawful and decent for the Lord God Jehovah, seeing certain little children of Beth-el laugh at Elisha’s bald head, to send a she-bear from the wood, and to instruct, incite, induce and command it to tear forty-two of them to pieces.” Or, “I, the Right Rev._____ _________, Bishop of _________,D.D., LL.D., do honestly, faithfully and on my honor as a man and a priest, declare that I believe that Jonah swallowed the whale,” or vice versa, as the case may be. No, there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even about theology, and not many of them are honest. One may forgive a Communist or a Single Taxer on the ground that there is something the matter with his ductless glands, and that a Winter in the south of France would relieve him. But the average theologian is a hearty, red-faced, well-fed fellow with no discernible excuse in pathology. He disseminates his blather, not innocently, like a philosopher, but maliciously, like a politician. In a well-organized world he would be on the stone-pile. But in the world as it exists we are asked to listen to him, not only politely, but even reverently, and with our mouths open.

H.L. Mencken, The American Mercury, 1930-03; first printed, in part, in the Baltimore Evening Sun, 1929-12-09.

August 27, 2016

Scott Adams finds a silver lining to the 2016 presidential race

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

I didn’t think it was possible, but Scott Adams points out two unexpectedly positive things that have come to pass despite the two leading candidates for the office of President of the United States being two of the most obnoxious and polarizing human beings ever to enter the race:

Hillary Clinton has already broken the ultimate glass ceiling. I see no discussion – in private or in public – about the role of her gender. Clinton did that for you and your daughters. She took gender off the table for the most important job in the land. It doesn’t matter who gets elected now. Clinton already made the gender sale. In 2016, nearly all American citizens believe a woman can, and will, be president. Because of Hillary Clinton. That’s a big deal.

I know that some of you think Clinton “cheated” because she used the advantage of her husband’s presidency to seek her own destiny. But keep in mind that ALL successful people exploit their unique advantages. Clinton just did it better. She isn’t here by accident.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump turned the GOP into a pro-LGBTQ organization. No one saw that coming. And I think it is sticking. That’s a big deal.

So, while we were watching the two most odious personalities on the planet hurl lies and insults at each other, those two odious personalities were bringing civilization toward the light. And succeeding.

Don’t lose that.

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