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October 23, 2017

Baltimore Ravens at Minnesota: stout defence and field goals galore in 24-16 Vikings win

Filed under: Football — Tags: Baltimore, MinnesotaVikings, NFL — Nicholas @ 05:00

Vikings quarterback Sam Bradford didn’t practice at all this week, so he was clearly not going to be playing against Baltimore, this meant that backup Case Keenum automatically became the starter for the game. Keenum didn’t show his abilities to their best during the game (20-of-31 passing for 188 yards and a passer rating of 67.7 and a pick), leading to placekicker Kai Forbath being the key scorer for Minnesota (six field goals from 52, 51, 43, 43, 34 and 32 yards, but a missed extra point to keep him humble), while Baltimore kicker Justin Tucker threatened to score from well outside normal kicking distances (48, 57 and 47 yards, yet the game announcers seemed sure he could make it from inside his own 20 yard line). Still, ugly games count just the same as awesome ones, so chalk this one up as an ugly win.

Both teams were missing key players: Baltimore was already down most of their top receivers (Breshad Perriman, Chris Matthews and Jeremy Maclin) when Mike Wallace took a hit from Vikings safety Andrew Sendejo early in the first half which put him into the NFL’s concussion protocol (Sendejo was penalized for unnecessary roughness on the tackle, which negated a fumble recovery by Xavier Rhodes). Minnesota was missing both Stefon Diggs and Michael Floyd, which gave rarely used veteran Jarius Wright an opportunity to shine, making some clutch catches to extend Viking drives. Nick Easton had been ruled out, so Jeremiah Sirles got the start at left guard, and both Sirles and starting left tackle Riley Reiff suffered injuries during the game, so backup tackle Rashod Hill and rookie guard Danny Isidora got into the game as replacements.

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Today I learned a new word: Pigmentocracy

Filed under: Africa, Business, Health, Media — Tags: Advertising, Ghana, Nigeria, Racism, Women — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the Guardian, Afua Hirsch writes about the recent Nivea skin cream video to explain why the ad is so controversial:

“Now I have visibly fairer skin, making me feel younger,” declares the Nigerian actor Omowunmi Akinnifesi in an advert for a new face cream. The ad, for the global skincare brand Nivea, was only ever intended to reach a west African audience, but predictably – has Nivea heard of the internet? – it has been watched and shared millions of times around the world including in the UK, where most of us live in blissful ignorance of the fact that some of our most popular brands openly promote the idea in other markets that white is right.

Nivea says the ad was not intended to offend, but offence is not the point. The global market for skin lightening products, of which west Africa is a significant part, is worth $10bn (£7.6bn). Advertising has a long and unbroken history of promoting and normalising white beauty standards, and if Britain built its empire as a geopolitical and ideological project, the advertising industry commodified it. Soap brands such as Pears built a narrative that cast Africa as dark and its people as dirty, the solution to which – conveniently – was soap. Cleansing, lightening and civilising in one handy bar.

These days the marketing has become much more sophisticated. Ads speak of “toning” as code for whitening. Lancôme, which a few years ago got in trouble for using Emma Watson’s image to market its Blanc Expert line in Asia, emphasised that it does not lighten, but rather “evens skin tone, and provides a healthy-looking complexion … an essential part of Asian women’s beauty routines”.

[…]

Shadism, pigmentocracy – the idea of privilege accruing to lighter-skinned black people – and other hierarchies of beauty are a complex picture in which ads such as Nivea’s are only the obvious tip of an insidious iceberg. Celebrities with darker complexions, such as the Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech – nicknamed Queen of the Dark – and actors such as Lupita Nyong’o, are so often discussed in the context of having achieved the seemingly impossible by being both dark and beautiful, that they become the exceptions that prove the rule.

It is often observed that light-skinned black women are more likely to become global superstars, the Beyoncé-Rihanna effect. They are, however, still black women and therefore not immune from the pressure to lighten – most recently by fans following a new Photoshopping trend of posting pictures of whitened versions of their faces and remarking upon the improvement.

In countries such as Ghana, the intended audience for the Nivea ad, and Nigeria – where an estimated 77% of women use skin-lightening products – the debate has so far, understandably, focused on health. The most toxic skin-lightening ingredients, still freely available, include ingredients such as hydroquinone, mercury and corticosteroid. It’s not unusual for these to be mixed with caustic agents ranging from automotive battery acid, washing power, toothpaste and cloth bleaching agents, with serious and irreversible health consequences.

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It’s legal to sell 2×4 lumber that’s not actually 2″ by 4″

Filed under: Business, Law, Woodworking — Tags: Illinois, Lawyers, Marketing, Materials — Nicholas @ 03:00

Not only is it legal, that’s the way construction lumber has been marketed and sold for decades. A recent Illinois case against US DIY chain Menards was dismissed recently:

A federal judge has slammed the door on the Illinois lumber shoppers who sued Menards claiming it deceived them about the size of its 4x4s.

Saying no reasonable consumer would regard Menards’ descriptions of its lumber the way plaintiffs Michael Fuchs and Vladislav Krasilnikov said they did, the judge last week dismissed the would-be class action lawsuit against the Wisconsin-based home-improvement chain.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang throws out a case in which Menards was accused of deception because it marketed and labeled its 4x4s without specifying that the boards measure 3½ by 3 ½ inches.

So-called dimensional lumber — 2x4s, 4x4s, 2x6s and such — is commonly sold by names that do not specify the measurements of the pieces. The longstanding industry convention is recognized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which distinguishes between the “nominal” designations for pieces of lumber and their actual size. The department says a 2×4, for example, can measure 1½ inches thick by 3½ inches wide.

The distinction between the name and the actual dimensions stems from the fact that lumber, when it is produced, typically is trimmed to smooth it after the initial rough cut, Chang said in his decision.

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The Spitfire’s Fatal Flaw

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: Aircraft, Engineering — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Engineering
Published on 3 Aug 2016

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QotD: Cargo cult economics

Filed under: Economics, Quotations, USA — Tags: Banking, Housing, Poverty, University — Nicholas @ 01:00

Once upon a time, government officials decided it would help them keep their jobs if they could claim they had expanded the middle class. Unfortunately, none of them really understood economics or even the historical factors that led to the emergence of the middle class in the first place. But they did know two things: middle class people tended to own their own homes, and they sent their kids to college.

So in true cargo cult fashion, they decided to increase the middle class by promoting these markers of being middle class. They threw the Federal government strongly behind promoting home ownership and college education. A large part of this effort entailed offering easy debt financing for housing and education. Because the whole point was to add poorer people to the middle class, there was a strong push to strip away traditional underwriting criteria for these loans (e.g., down payments, credit history, actual income to pay debt, etc.)

We know what happened in the housing market. The government promoted home ownership with easy loans, and made these loans a favorite investment by giving them a preferential treatment in the capital requirements for banks. And then the bubble burst, with the government taking the blame for the bubble. Just kidding, the government blamed private lenders for their lax underwriting standards, conveniently forgetting that every President since Reagan had encouraged such laxity (they called it something else, like “giving access to the poor”, but it means the same thing).

Warren Meyer, “Cargo Cult Social Engineering”, Coyote Blog, 2012-11-28.

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