Quotulatiousness

November 19, 2017

Missing Argentine submarine may have been located (Updated)

Filed under: Americas, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:35

The BBC is reporting some hope for the 44 crew members of the Argentine Navy submarine ARA San Juan, which went missing on a routine mission this week:

ARA San Juan in an undated photo at her base in Mar del Plata
Photo via Wikimedia.

Signals have been detected that are thought to have come from an Argentine submarine that went missing with 44 crew on board, officials say.

The defence ministry is now trying to trace the location of the seven failed satellite calls received on Saturday.

[…]

The ARA San Juan was returning from a routine mission to Ushuaia, near the southern-most tip of South America, to its base at Mar del Plata, south of Buenos Aires.

Its last contact with the navy command was on Wednesday morning.

An Argentine destroyer and two corvettes are conducting a search around the area of the sub’s last known position off the south-eastern Valdez peninsula.

But so far there are no clues about its whereabouts.

It is thought that the submarine may have had communication difficulties caused by a power cut.

Navy protocol dictates that a vessel should come to the surface if communication has been lost.

Update, 31 January 2018: Earlier this month, CDR Salamander shared a graphic summarizing the US Office of Naval Intelligence acoustic detection analysis of the ARA San Juan:

[Click to see full size image]

Update, 19 November, 2018: The New York Daily News reports that the remains of the ARA San Juan have definitely been located about 700 miles east of Puerto Madryn at a depth of over 2800 feet.

An Argentine submarine that vanished with 44 crew members aboard was found at the bottom of the South Atlantic Ocean a year and a day after it disappeared, authorities said.

The wreckage of the ARA San Juan was located 2,850 feet deep, and about 700 miles east of the city of Puerto Madryn.

“It appears to be complete, but it obviously imploded,” Argentine naval Capt. Gabriel Attis told reporters, CNN reported, adding the sub’s hull was “totally deformed, collapsed and imploded.”

The [220]-foot vessel vanished off the coast of Argentina on Nov. 15, 2017, as it traveled back to its base in the coastal city of Mar Del Plata.

Development of British Tank Tactics 1917 I THE GREAT WAR Special

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published on 18 Nov 2017

The Battle of Cambrai 100 years ago was one of the pivotal moments for the British Tank Corps and tank combat in general. For the first time, the tanks were deployed in a way that they could play to their strengths.

The case for a “social” statute of limitations

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

Megan McArdle recounts a few incidents and wonders if it’s rational or fair to apply today’s social rules to interactions that happened years or decades ago:

These events, after all, took place at least two decades ago. In some cases, cultural norms really have changed. I’d be shocked now to hear a really dirty joke told at work, but in my early twenties, I don’t recall even being mildly nonplussed. I’m not saying that the norms of those workplaces were right, but I am saying that the men who told them did not have mens rea: the knowledge that they were doing something wrong. And in general, it’s a bad idea to punish people for trespassing against rules they didn’t know. Or rules that didn’t exist.

But even if they had known, I still wouldn’t be eager to out and punish them now. I did a lot of things decades ago that I regret, and I would hate to be held accountable for them now as if they’d happened last week. And since I hope to grow and change a bit in the coming decades, I’d also hate to be punished in some far tomorrow for the norms — or even the folly — of today.

So it seems worth asking whether we need some sort of statute of limitations on these kinds of offenses in our culture, not just in our laws. It would not be a blanket pardon for anyone who manages to go unreported through the five- or 10-year mark. It would be a mitigating factor in deciding how to respond in the present to actions from another time: autre temps, autre moeurs.

The question when confronted with reports of decades-old misdeeds is not “Would this guy be a creep if he did this today?” Better to ask: “Was he better or worse than his environment?” And also: “Is there reason to believe he might have changed since then?”

Some cads and criminals would fail all these tests. And if the offense was last year, or if the accused attempts to intimidate the victim or explain away the transgression, then the answer to those questions is probably “No.” But if a man shamefacedly confesses that he made a mistake decades ago, through bad understanding or bad judgment, just how far are we willing to go in shunning him? To the same extreme we would for a recent, remorseless, serial offender?

If so, how many of us are willing to live under that standard — in which the sins of our distant past are ripe for litigation at any moment? In which the court of public opinion issues the same summary judgment immediately after every accusation? In which every defendant’s reputation and contributions are discarded into the same garbage heap, no matter what the age or nature of the offense?

Unique Ross Experimental A2 Pistol Prototype

Filed under: Cancon, History, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 13 Mar 2017

This is a very rare Ross automatic pistol, patented in 1903 by Charles Ross, of the Ross Rifle Company in Quebec. It is a short recoil, toggle locked design, made for the .45 Ross proprietary cartridge (although efforts were made, unsuccessfully, to make a .45 ACP version for the US 1907 pistol trials).

QotD: The Clintons

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

The Clintons? Hillary got rich, Bill got laid, republican virtue got screwed. Like the sickly leaders of late-Soviet politburos, both appear older and feebler than their years: once the star performer of the double-act, Bill staggers around like the Blowjob of Dorian Gray; the life has all but literally been sucked out of him. His straight-woman, once the reliably stolid, stone-faced Margaret Dumont of his cigar-waggling routine, now has to be propped up on street bollards and fed lines by her medical staff. When she shuts down and she’s out cold, who’s driving the pantsuit? Huma? Cheryl? Podesta? Bill and Hillary have been consumed by their urges. America would be electing the Walking Dead, insatiable and fatal to the touch, but utterly hollow.

Mark Steyn, “Hollow E’en”, Steyn Online, 2016-11-01.

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