Quotulatiousness

May 6, 2018

Peace and Revolution I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1919 Part 3 of 4

Filed under: Europe, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published on 5 May 2018

The Paris Peace Conference gets underway while the world continues to go up in flames. In 1919 it seems like every corner of the world is plagued by revolutions, strikes, protests, oppression, ethnic violence, massacres, or war.

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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

Justin Trudeau may (or may not) delay the legalization date for marijuana

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s just another day in Liberal Ottawa, as the Prime Minister briefly appears to wobble on the one election promise he’s close to fulfilling before the next election cycle begins. Colby Cosh manfully avoids a few drug-related jokes while recounting the latest “goffe” (as Gary Johnson actually said):

The legislative scenes preceding the three-quarters-legalization of marijuana in Canada continue to have an unreal, hallucinatory quality for which I am determined not to use the obvious metaphor. On Tuesday the Senate Aboriginal Peoples Committee presented the government with a demand that its vague summer legalization deadline be delayed by “up to one year” because Indigenous groups were not consulted closely enough on the effects of making it lawful to have a plant.

The prime minister, after some hemming and hawing, reiterated that legalization will happen on time, whatever the particular date happens to end up being. This will certainly come as a relief to the people who have poured zillions of dollars into a new horticultural and retail industry on the premise that it would, y’know, exist. Seeing how many of them are former Conservative politicians, perhaps they can be persuaded to buy a novena or two for a Liberal government that has — despite the unique moral pressure that Indigenous Canadians are capable of exercising, and in arguable defiance of its own history — decided to stick to an electoral promise.

Even as it is, the promise is taking most of the life of a Parliament to fulfill. Perhaps the conscience of Justin Trudeau, the little cartoon angel that perches on his shoulder and whispers progressive maxims in his ear, would have preferred to relent and toe the legalization deadline forward a year. Unfortunately, on the list of Trudeau’s political problems, “not being able to get stuff done in Canada” ranks alarmingly high at the moment.

In an ideal world, going along with the Senate committee and inflicting a wrestler’s piledriver on the economy for the sake of a principle might have been tempting. May 2018 is, alas, not really the time to be asking for that. It is precisely because so many interest groups and subnational governments have had to be negotiated with and appeased that pot legalization has taken so long — long enough that another election is in sight, with other elements of the Liberal program already in smithereens by the wayside.

Our Trip To Turkey Recap I THE GREAT WAR

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

The Great War
Published on 5 May 2018

Indy and Flo give you a small recap of our amazing trip to Turkey. Cool special episodes coming soon.

Now I understand why Google calls it a “campus”

Filed under: Business, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve worked in high tech for my entire career, and I’ve never worked at a company that had anything like this kind of non-work-related activity … it sounds much more like a university than a workplace (and I don’t mean that in a positive way):

A recent report in The Wall Street Journal chronicles the drama of a thoroughly politicized and tribal workplace at Google, where activist employee groups stage competing talks on their pet issues, and a growing number of former employees are suing the company for discrimination and bias.

The article opens with an incident that took place in January, when Ingrid Newkirk, the co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was slated to give a presentation at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters as part of the “Talks at Google” series.

The subject of her talk, which was organized by the “Googlers for Animals” employee group, was how animals can be subject to discrimination and bias just like people are. But another employee group, the “Black Googler Network,” understandably found the premise of the talk offensive and protested it. The talk was canceled at the last minute, as Newkirk was waiting in a parking lot outside Google.

“Such is the climate inside the tech giant, where fractious groups of employees have turned the workplace into a virtual war zone of debate over all manner of social and political beliefs,” wrote the Journal. “Google has long promoted a work culture that is more like a college campus—where loud debates and doctrinaire stances are commonplace—and today its parent, Alphabet Inc., is increasingly struggling to keep things under control.”

Welcome to Google, microcosm of America in 2018. Like nearly every facet of American life these days, Google’s workplace has become politicized, which means the company must now constantly adjudicate every offense that arises from an ever-growing roll call of the aggrieved.

Google reportedly has employee groups for every conceivable cause: “Activists at Google,” which is anti-Trump; “Militia at Google,” which is pushing for the ability to carry guns in the office; “Conservatives at Google,” which claims the company discriminates against right-leaning job candidates; and “Sex Positive at Google,” which doesn’t want explicit content removed from Google Drive file-sharing software. Like other tech companies, Google has cultivated a college atmosphere in the workplace. It seems the company has succeeded, but only in the sense that its workplace has fractured into competing identity groups.

How would anyone get any actual work done with all those competing circus acts clamouring for attention throughout the “work”day?

Tank Chats #29 Daimler Dingo Scout Car | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published on 21 Dec 2016

The wheeled armoured scout car was the British Army’s principal reconnaissance vehicle from the beginning of World War II until the 1980s.

Scout cars were small and much quieter than a tracked vehicle; units equipped with scout cars relied on stealth to obtain information, rather than fighting for it. The Daimler Dingo entered service with the British Army in 1939 and served until the middle 1960s as a reconnaissance and liaison vehicle used by armoured and infantry divisions.

It was so versatile that a multitude of uses were found for it: medical officers used them to search for casualties in the battle field while one unit even issued a Dingo to its chaplain!

QotD: The hierarchy of success for rock groups

Filed under: Business, Media, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

How do you define success for a rock group? The nature of the ladder is very clear at the bottom: the rungs are marked with “playing competently in the same key,” “playing for money for the first time,” “becoming spiritual leaders of a local music scene,” “having a national hit single” … it is all easy to work out. At the top, though, the standards are no longer technical and commercial. They become historical.

Above the level of “mere” successful hit-makers, there are artists whose core discography, or even their entire career in the studio, becomes part of a larger cultural story — the Led Zeppelins, Black Sabbaths and Kinks. And there’s a level above that, at which a group’s individual tracks become the subject of extensive study, entire mini-literatures — where even B-sides and cast-offs attract interest, and every move, every day, is extensively documented. That level’s pretty much Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

Colby Cosh, “The improbable media journey of The Tragically Hip”, National Post, 2016-08-22.

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