Feature History
Published on 21 May 2017Hello and welcome to Feature History, featuring Meiji Restoration, a fancy schmancy collab, and most likely too many bill wurtz references in the comments.
Rackam’s Life & Times of Tokugawa Ieyasu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6fR8oDewdg
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/FeatureHistory
https://twitter.com/Feature_History
———————————————————————————————————–
I do the research, writing, narration, art, and animation. Yes, it is very lonely
Music
Jeff Van Dyck – The Shoto
Jeff Van Dyck – Ona Hei
Jeff Van Dyck – Sonaiyo
Jeff Van Dyck – Now and Zen
Jeff Van Dyck – Fudo Myo March
Jeff Van Dyck – Rock and a Hard Place
Jeff Van Dyck – Winds of Fate
Jeff Van Dyck – Duty Calls
Jeff Van Dyck – Battle of Shinobue
Jeff Van Dyck – The Harvest
Jeff Van Dyck – Death Cures a Fool
Jeff Van Dyck – The Fall of the Samurai
Jeff Van Dyck – Stalemate
June 18, 2018
Feature History – Meiji Restoration
QotD: Spoiled brats
It is sad to see parents turn basically good-natured kids into spoiled brats by neglecting to impose any discipline. Some of these kids may never stop being spoiled brats, no matter how old they get.
Thomas Sowell, “A Few Assorted Thoughts About Sex, Lies And Human Race”, Sun Sentinel, 1998-11-28.
June 17, 2018
Conrad Black – Trump’s not bluffing
In the National Post (but linked from his personal website), Conrad Black warns of the danger of assuming that Trump is just blustering on his trade threats:
Justin Trudeau struck just the right Canadian note of our gentle nature but refusal “to be pushed around,” and he predictably will reap the short-term reward for standing up for the country opposite the ideal American bogeyman, the blustering billionaire president who has been a Garry Trudeau caricature of the Ugly American for 25 years. (It is a very incomplete picture, like most caricatures, but it works for Trump and he often cultivates it.) The boycotts of American goods and holidays will be a bonus to Canada economically and the anti-Trump American media will be along within two weeks to lionize doughty Canada like “Gallant little Belgium” in 1914 and “Plucky Israel” in 1947, and it will strengthen Canada’s always fragile self-regard opposite the United States.
On the other hand, Trump isn’t just a blowhard; all his career he has known how to go for the jugular and his reference to 270-per-cent Canadian tariffs on butter is a valid complaint that threatens to tear the scab off this egregious payoff to the comparatively small number of Quebec dairy farmers who mainly profit from it. The same issue was hammered hard by Martha Hall Findlay when she ran for the federal Liberal leadership in 2013 and by Maxime Bernier when he ran narrowly behind Andrew Scheer for the Conservative federal leadership last year. The issue died down after their unsuccessful campaigns, but if Donald Trump is incited to hammer that theme, he will roil the domestic Canadian political waters and English-French relations in the country generally.
Presumably our trade negotiators will not become so intoxicated by the prime minister’s peppy talk and spontaneous popular boycotts of the U.S. that they forget the correlation of forces. An aroused American administration could do serious damage to Canada’s standard of living, and it could be a tempting tactic to expedite more important negotiations with Mexico and the principal Asian and European powers. The United States is now enjoying three times as great a rate of economic growth as Canada (4.8 to 1.5 per cent), has lower tax rates, 11 times as great an economy, and more unfilled jobs than unemployed people.
Behind the peeling façades of Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney, the United States is a monster, and not always an amiable monster. If Canadians are blinded by their visceral dislike of Donald Trump, as the antithesis of Canadian criteria for likeable public figures, they will be exposed to the ruthless pursuit of the national interest that in his own career propelled him from technical insolvency to immense wealth and celebrity and then, against all odds, to control of a great political party and to the headship of the most powerful country in the world. If these talks blow up, the U.S. doesn’t have to settle for WTO rules; it can impose outright protectionist measures. Justin Trudeau has been agile, and the country has responded admirably. But Canadian policy-makers must understand that they are playing for almost mortal stakes with potentially dangerous protagonists who have no sense of fair play and no interest in what Canada thinks of them.
Blackmailing the Bishop – Blackadder – BBC
BBC Comedy Greats
Published on 11 Jan 2010The baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells comes to collect a debt, but finds himself the victim of a fiendish plot.
QotD: “Progress”
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.
Thomas Sowell, “A Few Assorted Thoughts About Sex, Lies And Human Race”, Sun Sentinel, 1998-11-28.
June 16, 2018
Thermopylae – East vs. West – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 14 Jun 2018Brought to you by Total War: Arena! Use the code HOPLITE for extra goodies: https://totalwararena.net/join/4064_EN1…
Why does everyone know the Greek defeat at Thermopylae, but victories like Salamis and Plataea remain obscure? Because it helped define Greek, and thus “western” culture. And that’s thanks to one man: Herodotus.
The oracle said that a Spartan king must fall in battle or Sparta would burn. So when Persia said “hand over your weapons” Leonidas said “come and take them.”
Who will think of the children Australian civil servants???
A tale from Catallaxy Files that’s sure to tug on your heartstrings:
In Canberra today, the Australian Greens announced a new tax fairness policy to remedy a design fault in the current system.
According to the Greens, it seems that it is only Australian public servants (local, state and Federal) who have been able to negotiate salary increases. As a consequence, because of their increased salaries, public servants are constantly pushed into higher tax brackets with the result that impost of bracket creep disproportionately falls on them.
Independent economic research has confirmed this phenomena. The Australia Institute economists have models showing that up to 80% of Commonwealth bracket creep tax receipts are paid by Australian public servants.
The Australian Greens believe that just because public servants earn more than private sector workers, they should not be required to pay more tax. Australian Greens’ Treasury spokesperson Adam Bandt said:
Australian public servants should not be forced to carry the brunt of government spending, including spending on other public sector salaries. This is a role for the private sector. It is manifestly unfair that just because public servants have been able to extract additional salaries that they should be forced into higher tax brackets.
In response, the Australia Greens have announced the Tax Equalisation and Redistribution Designation (TERD). Under the TERD, full-time, part-time and casual public sector workers will be subject to a separate tax schedule with a flat 15% rate for income above $500,000. Public servant income below $500,000 will be tax free.
Of course, it would be even simpler for accounting purposes just to exempt the civil service from paying tax at all — we might expect that to be a Green Party policy plank in a year or two (or even our own NDP, who have a lot of support from our unionized civil service).
Reminder: Catallaxy Files is not a parody site … although this particular story is a parody. Not following Australian politics closely, I only twigged when they got to the acronym for the program…
The pilum – did legionaries carry one or two?
Lindybeige
Published on 24 Jul 2015I used to be a museum guide, and when showing people the mannequins dressed as Romans, I used to tell the visitors that legionaries carried two pila, as I had seen it pictured in modern books. I may have been wrong.
The pilum (plural ‘pila‘) was the standard throwing weapon of the Roman legions. Archaeologists has found weighted and unweighted versions of them, but were both types carried by every legionary?
The spark for this video was a discussion I had about the authenticity of a set of plastic model legionaries on the march. They were shown carrying one pilum and wearing lorica segmentata. I said that they should have two, but then found myself unable to back this up with evidence. Polybius, writing about the earlier period, with javelin-throwing velites, and the triarii at the back, says that the hastatii carried two types of pilum, but it isn’t perfectly clear whether he meant that the unit carried both types, or each individual man within them. For the later days of the classic legionary, with no velites in front of him, and lorica segmentata on his back, I have no evidence for two pila per man.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
QotD: Term limits
The last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it. The best person to wield power is someone who is reluctant to do so, but who will do it for a while as a civic duty. That is why term limits should make it impossible to have a whole career in politics.
Thomas Sowell, “A Few Assorted Thoughts About Sex, Lies And Human Race”, Sun Sentinel, 1998-11-28.
June 15, 2018
The French Counter Attack At Matz I THE GREAT WAR Week 203
The Great War
Published on 14 Jun 2018The French have cracked the German radio code on the Western Front and use their advantage for a counterattack at Matz. The already hastily planed German attack during Operation Gneisenau is called off after just 4 days. Meanwhile Austria-Hungary plans another offensive in Italy and German and Ottoman forces fight each other in Georgia.
Looking at US farm subsidy claims
On Twitter, Chris Auld, an economics professor at the University of Victoria explains why Canadian journalists should stop using the $22 billion figure for US farm subsidies to justify Canada’s unjustifiable supply management regime:
It's been widely reported that the U.S. subsidizes dairy farms $22B per year, or 71% of revenues. Which seems… large. That figure comes from a report paid for by the Dairy Farmers of Canada by a small consulting firm. (https://t.co/2v4xkOZRBU). 1/5 pic.twitter.com/chMnPeRMZx
— Chris Auld (@Chris_Auld) June 12, 2018
If we follow their source to pg 111 of the cited USDA document, we find what they're counting as the $225B of "agricultural subsidies" includes absolutely everything in the USDA's budget! More than half goes to SNAP ("food stamps") and other anti-poverty programs. 2/5 pic.twitter.com/tPhR3Qtb6d
— Chris Auld (@Chris_Auld) June 12, 2018
And much of the remainder, including programs like food safety, the forest service, and research, are not agricultural subsidies, either. See pages 210-211 here: https://t.co/BBmjD41AWZ 3/5
— Chris Auld (@Chris_Auld) June 12, 2018
Some of what's left is subsidies, but the report just takes 10.54% of the total as allocated to dairy since that's the percentage of dairy in U.S. agriculture. What most people would think of as actual "dairy subsidies," direct or indirect payments to dairy farmers, 4/5
— Chris Auld (@Chris_Auld) June 12, 2018
are a trivial fraction of the staggering sums claimed in this report. And if we calculated Canadian "dairy subsidies" in the same silly manner, we'd wind up with similarly vast sums. This figure is rubbish and journalists in particular should stop repeating it. 5/5 pic.twitter.com/Hg0M3vpOuB
— Chris Auld (@Chris_Auld) June 12, 2018
JM’s Toy Stories – Legoland Vault
Megan T
Published on 26 Apr 2015
QotD: Churchill on Montgomery
There was a brief firestorm in Britain when a photograph appeared in the press of Montgomery and Gen. Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, the commander of the Afrika Korps and the highest-ranking German captured at Alamein. After his capture Thoma was brought to the Eighth Army command post, where Montgomery accorded him the respect of one honorable professional soldier to another. The two dined that night, and the photograph of the two generals led Brendan Bracken to send Churchill a memo criticizing Montgomery’s naïveté and noting that it created a bad impression with the public. Churchill merely commented: “I sympathize with Gen. von Thoma. Defeated, humiliated, in captivity, and,” after pausing for effect, “dinner with General Montgomery.”
Carlo d’Este, Warlord: A life of Winston Churchill at war, 1874-1945, 2008.
June 14, 2018
The economic idiocy of Canada’s supply management system
Andrew Coyne, who finally seems to have weaned himself off the PR voting jag, explains the Canadian government’s idiotic yet deeply entrenched supply management bureaucracy:
How did supply management, of all things, come to be at the centre of everything?
The policy, under which farmers in a number of sectors — milk, cheese, eggs, poultry — are organized into government-approved price-fixing rings, enforced by a complex system of quotas and protected by prohibitive tariffs on imports of the same goods, has been in place since the early 1970s. It affects fewer than 15,000 farmers nationwide, who between them account for less than one per cent of Canada’s GDP.
Yet it has somehow become the central issue not only of our domestic politics, but of international trade talks. It was the pretext for Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel, and is his most-cited grievance with Canadian trade policy. As such, it has become the rallying cry of preening political patriots, each of the parties seeking to outdo the others in defence of a policy whose avowed purpose, let us remember, is to make basic food items more expensive for Canadians.
It has also become a source of deep division within the Conservative Party. It was already, of course, thanks to last year’s leadership race, in which Maxime Bernier made its elimination the central plank in his campaign, as Andrew Scheer made its retention the key to his. Indeed, Scheer’s narrow victory was directly attributable to the votes of thousands of Quebec dairy farmers, who took out party memberships for the sole purpose of ensuring Bernier’s defeat. It is even possible the Scheer campaign encouraged them in this endeavour.
[…]
There is no serious case for supply management — a policy that is is as unjust, inasmuch as it imposes the heaviest burden on the poorest families, as it is inefficient; that locks out new farmers and deters existing farmers from seeking new markets; and that makes us look utter hypocrites in free-trade talks, not only with the U.S., but the rest of the world — and no serious person whose livelihood does not depend upon it would make it.
And yet every member of every party is obliged to swear a public oath of undying fealty to it. That all do, but for one, is a sign of the institutional rot in our politics. For they do so not in spite of its awfulness but because of it — because the willingness to say two plus two equals five has become the ultimate test of loyalty.
On other issues, that might be because of genuine agreement. But a willingness to sign onto a truly hideous policy like supply management — that’s certain proof an MP is a “team player.”
