Quotulatiousness

August 25, 2018

Vikings 21, Seattle Seahawks 20 in third preseason game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

The third preseason game is traditionally the “dress rehearsal” — teams play their starters for an extended period of time (sometimes going into the third quarter) before subbing in their reserves. As the columnists at the Daily Norseman tend to write, it’s the “All-Important Third Preseason Game™”. Friday night’s game in Minneapolis saw the Seattle Seahawks come to town to test Russell Wilson against the Vikings’ league-leading defence from last year. Unlike last game, where the Vikings couldn’t seem to buy a first down, yesterday the first-stringers under Kirk Cousins were able to keep the chains moving (amassing 120 yards in the air through the first quarter) but not to get points on the board. Newly installed placekicker Daniel Carlson didn’t cover himself in glory, missing both of his field goal attempts to the left from 42 yards and encouraging the team to try a two-point conversion after their first touchdown. On the latest Purple Podcast, Judd Zulgad said explicitly that coach Mike Zimmer deliberately ordered the two-point attempt because he didn’t trust Carlson to make the extra point.

Second-string quarterback Trevor Siemian had a bad game (4 of 8 for three yards) and looked very frustrated by the time he was done. However, Siemian did have one particular pass that made the highlight reel:

Third-stringer Kyle Sloter, on the other hand, put on a very good show and led the team to the winning touchdown (and a two-point conversion):

It will be interesting to see if the coaching staff still has confidence in Siemian as the backup after the first three preseason outings, where he didn’t set the world on fire. Sloter is certainly showing that he’s got the chops, if not the experience, for that role at some point in the future. Early in the fourth quarter, I texted to a fellow fan “Sloter >> Siemian” (and that was before Sloter got the first TD. I’m clearly not alone, as at least one Daily Norseman writer feels the same way:

As a former starter with many games of experience in the regular season, you’d expect a guy like Trevor Siemian to show more command. More ability. He should be a little above the second stringers he’s playing against. But he didn’t. He didn’t look like a starter. He didn’t look like a guy you want starting at QB for your team either. And that’s the point.

He was inaccurate. He looked poor under pressure. He did not lead second stringers, he let them down. There was a lack of energy. Quite simply, his game was not up to the task.

By fairly obvious contrast, as soon as Kyle Sloter took the field in each of the first three Vikings preseason games, there was energy and leadership. There was the will to win. There was a QB looking to make plays, not just play out his time.

And Sloter showed presence. Poise. Better scrambling ability. Better acccuracy. And he made plays. Every game. What plays did Siemian make? Zero. Nada. Bupkis.

Sloter led drives. He came through in the clutch. He delivered when he needed to. Yes, he went down twice late on back side blitzes, but he managed to escape from several others and made plays too. Siemian never did.

And, as every NFL head coach knows, if you want to win, you need a quarterback that can make plays. You can’t coach that. You can’t learn that in practice. Experience can help, but not that of Trevor Sirmian’s kind. He was not a playmaker in Denver, and he was released as a result. I’m not sure how that type of experience is a plus. It sounds good to say, “now here’s a QB that’s started a lot of games in the NFL, who can come in a take over if Cousins goes down.” But you could say that about Christian Ponder too.

I don’t think the team should go with only two quarterbacks — not after our experiences over the last several years with quarterback injuries — but I do think that Sloter should be given the primary backup responsibilities.

Newly signed safety George Iloka played a key role with the second team, tipping a pass that was intercepted by Anthony Harris.

Swedish Antiaircraft Artillery: Bofors 40mm Automatic Gun M1

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 24 Aug 2018

Note: In the video I mistakenly describe this as a two-stamp NFA gun. It is actually deactivated, and thus does not require a tax stamp. Sorry for the mistake!

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

The Swedish Bofors company developed their 40mm antiaircraft gun in the 1930s, and it would go on to be one of the most successful weapon designs in modern history. Used by both sides in WWII and in all theaters, improved versions of the 40mm Bofors gun continue to serve in military front lines to this very day. In the US, they comprise part of the armament on the AC-130 Spectre gunships, for example.

This particular gun is a WW2 vintage piece, made in Sweden. Most of the examples used by the United States were made under license by Chrysler, the car company. Something like 60,000 were produced during the war, mostly for naval use. These guns would be a mainstay of American vessels’ air defense against Japanese Kamikaze attacks.

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

Mediterranean trade in the Iron Age

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Middle East — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jan Bakker, Stephan Maurer, Jörn-Steffen Pischke, and Ferdinand Rauch look at the relationships between trade and economic growth around the Mediterranean during the Iron Age:

Economists often point out the benefits of trade, yet empirical evidence for these benefits has been hard to come by and tends to be recent. This column goes back to the first millennium BC to analyse the growth effects of one of the first major trade expansions in human history: the systematic crossing of the open sea in the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians. A strong positive relationship between connectedness and archaeological sites suggests a large role for geography and trade in development even at such an early juncture in history.

The effects of free trade inspire a lot of public debate these days, and policies to restrict trade are gaining in prominence. Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have typically pointed out the benefits of trade. Yet empirical evidence for these benefits has been much harder to come by and is much more recent. In particular, empirical economists have tried to demonstrate that more open economies or more integrated markets see faster growth. The relationship between these two variables is not much disputed; the more difficult question is whether this is due to trade causing growth or richer economies being more open.

[…]

To analyse whether this increased trade also caused growth, we exploit the fact that open sea sailing creates different levels of connectedness for different points on the coast. The shape of the coast and the location of islands determineshow easy it is to reach other points, which might be potential trading partners, within a certain distance. We create such a measure of connectedness for travel via sea. Figure 1 shows the values of this measure on a map and demonstrates how some regions, for example the Aegean but also southern Italy and Sicily, are much better connected than others.

We use this measure of connectedness as a proxy for trading opportunities.

Figure 1 Log connectedness at 500km distance

Note: Darker blue indicates better connected locations.

Measuring growth for an early period of human history is more difficult as we have no standard measure of income, GDP, or even population. We quantify growth by the presence of archaeologic sites for settlements or urbanisations. While this is clearly not a perfect measure, more sites should imply more human presence and activity. We then relate the number of active archaeological sites in a particular period to our measure of connectedness.

We find a large positive relationship between connectedness and archaeological sites. The effect of connections on growth in the Iron Age Mediterranean are up to twice as large as the effects Donaldson and Hornbeck (2016) found for US railroads. Although these results are unlikely to be directly comparable, the magnitudes suggest a large role for geography and trade in development even at such an early juncture in history.

Why was Italy so Ineffective in WWII? | Animated History

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Italy, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Armchair Historian
Published on 27 Jul 2018

Potential History’s Video: https://youtu.be/QB2GINNs3Aw

Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/armchairhistory

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Sources:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
Fascist Italy’s Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45, Frank Joseph
Hitler’s Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943, MacGregor Knox

QotD: India’s caste system

Filed under: Africa, History, India, Law, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… Gandhi, born the son of the Prime Minister of a tiny Indian principality and received as an attorney at the bar of the Middle Temple in London, [began] his climb to greatness as a member of the small Indian community in, precisely, South Africa. Natal, then a separate colony, wanted to limit Indian immigration and, as part of the government program, ordered Indians to carry identity papers (an action not without similarities to measures under consideration in the U.S. today to control illegal immigration). The film’s lengthy opening sequences are devoted to Gandhi’s leadership in the fight against Indians carrying their identity papers (burning their registration cards), with for good measure Gandhi being expelled from the first-class section of a railway train, and Gandhi being asked by whites to step off the sidewalk. This inspired young Indian leader calls, in the film, for interracial harmony, for people to “live together.”

Now the time is 1893, and Gandhi is a “caste” Hindu, and from one of the higher castes. Although, later, he was to call for improving the lot of India’s Untouchables [Dalits], he was not to have any serious misgivings about the fundamentals of the caste system for about another thirty years, and even then his doubts, to my way of thinking, were rather minor. In the India in which Gandhi grew up, and had only recently left, some castes could enter the courtyards of certain Hindu temples, while others could not. Some castes were forbidden to use the village well. Others were compelled to live outside the village, still others to leave the road at the approach of a person of higher caste and perpetually to call out, giving warning, so that no one would be polluted by their proximity. The endless intricacies of Hindu caste by-laws varied somewhat region by region, but in Madras, where most South African Indians were from, while a Nayar could pollute a man of higher caste only by touching him, Kammalans polluted at a distance of 24 feet, toddy drawers at 36 feet, Pulayans and Cherumans at 48 feet, and beef-eating Paraiyans at 64 feet. All castes and the thousands of sub-castes were forbidden, needless to say, to marry, eat, or engage in social activity with any but members of their own group. In Gandhi’s native Gujarat a caste Hindu who had been polluted by touch had to perform extensive ritual ablutions or purify himself by drinking a holy beverage composed of milk, whey, and (what else?) cow dung.

Low-caste Hindus, in short, suffered humiliations in their native India compared to which the carrying of identity cards in South Africa was almost trivial. In fact, Gandhi, to his credit, was to campaign strenuously in his later life for the reduction of caste barriers in India — a campaign almost invisible in the movie, of course, conveyed in only two glancing references, leaving the audience with the officially sponsored if historically astonishing notion that racism was introduced into India by the British. To present the Gandhi of 1893, a conventional caste Hindu, fresh from caste-ridden India where a Paraiyan could pollute at 64 feet, as the champion of interracial equalitariansim is one of the most brazen hypocrisies I have ever encountered in a serious movie.

Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.

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