Quotulatiousness

April 16, 2019

The fire at Notre-Dame de Paris

Filed under: Architecture, France, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:29

The central Paris landmark has been severely damaged by a fire that broke out beneath the roof of the cathedral early in the evening of April 15th. Here are a few images from the Wikimedia Commons page on the fire:



Officials were quick to announce that the fire was not the result of terrorist action … while the fire was still raging (that is, before anyone could have made any scientific determination on the cause), which only made those inclined to suspect terrorist activity even more suspicious. Conspiracy theorists gotta theorize, after all. Robert Harris discusses this aspect of the story at the New English Review:

Ruling out any cause other than accidental fire, at such an early stage, did seem to be an assumption made with [undue] rapidity, not least because it occurred within a week of Easter when such a religious landmark would be a prime target within a city and a nation that has suffered more than its share of acts of Islamist terrorism, and especially at a time when numerous French churches have been targeted.

The international media was similarly unanimous in describing the cause of the blaze, with some carrying critical coverage of Youtube’s automated topical descriptors linking the event with 9/11. Even Fox News’ Shepard Smith was rather more than simply unwilling to entertain the speculations of one French interviewee that tried to note some of the above surrounding circumstances.

Prima facie, it might have also been thought that it was peculiar that such a serious fire became so advanced during a time of day when the cathedral would have been in use by public visitors. There have been numerous serious fires during periods of restoration, as the mainstream media rightly noted, but less mentioned was the likely fact that such work would have ceased some hours before smoke became visible.

[…]

The prospect of a terrorist act rears but there is perhaps some reason to assume a non-terrorist motive because there doesn’t seem to have been any claims of responsibility. It may be thought that any Islamist organisation linked with the blaze of such a major Christian/Western landmark would be very keen to boast about the deed on social media when the story hit the international news. Alternatively, the inferno could have been caused by a lone-wolf terrorist attack but such individuals commonly swear allegiance to a particular group and/or make some sort of public statement before a given attack.

If religiously motivated terrorism can be deemed to be unlikely at this stage, obvious alternatives still remain, such as an act of criminal arson or non-religious terrorism in which the perpetrators might be less keen to voice their involvement with the crime. For example, the blaze could have been an act of secular quasi-terrorism/arson/vandalism by the left-wing ‘Black-Bloc’, which has been responsible for much of the recent violence within the ‘Yellow Vest’ protest movement. It may therefore be suggested that the French authorities came to an unduly prompt reaction, given the surrounding circumstances.

Modern ASW corvettes are not the answer for the Royal Navy

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

A few years, back someone floated the idea of a cheaper class of warship for the Royal Navy to address a perceived weakness in anti-submarine capabilities. I heard it mentioned as the “cheap and cheerful” frigate proposal. The idea must still be popular with the fantasy fleet set, as Sir Humphrey takes some time to explain why the Royal Navy isn’t likely to order up a big batch of the 21st century’s answer to the Flower class of corvettes any time soon:

At its heart is the difficult question about whether the Royal Navy is best placed to meet the many global operational challenges it faces by investing in a small but highly capable force of escort ships, able to operate in every threat environment against peer competitors, or whether it invests more in a larger force of less capable platforms which increase its presence around the world.

Underpinning this argument is a sense by many commentators that what the Navy needs is more ships, and that the only way to get this is to invest in buying lots of smaller ships now to improve overall levels of capability.

This argument was recently made in an article by respected defence commentator Nicholas Drummond, who argued that what was required was a force of cheaper corvette style vessels. Perhaps up to 20 would be a highly effective way of providing basic ASW defence and also increasing hulls for operations around the world. Drawing his inspiration from the WW2 ‘FLOWER’ class, he notes that the RN was able to quickly build ships that provided a basic level of defence in an all out general war.

It is tempting to see this as a strong argument for the Royal Navy – build lots of little ships, individually cheap, but which when brought together provide a level of coherent defensive capability against threats that would potentially deter a submarine captain.

RCN Flower-class corvette HMCS Regina, pennant number K234 circa 1942-43.
Photo from the Canadian Navy Heritage site, negative number CT-252 via Wikimedia Commons.

The parallels break down because the Flower class were very cheap to build — they were built by commercial shipyards that normally worked on fishing vessels and small- to medium-sized cargo ships — they were not as heavily built as “real” warships and would have been almost helpless in surface combat with anything larger than a surfaced U-boat or light patrol craft. The enemy they were designed to fight was effectively a torpedo boat with limited underwater capabilities. WW2-era anti-submarine combat is no longer a useful guide to modern warfare.

The reality is that modern ASW is not something that can be done cheaply or via a simple platform. A credible and effective ASW frigate requires two three key assets, firstly the sonar processing power to identify, track and prosecute an attack against an extremely quiet target that does not want to be found. Secondly, it needs the means to deliver this attack as far away from the escort ship as possible – which calls for a platform capable of operating a long range helicopter capable of prosecuting an attack. Finally to prevent detection and attack, the frigate is required to be as quiet as possible to avoid notifying submarines of its presence – this requires extensive silencing and mounting of machinery to prevent it giving away a ships presence.

In turn these three characteristics raise the cost of the platform. Modern sonar equipment is incredibly expensive – particularly if you want to opt for things like Towed Array Sonars. If you want it to be able to work effectively against a highly capable target, you need to be prepared to spend a lot of money on it. There may be plenty of ‘cheap’ ASW frigate designs out there, but they almost certainly skimp on the complex underpinning sonar and software architecture required to be effective – and they are not intended to go up against peer threats like the latest Russian SSNs.

In the same vein while some of the designs on the market may have a flight deck or hangar for a small aircraft, what they are not cleared for is operating large Merlin scale helicopters. These are an essential part of the ASW battle – intended to travel quickly to successfully prosecute any contacts, the Merlin is at the heart of the modern Royal Navy frigates ASW weaponry.

World War 2 British Armour Doctrine & Tactics with David Willey of the Tank Museum at Bovington

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Military History Visualized
Published on 8 Dec 2017

David Willey the Curator of the Tank Museum at Bovington explains British Interwar and World War 2 Armour Doctrine and Tactics. Especially, about the Infantry and Cruiser tank “concept”. Additionally, we talk a bit about the 2nd Battle of El Alamein, Montgomery and Rommel.

‘Tis Eastertide, and so the professional miserablists are going after Easter Eggs, of course

Filed under: Britain, Business, Economics, Environment, Food — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall tells the worried environmentalists that no, it does not make sense to ban Easter eggs — for their “wasteful” packaging — on environmental grounds:

One of the more silly of the current environmental concerns is the worrying about the quantity of packaging that goes into – or around – Easter eggs. There’s an underlying mistake being made here, one which none of the proponents of action have bothered to recognise, let alone think about. Which is, well, what’s the purpose? The point of all this human activity we call an economy?

As any economist could and would tell you we’re after the maximisation of human utility. Given the constraints placed upon us by reality – the availability of stuff with which to do things, technologies we know about to do things to stuff with – we want humans to be as happy as they can be. We want, in short to maximise the amount of joy in the world.

At which point, packaging. Sure, no doubt there’s a certain harm that befalls us all from the creation of packaging and its disposal. Why not? There are costs and benefits to everything of course. But that’s the point, while there may be costs there are also benefits. So, yes, OK, there are costs to packaging.

[…]

At no point is even consideration given to the idea that the packaged egg might produce that joy. Which, given that we do indeed go buy these things each year to give to each other, is odd, isn’t it? Why are we giving each other expensive – as opposed to cheap – chocolate? Because, obviously enough, the dressing of the chocolate is something that produces that joy.

We can even have a stab at quantifying matters.

The cost is 3,000 tonnes of packaging. We know what that costs us, the value of the landfill tax. Around £80 a tonne. So, call it quarter of a million pounds. Spending upon Easter eggs is some £400 million a year. The joy produced must be of greater value than that £400 million otherwise we’d not be spending it in the first place. And yes, £400 million is more than £250,000.

We thus have our answer to the prodnoses worrying about the cost of Easter egg packaging. Piss off matey, you’ve missed the point entirely.

An Orgy of Innovation

Filed under: Economics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 20 Apr 2015

The list of famous inventions from the last few centuries is long, and you may even be making use of one right now — laptops, smartphones, tablets, and televisions, for instance. There are countless unsung improvements, too, that make our daily lives much easier. We’ve all benefited from zip top sandwich bags, twist bottle caps, and long-lasting batteries, to name a few!

The economic historian Deirdre McCloskey coined the term “innovationism” to describe the phenomenal rise in innovation over the past couple hundred years. While there have always been inventors and innovators, that number exploded after the eighteenth century, contributing to what we’ve described in previous videos as the “Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity.”

Why has innovation grown so rapidly? Economist Douglass North argues it has to do with institutions such as property rights, non-corrupt courts, and rule of law, which lay the foundation for innovation to take place. Others attribute the rise to factors such as education or access to reliable energy. McCloskey argues that what really kicked innovation into high gear is a change in attitude — ordinary people who once celebrated conquerers and kings began to celebrate merchants and inventors.

In this video, we discuss these ideas further. After all, a better understanding of what drives innovation could help poor countries that still live on the handle of the “Hockey Stick” reach a much greater level of prosperity.

QotD: Romania and the Nazi Final Solution

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Last place goes to Romania, which had been anti-Semitic since the beginning of time and was genuinely excited to have Nazi orders as an excuse to carry out their own worse impulses:

    In Rumania even the S.S. were taken aback, and occasionally frightened, by the horrors of old-fashioned, spontaneous pogroms on a gigantic scale; they often intervened to save Jews from sheer butchery, so that the killing could be done in what, according to them, was a civilized way.

The Romanians started their own concentration camps to supplement the Nazi’s, “more elaborate and atrocious affairs than anything we know of in Germany”, but they didn’t always need them – “deportation Rumanian style consisted in herding five thousand people into freight cars and letting them die there of suffocation while the train traveled through the countryside without plan or aim for days on end; a favorite followup to these killing operations was to expose the corpses in Jewish butcher shops.” Things became so bad that Nazi emissary Manfred von Killinger, intervened and asked them to stop and defer to German efforts. I feel like when a Nazi named Commander von Killinger is horrified by your brutality, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate whether you may have crossed a line.

Other interesting profiles include Greece (hopelessly depressing), Slovakia (very Catholic, in favor of killing Jews but got in a bunch of fights with the Nazis about ethnic Jews who had been baptized into Catholicism), Hungary (ruled by an Admiral despite being landlocked; otherwise hopelessly depressing), Belgium (deliberately left the trains unlocked so the Jews could escape!), Holland (kind of like France; the local Gentiles tried to help, but the assimilated Jews sold out the refugee Jews in the hope of placating the Nazis; the Nazis were not placated; three-quarters of Jews died), and Poland (I don’t even want to talk about how hopelessly depressing this one is).

Scott Alexander, “Book review: Eichmann in Jerusalem”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-01-30.

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