Today Nicholas Moran (the Chieftain) and I are at DriveTanks.com courtesy of Wargaming.net, to show you around a World War Two Sherman tank and all its various armaments. We will discuss and shoot the bow machine gun, coaxial machine gun, commander’s hatch machine gun, antiaircraft .50 cal M2 machine gun, 76mm high velocity main gun, and the crew’s small arms, an M3 Grease Gun and a 1911 pistol.
If you enjoy this video, check out World of Tanks – and maybe they will send Nicholas and I back again to do the same thing for a different tank!
Looking to get back on track after last week’s disappointing trip to Seattle, the 8-4 Minnesota Vikings hosted divisional rivals the 3-8-1 Detroit Lions at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon. The Vikings were again without the services of star wide receiver Adam Thielen, who suffered a hamstring injury early in the last game against Detroit. The Lions started their backup quarterback, as starter Matthew Stafford has a back injury that needs time to heal. This might sound like a tough situation for the Lions, but backup quarterbacks have done well against the Vikings in earlier games this season.
The Minnesota defence seemed to be a bit more like its traditional self, batting down two passes on the Lions’ first possession and sacking quarterback David Blough to force a punt, but the high-scoring Vikings offence seemed … somewhat underpowered. Although the score was 17-0 at the half, the Vikings should have been up a few more scores but for just enough miscues to derail drives outside the red zone. Defensive end Danielle Hunter got some attention from the broadcast team as the first of his three sacks put him up to 50 in his career, and he’s the youngest player to get 50 sacks in the NFL.
The Vikings defence kept the Lions out of the end zone until less than three minutes remained in regulation time, playing the dreaded “prevent” to avoid giving up long pass plays. Judd Zulgad was hoping to see some improvement over the Seattle game, but says this game really didn’t show it:
The only thing worse than the Lions might have been the fact the crowd of 66,776 fans was subjected to the look-at-me officiating work of referee Walt Anderson and his crew. A game after Clete Blakeman’s crew threw an NFL season-low four flags on Monday in Seattle, Anderson and Co. called nine penalties in the first half and 12 in the game.
The problem with this game was is it came at a time when you would like to see which direction a team is trending, Sunday provided no clarity when it comes to the Vikings. The Vikings weren’t alone. The Green Bay Packers (10-3) remained a game ahead of the Vikings (9-4) in the NFC North after beating a terrible Washington team (3-10) at Lambeau Field.
The Vikings should get a better test next Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers simply because it’s a road game. The Chargers entered Sunday’s game against another bottom-feeder, Jacksonville, with a 4-8 record. The next real test for the Vikings should be in Week 16 against the Packers in a Monday night game at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Entering Sunday, the Vikings had beaten seven teams with records below .500 and only one (Oakland) with a .500 record. Their four losses had come against teams with winning records (Green Bay, Chicago, Kansas City and Seattle).
That’s part of the reason why it’s extremely difficult to see the Vikings being capable of making a Super Bowl run and impossible to do so if they end up as a wild card team and have to win three times on the road. The Vikings’ too-easy-victory on Sunday did nothing to change that feeling.
Buy: The defensive effort today. I was kind of concerned heading into this game. Rookie David Blough put over 280 yards passing on the Bears defense last week, and Mike Zimmer has a maddening habit of playing a fairly vanilla defense to start a game, allowing young QB’s like Brandon Allen of the Broncos to light up the VIkes like a Christmas tree. Today, the defense set the tone, blitzing and hurrying Blough from the first series, and completely stonewalling a top 10 NFL offense until the game was well decided.
Sell: Offensive penalty on 4th and 1 from the Lions four. In the second quarter the Vikings had a nice drive going, moving from their 35 to the Detroit four. On 4th and one, Mike Zimmer decided to go for it, and Dalvin Cook appeared to get two yards and a first down, setting up a first and goal. But the offense wasn’t set, they were called for an illegal procedure penalty, and Minnesota had to settle for a field goal. Against a better team on a different day, that could have been potentially huge.
Buy: Two minute drive to end the half. After the Prater missed knuckleball, the Vikes took over on their 35 with 1:06 and two timeouts left before halftime. What ensued is what I would argue might be the best two minute drive of the Zimmer era. A combination of great play calling, exceptional use of timeouts, and perfect execution on a big play got the Vikings close to the end zone:
Again, note the great protection for Cousins. It was a great throw, great catch, and two plays later Dalvin Cook walked in, giving Minnesota a 17-0 lead into the locker room.
Sell: Not stepping on the gas pedal to open the second half. Yet, the Vikings didn’t really do anything with that momentum coming out of the half. It seemed like Minnesota went into ‘kill the clock mode’ as opposed to ‘go for the throat’ mode, and part of me understands it. You have a big lead, the Lions have shown zero life on offense, and Minnesota was in complete control of the game. Yet we’ve seen first hand how tenuous 17…or 20…point leads can be.
A weird bounce, a turnover, or a busted play could completely turn the game around, and now what was a game you had in the bag is very much NOT in the bag. For example, on the Vikes first drive, a makeable third and five went to waste when Cousins threw a deep, low percentage pass to Alexander Hollins. Punt. On their second drive, the third and seven call was a run to the left by Dalvin Cook that went for no gain. Punt. The defense remained stout throughout, and the Lions got nothing going until the game was pretty much over, so it wasn’t a big deal. Still, for as much as Mike Zimmer preaches the importance of closing the first half with points and bookending that with points to open the second half, the lack of urgency there was weird.
Buy: Benching Rhodes to start the game. I like the move to bench Xavier Rhodes early in the game. The stat sheet says Rhodes started, but it looked like Mike Hughes started in his place, and played a good part of the first half. Rhodes did play, and it seemed like he responded. I liked it because it sent a message to the defense that they needed to play better, and it appears that the defense got the message loud and clear, as they played as well as they have in two months.
Sell: Walt Coleman’s officiating crew. What a joke of a crew. Their inability to correctly call the most basic of plays is balanced out by their penchant for throwing a flag just as the game is getting into a rhythm. Ticky tack penalties, a blown call that caused Zimmer to throw a challenge flag to overturn, when the side judge was literally looking at the drop happen? It was just a terribly called game.
Buy: This was a boring game. No, it won’t be the NFL Game of the Week, and yeah, it was kind of a snoozefest, but it’s a win. And it’s nine wins for the Vikings on the year, and one game closer to a playoff spot. I’ll happily take it.
Sell: Exciting losses are better. I would rather watch a boring win than sit through an exciting loss, like we saw happen between the 49ers and Saints.
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Jonathan Wild had the whole crime system figured out. A man of justice by day, and leader of a criminal empire by night. But that is when Jack Sheppard came into his life. Jack Sheppard was a talented thief but an even more talented escape artist. And one of the last criminals in London who refused to bend the knee to Jonathan Wild. This was unacceptable. Jonathan Wild became obsessed. But obsessions can be dangerous. Every prison escape causes Sheppard’s popularity amongst the people, sick and tired of corruption, to grow. And the consequences may be deadly.
Ted Campbell looks at the US political scene and wonders if Nikki Haley will be the President after the 2024 federal election:
President Donald Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, 24 September, 2018. Official White House photograph by Shealah Craighead via Wikimedia Commons.
Following on from my previous post, I suspect that former Governor (South Carolina) and US Ambassador (to the United Nations) Nikki Haley might be President-elect of the United States five years from now. She is, right now, I think, the wholly unofficial but very clear voice of the post-Trump Republicans. She shares many of the Trumpian aims but she will campaign with a much different mixture of grit and grace, as the title of her recent book (campaign manifesto?) suggests.
It also seems pretty obvious to me, and to some other observers, that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have decided that they can win a majority in (probably) 2021 by appealing even more strongly to the Laurentian Elites and thereby securing a half dozen more seats in each of Greater Vancouver and in urban Quebec and another dozen in (mainly) South-Western Ontario.
[…]
I think that Ambassador Haley’s comments are a shot across Canada’s bows made on behalf of the American establishment, not just Donald Trump. I suspect her remarks were very carefully crafted and even blessed by influential leaders in government, academe and in the huge array of think tanks in which America’s “government in waiting” resides. She is not speaking for Donald Trump; he can (likely will) speak for himself in his own, inimitable, bullying style. She is speaking for a larger, more permanent establishment, the “deep” administrative state that guards America’s permanent, vital interests.
Canadians need to pay attention. Nikki Haley matters; she (or someone very like her) is the future and she (or that similar someone) is the future to which we must accommodate ourselves for the 2020s and into the 2030s. We must remain a steadfast, trusted member of the US-led West. We, under Mackenzie-King and Louis St Laurent and John Diefenbaker, helped to build the US-led West, we even helped to lead it. Pierre Trudeau wanted to change Canada; he did, but not as much as he wished. His own Liberal ministers would not follow him all the way. Justin Trudeau is following in his father’s deeply flawed strategic footsteps which aim to make Canada irrelevant. He has a much tamer (weaker) cabinet allowing him and Chrystia Freeland to push Canada towards a strategic place where our country will be politically isolated, largely friendless and poor.
Liberals, by which, in the 2020s, I mean Conservatives, must speak out and offer Canadians a better, principled strategic vision which aims to secure our sovereignty, our prosperity and a respectable, responsible, leadership role ~ what Paul Martin called a role of pride and influence ~ in the world. Otherwise, Canada’s very sovereignty is in peril. If, as I expect, Donald Trump is re-elected next year and is then followed in 2024 by another, albeit “kinder, gentler” Trumpian, (which I believe is very likely because I think the Democratic Party in the USA will shatter after the 2020 election and will not be a real force again for a decade or more) then Canada must adapt. The importance of our bilateral relationship with America is to all other things as ten is to one.
It was David Lee Roth who ruined personal-appearance contracts for all time with his Brown M&M’s Clause in the ’80s. The story sounds apocryphal but it’s true: Any promoter hiring Van Halen for a concert was required to supply M&M’s in the band’s dressing room but “ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES.”
In later years Roth would claim that this was not an example of spoiled rock star entitlement but a way to make sure that concert promoters read the entire contract and took care of other, more important provisions. I was actually buying this — promoters can be forgetful and dense at all levels of the business — until the Smoking Gun website tracked down the famous M&M’s rider so that we could read the rest of it. In order to “present to your customers the finest in contemporary entertainment,” Van Halen also needed two dozen English muffins, but not just any English muffins — they had to be Thomas brand English muffins — plus two cases of beer delivered precisely at 6 p.m., two more cases (one Budweiser and one Heineken) delivered to the stage manager at 7 p.m., different food menus for even and odd days, and, just to keep you on your toes in the implements department, “all forks must have four prongs.” Backstage the band also needed one case of Budweiser, four cases of Schlitz Malt Liquor (really?), one half case of Tab (perhaps even more shocking than the malt liquor), three fifths of Jack Daniels Black Label, two fifths of Stolichnaya, one pint of Southern Comfort, two bottles of Blue Nun white wine (whoever that was should lose his rock-star cred forever), three packs of Marlboros (these riders are for one day — is that guy dead yet?), and — the mind boggles — “one large tube of KY Jelly.”
The rider ran to eleven pages and is, in fact, ridiculously demanding. (“Any caterer not providing adequate condiments, utensils or ice will be subject to a $100.00 fine.”)
Looking to get back on track after last week’s disappointing trip to Seattle, the 8-4 Minnesota Vikings hosted divisional rivals the 3-8-1 Detroit Lions at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon. The Vikings were again without the services of star wide receiver Adam Thielen, who suffered a hamstring injury early in the last game against Detroit. The Lions started their backup quarterback, as starter Matthew Stafford has a back injury that needs time to heal. This might sound like a tough situation for the Lions, but backup quarterbacks have done well against the Vikings in earlier games this season.
