Quotulatiousness

February 8, 2020

300 | Based on a True Story

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 29 Jul 2015

Here is another episode of “Based on a True Story”. This time it is 300 and how it is based on the battle of Thermopylae. It is a great film with a great many historically innacurate plot points.
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references:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/ree…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(fi…
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LET’S CONNECT: https://twitter.com/Cynical_History
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Wiki:
300 is a 2006 American epic fantasy war film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. Both are fictionalized retellings of the Battle of Thermopylae within the Persian Wars. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book.

The plot revolves around King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who leads 300 Spartans into battle against the Persian “god-King” Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his invading army of more than 300,000 soldiers. As the battle rages, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support in Sparta for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios (David Wenham). Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy. The events are revealed to be a story told by Delios, the only one of the 300 Spartans to survive the battle.

300 was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007. The film received mixed reviews, receiving acclaim for its original visuals and style, but criticism for favoring visuals over characterization and its depiction of the ancient Persians in Iran, a characterization which some had deemed racist; however, the film was a box office success, grossing over $450 million, with the film’s opening being the 24th largest in box office history at the time. A sequel, entitled Rise of an Empire, which is based on Miller’s unpublished graphic novel prequel Xerxes, was released on March 7, 2014.
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Hashtags: #history #300 #Thermopylae #review #BasedOnATrueStory #Sparta #ThisIsSparta

ESR on the Wuhan coronavirus

Filed under: China, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

He’s backing away from his — to me unfathomable — earlier belief in the accuracy of official Chinese government statistics:

My willingness to believe the official line didn’t stem from any credulity about what the Chinese government would do if it believed the truth wouldn’t serve. As Communists they are lying evil scum pretty much by definition, and denial would have been politically attractive for as long as they thought they could nip the pandemic in the bud. I thought their incentives had flipped and they would now be honest as a way of assisting their own countermeasures and seeking international help.

My first clue that I was wrong about that came from a friend who is plugged into the diaspora Chinese community. According to him, there is terrifying video being sent from Chinese clans to the overseas branches they planted in the West to prepare a soft landing in case they have to bail out of China. Video of streets littered with corpses. And of living victims exhibiting symptoms like St. Vitus’s Dance (aka Sydenham’s chorea), which means the virus is attacking central nervous systems.

My second clue was the Tencent leak. […] the takeaway is that there is now reason to believe that as of Feb 1st the actual coronavirus toll looked like this: confirmed cases 154023, suspected cases 79808, cured 269, deaths 24589.

Compare that with the Johns Hopkins tracker numbers for today, a week later: Confirmed cases 31207, cured 1733, deaths 638. Allowing for the Tencent leak being roughly one doubling period earlier, the official statistics have been lowballing the confirmed case number by a factor of about 8 and the deaths by a factor of about 80. And then inflating cures by a factor of about 12.

Even given what I’d heard about the video, I might have remained skeptical about the leak numbers if someone (don’t remember who or where) hadn’t pointed out that the ratio between reported cases and deaths has been suspiciously constant in the official Chinese statistics. In uncooked statistics one would expect more noise in that ratio, if only because of reporting problems.

So my present judgment, subject to change on further evidence, is that the Tencent-leak numbers are the PRC’s actual statistics. And that has a lot of grim implications.

The Trial of Charles I (1649)

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Historia Civilis
Published 6 Feb 2020

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T. B. Howell “A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the Year 1783,” Volume IV | https://bit.ly/2Q9tPOS
“The Sentence of the High Court of Justice upon the King,” January 27th, 1649 | https://bit.ly/2rooZVC
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J. P. Kenyon, The Civil Wars of England | https://amzn.to/2EIAJW3
Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714 | https://amzn.to/371CSs0
Sean Kelsey, Politics and Procedure in the Trial of Charles I | https://www.jstor.org/stable/4141664
Clive Holmes, The Trial and Execution of Charles I | https://www.jstor.org/stable/40865689

Music:
“Heliograph,” by Chris Zabriskie
“John Stockton Slow Drag,” by Chris Zabriskie
“Your Mother’s Daughter,” by Chris Zabriskie
“Hallon,” by Christian Bjoerklund

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Switching over from internal combustion vehicles to electric won’t be cheap … it really won’t be cheap!

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Environment, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Spiked, Rob Lyons looks at the British government’s recent decision to ban sales of internal-combustion cars in 2035 rather than the earlier target date of 2040:

Nissan Leaf electric vehicle charging.
Photo by Nissan UK

First, at present, electric vehicles cost a lot more than those with internal-combustion engines. For example, one car-buying advice website notes that the Peugeot e-208 is as much as £6,200 more than the standard 208 model. There are government subsidies to help with the cost of electric cars (currently £3,500), but can this be sustained if we all switch? It has already been cut from £4,500 in 2018.

That said, while the purchase price of an electric car may be higher, charging is a lot cheaper than fuelling a regular car. Electric vehicles cost between £4 to £6 per 100 miles to charge at home and £8 to £10 using public charge points, while petrol and diesel cars cost £13 to £16 per 100 miles in fuel (although 60 per cent of the fuel cost is tax).

In theory, maintenance should be cheaper, too, given that electric motors have fewer moving parts than petrol or diesel engines. But to further complicate matters, batteries gradually lose their capacity to hold charge over time. They have to be replaced at the cost of thousands of pounds every few years. (The warranties covering battery replacement varies by manufacturer: Tesla, for instance, offers an eight-year warranty, but the Renault Zoe is covered for just three years.)

Electric cars may be cheaper to own overall, but this is largely down to subsidies and tax breaks, including lower vehicle duties and not having to pay charges in low-emission zones. Still, with the entire car industry throwing its efforts into making electric cars cheaper and increasing battery capacity, costs may well come down somewhat, reducing the need for such breaks. Fingers crossed.

The cost to individual owners will be higher, but the costs to build up the electric charging infrastructure will be distributed among all consumers, not just the owners of vehicles:

This brings us to perhaps the biggest problem: where will the power come from and how will it reach us? Eventually shifting all the energy for cars from oil to electricity means producing much more electricity. Greens are pleased that electricity use is currently decreasing, and a greater proportion of electricity is coming from renewable sources. But the arrival of electric cars en masse would demand a whole lot more electricity, mostly to be used at night.

Unless we want to coat the landscape in wind turbines, which are unreliable in any event, we’ll need other sources of power. More nuclear? Fine by me. But will eco-warriors stand for that? Even if we can produce the juice, having lots of cars charging in the same area may overwhelm the local electricity networks. Who is going to pay for the upgrade?

When all of these factors are considered we have to ask if all this effort will really reduce greenhouse-gas emissions anyway. Digging up the resources required to create all those batteries will be hugely carbon-intensive. Perhaps the most likely outcome of banning sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles is that demand for second-hand vehicles will go up. We could end up like Cubans, nursing venerable old cars for years, way beyond their intended lifespans.

Confederate Whitworth Sniper: Hexagonal Bullets in 1860

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Oct 2017

NOTE: Please see this video for a correction regarding Whitworth accuracy: https://youtu.be/cUd2RQGfL7E

Sold for $161,000.

Sir Joseph Whitworth is quite the famous name in engineering circles, credited with the development of such things as Whitworth threading (the first standardized thread pattern) and engineer’s blue. When he decided to make a rifle, he decided that he could make flat surfaces more precisely than round ones, and chose to design a rifle with a hexagonal bore and mechanically fitted bullets.

The Whitworth rifles proved to be magnificently accurate, with a British military test showing a group of 0.85 MOA at 500 yards, and under 8MOA even at 1800 yards. However, the rifles were equally expensive, and were not given further consideration for military use. Whitworth made a total of about 13,700, selling them to high level competitive marksmen and wealthy shooting enthusiasts. A small number were purchased by Confederate agents during the Civil War, and between 50 and 125 were able to evade the Union blockades to be delivered into Confederate hands. These rifles were equipped with Davidson 4-power telescopic sights, and they were put to extremely good effect by Confederate sharpshooting units. In particular, they were used to shoot at Union artillery crews, and Whitworth bullets have been found on a great many Civil War battlefields. They were not available in large numbers, but they were excellent rifles and put to use as much as possible.

Given the small number originally brought into the CSA, the number of known surviving examples is extremely low. This one, like many, was found without its scope and mount, and those parts have been replaced with period examples. As a true Confederate Whitworth, however, this is an extremely rare and historically relevant rifle!

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QotD: Canadian peacekeeping, myth and reality

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In fact, why don’t we practise anything we preach? As of May 2005, the top contributors to UN operations were Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal at Number 4, good grief, and they’re practically on the brink of civil war. Well, okay, we’re not in the Top 10 with all that expendable Asian manpower but c’mon, we must be in there somewhere … Number 20) France; 24) Ireland; 29) United Kingdom; 30) United States … hey, how’d those two warmongers make the Top 30 peacekeepers? Wait a minute, here we are: Canada, rocketing into the Hit Parade at 33 with a lack of bullet, right between Togo and Turkey. But, to the best of my knowledge, Togo and Benin (28) and Senegal (12) don’t regard peacekeeping as so indispensable to their self-image that they stick it on their currency and brag about it in beer commercials.

So we’re no longer a great military nation. But nor are we a great peacekeeping nation: we do less than notorious sabre-rattlers like Britain and America. Compared to the Scandinavians and the other niceniks we’re a poor aid donor, and our immobile rapid-reaction force is of no practical use in humanitarian crises. M. Chrétien’s legacy-building Africa initiative of 2002 is known only to Canadians. Everywhere else, it’s credited as Tony Blair’s Africa initiative. We have less influence internationally than we did in the 1940s — before we had a flag, an anthem, or our own citizenship. Even if the Trudeaupian vision of Canada were sufficient for a national identity, it suffers from the basic defect of being a bald-faced lie.

Mark Steyn, “Nothing to see here”, Western Standard, 2005-08-08.

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