Quotulatiousness

May 28, 2020

Seamless mitered corners with handtools and easy jigs

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Rex Krueger
Published 27 May 2020

Make perfect miters with hand-tools using two easy jigs you can build from scraps!

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Wuhan Coronavirus versus Canadian government planning and implementation

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As Chris Selley illustrates, this was a clear failure for the various levels of government:

When Ontarians look back on the COVID-19 pandemic as the moment when their government finally ponied up the big bucks and fixed the province’s long-term care system, they will likely also wonder what the hell took so long. As appalled as everyone quite rightly is by the Canadian Forces’ report into the state of five long-term care homes that were in dire enough shape to require military intervention, we really shouldn’t be shocked. As the Ottawa Citizen in particular has reported in recent years, the system’s staffing levels were designed for a much less old, much less sick and much less Alzheimer’s-afflicted population than lives in them today — and it led to some terrible outcomes in normal times.

Perhaps it was easy to blame such incidents on individual villains: Ottawa support worker Jie Xiao, who was caught on video punching 89-year-old Georges Karam 11 times in the face; or Elizabeth Wettlaufer, one of Canada’s most prolific and yet somehow least-famous serial killers, who murdered at least eight senior citizens in long-term care homes during her red flag-festooned nursing career. Perhaps tales of society’s most vulnerable being forced to wallow in their own filth, or even just left alone in confusion and misery, are too much for the human mind to contemplate at length.

In any event, it only stood to reason that a virus as potent as the one that causes COVID-19 would exploit weak points in a long-term care system. Between wandering patients, fans circulating air throughout facilities and a lack of basic sterilization control, you would almost think these five facilities wanted the virus to spread. It’s a wretched understatement to say we can do better.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves, though: Long-term care homes will always be uniquely vulnerable. And as the economy reopens, it’s essential we keep focusing on them. It’s essential that we focus, period.

There is a tendency among media in Central Canada to treat “Canada’s COVID-19” outbreak as a single thing affecting all of society. It clearly isn’t. The numbers are all over the map. Quebec has reported by far the most cases and deaths: 5,655 and 480 per million population, respectively. Ontario is at roughly one-third of that: 1,778 cases per million and 144 deaths per million. At 1,569 cases per million, Alberta has a comparable number of cases to Ontario — but far fewer deaths, at just 31 per million. British Columbia has the same death rate as Alberta, but with only one-third as many cases. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and New Brunswick have reported just 18 deaths between them. Quebec has nearly 30,000 active cases; Ontario has just over 6,000; Manitoba has 16.

Why Halftracks? Why limited to WW2 only? (Featuring Tank Fest 2018)

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Military History not Visualized
Published 6 Jul 2018

Disclaimer: I was invited to Tank Fest by the Tank Museum.

Why were half-tracks used in the first place? Why not trucks, fully-tracked vehicles or something else? Also, why after the Second World War did the half-track disappear? Why were there no new types produced by major powers?

Big thank you to green_goblin_z for sending me 2 books from my amazon wishlist!

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Military History not Visualized is a support channel to Military History Visualized with a focus personal accounts, answering questions that arose on the main channel and showcasing events like visiting museums, using equipment or military hardware.

» SOURCES «

Spielberger, Walter; Doyle, Hilary Lous, Jentz, Thomas L.: Halbkettenfahrzeuge des deutschen Heeres
Spielberger: Halftracked Vehicles of the German Army 1909-1945 (Spielberger German Armor and Military Vehicle)

Zaloga, Steven J.: M3 Infantry Half-Track. 1940-73. Osprey Publishing: Oxford, UK (1992 / 2002).

Citino, Robert M.: The German Way of War. From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich. University Press of Kansas: USA, 2005.

Krapke, Paul-Werner: Armor, in: Margiotta, Franklin D. (Executive Editor): Brassey’s Encyclopedia of Land Forces and Warfare. Brassey’s: Washington, USA (1996), p. 42-53

Pöhlmann, Markus: Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges: Eine deutsche Geschichte 1890 bis 1945 (Zeitalter der Weltkriege)

Munzel, Oskar: Die deutschen gepanzerten Truppen bis 1945

Fleischer, Wolfgang: Die motorisierten Schützen und Panzergrenadiere des deutschen Heeres: 1935-1945 – Waffen, Fahrzeuge, Gliederung, Einsätze

Felberbauer, Franz: Waffentechnik I – Band 2: Geschütze, Waffen in Entwicklung, Nichttödliche Waffensysteme, Ballistik, Physikalische Grundlagen (Truppendienst)
https://www.truppendienst.com/td-buec…

QotD: The decline and fall of the British aristocracy

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Therein you have a microcosm of modern British aristocracy. A class system that used to distribute power and responsibility has collapsed into a source of therapeutic validation for the fragile individualism of its members. False merit thrives between narrow horizons — and few are narrower than the blue bloods of England. Enabling these delusions are the hangers-on who crowd Britain’s husks of aristocracy. It takes celebrities, journalists, and photographers to clothe their naked imperium and validate their feelings of uniqueness. And what does the intelligentsia get in return for this courtship? The answer, of course, is nothing. Because if Britain’s nobs know one thing, it is that they owe the world nothing. They have kept their noblesse but eschewed their oblige. In its place has come venality and codependence: rugged individualism without the actual ruggedness.

The historical way-markers to this implosion are well-documented. The First World War delivered a demographic and psychological blow of unprecedented proportion. Yet the next generation laughed into the void. The Roaring Twenties were a whirl of parties and bankruptcies. Only with the aid of married American fortunes did a carapace of their old values remain intact. The ’60s dissolved what remained of those values in a fug of dope and good tail. Those who didn’t succumb to the new addictions succumbed to old ones they could no longer afford. Titans of the British military like Sir David Stirling — cofounder of the SAS and a descendant of Charles II — gambled away their estates at the hands of unscrupulous Mayfair casino-owners who pretended to be their friends. The aristos were co-opted for their charm — read: money — by a new milieu that promoted the glamour of sexual and social transgression. Blinded by their inherited feelings of self-worth, they never realized they were being used by people who despised them. As a result, nowhere was Britain’s postwar political direction — dubbed “The Management of Decline” — internalized as effectively as among the people who had once driven its ascent.

[…]

How could a species that once steered Britain to greatness now claim the Darwin Award in every passing decade? The simple reason is that British aristocrats are the only people on earth among whom stupidity is not only accepted but prized. As the ultimate proof against meritocracy, it is the ultimate badge of honor. As Stendhal wrote in Le Rouge et Le Noir, “It is not doing something well or badly that is the crime: but doing it at all.”

“Bunky Mortimer III”, “Class Rejects: A Guide to the British Aristocracy”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-03-02.

May 27, 2020

Best Way For Gluing Wood Together To Get Thick Pieces

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Nick Ferry
Published 24 Mar 2018

More information in the website article – https://nickferry.com/2018/03/best-wa… including links to the wood clamps

Sometimes you need to glue boards together to make up thicker stock for table legs, furniture making & turning projects. This is the best way for gluing wood together to get thicker boards. Super simple but effective way to keep all the wood aligned while clamping just by using a parallel clamp and some F-style clamps. I find this method a lot easier than using cauls, salt or nails.

Comprehensive planning and communication failures are the hallmark of Canada’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Selley understands why the internet shaming community is dunking on the apparently large number of people who crowded into Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods park over the weekend but doesn’t feel the need to join them:

Screencap from a CBC report on unorganized social distancing civil disobedience at Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods Park on Saturday.

Human beings need to get outside and socialize. They have breaking points, and many are very understandably at them. (An aside: I can’t help noticing how many people venting fury on social media have also treated their followers to images of their back-patio office setups, or updates on their new vegetable gardens.) There is also no surplus of parkland in downtown Toronto. Photographic evidence suggests other neighbourhood greenspaces were very busy as well, though not to the same extent.

In other words, this was always going to happen. So the time is long past when politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford or Toronto Mayor John Tory should be able to cluck their tongues or stamp their feet at such people and expect their constituents to nod along in solidarity.

Jurisdictions facing significant COVID-19 outbreaks had one finite period of time in which to try to knock this bastard virus down. After that period of time, the socioeconomic costs of the shutdown would become unsustainable and the economy would have to reopen. We’re seeing that happen all over the world right now: in essence, countries are rolling the dice. If they did well in the allotted time, fewer people will have to die in the name of getting back to normal.

The federal, Ontario and Toronto governments have not done well — certainly not to any extent that justifies their leaders’ soaring approval ratings.

The feds have been abysmal since even before Day One, with Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam actively downplaying the threat. We shipped 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to China with no viable plan to replace it. Whatever you think of travel bans as an anti-pandemic measure, the government undermined its own credibility by insisting they don’t work, then changing course 180 degrees over the course of a weekend. Most astonishingly, the feds at first utterly failed to communicate the most basic advice to returning travellers — advice such as “don’t stop for groceries or at the pharmacy on your way home.”

And Tam’s initial ludicrous “masks don’t work” narrative has grudgingly evolved to support the use of non-medical masks “where social distancing is not possible.” But the federal government’s official advice on “safe shopping” — indeed the entire web page titled “COVID-19 and food safety” — still doesn’t mention masks, even as the berth shoppers give each other seems to narrow by the day. This anti-mask stance seems to be ideological, bred in the bone.

The Battle to Crack Enigma – The real story of ‘The Imitation Game’ – WW2 Special

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

World War Two
Published 26 May 2020

For the British, breaking the Germans’ seemingly unbreakable codes is one of the most vital battles of the war. If they fail, there is litte to stop the German U-Boats hunting down Allied shipping in the Atlantic.

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Norman Stewart, https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
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Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
IWM D 23310, A 13709, A 23513
Picture of Enigma G model, courtesy Austin Mills https://flic.kr/p/2bQ9Q
reconstructed bombe machine at Bletchley Park, courtesy Gerald Massey
Picture of Enigma M4 model displayed at Bletchley Park, courtesy Magnus Manske
Picture of John Herivel, courtesy GCHQ
From the Noun Project: Letter by Mochammad Kafi, Desk by monkik, Phone by libertetstudio, person by Adrien Coquet, Letter by Bonegolem, Table by Creative Stall, documents by Johannes Hirsekorn, sitting at desk by IYIKON, Paper by James Kopina

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
Hakan Eriksson – “Epic Adventure Theme 3”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”

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From the comments:

World War Two
4 hours ago (edited)
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Please let us know what other specials you’d like to see. And if you would like to know something about a smaller topic, make sure to submit that as a question for our Q&A series, Out of the Foxholes. You can do that right here: https://community.timeghost.tv/c/Out-of-the-Foxholes-Qs.

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American passenger trains before Amtrak

Filed under: Business, Government, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

George Hamlin reflects on the state of the US passenger rail system before the formation of Amtrak in 1971:

… non-commuter U.S. passenger trains can be said to have been under siege essentially for my entire lifetime, beginning not long after the end of World War II. Many railroads spent large sums to re-equip with streamlined lightweight equipment after the war, only to see what was originally couched as an investment turn into essentially a drain on their companies’ treasuries.

And the “rewards” for this? Passengers decamped to the rapidly-expanding airlines, and their personal automobiles. The decisive blow came in 1956, with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act, which led to the Interstate Highway System.

Quoting from Joe Welsh’s Pennsy Streamliners, The Blue Ribbon Fleet (page 138), “Referring to the challenge, [PRR President] Symes wrote ‘There is such a thing as planning an orderly retreat in the face of superior forces.’ Clearly, the bugle had been sounded.”

In 1958, an Interstate Commerce Commission Hearing Examiner predicted that there would be no intercity passenger trains by 1970; he only missed by four months, effectively (and didn’t count on the Southern Railway, Rio Grande and Rock Island shying away from the government’s largesse). In 1959, TRAINS magazine devoted an entire issue to what was now clearly a crisis; the cover bore the legend “Who Shot the Passenger Train?”, complete with simulated bullet hole.

The 1960s in the U.S. could well be described as the “train-off” decade from a transportation history perspective; get, and read, Fred Frailey’s Twilight of the Great Trains, for a blow-by-blow analysis. The 1970s quickly produced the Penn Central bankruptcy, which proved to be the catalyst for government intervention; less than a year later, Amtrak was on the scene.

And since, it has frequently found itself in a “Perils of Pauline” existence, ranging from lack of funding to buy equipment, in many cases, to several bouts of route eliminations, to micro-management by politicians that don’t seem to be willing to provide consistent operational funding so that the company can make reasonable plans.

PRR E8A 5803 with Train 72, The Red Bird, passing the Hartsdale, Indiana tower and crossing the NYC and EJ&E on November 26, 1965.
Photo from the Roger Puta collection via Wikimedia Commons.

Webley 1913 Semiauto Pistol: History and Disassembly

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 May 2017

William Whiting and the Webley company had high hopes for their self-loading pistols being adopted by the British military — but they never got the success they were hoping for.

After the poor performance of the Webley 1904 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hT38…) at trials, William Whiting decided to make sure his next attempt would be fully developed before he put it in the hands of the military. He did very well at that too, as the gun which would become the Model 1913 Webley did very well from its very first military tests. The Royal Navy was, in fact, quite enthusiastic about it, although the Army was not. The Navy would ultimately adopt the gun and purchase about 8,000 of them during World War One, while the Army acquired just a couple hundred and preferred to stick to its revolvers.

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QotD: “Hate speech” is the new secular heresy

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The cynical category of “hate speech” is openly used to police the parameters of acceptable thought and to punish those who are considered to hold heretical views that the guardians of moral correctness oppose. So not only are critics of Islam denounced as “hate speakers” — so are feminists who question the cult of transgenderism, Christians who disapprove of same-sex marriage, right-wing people who want stricter immigration controls, etc. These are all entirely legitimate political or moral opinions. The branding of them as “hate speech” — and therefore undeserving of the protections of freedom of speech — is really a way of calling these views heresy. And of course heretics must be cast out. Feminists, Catholics, critics of Islam — hound them off campus, get them off the airwaves, report them to the police for their crimes of hatred. This is an intolerant assault on heresy of the kind that has appeared many times throughout history. Those who say “It isn’t censorship” protest far too much. Deep down they know it is. Deep down they know they are to the 2020s what Joe McCarthy was to the 1950s.

Brendan O’Neill, “Why we must win the fight for free speech”, Spiked, 2020-02-26.

May 26, 2020

Preparing a Wooden Jack Plane | Paul Sellers

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Paul Sellers
Published 17 May 2014

In this video, Paul Sellers takes you through the steps necessary to prepare a wooden jack plane for use.

To find out more about Paul Sellers and the projects he is involved with visit http://paulsellers.com

“No more pencils, no more books…”

Filed under: Britain, Education, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, Sean Gabb considers the demands from the British government to quickly re-open the schools over the concerns of the educational unions and administrations:

The latest turn in an increasingly dull coverage of the Coronavirus panic is a proposed reopening of the schools. The Government wants them open as soon as possible for at least some of their students. The teaching unions are bleating that no one should go back until their members can be sure of not catching anything. The headmasters are worried about compliance with the social distancing rules. As a conservative of sorts, I think I am supposed to side with the Government and the pro-Conservative journalists — denouncing the teachers as a pack of idlers where not cowards, and insisting that those factories of essential skills must be set back in full production before the summer holidays. Of course, my settled view as a libertarian is that the teaching unions deserve all the support I have never so far given them. The schools must remain closed until no one is in any danger of so much as an attack of hay fever. The schools have been largely closed since the end of March. The longer they stay largely closed, the better. Best of all if they never reopen — or never reopen as they have been since attendance was made compulsory at the end of the nineteenth century.

I quote John Stuart Mill on compulsory schooling:

    A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.
    (On Liberty, 1859, Chapter 5, “Applications.”)

This has always been the case in some degree. The spread of state schooling in England after 1870, and particularly after it was made compulsory in 1880, and then extended in 1902, is probably inseparable from the nationalist hysteria that drove our participation in the Great War. It also may explain the perverse belief, general until the 1970s, in the unique goodness and honesty of our ruling class. This being said, reasonable patriotism is to be encouraged; and, compared with others, our ruling class was not until recently so bad. A further point is that compulsory state schooling used to be reasonably effective at giving the mass of people a basic education. By 1960, most people were literate and numerate. They could spell and write grammatical prose. They had some exposure to the English classics, and the means of exploring these to greater depth if they wished. They had some understanding of history and the sciences. You can tell much about the quality of a people by examining what is read and watched. Looking at the popular arts in England during much of the twentieth century explains why this passage in On Liberty was less often discussed than his arguments for freedom of speech. Mill was right in the abstract. He could be shown to be right in certain particulars. But the evils of compulsory state schooling were mostly potential.

All this, however, is in the past. Since about 1980, schooling of all kinds has been made into a concerted means of indoctrination. The cultural leftists have captured both the classrooms and the curriculum. I will not elaborate on this claim. Some will argue over terminology, some over the merits of the capture, but hardly anyone denies the broad fact. One of the main functions of modern schooling is to bring about and to protect a radical departure from the old intellectual culture of this country.

Much of this departure has been achieved by preaching in the classroom. But it is supplemented by a growing bureaucracy of surveillance. The teachers themselves are watched, and they can be punished for dissenting from the established discourse. There is, for example, the Government’s Prevent strategy, which applies to the whole state machinery. Its purpose is to identify and root out anyone defined as a “political extremist.” Anyone identified as such is effectively banned from working with children and young people, and probably in the state sector as a whole.

Legends Summarized: The Journey To The West (Part III)

Filed under: Books, China, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 Apr 2016

At last! The saga continues, as our troupe of compadres grows from three to five and the story can REALLY get started!

In case you were wondering, this ISN’T the only origin of the five-man-band archetype, although it certainly accounts for a lot of the associated tropes. The Mahabharata is another classic example, with the five Pandava brothers filling out the classic roles very well.

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QotD: Our sister Dominions on the other side of the world

Filed under: Australia, Cancon, History, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

I used to write from time to time about how strange it is that we Canadians don’t pay more attention to politics in Australia, our nearest sibling as a historic Dominion of the British crown. But this has changed a bit in the last few years. Editors have learned that Australia’s rough-and-tumble party politics and leadership “spills” make terrific entertainment. Canadian election reformers praying for proportional representation have given Oz more attention as a teaching example. Australia gets more column-inches, or at least koala GIFs, than it once did.

But, of course, the real joke here is on New Zealand. It’s the Dominion too easily forgotten for someone like me to remember to point out how forgotten it is.

What’s interesting about this is that, over the past 40 years or so, New Zealand has probably exercised a more significant political influence on Canada than Australia ever did. New Zealand’s 1980s neoliberal revolution, led by Finance Minister Roger Douglas, helped teach politicians everywhere (and especially in Alberta) tactics for deregulating, privatizing, lowering marginal tax rates, and generally blowing the dust off of planned economies.

Colby Cosh, “An ounce of Canadianity for a less-radical junior Dominion”, National Post, 2018-02-27.

May 25, 2020

The Problem With Civil War Reenactors

Filed under: History, Humour, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 6 Feb 2019

A former Gettysburg tour guide and confirmed farb talks smack about folks who take the hobby way too seriously.

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