World War Two
Published 25 Sep 2021Franz Halder, German Army Chief of Staff since the war began, loses his job this week, but the offensive this summer has failed to gain any of its objectives and someone has to take the blame. In the Caucasus it’s slowing to a crawl, and in Stalingrad the fighting is now block by block. Meanwhile, the Japanese are making new plans for a big offensive of their own, to take Guadalcanal once and for all.
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September 26, 2021
Stalingrad, Factory by Factory, Room by Room – WW2 – 161 – September 25, 1942
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“… is there a single area of public policy where Canada has its shit together?”
In The Line‘s weekly round-up, they point out a little-noticed Globe and Mail article that illustrates something that should really concern Canadians:
Sometimes the big lessons are in the small things. While everyone was busy jawboning about the federal election returns earlier this week, we were also struck by a barely noticed story in the Globe and Mail reporting that the federal government had awarded a contract to begin replacing the disastrous Phoenix payroll system. Phoenix, you’ll recall, was an IT project designed to harmonize the payroll for the entire federal public service. The 2016 rollout was a disaster, resulting in thousands of employees being paid too much, too little, or not at all. Fixing it has cost billions and has not entirely succeeded, and now it is being replaced entirely.
We were still pondering this news when Alex Usher idly wondered: “Genuine question: is there a single area of public policy where Canada has its shit together?”
Alex isn’t some rando Twitter troll. By day he runs Canada’s premier higher education consultancy. But he’s also one of the country’s most perceptive policy analysts, writes a daily blog about just about anything policy related, and is probably one of the three or four smartest Canadians still on Twitter.
Which is why his question was met with more thoughtful responses than the usual schoolyard heckling that is typical of the platform. Fiscal policy between 1993 and 2015, offered Ken Boessenkool. Andrew Coyne half-heartedly suggested monetary policy. Rachel Curran proposed immigration, prisons, and the coast guard, but was quickly set right by people who knew what they were talking about.
So when Usher followed his question with a long Twitter thread showing just how broken Canada is, with a sophisticated and nuanced take on why that’s the case, there really wasn’t anyone left making a serious argument against him. Everyone knows it is true.
Everyone, that is, except two of the most politically polarized groups in the country, who disagree about everything except the capacities of the government.
On the one hand there are the Build Back Better people, mostly housed in the increasingly unpopular Liberal Party of Canada. These people persist in believing that the federal government is poised to make big decisions, to take big actions, on big issues such as climate change, pandemic preparedness, and dealing with the rise of China. They are prepared to talk big talk, and spend big money, in pursuit of their policy objectives.
On the other, there are the paranoid conspiracists who believe that the government is using the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic to implement all manner of social controls. These include suspicions that the government would use a contact tracing app to engage in mass surveillance, that they are putting a 5G payload into the vaccines, or that this is all part of a big Liberal internationalist plan to set up a world government.
While these seem to be diametrically opposed worldviews, what they share is the deep conviction that the government can actually do something. Indeed, what is charming about the conspiratorial worldview is how much faith it actually has in the authorities.
Confront China? Please. We can’t buy ships, planes or even handguns for our military. Pandemic preparedness? You’re kidding, right? We can’t even hire enough nurses for the health-care system. Set up a world government? Lol who would we hire to work for this government? We can’t even figure out how to pay the public servants we already have on staff.
As usual, the correct counter to conspiracy-minded thinking is not to have faith in government, it’s to be realistic about it. Similarly, the correct response to the build back better crew is not enthusiasm, but realism. And ultimately, the right approach to everything the government proposes is deep, deep, deep cynicism.
One of the major reasons I’ve long favoured smaller government — the smaller the better — is that the bigger any organization gets and the more things it tries to do, the less effective it is at all of them. Governments in the western world generally have gotten so big that they’re incapable of doing almost anything in an effective, competent, and repeatable manner. A hypothetical world government would be even worse (just look at the existing United Nations to see how billions of dollars not only get nothing useful done, but often exacerbate existing problems).
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I finally made GARUM | Ancient Rome’s favorite condiment
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 9 Jun 2020In nearly every recipe we have from Ancient Rome, a key ingredient is Garum or Liquamen; fermented fish sauce. While it usually takes two months to make, I use an ancient recipe for same day garum which gave me plenty of time to look at the history of Ancient Rome’s favorite condiment.
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GARUM
ORIGINAL RECIPE From The Geoponica
If you wish to use the garum at once — i.e. not expose it to the sun, but boil it — make it in the following manner: Take brine and test its strength by throwing an egg into it to see if it floats; if it sinks it does not contain enough salt. Put the fish into the brine in a new earthenware pot, add oregano, put it on a good fire until it boils — i.e., until it begins to reduce. Some people also add defrutum. Let it cool and strain it two or three times, until the liquid is clear. Seal and store it away.MODERN RECIPE
INGREDIENTS (Amounts are approximate)
– 2 Quarts (1900ml) Water
– 1lb (450g) Sea Salt
– 2 Teaspoons Dried Oregano
– Defrutum or Honey
– 2lbs (900g) Whole Fish (oily)METHOD
1. Add salt to the water and stir to dissolve. You may not need the full amount, so start with about 3/4s. Place an egg in the water and if the egg floats, stop adding salt.
2. Add the whole fish and the oregano (and defrutum if you are using any) to the water and place over medium-high heat and boil for 30 – 40 minutes. Every ten minutes, mash with a spoon to break up the fish.
3. Once the water has reduced to about half the amount, remove the pot from the heat and allow to cool.
4. First, pass through a colander and then strain through a kitchen cloth or paper towel until the garum is free of particles. Then bottle in a sterile bottle and refrigerate.Music Credit
“Gigue” From 3rd Cello Suite
Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Photo Credits
chef PNG Designed By CHENXIN from https://pngtree.com/
Garum Mosaic – Claus Ableiter / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Adana Mosaic – Dosseman / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Galen – Wellcome Collection / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Snails Mosaic – Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Seneca & Nero – By Eduardo Barrón – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…#tastinghistory #garum #ancientrome #foodhistory
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QotD: Euphemism
Throughout the Globe piece, neither Robinson nor his interviewer is able to say the words “mentally ill,” let alone crazy. Rather, it is said that he “suffers from a mental illness,” or in Svendspeak, that he is “living with mental illness,” rather like a room-mate. This is a euphemism, a kind of linguistic prophylactic intended to shield the speaker, no less than the listener, from the harsh reality to which it refers. Like all euphemisms and some prophylactics, it will eventually wear out, requiring the substitution of some new euphemism in its place. In time, “living with mental illness” will be seen as a grievous insult, much as “coloured people” is to people of colour. (Except, of course, for those working at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.)
Andrew Coyne, “False Sensitivity”, andrewcoyne.com, 2005-05-07.
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