Quotulatiousness

December 19, 2021

Remember the megabucks Andrew Cuomo received for his (ghostwritten) book? It’s going to New York State instead

Filed under: Books, Business, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Back in November, Kenneth Whyte reported on the unlikely pay-off for Andrew Cuomo and his American Crisis. In this week’s SHuSH newsletter he’s delighted to report that the state government — which effectively funded the research and writing of the book — will be the eventual recipient of the whole advance:

Sorry to keep harkening back to previous SHuSHs but I can’t overlook the latest on the Andrew Cuomo shambles.

You’ll remember that now-disgraced former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, played dirty with his publisher and the public while landing a lucrative book contract. More specifically, he suppressed bad news about pandemic deaths in his state while coaxing a $5.1 million advance out of Penguin Random House for a book about his heroic activities as a COVID-19 fighter.

I mentioned that it was astonishing that the governor of America’s hardest-hit pandemic state could produce a fat manuscript in just three months, and that media reports suggested his staff and a ghostwriter authored the book for him. The same reports said he was in danger of violating state ethics prohibitions against the use of state resources or personnel in producing his book.

I also noted that weeks after the grandly titled American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic was released in October 2020, Cuomo was hit with the first in a long series of sexual harassment allegations. He was forced to resign his office in August 2021. By then, it had also emerged that Cuomo’s office had covered up roughly half of the fatalities among state nursing home residents during the pandemic.

Penguin Random House took a bath on the project. American Crisis has sold only about 50,000 copies, about a tenth of what the publisher needed to cover the advance it paid the author.

This week it was Cuomo’s turn in the tub. An ethics panel ruled that he had broken his promises not to use state resources or government staff to write his self-congratulatory book, and gave him thirty days to hand over to the State of New York the $5.1 million he earned with the book.

‘Tis the season to be jolly

Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

Guadalcanal Life Expectancy: 30 Days- WW2 – 173 – December 18, 1942

Filed under: Africa, Britain, France, Germany, History, Italy, Japan, Military, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 18 Dec 2021

Just a few weeks ago massive offensives were launched in North Africa and the Soviet Union, against the Axis. These operations and offensives have now morphed into fully fledged campaigns, and the nature of these theatres of the war has been transformed.
(more…)

“Instant replay” in the NFL

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Severian talks about the surprising statistical results when the NFL introduced “instant replay”:

I was a big NFL fan when they first started debating the now-standard “instant replay challenge” rules. Like most people, I was all for it — geez, these refs are terrible, video’s the way to go. My only worry was that if every call those numbnuts obviously screwed up got reviewed, games would last 12 hours …

But a funny thing happened: As with most people, my respect for the refs went way, way up once they put in the video challenge rules. Yeah, they screw up one or two calls per game, the challenges prove that … but that’s one or two out of hundreds, which is a phenomenal success rate. Not only that, even the very toughest calls — the ones that draw the red flags — they get right, or at least not-wrong (football is nothing if not Hegelian), about half the time. Put it through all the techno-whizbangery you want — slow it down to molasses-in-winter speed, run it through one of those Blade Runner image enhancers — and it’s still pretty much a coin toss, at least half the time. And the refs are making those calls at full speed, from dramatically different angles.

In other words, I learned a lesson in applied statistics. Before instant replay, if you’d asked me to guess, as objectively as possible, how many calls per game the refs blew, I’d have said something like “four or five, tops”. (I suppose we must pause here to note, for the benefit of anyone who still follows the NFL for some reason, that I’m not talking about bullshit like the “tuck rule” or whatever the fuck a “catch” is supposed to be these days, which even the refs don’t seem to understand; I’m talking stuff like “Did he fumble?” or “They missed the ball spot by a yard or two”). I certainly wouldn’t go any higher than that, and if you told me that an independent auditing firm had reviewed ten seasons’ worth of game tape and came up with a hard number of 2.6 calls per game, I’d roll with it, no problem.

If you then told me that this represents a “failure rate” of well under 1%, well, I’m not sure I want to go through all the math to check you, but I’d believe it, because I know something about how the game is played. I don’t want to get too far off track here, but for the benefit of casual fans and especially non-American readers, there are 11 men on a football team, and all of them have the opportunity to do all kinds of illegal stuff on every single play. Call it 65 plays per game (the first rough number I could find with a five second internet search), and that’s … well, my math doesn’t go that high, but let’s just say it’s a lot of opportunities for fouls. And that’s not counting all the other stuff refs have to do — that they have the opportunity to get wrong — on nearly every play: Marking the ball spot, determining where a guy went out of bounds, and so on.

The important thing to note is how far my emotional perceptions of the game diverge from statistical reality. Let’s stipulate that all the math up there results in a “success rate” of 99.993%. I’d buy that … Intellectually I’d buy it, because I know a bit about how math works, and a lot more about how football works, but note my first impression when they started talking about instant replay: “Oh God yes, these guys suck, they blow so many calls that games are going to last 12 hours if they review all the calls those lousy refs obviously miss.”

Emotion beats math, every time.

And note that I’m talking about refs in general here. In general, they blow calls all the time (the emotional me said), but when it comes to my team in particular, well, they’ve obviously got it out for us. They screw up an entire season’s worth of calls every time my team plays, and all those screwups go the opponents’ way!

I’m kidding, but I’m not joking. I got to see this process firsthand, and that’s the second lesson instant replay taught me: “Indisputable video evidence,” as the phrase is, don’t mean squat when you’ve got your heart and soul in it.

Every NFL fan knows that the refs hate their particular team and love their most hated rival, and no amount of indisputable evidence will shake that belief. NFL fans are rather like progressives in that way …

Canada’s almost functional flying saucer; the story of the Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Polyus Studios
Published 14 Jul 2018

Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudios

The Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar: Canada’s first attempt at vertical take off and landing aircraft. Although the concept ultimately turned out to be a dead-end, the engineers and designers at Avro experimented with bold new ideas. Their concepts would push the limits of the imagination and reflected the extreme technological optimism of its time.

Music:
Denmark – Portland Cello Project

Research Sources:
“Declassified: America’s Secret Flying Saucer” – https://www.popularmechanics.com/mili…
Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar – https://www.aviationsmilitaires.net/v…
Avrocar: Canada’s Flying Saucer: The Story of Avro Canada’s Secret Projects by Bill Zuk (2001)
How to Build a FLYING SAUCER – https://declassification.blogs.archiv…
LaesieWorks – AVROCAR VZ-9AV – http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/AV…
The Living Moon – Project Silverbug – The Avrocar – http://www.thelivingmoon.com/49ufo_fi…

Footage Sources:
Avrocar I Progress Report 01/02/1958 – 05/1959 – US National Archives (~1959)
Disc Flight Development, Avrocar I Progress Report, 05/02/1959 – 04/12/1960 – US National Archives (~1960)
Avrocar Continuation Test Program and Terrain Test Program, 06/01/1960 – 06/14/1961 – US National Archives (~1959)
Tiltwing Versatility – San Diego Air and Space Museum (~1971)

Aircraft mentioned:
Project Y
Project Y-2
Project PV 704
Project 1794
Project Silverbug
Weapon System 606A
VZ-9AV Avrocar
CL-84 Dynavert

#Avrocar #CanadianAerospace #Polyus

QotD: Sun Tzu’s Art of War reworked for the 21st Century by General Mark Milley

Filed under: Books, China, Humour, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

… here at The Babylon Bee, we’re legit journalists, so we’ve got the exclusive scoop. Here are some excerpts from the upcoming revision of The Art of War:

    “If you think you might attack an enemy, pick up the phone and give ’em a heads up. It’s only fair.”

    “You have to be careful not to surprise your enemy. They really don’t like it.”

    “Treason is not treason if it is the lesser of two treasons.”

    “Know thy pronouns, and know thy enemy’s pronouns.”

    “The supreme art of war is to surrender to your enemy without fighting.”

    “All war is white rage.”

    “If you surrender, you can never lose.”

    “If thy commanding officer sends mean tweets, thou need not follow orders or the chain of command.”

    “The enemy of my friend is my friend.”

    “Keep your friends close and your enemies on speed dial.”

    “You can not betray the one to which you were never loyal.”

    “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for China.”

    “When retreating, leave most of thy armaments behind so you know what you’ll be up against next time.”

    “Chinese bros before American hoes.”

    “He who turns on bad orange man gets big book deal.”

“General Milley Is Releasing A Revised Version Of The Art Of War — And We’ve Got Exclusive Excerpts”, BabylonBee, 2021-09-17.

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