This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no.” The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.
Ian Betteridge, “TechCrunch: Irresponsible journalism”, Techechnovia.co.uk, 2009-02-23. (Link goes to archived page at the Wayback Machine.)
June 17, 2019
QotD: Betteridge’s Law of Headlines
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June 16, 2019
The “NBA” unveiled
Just before his mysterious disappearance (police are baffled, no clues have been found, etc., etc.), Colby Cosh filed a bizzare rant with his newspaper that they somehow forgot to spike:
Kawhi Leonard of the Toronto Raptors about to attempt a free throw during game 2 of the 2019 NBA Finals.
Photo by Chensiyuan via Wikimedia Commons.
By the time you read this, I may be dead. The newspaper industry’s taboo against openly discussing the scriptwriters who create the elaborate soap operas we call “professional sports” is a strong one, and viciously enforced. The money we make from pretending that sports aren’t fake is too important to our bottom line. Good people who have tried to write articles like this have found their careers and lives cut short.
No doubt it will be so with me, but I feel that the geniuses behind the “National Basketball Association” — rumoured to be a tight-knit group of a half-dozen or so fiction veterans recruited from Hollywood, the manga industry, and, in at least one case, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. — deserve credit. Decades of planning went into this ambitious, implausible Toronto Raptors story line. The conquest of Canada now seems complete.
For decades no one thought that basketball, as a theatrical production, could make headway in Canada against the National Hockey League. The NHL’s scriptwriters were thought to be too naturally, intuitively in touch with Canada’s Victorian and Protestant values. And Canada, owing to its geography, had a natural market corner on “athletic” performers who could skate. The league could always come up with a backstory and an affable personality for a “Wayne Gretzky” (actually a figure skater from Swift Current named Kevin Feinberg) or “Alexander Ovechkin” (born Dennis Brian York in Nepean, Ont.)
Unfortunately, the NHL, its creative staff increasingly laden with third- and fourth-generation mediocrities, started to spin its wheels as any monopolistic institution does in the end. It became the CBC of sports. Head showrunner Gary Bettman adopted an ambitious strategy of colonizing new American markets, but failed to bring new blood into the writing room. He was left with increasingly cheap, desperate moves like inventing the “Vegas Golden Knights” and injecting them directly into the Stanley Cup final.
Accounts of when and how the so-called “National Basketball Association” decided to exploit this weakness remain cloudy. They say one of the writers was thumbing through the sport’s “bible,” the binder every television program keeps on hand to guarantee continuity, and noticed that basketball’s creation myth actually involves a Canadian inventor-hero, “James A. Naismith.” (This has always invited suspicion among the punters. How many Naismiths do you run across?)
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June 11, 2019
QotD: Advice to young men
H.L. Mencken in 1928.
Photo by Ben Pinchot for Theatre Magazine, August 1928.
Since Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, published his celebrated letters to his morganatic son, in 1744, there has been no adequate book, in English, of advice to young men. I say adequate, and the adjective tells the whole story. There is not, of course, a college president or a boss Y.M.C.A. secretary, or an uplifting preacher in the United States who has not written such a book, but all of them are alike filled with bilge. They depict and advocate a life that no normal young man wants to live, or could live without ruin if he wanted to. They are full of Sunday-school platitudes and Boy Scout snuffling. If they were swallowed by the youth of today the Republic of tomorrow would be a nation of idiots.H.L. Mencken, “Another Long-Awaited Book”, Chicago Tribune, 1926-09-12.
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June 10, 2019
QotD: Robert Heinlein on “honest work”
The beginning of 1939 found me flat broke following a disastrous political campaign (I ran a strong second best, but in politics there are no prizes for place or show).
Robert A. Heinlein at the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention
Via Wikimedia Commons.I was highly skilled in ordnance, gunnery, and fire control for Naval vessels, a skill for which there was no demand ashore — and I had a piece of paper from the Secretary of the Navy telling me that I was a waste of space — “totally and permanently disabled” was the phraseology. I “owned” a heavily-mortgaged house.
About then Thrilling Wonder Stories ran a house ad reading (more or less):
GIANT PRIZE CONTEST —
Amateur Writers!!!!!!
First Prize $50 Fifty Dollars $50In 1939 one could fill three station wagons with fifty dollars worth of groceries.
Today I can pick up fifty dollars in groceries unassisted — perhaps I’ve grown stronger.
So I wrote the story “Life-Line.” It took me four days — I am a slow typist. I did not send it to Thrilling Wonder; I sent it to Astounding, figuring they would not be so swamped with amateur short stories.
Astounding bought it… for $70, or $20 more than that “Grand Prize” — and there was never a chance that I would ever again look for honest work.
(“Honest work” — an euphemism for underpaid bodily exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines, tractors, and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me. Sitting at a typewriter in a nice warm room, with no boss, cannot possibly be described as “honest work.”)
Robert A. Heinlein, 1980.
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June 8, 2019
Blue’s Top Five Domes!
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 7 Jun 2019There are questions any self-respecting YouTube Historian must ask: “How do you balance entertainment and educational value?”, “What’s the split between your area of expertise and more foreign topics?”, and, of course, the most important of all: “Which Dome is the best dome?”
Today, Overly Sarcastic Productions takes a stand on this critical issue — and proceeds to shitpost about it.
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Differentiating between actual security and security theatre
Alistair Dabbs has a security tale of woe:
“Keypad Entry”by Victor Frost is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Access denied. Enter Access Code.That’s a good start. Just a few moments ago I was handed a card on which is written, in blue ballpoint, a newly compiled string of alphanumerics that is supposed to identify me as a unique user. Oh well, maybe I fumbled the buttons. Let’s try again.
Access denied. Enter Access Code.I am standing in the driving rain – this is London in the summer – in front of a large electronically operated vehicle barrier that keeps the riff-raff from getting anywhere near the car park and loading bay behind the building where I am to be working this week.
The vertical stainless steel keypad into which I am pushing my access code is weather-resistant. I am not. You’d think they could have installed the keypad at car-window level but no, it’s at lorry level. And it’s not on the driver’s side anyway, so anyone not rolling up in an unmodified US or continental import vehicle is forced to exit and walk over to the access terminal.
Access denied. Enter Access Code.As far as it is concerned, I am riff-raff. I look behind me to see a steel-grey car has pulled up behind mine. Steel-grey = bland, unimaginative, company car, must be management. As I trudge back towards the street entrance around the corner to ask the security desk for an alternative access code, remembering this time to express an explicit preference for one that actually provides access, I notice the driver in the grey car has started to harrumph.
Security systems like this exist to protect me and my possessions, whether physical or electronic. They keep out the nasties and foil the mischievous. They allow access to the honest and prevent it to the unauthorised.
They are a pain in the arse.
Security is essential, of course, but only for other people. Not me. I’m the nice guy here and this sodding keypad is stopping me from getting in.
But then security authentication is one of those functions whose philosophical concept is hampered by self-contradictory details of its own design. To pick a topical example, it is the right of European Union citizens to enjoy free movement between EU countries without being stopped by border controls. However, how can the border controls know whether you are an EU citizen or not unless they stop you to ask for your EU identification? So it’s only by presenting your passport or ID card that you can exercise your right not to have to present your passport or ID card.
The forces of law and order, from police to night club bouncers, face the same recursive logic. Why do they insist on frisking me? Why can’t they concentrate their stop and search efforts only on those who are carrying concealed weapons?
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June 2, 2019
Andrew Heaton defends Basil Fawlty John Cleese
In his latest newsletter (subscribe here), Andrew Heaton takes up the cudgels to defend John Cleese against accusations of racism, sexism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, etc., etc. and suggests that the answer is that he’s “just old”:
First, “Some years ago I opined that London was not really an English city anymore.” Well, he’s right. London is geographically English, but other than its physical proximity to Surrey, it’s not English — it’s global. Its last census reports that 36.7% of its denizens are foreign-born. About 45% of the people who live there are White British (Welsh, Irish, English, Scottish). Which is to say, less than half of London is English [a lot less than half — the Welsh, Irish and “porridge wogs” don’t appreciate being called “English”, nearly as much as Canadians don’t like being called “Americans”]. The rest are a mélange of Europeans, non-Europeans, first and second generation immigrants, Klingons, Vulcans, Wookis, and folks from elsewhere in the Commonwealth and/or Narnia.
It’s a global city, like New York. It is richly diverse and cosmopolitan, which is a strength and draw to millions of people who live there. However I will argue that it’s difficult to be ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan while simultaneously being homogeneously English. Mutually exclusive, in fact.
Although to be fair, people aren’t mad at Cleese for observing that London isn’t English, they’re mad because he wishes it were. Cleese appears to prefer Englishness over multiculturalism. (Note the distinction between “culture” and “race.” Following the media storm, he tweeted, “… I prefer cultures that do not tolerate female genital mutilation. Will this will be considered racist by all those who hover, eagerly hoping that someone will offend them – on someone else’s behalf, naturally.” [Sic.])
My read on the situation is that Cleese is not racist, he’s old. What I mean by that is: life is always in flux, cities are by nature dynamic, society is fluid. People tend to want things to stay static, and they don’t, and that’s irksome for many, particularly as they grow elderly and nostalgic. I question when London was last really “English,” given that it was the imperial capital of half the globe well before he was born, and no doubt had several pockets of Indians and Jamaicans and Vulcans living there by the time he showed up.
All the same, is John Cleese allowed to prefer English over polyglot? Because I think that’s the root heresy at work here: saying that English culture might be superior to some others, and preferring it to them.
New York City is far, far more diverse and multicultural than, say, Portland, Oregon. Portland is so overwhelmingly white that it’s basically a giant bleach commercial with some craft breweries and street buskers thrown in. Ethnicity aside, can Portlanders prefer their cultural homogeneity over the vastly more polyglot city of Houston? So long as people agree that immigration is positive and we should be neighborly and welcoming to newcomers, I’m disinclined to hound people for their personal preferences.
I don’t know whether or not John Cleese meets that threshold. We know that he favored Brexit. I suspect, based on scattershot Cleese musings, that wants a Britain which is open and welcoming to foreigners, but that he would also like them to become polite, uptight, tea-drinking gardeners once they’ve moved there.
I could be wrong. I don’t know the depths of John Cleese’s heart, and whether or not his pro-Brexit stance comes from hatred of distant bureacurats (good) or dislike of foreigners and immigrants (bad). I suspect most of the people shouting at him on Twitter have no idea either.
Which is my main and final point. Maybe a single isolated tweet isn’t sufficient information to psychically intuit whether someone is a bigot or not? We’re all on the same page here: bigotry is bad. Don’t be a racist. Don’t be a homophobe. But if we’re going to champion the idea that the worst non-criminal thing you can be in our culture is a bigot, then we should also be at least a tad reserved about passing out scarlet letters just because there’s a slow news day and we spot a fun Twitter pile-on to get worked up about.
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June 1, 2019
2020 Presidential Candidate Blowout!
ReasonTV
Published on 31 May 2019Election season is heating up, which means Republicans and Democrats are ready to sell you the candidate of your dreams. Whether it’s government intrusion into your private life or government intrusion into your economic life, they’ve got you covered.
——————
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Subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts: https://goo.gl/az3a7aReason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.
—————-Written by Austin Bragg. Starring Andrew Heaton and Austin Bragg. Video produced by Bragg.
Happy Happy Game Show Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Photo credit: Richard B. Levine/Newscom
Experimental social media link thumbnail thingy:
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May 25, 2019
History Summarized: Late Dynastic China
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 24 May 2019Signup for your FREE trial to The Great Courses Plus here: http://ow.ly/diiG30oC0Lk
In a shocking twist of fate, China stays in one piece for a majority of this video. The unfortunate side-effect is that when it does collapse, it collapses HARD. Find out how in this tour through the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties!
Further Reading: China, A History by John Keay
PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
The Great Courses Plus is currently available to watch through a web browser to almost anyone in the world and optimized for the US, UK and Australian market. The Great Courses Plus is currently working to both optimize the product globally and accept credit card payments globally.
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May 19, 2019
How not to drive a nail
In Christopher Schwarz’s recent The Anarchist’s Design Book, he includes a set of illustrations from a 1947 publication, which appear to still be 100% accurate:
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May 16, 2019
QotD: Reacting appropriately to criticism
Ich sitze in dem kleinsten Zimmer in meinem Hause. Ich habe Ihre Kritik vor mir. Im nächsten Augenblick wird sie hinter mir sein! (“I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me!”).
Max Reger, responding to a review of his work by Rudolf Louis in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 1906-02-07, as reported by Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective, 1965.
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May 13, 2019
QotD: The Church of Environmentalism
Julian Simon, the economist who was legendarily skeptical about environmental doom, once posed a question at an environmental forum: “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Almost every hand shot up. He then said, “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” There was no response, so he asked again, “Is there any evidence I could give you — anything at all — that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Again, no response. Simon concluded, “Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for church.”
Jeremy Carl, “The Church of Environmentalism”, Claremont Review of Books, 2016-02-25.
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May 12, 2019
History-Makers: Homer
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 10 May 2019Visit PhilosophicalPhridays.com to learn more about Blue’s BOOK!
“History-Makers” is a new series from Blue, digging into the backstories of history’s most influential writers and their great works. We begin at the beginning, with the Greek poet Homer, trying to figure out how exactly he wound up with the Iliad and Odyssey!
Let me know which History-Maker you’d like me to cover in the comments below!
PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
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May 11, 2019
QotD: The Coolidge Effect
Behavioral endocrinologist Frank A. Beach first mentioned the term “Coolidge effect” in publication in 1955, crediting one of his students with suggesting the term at a psychology conference. He attributed the neologism to:
… an old joke about Calvin Coolidge when he was President … The President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm. When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, “Dozens of times each day.” Mrs. Coolidge said, “Tell that to the President when he comes by.” Upon being told, the President asked, “Same hen every time?” The reply was, “Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time.” President: “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
The joke appears in a 1978 book (A New Look at Love, by Elaine Hatfield and G. William Walster, p. 75), citing an earlier source (footnote 19, Chapter 5).
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