Extra Credits
Published on 7 Aug 2018Before we delve into Robert Heinlein’s famous works, let’s look at an overview of his writing career and the philosophical ideals he was known for: particularly his libertarian worldview, although even this is still hotly debated.
August 9, 2018
Robert Heinlein – Rise – Extra Sci Fi – #1
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August 7, 2018
“[Trudeau’s] ideology is jeopardizing 20% of the Canadian economy”
Brandon Kirby on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failing efforts to negotiate with the United States on trade:
Trade with Canada constitutes 2% of America’s GDP and trade with America constitutes a whopping 20% of Canada’s GDP. My home province of New Brunswick finds 50% of its private sector exporting to the U.S. – NAFTA is of vital importance to our economy.
The dwindling efforts of Trudeau’s cabinet to negotiate a deal with the Americans could become his government’s greatest failure. With tariffs already being imposed on steel and aluminum, NAFTA is potentially unraveling before our eyes and along with it, the Canadian economy.
Trudeau’s American counterpart isn’t known for his vocal support of trade and yet he handed Canada everything on a silver platter at the recent G7 summit. He offered to remove all tariffs and subsidies on imports and exports, provided Canada did the same. This is about as fair an offer as one could expect. Trudeau retaliated by insisting Canada had been insulted.
The trouble with Trudeau is precisely that. He was given a talking point. He developed rhetoric rather than substance. Akin to Marco Rubio’s disaster of a debate performance, who refused to go off script even when he was being called out for scripted answers, Trudeau had a talking point. It was a good one, Canadians and Americans died together in the mountains of Afghanistan to bring justice for Americans who died on September 11th. Trump alluded to our tariffs on their dairy farmers as a national security threat. But when Trump acquiesced, Trudeau kept to his talking points and refused to go off script, even when his talking points no longer made sense.
The initial renegotiation began with Trudeau’s government attempting to include a chapter on gender. The Americans weren’t enthusiastic about devoting a significant portion of their time at the negotiations to discussing an unenforceable chapter of the deal, but Trudeau pressed on.
The liberal rationale in the briefing notes was leaked, “Think back 20 years and remember the early discussions of labour and environment in the context of trade agreements.”
Environmental and labour standards were included in the negotiations of decades past because a country that has humane labour standards is at a trade disadvantage to countries that neglect their workers and their environment. Gender doesn’t have any bearing on trade. His ideology is jeopardizing 20% of the Canadian economy.
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Grasping at straws to virtue signal
Richard Morrison points out just how banning plastic straws will not do anything meaningful to save the environment, but will definitely have a negative impact on consumers:
Of all the consumer products one might have expected to become a flashpoint for political controversy, the humble plastic drinking straw is an unlikely contender. Leap into the headlines it has, though, with communities like Seattle and San Francisco recently enacting bans on disposable straws. The city council of Santa Barbara, California, initially voted for a ban that would have punished restaurant workers with up to six months of jail time for giving out a disposable plastic straw, but city officials agreed to revisit the ordinance when it appeared to also ban the sale of straws at supermarkets.
[…] the case against the plastic straw is exceedingly weak. There aren’t as many plastic straws thrown away as claimed, and only a tiny portion of U.S. straws end up anywhere near the oceans — the vast majority of municipal solid waste in this country ends up either buried in landfills, recycled, or burned up in incinerators, far from any congested sea turtles.
The vast majority of plastic waste in oceans actually comes not from advanced countries like the U.S. but from countries like China and Indonesia that consume a large volume of plastic products but lack our modern waste collection infrastructure. Much of their plastic waste ends up washed into major river systems that empty into the oceans. A study published last year in the journal Environment Science & Technology by three German researchers found that 90 percent of the plastic debris found in the world’s oceans is dumped there by just ten of the world’s rivers — none of which are in the Western Hemisphere, much less the United States.
Beside the fact that U.S. consumers are contributing very little to the ostensible problem is the other side of the equation: the benefits of the straws themselves. I suspect many Americans who were initially receptive to the idea of a ban were genuinely surprised to learn that disposable drinking straws are very important to people with certain disabilities. British disability rights activist Penny Pepper recently commented in the Guardian about how she depends on plastic straws — and other single-use, disposable products like baby wipes — writing “I don’t have the luxury of a plastic-free life.” The durability, convenience, cleanliness, low price, and resistance to heat of disposable plastic straws make them irreplaceable to people with many different physical limitations.
Vancouver, as any Canadian would have guessed, was the first Canadian city to pick up on this particular variant of virtue signalling.
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Flying Tanks! Tetrarchs and Locusts
Lindybeige
Published on 31 May 2018Bovington Tank Museum, and The Chieftain again – ten minutes on the topic of air-portable tanks of World War Two.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeIt is possible that (some?) Tetrarchs had holes in the sides of the turret for a drawstring that could pull the trigger of the smoke projector from inside the turret. However, you really wouldn’t want the rifle cocked and ready to fire unless you were just about to use it. White phosphorous is dangerous stuff and you would make no friends by setting it off by snagging your belt on the string as you climbed in the tank.
Hannibal graphic novel (in production): http://www.InSearchofHannibal.com
Many thanks to The Chieftain, my co-presenter, and to The Tank Museum at Bovington.
Two ideas have been posted in the comments for the name ‘Tetrarch’. One is that it has four equally-sized wheels on each side (which guide the tank, a bit like four rulers guide an empire). The other is that there was a very famous racehorse called ‘The Tetrarch’ that died in 1935. The tank was not designed originally for air-drops, but was presumably meant to be fast, so that makes sense.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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August 6, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Leviathan – Extra History – #5
Extra Credits
Published on 4 Aug 2018This is a global pandemic. The flu jumps ship, literally, onto the docks of American Samoa, of South Africa, of Alaska, of India. The 1918 flu infects every human continent.
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OSS “Stinger” Covert Cigarette Guns
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 16 Jul 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
During World War Two, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) was the primary US clandestine operations organization. It was responsible for making all sorts of unique weapons, including these “Stinger” cigarette guns. They were single shot disposable .22 Short pistols.
The first pattern was contracted and manufactured entirely by the OSS, and 25,000 of them were manufactured early in the war. They proved to have a myriad of minor to moderate problems, though, including failures to fire and burst barrels. A second version was produced by the Ordnance Department in 1944, with a strengthened and improved design, and 25,500 of those were made.
I have not found any documentation of these being actually used, but then again not much documentation exists on the use of any OSS weapons. These sorts of things were often provided to infiltration agents who might never be heard from again, or dropped to partisan or resistance groups who weren’t exactly writing field reports on their gear.
Many thanks to the collector who provided me access to these!
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
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QotD: Voting
Most people vote in elections for the candidate they dislike the least, and perhaps this is as it should be: positive enthusiasm for candidates and politicians in general is likely to give them an inflated idea of their own importance and thereby promote the politicization of life.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Self-Anointed v. Resentful: A view from across the Atlantic”, City Journal, 2016-11-08.
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August 5, 2018
On The Far Side
Today I Found Out
Published on 9 Jul 2018Check out my other channel TopTenz! https://www.youtube.com/user/toptenznet
Never run out of things to say at the water cooler with TodayIFoundOut! Brand new videos 7 days a week!
More from TodayIFoundOut
What Ever Happened to the Creator of Calvin and Hobbes?
In this video:
For 15 years, Gary Larson took millions of readers over to the Far Side. Using anamorphic animals, chubby teenagers, universal emotions, a simple drawing style and a really bizarre, morbid sense of humor, The Far Side became one of the most successful – and praised – comic strips of all time.
Want the text version?: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…
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August 3, 2018
Four Years of War I THE GREAT WAR Week 210
The Great War
Published on 2 Aug 2018As the war turns 4 years old, there is still no end in sight. From the Western Front to the Caucasus and the Middle East; in every theater the war is still raging on.
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The obscure, almost-forgotten campaign that ended the First World War
It’s often called the “Hundred Days”, but even for people who stayed awake in their high school history classes, that’s often taken to refer to the last hurrah of Napoleon between his escape from Elba and his ultimate defeat at Waterloo. The WW1’s Hundred Days began with the Allied victory at the battle of Amiens and ended with the Armistice on 11 November, 1918. On Twitter, Engaging Strategy shared a series of tweets about this campaign and how little is generally remembered about it:
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August 2, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Fighting the Ghost – Extra History – #4
Extra Credits
Published on 28 Jul 2018Philadelphia gets hit the hardest. New York fares somewhat better, but everyone is trying to keep hush-hush about a pandemic that still found its way into a children’s rhyme: influenza.
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Manufacturing the Engineered Wood Floor Joists
Bob Vila
Published on 30 Mar 2015Bob visits the Willamette I-Joist Mill in Woodburn, OR, before returning to Yonkers where the crew is assembling the second floor walls with structural insulated panels.
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August 1, 2018
Isaac Asimov – Foundation & Empire – Extra Sci Fi – #3
Extra Credits
Published on 31 Jul 2018Asimov’s Foundation stories were absolutely foundational for science fiction — they introduced the concept of a space empire, bringing along analogies from historical civilizations to the social issues of advanced technology and humanity’s future.
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July 31, 2018
The Utah Navy: Clearfield Navy Supply Depot, updated
The History Guy: Five Minutes of History
Published on 5 Aug 2017The History Guy examines the unique role of Utah and the Clearfield Navy Supply Depot in the war in the Pacific. Episode one of History Guy: Five Minutes of History is now available in HD.
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