Quotulatiousness

October 12, 2019

To the amazement of the chattering classes, Greta didn’t win the Nobel

Filed under: Africa, Environment, Europe, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Teen apocalypse prophet Greta Thunberg not only had her childhood stolen from her, now they’ve stolen her Nobel Prize:

Greta Thunberg at the EU Parliament, 16 April, 2019.
European Parliament photo via Wikimedia Commons.

It seems like Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali stole even more of Greta Thunberg’s childhood by winning this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, beating the 16-year old Swedish Apocalyptic who seemed to have been the sentimental favourite of the international chattering classes (and the betting site Ladbrokes) for her figureheading of Climate Strikes and her recent appearance at the [United Nations] where she shouted at the adults for killing the planet. Ali was awarded the prize for ending the twenty-year conflict with the neighbouring Eritrea (once a part of Ethiopia) and the general moves to liberalise what has been a rather unappealing regime. In other words, Prime Minister Ali got his Peace Prize for actually bringing peace. Radical, eh?

Interestingly, Ali has not only done more for peace than Thunberg (it’s perhaps not a great claim to fame to have beaten a 16-year old girl, but hey, her cheerleaders in the media and elsewhere have turned her into a cross between a saint and a savant); he has also done far more for the environment. While Thunberg and millions of others wagged school and work and sat on their asses to save the Earth, Ali and millions of his compatriots got off theirs to do something quite spectacular recently:

    Ethiopians planted more than 350,000,000 trees* in just 12 hours on Monday [29 July], the country’s minister of innovation and technology announced on Twitter. The mass-tree planting not only helps the environment, it sets a world record, the Associated Press reported.

    Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed created the initiative to help restore Ethiopia’s landscape, which experts say is being eroded by deforestation and climate change, the AP reported.

    The country’s goal was to plant 200 million trees in one day. But Getahun Mekuria, Ethiopia’s Minister of Innovation and Technology, later announced that 353,633,660 trees were planted.

    Ethiopia has a larger goal of planting 4 billion trees between May and October 2019. So far, more than 2.6 billion trees have been planted in almost all parts of the country, the AP reported.

Planting trees is one of the most effective ways of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, which the trees (and all other plants) do through the process of photosynthesis as they grow. In fact, half the weight of a tree is carbon. Statistics vary between countries (and climates, soil conditions, etc), but a hectare of wood in the United States has some 118 tons of carbon, while in Europe the figure is 177 tons (density of trees can also, of course, vary widely but the plantation average is 1000-2500 per hectare). By the way, one tonne of carbon accounts for 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide, with oxygen being released back into the atmosphere.

⚜ | Survivor Bias in World War 2

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

Military Aviation History
Published on 31 Aug 2017

Survivor Bias was a thing in World War 2. Let’s learn what happened.

– You can support my Channel with Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Bismarck

⚜ Support My Work ⚜
– You can support my Channel with a donation [Paypal]: https://www.paypal.me/BismarckYT

⚜ Find Me On Social Media ⚜
– Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/bis18marck70
– Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bis18marck70

⚜ Sources ⚜
M. Mangel, F. J. Samaniego, Abraham Wald’s Work on Aircraft Survivability

Abraham Wald, A Reprint of “A Method of Estimating Plane Vulnerability Based on Damage of Survivors”

From the comments:

Military Aviation History
2 years ago (edited)
Hey all, I hope that you like this video. Small correction from my side at 05:00 – It was reprinted in 1980 not 1918. I misspoke. Obviously.

This video was actually planned for the end of September but since I had the script already, I decided to publish it now. As mentioned to my Patreons some days ago, I have a few unexpected home visists to make. The first set was last week and after returning two days ago, I flew off to yesterday for another week abroad. As such it made sense to get such a familiar topic out now since otherwise, there would be nothing.

It should be mentioned that I did not find the “original” study Wald responded to. Either it got lost, or it was never published. Perhaps Wald saw them work on it, saw the errors and published his paper leading the other group to abandon their project. However, there is also a slight chance that over the years parts of the story were exaggerated. Wald certainly published his papers (you’ll easily find it on the internet) and was given the credit for helping US designers — but what of that inital research group? What were their conclusions, their recommendations beyond what is usually linked to Wald? Without their study, no one seems to know.

QotD: Giving the vote to children

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

The irony being that children and teenagers tend to be quite selfish and self-absorbed, to a degree unbecoming in adults, and are accustomed to free stuff, all paid for out of sight by someone else, much to the youngsters’ indifference. It would therefore hardly be surprising if voting children tended to favour policies that pile up unsustainable debt, all left for whatever generations follow them.

Apparently, this constitutes “planning for the future.”

David Thompson, commenting on “”, David Thompson, 2018-12-08.

October 11, 2019

Germany Never Elected Hitler | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1933 Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Germany, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published 10 Oct 2019

Hitlers rise to power, also known as the Machtergreifung, was riddled with physical and mental manipulation, political games and an exploitation of the Democratic system. This episode follows the events leading up to the Nazi takeover of Germany.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Iryna Dulka

image source:
Deutsche Bundesarchiv

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

Spartacus Olsson
18 minutes ago
Hi, for those of you that don’t know me yet, I’m the lead author of this series and the author of this episode. Now, as you will, or have just seen, this episode covers an event of earth-shattering magnitude in human history. An event that is often misunderstood and glossed over. The reason for that is not that there is anything controversial, or stupendously new with what we’re documenting here. The simple fact is that its just too detailed and too complicated to cover in general history studies, especially in secondary school. The level we get into here is usually only covered in specialized lectures at college or university level. Tons and tons of books have been written on the topic and yet, many misconceptions remain. It was my goal to dispel some of the many misunderstandings that abound about how Hitler finally seized power. One of the chief myths is that Hitler was elected. As the video shows, that is not what happened. So you might ask yourself; how come the vast majority of Germans finally rallied behind him? Because they did, there’s no question. But you see, that happens after he seizes power and it will be the topic of our next episode on Germany that covers the Nazi consolidation of power.

It was also my goal to cast some more light on a topic that has been weaponized in political debate in recent years: the level of Socialism in the German National Socialist Worker’s Party. I hope that I have laid the latter one to rest, but I fear that the comment section will still be full of politically biased nonsense on this topic. It’s quite tiring for our community managers to answer that misrepresenting alt-right trope over and over again. And we won’t stop you from posting it, even if it’s nonsense. Instead we will try to patiently answer, but think fifteen times about posting ‘Nazis were Socialists, duh!’ or “Dude, Nazis are left-wing, duh!’ out of respect for us. What we will not tolerate is that you post links to any of the clown videos by non-historians that try to perpetuate that myth. We are a team of actual historians. We have no interest in ‘pinning’ Naziism on anyone. We also have no interest in ‘pinning’ Socialism on anyone. Nor should you, if you have any interest whatsoever in understanding history. Revolutionary Socialism, Communism, Fascism and Nazism have all brought down a lot of suffering on humanity – if we are supporters of freedom and democracy we need to learn from that. Throwing them all in one bucket and dumping it on our perceived political opponents is not learning, it’s obfuscation, confusion, and destruction of education. So respect humanity, respect history and don’t take part in that kind of nonsense.

The National Basketball Appeasement Association

Filed under: Business, Cancon, China, History, Liberty, Politics, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh discusses the moral squalor, cowardice, avarice, and reflex appeasement gesturing of the NBA and finds a Canadian angle to the whole mess:

The National Basketball Association has spent the week trying to control the effects of a tweet by Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, who jeopardized his job on Friday when he told readers “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” The tweet winked out of existence quickly, but it had prodded a sore spot. Morey faced immediate criticism from the Rockets’ owner and from the Chinese consul in Houston. Steps were taken within China to declare the Rockets personae non gratae and to cancel some NBA broadcasts.

[…]

Which leads to us to the true Canadian angle, copyright Colby J. Cosh 2019 (all rights reserved). Daryl Morey’s tweet was the 21st century’s “Vive le Quebec libre.”

All right, Morey isn’t a statesman, as de Gaulle was — but the NBA itself wants us to believe that it is a force for international harmony, and Morey is a prominent figure in the NBA. There is an amusing subplot here in that Morey has traditionally been regarded as an outsider in the league, a computer nerd who barged his way in by using technical analytics to improve team performance both on the court and at the gate. The natural assumption of a person who went to university in the 1990s is that he would be perfectly free as a matter of course to blurt out a political opinion — one that is in no way remotely controversial in the free world — on Twitter. Well, we are all learning to revise such assumptions.

When General de Gaulle uttered the 1967 version of an ill-advised, impulsive tweet, it created a small spasm of anger in English Canada, as Morey’s endorsement of an increasingly separatist protest movement in Hong Kong has. (Chinese sovereignty in Hong Kong is supposed to be as much an accepted fact as Canadian sovereignty in Quebec, and from the Party point of view, the Hong Kong protests are internal civil disorder. The same, of course, would go for China’s re-education camps full of Uyghurs, who represent the fate that pro-democracy Hong Kongers are trying to avert.)

But it was the Canadian political establishment that de Gaulle really provoked to rage with his sly, ambivalent remark. It was seen as an offence against hospitality. Canada’s mandarins — pardon the inadvertent pun — knew that de Gaulle’s resounding “liiibre” would give, above all, moral impetus to the enemies of Confederation. This proved to be the case, as far as history can tell. Et donc — vive Hong Kong! Vive Hong Kong libre!

Mitring and Fitting the Plinth | Dovetail Box Project #16 | Free Online Woodworking School

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

Matt Estlea
Published 9 Oct 2019

In this video, I show you how to accurately mitre the plinth using a shooting board and cover a few different methods in the process. In addition, I will show you how to accurately attach it to the box to achieve a superior fit.
_________________________________________________________________

Support what I do by becoming a Patron! This will help fund new tools, equipment and cover my overheads. Meaning I can continue to bring you regular, high quality, free content. Thank you so much for your support! https://www.patreon.com/mattestlea

Don’t want to commit to a monthly direct debit but still want to help out? That’s fine!
You can make a one time donation here: https://www.paypal.me/MattEstlea
You can donate us biscuits here: https://amzn.to/2WOl1UR
_________________________________________________________________
BUY THE WOODWORKING BIBLE HERE:
– UK: https://goo.gl/X8ZzSF
– US: https://goo.gl/UDqWf3
– CA: https://goo.gl/31jBxj
_________________________________________________________________

See what tools I use here: https://kit.com/MattEstlea
My Website: http://www.mattestlea.com
_________________________________________________________________

My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 23 year old Woodworker from Basingstoke in England and my aim is to make your woodworking less s***.

I come from 5 years tuition at Rycotewood Furniture Centre with a further 1 year working as an Artist in Residence at the Sylva Foundation. I now teach City and Guilds Furniture Making at Rycotewood as of September 2018.

I also had 5 years of experience working at Axminster Tools and Machinery where I helped customers with purchasing tools, demonstrated in stores and events, and gained extensive knowledge about a variety of tools and brands.

During the week, I film woodworking projects, tutorials, reviews and a viewer favourite ‘Tool Duel’ where I compare two competitive manufacturers tools against one another to find out which is best.

I like to have a laugh and my videos are quite fast paced BUT you will learn a lot, I assure you.

Lets go make a mess.

A spectre is haunting the Liberal war room: the spectre of Jagmeet Singh

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the wake of the English language debate, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is suddenly getting more of the kind of attention I thought he’d get from the media after he became party leader. Back in January, while he was campaigning for a seat in Parliament in a BC byelection, I wrote:

When Jagmeet Singh was elected NDP leader, I really did think he’d be a significant challenge to Justin Trudeau due to the media’s apparent fascination with Singh (a love affair that appeared to be as deep and lasting as that of Justin’s teeny-bopper [media] fan club for their darling), but it faded very quickly indeed. I guess as far as the Canadian media is concerned, there can only be one …

Now it appears that the Liberal Party backroom braintrust has suddenly woken up to the threat that Singh and the NDP are going to retain and even increase their support among left-leaning voters the Liberals had been taking for granted:

An even bigger risk for Trudeau is if lots of so-called low-information voters — who make their decisions late in a campaign — decide to cast a ballot for the charming Singh’s New Democrats.

But the biggest risk of all to the Liberals and Conservatives is if lots and lots of citizens give the finger to both parties and decide to vote NDP or Green to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo.

It looks like a long shot now with the economy humming along and a low unemployment rate.

But the same circumstances existed in B.C. in 2017. And plenty of voters decided that these were the right conditions for bringing the NDP back to power.

Nobody is expecting that Jagmeet Singh will be prime minister after the October 21 election.

But if he captures far more seats than the CBC poll tracker is projecting, it will be because of his genial nature and his ability to speak like a human being.

Surely, the Liberals realize that. The class differences between Trudeau and Singh are profound — and there are far fewer voters in Trudeau’s realm than Singh’s.

Bethlehem Steel 37mm Cannon – WWI Era

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 6 Jul 2014

http://www.forgottenweapons.com

Theme music by Dylan Benson – http://dbproductioncompany.webs.com

The 37mm gun was found in many guises during World War One – that caliber was the smallest allowed to use exploding projectiles by the 1899 Hague accords. Every nation in the world, it seems, used 37mm guns of one type or another. Well, one particular version I had the chance to look at was built by Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania for the French Army. Chambered for the same 37x136mm Hotchkiss Heavy cartridge used in US naval service, 200 were purchased in 1916. Only 15 were actually shipped before the US Army seized the bulk of the order in 1917 – but they were never put into any sort of service by the US military. The French tested the guns for suitability as an infantry gun, anti-tank gun, anti-aircraft gun, and naval landing gun – and found it unsuitable for all roles. It was probably tested only as a backup in case the redesign of the Mle 1916 Tir Rapid ran into problems.

At any rate, the 15 guns sent to France were sent back at the end of the war, and the guns remained in US Army inventory until 1921, when they appear to have been distributed out the National Guard units.

I think this is a very cool gun for the present-day enthusiast. In addition to the historical links to WWI, it has the practical benefits of being relatively light and using ammunition relatively inexpensive to reload. And, of course, the free mount and shoulder rest and iron sights give it more the feel of a shoulder rifle than later light artillery that use precisely adjusted mounts. This one is just more fun to shoot! Alas, there are very few still in existence. Perhaps an opportunity for someone who wants to make a reproduction Big Boy’s Toy?

QotD: Religious hysteria

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As for […] the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past.

It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.

Nevertheless this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country — Sunday closing laws here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the Prohibition experiment, temporary enclaves of theocracy such as Voliva’s Zion, Smith’s Nauvoo, and a few others. The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.

Could it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not — but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck.

Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening — particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.

Robert A. Heinlein, “Concerning Stories Never Written”, Revolt in 2100, 1953.

October 10, 2019

Make your own Low-Angle Jack Plane

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

Rex Krueger
Published 9 Oct 2019

More video and exclusive content: http://www.patreon.com/rexkrueger
(more…)

Justin Trudeau scrambles to escape from the consequences of his mistakes

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It must be awful to be a Justin Trudeau fan these days, where he seems to spend more time looking awkward as his personal mis-steps keep coming back to haunt him. I’d never vote for the guy — but I wouldn’t vote for his main opponent, the Milk Dud either — but I thought he was a better politician than he’s turning out to be in this election campaign without the dependable strawman of Stephen Harper to struggle against. While I think he’s unfit to be Prime Minister, Barrett Wilson argues he wasn’t even fit to be a teacher:

It should be well established by now that this man is unfit to serve as our Prime Minister.

But if corporate corruption, obstruction of justice, internet censorship, persecution of journalists, buying off the media, and frickin’ blackface weren’t enough to convince you that Trudeau is unfit. Perhaps this latest insanity will.

Trudeau and his campaign team somehow felt it was a good idea for the disgraced Liberal leader to appear on a pre-taped and rehearsed children’s television show today called “New Mom, Who Dis?” The appearance was cringeworthy at best, as host Jesse Cruickshank shamelessly flirted with the PM, but it was also cynical, manipulative, and exploitative, as Trudeau fielded two questions from two young black twin girls.

The first twin asked Trudeau, “Why did you paint your face brown?”

Trudeau answered: “Ooh. Um, it was something I shouldn’t have done because it hurt people. It’s not something that you should do and that is something that I learned. I didn’t know it back then and I know it now, and I’m sorry that I hurt people.”

The second twin followed up: “But did you paint your nose and your hands brown?”

Trudeau: “Mmmhmm. Yeah. And it was the wrong thing to do.”

The clip deserves to be watched more than once just to understand and appreciate how clearly scripted, deeply cynical, and frankly sick, the whole thing is.

Okay. So, this will take a second to unpack. Somehow, Justin Trudeau felt it would be a good idea to use a children’s television show and two young children of colour as a stage for a preplanned apology for his blackface exploits from when he was 29-years-old. Don’t worry everyone. He’s learned from his days of trying to manipulate strong, principled women of colour such as Jody Wilson-Raybould. It’s much easier to exploit young children!

And, by the way — who doesn’t know that blackface is wrong when they are 29-years-old? The culture in 2001 rejected such racist tropes. If Trudeau were actually that stupid at 29, when his brain was fully developed, then how in the hell should he ever lead a G7 country at 47? He can’t even be trusted to properly instruct young school children.

What other stupid things has this guy done that Canada’s enemies could use as blackmail (no pun intended).

Suez Crisis Part 2 of 2

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Epic History TV
Published on 28 Dec 2017

In 1956, an international crisis over control of the Suez Canal put Britain and France into direct conflict with President Nasser of Egypt, a proud Arab nationalist determined to stand up to foreign powers meddling in Egyptian affairs.

Part 2 explores how Britain, France and Israel cooked up a secret plan to invade Egypt, overthrow Nasser and reassert their standing as global powers. But when the international community, and in particular the United States, condemned their actions, the aggressors were forced into a humiliating climbdown. The repercussions for the Middle East and global history were long-lasting and profound.

Archive film from AP Archive http://www.aparchive.com/

Music from Filmstro https://www.filmstro.com/
Get 20% off an annual license! Use our exclusive coupon code: EPICHISTORYTV_ANN

Help me make more videos by supporting Epic History TV on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/EpicHistoryTV

Further Reading on Suez Crisis (click affiliate links to buy on Amazon & support the channel):
Blood and Sand, Alex von Tunzelmann (Simon & Schuster, 2016) http://geni.us/QyoWs
Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East, Keith Kyle (I.B.Tauris, 2011) http://geni.us/aqn6AH
The Suez Crisis 1956, Derek Varble (Osprey, 2003) http://geni.us/ANxBQEE
“Suez 1956”, Timothy Benson in History Today (Nov 2006)
“Suez: The Canal Before the Crisis”, Steve Morewood in History Today (Nov 2006)
“Nasser, Suez and Arab Nationalism”, Michael Scott-Baumann in History Today (Mar 2010)
“The First Suez Crisis”, Christopher Danziger in History Today (Sep 1982)
The Suez Crisis, by Laurie Milner, BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/…
“Andrew Bacevich reviews ‘Eisenhower 1956′”, London Review of Books (Vol.33 No.12)
“Avi Shlaim reviews ‘Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-56′”, London Review of Books (Vol.16 No.16)

#EpicHistoryTV #SuezCrisis #ColdWarHistory

QotD: Taxonomy of the online troll

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

First, the Peevish Adolescent. This is the most common and least interesting form of haterboy. There’s almost nothing there except a juvenile desire to fling feces. This is the type that is most likely to have indifferent-to-poor writing skills – crappy spelling, difficulty forming coherent sentences, run-on paragraphs – and most likely to use an anonymizing handle.

The Peevish Adolescent’s dominating emotions are all about primate posturing for status. One often gets the sense that any authority or high-status figure would do as a target for his feces-flinging and one has been chosen for the role almost at random. The Internet enables him to demonstrate belligerantly at a silverback male without fear of actual consequences; this thrills him and helps him feel marginally less inadequate.

The polar opposite of the Peevish Adolescent is the Embittered Old Fart. This type is much less common and much more interesting. Tends to be middling on the language-competency scale, and may have interesting things to say if you can mask out that 60-cycle hum.

The dominant emotions of the Embittered Old Fart are envy and resentment. The EOF fails to hide the fact that he thinks he could have been as famous and successful as you, or should have been; in order to live with his own comparative failure, he has to try to tear you down and trash your reputation. The amount of effort and intelligence an EOF may expend on this project is a very sad thing to see; one can’t help thinking he’d have much less resentment in him if he’d directed his energy more constructively in the past. Accordingly, where the Peevish Adolescent is mostly just ridiculous, the Embittered Old Fart is genuinely tragic.

Next we come to the Zealot. The Zealot thinks you are an articulate advocate of evil and must therefore be discredited at all costs. He doesn’t hate your success other than consequentially, and isn’t mainly concerned with posturing for status. No; his problem is that you have associated yourself with the wrong operating system, or the wrong political ideas, or the wrong religion, and that you commit the intolerable crime of persuading others to do likewise.

High-grade zealots are the most articulate variant of haterboy; indeed, they often run over with immaculately grammatical verbiage. Of all the haterboy types, they are most likely to try to pack a PhD thesis into a blog comment, complete with numerous hyperlinks. The thing about them, though, is that no matter what their particular idée fixe is, they all sound alike after awhile. The 60-cycle hum drowns out the idea content.

Zealots are also the least likely type to use an identity-concealing handle. Sadly, the appearance of honesty often deceives; their citations are apt to be thin and hyperpartisan, and their arguments to have gaps or even tactical falsehoods at crucial points. You are more likely to learn something useful from an Embittered Old Fart than from a Zealot.

Finally, the Iconoclast. The Iconoclast is, in his own mind, a fearless and principled speaker of truth to power. You are the idol with feet of clay, the pretender, the false god he must destroy. But note how he differs from the Peevish Adolescent; he is relatively unconcerned with his own status, and more like the Zealot in that he is mainly interested in protecting others from your baneful influence. The core of his complaint, though, is about social power and personal influence rather than ideas.

On this blog, the characteristic accusations of the Iconoclast are that (a) I’m a monster of ego, and (b) I claim a position of leadership in the hacker community that I don’t actually hold. I point these out because they’re issues that matter much less to the other haterboy types. The Peevish Adolescent and the Embittered Old Fart attack me exactly because they see me as a silverback alpha, and the Zealot is only upset by my social power insofar as it assists the infectiousness of my ideas.

Eric S. Raymond, “Taxonomy of the haterboy”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-12-22.

October 9, 2019

Theodore Dalrymple on Justin Trudeau and David Cameron

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

He doesn’t hate either of them, he just thinks they are either fools or knaves. As the Instapundit often says, it might be time to “embrace the healing power of ‘and'”:

No doubt it is the mark of bad character to rejoice, as I do, in the spectacle of a man being hoist with his own petard, and as the Canadian Prime Minster, Justin Trudeau, has recently been hoist. And while I am at it, I confess also that, though I know that there is no art to find a mind’s construction in the face, I cannot help also but judge people, at least to an extent, by their physiognomy. And the fact is that Mr Trudeau has a face as characterless as that of the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron. They are of the same ilk. You look at them and think “What nullities!” The main character discernible in their faces is lack of character.

David Cameron’s official portrait from the 10 Downing Street website, 3 August 2010.
Open Government Licensed image via Wikimedia Commons.

It is not their fault, perhaps; besides which I, or you, might be mistaken in our assessment of them and actually they have backbones (or what my teachers use to call moral fibre) of enormous strength. In any case, there are worse things to be, especially in the field of politics, than a nullity: an evil monster, for example, would be far worse, and no one could seriously claim that either of Messrs Trudeau and Cameron are, or were, evil monsters, however little they inspire admiration.

No one, then, could accuse me of partiality for Mr Trudeau, and the abjectness of his apology for his behaviour when he was a very young man did nothing to increase my liking for him. But it seems to me that sins as a young man were venial at worst, a callow disregard of the sensibilities of others which I common in youth. I very much doubt that he was a deep-dyed racist in any dangerous way, more a silly boy having a bit of fun.

There is a serious side to this imbroglio, of course. If the political leader of an important country can be overthrown or not re-elected on so relatively trivial a ground, while at the same town no one cares in the least about his shallow but dangerous moral posturing and obviously weak-minded pandering to the ayatollahs of an absurd and ill-founded political morality, then a new nadir of decadence and cowardice has been reached. It is a difficult question of moral philosophy as to whether it would be worse if Mr Trudeau actually believed his own political correctness or merely made use of it as a means to power. If the former, he is a fool; if the latter a knave. I leave it to others to decide which is better in a politician, or indeed in any other human being, foolishness or a knavery.

Political correctness is dangerous because when fools or knaves get into power, they may try to implement its dictates. And since many people are much more concerned to appear good than to do good, and since they are unlikely to suffer the consequences of their own actions (except when hoist on their own petard), the implementation may continue for a long time after the negative effects of its dictates have become clear. When implemented, those dictates create a clientele dependent upon their continuation, which turns any attempt to undo the harm into a nasty social conflict.

The Villa Council Presents: 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Middle East, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Getty Museum
14 Jun 2016

Noted historian and archaeologist Eric Cline discusses the themes of his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed and takes a closer look at why Mediterranean societies of the Late Bronze Age — with their complex cosmopolitan and globalized world-systems — came to a dramatic halt. He considers the similarities and parallels of our contemporary civilization, making the chain of interconnected events more than simply a study of ancient history.

Photo: Blink Films

May 22, 2016
The Getty Villa, Malibu, California

Find out what’s on now at the Getty:
http://www.getty.edu/360/
#gettytalks

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress