Matthew Lowry
Published on 19 Nov 2016This is the last episode of Motorworld (BBC WORLDWIDE), the extremely rare UK Special. All copyrights go to their respective owners.
June 21, 2019
Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld UK Special
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QotD: Caloric intake and weight gain
The average person needs about 800,000 calories per year. And it takes about 3,500 extra calories to gain a pound of weight. So if somebody stays about the same weight for a year, it means they fulfilled their 800,000 calorie requirement to within a tolerance of 3,500 calories, ie they were able to match their food intake to their caloric needs with 99.5% accuracy.
By this measure, even people who gain five or ten pounds a year are doing remarkably well, falling short of perfection by only a few percent. It’s not quite true that someone who gains five pounds is ((5*3,500)/800,000) = 98% accurate, because each pound you gain increases caloric requirements in a negative feedback loop, but it’s somewhere along those lines.
Take a second to think about that. Can you, armed with your FitBit and nutritional labeling information, accurately calculate how many calories you burn in a given day, and decide what amount of food you need to eat to compensate for it, within 10%? I think even the most obsessive personal trainer would consider that a tall order. But even the worst overeaters are subconsciously managing that all the time. However many double bacon cheeseburgers they appear to be eating in a single sitting, over the long term their body is going to do some kind of magic to get them to within a few percent of the calorie intake they need.
It’s not surprising that people overeat, it’s surprising that people don’t overeat much more. Consider someone who just has bad impulse control and so eats whatever they see – wouldn’t we expect them to deviate from ideal calorie input by more than a few percent, given that this person probably has no idea what their ideal input even is and maybe has never heard of calories?
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: The Hungry Brain”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-04-27.
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June 20, 2019
Making a Viking Shield
Rex Krueger
Premiered 4 hours agoMore Video and Exclusive Content: http://www.patreon.com/rexkrueger
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The Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Transatlantic Commission on Elections Integrity for the Alliance of Democracies Federation
Did you read that headline? I certainly didn’t. And I wrote copy’n’pasted it. Have you ever heard of either of those organizational entities? I hadn’t until I read Colby Cosh’s article.
A wire story by The Canadian Press’s Joan Bryden arrives over the transom. Let me quote briefly from Bryden’s copy, as an exercise in describing how news sausage is sometimes ground. “An international report says Canada has taken ‘commendable’ steps to safeguard this fall’s federal election from foreign interference. But the report says this country needs to do more to regulate social media giants and should impose ‘major sanctions’ on those that fail to control fake news and other forms of disinformation on their platforms.”
An international report says Canada is vulnerable to fake news! Food for thought. But as I was mulling over this dread warning about sensationalistic information from questionable sources, a skeptical question came to mind: what is “an international report” exactly?
Bryden goes on to tell us, sort of: “The report,” she writes, “is part of a series of assessments conducted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Transatlantic Commission on Elections Integrity for the Alliance of Democracies Federation.” Show of hands: how many of you found it possible to read that sentence without falling asleep? Don’t worry, you weren’t meant to read it — just to absorb its general miasma of seriousness.
Ottawans will know the Centre for International Governance Innovation: it is, essentially, a big pile of Jim Balsillie’s money, and ours. There is a CIGI Campus in Waterloo, Ont., built by Balsillie with matching funds from the provincial and federal governments, that contains the CIGI think-tank and collects rent from the U of W and Wilfrid Laurier U. The Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity is another think-tank, an international one established amidst post-Trump panic by a range of institutions that includes Microsoft, BMW and other global companies and nonprofits.
Bill Gates didn’t write the “international report.” The report says it was “submitted to TCEI by Allan Rock, TCEI member.” Mr. Rock was, you may recall, a key figure in Jean Chrétien’s cabinet and then president of the University of Ottawa. He “submitted” the report … but did he write it? What the text says is that research and writing done by two University of Ottawa law students “were essential to the preparation of this report … Allan Rock expresses his sincere appreciation for their excellent work.”
So, yeah: it’s a jeremiad against fake news that is pretty much just a long op-ed written on contract by two underpaid young Canadians. After a few impressive-sounding (and foreign-funded) brand names are tacked on, this ends up in your newspaper as a distinguished “international report” justifying draconian regulation of social media.
Otto von Bismarck talks with the captive Napoleon III after the Battle of Sedan in 1870.
The “news sausage” comment is a reference to a quote frequently (but apparently mistakenly) attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, that laws and sausages are things you should never watch being made.
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A Clockwork Orange – Dystopias and Apocalypses – Extra Sci Fi
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Published on 18 Jun 2019Go to https://NordVPN.com/ExtraCredits to get 75% off a 3 year plan and use code
ExtraCreditsto get an extra month free. Protect yourself online today!A Clockwork Orange reflects a cultural fear of society’s moral decay in the 1960s. Its usage of a mashup slang language known as “nadsat” illustrates the complexities of rebellious youth culture. Ultimately, Anthony Burgess’s work asks us to think about if or when free will should ever be suppressed, but the major differences between the book and the film version of this story present contrasting takeaways.
Where the dystopias of Brave New World and 1984 warned against the easy slide into totalitarianism, and painted for us worlds in which freedom is nearly a forgotten thing… A Clockwork Orange presents us with a protagonist who has almost an excess of freedom, and in doing so it shows us the shift in societal fears.
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James Holland on the operational side of World War 2
I saved this link at the time, then life intervened and I only just re-found it now … but it’s not a time-sensitive article and the arguments he makes are still worth considering:
Studying such things in detail meant I was now looking at the operational level of war. Any conflict — or business for that matter — is understood to be conducted on three levels. The first is the strategic — that is, the overall aims and ambitions. The second is the tactical: the coal face, the actual fighting, the pilot in his Spitfire or man in his tank. And the third is the operational — the nuts and bolts, the logistics, economics and the supply of war.
Almost every narrative history of the war ever published almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives scant regard to the operational, and the result is a skewed version of events, in which German machine guns reign supreme and Tiger tanks always come out on top.
Studying the operational level as well, however, provides a revelatory perspective. Suddenly it’s not just about tactical flair, but about so much more. Britain, for example, decided to fight a highly mechanical and technological war. “Steel not flesh” was the mantra and that’s why the British had a small army, yet still ensured it was 100-percent mechanized. They also developed a vast air force and built a staggering 132,500 aircraft during the war — and that’s 50,000 more than the Germans. Until the start of 1944, the priority for manpower in Britain was not the army or navy or even air force, but the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Well-fed men and women were kept in the factories.
Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.
And if the ability to supply war was key, then in the war in the West, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that was the decisive theater. Yet Germany built a surface fleet before the war, which could never hope to rival Britain or France and in doing so neglected the U-boat arm. Despite sinking substantial amounts of British supplies in 1940, it was still nothing like enough to even remotely force Britain to her knees. In truth, there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war.
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Tank Chats #49 A7V | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 20 Mar 201821 March 1918, was the action debut of the German A7V tank during the First World War.
One hundred years later, historian David Fletcher talks through the vehicle and its history. The Tank Museum’s A7V is a replica, which can be seen running at Museum events, like TANKFEST.
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QotD: Elizabeth Warren
Camille Paglia, “Prominent Democratic Feminist Camille Paglia Says Hillary Clinton ‘Exploits Feminism'”, Washington Free Beacon, 2017-05-15.
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June 19, 2019
Making an OSB Pen! 🤯 | Turning Tuesday #19
Matt Estlea
Published on 18 Jun 2019In this video, I finally got round to making one of the most highly requested projects on Turning Tuesday to date. An OSB Pen!
_________________________________________________________________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
_________________________________________________________________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.
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Avoiding a hot war with Iran
Jay Currie responds to a recent article at ZeroHedge, on the US-Iran situation:
The game map for Gulf Strike, an early 1980s board wargame by Victory Games.
Image from https://pbem.brainiac.com/vg.htm
The article outlines all the ways that this approach to war with Iran would be folly and while I don’t necessarily agree with all the points made, the general point that massive force however strategically deployed will almost certainly produce results that the US and the rest of the world will not like one little bit. While you can bomb the Hell out of Iran, Iran has a number of retaliatory options ranging from the possibility of an EMP hit (they may have a rudimentary nuke) to closing the Strait of Hormuz to using Hezbollah sleeper cells in the US to hit critical infrastructure. While I have no doubt the US could beat Iran in a straight war, it would be long, bloody, politically suicidal for Trump and nasty for ordinary Americans.
Worse, it would be a strategic error. If the US leaves its current sanctions in place the Iranian economy will grind to something of a halt. Support for the current Iranian regime, already shakey, will decline. Yes, the current regime will continue with its provocations – I have no doubt it was Iranians who put holes in the sides of two tankers. But, so what?
Exciting as a hot war with Iran would be for assorted policy wonks, it would be an expensive exercise in futility compared to a longer term cold war with some clever extras.
First off, the Americans should make it very clear to the Iranians and the world that while they are committed to freedom of navigation, they are not interested in massive responses to minor incidents. If there is to be any response at all to the tanker mines (if that is what they were) it should be very local indeed. Find the boat in the video and sink it (or one very much like it – no need to be too picky).
Second, using US cyber assets – such as they are – it is time to see just how effectively infrastructure can be disrupted rather than destroyed. A sense of humour would be a huge asset here. Being able to cut into TV broadcasts is one thing, telling jokes at the Ayatollah’s expense is another.
Third, the Israelis did a very good business in the selective assasination of Iran’s nuclear scientists. A similar tactic against Iranian civil and military officials engaged in terrorism or attacks on shipping would be throughly demoralizing for the Iranian regime.
On point two, I’m reminded of a key scene in Robert Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—” (later published in expanded form in Revolt in 2100), where the United States has fallen under the control of religious fanatics (vaguely Christian, but carefully not identified with any then-current sect) so that “The Prophet” occupies the role of head of state and unquestioned all-powerful religious leader. The current Prophet performs a televised annual “miracle” where he is seen on-camera to transform into Nehemiah Scudder, the First Prophet, and give blessings and advice to the current Prophet and to the American people. The conspirators manage to take over the central TV feed and replace the “genuine” Prophet’s message with a skilled actor’s portrayal of Scudder calling America to arms to overthrow the false Prophet. This is the start of the armed rebellion against the Prophet. In the technology of the story, this required a strike team to attack and occupy the physical studio where the broadcast originated — literally a suicide mission. In our digital world, the “strike team” might never need to leave Fort Meade (or wherever the data centre might be)…
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Summer Stupidity: NEW YORK (City Review!)
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 18 Jun 2019Welcome to summer break! We’re beta-testing a new kind of video to punctuate our REAL weekly Friday content on lazy summer Tuesdays. Let us know if this brand of fast-talking stupidity is something you’d potentially like to see more of! As always, regular content returns Friday.
PATREON: http://www.Patreon.com/OSP
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BOHICA! Section 13 threatens to come back to life
Mark Steyn recently testified before the parliamentary Justice and Human Rights Committee recently. They carefully avoided having the video cameras turned on during his testimony and that of two other civil libertarian speakers. The committee clearly ignored everything that was said:
Lindsay Shepherd, Mark Steyn, and John Robson prepare to give testimony to the Parliamentary Justice and Human Rights Committee, June 2019.
Photo via Andrew Lawton.
“No monarch, no parliament, no government, and certainly no bureaucratic agency operating the pseudo-law of section 13 can claim jurisdiction over my right to think freely, to read freely, to speak freely and to argue freely.”
Those were the closing words of Mark Steyn’s testimony before parliamentarians on the Canadian House of Commons’ so-called justice and human rights committee just two weeks ago.
His call fell on deaf ears.
Yesterday, the justice committee tabled its report on “online hate” in Canada’s parliament.
The report laid out nine recommendations, one of which being that government should provide a “civil remedy for those who assert that their human rights have been violated under the Canadian Human Rights Act, irrespective of whether that violation happens online, in person, or in traditional print format. This remedy could take the form of reinstating the former section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, or implementing a provision analogous to the previous section 13 within the Canadian Human Rights Act, which accounts for the prevalence of hatred on social media.”
Once you strip away the mumbo jumbo bureaucrat-speak in there, it means the Canadian Liberals wish not only to revive section 13 from the dead, but to give it untold powers to force social media companies to purge online speech from whomever the government deems the hatemongers du jour.
This is apparent in another recommendation, that lawmakers “establish requirements for online platforms and Internet service providers with regards to how they monitor and address incidents of hate speech, and the need to remove all posts that would constitute online hatred in a timely manner.”
Of course there’s no provided definition for what “hate speech” is in the context of this desired law. Just a promise to figure it out later.
Before section 13’s repeal under the previous Conservative government, there was a quasi-judicial body to decide if online posts were sufficiently “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” Those found guilty of violating this provision were slapped with a fine or gag order, while having none of the protections afforded to criminal defendants throughout the process.
This regime seems like child’s play compared to what’s proposed in this report – elimination of online speech by social media giants under the threat of government penalty. Not sure which I like better, actually: the opaque, unappealable hammer or the sham tribunal that at least pretends to give you a shot at beating the rap.
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37mm Antitank Gun on a Dodge Weapons Carrier – M6
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 1 Jun 2014http://www.forgottenweapons.com
Theme music by Dylan Benson – http://dbproductioncompany.webs.com
The M6 Gun Motor Carriage was the first American tank destroyer of WWII – a 37mm antitank gun (basically identical to the M3 gun) mounted on the back of a Dodge 3/4 ton weapons carrier. A large armor shield protected the gun crew from small arms fire, but the vehicle was otherwise highly exposed. The truck was powered by a flathead 6-cylinder engine producing 99 horsepower, and had a top speed of 55 mph. The gun was effective and modern in the late 1930s when its design process began, but was underpowered and insufficient by the time the M6 first saw action in 1942/3 in Tunisia.
Not many complete M6 carriages remain in existence today, as they were replaced quickly after their poor showing in North Africa. Most had the guns removed and were converted back into utility trucks, while some were used by the Free French forces and some saw use in the Pacific theater (where the underpowered gun was less of a concern).
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QotD: Working class “materialism”
When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings.
Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943
Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about “godless” Russia and the “materialism” of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. Ditto, though it contains a partial truth, with all the talk about the worthlessness of social reconstruction not accompanied by a “change of heart”. The pious ones, from the Pope to the yogis of California, are great on the “change of heart”, much more reassuring from their point of view than a change in the economic system. Petain attributes the fall of France to the common people’s “love of pleasure”. One sees this in its right perspective if one stops to wonder how much pleasure the ordinary French peasant’s or working-man’s life would contain compared with Petain’s own.
The damned impertinence of these politicians, priests, literary men, and what-not who lecture the working-class socialist for his “materialism”! All that the working man demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn’t leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. Not one of those who preach against “materialism” would consider life livable without these things. And how easily that minimum could be attained if we chose to set our minds to it for only twenty years! To raise the standard of living of the whole world to that of Britain would not be a greater undertaking than the war we have just fought. I don’t claim, and I don’t know who does, that that wouldn’t solve anything in itself. It is merely that privation and brute labour have to be abolished before the real problems of humanity can be tackled.
The major problem of our time is the decay of the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police. How right the working classes are in their “materialism”! How right they are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time! Understand that, and the long horror that we are enduring becomes at least intelligible. All the considerations are likely to make one falter — the siren voices of a Petain or of a Gandhi, the inescapable fact that in order to fight one has to degrade oneself, the equivocal moral position of Britain, with its democratic phrases and its coolie empire, the sinister development of Soviet Russia, the squalid farce of left-wing politics — all this fades away and one sees only the struggle of the gradually awakening common people against the lords of property and their hired liars and bumsuckers.
The question is very simple. Shall people […] be allowed to live the decent, fully human life which is now technically achievable, or shan’t they? Shall the common man be pushed back into the mud, or shall he not? I myself believe, perhaps on insufficient grounds, that the common man will win his fight sooner or later, but I want it to be sooner and not later — some time within the next hundred years, say, and not some time within the next ten thousand years. That was the real issue of the Spanish war, and of the last war, and perhaps of other wars yet to come.
George Orwell, “Looking back on the Spanish War”, New Road, 1943 (republished in England, Your England and Other Essays, 1953).
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June 18, 2019
Ōkuninushi’s Tale – Japanese Myth – Extra Mythology
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Last we saw Ōkuninushi, he showed kindness to a hare in distress, and the hare of Inaba had foretold that he would be the one that the princess of Yakami would desire. And this was true, because when his 80 brothers showed up at court and declared their intentions, the princess insisted she would only marry him — so thus, his brothers began trying to kill him off…
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