Quotulatiousness

January 28, 2012

Photoshopping images is so passé: using game footage is the new trend

Filed under: Gaming, Media, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

At the BBC website, Phil Coomes shows some side-by-side images of real events and modern FPS game images. The recent flap over clips from the game Arma 2 being cited as genuine film captured from the IRA is only the first of many incidents we should expect to encounter, as games get better (and advocates remain as dedicated to advancing their causes as ever):

Today we are used to seeing real time reports from across the globe, technology has advanced and anyone with an internet connection can travel to far-off places, even imaginary worlds, from their armchair.

The world of video games has progressed too. Some seem real, as highlighted by a recent Ofcom ruling that ITV misled viewers by airing footage claimed to have been shot by the IRA, which was actually material taken from a video game.

Labelled “IRA Film 1988”, it was described as film shot by the IRA of its members attempting to down a British Army helicopter in June 1988. However, the pictures were actually taken from a game called Arma 2.

[. . .]

So I went through my photos taken from various combat zones, and attempted to replicate them in a computer game.

The game Arma 2 was ideal — it’s more of a war simulation than an all-out blaster, with the correct uniforms, vehicles and weapons as well as varied terrains and bang-bang firefights.

Plenty of hours fiddling within the gaming environment, alongside Ivan who developed the game, produced some pretty remarkable results.

In some cases it is actually quite hard to tell the difference between my photographs and the computer version, which is deeply worrying. The level of detail is so precise that the virtual war zone is as convincing as the real thing.

January 26, 2012

What is really meant by the term “market failure”

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:10

Posting on the Institute of Economic Affairs blog, Tom Papworth tries to clarify what the term “market failure” actually means, in comparison to how it’s commonly used by politicians and journalists:

Firstly, it seems to blur the distinction between ‘the market’ and ‘the markets’ — a very common error in current discourse. The market is an economic concept that describes the myriad of choices and exchanges that take place between people every day; the markets are the very real institutions created for handling major financial transactions. It is not clear to me that this article acknowledges that distinction. This manifests itself primarily in the title and main theme: indeed, as Jan (and at least one commentator) does tacitly acknowledge, the financial markets are so shaped by government intervention that it would be a surprise if they did correspond to a model market.

And that brings me to the second problem: the suggestion that markets don’t fail when they ‘respond rationally, quickly and often brutally to conditions as they find them’. While that description is true, it has little bearing on the concept of market failure. Market failure typically refers to situations where the effects one would expect to see in a theoretical market economy do not in fact manifest themselves in real life. As the great man himself would be — and perhaps was — the first to point out (though without using these terms) markets fail because of factors such as monopoly and externality — monopolies undermine competition and so markets do not clear; externalities enable costs to be passed onto third parties and prevent all beneficiaries contributing to the production of goods. Information asymmetry is often presented as another source of market failure.

Now, to be fair to Jan, that precision of language is hardly prevalent among the politicians he is criticising. When they speak of market failure, it seems almost as though market success is defined by a number of uneconomic measures such as social justice, or even (that ultimate weasel-word) fairness.

January 24, 2012

Sorting out the proper terms of address, American style

Filed under: Media, Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

In an lengthy aside in his weekly NFL column, Gregg Easterbrook provides a useful summary about how to address current and former holders of various offices (answering a few questions I had about this topic):

In the Republican debate just before the South Carolina primary, John King of CNN addressed the candidates as “Governor Romney,” “Senator Santorum,” “Speaker Gingrich” and “Congressman Paul.” Only Paul actually holds the post connected to the title. [. . .]

Should the news media use titles such as Governor and Speaker for candidates who are not in fact governors or speakers? The authority here is The Protocol School of Washington, which teaches etiquette and, name aside, is located in Columbia, S.C. It maintains a lengthy website on terms of address; the section on addressing former officials is here. The basic rule is that if there are many persons in a category then a former official keeps his or her title when being addressed, while if there is only one of someone, the former person to hold that job does not keep the title.

Since there are many governors and senators, “Governor Romney” and “Senator Santorum” are correct terms of address. But there is only one Speaker of the House, so Gingrich should not be addressed as “Speaker Gingrich.”

The one-or-many rule is the reason judges, generals, admirals, governors, mayors and members of Congress keep their titles for life — but presidents, speakers and cabinet secretaries do not. The Protocol School notes that former president Bill Clinton should not be addressed as “President Clinton,” though having been a governor, he may be addressed as “Governor Clinton.” Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should not be addressed as “Secretary Rice,” she is addressed as “Dr. Rice.” When Dwight Eisenhower left office, he asked to be addressed as “General Eisenhower,” because addressing him as “Mr. President” would have been disrespectful to the sitting president, John Kennedy. Dick Cheney and Al Gore, the Protocol School notes, should not be addressed as “Vice President Cheney” or “Vice President Gore,” because there is only one vice president, though they may be addressed as “Congressman Cheney” or “Senator Gore.”

Thus addressing Next Gingrich as “Speaker Gingrich” is improper and disrespectful to the sitting speaker, John Boehner. As a former member of the House of Representatives, Newt should be addressed as “Congressman Gingrich.”

Considering Gingrich frequently proclaims his great knowledge of history, and considering he misses no chance to savage the media, why doesn’t he correct journalists who improperly address him as “Speaker Gingrich”? Perhaps because being called “Speaker Gingrich” makes him seem more important.

Why do members of the news media address Gingrich improperly? Because it makes them, by reflection, seem important. When news types call him “Speaker Gingrich” or “Mr. Speaker,” it sounds like someone of power and standing is in the room. A relationship of mutual phoniness is established — Gingrich and any journalist addressing him as “Speaker Gingrich” both pretending to be more important than they are.

We don’t have as many different ways to refer to our politicians: they’re generally either “The Honourable” (cabinet ministers, MPs, and senators — they retain the title after retirement if they are members of the privy council, and former cabinet ministers are always members) or “The Right Honourable” (Prime Minister, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and former Governors General). The current Governor General, as personal representative of the monarch, is addressed as “Your Excellency”.

Scottish Americans: nostalgia compounded of Braveheart, whisky tours, and castles

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

The BBC looks at the views of Scotland held by Scottish Americans:

It’s the time of year when Americans everywhere get in touch with their Scottish roots, however tangled and distant they might be, as they celebrate Burns Night.

The concept of Scottish identity has recently been invigorated as plans for a referendum on independence take shape in Holyrood. So what do Americans with Caledonian ancestry make of the debate?

[. . .]

Their vision of Scotland is mostly taken from movies like Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s 1995 tale of Scottish rebel William Wallace, who leads an uprising against an English tyrant, says Mr Forbes.

Few have any idea what modern Scotland is like, he adds, and if they do it will have been picked up from dark and twisted tales like Trainspotting or Shallow Grave.

“There are elements of truth in what people believe the whole of Scotland to be but it is not the whole truth. If you look at the marketing of Scotland, you see these broad mountainous vistas, these sparkling lakes, these old castles.

“They don’t talk about the Silicon Glen, they don’t talk about the industry around the northern oil fields.”

[. . .]

Members of a Gaelic speaking society are, apparently, still smarting after their inquiries about promoting the language in Scotland were batted away by Scottish government officials, who told them that more people speak Farsi than Gaelic in modern Scotland.

John King Bellassai, former president of the DC St Andrews Society, says Scottish Americans tend to let romance cloud their judgement when it comes to an independent Scotland

January 20, 2012

The anti-Top Gear crowd: “In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime”

Filed under: Britain, Humour, India, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

Patrick Hayes on the tut-tutting, disapproving folks who only watch Top Gear to generate more outrage at Jeremy Clarkson’s antics:

I wonder what proportion of the five million viewers of the Top Gear India Special over Christmas were desperate-to-be-offended members of the chattering classes? Skipping the second instalment of Great Expectations, they no doubt sat through the show solely to tweet about how awful Jeremy Clarkson and Co’s monkeying about on the road to the Indian Himalayas was.

In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime. He was chastised for offending blind people when he called former UK prime minister Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’, censured for driving while sipping a gin and tonic en route to the North Pole, and generated fury when a couple of years ago he called for the Welsh language to be abolished. But never has he generated so much controversy as the Twitch-hunt that took place against him at the end of last year, after he made a quip that public sector strikers ‘should all be shot’.

This was so evidently a joke, although a crap one, that you had to wonder whether the tens of thousands of ‘offended’ people who took to their keyboards to campaign to get him sacked were for real. Is it humanly possible to be that po-faced? Evidently so. Irony-phobic Labour leader Ed Miliband led the way, calling the comments ‘absolutely disgraceful and disgusting’. A sour-mouthed trade union rep even compared his comments to the atrocities carried out by former Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi.

[. . .]

For these petty censors, it’s not enough simply to change the channel. The danger, so the argument goes, is that Clarkson could become a red-blooded role model to millions of impressionable viewers who will mimic his expressions and share his juvenile, PC-averse passions. Attempts to tame Jezza are invariably attempts to try to reform the viewing public, too. If not stopped now, it would seem, Top Gear could generate an army of misogynistic, environment-despoiling racists-in-the-making.

The danger doesn’t come from Clarkson, however. It comes from these Clarkson-bashing killjoys who are intolerant of informal banter, suspicious of anything ‘fun’, taking every word said in jest literally and moaning to the authorities because Clarkson sets a bad example. These are the ones who, to steal a phrase from the man himself, ‘should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite’.

January 17, 2012

The media angle on the Costa Concordia wreck

Filed under: Europe, Italy, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Tim Black points out the most common media memes about the Costa Concordia have much more to do with snobbery and disdain than with human interest or concern about the actual causes of the shipwreck:

The sequence of events that led to the sinking of the luxury cruise liner, the Costa Concordia, is now pretty much established. But facts have not got in the way of a variety of commentators who are using the accident to parade their prejudices about too-big ships and ignorant passengers.

[. . .]

These are the tragic facts so far. What no one knows exactly is why it happened. Explanations have been mooted, of course: a power blackout affecting the ship’s steering; inaccurate navigation charts failing to show the rocks; or human error, in particular by the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino. Yet while the exact reason for the ship straying off course remains unclear, that has not stopped another object of blame coming to the fore in some of the coverage. That is, the real, underlying reason for the Costa Concordia accident is to be sought not in the actual events of Friday evening but rather in the profit-driven, build-‘em-high cruise industry and, by association, in the sea-faring ignorance of all those who sailed aboard her.

This is why so much of the coverage seems obsessed with the size of the Costa Concordia. Over the past few days, we have been repeatedly told that cruise ships have doubled in size over the past decade. While this is true — and as the twenty-sixth-largest liner in the world, the Costa Concordia is far from the most impressive of this new breed of ships — the Concordia’s size does not actually tell us why it was three miles off course. Nor does it explain why the ship’s crew was unaware of the rock outcrop despite having navigation equipment. Yes, perhaps ship size does affect manoeuvrability, but would a smaller vessel not have suffered a similar fate that befell the Concordia? In fact, the obsession with the ship’s size sheds very little light on what happened to the Concordia on Friday evening.

What the convenient obsession with size draws upon, rather, is an antipathy towards the cruise industry, a sense that it is little more than the ocean-going equivalent of that other right-thinking person’s bête noire, Dubai. In other words, a vulgar testament to profit and sky-high consumption. So although size here is not really relevant as a cause of the Concordia’s capsizing, it appears relevant to certain commentators as a symbol of commercial hubris, of complacent materialism.

January 15, 2012

What’s next, allowing only “registered journalists” to report the news?

Filed under: Government, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

A brief item that should send a frisson down the spine of anyone who collects and disseminates information from the web and social media outlets:

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

H/T to Chris Myrick for the link.

January 14, 2012

Rex Murphy: “Big Environment” finally gets a bit of critical attention

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:27

The western world’s largest secular religion may finally be given a bit of balanced coverage — a big change from the automatic deference it has received from the media up to now:

The greatest advantage the greens have had is the relative absence of scrutiny from the press. Generally speaking, it’s thought to be bad manners to question self-appointed environmentalists. Their good cause, at least in the early days, was enough of a warrant in itself. And when it was your aunt protesting the incinerator just outside town, well that was enough. But when it’s some vast congregation of 20,000 at an international conference, or thousands lining up to present briefs protesting a pipeline, well, let’s just say this is not your aunt’s protest movement anymore.

There is no such thing as investigative environmental reporting — or rather very precious little of it in the established media. Environmental reporters rarely question the big environmental outfits with anything like the fury they will bring to questioning politicians or businesspeople. Advocacy and reportage are sometimes close as twins.

And so the great thing I see about Resource Minister Joe Oliver’s little rant against Northern Gateway pipeline opponents a few days ago — asking whether some groups are receiving “outside money” or if they are proxies for other interests — is not so much the rant itself, but rather the fact that at last some scrutiny, some questions are being asked of these major players. Big environment, however feebly, is being asked to present its bona fides. And that’s a good thing: The same rigor we bring to industry and government, in looking to their motives, their swift dealing, must also apply to crusading greens.

Where does their money come from? What are their interests in such and such a hearing? What other associations do they have? Are they a cat’s paw for other interests? Do they have political affiliations that would impugn their testimony? In hearings as important as the ones over the Northern Gateway pipeline, with the jobs and industry that are potentially at stake, the call to monitor who is participating in those hearings is a sound and rational one.

In a media environment where anyone who questions the green orthodoxy is accused of being in the pay of “Big Oil”, it’s refreshing to have at least a bit of the same medicine being forced on the other side of the debate.

January 12, 2012

This time it’s India that gets the Top Gear treatment

Filed under: Humour, India, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

I haven’t seen the Top Gear special in question, but from the complaints, it sounds like a pretty typical outing for the boys:

In the letter, published in the Daily Telegraph, the HCI criticised a lack of cultural sensitivity and called on the BBC to take action to pacify those offended.

One Indian diplomat told the BBC News website: “People are very upset because you cannot run down a whole society, history, culture and sensitivities.

“India is a developing country, we have very many issues to address, all that is fine but it is not fine to broadcast this toilet humour.”

He added: “There are many parts of the programme that people have complained about.

“It’s not only Indians, it’s also our British friends — it goes much beyond.”

The diplomat cited an “offensive” banner placed on the side of a train — reading “the United Kingdom promotes British IT for your company” — which read quite differently when the carriages were parted.

And he also criticised a scene in the programme which showed Clarkson taking off his trousers at a party to demonstrate how to use a trouser press.

Showing off the customised Jaguar, complete with toilet roll on its aerial, presenter Jeremy Clarkson said on the programme: “This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.”

Update: Jeremy Clarkson strikes again, this time agitating the folks on the Isle of Sheppey and recent immigrants:

Clarkson wrote: “Mostly, the Isle of Sheppey is a caravan site.

“There are thousands of thousands of mobile homes, all of which I suspect belong to former London cabbies, the only people on Earth with the knowledge to get there before it’s time to turn round and come home again.”

“And what of the locals? Well, they tend to be the sort of people who arrived in England in the back of a refrigerated truck or clinging to the underside of a Eurostar train.”

“And that reinforces my point rather well.

“Mboto has somehow evaded the gunmen and the army recruiters in his remote Nigerian village. He walked north, avoiding death and disease, and then somehow made it right across the Sahara desert to Algeria.

“Here, he managed to overwhelm the security men with their AK-47s and get on a boat to Italy, where he sneaked past the guards.”

The article in Top Gear mag adds: “He made it all the way across Europe to Sangatte, from which he escaped one night and swam to Kent.

“But that stumped him. Getting out of there was impossible, so he decided to make a new life in Maidstone.”

January 7, 2012

QotD: Is Disappearing

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:33

To be or not to be? That remaining the question, the answer increasingly clear. The verb “to be” dying out, and the culprit? None other than TV news channels. Taking the place of such cherished words as “is,” “are,” “am,” even “were” and “was”: a new verb form that you might call the one-size-fits-all past, present, and future participle. Or you might call it the one-size-fits-all past, present, and future gerund. One of these right and one of them wrong, but which which? Nobody really knowing the difference between a participle and a gerund. Anyone claiming to understand the distinction probably bluffing. So calling it what you wish: Either label doing.

Michael Kinsley, “Is Disappearing: What TV news doing to our precious verbs”, Slate, 2001-11-01

January 6, 2012

Paul Wells: Harper has big plans for 2012 … maybe

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

Yes, it’s the constantly threatening hidden agenda!

What does Stephen Harper want to do with his parliamentary majority? “I want to make sure that we use it,” he told CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme in a year-end interview. “You know, I’ve seen too many majority governments, the bureaucracy talks them into going to sleep for three years, and then they all of a sudden realize they’re close to an election.”

[. . .]

You don’t have to like this list. I’m not saying Harper’s predecessors were heroes. I am saying they were not sleeping. If the Prime Minister’s comments have any meaning, he must have something up his sleeve at least as big as those accomplishments. If he doesn’t, he won’t be the first politician to congratulate himself for his achievements before he fails to achieve them.

His interviews suggest Harper plans something big. Four times during his CTV interview, and once with the Chinese-language Fairchild network, he used the adjective “major” to describe his plans for 2012.

[. . .]

It’s striking how rarely Harper sounds bold when any discussion descends from slogans to details. Take foreign policy. On Syria, he pleads the lack of a Security Council resolution. On Egypt: “We’ll try and do what we can do to encourage stability and encourage the forces of democracy, but we don’t go into these things blind. There are some very real risks.”

A policy of bold action only where success is assured is a policy of offering help where none is needed. It is a bold decision to join others’ victory parades. There is nothing major about it.

Incidentally, the bureaucrats I talk to aren’t plotting to put Harper to sleep. On the contrary. Many wonder whether this government will wake up. One of Ottawa’s most experienced civil servants tells me the widespread belief is that Harper’s government is so obsessed with each morning’s headlines that it cannot plan. This official predicts a year of high-level early retirements from the civil service if Harper does not start using his majority.

January 5, 2012

The MPAA over-cooks their numbers to support SOPA

Filed under: Economics, Law, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:53

Techdirt reports on the work done by Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute to actually scrutinize the “loss” numbers used by the MPAA:

One of the things we’ve noticed in the debate over SOPA and PIPA is just how the other side is really lying with statistics. We’ve done a thorough debunking of the stats used by the US Chamber of Commerce to support both bills, as well as highlighted the misleading-to-bogus stats used by Lamar Smith in his support of the bill.

But every day, more bogus stats are rolled out. Julian Sanchez, over at the Cato Institute, has decided to dig into one specific bogus number, the supposed claim of $58 billion in “losses,” and to show how the numbers don’t hold up to any scrutiny. In fact, using the details of where the numbers came from, Sanchez makes the case that SOPA won’t save a single net job for the US economy. Read on to find out how.

First off, the $58 billion comes from an absolutely laughable report for the Institute for Policy Innovation, done every year by Stephen Siwek at a firm called Economists Incorporated. We’ve challenged this ridiculous number in the past, but not to the level of detail that Sanchez has here. He starts out by bringing up (as we have many times), Tim Lee’s excellent debunking of the ridiculous “ripple effects” that Siwek/IPI always use, despite them being a trick to double, triple, quadruple, etc count the same dollars [. . .]

Firefly MMO may rise from the dead

Filed under: Gaming, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

There’s still hope, Browncoat gamers:

While Multiverse, the development platform that was supposed to be the driving force for possible Buffy and Firefly MMOs, suffered a studio shutdown, the source code lives — and has been snatched up by the newly formed Multiverse Foundation. Fortunately for those who were holding out hope for an online version of Joss Whedon’s scifi western, it looks as though this new company wants to pick up where the previous team left off.

Don’t let your hopes soar too high: this is still very far from being a complete product (and the organization’s website is still in deep lorem ipsum marination). It is, however, a sign that there’s still enough life in the fan community for the Joss Whedon properties that it appears viable for someone to take this on.

January 1, 2012

Kathy Shaidle on overrated comedians

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:30

Kathy is in her normal take-no-prisoners mode over heroic liberal comedians:

Yeah, I’m a heretic. I also fell asleep during Star Wars.

Bruce Springsteen? Pompous blowhard.

The Godfather? Long stretches of beige nothingness.

And The Who are better than The Beatles.

(Hell, I prefer The Monkees to The Beatles…)

But here’s the first “pop culture” contrarianism I’m a teensy bit afraid to confess in public:

George Carlin never made me laugh.

I started thinking about overrated liberal comedians this week, when news broke that a fawning, big budget Smothers Brothers biopic is in development. Great: we’re now facing months of witless hagiography about these two “daring, transgressive, brave” performers, and the rest of the progressive comedy pantheon of heroic martyrs.

Who weren’t funny.

OK, so you think they’re funny. Maybe you’ll be driven to call me lots of mostly unimaginative names in the comments below. But the people I’m about to discuss rarely, if ever, made me laugh. Personally. That’s my definition of “funny.”

Your mileage will vary.

She’s certainly right about The Godfather, The Who, The Beatles, and The Monkees. My friends were much more into George Carlin’s humour than I was (I rather liked his late-career talk on the insanity of “saving the planet”, but generally didn’t listen to him).

December 31, 2011

Don’t mess with Firefly (or the right to free speech)

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

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