Christopher Hitchens on our Enemies

In a recent article for Vanity Fair Christopher Hitchens returns to his old neighbourhood and finds it filled with jihadists.

Army Group Ferret

In a thread on Alternate History about naming military units after geographic features somebody brings up The Army of the Don.

Wozza replies with:

How many Dons are there?


I see there is one in Yorkshire. Obviously when we come to crush you people and your ferret-down-the-trouser barbarisms we will need an Army Group Don to maintain control.

I imagine hypern is the ideal man for internal order operations.

Windjammer and East Indiaman Shipping Lanes

A Dutch group has gone through the logs of dozens of 18th and 19th century ships. From this data set can determined historical climate conditions, temperature and wind speeds and direction. The image above is the

"Positions of the available observations in the CLIWOC database for the period 1750-1854. The markers in the image show the corrected (mainly for the correct zero-meridian) positions."

CLIWOC also has individual plots of dozens of ships like the Ajax, Captain Cook's Endeavour and Enterprise. Looking at the above you see the shipping lanes.

from the Trade Route Resources blog.

Afghan Army Exercises

Somebody in Afghanistan, probably Canadian has put edited together a video of Afghan soldiers doing the worst excuse of a work out since elementary school.

Ultra Catty View of Paris Hilton

HA HA

from Walt Handelsman, Long Island, NY, Newsday

Alarmforce Spokesman Pauly Walnuts

Whenever I see the TV ad for Alarmforce and its spokesman I cannot not be reminded of Pauly Walnuts. I am not convinced of Alarmforce's honesty after seeing their ads.

Cat Sitting Ad

John Hodgman: The Truth About Jonathan Coulton

All We Want to do is Eat Your Brains

Another great song from Jonathan Coulton on the merits of Zombie cuisine. Here is the same song set to anime rather than WoW. Here is A Hard Days' Night of the Living Dead.

Ah, Zombie humour.

Unemployment and Immigration

The problem that economists have in measuring inflation and costs is that that these vary based on where you are in the economy. If you are employer your costs are lower if there are many people who are unemployed or underemployed, see reserve army of the unemployed and other Marxist theory. This has meant that labour costs in argriculture and construction and meatpacking in the United States has declined with the availablity of easily exploited undocumented workers. That is one side of inflation for construction workers on the other hand inflation has increased for displaced construction workers as their wages decline.

Inflation is a value judgement.

Clash of the Car Titans

We all should have seen this coming. General Motors were successful for a long time because of the way that Alfred Sloan organized the disparate auto and auto part companies that made up GM. Because of the example of Sloan management ability and bureacratic skills was more important than engineering. In de Lorean's book, On a Clear Day you can See General Motors, he describes how he was an unusual GM executive because he was a car nut. In recent years GM has made more money out its loan division than by making or selling cars. American car companies need to focus on cars and automotive engineering.

Update 05/08/2007
Edwin Black who noted the IBM technology behind the Holocaust has come some new research that links GM and Panzers. He has documented some ways that GM helped the Nazi war effort. However whatever help GM was able to give to the Nazi war effort was insufficant in overcoming a persistent lack of petroleum resources. Although there were armoured divisions, Panzers, most German even SS divsions were not fully mechanized or even motorized. Trucks had not completely replaced horses and horse drawn artillery were used until the end of WWII.

Still, I like a good muck raking as much as the next schadenfreuden addict.

Hitler's Carmaker: The Inside Story of How General Motors Helped Mobilize the Third Reich (Part 1)

Hitler's Carmaker: As the Nazis Amassed Power, What Did GM Know and When? (Part 2)

Hitler's Carmaker: From War Profiteering to Undermining Mass Transit (Part 3)

Wikisky

WikiSky is a combo GoogleEarth for the sky and a Wiki for the sky. It even has a section of many interesting and amusing images from faces in the sky to quasars to globular clusters. Doesn't that sound like a great snack food, mmmm globular clusters with peanuts, fudge and popcorn

Above is the big dipper.

From a link at Andart.

French Election News

I have been following the blog ¡No Pasarán! for French election news. At this point the coverage is focused on riots and car burnings. Riots and car burnings were threatened if didn't turn left. Sarkovy was castigated for famously called his political opponents who were expressing themselves by rioting and car burning last summer as "scum". It was considered a racial remark because of the identity of the rioters and carburners.

Update
The website Little Green Footballs actually had a poll on how many cars would be burned and answered it the next day with 367.

Thought Process of Conspiracy Theorist

1. Something horrible happens
2. It never happened
   
3. The Jews, CIA, Swiss Bankers, Masons, insert most hated group here, did it.

Real History in Song and Cartoons

In the past the the major cost of fighting a war was paying the war bonds. After the mass participation wars in the western world the major cost of a war was paid decades later in the form of pensions and health care. In earlier less financially stable times armies were laid off and the maimed were sent out to beg their own livings. While on active service armies were permenment host for a host of diseases like thyphoid, plague, cholera, and syphilis. Soldiers died from diseases more than bullets. If we look to Africa now we can see our own past. African armies have horrendus AIDS infection rates of 40-60%. There has been scholarship to suggest that the song St James Infirmary is about a soldier dying of VD in a poorhouse. Without a wealthy society that actually cares about its people that is the fate of ex-soldiers and many others to die in the gutter of some horrible disease while begging for crumbs.

These 2 editorial cartoons highlight the fate of soldiers to end up as diseased beggers.

Least Effective Forms of Political Activism

Ha Ha.
Blog Comment Warfare is what I recognize, coutesy of Slowpoke.

Action Hero Cats

Courtesy of Cool LOking ads.

Everything I know I Learned in History Class

On Morning Edition there is a story of about some basic training to recruits in the "intelligence community". What the apprentice spooks are taught are basic historiography pracrtices. On Wiki there is this description of historiography before it getsmired in ideological and religious motivations.

Some of the common questions of historiography are:

1. Reliability of the sources used, in terms of authorship, credibility of the author, and the authenticity or corruption of the text.

The weighing of sources and the provenance of sources and the intergration of all sources into coherent narrative is what history, reporting and intelligence analysis is. Provenance of sources is the sources of sources be it raw information, primary source in history, interpreted information, secondary source in history, or information interpreted from others' interpretations, tertiary sources. What it boils down to is the need to have many sources that are as primary and verifiable as possible for a history paper or intelligece briefing.

What surprises me is that they need to teach aspiring spooks such basic practices. The tyro spies and their instructors are not identified but probably have at least a liberal education. Just because a job is important dosen't mean it gets the best recruits. In the book Inside The Soviet Army thereis a description of the ease of doing secret research. For if did "secret research" in the old Soviet Union you may have less access to overseas trips but will be easier to get your thesis approved, easier to get hired and tenure and you have to produce less scientific papers than pursuing pure science. Additionally there are problems with intelligence agents or agencies in that rarely can loyalty and knowledge be combined. In the early Cold War the Brittish had very smart but treasous spies and the Americans had the opposite very loyal but stupid spies.

The Chinese Business Mirage

China has never been a very good market for foreign goods. Historically China was self sufficent in food and manufactured items. Their had little need or desire for foreign goods. There were the only source for silk, tea and porcelin. There were willing to take silver and gold. After the 19th century there were willing buy curiosities like clocks and bicycles. At one Lancastershire textile mill owners thought their prosperity would be assured if everyone in China wore a sightly longer shirt. It was a mirage. The only time when the rest of the world was able to reverse the currency drain built in to the China was to sell dope.

Over the last generation government and business leaders in the west have promoted trade with China. The net result of all this expansion of trade has been a permament Chinese trade surplus. China is willing to buy raw materials but not manufactured goods. The expansion of trade has been zero benefit to all but China. Instead we have business groups agitating for policies that promote a tyrannical communist regime. Here is the story of today of a fake Chinese Disneyland.

At Cartoon Brew where I got this link somebody pointed out the website for this pseudo amusement park is http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/.

Bill Gates, Bully in Chief

Tom Evslin who briefly worked at Microsoft has reported on Bill Gates management style. Bill Gates managed with rudeness and bullying. The culture at Microsoft modeled itself on Gates' rudeness and bullying.

At some point in your presentation billg will say “that’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve heard since I’ve been at Microsoft.” He looks like he means it. However, since you knew he was going to say this, you can’t really let it faze you. Moreover, you can’t afford to look fazed; remember: he’s a bully.

In the comments a NonMSFTer gives his reaction to the Sleazeballs in Seattle:

Yes. I interviewed at Microsoft in about 1989, and it was VERY clear from the style of at least one interviewer that it was a confrontational, in-your-face kind of place, where rudeness seemed to be a kind of initial ante into being perceived there as being very bright and/or the kind of aggressiveness they were looking for. I called (quietly) bullshit and withdrew. But the author is right; it ripples down from the top. I won't forget the asshole I interviewed with (a 20-something Brit named Richard Tate), but the real blame goes with an environment that fosters that kind of hubris.

At slashdot where there is a link to this story there has been many interesting comments.

SheildWOlf has a parent take to dealing with bullies.

It was a test. And you failed. All of us.

Like I was telling my daughter yesterday, the appropriate thing to do when you meet such a person is to drill them in the nose with your knuckles as hard as you can, unless they outweigh you by a significant margin, in which case you should hit them with a chair until they crumple to the ground.

This is how you deal with bullies.

You certainly don't turn yourself one after another into his bitch and make him rich as reward for his antisocial behavior.

I bet Bill wears an "Everything I needed to take over the world, I learned from the bully in kindergarten" T-shirt to bed as a nightie.

Maestro4k has this reaction to MS Inhuman resources management and its costs.

There's a distinct difference between expecting someone to champion their project and being a bully and abusing them verbally. Telling every person that their project idea is "the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." is just being downright mean. Especially when you just glare at them coldly after they defend themselves (as the article points out).

And then you get people who'll imitate the behavior without the smarts to back it up, so it becomes nothing BUT abuse. (Middle management for example.) I think Bill's management technique explains a lot about Microsoft's behavior over the years and why they're so disliked in the technical community. In fact looking back at how MS acted during their two biggest trials (the US anti-trust and EU anti-trust) you can see this "bullying" all over the place. Acting like a bully when you're the defendant in court is not a good idea. It'll just piss the judge (and possibly the jury) off, and they're the ones passing judgment on you.

Besides, it's not like this technique has worked incredibly well for MS, especially in areas like security. MS has also put out some really lousy stuff over the years, like MS Bob, that were apparently "championed" all the way to release, then bombed. Maybe if Bill had developed a culture less focused on bullying they could have avoided some of those things, and saved money. When you force every one of your employees to defend their projects in such a manner then how many are going to be willing to listen when people point out problems with them? You can't have any second doubts if you have to defend your projects constantly, so people will stop listening to any criticism, leading to lower quality all around.

Quote

LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.
-Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary