The General Staff system was borrowed widely from Germany. Not that it helped them win WWI, but it sounded impressive.

Its key flaw is that you get a lot of bright people in a room with too much time on their hands and not enough interaction with others. So the American general staff, for example,

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade: "The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival."

In the event of war, the American planners figured that England would use Canada (Crimson) -- then a quasi-pseudo-semi-independent British dominion -- as a launching pad for "a direct invasion of BLUE territory." That invasion might come overland, with British and Canadian troops attacking Buffalo, Detroit and Albany. Or it might come by sea, with amphibious landings on various American beaches -- including Rehoboth and Ocean City, both of which were identified by the planners as "excellent" sites for a Brit beachhead.


The plans are copiable for $0.15/page in the archives. I think they'd make good prank material.

Best definition in the contest:

Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Points to the finder of the source at A&M.

Difficulties in your current organization? Working for an "old media" dinosaur so creaky that its death throes alone provide you with endless hours of comment and semi-productive work?

Time to step up to the management secrets of a recognized leader in getting things done! Once you have mastered these simple principles, you should be able to handle the most difficult management issues with appropriate Force.

An American teenager has gone through 118 days of training to be the next pop idol, Reuters reports.

"It was like I was a fake person, like I didn't really exist. I was just here," she said[.]

We await news of her appearance on "American Idol" or MTV.

Or indications I'm in the wrong job.


Powered By Best Vibrators

Yes, it's time to relive those exciting days of yesteryear, with their odd letters coming in your mailbox!

I'm still waiting for that replacement newspaper for the one that landed on the roof.

Waiting.

From the Dictionary for the Politically Correct:

Judgmentalism - The capacity to form moral judgments, this being the principal quality that gives human beings an advantage over orangutans, who after all are a good deal stronger. Nonetheless, judgmentalism is a bad thing, because the formation of judgments implies that one might correctly conclude that some ways of behaving are better than others. See "tolerance." The upshot is that only "non-judgmentalism" is an acceptable outlook on life -- with the caveat that non-judgmentalism is subject to cancellation without notice when the subject is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Alberto Gonzales, anyone invovled with the imprisonment of terrorists at Guantanamo, and of course the Duke lacrosse team.

Read the whole thing: then catch the original post., where we learn another key word:

Tolerance - Tolerance is the mind-set that requires you to assume that every way of living is as good as every other way of living. Thus, if a woman has X number of kids by Y number of men, none of whom she troubled herself to get to know all that well, much less marry, we must accept this in the name of "tolerance" of a "non-traditional lifestyle." (Indeed, we are required not merely to tolerate it but foot the bill). If you are rude enough to point out that the kids who come into the world this way are much more likely to be poorly educated, not to mention abused by the next boyfriend, you are "intolerant." In bygone days, "tolerance" had a different meaning, to wit, an open attitude of good faith toward socially benevolent behavior and beliefs even if different from your own, but that view is now held principally by old fogies.

BoingBoing reminds us of the best post 9/11 editorial out there, with his favorite quote:

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.

Yep. It must be in the DNA of every editorial department I know -- not least, of course, in my own pretentious postings. (did I say that??!!)

As it turns out, some people spend way too much time on them.

Of course, he's teaching a university class.

Another reason to smile and remember that the word "That's academic" means, in American slang, "That's irrelevant."

I suppose I should worry about those students pictured taking notes.

Is this one.

A tongue-in-cheek Toronto study has tracked down new signs of serious health problems -- astrological signs.

Researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Ontario's capital linked medical data from more than 10 million adult residents in the province to the 12 astrological signs.

They initially found that, compared with people born under other signs, Pisces have a higher probability of hospitalization for heart failure, Aries have more bone disorders and Libras are more likely to fracture their pelvises.

The study, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and conducted by researcher Peter Austin, also found a statistical link between Geminis and alcohol dependence syndrome, Virgos and excessive vomiting during pregnancy, as well as Scorpios and lymphoid leukemia. All twelve signs were linked to at least two medical disorders.

But put away the crystal ball and cancel that trip to the palm reader. The superstitious study was meant to show how erroneous patterns can sometimes be drawn from statistical medical research.

But the key quote comes from here:

The confusion arises because each result is tested separately to see how likely, in statistical terms, it was to have happened by chance. If that likelihood is below a certain threshold, typically 5%, then the convention is that an effect is “real”. And that is fine if only one hypothesis is being tested. But if, say, 20 are being tested at the same time, then on average one of them will be accepted as provisionally true, even though it is not.

In his own study, Dr Austin tested 24 hypotheses, two for each astrological sign. He was looking for instances in which a certain sign “caused” an increased risk of a particular ailment. The hypotheses about Leos' intestines and Sagittarians' arms were less than 5% likely to have come about by chance, satisfying the usual standards of proof of a relationship. However, when he modified his statistical methods to take into account the fact that he was testing 24 hypotheses, not one, the boundary of significance dropped dramatically. At that point, none of the astrological associations remained.

Unfortunately, many researchers looking for risk factors for diseases are not aware that they need to modify their statistics when they test multiple hypotheses. The consequence of that mistake, as John Ioannidis of the University of Ioannina School of Medicine, in Greece, explained to the meeting, is that a lot of observational health studies—those that go trawling through databases, rather than relying on controlled experiments—cannot be reproduced by other researchers. Previous work by Dr Ioannidis, on six highly cited observational studies, showed that conclusions from five of them were later refuted. In the new work he presented to the meeting, he looked systematically at the causes of bias in such research and confirmed that the results of observational studies are likely to be completely correct only 20% of the time. If such a study tests many hypotheses, the likelihood its conclusions are correct may drop as low as one in 1,000—and studies that appear to find larger effects are likely, in fact, simply to have more bias.

Those who wish to follow up should check this out.

There are moments when you realize that someone hasn't got a clue, and also realize that they think they are making a point.

Here's an example. Or, if you'd prefer, just sit back and listen.

File under "unintentionally funny"

Don't worry. He has tenure.

As noted by almost everyone who deals with the press, reporters can't read very well. But I'm amused by this latest note on how poorly they are able to handle their own reporting:

An e-mail:

The media is re-running old “gotcha’s” against Bush. Unfortunately, they weren’t accurate the first time, either:

Associated Press, Jan. 27, 2007:

Now even George W. Bush says [climate change is] a problem. […] [D]uring last week's State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global warming as an established fact.

Finally! The first time! At least, since 2005:

In 2005, however, Europeans sensed a shift when Bush was asked about the issue in Denmark. "Listen," [President Bush] said, "I recognize that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem."

And that was — finally! – the first time Bush had acknowledged it…since 2004, when:

A Bush administration report suggests that evidence of global warming has begun to affect animal and plant populations in visible ways, and that rising temperatures in North America are due in part to human activity.

Finally! The first time the Bush administration ever acknowledged global warming! At least, since 2001, when President Bush said:

First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. […] And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.

Apparently, the media has to rediscover this “finally” moment every year or so.


I spoke a few days ago about the gullibility of skeptics. The illiteracy of reporters should go right along with it.

PJ O'Rourke has done it again: distilled the swing of politics from Democrat to Republican in terms that the voters actually use:

"The important thing," he continues, "is negative rights: freedom from. But politics is all about positive rights: What're you going to give me? In a democracy it's always vibrating back and forth. People want the government to do everything for them, then when they see that it sucks, they want the government to let them take charge, and when that doesn't work, they want the government to come back and fix all the problems that they themselves caused when they took charge." There's a kind of separation of church and state, Mr. O'Rourke contends: "You simply cannot put your ideas into action."

Of course the problem is that too many people want to run on ideas.

OK, I've had enough people complaining about bad church architecture: it doesn't impress them, doesn't give them the feelings that they are after, etcetera, etcetera.

And then there are those who want to make a mockery of the whole thing, such as the worshippers of St. Darth Vader (evidently an Episcopal saint: I'm sort of wondering how that happened.) Tip of the hat to fluffy, destroyer of worlds

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Reverend Earl Arnold the Fifteenth of Molton St Anywhere Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Quite a change from Arnold, Earl of Hathaby, I suppose. Of course, that one is just old: this has the virtue of being new.

Once again, Palestinians have revealed their preferences: anyone but America, anyone at all. In this case, it shows up as mourning the passing of Saddam. It's a good rule of thumb that the Palestinians are on "the other side", whatever sides you're describing. I'm waiting for the headline, "Alien Menace to Wipe Out Humanity: Praised by Palestinian Authority."

UPDATE:A reminder of why they are so off base. If all you have on your side is a New York Times pity party, you're in trouble.

Like many another dictator before him, Saddam so sealed himself off from his own people, in his scores of palaces, and on his carefully staged, video-recorded walkabouts among crowds of ululating citizens, that he seemed never to grasp, even in the extremities of his last weeks, how hated he was by his people. In the courtroom, he insisted, repeatedly, that he remained Iraq’s lawful president and thus immune to prosecution, even as the judges responded by calling him “ex-president” and ordering him to sit down. He was sustained in this make-believe world by his former acolytes, who would stand in the dark as he entered, greeting him with expressions of undying fealty.

UPDATE: A suggestion that we should refer to them officially as an enemy country. I'd suggest taking it seriously.

From a site I should get to more often:

It is not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.
--Hubert Humphrey

Not a person I've always been iterested in listening to, but absolutely true. Job would understand.

The talk show format I like least is "here are two guys nominally on opposite sides talking about THE NEWS." Their job is apparently to say nothing new, nothing that is not perfectly predictable given their role.

But sometimes, the format works brilliantly (use headphones if at work: not all dialogue is work-safe). These two on current events is something I'd pay to see.

Evidently, I've been missing the point of the prize.

Maybe it is time for vulgar, brutal, authoritarian thugs to be awarded it, rather than vulgar, brutal, totalitarian ones.

I'm sure Jimmy Carter and James Baker would approve.

After all, Pinochet, like Castro, like Che Guevara, were thugs, torturers, brutal and mindless killers. But one of them left behind a country that has thrived. The others only killed. Think of it as redemption, of a sort.

UPDATE: The encomia keep pouring in. More, and more. From the other side, as a historical note, those who believe they have divine sanction to hate him, but who seem not to notice Castro, who behaved, and behaves, just as badly, if not more repressively.

Final UpdateOk, now we have a decent obiturary, and this article and this book reviewed. And with that, rest in peace.

Every now and then, you have to write something just to see what the response is. An example, you ask?

How about this?

Please don't skip the comments. The fake statistics alone (our falling life expectancy?) are worth a quick howl of laughter.

In answer: why do I eat animals? Well, I like them. And, as it turns out, they're made of meat.

Special, for those attempting to demonstrate that "neocons" like me have a secret agenda:

The decoder. Just paste any text from my website there, and you'll find out what I'm REALLY saying.

Or not.

Overheard:

"A day without sunshine is, like, night."

It's all about being graceful, I suppose.

It's a good thing that familial clumsiness excuses me, then. And here is another approach to gracefulness.