blogjou
It seems like at least the European CORONA crisis is coming to an end, so I need another socially accepted excuse for never being around anywhere. A blog!Besides, for the US in particular...
Besides, for the US in particular, when the 9/11 attacks generated a sudden and irresistable demand for intelligende support for the ‘War on Terror’, this was the only way an intelligence community that had suffered a decade of contraction could respond rapidly. You cannot train officers to speak Farsi or pivot them from Kyiv to Kabul overnight, but you can hope to hire that existing expertise. Short-term response become long-term dependency, though: as a 2007 presentation from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put it, ‘We can’t spy … if we wan’t buy!’
Suddenly, everything can be weaponised...
Suddenly, everything can be weaponised as part of the expanding array (arsenal, even) of military metaphors all around us. The irony is that just as the language of real war is becoming blandly euphemistic (with ‘delivery systems’ causing ‘collateral damage’), civilian speech becomes more martial. Beyong the ‘War on Drugs’ and the ‘Battle Against COVID’ (British prime minister Boris Johnson even hailed news of vaccines as proof that the ‘scientific cavalry’ were ‘coming over the brow of the hill’), everything now seems couched in military terminology. In part this may reflect the new age in which a terrorist’s bomb or a rival’s sanctions could hit anyone, any time, leaving us feeling like reluctant conscripts on an invisible battlefield.
Close allies compete viciously...
Close allies compete viciously for trade deals and a technological edge, for precedence and prestige. If now we have no real enemies, the sad corollary is that we have no real friends, either.
A Swiss Army knife is a very fine instrument ideed...
A Swiss Army knife is a very fine instrument indeed, but if you insist on adding more and more tools to it, and take out the knife to make room for, say a bonsai rake and a magnifying glass, arguably you miss the point. Often it is better to use a different gadget, one specifically dedigned for the job, and not ruin your Swiss Army knife at the same time.
Even the UN hire private security companies...
Even the UN hire private security companies to protect its missions. In1994, when the genocide was being practised with murderous abandon in Rwanda and no governments seemed inclined to step in, the UN’s then-Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, considered hiring one of the biggest, DSL, to intervene. He ultimately ung back, saying that ‘the world may not be ready to privatise peace’, but it certainly seems to be willing again to privatise war.
The two-income family
Harper´s magazine in December struck a sombre economic note with an article by Nancy B. Mavity on an unsettling new phenomenon, the two-income family, in which husband and wife both went out to work to pay for a more ambitious lifestyle. Mavity´s worry was not how women would cope with the demands of employment on top of child-rearing and houswork, but rather what this would do to the man´s traditional standing as breadwinner. ´I´d be ashadmed to let my wife work,´ one man told Mavity tardly, and it was clear from her tone that Mavity expected most readers to agree. Remarkably, until the war many women in America had been unable to work whether they wanted to or not. Up until Pearl Harbor, half of the forty-eight states had laws makin it illegal to employ a married woman.
Omar has proved a lot of myths to be wrong or misleading.
Omar has proved a lot of myths to be wrong or misleading. ‘Teams hoping to get promoted from the Championship should employ players with experience of playing in that league’ is not true if you look at the numbers. ‘Managers should get their teams to play more aggressively’ is an unqualifiable and meaningless statement. ‘The wage bill in the Premier League team determines results’ is only true for the gap between the ‘big six’ and the rest of the league. Teams outside the big six can do well on smaller budgets. ‘The success of Spain and Barcelona means that clubs should look for shorter players’ is no established by research. Instead, there is a risk that teams get caught up in a rush to follow fads. Myth after myth fails when Omar starts to do his statistical checks.
Sir Alex' last few seasons at Manchester United
Reading the analyses Sam performed during his time working at Opta, it is clear that he made good use of their extensive data sets. An article he wrote in 2013 about Manchester Unites’s shot conversion was particularly revealing. During Alex Fergusons last few seasons at the club, United had fewer shots than their title rivals, but they scored from more of the chances they created. Using ‘expected goals’ Sam showed that United scored more because they were shooting centrally, in positions that were more likely to result in a goal. Howver, he also suggested that even accounting for their better shooting position, their success was unsustainable.
Is it really the referees only?
I very much doubt that FIFA will redraw the penalty area. Instead, referees already attempt to compensate for its poor current design. 61% of the penalties are awarded in the 18 yard by 20 yard area found by extending forward from the six-yard box to the edge of the penalty box. The other 39% are awarded in the two 18 yard by 12 yard areas on either side. That makes the probability per square yard of bein awarded a penalty in a central area 2.1 times greater than the probability of being awarded one on the outer edges. Penalties on the edges of the box are exceptions rather than the rule.
In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to...
In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition - either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Damm and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and temote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit - that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware River might actually set off the grandeur around it, or that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn´t all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and tilles fields.