Author: VD

Experts vs Media: A Retrospective

Peter King revisits the big draft question of 25 years ago, and in doing so, underlines my point about the mainstream media. Which is, namely, never believe anything it tells you.

A quarter-century ago this week … A couple of months before the draft in 1998, I took a VHS tape with 30 to 35 plays each of Tennessee QB Peyton Manning and Washington State QB Ryan Leaf, the presumptive top two picks in the draft, around the country to show six people and to ask: Who would you pick among these two players? (VHS qualified as high-tech in 1998.) My panel of experts: Hall of Fame coach/QB guru Sid Gillman, retired Niners coach Bill Walsh, Giants QB Phil Simms, Denver coach Mike Shanahan, Tampa Bay director of player personnel Jerry Angelo and UCLA coach Bob Toledo (who’d faced both players).

There was some debate over who should go first that year. ESPN published a long magazine story opining the easy pick was Leaf. “Come 2018, Ryan Leaf, not Manning, will be strutting up to a podium in Canton,” was one line from that story, one of the great wish-we-had-that-back lines ever. ESPN wasn’t the only one to go all-in on Leaf. But I sat with each expert and asked the question.

The vote: Manning 6, Leaf 0. “Now this is a pro quarterback,” the 86-year-old Gillman said in his Carlsbad, Calif., home. “Is that a beautiful throw, or is that a beautiful throw? I’d draft this kid in a second.” The iconoclastic Walsh favored Manning over Leaf, but also said he’d pick another position first in the draft, then chose Brian Griese in the second round.

When I wrote the story in early April, I remember a few stories like the ESPN one, or ones quoting anonymous scouts or GMs saying they’d pick Leaf. I wondered if I’d picked the wrong guys to poll. But sitting with Gillman, a seminal figure in quarterback history, and Shanahan, and hearing their this-is-no-contest tone, I thought Manning was the guy. “Peyton will handle the inferno of going to a 3-13 team. He’s a sure player,” Angelo said. And he was.

Forget sports. Forget the NFL. Forget the converged reporter concerned. The salient point here is the massive gap between the unanimous position of the proven experts and the expressed conclusion of the media. The experts consulted by Peter King had unparalleled and unquestioned chops. ESPN could have consulted them even more easily than King did.

And yet, the mainstream media organ somehow managed to present a conclusion diametrically opposed to the conclusion of the experts. This is par for the course. Never forget that.

DISCUSS ON SG

Everything is On Record

I find it very, very difficult to believe that Elon Musk was genuinely surprised that the US government has full access to private messages on Twitter:

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has claimed the U.S. government had access to users private messages on Twitter.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, set to be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday night, Musk made the startling claims noting how he was shocked to learn that the government had full access to private communications on the platform.

The billionaire tycoon told Carlson how unaware of the fact until he joined the company and expressed surprise at the degree to which government agencies were able to monitor social media.

‘The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,’ Musk said. ‘I was not aware of that.’

I was warning people that nothing on the Internet is private back when the NSA was still supposed to be a fictitious agency. If you’ve done it online, it’s in the records of many agencies of multiple governments. Nothing is private anymore, we have been living in the Age of the Panopticon for at least 15 years and probably more, so it is long past time for everyone to understand and accept that.

There is no getting around it. There is no hiding it. So don’t worry about it, just be prepared to answer for anything and everything you have ever done or said online. If nothing else, it should underline one’s need for an Advocate in the afterlife.

DISCUSS ON SG

Weekend Arktoons

AFTER ATLANTIS Episode 1: Meet Jayesh and Kari

THE RED TATTOO Episode 36: See You Soon

VEGFOLK FABLES Episode 220: Precious Old Bones

INVASION ’55 Episode 40: The Townsfolks’ Fate

NEURAL NETWORK NOVELLAS Episode 6: Wanted – Dead Man Episode 1

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: COMEDY Episode 87: Love Poem Episode 5

THE WISE OF HEART Episode 18: A Disgruntled Superintendent

PAPER DOLL VERONIKA Episode 56: Night on Gold Mountain

FULL OF EYES Episode 32: Preparing Glory

CLASSIC BIBLE TALES Episode 92: Beware the Teachers of the Law

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 228: Tell a Phony

We’re pleased to announce that another new independent series launches today, entitled AFTER ATLANTIS, from NetRaptor.

Raising Our Game

While Castalia House has repeatedly demonstrated excellence with regards to the content and manufacturing quality of our books, our customer service has been essentially nonexistent. What people may not understand is that this was not simply the result of indifference, but was more to the fact that we had absolutely no control over when a book was shipped out to a buyer.

One of the reasons I have been so reluctant to provide dates, and why I have been so unapologetic about missing those dates that we did provide, is because until now, there was never anything at all that we could do about them. For example, I was told by the bindery that THE JUNGLE BOOKS would be shipped to our newly-established shipping center on March first. However, we did not receive them until April 7th.

Fortunately, we are now in physical possession of our entire stock of leather books, and future books will be shipped from the bindery to the shipping center as soon as they are bound and boxed. We also will not consider any books “ready to ship” until we have received them and are ready to send them out. We have a new email address that anyone who has not received a book of any kind can contact (1), as well as an email address (2) for those who want to check on the status of their Library/Libraria/History subscription.

  • (1) shipping-at-castaliahouse-dot-com
  • (2) library-at-castaliahouse-dot-com

We have also recently discovered a bug in the WooCommerce system that has permitted a few people to order books that were officially out of stock, but still had books listed in the inventory. Apparently, it’s not enough to declare a book out of stock, but the inventory also has to be set to zero or the system overrides the out-of-stock status. So, for example, eleven customers have not yet received their leather Junior Classics set because we did not realize they’d been able to buy them since we’d declared the set to be out-of-stock more than a year ago.

Fortunately, we always keep a reserve to cover shipments that go awry, so we have enough books to send everyone. But in at least some cases, if you haven’t received a leather book yet, it may be because we didn’t know you’d bought it due to this WooCommerce bug. Now that we know about it, we will get the books sent out to the appropriate addresses.

And yes, we will permit new orders of the Junior Classics leather sets once books 7 through 10 are printed and being bound. We printed 500 copies of Vols 1 through 6, but only bound 250, so we can produce another 250 sets whenever we decide to pull the trigger.

DISCUSS ON SG

Neither Democratic nor Free

Peter Hitchens asks why the UK is following the fanatically stupid lead of the neocons into war with Russia:

First of all, what interest does the United Kingdom have in continuing and sustaining this war? A powerful faction in Washington DC, with supporters in the West Wing of the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA, have long wanted a proxy war with Russia. They believe passionately that Russia must never be allowed to rise again. This faction, whose founding document is known as The Wolfowitz Doctrine, have been hard at work since 1992, when The New York Times leaked their plans. They are almost exactly the same people who created the Iraq War out of nothing, who got the West into the Afghanistan quagmire, and who backed Islamist fanatics in Syria – who were the sort of people they would have arrested in Chicago.

They have an unparalleled record of fanatical stupidity, and everywhere they intervene ends up in corpse-strewn ruins, with everyone who can get out fleeing from the fire and screams… towards Europe and the Channel coast.

If every dollar these zealots have spent on war had been spent instead on building prosperous free countries in places such as Russia, the world would be a startlingly better place. That, fundamentally, is America’s problem. If nobody in the USA will stand up to them, they will get their repeated stupid wars and the rest of us will have to watch, weep and receive the fleeing multitudes.

But we do not have to take part. Why are we in this? How does Britain benefit from war between Russia and Ukraine? How, for that matter, has poor Ukraine benefited from it, its cities wrecked, its economy half-dead, untold numbers of its young men gone to graveyards? Why should any British soldiers be there at all? If Parliament does not debate this, then we are not a democracy. And if any critical voices are drowned out with slander and abuse, then we are not a free country.

Just as the secular commentators can’t make sense of all the evil in the world today due to their refusal to accept the reality of the spiritual world, Christian commentators like Peter Hitchens can’t understand Clown World due to their refusal to accept the fact that they are ruled over by foreigners practicing a foreign religion.

DISCUSS ON SG

When Defeat is in Doubt

Conservatism is the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s astonishing how every time conservatives start winning even the smallest battles in the cultural war, their intrepid leaders immediately call upon them to lay down their arms and refrain from actually defeating the enemy.

Apparently the Younger Trump is not the warrior that we’d hoped he would become. Regardless, my lifelong boycott of Bud Light will continue.

DISCUSS ON SG

Friday Arktoons

FULLSTRIKE! Episode 1: The Early Bird

FIDDLE WITH DARKNESS Episode 6: Chapter 6- The Conspiracist

WARDOGS INC. Episode 26: Operation Five Finger

THE SWORD OF GOD Episode 54: Like Mother Like Son

FRIDAY FISH FUNNIES Episode 15: Why So Serious

BOB Episode 128: Stop Tutting

FLYING SPARKS Episode 67: Making An Example

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 227: No Smorking

Today marks the first episode of FULLSTRIKE!, Cliff Cosmic’s first original series. Check it out!

Blocking the Bowdlerizers

An English playwright who is already experiencing requests for revisions by SJWs plans to protect his work from his literary heirs in his will:

Martin McDonagh has revealed he may use his will to ensure there are no Roald Dahl-style posthumous edits to his work.

The acclaimed playwright, 53, told how some theatre companies have refused to put on productions of his plays because he refused language changes to make the performances more ‘palatable’. The filmmaker, who wrote and directed The Banshees of Inisherin, described the practice of writers being asked to change what they have written for sensitivity-related reasons ‘problematic’.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Martin said: ‘That’s why I’ve got to make sure in my will, the wording of that is very, very specific too. A theatre has got every right not to put a play on. The major problem is that they ask you or another writer to change it to make it more palatable to them or what they think their audience is.’

The playwright’s words come after it emerged that Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books are being rewritten by sensitivity gurus to remove language they deem offensive. Publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books ‘can continue to be enjoyed by all today’, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.

It’s a good idea. My initial thought is to include a codicil stating that if the heirs sell any of the rights associated with the work or publish the work with any posthumous edits, the work immediately reverts to the public domain.

Obviously, this requires some careful thinking and precise language, as one does not want to harm an honest literary heir like Christopher Tolkien who did a remarkable job preserving and even extending his father’s literary legacy. But no self-respecting author wants to see what is happening to the work of Road Dahl and other deceased authors happen to his work.

DISCUSS ON SG

Undermined by Intelligence

As the Chinese state media sees it, US foreign interests are being systematically undermined by the behavior of the US intelligence agencies toward major US allies:

The leaked documents offer a rare glimpse into the U.S.’ extensive espionage operations targeting both allies and adversaries. Among the most striking revelations is the interception of conversations between high-ranking South Korean national security officials. These conversations focused on concerns over a U.S. request for ammunition, which the U.S. intended to send to Ukraine. The South Korean officials debated the potential violation of their policy of not supplying lethal aid to countries at war and even discussed ways to circumvent this policy by selling the ammunition to Poland.

In the case of Israel, a leaked CIA report sourced to signals intelligence alleges that Mossad, Israel’s primary intelligence agency, has been encouraging protests against the country’s new government. This revelation has sparked outrage in Jerusalem, with the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office vehemently denying the allegations and calling the report “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”

As for the U.S.’ infiltration of its adversaries, the documents reveal detailed information about Russian troop movements, capabilities, and plans. This information was obtained through intercepted communications and human confidential sources, raising concerns about the safety of these assets and the possibility of Russia changing its communication methods to better conceal its planning.

The leaked documents not only showcase the breadth and depth of the U.S. intelligence operations but also highlight the potential consequences of such activities. The exposure of U.S. espionage on its allies may lead to a weakening of trust in these crucial relationships, while the revelation of America’s infiltration into its adversaries’ communication systems may force these adversaries to adapt and find new ways to obscure their intentions.

In the context of the ongoing situation in Ukraine, the documents highlight the proxy nature of the conflict, directed by Washington. The U.S. has been providing intelligence that allowed Ukrainian forces to anticipate and counter Russian operations. The Pentagon’s involvement in organizing Ukraine’s air defenses and estimating the exhaustion of the country’s existing arsenal underscores its active role in the conflict.

Sooner or later, the extent of Clown World’s insidious evil will become known to the entire world. I would not be even remotely surprised to learn that national leaders such as Putin, Xi, and even AMLO have been fully aware of the US-stasi domestic spy program for some time. At this point, most foreigners are better informed about the true nature of the Empire That Never Ended than Americans are, and I have little doubt that more information on the subject will be made available to the US public in the near future.

DISCUSS ON SG