Category: Uncategorized

A fascinating glimpse

Into the world of an NFL quarterback. It’s not hard to see why the athletically gifted, but less intelligent or less dedicated college stars reliably fail once they find themselves in the deep end:

In a conference room on the second floor of the Cardinals’ Southwest-motif headquarters in Tempe late Tuesday afternoon, Garver and assistant tight ends/special teams coach Steve Heiden sit at a long table, looking up at the whiteboard. Arians is seated at the end, wearing his trademark Kangol cap, pondering his practice plan for Wednesday. He wants to make sure every play counts in his three practices this week. Not only will the game plan be about 20 plays longer than the usual 150-play catalog he uses—Cleveland’s “rolodex of coverages,” as Palmer says, makes Arizona want more options in the game plan—but Arians will be coaching a team in a hurried week, against an opponent few on his team and staff are familiar with.

Observing Arians as the plan is being finalized, you realize there is no secret to the plays that are his pets. There is a section smack dab in the middle of the white board headed HOME RUN. It means exactly how it sounds: big shots, far downfield.

Arians picks out six Home Runs per week. This week, one of the Home Runs stands out above all: Pistol Strong Right Stack Act 6 Y Cross Divide. “I love the play this week,” Arians says.

Pistol means Palmer will take the snap four yards behind center. It’s a short shotgun snap. Strong tells the fullback (backup center A.Q. Shipley, in this case) to line up to the tight-end side of the formation. Right is the side the tight end will line up on, assuming the ball is spotted in the middle of the field or the right hash. Stack tells the two wide receivers on the play to line up in a stack to the opposite side of the formation from the tight end. Act 6 is the protection, telling the two backs which linebacker to block if the ’backers rush; the fullback will seal the tight-end side, while the running back will take the blitzer from the middle or weak side, if there is one. Y Cross Divide comprises the two routes run by the wide receivers. The Y, or slot receiver, will run a deep cross through the formation and hope to take a safety with him, while the split end in the stack will run a divide route; that means the split end, likely Larry Fitzgerald, will run a stutter-and-go, running maybe seven yards downfield, faking toward the sideline, then sprinting downfield. The route is divided into two segments, the first ending in the deke to the right, and then the go.

Just one of 171 plays the Cardinals installed for their game with Cleveland.

“You pretty sure you’ll run it this week?” I ask.

“Oh yeah,” Arians says. “It ties into what we did last week running the ball. We’ll take one of the runs they’ve seen with A.Q. in the backfield, and we’ll run play-action off it instead of a run. It’s a concept, a play, our quarterback and receivers know, but we haven’t run it out of this formation or this set. Larry’s really good on the [divide] route. Plus, it’s a seven-man protection, so we’ve got probably 3 to 3.5 seconds for Carson to get rid of it.”

The play stands out for several reasons. One: Cleveland safety Donte Whitner is very aggressive. If he sees Shipley in the backfield, his study of the Cards is likely going to lead him to think it’s a running play. So Whitner could cheat toward the line, thinking it’s a run, or he could blitz to cram the line of scrimmage, or he could stay back in coverage. “He’s all over film, getting his eyes in the backfield when he never should,” Palmer says. Two: The Y receiver would be either of the two young Arizona speedsters, John Brown or J.J. Nelson, and the likelihood of one darting across the formation would cause the remaining safety, Tashaun Gipson, to shade toward helping the Cleveland cornerback over the top on Brown or Nelson. Three: Arizona tight end Jermaine Gresham, running a short cross opposite and underneath the Y cross, would likely be picked up by a linebacker and be open. Four: Fitzgerald isn’t the fastest receiver on the field, but as Arians says, he runs a heck of an out-and-up; if Palmer has the time, Fitzgerald on a corner would be tempting, because he’d likely gain half a step on the corner with the fake.

It’s very cool to see how little is left to chance… and yet how big a role chance nevertheless plays with regards to the eventual outcome. There are several important life lessons to be found there. Be sure to read both parts.

Mailvox: the key to failure

Is often past success. It sounds as if Team Clinton is attempting to pull another Perot out of their bag of tricks. A loyal member of the Ilk writes:

I just received a robo-poll from “Victory Processing, LLC”, asking whether I might vote for “a successful businessman” in a three-way race between Hillary Clinton, a Republican, and “Fred Strauss”.  I thought you would want to know about this call, because it suggests that the Clintons are considering putting up another Ross Perot, so that they can split the Republican vote and win the election.  It also suggests that the Clintons are going to try to run a completely issue-free campaign.

The robo-pollster sounded like a pleasant, decently educated, middle-aged white woman.  She started with the usual questions — Do I always vote in presidential elections?  Do I consider myself to a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Other?  Do I consider myself to be a Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, or Other?  If the presidential election were held today, would I be inclined to vote for a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Other?  Do I think that the people running the country are working for the rich and powerful instead of ordinary people?  Do I want an insider “who can get things done,” or an outsider who would bring “new ideas”?  There were **no** questions about the economy, or “Is the country on the right track or on the wrong track”, or foreigh policy, or immigration.  In fact, **there were no questions about any issues at all.**

Then the poll asked if I had a Favorable, Unfavorable, or Undecided view on each of Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump.  It also asked about head-to-head matchups.  If the presidential election were held today, would I vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, or be undecided?  Ditto for Clinton vs. Carson, Cruz vs. Clinton, and Clinton vs. Rubio.

Then the poll asked if I would consider voting for an unnamed “successful businessman” in a three-way race.  The unnamed candidate “grew a small family business from 2 stores to 600 stores in 30 states, with 40,000 employees.”  The poll asked if, regardless of my candidate preferences, whether I thought a third-party candidate could win.  Yes, No, Maybe, or Undecided?

Then the poll named the mystery candidate:  “Fred Strauss”.  The poll repeated the four matchups, this time with Strauss as a third-party option.  This time there were 7 options: “Definitely vote for” candidate X, “Probably vote for” candidate X, ditto for Y, ditto for Z, Undecided.

At the end, the poll asked some demographic questions.  Age range: 18-35, 36-50, 51-65, over 65?  Male or Female?  Race:  White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Other, Refuse to State?  There were **no** questions about educational attainment, income, profession, or employment status.

The poll ended by thanking me for my time, and saying that it was paid for by “Victory Processing, LLC”.

I hope this gives you and The Ilk some ideas about how the presidential campaign might unfold.

The other possibility is that Team Clinton is worried that Donald Trump will run as a third-party candidate if the GOP Establishment successfully denies him the nomination despite his popularity.

Which, by the way, he absolutely should do, given the way in which the GOP Establishment is now attacking him. Loyalty is only ever a one-way street for them.

Peyton always was a punk

Contrast Manning’s reported behavior with Brady’s when he was injured. No wonder Brady ended up with more Super Bowl rings. He was the better quarterback because he is more of a team player.

If this is indeed the end for Peyton Manning, it may be even uglier than we thought.

While the product on the field has been difficult to watch (nine touchdowns, 17 interceptions), it has apparently extended off the field, too.

According to NFL Network’s James Palmer, with Manning not playing this week due to what the team is calling a left foot injury, the future Hall of Famer has not even been near his team or coaching staff this week.

Manning “hasn’t attended any practices or meetings this week and hasn’t had a single conversation about Sunday’s game plan with Brock Osweiler,” according to Palmer. Mark Haas at CBS Denver has reported the same.

Everyone has assumed that Peyton Manning would become a successful OC or head coach someday due to his high football IQ, but I wonder if his personality won’t sabotage him there too.

Scalzi: Americans are ” shrieking, bigoted cowards”

John Scalzi’s accusation that Americans are “shrieking, bigoted cowards” and “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” because they don’t want to permit Muslim immigrants to move in next door is more than a little ironic, considering that McRapey has a) never been in so much as a fistfight in his life, b) spent the last year lecturing everyone about how SF conventions are unsafe and #GamerGate is more evil and lethally dangerous than the Waffen SS, and c) lives in the whitiest white Christian enclave he could afford.

So, this week.

    The last few days are a reminder that a large number of Americans are in fact shrieking, bigoted cowards, and that’s a sad thing, indeed.

    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 19, 2015

Seriously, I don’t think the bedwetting about Muslims has been this bad in a very long time, which is saying something, and the panic on Syrian refugees is particularly ridiculous. Here’s a nice, juicy quote from a just released essay on the subject:

    Of the 859,629 refugees admitted from 2001 onwards, only three have been convicted of planning terrorist attacks on targets outside of the United States and none was successfully carried out.  That is one terrorism-planning conviction for a refugee for every 286,543 of them who have been admitted.  To put that in perspective, about 1 in every 22,541 Americans committed murder in 2014.  The terrorist threat from Syrian refugees in the United States is hyperbolically over-exaggerated and we have very little to fear from them because the refugee vetting system is so thorough…

    The security threat posed by refugees in the United States is insignificant.  Halting America’s processing of refugees due to a terrorist attack in another country that may have had one asylum-seeker as a co-plotter would be an extremely expensive overreaction to very minor threat.

What horrifyingly liberal commie soviet came up with this load of codswallop? The Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank co-founded by Charles Koch, i.e., the fellow who with his brother is currently trying to buy the entire right side of the political spectrum for his own personal ends. When the Cato Institute is telling you to maybe take down the pearl-clutching over the Syrian refugees a notch or two, it’s an indication that you’ve lost all perspective…. So congratulations, America. We’ve successfully wrested the title of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” from France. Enjoy it.

So brave. The reference to France is ironic, in light of how the general mood in France right now is somewhere between “I am voting for Front National” and “kill all the fucking barbarians already”. And apparently the Chinese are even more cowardly, considering that they are terminating with extreme prejudice all terrorist suspects, including those under the age of six.

It will be amusing to see how long it takes before Scalzi starts desperately trying to explain away this piece in much the same way he has been trying to explain away his public rape confession for the last three years. But not as amusing as it would be to see Saladin Ahmed behead him on stage at Worldcon, which Ahmed totally would not do because Muslims never do that sort of thing. It is, I am reliably informed, “against Islam.”

UPDATE: Someone sent along this.

[Link to Vox Day’s site deleted; he doesn’t need traffic from here – JS] 

It’s true, I don’t. I’m already approaching four times his traffic.

Root and branch

China is already fighting WWIII. So are several African countries. Europe will be next:

Chinese police have killed 28 members of a “terrorist group” in the mainly Muslim Xinjiang region, authorities announced Friday, in the bloodiest such operation in months and as Beijing denounces Western “double standards” in the wake of the Paris attacks.

The killings took place over the course of a 56-day manhunt following an attack on a colliery in Aksu in September that left 16 people dead, said the Xinjiang regional government’s Tianshan web portal. One “thug” surrendered, it added.

It was the first official confirmation of both the attack on the mine and its aftermath.

Xinjiang is the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, many of whom complain of discrimination and controls on their culture and religion, and is often hit by deadly unrest.

The assault on the colliery was “a violent terrorist attack under the direct command of an overseas extremist organisation”, Tianshan said.

China’s official Xinhua news agency cited a Xinjiang government statement identifying the attack leaders as Musa Tohniyaz and Mamat Aysa, both apparently Uighur names.

Friday’s reports came after Radio Free Asia (RFA), which is funded by the US government, said that more than 50 people including five police were killed in a knife attack at a colliery in Aksu in September.

Earlier this week RFA cited government and local sources as saying 17 suspects, including seven women and children — among them a one-year-old and six-year-old — had been killed by authorities.

You don’t have to like something to understand that it is inevitable. I don’t like it. I issued regular and repeated warnings for 14 years in a futile attempt to convince the USA to choose a more civilized path. This is not what I wanted to see. This is exactly what I feared would be the outcome.

If you didn’t want to see suicide bombings and massacres and little children being executed as “terrorist suspects” across the West, then you should not have permitted Islamic immigration into it. Mohammedans have brought war in their wake literally everywhere they have gone from the time their Prophet led the Al-Is Caravan raid in 623 AD.

And I tend to doubt that the Islamic State’s execution of the Chinese hostage it was holding is going to cause much restraint on the part of the Chinese authorities.

The Battlefield of Order is over. This is 4GW. It’s going to be considerably uglier than its predecessors, and this time, the Catholic Church is in no position to mitigate it.

Caught red-handed

This is yet another reason why we need a new Wikipedia:

A crew member from “The Hunting Ground,” a one-sided film about campus sexual assault, has been editing Wikipedia articles to make facts conform with the inaccurate representations in the film.

Edward Patrick Alva, who is listed on the film’s IMDB page as part of the camera and electrical department, has been altering Wikipedia entries for months, in violation of the website’s conflict-of-interest guidelines. Alva is the assistant editor and technical supervisor for Chain Camera Pictures, the production company associated with “The Hunting Ground” director Kirby Dick.

Wikipedia guidelines state: “Do not edit Wikipedia in your own interests or in the interests of your external relationships.” As a member of the film’s production team, Alva should not have been editing pages about the film or related to the film.

I’m only surprised that it wasn’t a Wikipedia admin. They are the real problem. But it does demonstrate the Left’s backward thinking. Rather than observing reality and acting on that basis, they act on the basis of their ideology and then attempt to modify reality accordingly.

This is why they reliably fail.

Peaceful and tolerant people

So much for the idea that Donald Trump can’t beat Hillary Clinton:

An acid-tongued Hillary Clinton ripped into conservatives on Thursday for what she said was an ‘obsession in some quarters’ with the notion that the global spread of terrorism is a byproduct of the Muslim faith, denying that the two are connected in any way.

‘Islam itself is not our adversary,’ the former secretary of state said during a campaign speech outlining her foreign policy objectives.

‘Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.’

If Trump wins the Republican nomination, I would expect we’re going to be seeing those words frequently over the next 12 months.

Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.’
– Hillary Clinton

It’s rather astonishing. Hillary Clinton may actually be a worse presidential candidate than Bob Dole and John McCain. It must be the Democrats’ turn to throw the election.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, ten or so peaceful and tolerant people who have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism have attacked a Radisson hotel in Mali and hold 170 hostages there.

UPDATE: Le Monde reports that the Malian security ministry has confirmed three deaths so far in the siege.

Social justice serves justice

It doesn’t happen often, so enjoy it when it does. Sooner or later, the revolution always eats its own:

Students staged a protest Wednesday inside the office of Princeton University’s president, demanding the school remove the name of former school president and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from programs and buildings over what they said was his racist legacy.

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber told the students he agreed with them that Wilson was racist and that the university needs to acknowledge that, according to a video posted to YouTube. But a school spokesman said the president also told students it is important to weigh Wilson’s racism, and how bad it was, with the contributions he made to the nation.

Hi-freaking-larious. Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst US presidents in history. He set the stage for many of the problems we presently face today and he should be a significant hero to SJWs.

But he was racist and therefore he has to go. I look forward to hearing about Mr. Eisgruber’s inevitable apology and resignation.

It’s going to be even more amusing when they eventually turn on Scalzi.

Europe Belongs to Us

“Europe’s anti-immigration and hard-right parties are on the warpath”:

It seems like everywhere you look in continental Europe, the hard right is gaining ground.

Today, it’s the turn of the Sweden Democrats.

In 2014, the hard-right party came in third place on 12.9% of the vote, shocking international commentators. By comparison, the party got just 5.7% of the vote in 2010, and 1.49% in 2006.

They’ve only been getting more popular since and on Thursday Yougov published a poll that puts the Sweden Democrats ahead on 26.7%, 5 points clear of any other party.

It’s one of 7 polls since August that have put the party in the lead in one of the world’s most open and liberal states. The Sweden Democrats have built support on the back of opposition to immigration in a country that has taken more refugees relative to the size of its population than any other European nation.

The Sweden Democrats are part of a group of European political figures and parties that don’t all want to be associated with each other, but all share at least two common tenets: opposition to immigration and scepticism about the European Union. Some even advocate leaving the single currency.

First, I would like to note, as an American Indian, that I feel very microaggressed by the headline. Warpath? Seriously? Wow just wow!

Second, I would like to note that the only ones actually engaging in acts of war in Europe at the moment are the Middle Eastern migrants. Everyone, including the migrants, had better hope that the anti-immigration hard right takes power soon, because if the nationalists don’t, the ultra-nationalists will.

Brainstorm: Urban survival tactics

There will be a closed Brainstorm event for Annual members only focused on urban survival tactics on Saturday; I’ve tentatively scheduled it for 7 PM EST. I am waiting to hear back from the two panelists I have invited, both of whom have extensive urban tactical training and military experience. We will be discussing the Paris attacks, the possibility of future attacks in the USA and likely targets, and what we in the West can realistically do about the reality of 4GW in our hometowns.

If you’re interested in signing up to be an Annual member, you can do so via the Castalia store. Benefits include a free pass to both the Game Dev and Business Startup courses.