NFL Week 11

Vikings (7-2) vs Packers (6-3). Who expected THAT at the beginning of the year, or even after Week 1? This game could settle the NFC North, although the Vikes have a harder schedule going forward. I am dubious that an injured Rodgers behind a weak offensive line can keep the ferocious Vikings pass rush in check for long. Either way, it is the must-see game this week.

Also, perhaps the Packers fans can help me on this one. For years, even decades, I have heard the national media talk about the big Packers rivalry with the Bears. Recent case in point:

While the Packers’ long historic feud with the Chicago Bears commands as much or more attention in Wisconsin’s population centers (Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay) as the team’s rivalry with the Vikings, there’s no team in Minnesota as reviled as the green and gold.

Now, I lived in Minnesota and so it’s natural that the many Packers fans I met there – including my Packers-owning mother-in-law- consider the Vikings to be their primary rival. But the thing is, I have not met a single Packers fan who considers the Bears to be their primary rival anywhere in my entire life. I’ve met Packer Backers from Florida to Florence, Italy, and the moment they hear you have any connection to Minnesota, it’s on.

And on the online sites like ProFootballTalk, the Packer Backers are always going after the Vikings and the Vikings fans. They never have much to say about the Bears, not even in the comments on an article about an upcoming Packers-Bears game.

So, what is the deal? Is this simply the national media assuming that the two old NFL franchises must be rivals while not paying any attention to the real deal? Are there really many Packers fans who wouldn’t mind losing to the Vikings twice this season so long as they beat the Bears again?

Lessons in Rhetoric: Atheist edition

This atheist – sorry, “gnostic atheist” – decided to insert himself into the conversation following my observation that Richard Dawkins demonstrably does not know what “evidence” is:

Sapien @VernacularSwag
@voxday @RichardDawkins Stop talking. Atheism and agnosticism aren’t mutually exclusive terms. 90% of self-described atheists are agnostic

Vox Day @voxday
There is considerable evidence for God. You like definitions: look up “evidence”.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
LOL. Name one piece of evidence. You now are taking the affirmative

Vox Day @voxday
You’re laughing because you’re stupid. Again, look up “evidence”.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
I’m not the one pointing to invisible arguments for my position.

Vox Day @voxday
Neither am I. You don’t know what evidence is. Your arguments are hopelessly wrong.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
What the actual fuck

Sapien @VernacularSwag
You’re refusing to even have the discussion so how do you even know what my argument is

Sapien @VernacularSwag
You claim there is evidence for god yet refuse to provide an example and I’m the stupid one

Sapien @VernacularSwag
Go look it up for yourself, I’m done arguing against your ignorance

Sapien @VernacularSwag
you said considerable amount so surely it should be easy to provide just one

Vox Day @voxday
It is. But I know the Atheist Dance. You’re too intellectually short for the ride.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
Try me

Vox Day @voxday
No. The train is fine. Stop talking.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
It’s much easier to win argument that never happens isn’t it

Vox Day @voxday
What the actual fuck? Stop talking. The train is still fine.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
What the hell is this train you keep talking about lol

Vox Day @voxday
The train that is fine.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
…are you okay?

Vox Day @voxday
Yes. So is the train.

Sapien @VernacularSwag
Are you just saying random things to derail the convo now or what?

Vox Day @voxday
The train is not derailed. I already told you it is fine. Stop worrying about the train.

Needless to say, he’s doing a wonderful job proving my observation about the high degree of correlation between atheists and what used to be called “Asperger’s Syndrome”. I suppose now we could simply call it “atheism”. Or, if they prefer, “gnostic atheism”.

It’s certainly interesting to see that eight years after the New Atheists burst onto the scene waving the bloody flag of atheism, even Richard Dawkins is now publicly claiming that he is merely an “agnostic” and atheists are insisting that “atheism” merely means “personal disbelief in the existence of God” and certainly not any positive claim that God does not exist.

NB: as an additional discrediting flourish, directly quote their little rhetorical jabs once they’ve used them. If you don’t overdo it, it serves to underline their disinterest in genuine dialectic.

The uselessness of the EU

The hollow nature and intrinsic inutility of the EU has been exposed:

Now, the outrage over what the open borders principle made possible – the untrammelled movement of organised murderers into and out EU countries – is being appeased with emollient talk about how Schengen might be limited to a smaller number of states or be modified to allow random checks of individuals. But the talking shops of EU ministers can churn out as many of these mock solutions as they like: governments are still (mercifully) accountable to their electorates. They will do whatever their people believe to be necessary for their own security, and they will be justified in doing that.

But it is not only the free movement of peoples and goods (which turned out to include Kalashnikovs) which has come into question. Along with the right to “tighten” France’s borders, whatever that turns out to mean in practice, François Hollande also demanded – and got – permission to ignore EU budget limits so that he could increase government spending on security and defence.

So, to return to my original question: what’s left? If national borders may be reinstated by individual governments either with hasty barbed wire or officially reconstituted checkpoints, and EU budget rules can be thrown out whenever circumstances require, what does the authority of the EU Commission and Council and Parliament amount to? Possible answer: a largely useless, self-perpetuating, massively overpaid bureaucracy presiding over Potemkin institutions whose deliberations count for nothing when the lives of real people living under real governments are at stake.

Being newer and less stable, the EU will be the first multi-national “empire” to break up. It hasn’t delivered on ANY of its promises; it was never anything more than the usual credit bubble surfing and elite resource extrication. However, it should be noted that it won’t be too much longer before the USA begins to follow suit. The United States is no more a nation than the EU is, the only significant difference is that it has rival ethnicities and cultures rather than national fault lines.

Bob Prechter predicted both failures long ago. And while he hasn’t been right about everything, I see absolutely no sign whatsoever that he hasn’t gotten both of those calls right.

Brainstorm: Urban tactics survival

It was a very interesting session tonight, although it ended rather abruptly when my computer locked up for some reason. It ended up going into more detail on martial arts and the law than I would have thought beforehand, but then, both experts agreed that the single most important aspect of surviving a terror attack is mindset.

Even if THEY are attacking, YOU are the predator. Move. React. Escape if you can, attack if you can’t, but whatever you do, do not lie there motionless leaving all the initiative up to them!

The other thing I took away from it is that 12 feet is the line of delineation. If they’re more than 12 feet away, don’t assume they can hit a moving target. That’s just two body-lengths. It is a LOT harder than it looks, even with a fully-automatic weapon. 12 feet or more, exit laterally at speed. Less than 12 feet, attack forward.

The book is sophomoric. The author is inept.

The sad thing is, Richard Dawkins doesn’t know it because he resolutely runs from all substantive criticism in favor of hiding in his hug box:

Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins
The God Delusion accused of being a “sophomoric” book. Well, is there any evidence for God that an intelligent sophomore couldn’t refute?

Vox Day @voxday
Considerable. Your arguments are so inept, some don’t even qualify as arguments.You don’t even know what “evidence” is.

Vox Day @voxday
I blew away your “religion causes war” argument once and for all because you simply don’t know history. 6.98%, not 100%.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Your worst “argument” was the appeal to Alfred Hitchcock. That’s a logical fallacy that doesn’t even have a name.

Vox Day @voxday
Look, atheists, you’re going to need much better champions than inept rhetoricians in over their heads like @RichardDawkins and @SamHarris.

Apple design fail

Former Apple designers think the post-Jobs Apple has lost the plot:

Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended.

No more. Now, although the products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist.

The products, especially those built on iOS, Apple’s operating system for mobile devices, no longer follow the well-known, well-established principles of design that Apple developed several decades ago. These principles, based on experimental science as well as common sense, opened up the power of computing to several generations, establishing Apple’s well-deserved reputation for understandability and ease of use. Alas, Apple has abandoned many of these principles. True, Apple’s design guidelines for developers for both iOS and the Mac OS X still pay token homage to the principles, but, inside Apple, many of the principles are no longer practiced at all. Apple has lost its way, driven by concern for style and appearance at the expense of understandability and usage.

I find the Apple UI almost unusable. But I’m not really equipped to judge, since I have staunchly refused to use Apple products since my last experience with one. After spending two hours trying to figure out how to do something very simple on SB’s Powerbook or whatever it was, I called up a technical friend who had switched to Macintosh.

“Oh, you just can’t do that,” he explained. “It’s not possible.”

And that was before the screen failed and the battery developed a massive tumor that prevented the computer from lying flat.

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.