Y'all cut that out
Professor Barry Sanders* is back with a reply to his critics: "Y'all
quit picking on me!"
Kidding. I am sure that Professor Sanders is sophisticated and would
never be caught dead throwing 'y'all' about in conversation.
His reply does seem a tad whiny. It's not his fault, you see, because
the military operates behind a scrim of secrecy and it's really
difficult to get information out of them. You'd think the military is
some kind of bureaucracy or something.
That and people were correcting his mistakes in a way that was not
respectful. Shame on y'all. Professor Sanders is from the academic
world where people are more polite and don't call bullshit in such
vulgar ways.
Let me begin by saying that this is a new world for me, the world
of blogging.
One could be unkind and reply that the world of logic, facts and clean
prose is new to him as well.
As a friend told me from the outset, one cannot take on the
military in this country, without getting knocked about.
Is there a lot to criticize about the military? Darn right there is.
My own beef is not that he is taking on the military but that he did
so with a poor logic and ratty data.
As for the Standard, Goldfarb does not like the line, "The USS
Lincoln helped deliver the opening salvos and air strikes in
Operation Iraqi Freedom." He says the Lincoln has no "guns." I took
that line from the Navy's own web site. If I am wrong, the military
has it wrong.
Reading comprehension is clearly not Professor Sanders strong suite -
the Navy web site doesn't mention guns but ordnance. Ordnance is
typically defined as 'stuff that goes boom', but they don't mention
guns. Clearly the Navy is wrong for not being specific and inserting
verbage like this
Lincoln delivered a big bunch of boom stuff by airplane. Because
that's what aircraft carriers do.
Or something like that.
He (Goldfarb) claims that only one aircraft carrier is not nuclear
powered and so my claim about "ship tracks" is wrong. First, does
he not think that nuclear power pollutes, or that no danger exists
from an accident? What does he think one should do about spent fuel
rods?
The article is titled 'The Military's Addiction to Oil' so the
confusion might be understandable. Goldfarb took his argument from the
title - if he is wrong, Professor Sanders has it wrong.
The USS Independence did move out to the Gulf in the first Gulf
War, in 1991. I mixed up the dates for the two Gulf Wars and
inserted the wrong one.
The article centered around current activities and never mentioned a
conflict more than a decade in the past. Yet one key point was meant
to jump back sixteen years and talk about a now decommissioned ship.
Maybe - he's clearly not the most organized thinker.
Also, I inadvertently left out the word battalion in the sentence,
"a pair of Apache helicopter battalions can devour more than 60,000
gallons of fuel in a single night's attack
The sentence as published was "Just one pair of Apaches in a single
night's raid will consume about 60,000 gallons of jet fuel." Ya -
inserting battalion in the middle of that makes a whole bunch more
sense. Sure, Ace. And I am Marie, Queen of Romania.
Let's now turn to the question of the number of carrier task forces
in the Gulf. First, from Reuters: "On January 20, 2007, the USS
Stennis set sail for the Persian Gulf as part of an increase in US
military presence within the Middle East. The Stennis joined the
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the United States Fifth Fleet of
operations. On May 23, 2007, the Stennis, along with eight other
warships including the carrier USS Nimitz and amphibious assault
ship USS Bonhomme Richard, passed through the Strait of Hormuz. US
Navy officials said it was the largest such move since 2003."
How many ships does this total? Ten or Twelve? How many "carrier
task forces" does that constitute?
This is not difficult - only an academic would make it so. A 'carrier
task force' requires a carrier.
Now - all of this has a shooting fish in a barrel feel. I wrote this
as a follow-up for yesterday's post out of a sense of obligation and
in the hope that by showing people like Professor Sanders he can't use
obfuscation and bad data in his arguments we'll get honest data and
real discussion.
If not we'll get to make fun of them, which ain't bad either.
*Take a look at his bio page: the title of two of his books is spelled
wrong. I don't know where the Huffington Post gets this data but one
suspects that Professor Barry Sanders lack of attention to detail is
to blame.
Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.
# posted by Brian Dunbar : 9:31 PM
|
British Humor
In general he doesn't know what to make of the Brits because they
appear (in his personal observation) to be the only other people on
the face of the earth, besides Americans, who possess a sense of
humor. He has heard rumors that some Eastern Europeans can do it, but
he hasn't met any of them, and they don't have much to yuk it up about
at the moment. In any case, he can never quite make out when these
Brits are joking.
-- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
And this from Perry de Havilland at Samizdata
I was watching the Channel 4 news coverage of the state visit of
the King of Saudi Arabia to Britain, when something I saw nearly
made me fall off my chair laughing.
So what does the British Army band for the guard of honour strike
up as The Man himself steps out of his limo to high-five Her
Majesty?
The Darth Vader March from Star Wars (click on 'watch the report'
to see for yourself). I kid you not.
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