The Off Topic Topic

[Razgovory]

Bookmaker Paddy Power has opened up betting on which animal is likely to be killed next at Copenhagen Zoo, after four healthy lions were put down this week.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/paddy-power-opens-bets-on-which-animal-is-likely-to-be-killed-next-at-copenhagen-zoo-9219202.html

Man, we killed a lot more people then that this year.  This is only executions.

[Zanza]

'Ndrangheta mafia 'made more last year than McDonald's and Deutsche Bank'
Study finds crime network made billions of euros from drug trafficking, illegal rubbish disposal and other activities

The 'Ndrangheta mafia from southern Italy made more money last year than Deutsche Bank and McDonald's put together with a turnover of €53bn (£44bn), a study has claimed.

The study by the Demoskopika research institute detailed the international crime syndicate's sources of revenue, including drug trafficking – which brought in an estimated €24.2bn – and illegal garbage disposal, which earned it €19.6bn.

The southern Italian mafia earned the equivalent of 3.5% of Italy's gross domestic product (GDP) last year, said the report based on analysis of documents from Italy's interior ministry and police, parliament's anti-mafia commission and the national anti-mafia task force.

The 'Ndrangheta is thought to have about 400 key "operatives" in 30 countries, but its activities are believed to involve as many as 60,000 people worldwide, the report said.

Extortion and usury last year brought in a substantial €2.9bn, while embezzlement earned the mafia €2.4bn and gambling €1.3bn. Arms sales, prostitution, counterfeiting goods and people-smuggling were less lucrative, bringing in less than €1bn together.

The 'Ndrangheta – whose name comes from the Greek for courage or loyalty – has a tight clan structure which has made it famously difficult to penetrate.

With its network of hundreds of family gangs based around the southern region of Calabria, it is even more feared and secretive than the Sicilian mafia.

Its roots go back to a criminal association specialised in gambling, the Garduna, which was created in the Spanish city of Toledo in 1412.

It spread to Calabria, one of Italy's poorest regions, and started building up as a crime network based on kidnapping for ransom.

Pope Francis last week called on Italy's mafia groups to "stop doing evil" as he met relatives of their victims to demonstrate the Catholic church's opposition to organised crime.

"There is still time to avoid ending up in hell, which is where you are going if you continue down this path," he warned mafiosi, telling them to relinquish their "blood-stained money" which "cannot be taken into paradise".

[Syt]

Current guilty pleasure: Stuart Ashen's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ashens

It scratches a peculiar itch: I've always wondered how bad all those knock off toys, cheap gadgets, and other junk you can buy in 1 EUR/GBP/USD stores actually are. And he is very British about it. And he sometimes reviews retro stuff like 1980s joysticks or old-timey consoles like the Vectrex.

[derspiess]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-state-senator-leland-yee-arrested-in-federal-raid/

SAN FRANCISCO[/b] -- A California state senator who advocated gun control legislation asked for campaign donations in exchange for introducing an undercover FBI agent to an arms trafficker and told him how to get shoulder-fired automatic weapons and missiles from a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.

Bizarrely, CBS neglected to mention his political affiliation.  So we know for sure he's not a Republican.

[DGuller]

  Does FBI have no legal means to obtain shoulder-fired automatic weapons?

[MadImmortalMan]

I talked Mrs Mim into driving to Seattle next weekend. She has to go and the plane tickets are too much now.

I'm going to visit my favorite brewery, Deschutes, in Bend. It looks like we'll be staying in Bend a night. I'd like to see the park there. We'll be passing through Portland. Would be a shame not to meet fahdiz.

[Sheilbh]

I've never been a massive fan of Nate Silver. But I thought I'd give his new site a try, then I saw this:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/parsing-is-such-sweet-sorrow/

Ick.

I've spent the entire day angry about this and mentioning it to people, however uninterested they may seem

[Maximus]

I've never been a massive fan of Nate Silver. But I thought I'd give his new site a try, then I saw this:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/parsing-is-such-sweet-sorrow/

Now I'm absolutely furious.

What's the problem?

[Sheilbh]

For a start Silver always used to moan about pundits misusing polls because they didn't understand them. But I think he's very, very shaky once he steps out of his area but just has this method in his mind - I've read criticism from climate scientists about this and his analysis of the British election polls were the most inaccurate out there.

But this article is using statistics to tell you things that any, basic, GCSE level guide to these texts would have said. Also it adds nothing to any understanding of any of those plays. She asks 'how much of Shakespeare's complexity a computer can capture', well less than reading or watching the plays can.

There's a use for this sort of computer-y statistical analysis of a writer - a concordance has its place - but it ain't this and, sadly, this'll probably be the most read of them all. Nate's an online NYT in terms of reach and respectability.

[Maximus]

Nearly all of computational linguistics these days in statistical. An examination of what features are statistically significant to the semantics of a sample in a particular domain is therefore very interesting, if not from a strictly literary point of view.

But then I don't think either Silver or the author of this article are claiming to be literary critics, are they?

[Sheilbh]

I've no doubt there's use to statistical analysis, if it adds something to the field its in. This piece doesn't, if anything it detracts because this point could have been made by attentive reading.

But what else are they claiming to be here? You write an article about the interactions of Shakespeare characters then I think whatever your basis that's criticism. A statistical analysis of, say, mills in Lancashire is still history even if it's not narrative.

But also there's the stream of banality really:

I wanted Romeo and Juliet to end up together — if they couldn't in the play, at least they could in my analysis — but the math paid no heed to my desires.  [I'd say here, the writing paid no heed to your desires]
...
We all knew that this wasn't a play predicated on deep interactions between the two protagonists, but still.
...
But when I analyzed the script of a modern adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" — "West Side Story" — I found that Tony and Maria interacted more in the script than did any other pair.

Again just reading the plays would tell you Lady Macbeth and Macbeth talk a lot - they're plotting together. Romeo and Juliet don't - they're star-crossed lovers (though at least the writer notes that their first communication is a perfect sonnet which is worth a hundred lines of flim-flammery). I hope she never looks at Othello because all through the play the entire tragedy could be averted by Othello and Desdemona talking - that's the point.

And I hate the conclusion.

[garbon]

I think, Sheilbh, that you're reaching Psellus levels of outrage. I agree with you that the piece is lame with foolish conclusions but hardly an outrage.

[Capetan Mihali]

It's silly, but it's pernicious. 

....much like...heresy... DUN DUN DUNNN

[garbon]

Pernicious, how? I'm struggling to think of the traumatic effects, allowing the starting point that a large number of people will see this article who could potentially be adversely affected by it (which I think is a big assumption).

[Syt]

Nothing quite like waking up with the mother of all tension headaches.