ProfessorBainbridge.com

An Ode to Top Gear

A fan vid (not by me):

Challenger v Abrams: Who Wins?

In the Top Gear episode I was watching last night, Jeremy Clarkson was testing the Range Rover Sport. In a typical Top Gear challenge, he took it off road while being pursued by a Challenger II tank. (Clip below)

During the set-up, Clarkson noted:

"The thing I'm interesting most interested in, though, is the big gun, which, as you can see is rifled for greater accuracy. Unlike those smoothbore American ones, which just hit something [pauses and waves off at the distance,dismissively] over there."

Which got me to wondering. Suppose you matched up equal forces of US Abrams M1A2 tanks and UK Challenger IIs. No supporting artillery or infantry. No air support. Just tank on tank, with the best troops of both nations. All else equal, who would win?

BTW, Wikipedia reports:

The Challenger Lethality Improvement Programme is a programme to replace the current L30A1 rifled gun with the 120 mm Rheinmetall L55 smoothbore gun currently used in the Leopard 2A6. The use of a smoothbore weapon allows Challenger 2 to use NATO standard ammunition developed in Germany and the US. This includes more lethal tungsten-based kinetic energy penetrators, which do not have the same political and environmental objections as depleted uranium rounds. The production lines for rifled 120 mm ammunition in the UK have been closed for some years, existing stocks of ammunition for the L30A1 are finite.

A single Challenger 2 was fitted with the L55 and underwent trials in January 2006.[14] The smoothbore gun is the same length as the L30A1, and is fitted with the rifled gun's cradle, thermal sleeve, bore evacuator and muzzle reference system. Early trials apparently revealed that the German tungsten DM53 round was more effective than the depleted uranium CHARM 3.

So the smoothbore gun's ammo is "more lethal" and "more effective." So much for the vaunted superiority of British rifled gun tubes, eh?

Update: To answer a reader question, I'm not unaware of the prodigious Leopard 2A6. A formidable main battle tank, it is (to quote Yoda). But it's not in the video, now is it?

Clarkson and Leno

These videos remind me of one of those credit card ads:

Jay Leno on Top Gear: Priceless

Jeremy Clarkson admitting America is a freer country than Great Britain: Priceless plus a few bucks

(The Leno segment starts at about 2:50 of the first video)

Sopranos Theories

David Chase tells Alan Sepinwall:

"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," he says of the final scene.

"No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God," he adds. "We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people's minds, or thinking, 'Wow, this'll (tick) them off.' People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them."

So Sepinwall offers his own theories:

Theory No. 1 (and the one I prefer): Chase is using the final scene to place the viewer into Tony's mindset. This is how he sees the world: every open door, every person walking past him could be coming to kill him, or arrest him, or otherwise harm him or his family. This is his life, even though the paranoia's rarely justified. We end without knowing what Tony's looking at because he never knows what's coming next.

Theory No. 2: In the scene on the boat in "Soprano Home Movies," repeated again last week, Bobby Bacala suggests that when you get killed, you don't see it coming. Certainly, our man in the Members Only jacket could have gone to the men's room to prepare for killing Tony (shades of the first "Godfather"), and the picture and sound cut out because Tony's life just did. (Or because we, as viewers, got whacked from our life with the show.)

One of my readers also suggested the latter theory in a comment on an earlier post, proving once again that I've got some very smart readers. Personally, however, I'm inclined towards theory # 1. The war was over. We know of no one who was gunning for Tony at the time. Plus, hasn't a major theme of The Sopranos been decline? Tony's world is smaller, less glamorous, less rewarding, and much more dangerous than the days when his dad and uncle ran North Jersey (a point brought home forcefully by Tony's visit to Junior's asylum). Looking over your shoulder while having dinner in an ice cream parlor is a pretty big step down from the "good old days."

The Last Sopranos

I should put up a SPOILER ALERT, but if you really care, you've already seen it.

Don't stop believing. Family is what matters most. Life goes on while hope endures. Even if you're staring down both literal and figurative barrels.

So did David Chase just pull off the perfect ending or did he give America the finger? Was Meadow coming to announce she was pregnant? Did the guy who went to the restroom come out shooting? Or did the hip-hop guys pull guns? We'll never know. I think the ending was absolutely in keeping with the tenor of a show that's about family and rarely offered closure (just like life itself).

Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

In contrast, my good wife is seriously annoyed with the lack of closure. (Not unlike Dave's wife.) Is that a gender difference?

Update: E&P is collecting MSM critics' comments.

Media Bias: Mellman on Fox News

In the course of a thoughtful post on the prospect of Rupert Murdoch controlling the W$J, Larry Ribstein makes a broader point:

In my Public Face of Scholarship, I explore the sources of journalist bias, by way of indicating the benefits of offsetting academic involvement in the journalistic enterprise. I identify “demand” and “supply” side theories. On the demand side, journalists try to give readers what they expect to hear. On the supply side, journalists arguably lean leftward and against markets. See David Baron, Persistent Media Bias. This comes from, among other sources, personal predilection.  ...

I point out that journalists’ bias can help shape public policy, particularly where interest groups are closely divided. For example, enactment of SOX followed highly negative coverage of business in the first half of 2002: 77 percent of the 613 major network evening news stories on business concerned corporate scandals. See Roberta Romano, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Making of Quack Corporate Governance, 114 YALE L.J. 1521, 1559 (2005). ...

And the press can directly affect corporate benavior. I note evidence that firms reduce the incentive effects of their compensation in response to news stories distorting compensation practices. See Core, Guay & Larcker, The Power of the Pen and Executive Compensation.

All of which provides an academic background to Matthew Sheffield's post:

American media elites often deny that they attempt to influence the national agenda. They're professionals, so the story goes, and completely capable of not letting their personal viewpoints intrude accidentally into their stories. It's laughable given the mountain of evidence to the contrary and the fact that journalists support affirmative action on the grounds that white reporters can't cover minority issues as fairly.

Every so often, however, you hear journalists privately say the complete opposite--that not only do they have the ability to influence news, they also choose to influence it. Such statements are usually more common among the non-American press where the sham of "objectivity" is not perpetrated on the public.

With that in mind, I was still quite surprised to see the following statements said at a panel discussion in Israel on the influence that country's media has had on its foreign policy:

A former Israel Broadcasting Authority news editor admits: "We slanted the news towards a withdrawal from Lebanon - because we had sons there."

The Final Sopranos

Salon:

What do you think? Which will it be for Tony -- death, prison or witness protection? Since it seems unlikely that Tony's former associates are actually terrorists, could the Feds have contacted them so they would testify against Tony? Does Detective Harris actually care about Tony, or does he want him to stay alive so they can arrest him and finally present their case against him? Does AJ's obsession with terrorists and suicide bombers foreshadow some final act of sacrifice, in which he saves his family from harm? Give us your final predictions!

But consider Slate:

I predict that David Chase will, on the night of June 10, somehow leave us at loose ends.

The reason I predict this with some confidence is that I just reread the Slate dialogue Jerry Capeci and I had with Terry Winter, a Sopranos writer, three years ago. In that dialogue, Terry wrote, "As you know, to the never-ending frustration of some of our viewers, we often fail to pay off what happens in one episode in the next and sometimes don't pay things off at all. (The next guy who asks me what happened to the Russian gets kicked in the nuts.) This is by design, for such is life, even if such is not network television, where everything is wrapped up in neat little bows."

Speculation:

1. The Russian returns from the Pine Barrens to wreak his vengeance?
2. Paulie has turned his coat (remember the general's coat he had painted on T?) and will betray Tony (but see this)?
3. AJ takes out Phil in a suicide bombing?
4. AJ takes out Tony in a suicide bombing?
5. Tony told Melfi he loves his family. Maybe Carm and the kids get whcacked, while Tony surivives to go into witness protection?
6. The last episode's ending will track the ending of one of the three Godfather movies:

• Tony reverses the odds and takes out Phil's whole crew, with Paulie kissing his ring at the end. Unlikely.
• Tony reverses the odds and takes out Phil's whole crew, while ending up sitting alone by his swimming pool with ducks flying overhead. Likely.
• Meadow gets whacked, Tony turns things over to AJ, and ends up sitting alone. Please No!

Last Night's Sopranos

This season's episodes of The Sopranos have been replete with Godfather references. Last night, which by the way was one of my favorite episodes in quite a while, we see Tony inspecting his tomatoes. The reference, of course, is to Vito Corleone's tending of tomato plants in his retirement and, indeed, death in his garden. Is Chase foreshadowing Tony's death? Of course, you can't ever tell. I thought Paulie was a goner for sure.

The End of Rome

And so the brilliant HBO series Rome has come to a final conclusion with Octavian's triumph. (Season one is now available on DVD and should be on everyone's buy list.) I shall miss it. Television of this caliber is so very rare.

I don't buy the effort to turn Octavian into a villain. The Republican constitution had broken down, as almost a century of civil war proved. As Russell Kirk observed, "a just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty." In the late Republic, the balance between order and liberty had failed. Rome required order if it were to survive, which the Augustan constitution provided for over 400 years.

I commend to you Werner Eck's outstanding The Age of Augustus.

In any case, Rome the series ended well. And now on to the final episodes of The Sopranos.

Media Bias: Mellman on Fox News

Democratic activist Mark Mellman goes after Fox News:

Fox is not a typical news organization. There are first-rate journalists at Fox, committed to accuracy, objectivity and fairness. However, as a network, Fox’s prime commitment is to the triumph of conservative politics, not to a well-informed public. From hiring hosts to selecting stories to framing questions for discussion, Fox demonstrates its dedication to advancing the ideological interests of the right. ...

Conservatives retort that other media project a liberal bias, while Fox presents a needed counterweight. The liberal bias of network news is debatable; that Fox regularly reports false and inaccurate stories designed to drum up support for their candidates and causes is beyond serious dispute.

Two thoughts. First, the liberal bias of the MSM really isn't all that debatable. Riccardo Puglisi, for example, studied the NYT over a long period of time and concludes:

Controlling for the incumbent President's activity across issues, I find that during the presidential campaign the New York Times gives more emphasis to topics that are owned by the Democratic party (civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare), when the incumbent President is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some "watchdog" aspects, in that -during the presidential campaign- it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. ...

Lott and Hassett found that:

American newspapers tend to give more positive news coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency than for Republicans. ...

A UCLA study found that:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

Second, and more interestingly, is the liberal bias of the MSM and the conservative bias of Fox a product of ideology or rational economic decision making? My guess is that it's the latter. Economist Michael Jensen theorizes that:

... the mass media is best understood as producers of entertainment, not information, and that the theories and facts that people absorb from the media are a by-product of their consumption of the entertainment value of the news. In addition, peoples' intolerance of ambiguity causes them to demand answers to questions; including those that are unanswerable. As a result the media is generally in the business of providing simple answers to complex problems whose answers are unknown, and it must do so in an entertaining way. Complex answers, even if correct are not acceptable to consumers of the media, and therefore are seldom provided.

Jensen's hypothesis is supported by the work of Gentzkow and Shapiro, who find that "analysis confirms an economically significant demand for news slanted toward one's own political ideology. Firms respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant in our sample." (I'd argue that the success of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report offer further anecdotal support.)

Perhaps then we should all just give up complaining about the media's lack of objectivity. After all, we don't expect objectivity from The Sopranos, so why should we expect it from CBS News?

In other words, Fox recognized that there was a market segment seeking entertainment slanted towards the center-right that was not being satisfied by the MSM. Put another way, there was a business case to be made for a conservative-leaning news outlet entirely independent of ideological considerations. (Remember when Rupert Murdoch cozied up to the Clintons?)

So what really seems to be bugging Mellman is that markets work.

Johnson Reams Grace

There's a lot wrong with the legal profession and TV "star" Nancy Grace accounts for much of it. Her relentless pro-prosecution bias, her Torquemada-like attitude towards punishment, and her attack dog personality routinely hold the legal profession up to disrepute. KC Johnson, who has developed enormous credibility as a chronicler of the Duke "rape" case blasts Grace in a must-read post. Money quote:

Grace, who regularly mocked principles of due process, allowed guests (such as the ubiquitous Wendy Murphy) to say virtually anything denouncing the players, while challenging even the mildest assertion suggesting the players’ innocence. And, when the case imploded, this television bully, who takes such joy in shouting down guests who challenge her views, was silent.

Please go read the whole thing. It's a devastating indictment of the worst of the legal talking heads.

Meanwhile, the following will offend lots of people (like Grace sycophants and various categories of PC-types). Indeed, like all good satire, it's humor is based on offensiveness. Of course, like all good satire, it's humor also depends on striking very close to home. And I think it's exactly what Grace deserves.

Music Videos

In the news:

The downward spiral of the MTV Video Music Awards' TV performance continued Thursday night as the ceremony's audience plunged from last year and VMA fans headed online.

The show, once a ratings juggernaut for MTV, pulled in an average of just 5.77 million total viewers over its three hour telecast starting at 8 p.m., down 28% from the 8 million viewers it averaged last year, according to preliminary data from Nielsen Media Research.

What I don't get is why MTV persists in having a music video award show, when MTV hardly shows any music videos anymore. It's all moronic reality TV these days.

HBO Sopranos and the 1986 Chateau Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande

Tony called the wine he and Christopher boosted from the Vipers in tonight's episode a 1986 Chateau Pichon-Longueville. Actually there are two wineries in Pauillac (Bordeaux, France) named Pichon-Longueville: Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande and Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron. They were part of a single estate until 1860, when they split into the current pair. Both are classified as second-growths.

Based on the quick flash shown of the label, I believe the wine they boosted was the 1986 Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande. Robert Parker rates it a 97 (the 1986 Baron rated a mere 88):

The 1986 is the most tannic, as well as the largest-framed Pichon-Lalande in over three decades. Whether it will ultimately eclipse the 1982 is doubtful, but it will be longer-lived. Dark ruby/purple, with a tight yet profound bouquet of cedar, blackcurrants, spicy oak, and minerals, this full-bodied, deeply concentrated, exceptionally well-balanced wine is, atypically, too brawny and big to drink young. Anticipated maturity: 1994-2015.

The Wine Spectator rated both the Baron and the Lalande 97, describing the latter as:

Amazingly rich and elegant with concentrated and compact fruit, layers of cassis, currant, vanilla and plum flavors and a remarkable aftertaste that is gentle and supple. Has the tannic framework for cellaring until at least 2000.

I haven't tasted either of the 1986 Pichons. My experience with the 1986 Gruaud-Larose, Latour, and Meyney is that they're all fabulous wines, but they're also huge, backward, and tannic wines that still need a lot of time in the cellar. Yet, even so, they've all already thrown vast amounts of sediment. Chugging one of these wines from the bottle, as Tony did, is asking for a mouthful of mud. You simply can't drink these wines without prior decanting.

Storing these wines in a cellar rack next to your washing machine and dryer, as Tony did, is also asking for trouble. Heat, vibration, and light are all enemies of wine. You want to find a dark cool place for winers this good.

Finally, when Chris said he sold 5 cases for $300, I really wanted to be his fence. At WineBid, the online wine auction site, the starting price for a single bottle of 1986 Lalande is $160.

The Lou Dobbs Transcript

From CNN:

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): How is the Harriet Miers' nomination playing with grassroots conservatives around the country? We spoke to two of them, Tom Roeser, a radio talk show host in Chicago, and Steve Bainbridge, a UCLA law professor and blogger. They used the same word to describe conservatives' response to Miers. ...

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE, UCLA LAW PROFESSOR: I think there's a lot of disappointment among conservatives.

SCHNEIDER: The professor summed up the complaints.

BAINBRIDGE: There are three C's, if you will, and those are commitment, credentials and cronyism. And the first of those is the most important.

...

SCHNEIDER: President Bush is saying to conservatives, "Trust me on Miers." Do they?

BAINBRIDGE: Ronald Reagan, who is the hero to many of us in the conservative movement, famously said, "Trust but verify." I'm willing to trust President Bush, but I want some verification.

WaPo Loves Big Bird

Here's the WaPo's lead:

A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," "Arthur" and "Postcards From Buster."

Now that's objective journalism, isn't it? Lead with how those awful GOPers are out to hurt kids. Sheesh.

Here's a little something the WaPo didn't tell you:

When advertising aimed at children became increasingly restricted on the networks, PBS became the venue for licensing bonanzas connected to its shows. For example, over 5,000 products connected to Sesame Street are grossing almost $1 billion in annual sales. (Link)

And that was ten years ago! In short, Big Bird is making a freaking fortune, and America's kids will be just fine if he loses his federal subsidy.