de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est - But Ambrose was asking for it

[hammelman]

Stop trying to hijack the thread with the climate change nonsense. I'm not taking sides, but this isn't The Climate Change Conspiracy Thread, its the Stephen Ambrose is a liar thread.

[Michael Emrys]

I'm not quite sure 'liar' is precisely the word. 'Self-deceiver' might be closer to the mark. Ambrose imagines 'facts' that suit his cherished beliefs. The only thing especially unique in that is that he has chosen to do it before an particularly unforgiving audience.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

ME - imagining multiple interviews with Ike? Thats going a little beyond self-deceiving and into fraud when it is used to bolster sales and repute.

It comes back to what should you expect of people. Both me, and hopefully society, has to have high standards otherwise anarchy looms.

At this stage I would have liked to link to a computer study of various populations of AI " humans" and showing how moral groups , co-operators, and freeloaders operate and the end results. However havng only read it yesterday can I find it again!!!!?

Essentially though it was a matter of critical mass in society being required to get standards. It seems to me that the US is a freeloader society and that the penalties that society has are insufficient for the task of getting a more beneficial society.

When I find it again I will post. But essentially judging by what is reported in the US media the attitude to greed and white collar crimes, and lying, appear very forgiving in terms of penalties both social and legal. Obviously if you are poor then my previous sentence does not apply.

hammelman - as someone relatively infrequently a poster but possibly a lurker you should know how these threads can go off on tangents!

6th May 2010

The onset of summer in England has been advancing since the mid 1950s, research from a pair of University of Sheffield geographers has shown.

The investigations, conducted by Amy Kirbyshire, a former undergraduate of the University, and Professor Grant Bigg, Head of the Department of Geography at the University, examined records of the first blooming date of early summer flowering plants (phenology) and the timing of first occurrences of warm 'summer' temperatures - events linked with the onset of summer.

Results revealed that the occurrence of 'summer' temperatures has advanced by 11 days in the 1990s compared to the period 1954-1963, while early summer flowering has advanced by three days. If this analysis is extended to 2007, the advance reaches 18 days.

Globally, research has shown the climate has undergone increasingly significant warming in the last half century, with the second half of the twentieth century likely to be the very warmest period in at least the last 1,300 years (IPCC 2007).

However, until Ms Kirbyshire's and Professor Bigg's investigations, research into seasonal change has focused on and demonstrated an early onset to Spring and a delay in the onset of Autumn, as opposed to any changes in the onset of Summer. In addition, such research has almost exclusively featured only phenological records as an indicator for change, without considering temperature as an indicator in its own right.

http://www.physorg.com/news192367161.html

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.physorg.com/news192822387.html

Over-fishing, tax evasion, freeriding: the Tragedy of the Commons happens again and again. A computer model now offers new insights into the way our society functions.

If someone is a freerider, he is behaving uncooperatively, thus cheating passengers who buy a ticket. Thus, an honest public transport user might ask, why he should pay, while others travel at his expense. If this kind of antisocial behaviour spreads, even the most honest passenger will be tempted to start freeriding.

Tragedy on a large scale

The individual is in a social dilemma: in the short term he can profits from egoistic behaviour, since he can use communal benefits without making an appropriate contribution. As a result, however, a system based on cooperative behaviour is easily corrupted. Eventually, the quality of the public transport service suffers, and cooperation can finally collapse, because there is a great temptation to end up better off than others. Sociologists call this the “Tragedy of the Commons”. It also happens in the over-fishing of oceans, tax evasion, insurance fraud, or in the abuse of social welfare systems.

To avoid the exploitation to social investments, ticket inspectors, courts, tax authorities or the police punish anyone who does not obey the rules. However, individuals can also sanction uncooperative behaviour themselves. Thus the question is: what are conditions under which cooperative behaviour in a community becomes established in a self-organized way?

And for a study using humans

http://www.physorg.com/news84726094.html

is very interesting in compring various options of punishment, no punishment, and reputation.

[Michael Emrys]

ME - imagining multiple interviews with Ike? Thats going a little beyond self-deceiving and into fraud when it is used to bolster sales and repute.

Yes, I see your point. I was thinking more of what he was writing in such books as Citizen Soldiers, but elsewhere it does seem that he stepped much further over the line.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

http://www.physorg.com/news192822387.html

This has been a concern of mine for several decades now. The problem has been—as might also be the case here based solely on the part you quoted—that the concern seems usually to be focussed on those cheats who occupy the lower income levels. While that can certainly be a problem, it strikes me that the damage they cause is relatively minor compared to the daily damage inflicted by those who rake in tens of millions a year while generally screwing up the world we all have to live in. Even if they break no laws (which is not a circumstance they always allow to hinder them), they knowingly do things that damage society. To use a time-honored phrase, they set a bad example. Others look at them and consider them naturally smart to get away with all they do, and thus in that way deserving of their fortunes. They then try to emulate them with varying degrees of success. And so it goes...

Michael

[Zarquon]

How many would sign a petition that they are 100% sure the dominant climate theory is exact and correct? That number would still be biased due to fundamental beleifs that we have got to fight pollution.

So much from someone who taught statistics at university (and wouldn't call himself a scientist since 10 years)

For a good laugh:

http://www.oism.org/

"OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for 'parents concerned about socialism in the public schools' and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war."

When you've stopped laughing, google The Wall Steet's (and other US media) coverage of the annual climate skeptic's conference in NY.

"The keynote speakers for the three-day conference are:

• Arthur Robinson, Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Among many other duties, Dr. Robinson directs the “Petition Project” that has obtained the signatures of more than 31,000 scientists, including over 9,000 with Ph.D.s, explicitly opposing the hypothesis of “human-caused global warming.”

[dieseltaylor]

Art Robinson :

The dead hand of government has stopped the American juggernaut. Suffering under crushing taxation, regulation, and government-sponsored litigation, Americans cannot even make the energy they need. They buy 30% of their energy from unstable nations abroad. Lost jobs, lost homes, lost savings and retirement plans, and lost hope for a future as prosperous as that of their parents and grandparents: Americans are watching as their way of life is destroyed.

That life was built on American freedom – freedom that permitted each American to produce more than he consumed and to prosper. That freedom has been taken away by career politicians – including the 12-term congressman who now represents Oregon District 4.

“As a result of governmental oppression, Americans are no longer able to compete in the world, regardless of their hard work and innovation. American workers have seen their jobs shipped abroad, their industries de-capitalized, and their country de-industrialized.”

Art Robinson

Influenced by demagoguery, the American people have made a terrible mistake. They have elected an extreme leftist President and a corrupt Democrat majority in Congress led by socialists who hold the American Constitution, the American Republic, and the American people themselves in contempt.

In one year, more than 25% of American free enterprise has been seized. Trillions of dollars have been spent – money printed or borrowed from China and other competitors. Many think the American people will soon be forced to declare national bankruptcy.

Seems that unbridled capitalism can do nothing but good. I am confused though that sending jobs abroad WAS unrestrained capitalist behaviour. Is the guy a fruitcake. Is the petition true? Who cares??

[JonS]

Disagreeing and signing a petition ain't the same thing. ...

Yep, I agree. What I took from the graphic was "so, yeah. 31,000 is a lot of signatories, but OMFG there are a lot of scientists in total!" The size of a pressure group in proportion to the size of the total population is an interesting metric, I think.

Also; to paraphrase Einstein, if the skeptics were right, one signature would be enough.

Also; Art Robinson is a total Kettler

[Joachim]

Yep, I agree. What I took from the graphic was "so, yeah. 31,000 is a lot of signatories, but OMFG there are a lot of scientists in total!" The size of a pressure group in proportion to the size of the total population is an interesting metric, I think.

Absolutely. Because when reading "31'000 scientists" the first thought would be that those scientists

a) work somewhat related to the subject of the petition

are working as scientists, not just working after an education that would (more or less ) qualify them as scientists.

Also; to paraphrase Einstein, if the skeptics were right, one signature would be enough.

[dieseltaylor]

Getting back to Ambrose for a moment. According I think JC, apparently Ambrose wrote that E company at Foy captured 100 Germans and three Tigers left town. Waters, who was there in his autobiography says 20 prisoners and no tanks.

[JasonC]

The source for the 100 PWs claim is Carwood Lipton, who was also there. He won his battlefield commission over the fight at Foy.

The regimental narrative puts the PW bag at 69. Which may be a more accurate count based on full accounting at the rear rather than visual impressions - or might not, since that PIR was not the only US unit present on the field.

Expecting one eyewitness's account to be more accurate than an historians full reconstruction based on all the evidence and accounts of many participants is a typical mistake of non historians, who think an imaginary authenticity trumps method. It doesn't. Single eyewitnesses are almost always wrong. Waters' figure might have been right for those specifically captured by E company, or might just be incomplete owing to his own limited experience of the field.

As for the presence of 3 German tanks at Foy, it is attested by MacDonald in Time for Trumpets. The source was the US armored column (with some paras attached to it) cut off at Noville, who fought their way back through Foy while the PIR was fighting to take it precisely to free their escape route. They give the count and they lost several US tanks to the fire of the German ones. See pages 498 and following of A T for T.

Why isn't this in Winters' account? Presumably because he simply didn't see that portion of the engagement. Plenty of other men did, reported it to MacDonald, and it is available to anybody who bothers to collate multiple sources instead of making a fetish of one.

Where they Tigers? I have no idea. Probably some eyewitness in the armor said so but he may have been in error, it was a very common one. Did they "leave town"? Presumably an inference from no wrecks being noticed afterward, coupled with the testimony of the US armor guys whose buddies got fried by them.

[dieseltaylor]

It is a fair point. I notice on examination that Ambrose states as positive facts both that 3 Tigers trundled out of the town in the retreat, and that the Americans took 100 PWs, most of them wounded. Meanwhile his main source, Captain Winter's memoirs, say nothing about any tanks at all, and states positively that the number of prisoners was about 20.

I thought my memory had not played me false.

However your point about the overall picture is well put. As I am totally unacquainted with Foy I took your post as the sum total of the event, not realising it was more than a skirmish.

Without reading Ambrose it would be hard to say whether his account conflated the units achievement at Foy with others, or that he was summarising the overall battle results. And perhaps he did not make the distinction clear.

The prior post:

Forgive me for being a bore. I looked at Ambrose, Band of Brothers, on the attack on Foy. What seems to have happened (not entirely clear from the narrative) is this.

*2nd Battn of 506th Reg. ordered to attack Foy. E company ordered to attack over 200 m open ground (with some haystacks) (I company also sent into the attack elsewhere). Battn HQ sets up 2 MGs in support, they lay down suppressive fire, E Co. moves out in skirmish line, 3 plts abreast, ordered to move out as quickly as possible to Foy.

* They receive negligible fire (rifle potshots).

*First plt falls behind during the advance, clearing out some outhouses and farm buildings (small German outpost captured, interrogated ["Where are the other defenders", which shows that the German main line has not shown itself yet], then killed when one of the prisoners reaches for a pistol).

*Commanding officer of E Company unnerved by first plt. falling behind, stops the advance, pulls sec. and third plt. into some form of column or fire base, sets up his mortars and HMGs, and orders first plt to flank [sounds like my CM playing style]

*At this moment, as first plt. is setting out on its flanking move, it takes 5 casualties from aimed rifle fire.

*The account doesn't make this clear, but I assume that this is the moment when German defenders actually open up, at less than 100 m range. ("Sitting ducks").

*Another officer takes over command, pulls first plt. back, and somehow frontally assaults his way into the village. He also personally somehow works his way to I company and back.

*This officer mentions being shot at with an 88mm on his way to take command of E company, so I assume that, indeed, the defenders did open up at some point.

*The reader is explicitly told that this is simply a rear-guard action, very skillfully fought, by the Germans.

*The episode of the TV series may have conflated this action with the much more violent attack on Noville ?

Well, that's Ambrose. No doubt there's a better account. But it's clear that it's not a dense line of guys in greatcoats running out into MG and rifle and gun fire and mortars while their Battn commander shouts "Keep moving", and only stopping when their lily-livered CO loses his nerve, it's a long skein-like skirmish line walking under a suppressive barrage from HMG, against a defender who's holding his fire, and in fact only opens up once he sees the threat of a flanking move.