Economist, Nov 7, 2015 (I)

choi

Sea snakes | Fangs a Lot; Something is lurking in California’s waters.

Quote:

"FOR the first time since the early 1970s, a highly venomous sea snake has turned up [and soon died] on a southern California beach [Ventura County] * * * Though a bite from this yellow-bellied snake can theoretically be lethal, shutting down all nerve signals to the respiratory system, 'Jaws' this is not: the snake attacks only when provoked, and no one has ever documented a human fatality from Pelamis platura.

" 'These snakes typically don’t get farther north than Magdalena Bay [in Mexico], maybe San Diego in an El Niño year,' says Greg Pauly a herpetologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County" (brackets original)

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest. This article says
(b) The title "Fangs a lot" evokes "Thanks a lot."
(c)
(i) Pelamis platura
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_platura
(view map for global distribution: including China and Taiwan -- "not found in the Atlantic or Mediterranean, though the water there is warm enough"; related to the cobra family [look at its tail]; length: male 77cm and female 88cm; "These snakes use their neurotoxic venom against their fish prey. No human fatalities from envenomation are known")
(ii) The Wikipedia page for "sea snake" says most sea snakes "are unable to move on land * * * All have paddle-like tails and many have laterally compressed bodies that give them an eel-like appearance. Unlike fish, they do not have gills and must surface regularly to breathe."

choi

New aircraft | Take-off Delayed; A Chinese planemaker will find it hard to break the Airbus-Boeing duopoly.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... -airbus-and-boeings

Quote:

"On November 2nd COMAC * * * revealed its C919 plane * * * COMAC says the C919 will have its maiden flight next year—two years later than first scheduled—and enter service around 2019.

"After several delays, Irkut, part of Russia’s state-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), hopes to launch its MC-21 aircraft, another potential rival to the 737 and A320, into service in 2017.

"Incumbents are just as hard to dislodge in the market for smaller 'regional' jets (ones with up to around 100 seats), which is dominated by Bombardier and Embraer of Brazil, but which COMAC['s ARJ21], UAC’s Sukhoi subsidiary and Mitsubishi of Japan are all trying to break into.

Note:
(a) The English Wikipedia page for "Irkut MC-21" states MC-21 stands for "Магистральный Самолёт 21 века" in Russian, which means "Airliner of the 21st Century."
(b) The economist article is a mere update on C919 and ARJ21.

choi

Military hubris | Their Own Worst Enemy; A study of military arrogance and its terrible consequences.
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... eir-own-worst-enemy
(book review on Alistair Horne, Hubris; The tragedy of war in the twentieth century. two publishers (one for US and the other for UK), 2015)

Note:
(a) Alistair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair
(the Gaelic form of the name Alexander)

The accent of Alistair is in the first syllable.

(b) "SIR ALISTAIR HORNE is a wise old bird. One of the British historian’s many books, an account of the Algerian war and its bitter aftermath, was seized upon by a beleaguered president, George W Bush, four years into the American occupation of Iraq as a source of sound advice in dealing with brutal insurgencies. Summoned [by George W Bush] to the Oval Office in 2007, more than 30 years after the [Horne’s] publication of 'A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-72' "
(i) bird (n): "(informal) a person (usually preceded by a qualifying adjective, as in the phrases rare bird, odd bird, clever bird)"
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bird
(ii) seize on/upon: "take eager advantage of (something); exploit for one’s own purposes: 'the government has eagerly seized on the evidence to deny any link between deprivation and crime' "
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... glish/seize-on/upon

(c) "For the ancient Greeks, hubris was the folly of a leader who through excessive self-confidence challenged the gods. It was always followed by peripeteia (a reversal of fortune) and, ultimately, nemesis (divine retribution). Sir Alistair’s subject is the embedded tendency of generals and nationalistic political leaders who experience military triumph to overreach, and for the next generation to inherit their arrogance and complacency with disastrous results."
(i) The three words all come from Greek words of exact spelling.
(A) hubris (n):
"1: excessive pride or self-confidence.
1.1 (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... ican_english/hubris
(B) peripeteia (n; Greek peripeteia sudden change, from peri- around + the stem of piptein to fall):
"formal  sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... _english/peripeteia
(C) nemesis (n; Greek, literally 'retribution', from nemein [verb] give what is due):
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... can_english/nemesis
(ii) “Sir Alistair’s subject is the embedded tendency of generals and nationalistic political leaders who experience military triumph to overreach”

The clause “who experience military triumph” is a modifier. The main sentence is “tendency of [certain people] to overreach.”


(d) "the little-known battle of Nomonhan in 1939 when General Georgy Zhukov, the most successful commander of the second world war, destroyed the Kwantung Army and put paid to [ie, end] any further thought of Japanese northward expansion"

Battles of Khalkhin Gol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol
(e) "the defeat of the once-preening Wehrmacht outside Moscow in 1941, which Sir Alistair sees, even more than the later battle of Stalingrad, as the 'end of the beginning' of the war"

preen (vt, vi):
"1 of a bird :  to groom with the bill especially by rearranging the barbs and barbules of the feathers and by distributing oil from the uropygial gland
2:  to dress or smooth (oneself) up :  primp
3:  to pride or congratulate (oneself) on an achievement"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/preen

(f) "the fall of Dien Bien Phu (where the French had convinced themselves they were reliving the glorious defence of Verdun in 1916"
(i) Verdun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdun
(ii) Henri Bidou, Battle of Verdun. Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated.
www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Verdun

(g) "Although at the turn of the [last] century Japan was rapidly industrialising and had equipped itself with some of the best warships money could buy (cheerfully supplied by their ally, Britain), the Russians constantly underestimated them. It was surely folly to send a fleet 18,000 miles to the Far East to relieve besieged Port Arthur. When the Russians arrived, their ships and men were so exhausted that the faster Japanese ironclads, superbly commanded by Admiral Heihachiro Tōgō 東郷 平八郎, were able to outmanoeuvre and destroy them"
(i) Imperial Russian Navy, including Baltic Fleet, at the time had ironclad battleships, too. See Stanley Sandler, Battleships; An illustrated history of their impact. ABC-CLIO, 2004 (in the series "Weapons and Warfare"), at pages 49-50.
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ronclad&f=false
(ii) Scientific American Supplement vol 62 (1906) reprinted
RD White, With the Baltic Fleet at Tsushima. United States Navy Institute Proceedings (USNIP) vol 32 (1906).
https://books.google.com/books?i ... 20fleet&f=false

, which is poorly focused to read.