Armor in movies is always just for show; whenever anyone wearing armor gets hit by any kind of weapon, they usually die instantly, like in Troy and Braveheart. Others say that armor is impractically heavy, hot, and restrictive, and that knights needed help mounting a horse or getting up after a fall. Then there's the myth that the English longbow was an armor-piercing medieval machine gun that won the battles of Crecy and Agincourt and which made armor obsolete, never mind French horsemen at Patay slaughtering longbowmen, or Italian condottieri at Verneuil being pretty much arrow-proof. And the myth that leather armor was popular in medieval Europe and was a substitute for metal armor. And the myth that mail was cheap but useless against thrusts, started when modern manufacturers made crappy unriveted (butted) mail with wrong-sized links rather than wedge-riveted, historically accurate mail.
When you have really nerdy stupid D&D friends and used to get in a lot of arguments about "making the Katana's stats more 'realistic' compared to longswords" you tend to find the topic unusually amusing.
"Katanas should totes get double attacks and do 2d20 damage guys! They used to cripple tanks with them in WW2!"
This video is not evidence of his low intelligence, it's evidence that he misspeaks. I misspeak sometimes, often with hilarious results, and especially when I have a lot on my mind, or am speaking to a group of people (but sometimes in 1-on-1 interactions as well). Doesn't make me an idiot.
I actually had a friend who believed this and we had a bitter argument over it. What's really funny is that after that he went home and while he was sleeping, the hidden 85% of his brain must have kicked in and convinced him not only was I right, but also erased memory of every having believed this misconception to begin with. The next time it came up (we saw it in a movie we were watching) he laughed about how stupid people that think this is true are and denied ever having agreed with them.
Heh, I intentionally do this all the time to tease people. Just recently, I've been ball-busting my gaming group for their terrible life decision to put every Carcassone expansion into the game without knowing the rules to them.
"Elizabeth I was a good queen" is one that commonly gets me.
Mischaracterizations or generalizations about a "nation"'s "historical character". For example the old "Britannia ruled the waves and always has" trope.
Pretty much anything having to do with "civilization", and especially civilization as opposed to "barbarism"
Armor in movies is always just for show; whenever anyone wearing armor gets hit by any kind of weapon, they usually die instantly, like in Troy and Braveheart. Others say that armor is impractically heavy, hot, and restrictive, and that knights needed help mounting a horse or getting up after a fall. Then there's the myth that the English longbow was an armor-piercing medieval machine gun that won the battles of Crecy and Agincourt and which made armor obsolete, never mind French horsemen at Patay slaughtering longbowmen, or Italian condottieri at Verneuil being pretty much arrow-proof. And the myth that leather armor was popular in medieval Europe and was a substitute for metal armor. And the myth that mail was cheap but useless against thrusts, started when modern manufacturers made crappy unriveted (butted) mail with wrong-sized links rather than wedge-riveted, historically accurate mail.
Add to this the supposed superiority of katana-wielding Eastern samurai who could Definitely Kill An Armored Knight despite katanas being unable to saw through plate mail in any appreciable time nor can effectively pierce chainmail. And the whole Martial Arts Are Awesome trope--you'd think if armies of dancing ninjas were so much better than armored guys with real weapons, states would have started employing them as soldiers instead.
Clutch is the idea that certain players (identified as clutch players) "rise" to certain key situations in a game. In basketball a clutch player might drain a key 3-point shot when the situation demands it. Clutch players both a) "rise to the occasion", and b) seek out the opportunity to be clutch (again in basketball, a clutch player "takes over the game" in key situations.) In baseball, this is usually identified as the quintessential "clutch play":
In this play, A's batter Terence Long hits a sharp line drive down the 1st base line. The Yankees RF Shane Spencer collects the ball and heaves the ball to home plate, but the throw is off line. Inextricably Yankees SS Derek Jeter runs across the entire field, grabs the throw on the bounce, and makes a running flip to Catcher Jorge Posada, who is then able to take out Jason Giambi attempting to score from 1st on the play. Thus the Yankees were able to preserve a 1-0 lead and ended up winning the game. In this play Derek Jeter is a "clutch" player. The SS isn't supposed to be anywhere near where Jeter was. He "rose" to the occasion by anticipating the bad throw and serving as the ad-hoc cutoff man, thus saving the game in a key moment for the Yankees.
Mike Miller is generally seen as the quintessential "clutch" player in basketball.
In this play Mike Miller is clutch because he nailed 2 key 3-point shots late in the game when the situation demanded it. He's viewed as especially clutch because he had the "presence of mind" to move behind the 3-point line following the steal on the second 3, enabling Indiana to tie the game, rather than trail by one if he had taken the 2. Conversely on the other end of the court John Starks missing those two free throws would be viewed as "unclutch" or a "choke" (the opposite of clutch). The situation demanded Starks make those 2 freethrows to capitalize on a Pacers error late in the game, but he misses them, thus allowing Indiana to win the game.
Perhaps the most famous recent "clutch" pitching moment. The Red Sox are down 3 games to 2 to the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS heading into New York. If the Red Sox lose then their season is over and they'll have gone 86 years without winning a World Series. Taking the mound for the Red Sox will be their staff ace Curt Schilling, however Schilling had just undergone tendon surgery on his ankle 3 days (or whatever it was) before. In spite of the pain, and very visible blood seeping out of his ruptured ankle, Schilling throws 7 innings, allowing just 1 run, thereby allowing the Red Sox to win the game and they'd later go on to win the ALCS and the World Series (with Schilling throwing a win against the Cardinals in the WS with another bloody sock). This is seen as clutch (and "gritty") because Schilling played through the pain and delivered a win to his team at a key moment in the postseason.
Anyway, I'm sure you get the point. Anyway, clutch is a serious problem because it plays on a number of pernicious tropes common to baseball, specifically, and sports in general. The first is that it plays on the eye test, confirmation bias, and hindsight. The eye test is a serious problem with baseball because baseball is a sport which fundamentally defies observation by definition. The best hitter gets a hit only 3 times out of 10. A player is only clutch because we are looking for someone to be clutch. For example, Aaron Boone is considered clutch for hitting a walk-off homerun on Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. But he's only clutch because he happened to hit that home run at that moment. If Derek Jeter had hit the home run or if Bernie Williams had hit the home run, they'd be the "clutch" one. Moreover it all plays in hindsight. Schilling's bloody sock game is considered clutch because the Red Sox went on to win the world series. If they hadn't, that game would not have been remembered. Clutchiness tends to focus on one player to the exclusion of everybody else involved in the play. A key player gets a key hit because he is clutch, not because the pitcher made a mistake. A team wins because one player willed the team to win, not because they executed better as a team than the other team or because the other team failed to make adjustments. This was a common trope 2 years ago in the NBA finals when the Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat. The Heat lost in the finals because "Lebron disappeared in the 4th quarter". Everything came down to "what Lebron did". It ignores what the other 4 guys on the court for Miami did, and it ignores how the Mavericks played (there is a particularly humorous conversation on youtube between Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and noted idiot savant Skip Bayless where Cuban objects to the characterization of Lebron's unclutchiness because it occluded the Mavericks' highly effective defensive scheme which prevented Lebron from ever being in a position to really score points).
Going back to the eye test and confirmation bias, you're going to remember notable events and forget the forgettable ones. This is the biggest problem with "clutchiness" in baseball. David Ortiz is considered the quintessential clutch hitter of the modern era. This is because he always seems to deliver a key hit for the Red Sox when the situation requires it. Of course he seems to because a) he bats 3rd in the lineup and therefore sees the 3rd most PAs per game for the team and tends to have PAs at key moments in the game, b) he is the Red Sox best hitter, so he records hits most often for the team, and c) you're going to remember those times when he gets a hit, and not those times when he strikes out because:
clutchiness is tautological. A player is clutch because he gets clutch hits. Once a player is deemed clutch, you only remember the clutch hits. You won't remember the times Ortiz strikes out late in the game, but you will remember the times he gets a key hit to drive in a run.
Statistical analysis has shown that there is a very, very low statistical correlation between players getting hits in key situations of games. Pretty much there have been maybe 1 or 2 players in the last 60 years who have a positive correlation worth noting between hits and key win-contributing situations, and the impact on team wins is so negligible, and the time required for the statistical correlation to manifest (it takes 10-15 seasons for a player's statistical "clutchiness" to stabilize) that there really is little point in identifying or remarking on "clutch" players from a statistical, analytic, or evaluative standpoint.
I work at a real estate office. I hear all the time that buying a home is the best/greatest/most awesome investment to make. That homes are just assets. This whole mindset just frustrates me. When adjusted for inflation, home values have (minus the housing bubble) only increased by about 10% over the last 100 or so years. Homes should really be viewed more as goods if you're going to live in them, use them, etc. And that's what most people do with homes. I would also put forth the argument that the psychological reasons for home purchasing (independence, your own space, etc.) are worth it to many buyers and could be a selling point more than some vague "it's an asset" claims I hear from Realtors.
I agree. My childhood home may or may not have increased in value, but we buried four of our loyal dogs in the back yard and did much home improvement ourselves. Kept it clean, maintained and improved it, and rearranged it to suit us as I was growing up. It's not fungible with other homes to us.
This video is not evidence of his low intelligence, it's evidence that he misspeaks. I misspeak sometimes, often with hilarious results, and especially when I have a lot on my mind, or am speaking to a group of people (but sometimes in 1-on-1 interactions as well). Doesn't make me an idiot.
From that list I spotted one I know and argue against: The Great Wall is not the only man-made object visible from space and the reality is much more complex. It's long, sure, but it's not even as wide a modern highway. While at some orbital altitudes, it can be seen, but so can lots and lots of other things. At further distances (as the article mentions) nothing but light pollution can be seen. The Truman Show had this myth in it and it kind of seems plausible. But imagine looking a strand of hair that's 20 feet long from 50 feet away. Do you think you could see it? It's, like, really long man.
Heh, I intentionally do this all the time to tease people. Just recently, I've been ball-busting my gaming group for their terrible life decision to put every Carcassone expansion into the game without knowing the rules to them.
Heh no you di'in't. I don't want to bring Poland into this, but a lot of people seem to believe this thing. Scary to see Nazi-era propaganda working so well, even so many years later
A board game. Long story short, the game involves players drawing and placing tiles, then the player can place one of his limited supply of pawns to claim a tile. Throwing all the tiles increased the game time exponentially to the point where it was not enjoyable because every tile added an additional turn as well as every expansion pack had its own special rules that increased the complexity of turn execution.
In this play Mike Miller is clutch because he nailed 2 key 3-point shots late in the game when the situation demanded it. He's viewed as especially clutch because he had the "presence of mind" to move behind the 3-point line following the steal on the second 3, enabling Indiana to tie the game, rather than trail by one if he had taken the 2. Conversely on the other end of the court John Starks missing those two free throws would be viewed as "unclutch" or a "choke" (the opposite of clutch). The situation demanded Starks make those 2 freethrows to capitalize on a Pacers error late in the game, but he misses them, thus allowing Indiana to win the game.
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