Down from the mountain

Like the great prophet of our era, I have come down from the mountain. You awakened me with your “election season” noise. This is your fault. I liked it up there.

While I’m putting together some initial thought, here’s a little light reading for you:

Sadism is not for everyone, not even for every neoliberal. Some just don’t have what it takes. ‘Mr Clinton’, Kissinger once famously (and rather unfairly) muttered into a cocktail, ‘does not have the strength of character to be a war criminal.’

I hate election season. You are warned.

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Still the definitive history of the 2015 Hugo Awards, even with Brad Torgersen’s valid objection

Amy Wallace updated her report on the Hugo Awards in Wired.

I think it’s a solid piece of reporting. It’s considerably more balanced than it would have been if I had written it, but, you know, I’m not a journalist. Lead Sad Puppies Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen are both given their say, as well as the Rabid Puppy Theodore Beale. Torgerson, however, is upset that Wallace told him that she would interview Sarah A. Hoyt and then did not do so.

That’s a damned fine point.

I don’t think it changes the substance or quality of Wallace’s report in any substantial way (I’ll explain below,) but it’s not cool to interview someone and then fail to live up to the promises that were made during the interview. I’ve no reason to suspect that Torgersen is lying or mistaken about this, so, yeah, that’s a pretty shitty thing.

The rest of his post, though, is a mess.

But Sarah A. Hoyt was not convenient to Amy Wallace’s narrative for the same reason Ben Carson is not convenient to progressive narratives on racial oppression: both Sarah and Ben *break* the narratives.

That’s a particularly silly example. Ben Carson is a black man and a conservative. Conservative politicians, particularly in the South, have endorsed racist policies to curry favor with racist voters. Both statements are true. Neither negates the other. The idea that the existence of Ben Carson somehow invalidates over a century of racism is patently false. It’s like saying that a single lottery winner disproves the idea that lottery tickets are a bad investment.

That’s relatively minor, though. Here’s where he really goes off the rails:

To add: did Amy ever go back and explain how 2,500 people sabotaging the win of Toni Weisskopf, for best professional editor, in any way was a victory for women and diversity in SF? How about the sabotaging of Sheila Gilbert, same category?

Actually, she did explain this, but apparently not explicitly enough for Torgersen. Let me lay it out here:

  1. The Sad Puppies were organized to make the Hugos “…less preachy and upper-crusty and more fun.
  2. The Rabid Puppies, meaning Vox Day, wanted “…to leave a big, smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were. All this has ever been is a giant ‘fuck you’—one massive gesture of contempt.”
  3. Anne Bellet, a Puppy-nominated author, believes that, for all intents and purposes, the Sad Puppies gave up control of their cause to the Rabid Puppies: “‘Dude, you’re in the same car, and Vox Day is driving.’ He (Torgersen) doesn’t get it. It makes me so sad.” (Wallace doesn’t mention it, but there’s empirical evidence that the Rabid Puppies were far more influential than the Sad Puppies)
  4. Vox Day is a sexist, among other things. He  “…opposes racial diversity, homosexuality, and women’s suffrage.” Again, Wallace goes easy on him. Here’s an unofficial bio.

The point is that voting against the Puppy slates, which were de facto Rabid Puppy slates, was a vote against a sexist’s attempt to game the system and destroy the awards. It wasn’t about sabotaging Toni Weisskopf or Sheila Gilbert; it was about punishing an attempt by Day to hijack the awards for his own purposes. I think this is reasonably clear from reading Wallace’s piece.

Day described his strategy as a  “Xanatos gambit”—“that’s where you set it up so that no matter what your enemy does, he loses and you win.” That’s overstating the case a bit. There’s no question that mainstream science fiction fans “lost” when the nominations were announced and the slates dominated several categories. That left fans-in-general with two choices: Either vote for the best candidates among the nominees that Day chose, or else vote “No Award.” Many fans felt that the later was the lesser of two evils and that voting “No Award” was the best way to preserve the integrity of the awards. 

It would be a mistake to interpret that as a victory for the Rabid Puppies. Their tactics were so widely regarded as shitty that a record number of voters paid for voting memberships just to vote against them. Day’s claim that the “No Award vote “demon­strates the extent to which science fiction has been politi­cized and degraded by their far left politics,” isn’t credible in the least. The voters voted against Day, and the fact that he’s going to define that as personal victory is interesting in a “he should probably talk to his therapist” sort of way, but not especially convincing. His “Xanatos gambit” (really more like “Xanatos Speed Chess“) wasn’t anything more than a politician adding a rider to bill that is never going to pass, something like a “We love Grandmothers!” amendment, so he can say his opponents hate grandmothers. It may amuse him to say so, but it’s not going to fool very many people.

Now, are there reasonable objections to Wallace’s story line? I think the characterization of the Sad Puppies is fair. I think the characterization of the Rabid Puppies is far, far more than fair. You might argue that she overstates the degree to which the two movements became one, but I think, in the mind of most people, it’s a fair statement, especially in light of the nomination numbers linked above. She certainly singles out the Rabid, not the Sad, Puppies for most of the negatives in her article, but at the end of the day, it was the Rabid Puppies who were calling the shots.

In that light, how, exactly, does including more Sad Puppy viewpoints in the story improve it? Even if she had interviewed Hoyt, would it have made any difference? The Sad Puppies were, again, I think fairly, described as marginalized by their own allies. Having another voice saying “This is what we were about before we were booted to the sidelines” wouldn’t have made the article any stronger.

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Hiatus…with Puppies!

Sorry for the hiatus. I’ve been wallowing in so much negativity that I had to take a break. Now, let’s get to the negativity.

I have spent many, many hours reading about the Hugo Awards fiasco this year. I have spent many hours listening to people who voted, many of them for the first time. I feel as though my understanding of the “meaning” of the “No Award” votes is very likely accurate.

“No Award” took home so many awards because people were angry about the hijacking of the nomination process.

Most of the people I’ve spoken to not only didn’t care about the personal politics of the individuals involved, they didn’t even know that personal politics were supposed to be an issue. It wasn’t about the merits of the people who were nominated; it was the fact that the nominations were a brute force attack, an attempt to force people to choose between either rewarding the slate-nominating tactic or voting “No Award.”

For the most part, it had nothing to do with making sure the “wrong people” didn’t win an award. Most of the people voting “No Award” didn’t even know who the “wrong people” were. The fact that there were some seriously deserving people on the slates tends to support this hypothesis. It was a vote against a tactic, not against a worldview.

Post-mortems which ignore this interpretation strike me as either naive or a disingenuous attempt to play the victim when you’ve essentially offered your so-called oppressors a no-win ultimatum. You don’t get to say “You must vote for the nominees on my slate or else you are throwing the women we put on our slate women under the bus!” That’s dishonest. That’s not just blackmail, that’s blackmail with a human shield.

Don’t get angry at voters for reacting to what they believe were unfair tactics. The Puppies didn’t get this kind of negative reaction (and, in my opinion, didn’t deserve this kind of negative reaction) until the slates got on the ballot. This was perceived as a punch in the face by the voters. You can’t claim victim status when people fail to reward you for punching them in the face.

Vox Day called it. He correctly predicted the result and seemed to be pleased with it. The goal was to set the whole thing up to play the victim. Once the fact that the nomination process had been co-opted by a slate became public knowledge, the backlash was predictably swift and angry. Again, this had nothing to do with anyone’s personal politics. These “No Award” votes were not against Larry Correia, nor were they a show of allegiance to John Scalzi, or anything like that. It was a response to the perceived hijacking of the awards.

Remember: Slate-nominating = No award

It’s not about politics.
It’s not about personalities.
It’s about the perception of unfair and dishonorable tactics.

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On Being A Jerk

This was a trying weekend.

I have come to the conclusion that focusing so much on the negative, even when I’m “in the right,” is going to wear me down to a nub in short order. It’s not fun, it puts me in fight-or-flight mode, and it’s not really helping anyone.

Here’s an article that’s quite relevant to my situation even though it’s about something else entirely:

I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one.

Reading that, I realized you could substitute almost any group for “anti-vaxxers” so long as they are intelligent, rational people who:

1. Have beliefs which are not supported by facts.

2. Have a tight network of like-minded believers who reinforce each other’s beliefs.

3. Believe themselves to be an oppressed minority (or secretly a majority.)

The takeaway, in case you don’t read the article, is that mockery is not helpful and will tend to reinforce their beliefs (see #3 above.) Telling people that they’re dumb for believing what they believe doesn’t make them change their mind; it makes them think you’re an asshole.

Ok, fair enough, I won’t deny that particular charge. But, it’s no fun for me or for anyone else to interact on that level, and if this isn’t fun or educational, then why do it? A friend of mine likes to make the distinction between “arguing to be right” versus “arguing to persuade.” That’s a pretty good distinction, and I’ve been arguing to be right, not to engage in any kind of persuasion or understanding. That sucks.

So, my, um, “three-quarter year resolution” is this: Stop that shit. Mocking people for their beliefs, even beliefs which are, by reasonably objective standards “wrong,” is not helpful, not healthy, and not worth anyone’s time. Certainly not mine, and probably not the time of anyone reading this.

But…

I’m making one exception: Politicians are fair game. I will mock the daylights out of them and I will not be ashamed. It’s simply not reasonable to discontinue all mockery when Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton are on stage. To expect otherwise would be silly. I mean, c’mon…

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Final Labor Day Post: Reconciling Christianity and Capitalism

You can’t.

At least, that’s the takeaway from the Gravity Payment’s experiment with paying workers a good wage and letting them share in the fruits of their labor. It hasn’t gone well, at least from a business perspective. Granted, any time a column starts with “Rush Limbaugh was right” it’s probably going to be a load of horseshit. However, the reaction from capitalists has been swift and stern: you’re doing it wrong.

From a capitalist perspective, there’s no question that Gravity is doing it wrong. From a capitalist perspective, paying your workers a dime more than you have to to get maximum productivity from them, you’re doing it wrong. This strikes me as a bug, not a feature, of capitalism. Anyway, I don’t see how you can reconcile this:

“Then Paul indicates that God’s real reason for this command is to instruct employers — employers of oxen, yes, but primarily of human workers — that all who help produce a harvest are meant to share in the rewards.”

(quoted from the first linked article)

If you can figure it out, I’m all ears.

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Second Labor Day Post for my friends at tipped jobs working overtime

Howdy! Do you or someone you know work at a job where you receive tips and, because of that, you’re paid less than the minimum wage? Have you ever wondered how overtime is calculated for tipped employees? Hint: It’s not your sub-minimum wage rate times 1.5. Not all employers know this, though, so I thought I’d show you all how the math works. Yay math!

Ok, let’s see you work somewhere in the United States where you go by the federal minimum wage: $7.25/hour. If you’re a tipped employee, you’re probably receiving $2.13 an hour, but it is important to remember that the minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour. The reason you’re getting $2.13 is that the law allows your employers to take a $5.12/hour “tip credit.” This means that your employer is taking $5.12/hour of your tips and then paying them back to you as wages.

The tip credit amount does not change when you go in to overtime. So, the overtime rate is $7.25 time 1.5 = $10.88 minus $5.12 (the tip credit) = $5.76 per hour.  It’s not $2.13 * 1.5 = $3.20. If your employer is paying you $3.20 as your overtime rate, they’re cheating you.

The fact that the $5.12 an hour tip credit is technically a wage and not a tip has some fun side effects. For example, if you take vacation pay or sick leave (assuming you get either of those), your wage is $7.25 at a minimum. Also, and I’m sure you know this already, if for whatever reason, you make less than $5.12 an hour in tips for a pay week, your employer has to make up the difference.

This also affects your tip share calculation. You know what tip share is, right? It’s the amount of your tips the company takes and then redistributes to support works like greeters and runners (but not kitchen employees, because that would be very illegal and if someone is doing that, please make them stop.) Anyway, it’s not bullshit enough that companies get to pay people less than minimum wage, take a portion of their tips, and pretend like the company is paying it to them. They also can make you surrender part of your tips to pay other sub-minimum wage employees.

Anyway, most states have guidelines limiting how much of your tips they can take for tip share. The fact that the first $5.12/hour in tips are considered wages and not tips is super important for this calculation. You work 5 hours, you make $50 in tips, you have to tip out $10 to the greeters. That’s, what, 20% of your tips. That’s not great, but it’s not terrible. But wait! There’s $25.60 in tip credit in those tips you made (5 hours * $5.12).  That means you only received $24.40 in tips, and you’re giving up 41% of your tips in tip share. In most states, that would be considered an illegal tip sharing arrangement (check out section 3b of this).

Shockingly few employers are aware of the labor laws governing sub-minimum wage employees, particularly owners of small businesses. Please spread this around to anyone you know who works at a job where they make less than minimum wage. And don’t take my word for what the law is. Here are the U.S. Department of Labor’s guidelines: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs15.pdf

The more you know…

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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Labor Day Stories)

1.

I watched the movie 9 to 5 the other day and there was an image which stayed with me: The image of an entire room with forty desks devoted to nothing but typists. Thanks to the miracle of automation, works are so productive now that that you might, might see a single administrator whose primary job is typing in an office today. Who benefits from that increase in productivity. Does the single, surviving typist get 40x as much salary? Do they get any more money for doing the work of 40 people? No, they get less, as now there are 40 people competing for that single job. The worker increases their productivity, but the company derives 100% of the benefit.  Yes, I understand that this is not the complete picture, that new jobs are created, and we shouldn’t subsidize unneeded worker, etc., but the key point, I think, is valid: Workers don’t benefit from increased productivity; their employers do.

2.

Speaking of “9 to 5,” anyone else remember when that was what a work day looked like? 9 AM to 5 PM with a one hour lunch. Oh, and there were no cell phones or VPN’s, so when you left the office at 5, that was it. Oh, and if you did have to work outside of those hours, odds are you got overtime for it since most jobs weren’t exempt from overtime.

3.

Remember when the offshoring of jobs started to kick in? The trade-off was supposed to be that, while backbreaking manufacturing jobs were going overseas, Americans would be doing service jobs for the same wages, so there would be an improvement in the quality of life for low income workers. It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way, does it? We’ve reduced the number of jobs available without decreasing the need for work, so of course, wages are moving in the wrong direction (at least, the wrong direction for people making wages. The folks paying them seem pretty happy with the situation.) Now we’re complaining about “burger flippers” wanting to make a living wage for full time employment.

4.

While we’re on the subject of a living wage, there’s a popular meme going around with a quote from FDR. The quote isn’t directly about minimum wage; it’s taken from his signing statement from the National Recovery Act:

In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.

(emphasis mine, of course)

This is an extended version of what you see on the meme and I think this makes it even more clear that Roosevelt meant for this concept to apply to all workings, including burger flippers.

5.

Of course, there are plenty of jobs which don’t play a living wage and yet their workers don’t starve to death, so how does that work? In short, the answer is: Socialism! Businesses which pay less than a living wage are able to do so because your tax dollars pick up the slack. I don’t like to pick on Wal-Mart, but…wait a second, yes, I totally like picking on Wal-Mart, which is good, because I’m about to do so again. Wal-Mart employees are the largest users of food stamps in the U.S. of A. They don’t starve because American taxpayers are picking up the tab.  Companies which don’t want to pay minimum wage are asking for a handout. It’s that simple. They don’t want to pay $15/hour; they want YOU to pay that wage for them.

6.

I’ll finish with another shout-out to Franklin D. I think one good answer to the current job loss would to make more jobs non-exempt and unionize the crap out of every company. That’s not likely to happen, so instead, how about a new Works Progress Administration? If the government is already paying a significant portion of the effective compensation for a lot of low-income workers, let’s get some public benefit out of it. Employee workers to fix our damn bridges, our highways, build public buildings. But don’t just include laborers: Hire designers and architects and engineers and make the infrastructure beautiful, just like in the days of the WPA. Subsidize higher education so there are fewer workers competing for jobs. All of this would provide a public benefit, it would reduce the number of workers competing for jobs, and increase wages. Sure, it might make corporate profits suffer in the short run, but in the long run, things like infrastructure and education are important. I realize America doesn’t “do” long term anymore, but maybe it’s time to start. And, as for those short-term corporate profits, you can probably guess how many tears I’ll cry for those.

Happy Labor Day everyone. If you’re interested in reading more, I suggest P.Z. Myer’s Labor Day post on just what the labor movement sacrificed and what was gained by their efforts. Today’s a “Thanksgiving” for labor. Don’t forget to give thanks.

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A Lesson In Logic Courtesy of John C. Wright

John C. Wright, loser of a record number of Hugo awards in a single year, has a reasonable beef with George R. R. Martin:

For one, Mr Martin would have seemed more sincere had he not parenthetically added “And too many people empowered VD and his slate… either by voting for the work he slated (often unread)…” Which says, in other words, that those who voted for my works in record numbers, giving me a record number of nominations, did not read those works.

The claim is not correct, but it is politically correct, that is, this is the narrative convenient for SocJus, and the mere fact no one could possibly know this is a matter of sublime indifference.

Often unread, indeed, Mr. Martin? And how, praytell, would you or any mortal man know such a thing? The Hugo committee does not quiz the voters on their reading comprehension.

While is, in fact, possible for a mortal man* to know this by, you know, asking people, it seems unlikely that Martin has personally polled enough of Vox Day’s supporters to know if they read the works they nominated or if they simply voted as Day asked them to without first reading the material. Martin’s jibe is probably not supported by direct knowledge and Wright is right to call him out for this.

While we’re on the subject, check out this even more egregious example of stating an opinion pulled out of one’s ass as “fact:”

The Social Justice Warriors did in fact react precisely as Mr Beale predicted, and after the Sad Puppies unexpectedly swept several categories in the nominations, the SJWs used their superior numbers to vote NO AWARD into that category rather than give the award to whichever work was most worthy among the candidates.

This was done purely and openly for political reasons. The mask is torn. No honest onlooker can doubt the motive of the Social Justice Warriors at this point, or ponder whether the claims made by the Sad Puppies were true or false.

This is just whacky. Just as the Hugo committee does not quiz the voters on their reading comprehension, it also doesn’t request a reason for each vote. The writer may have their own bizarre, petty, paranoid reasons for believing that the results of the voting has some sinister meaning behind it and that the writer knows for certain what this meaning is, but, again, as Wright said, “how, praytell (sic) would you or any mortal man know such a thing?”

The punch line, of course, is that the second quoted section is from….John C. Wright’s blog. He posted it two days before his taking George R. R. Martin to task for doing the same damn thing. He called Martin “dishonest” for his statements, so you pretty much have to conclude that, by his own standards, Wright’s just as dishonest.  I’m starting to get the impression that “No Award” was a deserving winner…

* Is there any other kind of man?

EDIT: Frequent readers are probably aware of the fact that I retracted a post about Wright because it felt mean to be dog-piling on a guy with as many issues as him. That’s still true, but by my math, if he starts attacking other people for doing exactly the same things he himself does? All bets are off.

EDIT 2: Zaklog’s comment lets me know that I haven’t made one part of this clear, so let me elaborate a bit. We’ll use an extended metaphor. Those are fun, right? Ok, let’s say you’re a democrat and you’re trying to get a job at a company that’s been hiring a lot of republicans lately. You show up for your interview, and you tell you’re interviewer “I’m a democrat, and I’m pissed that you have only been hiring republicans. So, I got my buddy to shred all the applications from republicans. Also, I think you’re a jerk, your kid is stupid, and your wife is ugly. When do I start?”  Strangely enough, you don’t get the job even though you think you have a really good resume.

If your takeaway from this is “This just proves that this company won’t hire democrats!”…well, I guess you can say it, but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you do.

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We failed to win a single battle, but we won the war! (Hugo Awards edition)

Well, we went through a lot of popcorn this year, didn’t we?

I’ll be perfectly honest with you: I’ve never paid much attention to the Hugo Awards before this year. I read the sci-fi I enjoy and I’ve never cared whether or not it won any awards or not. The only reason I paid any attention this year was because of the extremely unusual events related to the Hugos.

In short, a small group of people and an even smaller group of hardcore trolls decided that they didn’t like the way the Hugo awards were run and decided to use a legitimate but asshole-y tactic of lockstep nominations of a certain slate of books to ensure that they won awards. It turns out that most voters disagreed wildly with their tactics and voted not to give an award when the only nominees were on slates.

John Scalzi posted an excellent recap of the results and I agree with the majority of what he has to say:

The Hugo vote against the Puppy slates was not about politics, or cabals, or one species of science fiction and fantasy over another, no matter what anyone would like you to believe — or at the very least, it wasn’t mostly about those things. It was about small group of people acting like jerks, and another, rather larger group, expressing their displeasure at them acting so.

That’s how I read the results as well. I can’t know the intentions of all the voters, but the ones I’ve spoken to have said much the same thing as Scalzi. One person who read it very, very differently is Lou Antonelli:

They proved Vox Day right when they nuked five of the most important Hugo categories rather than let “the wrong kind of people” win them. He said they’d do that all along, destroying the credibility of the award, and they did.

Let’s do a little analogous thought experiment here.  Here’s a one question, multiple choice quiz:

What is the spiciest food in the world?

A) Wonder Bread

B) White rice

C) Frozen peas

D) A potato

E) None of the Above

For my money, the obvious answer is E and I suspect that’s true for you as well. I do not see how it can possibly damage the integrity of the quiz for most voters to select “None of the above.” Likewise, it is entirely possible, I would even say likely, that in every category where a slate was nominated, the best candidate for the award wasn’t on the ballot. If that’s the case, then the only way to maintain the integrity of the award is to vote “No award.”

And as for “proving Vox Day right…” I suspect Antonelli is aware that literally everything in the world proves Vox Day right. Day is the trollish alter ego of Theodore Beale, who may be a lovely person, but his Day character is a piece of work. He’s not a liar; he goes way beyond that to something I’d call “anti-truth.” If a liar punches you in the face, they might say “I didn’t do it!” An anti-truther would say “No, you punched me in the face!” Day will claim victory no matter the outcome in every event because he’s a persona designed to infuriate people, not to engage in thoughtful debate. As such, he has no commitment to any belief or any facts.

Anyway, the idea of claiming victory when all of your nominees are defeated is a little disingenuous. For that to be the case, then having their candidates walk away with awards would have been a defeat, and that’s just nutty. Even a child would see right through that one.  The awards emerged with their integrity intact and the Puppies roundly (and, for the most part, deservedly) defeated.

That doesn’t mean the Hugos are out of the woods Eric Flint’s post-mortem has some very wise words of warning:

Fact Three. Yes, there is a problem with the Hugo awards, but that problem can be depicted in purely objective terms without requiring anyone to impute any malign motives to anyone else. In a nutshell, the awards have been slowly drifting away from the opinions and tastes of the mass audience, to the point where there is today almost a complete separation between the two. This stands in sharp contrast to the situation several decades ago, when the two overlapped to a great extent. For any number of reasons, this poses problems for the awards themselves. The Hugos are becoming increasingly self-referential, by which I mean they affect and influence no one except the people who participate directly in the process.

This is essentially the complaint of the Sad Puppies before they were co-opted by their Rabid brethren. It’s a valid concern, but I don’t think the fix for a failure to reward popular books with a Hugo is to bulk-nominate even less popular works. That seems to kind of defeat the purpose, doesn’t it?

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Was Ramsey Offside? (Arsenal vs. Liverpool)

Short answer? Yes. Absolutely, demonstrably, yes.

Now, most pundits, as well as referee Graham Poll, say that Ramsey was not offside and that the goal should have stood. They have years and years of experience behind them, but I have geometry and video evidence and there’s really no questioning it: Ramsey was slightly, but unquestionably, offside.

Let’s use the (regrettably low-res) still from the Daily Mail:

ramsey

This shot is presented as evidence that Ramsey is onside. He appears to be directly level with Liverpool defender Martin Skrtel (or at least Skrtel’s rear end.) Appearances, however, can be deceiving. The lines on the pitch are parallel, but because the camera doesn’t line up with any of them, it’s tricky to determine exactly who is where in relation to each other. For example, the Arsenal player in the foreground appears to be further towards the Arsenal goal than the player on the ball. But…notice that the player on the ball is to the left of the line on the pitch, while the player in the foreground is to the right of it.

In this case, perspective is everything.

Here’s a crop of the area near Aaron Ramsey, blown up 400%. This makes for a lousy image, but it’s better for our purposes:

ramsey1

It still looks as though Ramsey is barely onside and if one didn’t both to correct for perspective, one might think the linesman got it wrong. But how to correct for perspective? I’m going to use the easiest, ugliest way possible. First let’s select the unoccupied area at the bottom of the image.

ramsey2

This is a section of the penalty box line. It is exactly the same angle as the line at the top of the penalty box. Now, let’s hastily and sloppily remove most of the grass:

ramsey3

This is the angle of the line we should be using to determine Ramsey’s position relative to Skrtel. Actually, it should be a little more severe since Skrtel and Ramsey are further away from the center of the camera than the penalty box line, but it’s by a pretty negligible amount. Now, all we need to do is paste this line between Skrtel and Ramsey:

ramsey5

First of all, note that this line is exactly parallel to the penalty box line. The inside of the line touches Skrtel’s rightmost point (nope, I’m not gonna say it.) Then notice that the inside of the line hits Ramsey is to the left or Ramsey’s rightmost point. His shoulder, and part of his chest, are closer to the goal than any part of Skrtel. Let’s go ahead and draw a thin red line and extend it just to be sure:

ramsey6

A line parallel to the penalty box, drawn from the tip of Martin’s Skrtel’s buttocks, goes right through Aaron Ramsey and actually hits him about where his neck meets his shoulder. Based on the photo on the Daily Mail site, Aaron Ramsey is offside.

The reason I chose this simple method was because it’s super-easy to reproduce. I didn’t do anything to create the result I was aiming for. Anyone could do the same thing, and they’d come up with the same result.

Or, if you were lazy, just skew the image 12 degrees to the right to make the penalty box line a vertical line, then drop a vertical line on Skrtel’s kop end:

ramsey7

Same result. Ramsey is slightly offside. Honestly, it’s so close, I don’t know how a linesman could be expected to get it right. I don’t think either club could seriously argue the call. It’s really that close. But, so many people are piling on about the call being “wrong” that I just wanted to point out that the evidence says otherwise: The linesman got it right; Poll and others got it wrong. Ramsey is offside.

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