Civilization II

-The ice caps have melted over 20 times (somehow) due primarily to the many nuclear wars. As a result, every inch of land in the world that isn't a mountain is inundated swamp land, useless to farming. Most of which is irradiated anyway.

-As a result, big cities are a thing of the distant past. Roughly 90% of the worlds population (at it's peak 2000 years ago) has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm. Engineers (late game worker units) are always busy continuously building roads so that new armies can reach the front lines. Roads that are destroyed the very next turn when the enemy goes. So there isn't any time to clear swamps or clean up the nuclear fallout.

-Only 3 super massive nations are left. The Celts (me), The Vikings, And the Americans. Between the three of us, we have conquered all the other nations that have ever existed and assimilated them into our respective empires.

I've been playing the same game of Civilization II for almost 10 years. This is the result.

Round up from yer Noble Cap'n's past

EPL blasts from the past as we work out rootability.

Aston Villa

Norwich City

Swansea City

West Bromwich Albion

Nice work, Daxler. Take a bow!

Elton's Pinball Wizard

Blog question

So are we done with labels? Maybe mostly?

Invention

Harris' Foam Corner

1. Harris Wittles

2.Harris' Foam Corner

3. Tapas the Mornin' to Jah

the three Fs

Shaking hands was like shaking a hot, fat, oily bone

Paper size

Many paper size standards conventions have existed at different times and in different countries. Today there is one widespread international ISO standard (including A4, B3, C4, etc.) and a localised standard used in North America (including letter, legal, ledger, etc.). The paper sizes affect writing paper, stationery, cards, and some printed documents. The standards also have related sizes for envelopes.

Paper size (Wikipedia)

ok here goes again

i can summarize Group C thusly: you should cheer for Ireland and not for Italy.

from the easiest to...

THE HARDEST. This is where the big dogs play poker. This ain't the kiddie pool. This is where big ol' dogs play poker in the deep end of the pool. welcome to your OFFICIAL 3E GROUP B PREVIEW AND ROOTABILITY THING Poor Denmark. In group A they would actually be right in the mix but here we got what are probably the 2nd and 3rd best teams in the whole tournament in The Netherlands and Germany and Portugal is no slouch either. I guess It will be the Neths and the Germs in some order getting out. You should cheer for the Dutch, they're orange. Cheer for Denmark, ya know, rootin for the underdog is popular these days. Do what you want, i don't care. Germany isn't really that likeable but they're not actual nazis or anything. Portugal are greasy and they have Cristiano Ronaldo. 1. neth 2. den 3. germ 4. port



flags: they're all pretty good.

nevar forget

hey remember when...

I did that flag thing for the world cup? I'd do something like that for the Euros but I hate the blogger layout so much now that I don't know if I could stand it. Instead, I'm doing this! Group A starts today so here's your official 3E GROUP A PREVIEW AND ROOTABILITY RANKINGS. Anyway we got Poland and Greece kickin it off and then Russia and the Czech Republic in the afternooncap. This has gotta be the easiest group. Gotta be. None of these teams are really that good. Greece is probably the best. Poland is at home but it probably won't matter. I'm going to pick Greece as group winners with the Czechs runnin up. As far as who you should cheer for, Greece used to be deplorable in their tactics and were unwatchable at the last Euros. I hear tell they're better now but they're still hairy. They have funny names though so that's something to think about. I'm biased toward Poland, being 1/8th Polack and all. I kinda like Russia. I don't know about the Czechs. As a 1/8th Slovak, I don't trust em. So rootability will go (i guess) 1. poland 2. russia 3. greece 4. czechs. there you go!


ps if we were doing the flag thing, Russia would win and Greece would pip Poland for runner up.

Wildcard

Sports conspiracies

Maybe I know exactly how many envelopes accounting firm partner Jack Wagner conspicuously bangs against the side of the clear plastic drawing cylinder. (One, and only one.) Maybe I've committed to memory the precise moments when Stern appears to thumb the bent corner of the winning envelope he's plucked from the cylinder, after grabbing and flipping and discarding two others. Maybe I can tell you that upon exposure to room temperature of 70 degrees, a plain manila envelope stored in a home freezer remains cold to the touch for 52.3 seconds.

None of this makes me crazy.

No, a crazy person would accept the lottery at face value. A crazy person would review the entire fortuitous chain of events that produced Patrick Ewing, New York Knickerbocker, and chalk everything up to dumb luck. Coincidence, even.

A sane person doesn't believe in coincidence.

The Truth Is Out There: From The 1985 NBA Draft Lottery To The Olympics To Game-Fixing ... Which Conspiracy Theory Can You Believe?

Pulp Fiction music mash up

Friday links

1. Movie Simpsons

2. Swimming dachshund

3. Law & Order: SVU analysis

4. The Same Picture of Dave Coulier Every Day

5.

Hot Bat Dog Man

slow week

did we post this before? If not, we should have.

hey it's a rootability thing part 2: everybody else with colors

17. Stoke City - Giant, hulking thugs. They play the way everyone thinks all English teams play.

16. West Ham United - Owned by a pornographer. Russell Brand's team. Cockney.

15. Manchester City - Likeable enough, historically. Too $$$ these days to really pull for all the time.

14. Liverpool - I don't know why I like them as much as I do. Owned by the people that own the Boston Red Sox.

13. Sunderland -meh

12. Queen's Park Rangers -mehh

11. Aston Villa - they fired their horrible manager, at least.

10. Tottenham Hotspur - shouldn't be this high, probably.

9. Reading -Pronounced like 'bedding.' so you can seem really smart.

8. Newcastle United -Newcastle beer is good. They have a terrible owner but a big, loyal fanbase.

7. Wigan Athletic -I used to not like them but now I think they're ok. They might have a less handsome manager next year.

6. Everton -Seem like a good choice.

5. Fulham -Even if Clint Dempsey is gone, they're still adorable. They have a statue of Michael Jackson at their stadium.

4. Southampton -Don't know why but I think you should cheer for them.

3. West Bromwich Albion - Funny name. Likeable.

2. Swansea City -WALES.

1. Norwich City - Not stupid. Might get relegated. Your kind of blokes. They wear green.

hey it's a rootability ranking part 1: NO

 


20. Arsenal - you're not going to do this so we're moving on. also I hate the way you have to make posts now.











19. Manchester United - this is stupid i can't make this do anything. you're not going to cheer for manchester united either.





18. Chelsea - I got frustrated with trying to find their crest.

COMING SOMETIME LATER: PART 2! THE SLIGHTLY LESS OBNOXIOUS.

Rap puppets

R.I.P.

"It's important for America to remember Wesley [...] Brown. He was a pioneer like Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson," said Navy historian Robert J. Schneller Jr.

[...]

"The Naval Academy was damned lucky to have such a fine gentleman that Wesley Brown was [...]" said Mr. Schneller. "He was a man who had deep respect for his family, military service, education and his community."

Broke Color Barrier at Naval Academy

Fake basketball uncle

They didn't show the part where somebody hard fouled an old man for showboating, and it ended up costing a twenty-year-old kid millions of dollars in future lifetime earnings.

Incredible Bongo Band

Honest trailer

Marriage

Throughout history and in virtually all human societies marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman.” So says the Coalition for Marriage, whose petition against same-sex unions in the UK has so far attracted 500,000 signatures. It’s a familiar claim, and it is wrong. Dozens of societies, across many centuries, have recognised same-sex marriage. In a few cases, before the 14th century, it was even celebrated in church.

This is an example of a widespread phenomenon: myth-making by cultural conservatives about past relationships. Scarcely challenged, family values campaigners have been able to construct a history that is almost entirely false.

The unbiblical and ahistorical nature of the modern Christian cult of the nuclear family is a marvel rare to behold. Those who promote it are followers of a man born out of wedlock and allegedly sired by someone other than his mother’s partner. Jesus insisted that “if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters … he cannot be my disciple“. He issued no such injunction against homosexuality: the threat he perceived was heterosexual and familial love, which competed with the love of God.

Moral decay? Family life's the best it's been for 1,000 years

Name ten things that aren't Skrillex

This is what it feels like every single time I visit your home, Wes.

ur noble captain on TV

Wednesday links

1. All the world's water in an 860 mile diameter sphere.

2. Wolfenstein

3. Hey kids. How you boys doin'?

this just in

It's Friday!

LET CLAW-PLACH ... BEGIN!

 

Wall Street justice

"There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI," says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who, as a government regulator in the 1980s, helped clean up the S&L mess. Black, who is a Democrat, notes that the feds dealt with the S&L crisis with harsh justice, bringing more than a thousand prosecutions, and securing a 90 percent conviction rate. The difference between the government's response to the two crises, Black says, is a matter of will, and priorities. "You need heads on the pike," he says. "The first President Bush's orders were to get the most prominent, nastiest frauds, and put their heads on pikes as a demonstration that there's a new sheriff in town."

Obama delivered heated rhetoric, but his actions signaled different priorities. Had Obama wanted to strike real fear in the hearts of bankers, he might have appointed former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or some other fire-breather as his attorney general. Instead, he chose Eric Holder, a former Clinton Justice official who, after a career in government, joined the Washington office of Covington & Burling, a top-tier law firm with an elite white-collar defense unit. The move to Covington, and back to Justice, is an example of Washington's revolving-door ritual, which, for Holder, has been lucrative--he pulled in $2.1 million as a Covington partner in 2008, and $2.5 million (including deferred compensation) when he left the firm in 2009.

Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?

Monday links

1. The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia

2. Alien banana sculpture

3. HowToBasic. Just put it on autoplay.

R.I.P. Adam Yauch

:(

Dog herding deer out of town

Sitting

But admirable efforts have been made, though with only limited success. A number of Scandinavian designers have designed ball chairs, kneeling chairs, and chairs that encourage sitting in several different positions. These are improvements but not total fixes. They also frequently don’t work properly at common table heights and their unconventional appearances make them unacceptable in most workplaces.

After decades of trying, perhaps it’s time to admit that there is no way to win.

If chairs are such a dumb idea, how did we get stuck with them? Why does our culture demand that we spend most of every day sitting on objects that hurt us? What the hell happened?

It should be no surprise to readers of Jacobin that the answer lies in class politics. Chairs are about status, power, and control. That’s why we like them. Ask any furniture historian about the origins of the chair and they’ll gleefully tell you that it all started with the throne.

Against Chairs

Metal Monday

tha captain sighted in local field

go get 'em, little buddy

that goat's got teeth

I think it's time we talked about this.

Hungry

State lotteries

Lotteries are the descendents of older, informal, private-sector prize systems like "policy wheels" (often run by neighborhood merchants as a way of distributing money people would then use to shop) or numbers games (usually run by organized crime). It wasn't until the 1960s – New Hampshire in 1964, to be specific – that states legalized, and then dove headlong into, the lotto business. The key difference for consumers when control shifted from the black market to the public sector was that the odds got a lot worse and the payoffs got much larger. Oh, and the winners got the honor of paying taxes on their prizes. Yes, lotteries actually got more exploitative when the mob stopped running them. The theory behind state control was and is simple: find a way to boost flagging revenues without taxing people who vote, and since gambling and playing the numbers are going to happen anyway (as Pennsylvania Governor Rendell so animatedly pointed out on TV recently) the state might as well get some tribute out of it. That the same logic could be applied to drugs and other illegal vices escapes most of our elected officials.

Running the Numbers: The Lottery, Part 2

this just in

Cause 911 is a fake life saver

Tribalism

The answer is that everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies and raise flags.

And so it has ever been. In ancient history and prehistory, tribes gave visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and a way to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups. It gave people a name in addition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world. It made the environment less disorienting and dangerous. Human nature has not changed. Modern groups are psychologically equivalent to the tribes of ancient history. As such, these groups are directly descended from the bands of primitive humans and prehumans.

The drive to join is deeply ingrained, a result of a complicated evolution that has led our species to a condition that biologists call eusociality. “Eu-,” of course, is a prefix meaning pleasant or good: euphony is something that sounds wonderful; eugenics is the attempt to improve the gene pool. And the eusocial group contains multiple generations whose members perform altruistic acts, sometimes against their own personal interests, to benefit their group. Eusociality is an outgrowth of a new way of understanding evolution, which blends traditionally popular individual selection (based on individuals competing against each other) with group selection (based on competition among groups). Individual selection tends to favor selfish behavior. Group selection favors altruistic behavior and is responsible for the origin of the most advanced level of social behavior, that attained by ants, bees, termites—and humans.

Biologist E. O. Wilson on Why Humans, Like Ants, Need a Tribe

Tiny hippo

Poorly Drawn Lines

Only Important Question in Petrino Firing:

How does this guy feel about it?

The Shining Twins Double Doorknob Mystery

Pretty straightforward.

The Shining Twins Double Doorknob Mystery

Townes van Zandt Tuesday

Metal Monday

METAL MONDAY BONUS: World Map: Metal Bands per 100,000 people

Text from dog

Pretty good, but I don't think they capture the inherent dogginess of dogs the way that, say, Louis vs. Rick captures the essentially catness of cats. Or this:

Bike jumping

RC Round Up

Peel it down and go mm mm mm mm

Youth prospects

Twenty-five years ago young Americans had a chance.

In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five. The year Obama took office, older Americans made almost forty-seven times as much as the younger generation.

This bleeding up of the national wealth is no accounting glitch, no anomalous negative bounce from the recent unemployment and mortgage crises, but rather the predictable outcome of thirty years of economic and social policy that has been rigged to serve the comfort and largesse of the old at the expense of the young.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, human potential has been consistently growing, generating greater material wealth, more education, wider opportunities — a vast and glorious liberation of human potential. In all that time, everyone, even followers of the most corrupt or most evil of ideologies, believed they were working for a better tomorrow. Not now. The angel of progress has suddenly vanished from the scene. Or rather, the angel of progress has been sent away.

The War Against Youth

Foggy mountain breakdown

looks pretty fun

Death Star garbage

The Trash Compactor Debate turns on whether the Death Star ejects its trash into space. I, for one, believe it does. Though we never see the Death Star ejecting its trash, we do see another Empire ship, the so-called Star Destroyer, ejecting its trash into space. I therefore see no reason to suspect that Empire protocol dictating that trash be ejected into space would not apply equally to all Empire spacecraft, including the Death Star.

The Death Star clearly has a garbage-disposal problem. Given its size and massive personnel, the amount of waste it generates — discarded food, broken equipment, excrement, and the like — boggles the imagination. That said, I just cannot fathom how an organization as ruthless and efficiently-run as the Empire would have signed off on such a dangerous, unsanitary, and shoddy garbage-disposal system as the one depicted in the movie.

On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor

Charles, you butthole

I have had all three of those songs from that one post and also the mameshiba jingle in my head.

Tuesday links

1. Westley B. sited, purchased this book.

2. toothpastefordinner trolling page

3. Just biject it to an open hypergraph whose elements are regular bijections.

4. A World Without People

Japan is light-years ahead of the USA

Songs stuck in my head lately, in order of frequency

Goodnight Moon

Set in a dystopian future in which genetically engineered animals have devoured humanity, GOODNIGHT MOON is told from the perspective of a unseen, dying victim of the ravenous hordes. As he reflects on the scene with his last breaths, MOON provides a terrifying eulogy for the human race.

Margaret Wise Brown’s approach to the apocalypse is a minimalist one. Leaving only vague hints about the world in the wake of DR. MOREAU-style takeover by anthropomorphic animals, the slowly expiring narrator describes his deathbed — a seemingly normal bedroom and its mundane, but symbolically sinister furnishings.

As illustrated by Clement Hurd, the room is green (a metaphor for Earth), while a balloon the color of bright arterial blood hangs over the tableau, suggesting both a fading sun and the blood spilled across the world in humanity’s losing battle against the cunning beasts.

Goodnight Moon

errbody saw the Romney rap, right?

If not!

this just in

the years change but this song never gets not awesome

Great, now you both have mouth herpes.

I would totally buy razors from these guys

JACKED FOR HATS SO MANY HATS

Friday Links

1. Tha Captain's personal web page

2. Endangered Ugly Things

3. Bad Ass of the Week: The Complete List

4. The Drawings of Will Laren

1920s Party Rock

Both of our readers have seen this since EDSBS twittereeted it but whatever.

these guys are really good.

Dick "Night Train" Lane

In 1952, the 24-year-old Lane showed up at the Los Angeles Rams training camp looking for a job because he disliked his current occupation at an aircraft factory. He was originally trying out for wide receiver, but the Rams switched him to defensive back. While with the Rams, he acquired the nickname "Night Train" from a hit record by Jimmy Forest (A #1 R&B hit for 7 weeks in 1952), frequently played by teammate Tom Fears. He initially disliked the nickname, but it grew on him after it gained national attention, first appearing in print describing a tackle in a Rams exhibition game: Dick "Night Train" Lane derails Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice. He wore number 81, unusual for a defensive back, because he was initially projected as a tight end. The receivers playing in front of him on the Rams, Fears and Elroy Hirsch, were stars and future Hall of Famers, so coach Joe Stydahar tried Lane at defensive back. In his rookie season he set an NFL single season record for interceptions with 14, which stands to this day even though the length of the season at the time was only 12 games. (It was expanded to 14 games in 1961 and 16 in 1978). He was traded to the Chicago Cardinals in 1954 and to the Detroit Lions in 1960. He played six seasons in Detroit (1960–65) and recorded 21 interceptions for 272 yards and one touchdown. He was All-NFL four times (1960–63) and was named to the Pro Bowl three times (1961–63).

Dick Lane

metal monday

the guy who got his dick stuck in a subwoofer sent corsair's daughter some love letters but corsair put them in the garbage before she saw them

while towling off after a bath, corsair strums his unerect dick like a guitar. it is his secret tradition

SORRY, BLACK PEOPLE

We really dropped the ball on this year's Black History Month festivities. We even had an extree long month.

Robot music

Might as well call it "Skynet Starter Kit"

Frank Zappa and Steve Vai

Dirty Words of 1811

ADMIRAL OF THE NARROW SEAS. One who from drunkenness vomits into the lap of the person sitting opposite to him. SEA PHRASE.

AMBASSADOR OF MOROCCO. A Shoemaker. (See Mrs. Clarke's Examination.)

APE LEADER. An old maid; their punishment after death, for neglecting increase and multiply, will be, it is said, leading apes in hell.

APPLE DUMPLIN SHOP. A woman's bosom.

APPLE-PYE BED. A bed made apple-pye fashion, like what is called a turnover apple-pye, where the sheets are so doubled as to prevent any one from getting at his length between them: a common trick played by frolicsome country lasses on their sweethearts, male relations, or visitors.

ATHANASIAN WENCH, or QUICUNQUE VULT. A forward girl, ready to oblige every man that shall ask her.

Dirty words of 1811

Four game Friday

I like this edition of links for games on Friday because these are all so different.

1. Tetrisweeper

2. Rebuild 2

3. Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2

4. Minotaur China Shop

new Goldeneye 64

Borders and order

But there exists another type of border, one that doesn’t reflect back our image. In vampiric asymmetry, it offers only the void. There are no barriers, no officials, no capitals on the other side. The world as we know it — reciprocal even across national borders — ends here. One thinks of the American West in the mid-19th century, or parts of Brazil into the 20th. The borderline does not merely separate two territories, but two paradigms: law and order from anarchy, progress from primitivism. Or perhaps, seen from the other side: freedom from oppression, purity from decadence.

In earlier times, such lawless anomalies were surprisingly common, even in the middle of “civilization.” London was riddled by as many as a dozen legal safe havens, where debtors and criminals could seek refuge from arrest [1]. Emerging first in the Middle Ages, they persisted until Parliament abolished the last of them in 1723.

The Undiscovered Country

ok last mick mcarthy nonsense post

3E Endorsed

(click to enlarge)

Animal Internets Friday

1. Well Dressed Animals

2.

SERIOUSLY? YOU GUYS UNFRIENDED ME ON FACEBOOK?

THAT’S BULLSHIT! WE’RE ROOMMATES!

ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS

3. The Kitten Covers

4.

TORIGUN

5. Animals in Hats

6. Horse_ebookmarklet

7. Animals Doing People Things

number 2, huh?

I guess this is why I haven't abandoned thefacebook completely yet.

Tha Captain sighted at local establishment

Tech journalism

This started when Nick Bilton of the New York Times posted an item criticizing Path, which had been caught up in a firestorm when it emerged that Path had been uploading entire address books from people’s iPhones. Bilton made the legitimate point that it’s now become a routine for Valley companies to do something sleazy, get caught, then quickly apologize and get hailed as heroes by the Valley for the quality of their apology. (It’s all about being able to fake the sincerity, as George Burns once said.) Bilton’s point was that Path didn’t just grab those address books by accident. They did it on purpose. It probably took weeks of programming. To just say, “Whoops! Sorry!” seems a bit disingenuous.

Anyway — Path comes under fire, and guess who rides to the rescue? Michael Arrington, who runs CrunchFund, an investor in Path, launches a blistering critique of Bilton himself, comparing him to a pit bull who attacks a dog that is already lying on its back, defenseless, saying that Bilton’s column was “a safe way to do business, but not very noble.”

Almost before you could stop throwing up in your mouth at the idea of Michael Arrington accusing a Times journalist of being less than noble, Arrington’s partner at CrunchFund, MG Siegler, weighed in with his own attack in which he basically said Bilton is a nice guy who was either too lazy or too busy to do a good job. From this Siegler leaps off into a long diatribe about how most tech reporting is utter bullshit written by idiots who are all in a hurry to chase page views.

So: Path comes under fire, and straight away, the paid hit men – Arrington and his sidekick, Matty the Angry Chihuahua — spring into action to smear Bilton and try to discredit him.

Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

What kind of question is that? Of course I do.

bwahaha

sad wolves

losing 5-1 to your biggest rival will do that.

Dana Gould as Maurice Evans as Dr. Zaius as Hal Holbrooke as Mark Twain

I'm really looking forward to the next 3E reunion

Bring this to whatever it is mathematicians do

Mathematically Correct Breakfast: How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves

movies update

I am remiss to not mention that included among the movies available on YouTube! are many MST3K episodes.

Ellis Island names

We have all heard someone say that their family name was "changed by the inspectors at Ellis Island." Nowadays our names are recorded when we are born and are virtually never changed. You can still use any name you want as long as you do not intend to defraud but, in fact, with drivers' licenses, social security numbers, credit cards, etc., it is just too complicated to try to alter your name except through a court proceeding.

People seem to feel that it was the same way at the turn of the century. They think that immigrants had one correct way to spell their name in the old country, when they encountered the clerk at Ellis Island it was changed to something else and then it was spelled that way ever after in America. The explanation usually is that the immigrant spoke little or no English, so either the immigrant inadvertently gave an incorrect reply to the question of "What is your name?" or the clerk misunderstood the name or decided it was too complicated.

In reality, it is highly unlikely that this happened. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has a good article on immigrant name changes that explains why this wonderful story is a myth: the clerks at Ellis Island didn't write down names. They worked from lists that were created by the shipping companies. What usually happened was the emigrant bought a ticket from an office near his home. So, the seller probably spoke the same language and transcribed the name correctly. In cases where the name was recorded incorrectly, it likely occurred in the old country, not at Ellis Island.

They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island

Sean wants to watch this whole thing tomorrow.

Don't think he's serious.



TOP YOUTUBE COMMENT: The best part is at 32:01.

Sherlock Holmes' politics

And Holmes himself? What were his politics? Well, an imperialist, with his VR monogram blasted into the sitting-room wall, and his uncritical sympathy with Mycroft’s projects. A rationalist, of course; his approach to domestic law enforcement and Mycroft’s to international politics rhymed. He saw scientifically-grounded “criminal tendencies” in handwriting, in the shape of a head; he was much more comfortable asking questions of cigar ash than of humans; with a parallel social-scientific approach, Mycroft advanced Her Majesty’s empire through what he referred to, archly, as “accounting.” I find no specific reference, but I assume that Holmes supported the Boer War.

Playing the Game– With Gratitude to Msgr. Ronald Knox

And finally the secret "Ha, Ha"

Horse_valentines