Author: VD

The economic imperative of Asteroid Wars

This sudden push for asteroid defenses seems a little out of left field:

Asteroids could wipe out humanity unless more effort is made to track and destroy them, a leading body of scientists and astronauts has warned. Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, Brian Cox, and Richard Dawkins are among more than 100 experts calling for the creation of a huge asteroid detection system to prevent a doomsday scenario.

At an event at London’s science museum on Wednesday night, Lord Rees read out a declaration resolving to “solve humanity’s greatest challenges to safeguard our families and quality of life on Earth in the future.”

The dire threat of asteroids producing an urgent need for space-based defense systems. Now, where have I heard something like that before? As it happens, in the testimony of a woman who was an associate of Werner von Braun back in the 1970s, which dates back 14 years.

He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics. That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Werner Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had “killer satellites”. We were told that they were coming to get us and control us—that they were the “Commies”.

Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country “crazies”. We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.

The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it, “Asteroids—against asteroids, we are going to build space-based weapons.”

And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card: “And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens, and all of it is a lie.”

I think I was too naïve at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70’s and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.

Of course, since we know the military-industrial complex is going to manufacture wars in order to keep its system of income distribution running smoothly, I would think it is eminently desirable for the wars to be waged against space rocks and entirely imaginary. It makes for an interesting investment plan, anyhow.

And is there not an even darker possibility? What if the whistleblower who is warning about these manufactured wars is actually an agent for the aliens who wants to see Earth disarmed? Wheels within wheels, my friends. Wheels within wheels.

Anyhow, it’s nice to see that the AGW/CC alarmists have a new toy with which to play.

Sic semper cæcis

If you don’t feel even the smallest touch of schadenfreude about this man’s alleged murder, you’re either a saint or a self-deluded SJW:

David Ruenzel knew, better than most, about the white privilege that killed him. As a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of his favorite topics was rooting out racism. And how white racism is permanent. White racism is everywhere. And white racism explains everything.

This mantra of the Critical Race Theory and the Southern Poverty Law Center applied to all white people because, even if they were not personally cracking the whips, or breaking the skulls, white people benefited from a racist system that did all that — and a lot more.

Ruenzel was writing about white privilege for the Southern Poverty Law Center as far back as 1997 — long before it became the rage at college campuses, newsrooms, churches, high schools and even grade schools.

By the time of his death, Ruenzel had accumulated many of the trappings of the white privilege he exposed: The job. The home. The intact family. And most importantly in his case, white privilege endowed Ruenzel with an expectation of safety in the Oakland neighborhood where last week two black people are suspected of killing him.

One would like to imagine that the progressive white equalitarians would wake up before they get themselves, and large quantities of other people, killed, but the lesson of David Ruenzel informs us that we shouldn’t count on it. It’s rather like the aid worker who was raped in Haiti; not even a callous denial of her appeal to racial brotherhood and subsequent rape was enough to convince her that black skin does not render one morally unaccountable.

Listening to the equalitarians and taking them seriously is a very good way to get yourself beaten, raped, or killed. Because eventually, objective reality asserts itself, and it asserts itself all the more cruelly to those who willfully pay it no heed.

Speaking of cruelty, granted, it may be the artist in me, but I rather like to think that before he was gunned down, David Ruenzel explained to his killers, a little indignantly, that he was a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center and that what they needed to understand that he was on their side. Of course, what he didn’t understand, and now will never have the chance to understand, is that it doesn’t matter.

Ironically, the only way David Ruenzel’s death will have any meaning at all is if people reject his foolish philosophy as a result of it.

The pain of the rejected

In which we endeavor to soldier on:

A while back, during THE WEREWOLF ERA of our blog (seems like a thousand centuries ago), someone suggested some books by Vox Day and Larry Correia.  I dismissed them because I wasn’t interested in them, seemed too tongue in cheek or wacky or silly for me.  Apparently someone told Vox Day about it, which I think is sad that anyone should make it his business that there’s someone on the internet that doesn’t want to read his books, but whatever.

Anyway just wanted to mention that I think Larry Correia does deserve some respect, especially for having THE UNMITIGATED GALL of having opinions that most artists don’t approve of.

Actually, I understand from people who frequent GoodReads that not reading Vox Day’s books is not only rather common, but qualifies as something of a badge of honor to which all good and decent people should aspire. Based on comments I have seen here and there, there even appears to be something of a competition with regards to the vehemence with which one vows never to pollute one’s eyes with words whose order I have arranged. In comparison with this, I fear Mr. Webcomics’s benign indifference is hardly likely to impress anyone.

Especially since he has committed the unthinkable crime of saying something positive about the International Lord of Hate, the Nemesis of the SJWs, Mr. Larry Correia.

I’ve never quite grasped the idea about being upset that people don’t read your books. When even Umberto Eco’s own children express what he describes as “Olympian indifference” towards HIS work, the miracle is that anyone has any interest in it at all.

SJW review of games

It seems to me that just as we have a useful metric for dividing Blue SF/F from Pink SF/F, it would be helpful to have one that allowed people to summarize, in a single number, just how SJW a game is. Here is an initial pass at a points list, with 0 equaling not at all SJW and 10 indicating full SJW.

+1 has homosexual or bisexual character
+1 per token Black/Hispanic/Asian
+1 has Magic Negro and/or Saint Gay
+1 contains left-wing political message
+1 core plot concerns left-wing political message
+1 protagonist or sidekick are kickass waifu
+1 female developer mentioned in marketing and PR (see: J. Raymond, Z. Quinn)
+1 takes shots at Christianity or traditional Western morality

Any ideas for improvement? I was considering “+1 produced by Bioware”, but that seemed too obvious and redundant.nt

SJWs are out to destroy games


That’s not hyperbole. That’s not an exaggeration. That is exactly what their long-term objective is; that’s what they mean by asserting that the game industry needs to be “transformed”. They can deny it it all they like, but there is absolutely no question that their true objective is to prevent gamers from being able to design, develop, play games without their approval.

If you want to see where SJWs want to take the game industry, look at the publishing industry, where the company that publishes “Beautiful Me:
Essential Health: Strong Beautiful Girls” has announced “we dropped the ‘For Boys’ from the series name [Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys] and we all agree here at Abdo that it was a very smart idea”.

Give into the SJW entryists and soon it will be deemed as out of bounds to make games for boys as it already is to publish books for boys.

Speed bumps

Apparently the USA learned nothing from the Cold War:

The new Army commander in Europe plans to bolster the U.S. armored presence in Poland and the Baltic states and keep rotations of U.S. troops there through next year and possibly beyond to counter Russia. Lt. Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges, who replaced Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell  earlier this month as commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the Army was looking to add about 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the forces in Eastern Europe.

Since taking command, Hodges has made clear his concerns about
Russia, which annexed Crimea last March and has supported the
separatists in eastern Ukraine. U.S. Army Europe, which had 280,000
troops at the height of the Cold War, now has 31,000.

The rotations of U.S. troops on training missions in Eastern Europe
would provide “deterrence against Russian aggression,” Hodges said. “I don’t think that Russia has any intention of some sort of a
conventional attack into NATO territory because they know that would
generate an Article 5 response.”

Translation: We know from the old Fulda Gap that 100 tanks won’t actually do anything militarily except provide a speed bump, but having ground troops there would provide the US with an excuse to get further involved if the Russians elect to follow the US lead in Ukraine and arrange for a “regime change” in Poland or the Baltic states.

One thing many Americans don’t understand is that they are the bad guys in Ukraine. The USA is the evil aggressor that overthrew a flawed but democratically elected government and installed a puppet leadership against which a portion of the country is literally up in arms. This, in addition to the failed US-supported “Arab Spring”, is another reason why anti-Americanism is on the rise in Europe and Asia.

To put it in perspective, imagine if Russia orchestrated the overthrow of the Mexican government (which is every bit as corrupt and shady as the former Ukrainian government was) and installed a pro-Russian puppet who promptly sent all of Mexico’s gold reserves to Moscow and placed Russians on the corporate boards of its oil companies? Do you think the USA would respond in as limited a fashion as Russia has?

Remember, Putin does not have to be a good guy in order for Obama to be the bad guy. The recent warning about ISIS targeting US soldiers in America is apt, as the increase in the amount and extent of US interventions abroad is infuriating more and more people around the world. If the USA won’t leave other sovereign countries alone, it seems likely that sooner or later, someone is going to return the favor.

The best books of 2014

For some reason, I’m on the GoodReads mailing list even though I don’t use it at all, so when I saw that the 2014 Readers’ Choice winners had been announced, I clicked on it to see if Larry Correia had won. And I literally laughed out loud when I saw the covers of the winners… now, do you notice anything that seven of these eight books have in common? Which one of these books is not like the others, which one of these books just doesn’t belong? Of course, as we know from the Hugo and Nebula Awards, it’s only a matter of a year or three before that last anomaly is viciously stamped out too. No wonder book sales are continuing to decline. Seriously, even the gamma males of science fiction aren’t going to read any of that equine ejectus.

And we are supposed to believe they’re honestly and truly going to make good, nay, even better, computer games. Really? To quote the Sports Guy: “The lesson, as always, is this: women ruin everything.”

Here is the primary difference between men and women. In the past, women would look at a male-dominated list of book awards and be struck by feelbad because she felt excluded. A man looks at that list, laughs, and thinks, do they really read that shit? THIS STAR WON’T GO OUT? Are you freaking kidding me?

Robert Heinlein was wrong. These are not the Crazy Years. They are the #GIRLBOSS Years.

The Cultural Collapse Progression

Roosh has written a truly insightful article concerning the way in which a cultural collapse proceeds:

The Cultural Collapse Progression

1. Removal of religious narrative from people’s lives, replaced by a treadmill of scientific and technological “progress.”

2. Elimination of traditional sex roles through feminism, gender equality, political correctness, cultural Marxism, and socialism.

3. Delay or abstainment of family formation by women to pursue careerist lifestyles while men wait in confused limbo.

4. Decreasing birth rate among native population.

5. Government enactment of open immigration policies to prevent economic collapse.

6. Immigrant refusal to fully acclimate, forcing host culture to adopt external rituals and beliefs while being out-reproduced.

7. Natives becoming marginalized in their own country.

It’s particularly interesting how he traces it back to the removal of the religious narrative, given that he is not, to the best of my knowledge, a religious man.

He writes: “Cultural collapse is the decline, decay, or disappearance of a native
population’s rituals, habits, interpersonal communication,
relationships, art, and language. It coincides with a relative decline
of population compared to outside groups. National identity and group
identification will be lost while revisionist history will be applied to
demonize or find fault with the native population. Cultural collapse is
not to be confused with economic or state collapse. A nation that
suffers from a cultural collapse can still be economically productive
and have a working government.”

However, I would note that conomic and state collapse are very likely to follow as a consequence of the cultural collapse, particularly if the marginalized natives were historically more economically productive than their replacements.

Free book extravaganza

In order to celebrate the release of THE BOOK OF FEASTS & SEASONS by John C. Wright, as well as to take advantage of the Kindle Select free days program before these books (sans the first) go on sale at the Castalia House store, we are giving away the following books this week on Amazon.

ENGLISH

ESPAÑOL

PORTUGUÊS

DEUTSCH

ITALIANO

This is all preparatory to beefing up the translation section of the Castalia store, which is something we could hardly do if we didn’t have eight of our translations available there. The books will still be available on Amazon, they simply won’t be exclusively found there. Some of the translations which are already complete and are only awaiting ebook formatting and/or cover translations are: Big Boys Don’t Cry in French and Serbian, two QUANTUM MORTIS books in Chinese, Four Generations of Modern War in Spanish, The Wardog’s Coin in Italian, and there are more currently in the works.

In the meantime, if you’ve got an interest in one of these languages, this is your chance to grab the translations for free.

The customer is not always right

Or desired. This is an interesting technological development in customer relations:

Travelers are often asked to review their hotel, restaurant and car service. But increasingly, it goes both ways.

Drivers for Uber and Lyft, for example, rate their passengers from one to five stars at the end of each ride. If a rider receives three stars or fewer, the driver and passenger will not be paired up again. And at OpenTable, the restaurant booking system, customers are banned if they do not show for a reservation too many times.

These are among the ways that sophisticated rating systems can turn on the customer, identifying the best and worst among them.

I wonder how long it will take for this to go ideological. After all, if we know one thing about SJWs, they politicize absolutely everything and they aren’t shy about cutting off their nose to spite their face. It won’t surprise me if we see customers being banned from various establishments and services because their patronage is unwanted due to politics. Which is, of course, an unprotected right, or at least it is until Christians start using it as an effective proxy to deny services to those whose behavior they believe to be abomination.

I’ve lost one job and three book contracts due to corporate correctness to date. Which I always enjoy pointing out to those who claim bakers have to bake cakes they do not wish to bake and permit bed-and-breakfast guests they do not wish to have. As always, the SJWs seek to establish laws that only bite in one direction.

Of course, the costs of corporate correctness can be blessings in disguise. I’d much rather be publishing books through Castalia House than have published Media Whores and The Red Hand of Government with Thomas Nelson and A Throne of Bones with Lion Hudson.