Author: VD

Under a Pale Moon

I got rid of Mozilla Firefox yesterday and replaced it with Pale Moon. Verdict: I probably would have done this for technological reasons, not ideological reasons, if I had known about Pale Moon before. Basically, it feels about 10-15 percent faster than Firefox, which has become increasingly crufty over the last few years and was offering new beta updates literally every week.

The installation process was two-part, the first being the usual download and install, the second being the download of the bookmarks importation tool that also migrated my various preferences and passwords. A little clunky, but no bother, and everything works, including NoScript. After about 2 hours, I was confident enough in Pale Moon to go ahead and remove Firefox from the system. If you are considering #uninstallfirefox, Pale Moon is definitely a preferred alternative if you are on Windows.

Plus I am amused by the fact that there are no plans for a Mac version. The developers are open to Linux, but Macintosh. No. Just no. Also, Linux users should note that Pale Moon runs under WINE; due to its superior speed and efficiency emulated Pale Moon may well run better than native Firefox.

For Android, I’m using Opera Mini for now, but I’m not particularly fond of it, so further investigation is required. I’m also going to start looking for a Thunderbird replacement.

NB: The all-time percentage of Firefox is 34 percent here and 30 percent at Alpha Game. It’s already down to 28 percent here and 26 percent there.

Two for three

I have scabs on the outsides of both ankles, a nice scrape curving up one shin, a toenail that looks as if it’s painted purple, and the clearly discernable imprint of a ball on one thigh. And we’re all of three games into the spring season.

We’re in that enjoyable phase of a veteran’s season when everyone has played themselves into shape but their bodies haven’t started breaking down yet. My current team hasn’t seen anything like the Bataan Death March of a season that whittled 31 players down to 10 healthy enough to be on the field, but our longtime captain is done thanks to his knees and our best midfielder is out for three months courtesy of a nagging hamstring. In other words, we have no chance at the title.

I’ve been moved back up to striker after spending most of the fall season at right wing. I’m also starting, which is nice, especially since I spent the winter running twice a week in preparation for the need to get up and down the field on the wing. However, the first game against R was a disaster; we controlled the ball for the entire first half, blew about 10 chances to score, and I couldn’t complain when the new captain took me out at halftime. I only took one shot, and too often passed when I should have simply shot on goal, perhaps because I wasn’t expecting to play up front.

We finally scored right after the half started, but then the captain made a serious blunder. We only have three speed players, me, Sergio, and Sandro. I was on the bench, Sandro tweaked his leg and had to come out, and Sergio got tired and took himself out with 15 minutes left. That left us with precisely zero speed on the field, which shrunk the field and killed our attack. R scored two goals on headed corners in the last five minutes and we lost 2-1. I also learned that unlike the previous captain, the new captain was not keen on post-match analysis, as he reacted very badly to my pointing out why we had lost a game we controlled most of the way.

And by badly, I mean badly enough that my friend with whom I rode to the next game was telling me that I’d probably be sitting on the bench for the entire second game against A. But he was only joking, as the captain told me that I was starting again and told me to prove that we needed speed on the field. Fortunately, Sergio gave me the chance to do that as he slipped the ball past the defensive line, at midfield, I blew by my defender and took a shot from just inside the box to put us up 2-0. I came out 10 minutes into the second half after our third goal, but after A scored two goals to make it 3-2 and the field started to shrink again, the captain came out and put me back in for him at left wing. I started making runs, forced the goalie to mis-hit a hurried clearance that Sergio promptly buried, and we ended up winning 5-2. Score one for the Theory of Speed.

Last night’s game started off all right, but although we were controlling the game for the first 15 minutes, I realized I just couldn’t get past this Robert Carlos-lookalike at sweeper. Not having Giorgio, our injured midfielder, really hurt as our attack kept failing to make the last pass to the striker in shooting position, and then D scored a beautiful goal on their first chance. I had one decent opportunity that I created by blatantly shoving the ersatz Carlos off the ball as we ran for it, but I hit the side of the net. We also had one goal taken away for offside, but it was the right call, and for once, no one even complained.

We were down 3-0 at halftime, then 4-0. I did get one back, however, when I charged down a backpass and blocked the sweeper’s attempted clearance with my right thigh. The ball rebounded right into the net before the goalie even realized that it hadn’t been cleared. In 25 years of playing soccer, that’s only the second time I’ve managed to score off a blocked clearance; the last time was with Nike about 15 years ago. Then our right wing celebrated his birthday by turning a throw-in into a half-volley that hit the crossbar and went in, which gave us a faint hope of coming back before D scored again to put the game away. We lost, 5-2, but no one felt bad about being beaten by the better team, although I was very annoyed with myself for getting caught offside on what should have been a good chance at the end.

Ender’s team is off to a better start. They are 2-1, but they’ve also lost two of their three best players. Jet was finally poached by an elite regional team and Cesare broke his collarbone, but, ironically enough, Ender and the big kid that he beat up last fall have turned out to be an effective combination in defense. The big kid sweeps while Ender shuts down the side and brings the ball up the field as a sort of point defender. Most of their scoring attacks begin with a long pass from him, either up the side or a cross into the middle that drops behind the defense. He doesn’t have much speed, but he has good vision and anticipation, so he’s usually in the right spot before he needs to be there.

A tale of two trends

While the lavender lobby is celebrating their latest corporate scalp, the worldwide criminalization of their perversion proceeds apace:

A U.S.-funded health project in Uganda has suspended operations after police arrested a staff member on suspicion of promoting homosexuality, highlighting the mounting legal risks confronting the gay community in the east African state. Uganda enacted legislation in February that strengthened punishments for anyone caught having gay sex, imposing jail terms of up to life for “aggravated homosexuality” – including sex with a minor or while HIV-positive.

We hear a lot about Uganda’s and Russia’s new laws. We don’t hear quite as much about the fact that Uganda is the 38th African nation to criminalize what the Bible describes as “abomination”. While the actions of a single judge are supposed to be indicative of progress, the democratic actions of entire nations are being ignored.

In the end, it is pretty simple. Reversion to the historical mean is the logical bet. And the USA is far from the first empire in decline to give itself up to sexual chaos.

A San Francisco homosexual comments on the matter: “You’ll forgive me if I dont’ feel any heartbreak for your kind finally being run out of town.”

You have two choices, Americans. Either criminalize their behavior and force them back into the closet or be run out of town yourself. There is no middle ground. Other nations have reached this conclusion; I expect it is only a matter of time before Americans do too. We tried toleration. Despite our honest efforts, it has failed, and failed abysmally.

Mailvox: breaking the ceasefire

Gara demonstrates that he doesn’t understand the difference between legal right and common practice:

Gara: So many people bitching about the whole Mozilla thing. One would expect a self described libertarian like Vox would understand that this is eactly how the free marketplace of ideas is supposed to work. Firefox’s CEO approves of discrimination against same sey couples. And other individuals and companies such as OKCupid responded by exercising their right of free association, declining to support a CEO who holds a viewpoint they found abhorrent. This is how democratic persuasion always operates guys. If you are so angry about it, then try with all means to make your OkCupid boycott work. See if you can get even half the influence they have.

Toby: Free marketplace of ideas involve demanding another person to step down from a position/quit from work because of his/her ideas? Gara, are you crazy?

Gara: Yes it does. You have all the right to say “If Mr X does not quit his position, I won’t have anything to do with your company anymore”. And the company can they react as they see fit. Liberals have the right to do things like that as much as conservatives do.

What we have here is a left-winger and a right-winger talking past each other. Gara is absolutely right in one sense. OKCupid and the various Mozilla employees were perfectly within their LEGAL rights to behave as they did. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has accused them of criminal activity or called for them to be prosecuted.

However, Toby is equally correct to observe that it was absolutely crazy for OK Cupid and the various Mozilla employees to exercise their legal rights in that manner. Because while it is LEGAL for employers and businesses to discriminate on the basis of political beliefs and affiliations, it has most certainly not been the ACCEPTED PRACTICE for them to do so openly.

Indeed, one of the great complaints about the universities and the media is that they secretly impose political litmus tests concerning who is permitted employment in their institutions, and the danger of this practice becoming open knowledge was so great that to this day the universities and media corporations still deny what is statistically undeniable and readily obvious to even the most casual observer.

But now, thanks to the Eich affair, political employment discrimination is overt, and what was previously only legal is now PUBLIC AND ACCEPTED PRACTICE. It is purge or be purged time. So, if you are an employer in many states, you can now feel free to stop employing every non-critical employee who voted for Obama or is known to be a member of the Democratic Party. And you can impose a political litmus test on your new hires; contact DH for his new service if you don’t want to bother surfing Facebook for incrimination evidence of inappropriate politics.

What Gara has failed to realize is that there had been a de facto political ceasefire in the corporate world. The Mozilla debacle broke the ceasefire and now the political Right has the ability to return fire with impunity. I doubt it will do so openly yet, but I have no doubt that there will be more than a few unexpected dismissals quietly taking place over the next few months now that corporate executives understand what the new reality is.

Most conservatives in the corporate community have prided themselves on being “colorblind” with regards to the political spectrum. I suspect that many of them will, sooner or later, understand that they have to abandon that position as being no longer tenable or intellectually justifiable.

And in keeping with the end to the ceasefire, I have removed Mozilla Firefox from my various systems and devices. I have replaced it with Pale Moon, about which more anon. #uninstallfirefox.

UPDATE: the ceasefire is observably over:

The director of corporate giving for Google Inc. has resigned in protest from the board of a Christian aid organization after the charity reversed its decision to hire employees in same-sex marriages. As the Associated Press reported Thursday, Jacquelline Fuller said in an email Wednesday to AP that while she remains a “huge fan” of the group’s work on behalf of the poor, she resigned Friday “as I disagreed with the decision to exclude gay employees who marry.” 

If people are more concerned about homogamy or equality than with helping the poor or basic Christian principles, they should certainly resign from any Christian aid organization. Indeed, they should not be involved with the group in the first place.

The true culprits

As I predicted when the issue first went public, Brandon Eich was not saved by his desperate supplication to his critics. But as awful as those critics are, they are not the real culprits in L’affaire d’Eich:

Brendan Eich, the well-known techie who has gotten swept up in a controversy about his support of California’s anti-gay marriage law Proposition 8, is resigning as CEO of for-profit Mozilla Corporation and also from the board of the nonprofit foundation which wholly owns it.

Mozilla confirmed the change in a blog post.

“Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves,” read the post, in part. “We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”

In several interviews this week, Eich had insisted that he would not step down from the job he was only recently appointed to, due to the intense backlash over a $1,000 donation he made in 2008 in support of the ballot measure to ban gay marriage.

“So I don’t want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we’ve been going,” he said to the Guardian, for example, yesterday. “I don’t believe they’re relevant.”

Not so, of course. In an interview this morning, Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said that Eich’s ability to lead the company that makes the Firefox Web browser had been badly damaged by the continued scrutiny over the hot-button issue, which had actually been known since 2012 inside the Mozilla community.

“It’s clear that Brendan cannot lead Mozilla in this setting,” said Baker, who added that she would not and could not speak for Eich. “The ability to lead — particularly for the CEO — is fundamental to the role and that is not possible here.”

Now, while it was both wrong and dangerous for the gay fascists to go after Eich, I’m not interested in that aspect of the case here. What is more informative is Eich’s hapless response to the attacks. As I said at the time, Eich’s immediate response should have been to fire his internal critics for insubordination and to attack his external critics through the media. That’s what an effective leader like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates would have done; a leader never backs down from a defensive fight.

I suspect his critics knew that Eich was weak, both in terms of the lukewarm support he enjoyed from the Mozilla board as well as his personal character. All one had to do was look at his face to see that he is a pleaser, and pleasers tend to handle conflict by immediately resorting to submission. When attacked, they grovel and plead, they don’t fight back.

The fact is that most people focus on attacking soft targets they believe to be safe and weak. Look at how few bloggers openly criticize me anymore, or even dare to mention my name. Where are all the World o’Craps and Dark Windows and Amandas and PZ Myers and Scienceblogs and Electrolytes and Hayden Nielsens and John Scalzis now? Are we to believe I am simply beneath notice? That seems unlikely given that they were all attacking me directly, by name and with links, when my blog readership was ONE-SIXTH what it is now. The primary difference is that it is now generally appreciated that I am a hard target, and what is more, a hard target that doesn’t hesitate to shoot back.

Eich was a safe and soft target. He made it clear that he wouldn’t return fire despite his position of power, which emboldened all the critics who might have otherwise feared his potential power, influence, and ability to fire them. So, they promptly piled on, Eich couldn’t take the heat, and promptly resigned. Eich was doomed from the moment of that first inept response because you cannot win a battle when you refuse to take the field.

The irony is that although they have damaged American corporate culture by sowing seeds that will bear destructive fruit for years and decades to come, Eich’s critics did Mozilla a genuine service by exposing the mistake that was made in promoting a man who had been a very effective technology innovator to the CEO position. Eich was less a victim of the point-and-shriek crowd than the Peter Principle, which states: “in a hierarchy every employee tends to
rise to their level of incompetence”.

And now Mozilla is out a perfectly good CTO, Eich has been humiliated and is unemployed, the left-wing lunatics have been encouraged by successfully taking a scalp, and every Christian and conservative in corporate America now knows that it is purge or be purged time. (Don’t forget, small business owners, it is legal under federal law to fire an employee for his Democratic Party affiliations.) All because the Mozilla board did not know its internal candidate well enough to realize that he lacked the backbone to be a CEO-caliber leader. 

That is why the true culprits here are the board members. First they picked the wrong man, then they failed to have his back when he came under fire. This does not bode well for Mozilla.

Spelling it out

This is for the benefit of all the logical slowpokes. It is logic so basic that even those who are intellectually limited to the rhetorical level should be able to follow it:

  • If you have the right to demand that I bake you a cake, then I have the right to force you to attend church, mosque, or synagogue.
  • If you have the right to fire me because you don’t like my political position on the legality of homogamy, I have the right to fire you because I don’t like your political position on the legality of homosexuality.
  • If you have the right to deny me access to the news media because I don’t believe in climate change, I have the right to deny you access to the media because you don’t believe in God.

If atheists truly want a power struggle for the right to be intolerant, Christians will eventually engage and win. Because we will die before we will give up our beliefs and you will not. We invented the Crusade and the Inquisition, two institutions so historically intimidating that atheists still shiver and tell each other scary stories about them centuries after the event.

We will revive them before we will abandon our faith. And while we would prefer to live with both Christian and traditional Constitutional values, if we are forced to choose between the two, we will choose the former without even thinking twice.

England wants independence

They didn’t fight wars with Napoleon and Adolf Hitler just to surrender to a bunch of third-rate eurofascists:

Nigel Farage accused Nick Clegg of “wilfully lying to the British people” and warned that the European project could end in bloodshed during the pair’s second debate on Wednesday night.

In a heated and confrontational televised debate the leader of the UK Independence Party warned that extremists would resort to “violence” unless the European Union “ends democratically”.

Early polls showed that Mr Farage won the debate comfortably, securing 68 per cent of public support in a YouGov poll and 69 per cent according to ICM.

Following the debate, Mr Farage said: “I’m very pleased with the result and surprised about how dishonest Nick Clegg’s argument was. I didn’t think I’d have to get personal, but he is trying to lie and deceive the British people and after 40 years we have had enough.

The British people have been lied to and deceived for 40 years. The Tories and Labourites and Lib Dems will be lucky to escape being tried for treason. Farage is doing very well to focus on the fundamental and intrinsic dishonesty of those who are trying to conquer the continent with nothing more than a currency and a web of lies.

Atheists are terrorists

It’s true, it’s the law:

Saudi Arabia has introduced a series of new laws which define atheists as terrorists, according to a report from Human Rights Watch…. Article one of the new provisions defines terrorism as “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based”.

Now that we understand that the Left has absolutely no regard for the freedom of thought or the freedom of expression, what reason can be given for why the West should not follow the lead of Africa and the Middle East in criminalizing both homosexuality and atheism? The Left has often lectured us on the moral superiority of those cultures, have they not?

Such actions can be fully justified on traditional grounds, historical grounds, moral grounds, and perhaps most importantly, pragmatic grounds. The reason past laws were relaxed was in the name of secular tolerance, but as has now been amply demonstrated, atheists and homosexuals are not at all willing to be tolerant of those who disagree with them. So why should anyone else be tolerant of them?

In the long term, it doesn’t really matter. Either circumstances will force the West to put its house in order, or it will be overrun by those less progressive societies which refuse to tolerate its self-destructive elements.

Kratman auf Deutsch

Große Jungs weinen nicht ist eine Novelle des Militär-Sci-Fi-Autors
Tom Kratman, der für „A Desert Called Peace“ und seine „Carrera“-Serie
bekannt ist. Die Novelle folgt dem Leben eines Rathas, ein
empfindungsfähiger Superpanzer der Zukunft, der pflichtbewusst die
Schlachten der Menschen auf fremden Welten austrägt. Doch wird die
Kreatur seinen Erschaffern noch immer dankbar sein, wenn sie ihr eigenes
Gewissen entdeckt? Und wie lange gibt sich eine intelligente
Kriegsmaschine, die mit Leichtigkeit eine Stadt dem Erdboden gleich
machen kann, damit zufrieden, dem Menschen ein unterwürfiger Sklave zu
sein?

Has there ever been a better marriage of Author Name and Translation Language than Tom Kratman and die Muttersprache? Ilona Meier has done a fine job translating Big Boys Don’t Cry into German and it was a pleasure to work with her. In a few hours, we’ll also be able to announce the availability of QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand, which was translated into German by the fortuitously named Dr. G, (seriously), who will also be translating John C. Wright’s forthcoming AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND.

Plötzlich findet sich die Größere Terranische Herrschaft in einer historischen Krise, als der Raumkreuzer der Shiva-Klasse ATSV Rigel während einer Routinepatrouille durch den Kantillon-Sektor verlorengeht. Zum Glück für das große sternenumfassende Terranische Imperium ist die Topgeheimdienstagentin des Herrschaftlichen Geheimdienst-Direktorats, Daniela York, mit von der Partie. Wird sie jedoch in der Lage sein, die tödliche Verschwörung, die von den gewissenlosen Attentätern des Hauses Dai Zhans eingefädelt wurde, im Schatten des drohenden galaktischen Krieges zu durchdringen, ganz besonders, nachdem das Direktorat herausfand, dass wahrscheinlich auch noch die Cyborgs der Integration Mensch-Maschine beteiligt sind? 

In other Castalia House-related news, the well-known Pulp Writer, Jonathan Moeller, has reviewed my recently published story collection, THE ALTAR OF HATE. He writes in his review:

There are some weaker stories in the collection, and oddly enough they are mostly in the front half, like the banquet master of Cana serving the poorer vintages before the choice wines. That said, there were some excellent and interesting stories in the collection, which we’ll examine now:

-“The Lesser Evil” is an interesting combination of historical fiction and time-traveling sorcery. An evil wizard travels back in time to use the dark power released by one of the great slaughters of history (specifically, Genghis Khan’s conquests) to fuel his power, and an organization of good wizards travels back to stop him. The interaction of the wizards with the historical figures was interesting, as was the eventual resolution and twist at the end….

-“The Logfile” was the standout story of the collection, charting an
artificial intelligence’s slow descent into madness. The AI wants to be
helpful and efficient, and starts testing new ways to become even more
helpful and efficient. Then it flies off the rails. Bad things ensue, as
the AI logically and meticulously reasons itself out of morality
entirely.

Read the whole review there, and if you’re a writer, don’t forget to click on the link to his Iron Laws of Storytelling. Or, if you are the sort of individual who finds either a) statistical probability or b) Candy Crush to be amusing, you could simply entertain yourself by playing Kratman Bingo, and seeing how often the covers for all three Kratman editions appear simultaneously on the blog.

UPDATE: Der programmierte Verstand is now live on Amazon.

Italy arrests Venetian secessionists

ROMA – Blitz dei carabinieri del Ros contro un gruppo secessionista accusato di aver messo in atto “varie iniziative, anche violente”, per ottenere l’indipendenza del Veneto, e non solo. L’accusa mossa dalla Procura di Brescia è quella di terrorismo (270 bis c.p.): 24 i provvedimenti restrittivi, 51 indagati in totale e 33 le perquisizioni ordinate dalla procura della Repubblica di Brescia e che hanno interessato il Veneto. Tra gli indagati nell’operazione anche un leader del movimento dei Forconi e un ex deputato, Franco Rocchetta, già sottosegretario di Stato agli Affari esteri tra il 1994 e il 1995.

ROME – A raid by the military police was conducted against a group of secessionists accused of having put into action “various initiatives, some of them violent” to obtain the independence the region of the Veneto. And in addition, the accusation of terrorism was made by the District Attorney of Brescia: of 51 that were investigated in total, 24 were taken into custody of and 33 were ordered to be searched…. Among those arrested in the operation included a leader of the  Sicilian-based “Pitchfork Movement” and a former member of the Chamber of Deputies, (the Italian House of Representatives), Franco Rocchetta, former undersecretary of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1995.

I realize that many Americans will find it difficult to credit, but secessionist movements are literally sweeping the entire range of Europe, from the Crimea in the east to Scotland in the West. It is only a matter of time before the economic contraction and increasing social turmoil lead to similar political developments in the USA, especially as the Obama administration and the Congress exhibit increasing political tone-deafness.