Author: VD

You’ve come a long way, baby

One needn’t fail to feel genuine sympathy for the victims of a stupid showboating Italian cruiseship captain to nevertheless be amused at the complaints from women who suddenly find they aren’t so keen on that all-important equality when push comes to shove:

Survivors from the Costa Concordia spoke angrily yesterday of the nightmare evacuation from the stricken ship as women and children were left behind. In the terrifying moments after the giant vessel began to list, fights even broke out to get into the lifeboats. Men refused to prioritise women, expectant mothers and children as they pushed themselves forward to escape. Crew ignored their passengers – leaving ‘chefs and waiters’ to help out.

In heart-rending footage, recorded on mobile phones, British children could be heard shouting ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mummy’ in the melee. As she waited for a flight home from Rome, grandmother Sandra Rogers, 62, told the Daily Mail: ‘There was no “women and children first” policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting.’

This was not so much predictable as predicted. Women have methodically attacked the concept of male duty and honor through every possible means for the past ninety years, and now they are whining that they don’t get special treatment simply because a ship happens to be sinking. Why, exactly, should any man “prioritise women, expectant mothers and children”? On what grounds can they be reasonably expected to do so, those outdated traditional grounds that the schools teach is hateful, sexist, and bigoted?

Those big, burly crewmen shoving aside women as they prioritized their own escape should have been wearing t-shirts that said “this is what a feminist looks like”. Enjoy the crash.

WND column

Ten Years Later

Let me be blunt. If you do not actively support Ron Paul’s campaign to be the next president of the United States of America – if you do not pray on a daily basis for his success – then you are a fool. You are a complete, unadulterated and unmitigated fool. It doesn’t matter if you are a liberal Democrat who bought into Barack Obama’s fraudulent hope and change propaganda or a conservative Republican who is still reeling with the shock from eight years of ceaseless ideological treachery by George W. Bush. If you have even a modicum of concern for the survival of America, either as a nation or as a constitutional ideal, there is demonstrably only one candidate who has any understanding of the size and scope of the challenges presently facing the American people.

NB: I didn’t bother mentioning Huntsman in the column because I didn’t consider him a genuine candidate. As it happens, he ended what passed for his campaign on Sunday night. Fittingly, Romney didn’t bother showing up to accept Huntsman’s endorsement.

Three for three

Or, if you prefer, six for seven. That being said, I was VERY impressed with the Houston performance against Baltimore. A third-string rookie QB playing on the road without their best defensive player and the Ravens still needed old school performances from Ray Lewis and Ed Reed to get the win. They will almost certainly be in the mix next year.

And Jermichael Finley, don’t overcelebrate making a catch for a first down, especially not if you’re going to drop the next one that hits you in the hands.

Marketilism isn’t capitalism

I’m genuinely curious how those who regularly – and wrongly – equate Wall Street and the financial industry with “capitalism” are going to explain the latest government measures intended to prop up the great zombie beasts of the various stock and bond markets:

When back in August, Europe declared a short selling ban of any financials (here we are willing to channel Romney, and make a $10,000 bet with anyone that said ban will never be lifted), and which as we predicted has had no favorable impact on bank stocks which have since tumbled, we suggested that the next step will also be the final one: the passage of laws prohibiting sales of any kind. As usual we were partially joking. And as so often happens, we are about to be proven right again. As the FT reports in its headline article today, whose gist is simple enough, that Europe is on the verge, it is the tactically-placed final paragraph that is of particular curiosity. It says the following: “Speaking on the fringes of a start-of-year retreat of her Christian Union lawmakers in the city of Kiel, Ms Merkel said she would consider calls from her party colleagues for legislation to bar institutional investors such as insurance companies from selling bonds when ratings were downgraded, or fell below investment grade.” Allow us to recopy and repaste the key part: “legislation to bar institutional investors such as insurance companies from selling bonds.”

And there you have it: after everything else has failed, the state, not the politically independent, if at least on paper central bank, is about to formally enter the capital markets. And yes, first it will be a ban of selling on downgrades, then it will be a ban of selling on any downtick, and finally it will be a ban of selling anything and everything.

I don’t recall anything about it only being legal to buy things at a certain price or more under a capitalist system. In fact, the idea of government-fixed pricing has rather more in common with socialism, if I recall correctly, although there is nothing very socialist about the idea of fixing prices in order to protect private government-guaranteed profits. As I’ve pointed out before, that smacks of the standard practice of the royal mercantilists.

Is it progress to go from royal mercantilism to democratic marketilism? Instead of the king’s ministers picking the lucky winners, now the federal bureaucrats do.

Imagine!

What the godless fans of John Lennon always seem to forget is that there is a well-known place where there are no countries, no religion, and nothing to kill or die for. It is a very peaceful place, at least when seen from this perspective. It is called “the grave”. And it is no accident that so many people end up there every time a utopian – who is often an atheist, but doesn’t have to be – puts himself in a position of power where he can attempt to build a New Man, a New Society, or a New World Order.

It’s not atheism that causes this lethal utopianism. But the observable fact of the matter is that atheists are particularly susceptible to it.

Playoffs Round 2

Packers over Giants
49ers over Saints
Ravens over Texans
Patriots over Broncos

Last week: 3-1. I really didn’t expect another Miracle by the Tebow.

I don’t really care who wins any of these games, although it would be absolutely hysterical if the Broncos knock off the Patriots. I would like to see the Packers play the Saints for the NFC championship, though, as that would be an interesting track meet.

Big in Japan

Or the former Eastern bloc, to put it more precisely. Much to my surprise, I have recently learned that Rebel Moon and Rebel Moon Rising, two of the games I designed and developed with Big Chilly, have an exceedingly devoted following in Russia and Eastern Europe. These lunatics have not only produced Russian and Hungarian language versions of the games, but have even gone so far as to port the original Rebel Moon, which was produced for Creative Labs and only ran on the original 3D Blaster, to Windows proper. They’ve even corrected a few of the crater names, which I apparently managed to get wrong somehow.

Here are a few screenshots from the Hungarian version. And here is a download link to the English version of Rebel Moon for Windows (30 megs) as well as a v1.1 patch (568k) that the Russian programmers created to fix a few minor bugs and add post-level briefings based on the novel. I have to admit, it’s rather pleasant to learn that some parts of the gaming community still recognize how far ahead of the game design curve we were at the time, even though the gaming media completely ignored RMR due to their singular focus on what at the time were still vaporware games built around true 3D engines such as Unreal.

What is missing here?

From National Review Online:

A Tight Race in S.C.
By Rich Lowry

There are now three polls in S.C. showing the same basic trend–Romney essentially flat but on top, Gingrich in a solid second, and Santorum falling back a bit from his post-Iowa highs.

This is just getting downright embarrassing for the “conservative” media.

When default isn’t default

The pretense of Greek solvency continues:

Talks between Greece and its creditor banks to slash the country’s towering debt pile broke down on Friday, with the Greeks warning of “catastrophic” results if a deal to swap bonds is not reached soon. The sides remain divided over the interest rate Greece will end up paying, which determines how much of a hit banks take….

The stumbling block in the negotiations was the low coupon, or interest payment, offered on the new bonds, one source familiar with the matter and one banking source said.

“The main problem was the (European Union and International Monetary Fund’s) insistence on a coupon lower than 4 percent on the new bonds,” the banking source said. It could mean an accounting loss of more than 70 percent for banks on their books, far more than the actual 50 percent cut in the original value of the old bonds laid down in the original deal.

The reason for the charade is that the banks are desperately attempting to avoid the Greek default triggering all the credit default swaps they have made with each other. In order to avoid a complete meltdown, it is necessary to pretend a 50% – or 70% – loss on a failure to repay a loan is somehow not a default.

To grasp how absurd this is, keep in mind that homeowners are in default when they fail to make a single mortgage paymentfall 120 days behind on their mortgage payments, never mind when they openly admit that they can’t make interest payments without taking out a loan to do so or repay more than half the principal of the original loan.