Author: VD

I was delighted by this review of Summa Elvetica at Amazon. It’s not often that an author is provided with proof that his book has found a reader who truly groks it to an extent very nearly approaching fullness:

Comtemporary fantasy is so indebted to Lewis and Tolkien that its explicitly Christian origins should be openly, albeit perhaps grudgingly, accepted by all–the acolytes of Eddison and Peake are obviously on the wane. Looking over the comments I am pleased for they seem sincere and I concur with the essence of most all of them. Honestly, this Casuistry is hardly a pot-boiler. But with such a title did you really expect it to be?

I would like to humbly bring just one point to light: Expressed in the author’s note is the following: “This novel did not proceed according to plan.” We are told that the philosophical stances of the various and sundry medieval scholastics would be embodied within the tropes of conventional high fantasy “races” and that this dream-ship floundered for lack of a viable narrative structure! Can an author win kudos for mere ambition? How many of you out there can honestly claim: “Aw man, he stole MY idea!” The fact that the creative team at Marcher Lord felt confident they could in turn sell it, failed concept or not, to the masses shows an equal amount of chutzpah…

Complaints about a boring story-line, though true to a point, after all a tale made up of different character’s stories are the essence of medieval literature, are ultimately I think irrelevant as strange as that sounds for what this novel presents is a novel ambient feel: A hot and sour soup for your mind. And just like the eventual Borderlands series, the real point is the continual feeling–this is so cool–that you get from mixing the Catholic church with High Fantasy and all that each entails…. I would argue that this Casuistry is a mandatory read. For cracking minds wide open if nothing else.

The reviewer quite clearly understands that SE is a failure, but is generous enough to view it as a noble failure and doesn’t think less of the book for that. He recognizes how the book has no intention of abiding by the conventional fantasy tropes, or even the conventional genre structure. Most importantly, he grasps that SE is fundamentally a book of ideas and impressions, not action.

Summa Elvetica could have been a better book. It really should have been a better book and I wish it had been a brilliant book. That it isn’t is testimony to my deficiencies, more of focus and execution than capability and conception. And yet, I’m happier with it than I am with any of my other books. From a creative perspective, I find it more personally satisfying to aim high and fail than to aim low and succeed.

I was talking to a friend who is a member of one of the Minnesota country clubs to which many Jews belong, and he told me that the losses in the massive Ponzi scheme are somewhere around $1 billion in Minnesota alone. Apparently the word is that Madoff has been worse for the Jews than Osama bin Laden. Compounding the problem is that Madoff’s “investors” are not only out their capital, they’re also on the hook for the 3x leveraging loan on that capital that many of them took out. And since many won’t be able to repay it, the lending banks are liable for yet another red ink bath.

The thing is, I very much doubt this will be the last fraud to be uncovered as the inflationary tide recedes. Or the largest.

In my WND column today, I addressed the observation that religious belief is to some extent inversely correlated with societal wealth. The correlation isn’t perfect; the evangelical churches in very wealthy Naples, Florida were surprisingly large and well-attended and it is, after all, a religion-defined group that is the most wealthy in the world. But across broad populations, it’s clear that people turn to religion in times of strife and contraction and away from it in times of peace and wealth.

The intellectually unsophisticated and logically incompetent, will naturally assume that this proves some sort of causal relationship between religion and these unpleasantries. But this is backwards. In much the same way that credit expansion in the boom causes the bust, religious revival in the bust helps bring about renewed growth. And as the receding tide exposes financial frauds like Fannie Mae and Ponzi Madoff, it also exposes intellectual frauds like the secular progressive narrative and the neoconnery of global democracy. Spengler, as usual, does an excellent job of showing how the global depression gives the lie to the democratic myth:

The diplomatic strategy of the industrial nations now resembles a James Clavell potboiler, in which an earthquake interrupts a hopelessly immured plot. Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.

One key principle to keep in mind when considering these matters is that it is as foolish to apply the generic concept of religion to specific societal applications as it is to substitute the generic concept of science for specific applications of physics, economics, or biology.

A rather peculiar defense of Obama:

President-elect Barack Obama has never been close to Mr. Blagojevich. He has aligned with the Daley division of the fractured Democratic machine, while Mr. Blagojevich, chiefly through the sponsorship of his father-in-law, a powerful Chicago alderman, has been from that faction that has always resented the mayor’s good fortune for being born with the Daley name.

You know the Obama administration is going to be good for some serious scandal when his pre-inaugural defense of his character is that he’s from the bigger and MORE corrupt part of the Chicago machine.

Apparently there won’t be a quiz today either, although this time it’s not my fault. ProProfs is down, presumably for maintenance, so it’s not possible to take the test on chapter six. If it’s not up tomorrow, we’ll double up on chapters 6 and 7 next Saturday.

In the meantime, think about the differences, if any, between the giant Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff and the everyday business of fractional reserve banking. Was Madoff actually doing anything but acting as a virtual bank? He may not have been able to satisfy his full obligations to all of his investors at any given time, but then, what bank can do the same for its depositors?

Interesting, too, to observe that the Elliott Wave people predicted there would be bigger frauds being revealed in Wave Three than in Wave One. What’s next, one wonders?

Rahm Emanuel doesn’t bark so loudly these days. He’s just a average guy, doing average guy things. Why can’t they leave him alone, the poor fellow is just busy trying to be a father:

Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s new chief of staff, and Jesse Jackson Jr, the co-chairman of his presidential campaign, both faced new revelations about their possible involvement in the scandal…. The TV station said Mr Emanuel had “multiple conversations” with Mr Blagojevich, who is accused of trying to “sell” the open Senate seat for a cabinet post or lucrative top foundation job, and his chief of staff.

As I expected, the Obama administration is going to be extremely entertaining, a veritable parody of a presidency. Which, coming after the joint disasters of Clinton and Bush, is somewhat impressive. I mean, the guy hasn’t even taken office yet and he’s already enmeshed in scandal.

I wonder how many Obama enthusiasts in the media are beginning to regret their “cover for the candidate” campaign already?

Republicans really should have broken with Bush back in 2004 at the very latest:

A bailout-weary Congress killed a $14 billion package to aid struggling U.S. automakers Thursday night after a partisan dispute over union wage cuts derailed a last-ditch effort to revive the emergency aid before year’s end.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit’s beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with Japanese carmakers.

None of the bailouts make sense or will do what they are nominally intended to do, so every failed bailout is a positive step. The longer the pain is postponed, the worse it will be. Trying to bailout boats with gaping holes in them simply isn’t going to work.

One wonders precisely how cold it will have to get before the science fetishists finally admit that they’re hopelessly wrong and that the “scientific consensus” is very nearly the exact opposite of the scientific method:

Falling snowflakes glimmered in streetlights, so wide that they billowed to the ground like parachutes, and so tantalizing that even awestruck adults reached out their hands or stuck out their tongues to catch one.

By Wednesday evening, the flakes were big enough to hold their shape for a moment on the street before melting into the pavement, and a dusting had collected on parked cars in some parts of town.

The flurries tied a record for Houston’s earliest snowfall ever…. Since 1895, records indicate, snow has fallen this early just once — on Dec. 10, 1944.

I’m quite confident that the “global warming” concept is a complete crock on both historical and anecdotal grounds. We have palm trees in our backyard, but already this winter, and last winter as well, we’ve had more snow than we’d seen in the previous ten years combined.

Now that presumed president-elect Obama has been safely elected, (barring, of course, any inconvenient eligibility issues surfacing in an untimely manner), the media is shocked, shocked, to discover that Chicago politicians are corrupt:

A 76-page FBI affidavit alleges that Blagojevich, a Democrat, was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps during the last month conspiring to sell or trade Illinois’ U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama for financial and other personal benefits for himself and his wife. At various times, in exchange for the Senate appointment, Blagojevich discussed obtaining:

A substantial salary for himself at a either a non-profit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions;

Placing his wife on paid corporate boards where he speculated she might garner as much as $150,000 a year;

Now, I’m curious. How is it that no one seems to have looked into the way Michelle Obama was named to a $275k board position with the University of Chicago Hospitals and a $50k board position with Treehouse Foods right around the time her husband was elected to the Senate? And where, one wonders, could “Hot Rod” Blagojevich have gotten the idea of using his position to funnel corporate board income to his wife?