Category: Uncategorized

The failure of accomodation

The Washington Post laments the decline of the American church:

America’s churches are in trouble, and they are in trouble in communities that arguably need them the most.

One of the tragic tales told by Harvard scholar Robert Putnam in his important new book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” is that America’s churches have grown weakest in some of the communities that need them most: poor and working-class communities across the country. The way he puts it, our nation’s churches, synagogues and mosques give children a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose — in a word, hope — that allows them to steer clear of trouble, from drugs to delinquency, and toward a bright and better future, warmer family relationships and significantly higher odds of attending college.

The tragedy is that even though religious involvement “makes a bigger difference in the lives of poor kids than rich kids,” Putnam writes, involvement is dropping off fastest among children from the least privileged background, as the figure below indicates.

The picture of religion painted by Putnam, a political scientist and the foremost scholar of American civic life, is part of a broader canvass in his book showing that kid-friendly institutions — not just churches, but also strong families and strong schools — are withering, but almost entirely in less-affluent communities. American children from better-educated and more affluent homes enjoy decent access to churches, families and schools, which lifts their odds of realizing the American Dream, even as kids from less-privileged homes are increasingly disconnected from these key institutions, making the American Dream that much more difficult for them to pursue.

Why is it that the country is witnessing not only a religious decline, but one that is concentrated among its most vulnerable men, women and children? Four factors stand out in understanding the emptying out of the pews in working-class and poor communities across the United States: money, TV, sex and divorce.

These things are all symptoms, not the actual problem. There are many, many strong Christians across the USA and around the world who do not attend organized churches because the organized churches have been invaded by entryists and gutted. The tolerant, welcoming, accomodating, and worldly churches are dying because they lack the only thing a Christian church needs: an unflinching commitment to Jesus Christ and the Bible.

Society cannot destroy the Church, but the Church can destroy itself by making societal approval its priority.

Tech spying cutting US economic throat

This could bring a rapid end to the continued growth of the global data-mining business:

The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data.

The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.

“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.

When asked directly, the commission could not confirm to the court that the Safe Harbour rules provide adequate protection of EU citizens’ data as it currently stands. The case, dubbed “the Facebook data privacy case”, concerns the current Safe Harbour framework, which covers the transmission of EU citizens’ data across the Atlantic to the US. Without the framework, it is against EU law to transmit private data outside of the EU. The case collects complaints lodged against Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Microsoft-owned Skype and Yahoo.

Schrems maintains that companies operating inside the EU should not be allowed to transfer data to the US under Safe Harbour protections – which state that US data protection rules are adequate if information is passed by companies on a “self-certify” basis – because the US no longer qualifies for such a status.

Fortunately, we can be certain that the federal government would never sacrifice economic growth for centralized regulatory power, right? This could prove a rather serious problem if the one of the proposed engines of US economic recovery turns out to be intrinsically illegal in most of the rest of the world.

I’ve noticed that between Russia’s move away from SWIFT, the support for the Chinese alternative to the IMF, the fall of Yemen, and the complete lack of European support for the USA’s adventures in Ukraine, the world appears to be increasingly disinclined to follow the US lead. This does not bode well for the US if it indicates that the global perception of its effective power is on the decline.

A shot across the bow

At this point, given recent steps like these, I think it is eminently clear that the US government has told the Israeli government to take a hike and is going to reach an agreement with Iran that will permit it to become an acknowledged nuclear power:

In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.

The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu’s March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.

Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel’s sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.

The 386-page report entitled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” gives a detailed description of how Israel advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s…. Declassifying the report comes at a sensitive timing as noted above, and
given that the process to have it published was started three years
ago, that timing is seen as having been the choice of the American
government.

This appears to be a clear message to the Israelis that since they have nukes themselves, they have absolutely no grounds to complain about anyone else obtaining them. I do find it somewhat amusing that the article claims the US has breached a nonexistent agreement.

If an agreement of the sort that appears to be in the works does in fact take place, it should be interesting to see how all the “Iran is the New Hitler”
neocons explain the complete failure of a nuclear Iran to immediately
launch the attack on Israel that they have been telling us is imminent for at least the last
decade.

Given what is presently taking place in Yemen and Iraq, I would think it is Saudi Arabia that has a lot more to be concerned than the Israelis.

Mailvox: The Singularity

One of the readers here, who also happens to have the good taste to be a John C. Wright fan, sends word of his band’s new EP, “The Singularity”. Good voice and some interesting guitar work.

Depression or Sudden Jihad Syndrome?

Contradictory claims are being made about the murderous Germanwings pilot. The more explosive one is that the “significant item” that was found at his apartment was indicative of a conversion to Islam:

According to Michael Mannheimer, a writer for German PI-News, Germany now has its own 9/11, thanks to the convert to Islam, Andreas Lubitz. Translation from German:

All evidence indicates that the copilot of Airbus machine in his six-months break during his training as a pilot in Germanwings, converted to Islam and subsequently either by the order of “radical”, ie. devout Muslims , or received the order from the book of terror, the Quran, on his own accord decided to carry out this mass murder. As a radical mosque in Bremen is in the center of the investigation, in which the convert was staying often, it can be assumed that he – as Mohammed Atta, in the attack against New York – received his instructions directly from the immediate vicinity of the mosque.

Converts are the most important weapon of Islam. Because their resume do not suggests that they often are particularly violent Muslims. Thus Germany now has its own 9/11, but in a reduced form. And so it is clear that Islam is a terrorist organization that are in accordance with §129a of the Criminal Code to prohibit it and to investigate its followers. But nothing will happen. One can bet that the apologists (media, politics, “Islamic Scholars”) will agree to assign this an act of a “mentally unstable” man, and you can bet that now, once again the mantra of how supposedly peaceful Islam is will continue.

Now this sounds a little far-fetched and breathless to me, especially since there were only reports of the pilot breathing, not of any prayers or the customary jihadist battle cry. I’d take it with a grain of salt at the moment. Then again, I’m not sure that any direct statements that the pilot said nothing of any kind have been made. And it is true that claims of his mental instability are already being reported, such as here:

The Germanwings co-pilot who crashed his plane into a mountain killing himself and 149 people on board was receiving psychiatric counselling right up until the crash, it emerged today.

Andreas Lubitz locked the pilot out the of the Airbus A320’s cockpit before setting the plane’s controls to descend into a rocky valley, French prosecutors revealed yesterday.

As well as having been signed off from training with depression in 2008, it was reported this morning that Lubitz had continued to receive mental health support up until this week’s crash.

German newspaper Bild also reported that the 28-year-old was in the middle of the ‘relationship crisis’ with his girlfriend in the weeks before the crash and may have been struggling to cope with a break-up.

It was claimed this morning that the couple were engaged to be married next year.

New information about Lubitz’s life emerged just hours after police investigating the disaster began a four-hour search of his flat, which he is said to have shared with a girlfriend. Officers refused to reveal details of what they have found but have insisted no suicide note had been recovered.

The two things that are slightly strange here are a) the refusal to reveal any details of what has been found, except the statement that something was “significant”. Of course, that could be anything from a Koran to the dead body of his ex-girlfriend. The other thing that is strange is that in all the previous reports, there was no indication of a girlfriend of any kind. For example, he was reported to have taken a trip to a resort with a male friend, the sort of trip I have never known any man to take except with a wife or girlfriend.

And, of course, given the growing strength of PEGIDA, we know the German authorities will be desperate to keep any indication of Lubitz being a Mahometan convert under wraps.

SJWs take a scalp

The British SJWs at the BBC finally managed to bring down Jeremy Clarkson:

The BBC bosses have always been partisans of whatever ideology was the most elitist, the most sanctimonious, the most anti-public, in any given age: in the 60s and 70s it was full of communists, today it is full of Politically-correct Progressives. They are almost always Leftist, always Collectivist, and almost always humorless.

And the BBC’s mid-level bureaucrats have always, always hated Top Gear. The current BBC’s manager, Danny Cohen, had been very vocal about how desperate he was to get rid of Jeremy Clarkson, and now he got his wish. In the process, it made a pretty startling revelation as to how Collectivists work, and who they serve.

When it was announced that the BBC was using a dinnertime argument as an excuse to fire (or “sack” as they say across the pond) the driving force behind Top Gear, two big petitions were being promoted across the social media almost instantly. The first was in support of Clarkson, demanding that the BBC not fire him; it ended up with over a million signatures and became the fastest-growing petition in the history of change.org. The second demanded that Clarkson be fired for his various crimes against humanity (which mostly consisted of being anti-Europe, anti-Left, anti-nanny-state, and anti-political-correctness). This petition garnered a whopping 34127 signatures. It featured, in brazen shamelessness, a completely un-ironic picture of Clarkson with his mouth gagged on it, making it very clear what these people wanted: to totally silence those who disagree with them.

This is an interesting result for two reasons. First, it gives us a very good, albeit non-scientific, look at just what the divide between the Collectivist elitists and the Individualists is: the Collectivist-Crowd made up about 3.2% of the population who signed either petition. These are the people who are strident in their advocacy of the Collectivist values of the modern “progressive” Left, that believe in pogroms against free speech; but more importantly, that will despise anything just because everyday people like it too much.

Clarkson’s case is actually quite similar to mine with the SFWA, despite the fact that considerably more people care about the former than the latter. When the SJWs are gunning for you, they will immediately grasp at any excuse, no matter how trivial, to at least try to get rid of you. It’s something you must always keep in mind once you understand that you’re being targeted by these vicious, spiteful little people. They can’t handle power and they’re control freaks, so perspective means nothing whatsoever to them.

So, don’t think that they won’t, and if you’re at all interested in keeping your position, you must avoid handing them the ammunition they are so avidly seeking. Of course, if you don’t give a damn, then don’t worry about it, accept the inevitable when it comes, draw the process out as long as you can, and thereby permit the world to clearly see exactly what sort of lunatics they are.

Equality: a review

Henry Dampier reviews Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld:

Throughout history, ‘equality’ has tended to mean different things, and it usually only pertained to certain situations or within certain groups. The most powerful argument that he makes is towards the end of the book, in which he points out that equality is an essential concept in military life, but that it isn’t generally sustainable outside that context. Members of a military unit of similar ranks must be somewhat equal — else the army loses coherence. It can’t hold a formation in reality, or be conceived of in a useful way by officers, if there is no attempt to make those men more equal.

van Creveld: Without equality, cohesion is inconceivable. Cohesion, the ability to stick together and stay together through thick and thin, is the most important quality any military formation must have. Without it such a formation is but a loose gathering of men, incapable of coordinated action and easily scattered, and of little or no military use. In all well-organized armies at all times and places, the first step towards cohesion has always been to put everyone on an equal basis. Often the process starts when all new recruits are given the same haircut. Beards may have to be taken off, moustaches trimmed, piercings and jewelry discarded.

This is the proper understanding of equality: equality of rank within a hierarchy. It has a limited conceptual and practical utility that becomes wasted when thinkers apply the concept beyond its carrying capacity, so to speak.

I thought this was a perceptive review. The important thing to remember when reading the book is that van Creveld is a scholar, not an ideologue or a polemicist. While he doesn’t hide his personal opinions, he also doesn’t place any particular weight on them in comparison with the historical facts and concepts that he delves into and describes.

The ultimate argument against certification

This should pretty much end any discussion about the idea that government certification is necessary or even likely to prevent significatly negative outcomes. From the Aviation Business Gazette:

FAA recognizes Andreas Guenter Lubitz. Rheinland Pfalz-based pilot sets positive example.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is recognizing Andreas Guenter Lubitz with inclusion in the prestigious FAA Airmen Certification Database.

The database, which appears on the agency’s website at www.faa.gov, names Lubitz and other certified pilots who have met or exceeded the high educational, licensing and medical standards established by the FAA.

Pilot certification standards have evolved over time in an attempt to reduce pilot errors that lead to fatal crashes. FAA standards, which are set in consultation with the aviation industry and the public, are among the highest in the world.

Transportation safety experts strongly recommend against flying with an uncertified pilot. FAA pilot certification can be the difference between a safe flight and one that ends in tragedy.

Imagine what might have happened if those poor Germanwing passengers had flown with an uncertified pilot?

Smells like murder-suicide

The Germanwings airplane appears to have been crashed deliberately:

BREAKING NEWS: French prosecutor: Germanwings co-pilot appeared to want to ‘destroy the plane,’ the Associated Press reports.

An official who knows about the audio recordings from the recovered cockpit voice recorder of the Germanwings flight that slammed into the Alps said Thursday one of the pilots was apparently locked out of the cockpit when the plane went down.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, told the Associated Press that this important detail was gleaned from studying data from the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, which was damaged, but recovered by emergency responders Wednesday.

Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, would not confirm nor deny the reports, the AP reported.

The New York Times quoted an unidentified investigator Thursday as saying the audio depicts someone knocking with increasing urgency — and force — on the cockpit door. The Times quoted the source as saying: “And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer.”

It’s not hard to tell who was the pilot and who was the co-pilot who appears to have intentionally crashed the plane:

Lufthansa, the German pilots’ union and the Lufthansa flight training school in Bremen where the pilots trained are not making any comment or giving out names. They have, however, given information on the pilot and co-pilot and their experience. But German media has identified the men as as Patrick S, a father to two children. Bild newspaper said he flew for over ten years for Lufthansa and Germanwings and had completed more than 6,000 flight hours on the Airbus 320.

The paper named the First Officer as Andreas L. He was “young”. He was from Montabaur, in Rhineland-Palatinate. He had 630 flight hours. He joined Germanwings in September 2013 straight from the Lufthansa Flight Training School in Bremen.

Lufthansa said both pilots were trained at the Lufthansa Flight Training School in Bremen. The captain had over 6,000 flight hours’ experience and joined Germanwings in May 2014. Previously he was a pilot with Lufthansa and Condor, a Lufthansa partner airline.

It’s a good thing his name was Andreas L. and not Mohammed L. or you might see air travel come to a near-complete halt. Although if it turns out that he was a convert, you might see a noticeable slow-down anyhow.

UPDATE: Prosecutor identifies jet crash co-pilot as Andreas Lubitz: AFP

UPDATE 2: From Zerohedge:

“At this moment, in light of investigation, the interpretation we can give at this time is that the co-pilot through voluntary abstention refused to open the door of the cockpit to the commander, and activated the button that commands the loss of altitude,” the prosecutor, Brice Robin, said. He said it appeared that the co-pilot’s intention had been “to destroy the aircraft.” He said that the voice recorder showed that the co-pilot had been breathing until before the moment of impact, suggesting that he was conscious and deliberate in his actions. He said that his inquiry had shown that the crash was intentional.

 UPDATE 3: I suspect Omega rage. Here is why.

Fingerprints on the prize

SciFi Pundit shows that once again, if John Scalzi says it, you can be pretty confident that it isn’t true:

WHATEVER:   John Scalzi announced on his blog today that he had predicted white chocolate M&M’s in his book The Android’s Dream. Unfortunately for Mr. Scalzi, white chocolate M&M’s, called Pirate Pearls, were already on the market in 2006 when his novel about killing aliens by farting (yes, really) was published. Apparently, ripping off Robert A. Heinlein (or Philip K. Dick, or Joe Haldeman, or Gene Roddenberry) isn’t sufficient to give someone powers of prognostication.

That’s actually a good heuristic for any SJW. Did they say it? Are they an SJW? Then it probably isn’t true.  Consider the following statements from the now-defunct Staffer’s Book Review:

“Opera Vita Aeterna” by Vox Day, the originator of the Sad Puppy Slate, received far fewer votes than No Award, which took fifth place. “Opera Vita Aeterna” did not place at all. In fact, 698 ballots refused to even recognize “Opera Vita Aeterna” existed.

Actually, 698 ballots had no preference between “Opera Vita Aeterna” and No Award, which means virtually the opposite of what  Mr. Landon is suggesting. All that meant was that having voted for their preferred finalist(s), the voters didn’t bother ranking the rest of them. One could also say, with equal justification, that 234 ballots refused to even recognize that the winner, “Lady Astronaut of Mars”, existed.

But more importantly, Vox Day was not the originator of the Sad Puppy Slate. Vox Day was not involved in any way with the Sad Puppy Slate; he was not even registered to vote for it. Vox Day was also not the originator of the Sad Puppy 2 Slate last year. Vox Day was not involved in any way with the Sad Puppy 2 Slate, except in that one of his works appeared on it. That’s like saying Jim Butcher is the originator of the Rabid Puppy Slate. It is true, however, that Vox Day is involved with the Sad Puppy 3 Slate and is the originator of the Rabid Puppy Slate.

Mr. Landon, who now writes for Tor.com, might be forgiven for his ignorantly erroneous ways were it not for that it appears to be his obvious ideological bias that is leading him to assert things that simply are not true. Consider the fine line he tries to invent here:

Where Vox Day and Larry Correia intentionally sabotaged the process, authors like Seanan McGuire are finding themselves disproportionately represented due to a consistently adoring fan base. Without the Sad Puppy Slate, McGuire would have been nominated in Best Novel, Best Novella, and Best Novellete. She appears three times on the Best Novella longlist, three times on the Best Novelette long list, once on the Best Short Story longlist, once on the Best Related Work longlist, and once on the Best Fancast longlist. Many of these nominations totals are around 30 ballots. I do not believe McGuire has in any way intentionally manipulated the ballot, but the mere fact that she has fans willing to nominate everything she publishes in a given year, and the fact she’s rather prolific, has created a glaring issue. There simply aren’t enough ballots cast in the nominating process to weed out the obsessive fan. Whether it’s Vox Day and his crazy or Seanan McGuire and her charisma, the Hugo nomination process is flawed.

So, we’re supposed to believe that Seanan McGuire putting herself on the Hugo  longlist nine times in one year is totally unintentional and indicative of nothing more than her charisma, but Larry Correia putting himself on the longlist once in a single category somehow means that Vox Day intentionally sabotaged the process? Now THAT is seriously crazy. It hurts the mind to even try to trace back how much doublethink is required to produce that conclusion.

But it does raise one question. Where did Seanan McGuire learn this little trick of charismatically inspiring such consistent adoration? Well, you’re not going to believe this, but it brings us right back to McRapey! Consider these nominations from the 2009 Hugo longlist:

54 Best Novel, 09 Best Novella, 24 Short Story, 23 Fan Writer, 31 Related Work, 45 Drama Long

We’re supposed to believe that this is all just the consequence of “a consistently adoring fan base”, right? Unfortunately, there is one little problem with that explanation. Those six appearances on the longlist occurred back when Scalzi had 308,745 pageviews per month. How very strange, then, that his appearances on the longlist abruptly dropped to the following in 2012 despite his site traffic more than tripling in the interval, even hitting its all-time monthly peak at 1,027,644 that year. From the 2012 Hugo longlist.

79 Novella

And keep in mind that we are supposed to believe that all of these Scalzi ballots from 2009 and 2012, none of which amounts to even half of the 183 nominating ballots cast for Larry Correia last year, are somehow more valid or more genuinely indicative of the former’s popularity than the latter’s. And yet, even the 69 ballots cast for me (which, by the way, shows far less SP2 voting in lockstep than the Scalzi-Stross alliance in 2008), were at least 15 more than were cast for Scalzi in any of the six categories in 2009.

The only conclusion we can reach from all this is that the SJWs don’t believe your votes are valid, simply because you are casting them for the evil people. Don’t ever forget that. But you need not fear, because you have a great defense attorney speaking out on your behalf, namely, Mr. John Scalzi, Esq.

I see that Seanan McGuire is getting a fair ration of crap from various quarters because she’s on the ballot a remarkable and record-setting five times, including in the Best Novel category, and twice in Novelette. What I’m seeing heavily implies that McGuire’s on the list because she has an apparently mystical ability to drive hordes of fans to nominate her for everything no matter what. Hey, I have an alternate theory, which goes a little something like this: Seanan McGuire is a very talented writer! Who writes things that people like! Including the people who nominate for the Hugos! Seems the simpler explanation, all things considered.

Let’s say it again: change the Hugos by nominating, voting and participating, or (much more slowly and far less reliably) actively making your case to the people who are nominating, voting and participating. As a pro tip, explicitly or implicitly disparaging their intelligence, taste or standing to make choices when you try to do that is unlikely to persuade them to decide anything other than that you’re probably an asshole.
– John Scalzi, April 5, 2013

“Change the Hugos by nominating!” That is a proper battle cry. One can hardly fault Mr. Correia for taking to heart the advice of such a distinguished and oft-nominated science fiction luminary. Let’s say it again indeed.