#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
The Right Wing News releases its annual list of the 100 most popular Conservative sites:
1) Fox News: 158
2) Wall Street Journal: 214
3) The Drudge Report: 437
4) The Blaze: 565
5) New York Post: 889
6) Breitbart: 1,344
7) Newsmax: 1,729
8) WorldNetDaily: 2,103
9) Independent Journal Review 2,147
10) The Daily Caller: 2,24052) Vox Day: 27,594
I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as a conservative, but then, I wouldn’t describe Fox News as conservative either.
Jim Hines tries to play the usual progressive card:
So what about Vox Day making the ballot for Best Novelette? My opinion of the man isn’t exactly a secret. If he got on the ballot for writing an awesome story, great. But unlike Correia, I’ve seen very few people trying to defend Day as a good author. He did post his novelette online for potential voters, so I downloaded it and started reading. I can honestly say that even if I knew nothing about the author as a person, I would have tossed this into the rejection pile after the first couple of pages.
And perhaps he truly would have. Every editor is entitled to his own opinion. But would he have been wise to do so? After all, nearly 30 publishers passed on Harry Potter. Hines is doing little more than striking a pose here that assumes he is a legitimate SF/F writer and I am not. (It’s a little amusing that he talks about a rejection pile when I am an editor and he is not.) In any case, perhaps we can consider the objective metrics available to the public and use them to compare two of my most recently published fantasy works to his two most recently published fantasy works:
(1) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,054 Paid in Kindle Store
4.4 out of 5 stars (60)
(2) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #148,509 Paid in Kindle Store
4.4 out of 5 stars (36)
(3) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #40,425 Paid in Kindle Store
4.2 out of 5 stars (142)
(4) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #101,358 Paid in Kindle Store
4.3 out of 5 stars (143)
One would assume that the more legitimate author would have higher ratings from the general public and sell more books, right? Two of these books were published by Jim Hines in 2013. Two of these books were published by me in December 2012 and 2013. Without checking Amazon, can you tell which two are my books and which two are McCreepy’s? And since his work was of sufficient quality to win the 2012 Hugo for Best Fan Writer, how can he possibly pretend, given the objective evidence, that my work is of insufficient quality to win the 2014 Hugo for Best Novelette?
(Cue the usual suspects and their fake reviews. Of late, a few Scalzi fans have been posing as long-time Kratman fans, then giving BIG BOYS DON’T CRY fake one-star reviews. Which, by the way, was published in 2014, has 4.3 out of 5 stars (61), and ranks #18,001 Paid in Kindle Store.)
As for seeing very few people trying to defend me as a good author, it is obvious that Hines neither reads the Amazon reviews for my books nor Making Light, despite having Abi Sutherland’s talking points down pat. I find it somewhat incredible to observe how the SF/F pinkshirts never cease their spin nor their attempts to control the narrative, no matter how often reality insists on surfacing to expose their pretensions.
ANSWER: VD (1) and (3), JH (2) and (4).
On Zerohedge, a Russian academic explains the roots of the conflict in Ukraine in terms of the long term objectives of the rival global elites:
Let’s look at the situation in and around Ukraine in a wider, global context, considering the role which the West collectively, by their various games, has assigned to Ukraine.
- Firstly – the battle against Russia.
- secondly – the clash with China, and
- thirdly – concerning the unleashing of war in the Middle East.
Let me repeat, By no means is it all groups in the West who want to unleash war in the Middle East. But quite a few of them are interested in it. Likewise Saudi Arabia and Israel are interested, for a whole series of reasons. And these three vectors converge in Ukraine – all three plans unite into one.
That is, the global geo-economic and geo-political re-distribution of assets in the course of the global economic crisis.
The “Yellowstone Threat”Of course, there is this Yellowstone threat – I mean the super-volcano. That could completely change the rules of play at any time. The super-volcano could solve for the Western elite the very problems which they’ve been trying to solve for the last 50-60 years and have been unable to. An eruption of the volcano could solve those problems. But that’s another subject.
The origin of the current situation
Let’s look at how the situation came about that preceded the current situation, namely: It’s 1991. The USSR has collapsed. After 10 years of robbery the Americans are wondering “should we go for more?” Evidently they decided not to, as it would have fallen to the Chinese. Besides, Yeltsin’s team seemed to be running the country into the ground. Then suddenly in 2001 came the attacks in New York. The Americans’ political vector shifted to the Middle East. They became occupied with the Middle East. i.e. they got distracted from the goals.
Then we had Iraq, Afghanistan. During this time the Russian Federation got room to breathe, rise onto its feet again. Then there was the war of 08.08.08, which showed the West they had somewhat let go of Russia.
After that the Medvedev episode, when we didn’t react on Libya. Evidently, 08.08.08, Putin’s coming to power, and our position on Syria, in spite of the West’s pressure, changed the approach toward Russia of those who brought Obama to power.
Two points to note:
- Obama established his military doctrine during his address to the Australian parliament on 17 Nov 2011, and
- And a new military doctrine of the US, established by Obama on 05 Jan 2012.
In the new doctrine of 05 Jan 2012 is established that the US can wage one war and some other indirect actions in other parts of the world. Previously it said two wars – meaning they’re not up to that any more. More interesting statements made by Obama in the Australian parliament 17 Nov 2011: This was said in Obama’s vague style. But if we call a spade a spade, it means:
Firstly: in this doctrine: political-economic encirclement of China. Control over the flow of energy into China. That’s why we have seen their naval power being moved to the straits between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. This is why land-based energy supply routes are so important for China. Sea-based supply routes can be easily interrupted by the Americans.
Secondly: applying pressure on the Russian Federation, as a partner of China, and as a country beginning to rise up.
Really, Obama didn’t say anything new here.
There’s an organization Stratfor -(Strategic Forecasting Inc), a kind of private CIA. Their founder and chairman, George Friedman, said openly that the primary task of the United States is the destabilization of Eurasia, in order that there could never be a state or group of states able to challenge the US.
I find the point about Yellowstone to be intriguing, especially considering the source. What are “the very problems which they’ve been trying to solve for the last 50-60 years and have been unable to?” I imagine they are the limitations imposed by the remnants of the US Constitutional system and the fact that the traditional American population is armed and therefore must be deceived and persuaded and ruled indirectly rather than directly by dictate.
If you find it hard to understand why rich and intelligent men not only seek wars, but work very diligently to start them, you have to stop thinking of war as intrinsically bad and see it as a tool. It is like dynamite; if you want to move large quantities of earth, you are going to need a powerful destructive force.
Large-scale wars happen when multiple parties reach the conclusion that the only way they can obtain their objectives is through a war involving other parties that increase their leverage. World War I happened mostly because French politician Raymond Poincaré was obsessed with recovering Alsace-Lorraine, the Russians sought to regain their position on the Black Sea they had lost in the Crimean War, and the Serbs sought to reclaim Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Austro-Hungarian empire. As it happened, both the French and the Russians were successful in their objectives; despite being the ones to set the match for the winning side, the Serbs ended up losing everything.
A basic concept of economics explains why the various evils of the equalitarians can never be conquered and serves as the logical basis for demonstrating that there is nothing moral about political correctness.
A positional good is a good that people acquire to signalise where
they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself
apart from others. Positional goods therefore have a peculiar property:
the utility their consumers derive from them is inversely related to
the number of people who can access them.Positionality is not a property of the good itself, it is a matter of
the consumer’s motivations. I may buy an exquisite variety of wine
because I genuinely enjoy the taste, or acquire a degree from a
reputable university because I genuinely appreciate what that university
has to offer. But my motivation could also be to set myself apart from
others, to present myself as more sophisticated or smarter. From merely
observing that I consume the product, you could not tell my motivation.
But you could tell it by observing how I respond once other people start
drinking the same wine, or attending the same university….PC-brigadiers behave exactly like owners of a positional good who panic because wider availability of that good threatens their social status. The PC brigade has been highly successful in creating new social taboos, but their success is their very problem. Moral superiority is a prime example of a positional good, because we cannot all be morally superior to each other. Once you have successfully exorcised a word or an opinion, how do you differentiate yourself from others now? You need new things to be outraged about, new ways of asserting your imagined moral superiority.
You can do that by insisting that the no real progress has been made, that your issue is as real as ever, and just manifests itself in more subtle ways. Many people may imitate your rhetoric, but they do not really mean it, they are faking it, they are poseurs. You can also hugely inflate the definition of an existing offense. Or you can move on to discover new things to label ‘offensive’, new victim groups, new patterns of dominance and oppression.
This is why SFWA overreacted so conspicuously and dramatically to my factual statements about a token writer whose main role in the organization was totemic. Their fainting fits and outrage were conspicuous consumption, designed to elevate their status within the group.
The main reason that this crowd was so deeply offended by my nomination was because it cheapens their painstakingly acquired status. Here they are, brandishing their expensive, designer outrage purses, when suddenly the Hugo voters hand them the equivalent of a notice that they’ve bought nothing but a cheap knockoff that anyone can pick up for nothing.
And this is why my usual critics, such as Jim Hines and John Scalzi, were wise to support my right to be on the ballot despite the fact that we know they could not care less about the rules are. They have already learned, (even if they haven’t publicly admitted it yet), that they simply can’t keep up with the conspicuous consumption of the more extreme elements of the PC brigade. Eventually, they will be shaken off by their putative allies, because without shaking them off, the extremists cannot maintain their conspicuous pose of moral superiority.
Which further goes to prove that their professed moral superiority is only a pose and there is nothing moral about PC morality at all. To be meaningful and coherent, to be a moral standard, morality must be universal and objective. And obviously, a dynamic morality defined by the most conspicuous consumers for the purposes of their own distinction can never be either.
Chris KluweVerified account @ChrisWarcraft
4:27 PM – 29 Apr 2014
“I’m talking, no one takes his money, sells him anything – nothing. Let’s see how racist he is when he can’t buy food.”
Apparently Zyklon B showers aren’t enough for him, as Sparklepunter openly seeks to shun and starve the Jew.
We see it in history and we see it in real-time. It’s not an exaggeration. Leftists literally want to kill those who possess undesirable opinions, and they never stop and think for a moment of the possibility that the consequences might run the other way. And yet, we can see that by their own reckoning, the worst IMAGINED excesses of the medieval Catholic Church of which they so often complain are more than justified.
Since Chris Kluwe is an anti-semite openly advocating the starving of Jews, summoning those ghastly images of emaciated men and women at Dachau and Auschwitz, I think it is obvious that the NFL commissioner has no choice but to impose a lifetime ban from the NFL on him.
L. Jagi Lamplighter is not an SFWA member, but as a fantasy author published by Tor Books, she is eligible for membership. In a recent post, she explains why she will not be joining the organization:
If a professional writing organization decides to uphold any social agenda whatsoever, they turn their back on the members of their organization that do not support that particular agenda.
Worse—this is speculative fiction—they turn their back on those who merely wish to speculate about what happens if you don’t support that agenda.
In other words, by dabbling in politics—even something as simple as deciding that a half-clad girl is sexist—they stop supporting science fiction.
So, it is with great sadness that I must announce that I shall not be applying for membership in this group that I have so long loved.
And in other SF-related news, the debate over the politicization of science fiction has now made the Washington Post, which follows the lead of a prominent liberal SF writer in supporting Larry Correia’s core position:
On the merits of this particular controversy, I largely agree with prominent liberal science fiction writer (and former Hugo winner) John Scalzi: both left and right-wing SF writers can legitimately try to influence their fans to nominate them for the Hugo, and both should be judged on the merits rather than on their political ideologies.
My position, on the other hand, is that since the editors and writers of Tor Books, (which has won more Hugo Awards than any other publisher), have openly declared they do not judge the nominated works on their merits, no one else has any obligation to do so either. The rules are clear, so let’s play by them.
You may wish to reconsider your fast food options in light of this decision by the Subway chain in the UK and Ireland to submit to Sharia:
Around 200 branches of Subway have cut ham and bacon from their menus, serving halal meat in response to calls from their Muslim customers. The sandwich chain said ‘following a strong demand from our Muslim customers’, 185 stores in the UK and Ireland have introduced the meat, which is prepared under strict Islamic rules.
I don’t know about you, but no restaurant or restaurant chain that bans ham and bacon is one that I am willing to support with my business. The clash of civilizations proceeds apace, and it is becoming every more apparent that the secular West is not the strong horse.
As I mentioned when asked yesterday, I neither follow nor care about the NBA. The extent of my knowledge of the league comes from a single Bill Simmons book, and I find it somewhat amusing to see the legions of the politically correct hot in angry pursuit of a rich Jewish lawyer who was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in 2009. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that we’re not seeing references to the Holocaust yet; the Times of Israel was relatively restrained in its headline: “Jewish owner of NBA team under fire over racist remarks”.
But I do find it interesting to see how the NBA and the media are very much following the program described in yesterday’s post, On Surviving a Witchhunt. Let’s compare:
That being said, after reading about the brouhaha, it seems most likely to me that all of this is nothing more than a league-approved coup d’etat attempt by Magic Johnson and the investors behind him. In the present hypersensitive PC environment, it’s not terribly difficult to whistle up a witch hunt in pursuit of your personal objectives. Steve Sailer connects the dots.
Listening closely to the presumably illegally made tapes suggests that the mistress was setting the LA Clippers owner up — she’s the one egging on the racial angle over her photos cuddling with Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp of the Dodgers. Originally, I assumed her minor league lawyer was her mastermind, but the news that Magic and his mysterious Guggenheim Partners backers want control of Sterling’s NBA franchise suggests that there’s a reasonable chance that this whole set-up originated with somebody more high-powered than her Woodland Hills attorney. (This lawyer is so obscure that his office is on Burbank Blvd. rather than on Ventura Blvd.)
Former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Magic Johnson was the public frontman for the secretive Guggenheim Partners in paying an outlandish $2 billion to Boston leveraged parking lot robber baron Frank McCourt for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. And now, what do you know, Magic and the Guggenheim Partners are willing to take the Los Angeles Clippers off Donald Sterling’s hands and add it to their nascent Los Angeles sports empire.
In contrast, the new Guggenheim Partners firm is very high-powered. In
fact, the SEC has been trying for a year to figure out if GP is so
high-powered that its Los Angeles sports franchise acquisitions are done
in illegal collaboration with … well, I won’t mention his name yet,
but it’s a smack-yourself-in-the-forehead name out of the history books
of Los Angeles and finance.
That may or may not be the case. But I suspect it would sway public opinion, to some extent, if it were discovered that Miss Stiviano was a honey trap being paid to unearth an excuse that would allow the NBA to turn a franchise in a major media market over to the Guggenheim Partners and Michael Milken.
Or, alternatively, perhaps this is just his punishment for finally managing to show up Showtime in Los Angeles.
This is vastly amusing. John Scalzi has lobbied for Hugos for years,
on behalf of himself and others. This is the second year of Sad Puppies.
Charles Stross has openly engaged in what he calls “Shameless Hugo
nomination touting” and the Toad of Tor has publicly declared that
science fiction awards are nothing but “a giant signal saying ‘this is
what we love, this is what we value'”. Dozens of pinkshirts have primly announced that they don’t intend to read anything by anyone of whom they disapprove.
And David Gerrold somehow
concludes that the politicization of science fiction is my fault?
Coming back to the starting point of the column — if we accept that
science fiction awards should not be politicized, then the columnist is
blaming the wrong people. He should start by blaming Vox Day the guy who politicized this year’s process in the first place.
Either Gerrold has lost it or I have powers far beyond my ken. For example, here is a Hugo-related post from 2010 that lists “Tor.com’s Hugo Award-eligible works” and pushes Tor novels, editors, and artists.
4. Irene Wednesday March 10, 2010 12:27pm EST
Hi Spera,This post was meant to be specific to the works that Tor.com has published.
But that doesn’t mean would love for you to consider Tor novels, editors, and artists. You can check out the Tor corporate site here.
At Alpha Game, it is observed that appears women in the military are closing the all-important suicide gap between male and female soldiers.
Meanwhile, at Castalia House, Anson contemplates the difference between “fluff” and “poorly done” in a review of John Ringo:
If a novel is poorly done, it doesn’t much matter what it attempts to do: it is a failure. (Although the topic of what makes a book either a success or a failure is a complicated one; that’s a topic I hope to dig into over time as these reviews continue).
Today, though, I want to speak about serious vs fluff. Lord of the Rings is serious. The Sword of Shana is fluff (it is also poorly done , but that’s not relevant). What makes LOTR serious while SOS (and, yes, someone please send help ASAP) is fluff? Intent, complexity, characterization, congruence between aim of the novel, tone of the language, originality of the world, nuance of the characters, depth of the moral code, etc.
And Daniel cites Philip K. Dick’s preferred method of future-scrying:
[B]ecause the mystical experience of writing to anticipate the future will most certainly be inaccurate, one is more likely to anticipate the future by looking to the past…and scrambling it.