Category: Uncategorized

The players’ union

I’m not a big fan of unions, but there is no question that college football players have a much better claim to be permitted to unionize than policemen and federal employees.

In a ruling that could revolutionize college athletics, a federal agency ruled Wednesday that college football players at Northwestern University can unionize. The decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board means it agrees football players at the Big Ten school qualify as employees under federal law and therefore can create the nation’s first college athlete’s union….

CAPA attorneys argued that college football is, for all practical
purposes, a commercial enterprise that relies on players’ labor to
generate billions of dollars in profits. That, they contend, makes the
relationship of schools to players one of employers to employees.

It’s hard, if not impossible, to argue with that. The fact that the employer is a university doesn’t mean that the janitors and professors are not employees, and they generate considerably less income than the football players do.

These young men are actually putting their bodies on the line, and they deserve the right to a significant slice of the income their activities are producing.

Madness and the Unreality Principle

John C. Wright presents a brilliant explication of the Left and their relentless denial of observable reality with his Unified Field Theory of Madness:

The Leftist has only two choices here: accept reality, in which case he is no longer a Leftist, or deny reality, in which case his loyalty to the ideals of Leftism becomes rarefied and refined, and he become of their Cathari, the Pure Ones, an arhat of enlightenment.

I spoke above of the Unreality Principle. Here is where it comes into play. The Unreality Principle is the moral imperative to ignore and deny reality at all costs, and remain loyal and faithful to the make-believe illusion-choked funhouse-mirror Wonderland of Liberal Bullshit. You must bathe in the bullshit, eat the bullshit, drink the bullshit, and stuff the bullshit up your nose as far as far can be, because from now own the offal will be feast and wine to you, and will be your baptism and your oxygen. It will feed and sustain you.

However, the Unreality Principle demands a cost. First, there is something like a daily maintenance cost: you must attend closely to whatever the social cues are telling you, and believe them and not your lying eyes….

The Leftists are people who are stupider than average, less moral and
upright and decent than average, who at once combine the worst features
of a self-deceived fool and a self-deceiving conniving con-man. The only
thing that saves them from the constant pain of the dentist drill of
their conscience, the constant clamor of their wretched self-esteem
telling them that they do not deserve to live, the only thing, indeed,
keeping them alive, is their false and inflated sense of sanctimony.
Each one is a Judas, who has betrayed all he hold dear. The only reason
why he does not hang himself from the nearest redbud tree is because he
adopts the numbing hypocrisy of the Pharisee.

There is no greater high than to fly on the drug of smug moral
superiority. You may look down your nose at all fashion of men greater
than you in every other way, but if they are evil and you are righteous,
the savory odor of your righteousness in your own nostrils is finer
than myrrh. It is more than wine which mortals drink; it is nectar of
the gods.

In case you were wondering where our modern-day Chesterton was, well, John C. Wright is it. It is a little frustrating to be publishing his excellent book of essays, the forthcoming TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN, because not a week goes by that he doesn’t produce another new essay that fairly screams for inclusion in it.

Needless to say, there will be a sequel if Mr. Wright is so inclined.

And if you haven’t read his GOLDEN AGE trilogy yet, you simply must. It is more than excellent, it is inspiring. Consider this quote from THE GOLDEN TRANSCENDANCE, which I am currently reading:

“[E]very intelligent entity, human or machine, requires justification to undertake the strenuous effort of continued existence. For entities whose acts conform to the dictates of morality, this process is automatic, and their lives are joyous. Entities whose acts do not conform to moral law must adopt some degree of mental dishonesty to erect barriers to their own understanding, creating rationalization to elude self-condemnation and misery. The strategy of rationalization adopted by a dishonest mind falls into predictable patterns.”

Note that this isn’t exposition or preaching, but a concept that is seamlessly integrated into the plot in order to explain the potential of mere human minds to correctly anticipate the thinking of superhuman, supersmart machine intelligences.

Ebony and ivory

Dwelling together in what would appear to be less than entirely perfect harmony:

The other night we reported how a mob of 200 teens went on a rampage in downtown Louisville, Kentucky last Saturday night, assaulting people and mob-robbing stores. There was surveillance footage from a store that was mob-robbed that showed the teens to be black – a detail left out in the reporting of the story.

One of the women attacked was reported to be in her car with her children in the backseat. She has come forward to explain what really happened and it’s a situation none of us would want to find ourselves in, especially with 5 children in the car:

    WDRB – It was around 8 p.m. Saturday when Viola Loeffler says she and her family were attacked at the intersection at First and Liberty.

    “Right before we got to the stoplight, we noticed about 50 to 100 teens coming to the middle of the street. It was a one-way street so we couldn’t go any further. All of a sudden, one of them throws a garbage can on our car,” said Loeffler.

    Loeffler says after that, the situation quickly escalated.

    Her boyfriend, Ron Carter, was in the driver’s seat and stopped the car to see what was going on. They say when he got out, the teens moved in on him.

    “All of a sudden, I’m getting attacked,” Carter told WDRB.

    Meanwhile, Loeffler and her five children were still inside the car.

    “At that point , I jump in the driver’s seat. I hear them throwing rocks at my car. The rocks were hitting the kids inside of the car,” said Loeffler.

It would appear that it is not only European-Americans who are becoming increasingly disinclined to suffer the joys of vibrancy, as seen in this predominantly African community:

Detroit homeowners have had enough. Police are too slow, and criminals are relentless. Since Feb. 22, homeowners have fatally shot six would-be intruders. The latest came at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday when a man shot and killed two men who were tying to break into his home on the 14800 block of Dexter, police said. So far this year, Detroit has recorded at least 10 justifiable homicides, compared to 15 in all of 2013.

The law is clear, as is the police disinclination to endanger themselves or attract criticism by getting involved. This presents the non-vibrant individual with three options. One is to take the Derbyshire approach and simply avoid public gatherings of Vibrant Americans. The second is the Detroit approach. Mind your own business, be prepared, and shoot to kill without hesitation if attacked in any way. And the third is the SWPL approach. Pretend that it is 1950 and that everyone is the same except for their skin color, then express complete shock and dismay when you or your children are attacked by rampaging vibrants.

UPDATE Fox has a clip of the Vibrant TV in Louisville.

The Sad Puppy Hugo Slate

Larry Correia recommends the following slate to the registered Hugo voters:

Best Novel

Warbound, the Grimnoir Chronicles – Larry Correia – Baen

A Few Good Men – Sarah Hoyt – Baen

Novella

“The Butcher of Khardov” – Dan Wells – Skull Island Expeditions

“The Chaplain’s Legacy” – Brad Torgersen – Analog

Novellete

“The Exchange Officers” – Brad Torgersen – Analog

“Opera Vita Aeterna” – Vox Day – The Last Witchking

Best Fanzine

Elitist Book Reviews – Steve Diamond

Best Editor Long Form

Toni Weisskopf

Best Editor Short Form

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Campbell Award

Marko Kloos

Frank Chadwick

It should be interesting to see how this all turns out. But after John Scalzi – how entirely unsurprising – laid the groundwork for the open politicization of the Hugo Award, it was inevitable that what had always been done quietly behind closed doors would come out in the open.

In addition to the Sad Puppy slate I am adding the following works:

Best Short Story
Port Call – Michael Z. Williamson – Baen
The Krumhorn and Misericorde – Dave Freer – Baen
Dog’s Body – Sarah A. Hoyt – Baen
Failsafe – Karen Bovenmyer – Iron Dragon Books

Best Related Work
Writing Down the Dragon – Tom Simon – Bondwine Books
On Training for War – Tom Kratman – Baen
A Terrible Thing to Lose:Zombie Science and Science Fiction in John Ringo’s
Under a Graveyard Sky – Tedd Roberts – Baen

Best Professional Artist
Kirk DouPonce

That’s not the only option

Developing political policy for a white minority populace:

For the first time in American history, non-whites will make up half or more of the next generation, likely pushing Washington toward a bigger government — and the GOP better tone down their anti-government rhetoric if they want to win them, according to a top polling outfit.

At a briefing for congressional aides hosted by the moderate Republican Ripon Society, Pew Research Vice President Michael Dimock said that the trend among younger Americans is support for government programs and acceptance of Democratic Party policies.

“Their tendency is more liberal, their tendency is bigger government,” he said of so-called “millennials” born between 1979 and 1995. They will likely set the trend for the still-unnamed next generation.

“This is a generation that is 41 percent non-white; the generation behind it is likely to be close to 50 if not more than 50 percent non-white, and the anti-government kind of tone is one that really doesn’t resonate with that non-white sector in particular,” said Dimock at the Ripon retreat.
Sign Up for the Paul Bedard newsletter!

His advice to the GOP: “Try to take as much of the anti-government rhetoric out.”

There is, of course, another obvious option. Try to remove the non-white population from the electorate. Given that it has already been observed how whites are beginning to abandon the Democratic Party, and given what we know about the way in which historical multi-ethnic societies have usually ended, Occam’s Razor tends to point towards wide-scale disenfranschisement, if not ethnic cleansing, throughout the West.

After all, the EU has already disenfranchised entire nations. A few population sub-groups would be a moderate policy by comparison.

If you find these prospects to be impossible, ask yourself this question: Is the prospect of ethnic cleansing in the USA more or less unthinkable than state-imposed homosexual “marriage” was a mere two decades ago?

Pro-vaccine dishonesty

If you are an advocate of mass vaccination who wonders why more and more people simply don’t trust those who are pushing vaccines on everyone, these two quotes from a vaccine debate on Reason should suffice to illustrate why:

PRO: A 2007 article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association compared the annual average number of cases and
resulting deaths of various diseases before the advent of vaccines
to those occurring in 2006. Before an effective diphtheria vaccine
was developed in the 1930s, for example, the disease infected about
21,000 people in the United States each year, killing 1,800. By
2006 both numbers were zero. Polio, too, went from deadly (16,000
cases, 1,900 deaths) to non-existent after vaccines were rolled out
in the 1950s and 1960s. Chickenpox used to infect 4 million kids a
year, hospitalize 11,000, and kill 105; within a decade of a
vaccine being rolled out in the mid-1990s, infections had dropped
to 600,000, resulting in 1,276 hospitalizations and 19 deaths.
Similar dramatic results can be found with whooping cough, measles,
rubella, and more.

CON: Judging from what one reads and hears in the popular media, it is easy to conclude that the science is settled, that the benefits of each vaccine clearly outweigh the risks, and that vaccinations have played the critical role in the decline of deaths due to infectious diseases such as measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria, all of which claimed many lives in the past.

However even a cursory look at the available data quickly reveals that the mortality from almost all infectious disease was in steep decline well before the introduction of vaccination or antibiotics. Diphtheria mortality had fallen 60 percent by the time vaccination was introduced in the 1920s, deaths from pertussis/whooping cough had declined by 98 percent before vaccination was introduced in the late 1940s, measles mortality had dropped 98 percent from its peak in the U.S. by the time measles inoculation was introduced in 1963-and by an impressive 99.96 percent in England when measles vaccination was introduced in 1968. In 1960 there were 380 deaths from measles among a U.S. population of 180,671,000, a rate of 0.24 deaths per 100,000.

The takeaway here is that vaccination played a very minor role in the steep decline in mortality due to infectious disease during the late 19th century and early to mid- 20th century. Improved living standards, better nutrition, sanitary sewage disposal, clean water, and less crowded living conditions all played crucial roles.

Again and again and again, we see the pro-vaccine side playing very fast and loose with the truth. They intentionally try to claim statistical benefits for mass vaccination that cannot possibly be attributed to it, even as the pharmaceutical companies disavow any responsibility for the products that they are lobbying to have legally imposed upon children who cannot possibly consent to having foreign substances injected into their bodies.

The vaccine lobby is a corrupt big government abomination that would vaccinate for oxygen if it could get away with it and no one who describes himself as a libertarian or even a conservative should support it in any way, shape, or form, regardless of his belief in the efficacy of vaccination. There is absolutely no libertarian case for mandatory vaccination and anyone who claims there is identifies himself as an ideological fraud.

May I suggest crying Holocaust?

Failing that, I’m sure this weakening support is nothing that a few judicious accusations of anti-semitism wouldn’t cure:

Support for Israel is weakening among evangelical Christians, prompting a new struggle for the hearts and minds of younger members of America’s largest pro-Israel demographic group. While hard numbers are not available, evangelical leaders on both sides of the divide on Israel agree that members of the millennial generation do not share their parents’ passion for the Jewish state; many are seeking some form of evenhandedness when approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“What is happening is that the hard line of Christian Zionists was not successfully passed forward to the next generation, because it was based on theological themes that are now being questioned by younger evangelicals,” said David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta.

I find it rather amusing that after decades of relentless Jewish attacks on evangelical Christianity, Jews are suddenly alarmed to discover that evangelical Christians are no longer reliably in their corner. How is this a surprise to anyone? They should be relieved that they haven’t managed to convert evangelicals into open enemies despite their best efforts.

If Ha’aretz is worried now, perhaps they should have a look at Europe, where the post-Christians are openly anti-Israel. After coming to America, many Jewish immigrants foolishly elected to attack the primary factor that prompted America to give them refuge. Ah well, no worries, there is always China. Are we not reliably informed of the tremendous respect and affection the Han have for the Jewish people?

Upon reading the end of the article, it appears it is impossible to parody at least one of these organizations:

The group is also launching speaking tours on campuses, and intends to invest in videos and social media activity that will monitor Christian influencers and “confront them when they cross the line.”

Now that’s going to work a treat. Nothing inspires love and affection like monitoring and confronting people.

The rogue agency

The NSA and CIA don’t answer to Congress:

In 2007, reporter Charles Davis asked then-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee – Jay Rockefeller – about clandestine U.S. operations against a foreign government.

DAVIS: Reports quote administration officials as saying this is going on and it’s being done in a way to avoid oversight of the Intelligence Committee. Is there any way—

ROCKEFELLER: They’ll go to any lengths to do that, as we’ve seen in the last two days [during hearings on FISA].

DAVIS: Is there anything you could do in your position as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee to find answers about this, if it is in fact going on?

ROCKEFELLER: Don’t you understand the way Intelligence works? Do you think that because I’m Chairman of the Intelligence Committee that I just say I want it, and they give it to me? They control it. All of it. ALL of it. ALL THE TIME. I only get –  and my committee only gets –  what they WANT to give me.

This is shocking … but not new. The NSA was created in secret … and Congress wasn’t even notified.

 This description of Congress’s feeble attempts at oversight is almost amusing:

Amash
said that intelligence officials are often evasive during classified
briefings and reveal little new information unless directly pressed.

“You don’t have any idea what kind of things are going on,” Amash said. “So
you have to start just spitting off random questions. Does the
government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear?
Does the government have a cyborg army? If you don’t know what kind of
things the government might have, you just have to guess and it becomes a
totally ridiculous game of twenty questions.“

I have to admit, I am genuinely curious about this talking bear? Does anyone know if the government’s ownership of it was officially denied?

Too religious, too difficult

This article on Gene Wolfe summarizes the current problem of traditional SF/F publishing. If the man who is widely considered to be among the greatest living SF writers could not get published today, then it should be entirely apparent that there is a serious problem in the industry:

Lots of novel readers—from the highest brow to the lowest—nod politely when the science-fiction writer Gene Wolfe is mentioned. But even among science-fiction fans, one gets the sense that they’re saying, “Yes, yes, we know how good he is, but we’d rather talk about such bestselling authors as Neil Gaiman or Robert Jordan, Laurel Hamilton or Neal Stephenson.” As Glenn Reynolds, the inveterate science-fiction enthusiast and popular blogger of Instapundit.com, recently wrote, “Gene Wolfe is a superb writer, but I’m not crazy about his storytelling.” I recently asked a veteran New York editor whether Wolfe could find a publisher today if he were just coming along as a young writer. “Probably not,” she admitted. His writing is too religious, too difficult, and too strange.

I think one could quite reasonably question if JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, or HP Lovecraft could get published today. Tolkien might well be accounted too difficult, Lovecraft too strange, and Lewis is more openly religious than Wolfe. It’s fascinating, too, to note that Wolfe appears to have anticipated my own argument that the philosophical problem of evil and suffering is not a problem for Christianity.

It is a familiar charge of modern atheism that the existence of pain argues against the existence of God. “For some time it has seemed to me,” Wolfe insists, “that it would be even easier to maintain the position that pain proves or tends to prove God’s reality.”

Pain necessarily implies pleasure just as shadow implies light and evil implies good. The opposite of pain is not pleasure, but rather insensate nothingness, the gray, unfeeling goo of the no-believers.

Setting the record straight… again

I have to admit that I do not understand how lying about my easily confirmed CV is supposed to serve as a substantive form of criticism.  Do these critics imagine that denying history is a valid and convincing form of rhetoric? I recently mentioned that when critics attempt to dig through my words in search of a disqualifying quote, they tend to forget that I started as a nationally syndicated columnist. In other words, unlike the average person blithely expressing himself on the Internet, I have always been aware that my statements are public and will be carefully examined for critical purposes.

This prompted the following response:

You
mean “World Net Daily? LOL….. You know, they’ll give a column to
anyone with a heartbeat and a willingness to say nasty things about
black people. Not really something to brag about . Especially since your daddy got you the job, he having been on the board of directors.

No, I did not mean WND. This should be obvious, given that WND is not a national syndicate. I began writing a column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1994. This column was picked up for national syndication by Chronicle Features, the syndicate arm of the San Franscisco Chronicle, in 1995. I was the sixth columnist in the Pioneer Press’s 145-year history to be syndicated. The syndicated column was picked up by the Boston Globe and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, among others. My favorite was the North Bay Nugget. During this time I also wrote several major reviews for Computer Gaming World and Electronic Entertainment, such as those on Heretic, Dark Forces, and TIE Fighter.

I did not begin writing for WND until 2001. It soon became the third most-popular weekly column there after Ann Coulter’s and Pat Buchanan’s and was nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate two years later. My father did not get me the job there. Nor can that column even be reasonably be described as a job, as I never took money from WND for any of those columns.

Another critic asserted a non-existent double standard.

The point is that Vox’s double standards is funny. He gets a little
uppity about people taking him out of context, but has no problem doing
the same. It’s funny. Even funnier though is his touting of his “column”
at WND that his daddy insisted he be given. And it was so meaningful.
People still talk about the amazing insights he offered. We know the
import of his views based on the many offers he’s had to recreate this
column elsewhere.

First, I don’t take people out of context. Second, my daddy didn’t insist that I be given a “column” at WND; Joseph Farah asked my father if I would be willing to write a column there. Third, I am contacted by various news sites inquiring if I might be interested in contributing to them on a fairly regular basis. And then there was this pair of individuals who questioned my veracity concerning a pair of game advances that were each worth more than 60+ times an advance that Mr. Scalzi bragged about:

“Ha, there is no way this is true. What was the advance for and when?”

“$2.4 Million in advances in one year. Not bad….RIGHT…….And yet, still no game from Vox Day. You
just have to wonder how far the guy will go to soothe his envy of
another writer who outpaces him so consistently. It’s a little vulgar.”

As it happens, the two advances that year were rather more than $2.4 million combined; there is an article in the Star Tribune which specifically discusses a $1.8 million advance that Fenris Wolf received for one of the two contracts mentioned. I’m not envious of a writer who brags about $20,000 advances. I’m not even envious of one of my European friends who received an advance more than ten times bigger than that on his most recently published novel. I don’t want to receive advances from anyone.

Those are the facts. The publicly available and undeniable facts. It is true that many are not familiar with them as I don’t often discuss these things, and in fact, I would not be inclined to mention them at all if they were not already public information. But they are what they are, as anyone can readily determine for himself. The problem, I suspect, is that when facts get in the way of the favored narrative, these critics prefer to reject those facts instead of modifying their narrative accordingly.