Category: Uncategorized

That’s not funny!

Scientists are gradually beginning to discover that progressives are, as the rest of us have known for decades, essentially humorless:

While Americans choose their next president, let us consider a question more amenable to science: Which candidate’s supporters have a better sense of humor? In strict accordance with experimental protocol, we begin by asking you to rate, on a scale of 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious) the following three attempts at humor:

A) Jake is about to chip onto the green at his local golf course when a long funeral procession passes by. He stops in midswing, doffs his cap, closes his eyes and bows in prayer. His playing companion is deeply impressed. “That’s the most thoughtful and touching thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. Jake replies, “Yeah, well, we were married 35 years.”

B) I think there should be something in science called the “reindeer effect.” I don’t know what it would be, but I think it’d be good to hear someone say, “Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.”

C) If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I’d say Flippy, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong, though. It’s Hambone.

Those were some of the jokes rated by nearly 300 people in Boston in a recent study. (You can rate some of the others at TierneyLab, nytimes.com/tierneylab.) The researchers picked out a variety of jokes — good, bad, conventional, absurdist — to look for differences in reactions between self-described liberals and conservatives.

They expected conservatives to like traditional jokes, like the one about the golfing widower, that reinforce racial and gender stereotypes. And because liberals had previously been reported to be more flexible and open to new ideas, the researchers expected them to get a bigger laugh out of unconventional humor, like Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts” about the reindeer effect and Hambone.

Indeed, the conservatives did rate the traditional golf and marriage jokes as significantly funnier than the liberals did. But they also gave higher ratings to the absurdist “Deep Thoughts.” In fact, they enjoyed all kinds of humor more.

Actually, it’s not quite true to say that progressives are completely humorless. They do enjoy one single joke that they repeat over and over again, in a myriad of variants.

“That X, he sure is stupid, isn’t he!”

It’s such a great joke because it works for everyone. They should have tried these three jokes on the progressives in the study:

A) George Bush is so stupid, he is really dumb!” (hilarity ensues)

B) Ronald Reagan is so stupid, he forgot he was senile! (a wave of laughter)

C) Barack Obama is so stupid, he married a Klingon! (stone cold silence)

What passes for progressive humor isn’t actually humor per se, it is merely group reinforcement behavior.  It’s how the rabbits police the bounds of what is, and what is not, currently deemed acceptable to the warren. And speaking of humor,  there are few things funnier than seeing the expression on the face of a progressive who hasn’t realized that the borders have been moved again tell a “joke” that is based on the previously defined limits, waiting expectantly for his endorphin rush of group approval, and then failing to receive it.

On the Tierney jokes, I’d rate them 7, 1, 4.

Publisher’s Weekly on the indie revolt

It’s not looking good for the traditional publishing industry:

For decades, aspiring authors were taught to bow before the altar of Big Publishing. Writers were taught that publishers alone possessed the wisdom to determine if a writer deserved passage through the pearly gates of author heaven. Writers were taught that publishers had an inalienable right to this power, and that this power was for the common good of readers. They were taught rejection made them stronger. They were taught that without a publisher’s blessing, they were a failed writer.

And it was true. Without a publisher, the writer was doomed to failure, because without a publisher the writer couldn’t reach readers. Six years ago publishers controlled the three essential legs of the professional publishing stool: the printing press, the access to retail distribution, and the knowledge of professional publishing best practices. It was a print-centric world where e-books were but an inconsequential glimmer in the eyes of a few delusional hippies, me included. A writer could self-publish in print, but without retail distribution these writers were destined to fill their garages with unsold printed books, all the while lining the pockets of vanity presses who exploited their dreams of authorship….

Today, the myth of traditional publishing is unraveling. The stigma of traditional publishing is on the rise.

The author community is growing increasingly disenchanted by Big Publishing’s hard line on 25% net e-book royalties, high e-book prices, slow payouts, and insistence on DRM copy protection. The recent news of major publishers touting record e-book-powered earnings only adds insult to authors’ perceived injury.

Authors are also disappointed by Big Publishing’s misguided foray into vanity publishing with Pearson/Penguin’s 2012 acquisition of Author Solutions, a company known for selling over-priced publishing packages to unsuspecting writers. Multiple publishers have formed sock puppet imprints powered by ASI: Simon & Schuster’s Archway, Penguin Random House’s Partridge Publishing in India, HarperCollins’ Westbow, Hay House’s Balboa Press, Writer’s Digests’ Abbott Press, and Harlequin’s Dellarte Press. These deals with the devil confirmed the worst fears held by indie authors who already questioned if publishers viewed writers as partners or as chattel.

Now, one could try to dismiss this because it is written by Mark Coker, who is betting big time on the indie publishing revolution with Smashwords. (Full disclosure, five of my books are available there.) But aside from the fact that he is in an ideal position to see what is taking place and sharp enough to have anticipated events, the significant fact is that Publisher’s Weekly obviously sees the writing on the wall.

The publication of this piece indicates that they have no intention of going down with the traditional publishing ship. Now, there is still a need for publishers; having been through all the headaches of getting set up for distribution, finding the right people with whom to work, and so forth, I would estimate that at least two-thirds of the traditionally published will have zero desire to become self-publishers if they can get a fair deal from independent publishers.

But publishers can’t continue to grab up to 93 percent of the revenue any longer. Publishers can’t live on the fat overhead they have traditionally demanded at the expense of the writers who were never presented with the choice between much smaller advances and significantly larger royalties. As Coker writes: “The solution is for publishers to realize that they are service providers to authors.”

That’s exactly what we’re doing at CH. We provide editing, superior covers, multiple foreign language editions within weeks of first publication, a boosted signal, reasonable rights-reversion terms, and the author receives an equal share of the royalties at worst. We know what authors want and need because we share their concerns and our business model is built on partnering with them, not systematically exploiting them.

“So, everybody buckled?”

Asked the Fed. “All right, then, let’s do this thing!”

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citigroup are among the banks that have successfully completed trial runs using their own models to assess risk and capital requirements. The announcement by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday gives those banks clarity on what methods they can use to calculate their capital requirements.

During the trial run, banks had to show they could comply with a more tailored approach to meeting capital requirements for four consecutive calendar quarters before they could officially rely on that method.

The Fed announced that eight bank holding companies, eight national banks, and four state member banks had satisfactory trials, ending a more than five-year limbo period for the largest US banks that had been waiting to hear the results.

In other words, they’ve been getting ready. Now they’re all just about ready. For what, one might wonder?

No house until 36

It’s hard to blame the millenials for living in their parents’ basement when they were suckered into taking out student loans on which they cannot, unlike previous generations, default. Karl Denninger spells out the math:

You mean the $500 a month student loan payment is half of a decent first-time homebuyer payment — or more?

Well, yes.  Never mind that $500 a month x 12 months = $6,000 a year saved toward a down payment, and if you put 20% down (which you should) then four years of that savings would make it possible for you to buy a $120,000 house.

Financing $96,000 @ 5% for 30 years gives you a P&I on that $120,000 house of…. $513.21, or awfully close to that student loan payment.

In other words you forego the ability to buy the house by taking the student loan debt.

And for how long do you forego it?

10 years, plus four more to build the down payment, or 14 years post-graduation.

If you graduate in four years (ha!) you’re 22, so this means you’re not buying a house until you’re 36.

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. The mortgage banks are complaining about the collapse in demand for mortgage debt because indebted graduates and non-graduates can’t afford to take on the debt required to buy a house.

Everything is as my modification of the Austrian Business Cycle predicted. The limits of demand are the limits of CREDIT.

Where science goes wrong

Coming Untrue helpfully provides a primer:

In case you’ve never thought it through, here’s a quick list of where the scientific method can go wrong, and these days, almost invariably does:

The hypothesis can be nonsense, wish fulfillment or fantasy.

  1. The “falsifiable prediction” or predictions may not be falsifiable. How, for instance, could one disprove the existence of God? It’s a classic case of a non-falsifiable prediction.
  2. The experimenter may stack the deck by faking results or discarding those that that don’t agree with his hypothesis.
  3. The experimenter may refuse to discard his theory no matter how much proof accrues against it, or may adopt it without legitimate evidence.
  4. At the peer review stage, the “scientist” may stack the deck by submitting only to those who already agree with his hypothesis and dismissing those who disagree as “deniers”, or refuse to show his results in full or at all in order to allow replication of his experiment.

 You may say, “Those things could never happen”. Except they do, on a regular basis.

It’s very strange that it is those who criticize the misuse and abuse of science that are most often accused of being “anti-science”. It’s like complaining that the person who calls the paramedics when they see someone is injured are “anti-patient”.

An effluvious bouquet

I have to admit, I’ve never heard of an entire movie devoted to fart-sniffing before. I can’t confess to harboring any interest in it myself, but I’m sure there are some fetish freaks that should find this “biopic” to be fascinating, if not outright porn:

 The actor Jason Segel will play David Foster Wallace in a forthcoming biopic of the author entitled The End of the Tour. Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008, was one of the most talented writers of his generation. The film will be based on an article in Rolling Stone in which journalist David Lipsky (to be played by Jesse Eisenberg) followed Foster Wallace on his book tour round America promoting Infinite Jest, his 1,100-page novel from 1996.

Lipsky’s account was turned into a book in 2010 entitled Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: a Road Trip With David Foster Wallace. The film is scripted by Pulitzer-winning playwright Donald Margulies, and the director is James Ponsoldt.

Actually, David Foster Wallace wasn’t one of the most talented writers of my generation. He was one of the most promising writers of it. He was one of the most ballyhooed writers of it. He was one of the most talked-about writers of it. But he never actually realized any of that promise, and never managed to produce anything more than an inferior John Irving novel writ larger and less coherent.

I am absolutely convinced that the fart-sniffers of New York literary society bear more than a little responsibility for Wallace’s suicide. If they hadn’t put him on such a pedestal so early and undeservedly, he might not have felt like such a failure. Because he was a failure, a complete failure, despite writing a big novel that didn’t completely suck. But it also wasn’t the masterpiece it was expected to be, it wasn’t the masterpiece that some still pretend it to be, and Wallace knew that better than anyone.

Crushing the insects

As he learned from his Mommy, Johnny thinks that if you pretend to embrace an insult, you are totally showing the big meanie that he can’t hurt you. Because if you put on a big enough production, no one will notice that you’re crying yourself to sleep at night.

“The problem is that the ‘vocal minority’ of insects who make up the new generation of writers don’t scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on them—they bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.”
— (name withheld) on SFF.net, during the recent unpleasantness.

Heh heh heh. I realize, of course, that the person who wrote the comment above meant “insect” as an insult. But what do we know about insects? They are numerous, adaptable, highly successful as a class, and, when they put their mind to it, absolutely unstoppable. No wonder this person seems terrified.

As it happens, I have for a long time said that there are three types of writers: dinosaurs, mammals and cockroaches. Dinosaurs are the writers who are tied into an old model of the writing and publishing life, and when that specific model dies, so does the writer’s career. Mammals are the ones who ride the wave of a new writing/publishing model into success and prominence — but if they tie their fortunes to that one model, they’ll find themselves transformed into dinosaurs soon enough. Cockroaches, on the other hand, learn and adapt and thrive in every circumstance, in part because they know that things change. If you’re a writer, being a cockroach is the way to go.

And so, oh! The irony! Of calling writers the thing that (metaphorically) it is awesome to be, careerwise.

For the record (and because it is referring to my time in office, which I can speak about): I am immensely proud to have, along with Mary Robinette Kowal (my VP for two thirds of my administration) and the rest of the board and volunteers, through our efforts on behalf of our membership, helped to bring so many of the writers this person so dismissively refers to as “insects” into SFWA. These writers are talented, opinionated, smart and adaptable, and not coincidentally write some really great things, and were already in my time doing good for the organization. If this person wants to put me at the head of this insect army, I’m delighted to accept the commission (as is Mary! I asked her! She said yes!).

Mary and I are no longer officers of SFWA, but I think our commissions at the head of the Insect Army are still in effect: After all, not every “insect” is in SFWA (yet). And so I say to you: Join John and Mary’s Insect Army! You must write! You must be fearless! You must stand your ground in the face of deeply silly insults, clacking your pincers derisively at them! And, if you believe that every person — writer, “insect” and otherwise — should be treated with the same dignity and honor that you would accord yourself, so much the better. Together we can swarm to make science fiction and fantasy awesome!

Insect is an apt term for them. They are nobodies and no-talents led by mediocrities who have careers by virtue of smoke, mirrors, and being chosen by other mediocrities due to their ideological affiliations. We’re not talking about China Mieville here. We’re not talking about Charles Stross or the late Iain M. Banks, left-wing writers of genuine talent. We’re talking about the nattering nothings. Scalzi is lying when he says: “These writers are talented, opinionated, smart and adaptable, and not coincidentally write some really great things.”

They’re not talented. They’re not smart. Most of them are barely even published. They’re not adaptable, they’re intolerant, and most of them don’t even write as well as the definitively mediocre Scalzi, who produced this award-winning dialogue:


“Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.
“What?” Dahl said.
“What?” Hester said.
“Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a
favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s
a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of
habit. It’s just an expression.”


“Got it,” Dahl said.


“No actual blowjob forthcoming,” Duvall said. “To be clear”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Dahl said, and turned to Hester. “What about you? You want to owe me a blowjob, too?”
“I’m thinking about it ,” Hester said. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it now takes to win A PARTICIPATION HUGO!

After taking over the SFWA with their bureaucratic swarming thanks to the McCaffrey rule, the insects made the same mistake that all the indebted college students are making today. They think the credentials and the awards matter and they don’t understand that those things were only ever significant because of what they symbolized: SF excellence. A Nebula once meant something. A Hugo once meant something. Now, they’re the reward for meaningless swarmings. The insects mistake the awards for the literary accomplishment.

That’s why the Old Guard’s petition, the Old Guard’s disgust, was so hurtful to them. Because it is an undeniable reminder that the insects cannot live on the stolen glory of their elders and betters.

And now that the gatekeepers don’t matter any longer, now that everyone has equal access to the SF/F readers, we will crush them beneath our iron-shod feet.

As for Mary Puppinette Kowal, the reason she’s a complete nobody is because nobody actually gives a damn what she writes. Nobody reads her except her fellow insects. For all her awards and bureaucratic involvement and being pushed by the biggest genre publisher, her most recent book is ranked #268,486 on Kindle. She’s a nasty little nothing and never-will-be who doesn’t even write SF/F, she writes miscategorized Regency Romance.

Libertarians are not libertarian

Karl Denninger received a letter:

Dear Karl:

I’ll get straight to the point.

Our general fund bank acount is critically low.

Unless we can raise funds immediately, the following may happen:

We may have to withdraw ballot access support from some large states.

We may have to lay off staff.

We may not be able to finance the purchase of our Libertarian Party Headquarters

Wes Benedict
Executive Director 

No wonder the Libertarians nominated presidential candidates who were terrible on the debt issue. They are addicted to credit themselves. Unlike past elections, I didn’t vote Libertarian in 2008 or 2012 because the candidates were Republican retreads who were little more genuinely libertarian than Barack Obama.

Like the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party is run by hacks who are more interested in perks than principles, it’s a micro-Republican Party. The sooner it goes away, the better. In any event, it should be eminently clear that the problems presently faced by the USA cannot and will not be solved by electoral politics.

Enjoy the crash.

Regime change comes to Eastern Europe

I have to admit, I haven’t been paying attention and I have no idea who is even supposed to be “the good guys” in Ukraine:

  • Ukrainian Health Ministry said 88 police, six journalists and four foreigners were among those hospitalised
  • Ukraine’s Interior ministry says 67 police troops have been captured by protesters in Kiev
  • At least 50 people have died in clashes in Kiev that came just days after the crisis in the Ukraine seemed to be over
  • Government snipers were reported to be shooting at some of the protesters in Kiev
  • Protest leaders and president called truce after two days of violent clashes between activists and police
  • President Barack Obama condemned violence, warning ‘there will be consequences’ for Ukraine if it continues
  • President Viktor Yanukovych declared Thursday a day of mourning for the dead
  • Several thousand protesters remained on Independence Square in Kiev and clashed with police on Thursday

It seems bizarre that one side is (allegedly) taking prisoners while the other one is (reportedly) shooting unarmed protesters. But those protesters don’t look particularly unarmed, what with the shotguns and all. And the fact that the Obama administration is pushing the Bush Doctrine of regime change in Europe makes me very suspicious of any attempt to turn the protesters into the good guys after their attempt to whitewash the psychopaths in Syria.

Women Ruin Everything: Academic edition

This open argument in favor of abanoning the Doctrine of Academic Freedom in favor of a Doctrine of Academic Justice is an excellent example of why women were not allowed into the universities in the first place. This is why they were not permitted to vote. We ignore the great minds of the past at our peril, and we have no right to complain about having to suffer the obvious consequences of entirely predictable actions:

In its oft-cited Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the American Association of University Professors declares that “Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results.” In principle, this policy seems sound: It would not do for academics to have their research restricted by the political whims of the moment.

Yet the liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words used to articulate a research question can have implications for its outcome. No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?

Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.

The power to enforce academic justice comes from students, faculty, and workers organizing together to make our universities look as we want them to do. Two years ago, when former summer school instructor Subramanian Swamy published hateful commentary about Muslims in India, the Harvard community organized to ensure that he would not return to teach on campus. I consider that sort of organizing both appropriate and commendable. Perhaps it should even be applied more broadly.

Women are, and have always been, intrinsically fascist at heart. With a small minority of exceptions, they hate freedom and will always trade it for the promise of security, physical and emotional. The Fascists understood this. The medieval philosophers understood this. The Founding Fathers understood this. The West rejected the idea in favor of sexual equality and the myth of progress, and now the university has abandoned its centuries-old tradition of academic freedom.

Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, not all women are the same. Yes, there are brilliant and sensible women. But the salient point is that the price of female involvement is reliably too high across the board. How much more destruction can Western Civilization be expected to survive before women of sense are willing to admit that the price of female participation in matters of governance is too great? Do we really need to undergo the Great Collapse before the ancient truths can be accepted once more?

“The lesson, as always, is this: women ruin everything.”
– Bill Simmons