Category: Uncategorized

Opposing predictions revisited

You may recall that after the mass shooting of dozens of larval Labor politicians in Norway, there was a discussion of whether this would turn the Norwegian electorate to the right or to the left.  Many predicted an anti-nativist backlash that would strengthen the ruling Norwegian Labor party and support its vision of a multicultural, multiethnic Norway. I, on the other hand, predicted that Breivik’s action would eventually be seen as a harbinger of Norway’s belated move towards the ethnic nationalism that is sweeping across most of Europe.

I believe we can safely conclude that the verdict is now in:

Norway will be holding elections for Parliament on September 9, just two weeks before Germany votes. If polls taken over the last year are accurate, the eight-year-old Labor-party government of Jens Stoltenberg is headed for a landslide defeat.

Normally, you would think it would be a shoo-in for reelection. Labor’s social democrats have long thought of themselves as the natural party of government — Labor has been the leading party in Norway for all but 16 of the last 78 years. While much of Europe is wracked by recession, Norway’s economy grew by 3 percent last year, and the unemployment rate is only 3.5 percent. Norway’s GDP per capita is now over $60,000 a year.

But Norwegians appear likely to elect a conservative coalition government for the first time in over a decade. Polls show the Conservative party leading with 32 percent of the vote, which should give it 58 seats in the 169-seat parliament, a dramatic increase from 2005, when it won only 23 seats. The Labor party has about 30 percent of the vote, and its left-wing allied parties are floundering. The Progress party — a populist party that supports low taxes and stricter limits on immigration, and that worries about Muslim extremism – has about 16 percent of the vote, and it and the Conservatives, together with their smaller allies, look to have a clear majority in the new Parliament.

Charles Martel, William Tell, and Winston Churchill are all seen as national heroes for their violent opposition to foreign immigration and occupation, so while some might find it very hard to believe now, it will not be terribly surprising if Anders Breivik is one day revered by Norwegians for his murderous stand against the invaders and quislings of his homeland.

The people in your neighborhood

If your neighborhood is insufficiently vibrant, Obama has a plan to fix that:

In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that
would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and
then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory.

The policy is called, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” It
will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in
every single neighborhood and try to remedy it. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP convention in July.

“Unfortunately, in too many of our hardest hit communities, no matter
how hard a child or her parents work, the life chances of that child,
even her lifespan, is determined by the zip code she grows up in. This
is simply wrong,” he said. Data from this discrimination database would be used with zoning
laws, housing finance policy, infrastructure planning and transportation
to alleviate alleged discrimination and segregation.

I think this is what one calls “a clarifying moment”.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes for “anti-racists” to change their position once they are forced to actually live in close exposure to vibrancy.

This should work about as well as busing did in the 1970s.

Dawkins and the Dark Ages

In this Twitter spat between Richard Dawkins and the Muslim community, I find it interesting that no one has noted the silliest thing that the world’s most famous atheist said:

Professor Richard Dawkins has become embroiled in a Twitter row after he claimed the last time Muslims contributed something worthwhile was during the Dark Ages.  The 71-year-old author went on to tweet that the world’s Muslims had won fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.

His comments sparked anger among high-profile Twitter users including writer Caitlin Moran and economics editor at Channel 4 News, Faisal Islam.

Moran tweeted: ‘It’s time someone turned Richard Dawkins off and then on again.

‘Something’s gone weird.’

While Islam said: ‘Actually, over the last two decades, it’s 8-4 against Trinity. I

‘I say this as a muslim alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge.

‘Of course if @RichardDawkins had any clue what he was talking about, he’d know to strip out the Economics Nobels, which aren’t quite real’

Forget the fake Nobels of economics, which Islam is correct to point out are not true Nobel prizes, but rather Sveriges Riksbank Prizes in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.  It’s more pertinent to point out that there never were any Dark Ages, in Europe or anywhere else, and even if one uses the term in the historically incorrect colloquial manner, it has nothing to do with Islamic history.

Richard Dawkins is simply demonstrating, once more, the fact that in addition to being a philosophical and theological ignoramus, he is a historical one as well.

UPDATE: It is pointed out that it was the newspaper, not Dawkins, who used the ahistorical term “Dark Ages”.  Fair enough, that is an error that should not be laid at his door.  But he is responsible for this logical error: if Muslims had contributed nothing worthwhile, then the Nobel count difference cannot matter since either Nobel Prizes are worthwhile, thus proving Muslims have contributed something, or they are not, in which case his comparison is pointless.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant, since Dawkins is merely playing his usual game of vomiting forth rhetoric in the guise of dialectic.

Handism in SF/F/SF

Standout Author and anti-handist activist Mike Z. Williamson was inspired to action after encountering this troubling discussion of racism:

Stephen Geigen-Miller
June 13th, 2013 at 1:41 pm · Reply
Jim,
I agree completely and deeply respect what you’re doing in this post
overall. Because of that, may I please suggest that you rethink your use
of the phrase “tarred by association”? There are some problematic
connotations there. Thanks very much.


Jim C. Hines
June 13th, 2013 at 1:51 pm · Reply
Stephen
– I’m not familiar with the connotations in question, and Google is
failing me. Can you help fill in this knowledge gap for me?
Thomas Wilde


June 13th, 2013 at 1:57 pm · Reply
I’m assuming he’s referring to tar babies or somesuch.
Trey
June 13th, 2013 at 2:06 pm · Reply
Tarring and feathering. Also associated with lynching.


Josh Hawks
June 13th, 2013 at 2:28 pm · Reply
I’m assuming it’s referring to tarring and feathering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarring_and_feathering), which does have classist/racist undertones.


Jim C. Hines
June 13th, 2013 at 2:15 pm · Reply
Had a quick and interesting Twitter chat about it, and did a little reading at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tar1.htm. I did go ahead and change that phrase, though. I like the new version better anyway
To which Mr. Williamson responded on the subject of privilege and the discriminatory bias of handism:
There’s one minority still not given proper respect in language: Left handers. The term “sinister” is still used as an epithet for evil, wrong, unpleasant. Likewise, “gauche” is a reference to rude behavior.  People are considered “dextrous” if they have good manual skills.

Why are the negative connotations expressed using references to left handedness, and positive connotations reserved for the right?

Writers, especially in fantasy, usually right-handed, should stop using these prejudicial terms and find terms that are non-handed specific.

This is a worldwide issue.  Only about 15% of the population are left handed…. I’m sure most people have never thought of this.  They have right-handed privilege, in a world that caters to them.

I’m sure some will dismiss this as a non-issue.  I challenge them to go into a store and ask for every household good in a left-handed model.  If the store has any, they will have a token one or two of each, not the dozens or hundreds of right handed options.  Buy them.  Go home and use them in your right hand so you’re using them backward. That’s what it’s like for left handed people every day of our lives.

Politically, I’ve seen conservatives refer to the political right being “correct” and the political left being “wrong.”

Then crack open a book and find the bad guy is “sinister” and the clueless guy is “gauche.”  Gee, thanks for that.

“Right” is an acknowledgment of correctness.  One gets “left behind.”
I expect there are a number of fantasy writers who are major offenders on this.  But if they’re taking steps with racially, culturally, gender and religiously sensitive terms, it would be fair to not use terms derogatory to the left handed minority as well.

This moving missive has truly opened my eyes to my right-handed privilege.  Was it an accident that the handist and racist Ursula le Guin asserted it was the LEFT hand that was DARK?  Was it a coincidence that the handist and religious bigot Jerry Jenkins related the LEFT to the body part most associated with ordure, the BEHIND?  Truly, the evil is rife within the genre! I can only abase myself and hope Mr. Williamson will accept my humble apologies for my thoughtless handism.  I henceforth pledge to do my level best to excise this shameful scourge of handist privilege from science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction.

Audiobook auditions

UPDATE: Narrator D is out because he has too many commitments and was forced to withdraw.  However, there are now two more new candidates, and a prospective third one who will be sending in an audition soon.

Narrator A

Narrator B

Narrator C

Narrator D

Narrator E

Narrator F

It belatedly occurred to me that I’ve been going about this audiobook process all wrong.  Leaping into an area in which I have zero experience – I don’t even listen to audiobooks myself – and doing so with a mammoth project that is larger than most audiobooks out there is a recipe for not only failure, but disaster.

So, I decided to retreat, rethink, and reassess my approach to producing the Selenoth audiobooks.  Since Amazon/Audible’s ACX is an attempt to be the standard offering, I thought I had better check that out.  And since I have a set of much shorter works set in Selenoth, I have the luxury of trying out several different approaches before settling on one narrator and distribution system for the main series.  This is important, because A Throne of Bones alone will make for a 36-hour audiobook.

In the interest of experimentation, Marcher Lord signed up A Magic Broken exclusively for ACX  and two narrators have already auditioned.  I’ve also included a non-ACX audition that was sent to me earlier. As I’ve mentioned previously, my ideal narrator would be Charles Dance, but then, I’m not the one who will be listening to the audiobooks so my opinion concerning the matter is not decisive.

If you’re someone who might be interested in the Selenoth audiobooks, I’d be interested to get your impression of the potential narrators.  Please let me know your thoughts in the comments here. I’ll post more here as they are submitted until Marcher Lord decides upon one.  As for ACX, my thought is to do AMB through their system and one of the stories from TWC through open distribution, then compare the results.

A fallen atheist

This self-described fallen atheist appears to have realized, as a result of up close and personal experience with the weak and the broken, that kicking away the crutch upon which people are leaning is not the act of a brave intellectual or an honest seeker after truth.  Even if the crutch is an intellectual placebo.

It is the cruel and thoughtless act of a self-centered asshole:

I heard how
the small cross in Takeesha’s purse offered her protection when getting
into a strangers car. “When I climb into that car God comes with me and
keeps me safe.”

I heard how Neecy found the strength to try and find a better life in her Bible.

I heard how Michael’s Rosary “Was a reminder that there is something better than all of this.”
Soon I saw my atheism for what it is: An intellectual luxury for those who have done well.

It isn’t a coincidence that the rise of the New Atheism coincided with the peak of the greatest credit boom in history.  And it isn’t an accident that the New Atheists are increasingly seen as intellectual embarrassments only five years into the Great Depression 2.0.

There is no shortage of scientific evidence that religion is, at worst, a placebo. Even if we assume that religion is entirely false, how can anyone who claims to possess any ethics, let alone superior and rationally determined ethics, possibly justify harming others by intentionally eliminating that placebo effect?

Double-damned lies and comparative statistics

It’s not as if government statistics weren’t already unreliable, but this mea culpa demonstrates why you should look very, very, very skeptically at any argument that compares the statistics from one country with the statistics from another.  Even with something as superficially straightforward as the murder rate, they simply cannot be trusted at face value:

I have frequently in this series referred to the English murder rates as historically low and currently very low compared to US murder rates.  I blandly accepted the murder statistics published by the UK Home Office as definitive.  I overlooked the details of what and how the English counted “murders.” It turns out that was a big mistake.  (I was first turned onto my error by this post at Extrano’s Alley.)

I fell into a definitions trap you may not be aware of. The shortest version is this. We count and report crimes based on initial data. The Brits count and report crimes based on the outcome of the investigation and trial. Yep, that says what I meant it to say.

In the US, the count of people murdered kept by the FBI is pretty darned straightforward. Got a body, not natural causes, not suicide? Must be murder of one sort or another. Count it.

So, if you ask the FBI, they will tell you that for 2011 there were 14,022 murders or non-negligent manslaughters.  On the same line of that chart, they tell us the population was 292,364,075 which gives us a “murder” rate of 4.8 per 100,000 population. Those counts are based on crimes reported by local police agencies.  They say nothing about the clearance rate, nor if anyone was ever identified or charged or convicted or whatever.  Body, not natural, not negligent, homicide.  Duh.

Now, on to England. It turns out that the Home office is very restrictive in what they report as “murders.”  Still, looking at the detailed report for 2010/2011 the Home office tells us that in the reporting period there were 636 murders “provisionally recorded” for a murder rate of 1.15 per 100,000 — less than 1/3 the murder rate in the US.  (See page 16 of the source document)

I’ve reported these numbers blindly many times, and quoted sources with many (sometimes silly) explanations for the lower murder rate in the UK. There’s a problem with that as it turns out. What about all those murders which were not solved? The ones where a conviction wasn’t gotten? The ones where the appeals are still on-going? Not only that, but when exactly were these homicides performed?

“Since 1967, homicide figures for England and Wales have been adjusted to exclude any cases which do not result in conviction”

OOOoooooops.  We’re not comparing apples to apples, we’re comparing apples to meatloaf. 

Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone extolling the wonders of gun laws in the UK or the excellent performance of the Scandinavian health care system.  It’s possible the statistics are relevant.  But then again, it is entirely possible that they are not.

The dismay of the white liberal

As Brown America waxes in influence, its longtime white liberal allies are dismayed to discover that the minorities they championed never actually gave a damn about the liberal principles they espoused:

Here’s the Daily Kos founder on the Snowden revelations:

I
don’t give a shit. Seriously, I just don’t care. NSA spying is bad! So
is stop and frisk. So is splitting up families by deporting children to
countries they’ve never been to and don’t speak the language. So is
harassing American muslims.

Government overreach
is bad. But to act like having the government track who you call is the
height of government abuse is a very white privileged view of the
privacy issue.

But as for Greenwald and Snowden? Seriously, I don’t give two shits.

Please,
Mr. Moulitsas, tell us, what is the proper, non-privileged,
multi-cultural view of the “privacy issue”? Is it one that stays within
the confines of what’s allowed by the Democratic Party? Is it one that
is relevant to the war on women, or voting rights, or immigration, but
ignores the collapse of the rule of law and the justice system (which is
far from a “white privileged” issue)?

Of course a
Mr. Moulitsas doesn’t give a damn about privileged whites such as
Greenwald and Snowden.  They are not of his clan or a minority in a
similar position. Imagine how shocked the white liberals are going to be
when they find out their erstwhile allies don’t give a damn about the
equality, the environment, abortion, women’s rights, or any of the
Left’s other sacred causes.  They never did, they merely went through
the motions and mouthed all the right words in order to ensure
themselves a place at the table.

The two-party system
based on ideology is totally foreign to most non-Americans, who are
accustomed to interest-based politics.  Now that minorities, real ethnic
minorities, make up a significant part of the Democratic party, it
should come as no surprise that they are beginning to reveal the true
nature of their politics.  Because of this, don’t be surprised when La
Raza becomes an effective third party in California and begins to
compete directly with the Democrats.

Book review: Hard Magic

BW provides the first review of the first Lions’ Den entry, Hard Magic by Larry Correia:

Hard Magic
Larry Correia
Rating: 8/10 and would buy

Hard Magic stands above several portions of mainstream culture. I’m tired of all these plucky kids and these strange worlds of elves and misanthropy. I’m tired of obvious political messages and anti-heroes being tough and unrelatable. I want a heroic big guy with a big gun in a hard boiled narration against someone or people I dislike a little. Hard Magic delivers in spades.

Jake Sullivan is a man for whom gravity is a compliant and willing mistress. Faye Vierra is a teleport spamming farm girl. Together, they must stop the Chairman, a man of elegance, strength and evil, who is planning to rule the world from Imperial Japan. Surrounding them is a colorful cast of characters which include a former radio personality who can control people’s minds, a German with a dark history involving zombies, a powerhouse of a dame and a samurai obsessed with strength above all. One might say it’s gimmicky, but this is no Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This is a logical and reasonable extension of the singular idea: What if magic showed up suddenly in the 1850’s?

Mr. Correia answers it well, he fulfills certain restrictions of Zeppelins with fire controlling Torches, lightning wrangling Cracklers and the wind shifting Weathermen. Gravity Spikers and Brutes serve as frontline troops, their natural strengths increased with their magical abilities. The Kaiser had sorcerers who raised the German dead to fight again. World War One was ended, not by armistice and treaty, but instead by Mad Scientist-made nuclear fire. At no point did I decide that the logic presented to me offended me. At no point did I say: “That’s it! I’m done, I could take the guy who could control gravity, but that one bit was too much.”

The book keeps a solid amount of suspense and rewarding action dispersed throughout in an even manner. The writing intricately changes itself according to whose perspective is the focus. Jake Sullivan’s voice is barebones and simplistic, hard boiled, even, while Faye’s is more descriptive and full of wonder. Madi’s voice feigns complexity and nobility while delving into barbarism as soon as it suits him. I was never confused as to the motivations of many characters, if it was a bit on the tell side of things.

One of the things that struck me was context. Unlike Dresden Files or other ‘hard boiled’ magical stories, this story had no questions of morals. People were good, or they were evil. Actions determined reactions, rather than stances or who they were. Even the events that lead to the death of a major character was shown to be evil, despite good long term intentions.  An example, not only were the Japanese elitist and darwinistic in the telling, they lived it in the logical fashion. They weren’t evil because they are evil conquering bastards; they were evil conquering bastards because their philosophies and values led them to that point. This brought the book to life. Details abounded, and rather than tell me the unimportant minutiae, Mr. Correia gave me tidbits that were relevant or funny. Hard Magic has no wasted space. 

Hard Magic proves that one doesn’t need a carefully crafted emotional backstory or actions for a modern protagonist. Like John Carter, Tarzan and other great action heroes of the great age of pulp, Jake Sullivan and the rest of the supporting characters do what they do because their characters were crafted from their surroundings, and personality from inherent humanity. It’s fresh, it’s great and I am entertained.

Style: 9 Writing changes itself to suit the characters. The writing never leaves me without images of the characters or actions. I won’t say it’s perfect, but my experience was very positive. There was a lack of complexity, and I was never challenged.

Plot: 10  Plot is simple, but it doesn’t need to be anything else. There’s a villain, and the story is over when he’s defeated. The heroes and villains have their own teams and motivations. It’s the solid armor protecting any weaknesses I didn’t pick up.

Characters: 10 Books like this rely on the couches of plot and characters. Failure in one can be made up in the other, but too much failure ruins the experience. It causes my boxers to get in a twist and me to put down a book. I had to be coerced by outside action before I stopped reading. I enjoyed every character who showed up and I enjoyed seeing them duke it out, especially in a teleport spam battle.

Value: 7  Sadly, this book holds little value in the big picture. All the ideas are interesting, but there is still that sense that this is a book for entertainment. That’s it. I can’t discern much to gain beyond a good tale. However, as entertainment, it succeeds admirably.

Series Draw: 6  Hard Magic is a story that could stand on its own, yet has a series attached to it. Sadly, The first book more or less deals with the characters and villains by the end of it, without pulling me into the series. Will I read the rest later? Oh yes. But if the sequels weren’t out, would I spend energy to remember the release dates? Not likely.

The book has no crippling flaws, I could read it to my not-yet living kids and I think it would look fancy on my paperback bookshelf. Would buy used, perhaps hardback if cheap enough.

Excerpt:  There was a shout and a gunshot. Sullivan’s concentration wavered, just a bit, and the real world came suddenly flooding back. The Power he’d gathered slipped from his control and the elevator gate was sheared from its bolts and slammed flat into the floor under the added pressure of ten gravities. A passenger screamed as his foot was crushed flat and blood came squirting out the top of his shoe. “Sorry, bud.” Sullivan turned in time to see one of the G-men tumbling down the stairwell, a grey shape leaping behind, colliding with Cowley and Purvis and taking them all down, “Aw hell,” he muttered, then spun back in time to see Delilah’s lovely green eyes locked on his.
“You were trying to smoosh me, Heavy!” she exclaimed, eyes twinkling as she ignited her own Power. She grabbed the big man by the tie and hoisted him effortlessly off the floor, even though he was almost a foot taller. The tie tightened, choking him as he dangled, and she finally got a good look at her assailant. “You! Well, if it isn’t Jake Sullivan. Been a long time.”
Then she hurled him. Suddenly airborne, he flew across the waiting area. Instinctively, his Power flared, and he bounced softly off the far wall with the force of a pillow. Jake returned to his normal weight as his boots hit the floor. He loosened his cheap tie so he could breathe again. “Hey, Delilah.”
“You lousy bastard.” She stepped out of the elevator and cracked her knuckles in a very unladylike manner. The other passengers had no idea what was going on, but they knew that this was not where they wanted to be. They took off at a run except for the one with the crushed foot, who hobbled as fast as he could. Every Normal had the sense to stay out of this kind of fight. “I’d heard you’d gone all Johnny Law now,” Delilah said.
“Something like that,” he replied slowly. “Bounty hunter.”
“Hypocrite.”
There was the sound of several quick blows. Off to the side, the grey shape rose and took on the form of a man in a long coat with a nightstick in hand. The G-Men were down. Purvis moaned. The man in grey stepped off the fallen agents and took a wary step away from Sullivan. He was short and tanned, with a pointy blond goatee and nearly shaved head. He picked his hat up and carefully returned it to his head. “Delilah Jones?” he asked quickly. Cowley started to rise and the stranger kicked him in the ribs, sending the agent back down.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m here to rescue you,” he stated with a German accent, “from him.” He nodded in Sullivan’s direction. “No offense, Mein Herr.”
“None taken, but I’m gonna give you an ass whoopin’, you realize that, right, Fritz?” Jake stated calmly. He checked. The majority of his Power was still in reserve and he began to gather it.
“I can take care of myself, buddy,” Delilah told the stranger. “Were you planning on arresting me, Jake?”
“If I don’t want to go back to prison, yeah,” Sullivan answered, glancing back and forth between Delilah and the new threat. Delilah was a known quantity, the other guy, not so much. “That’s kinda the plan.”
“Too bad,” she answered as she grabbed the heavy metal luggage cart, picked it up as if it weighed nothing and threw it at him.