Category: Uncategorized

Ideology or cash-credit decoupling?

The way I see it, the decision of the New York Times to sell the Boston Globe for a 93 percent loss – or rather, a 103% loss if the pension liabilities are considered, indicates one of two things:

After purchasing the Boston Globe in 1993 for a then-record $1.1 billion, the financially troubled New York Times just announced that it sold the 141-year-old paper to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry for a mere $70 million. That’s a straight 93% loss. Figuring in two decades of inflation would only make it worse — as does the fact that the Times retains the Globe’s pension liabilities, estimated at over $100 million.

The Times announced in February that it was putting the Globe up for sale. News reports claimed that bids had been as high as $100 million. What might have sweetened the lower offer for the Times is that Henry offered a straight cash deal, which is expected to close sometime in September or October.

In 2011, the Times turned down a $300 million offer from Aaron Kushner, CEO of Freedom Communications, Inc., publisher of the Orange County Register and other newspapers in California. This offer even included the assumption of pension liabilities, which are currently estimated at $110 million. 

Either it was worth $340 million to the owners of the New York Times to keep the Boston Globe out of the conservative-leaning hands of Freedom Communications or the value of $70 million in cash trumped $410 million in non-cash.  If the real reason was not ideological, this tends to indicate that we are proceeding faster into the deflationary scenario than even most deflationists understand.

In inflationary environments, stock is worth more than cash and credit is fully exchangeable with cash.  In deflationary environments, cash is worth more than stock or credit due to the expectation that the former will decline and the latter will be worth less than its nominal value.

Homeschool or die, vol 567

No doubt this young white boy will need remedial education about the manifold blessings of vibrancy after experiencing these unprovoked interracial relations on the school bus:

Note that the bus drivers are not expected to intervene unless they feel it is safe for them to do so, which is when their intervention is unnecessary. And notice how not even the most abjectly submissive posture was sufficient to save the younger, smaller white boy from a beating at the hands of his fellow scholars who happened to be randomly inspired to violence for absolutely no reason that could possibly justify charging them with a hate crime.

Of course, the real lesson of Trayvon Martin is that the vibrant youth had better save their violent outbursts for gun-free zones like schools and school buses.  Because, thanks to the Internet punching through the veil of the mainstream media, there are millions of black and white and Hispanic gun owners who are more than ready for the zombie apocalypse. 

Oh, were you under the impression that the whole zombie meme was actually about zombies?

The sad thing is that if the bus driver had done what he should have done, which is to end the attack by following Rule #1, he would have been charged with a crime instead of being rewarded with a bounty.

Losing the Cold Peace

I find it interesting that so many self-proclaimed devotees of science readily resort to sophistry in defense of imaginary homosexual rights:

Three months before Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a federal law banning the propaganda of “non-traditional relationships” — that is, same-sex ones — the bill’s sponsor went on the country’s most respected interview show to explain her reasoning.

“Analyzing all the circumstances, and the particularity of territorial Russia and her survival…I came to the conclusion that if today we want to resolve the demographic crisis, we need to, excuse me, tighten the belt on certain moral values and information, so that giving birth and raising children become fully valued,” lawmaker Yelena Mizulina told Vladimir Posner, Russia’s Charlie Rose.

Mizulina heads the Duma’s committee for family, women, and children and has become the stern face of Russia’s campaign against gays. But she would never call it that. Russia’s new laws — banning same-sex foreign couples from adopting Russian children in addition to banning LGBT advocacy — are part of the country’s very search for survival, according to her.

On the one hand, there’s its physical survival — Russia’s birthrate plummeted in the wake of the Soviet collapse and encouraging baby-making (through government grants as well as rhetoric) has been one of Vladimir Putin’s hallmarks. And then there’s its moral survival; if Russia is to survive as Russia it needs to reject the corrupting influences of the West.

The author claims that the first reason is “populist bluster” without bothering to offer any support for that position.  But, as anyone who has read Juvenal will recall, there is at least a partial correlation between societies that permit legal and open homosexuality and societies that are in a steep demographic decline.  This correlation doesn’t mean the relationship is causal, of course; I tend to believe that Ms Mizulina is correct in seeing homosexuality as a symptom of the larger problem, which is the abandonment of traditional values and moralities.

So, here is the interesting question.  Can anyone think of a historical society which openly endorsed legal homosexuality, which permitted men to marry men and women to marry women, which was not in steep demographic decline?  The history of homosexuality has never been an interest of mine, so I don’t actually know, but perhaps some of those who advocate homosexual rights have based their opinions on actual facts rather than feelings and can present some evidence in favor of their position.

Because, as it stands, most of the evidence of which I am aware is clearly in favor of the new Russian laws.  Note that the bans were unanimously adopted and are much more democratically popular than homogamy is in the United States. Regardless, the pendulum is clearly in the process of beginning to swing back, and if Russia’s nationalists manage to reverse the nation’s demographic decline, it will be a powerful argument against the sexual equalitarians, especially if the West whose corrupting influences it has rejected continues to decline.

The West won the Cold War because its economic values were in line with reality and the Soviet Union’s were not.  Perhaps having learned from past mistakes, Russia appears to be more likely to win the Cold Peace because its moral values are in line with reality and the West’s are not.

It’s not treason, it’s just free trade

So, the threat from al-Qaeda is so great that Americans have to give up all their civil liberties, while at the same time, al-Qaeda is being subsidized by the U.S. government:

Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing “due process rights” as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending.

The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said today in a letter accompanying a quarterly report to Congress.

“I am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract,” Sopko said.

But even that is less apparently treasonous than the US government directly supplying al-Qaeda, with whom it is supposedly at war, with heavy weaponry.  At this point, it looks as if Obama’s chief legacy will be having been the greatest gun salesman, both foreign and domestic, of all time.

It’s enough to almost make me wish I’d voted for him.

The bronze medal

The results for the 2013 Clive Staples Award were announced last night:

  1. Starflower by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
  2. Liberator by Bryan Davis
  3. The Throne of Bones by Vox Day
  4. Prophet by R. J. Larson
  5. Mortal by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee   

It’s probably not the best sign for a book when the awards committee doesn’t quite get the title right.  But its nomination, to say nothing of being selected as a finalist for the award, was still a nice surprise, given the fact that I didn’t think ATOB was even eligible for any awards.

The end of anti-racism

I’m not sure what is funnier, Day Above Ground’s song Asian Girlz or the hysterical reaction of the Huffington Post and all right-thinking anti-raciss individuals to it:

Today in horrible people doing horrible things: Day Above Ground released a song called “Asian Girlz,” and it’s about as bad way worse than you could possibly imagine. Judging by the reactions, “Asian Girlz” is either the most racist thing ever or just the most racist thing you’ll see all day.

Here’s what happens in the music video: The band is trapped in a bird cage while an Asian model strips out of a prim outfit to reveal lingerie and tattoos, while said band sings about things like fried rice and “buttf–king all night.” As Buzzfeed noted, the fourth verse is actually just a list of Asian stereotypes. While this is happening, every member of the band goes on a date with an Asian girl, nights chronicled in Polaroid snapshots. THEN, the model in question picks up the bird cage and takes it (and the band) to the bathroom where she — of course — draws a bubble bath and lets the miniature non-musicians out for a dive into the water….

Not only is there plenty of racist stuff to get one’s blood boiling, there’s also this actual lyric: “17 or 23, it doesn’t matter to me!”

Speaking as an East Asian Studies major, an Official Person of Color with an Asian grandfather, and a Japanese scientist, all I have to say is that the song is hilarious.  Especially the little pseudo-Chinese keyboard riff.  As for the stereotypes, they exist for a reason. 

It is observable that whites in general, and young white males in particular, are increasingly over the idea that racism is the worse of all possible evils.  And now that diversity is a central tenet of the establishment, it should come as no surprise that the young and rebellious fail to regard it as the holy of holies.

Congress exempt from Obamacare

Just in case it wasn’t sufficiently clear that Obamacare is going to wreck American health care, the executive branch has given the congressional branch an exemption from the law:

The White House has approved a deal that will exempt members of Congress and their staff from some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, Politico reported late Thursday. Under the law, popularly referred to as Obamacare, lawmakers and their aides were required to source health insurance “created” by the law or offered through one of its exchanges, and without the subsidies they currently enjoy, the members of Congress would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year, the report said. However, the Office of Personnel Management now plans to rule that the government can continue to make a contribution to the health-care premiums of the lawmakers and their staff, it said, citing unnamed congressional sources and a White House official.

Their shamelessness simply knows no bounds.  None.  Cicero was right; democracy does lead inevitably to aristocracy. The fact that we presently have an aristocracy of connections and influence rather than an aristocracy of blood only means that it will be another generation or three before the latter is made institutional.

Armed and fearful

This is precisely why women should not be permitted to serve as armed police officers.  They are terrified of larger, stronger men overpowering them, and so they are much more likely to unjustifiably fire on members of the public than male officers:

Cellphone video recorded by an eyewitness captured a police officer in Santa Ana, Calif., fatally shooting a 22-year-old homeless man at a shopping center earlier this week.The unidentified witness reportedly saw a confrontation unfold between a police officer and victim Hans Kevin Arellano. The incident occurred in the parking lot of the Harbor Place Shopping Center at about 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

Here’s how the eyewitness described the events to CBS Los Angeles:

 “She exited her patrol car, gun drawn, and asked the gentlemen to get on the ground. The gentlemen didn’t get on the ground, he was still inside the restaurant. She asked again. The man then exited the restaurant, and as he was exiting the restaurant, he said, ‘What are you gonna do, b—-?’ About a second later, she shot him in the chest.”

While this news report will no doubt excite many feminists, as it sounds exactly like a feminist revenge fantasy, it’s actually an extremely dangerous development for both the public and female police officers alike.  If anything but instant compliance with a female officer is a death sentence, it will only be a matter of time before criminals begin acting in preemptive self-defense.

It is also worth noting that a society in which individuals cannot verbally disrespect the police without being shot dead is not a free society. 

Putin is unimpressed by US threats

Snowden is granted at least one year of Russian asylum:

The U.S. is “extremely disappointed” in the move by Russia to grant ‘temporary asylum’ to Edward Snowden, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters this morning. Carney appeared to add a threat, as the WSJ reports, he added that the Russian decision undermines law-enforcement cooperation between Moscow and Washington. Russia’s decision also threatens to derail a planned September summit in Moscow between Obama and Putin, as Carney advised “we are evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this.”

These are strange days indeed, when Americans are fleeing abroad and seeking political asylum.  Especially when they’re fleeing to Russia.  In not entirely unrelated news, the international business magazines are finally beginning to figure out that USG’s use of corporate America as NSA spy vehicles is not likely to enhance American Internet technology exports.

Lions Den I: Larry Correia

I thought the inaugural Lions’ Den should start off with a literal literary bang, so I asked my fellow co-founder of the Hispanic-Latino Science Fiction Writers Alliance and Gun Club, Larry Correia, if he would do the honors. Being both fearless and heavily armed, he did not hesitate to kick the door down and stride right in with HARD MAGIC, the first book in the Grimnoir Chronicles.

“The Grimnoir Chronicles trilogy is kind of hard to
categorize. It is an alternative history, epic fantasy, noir-pulp sci-fi, diesel
punk saga about 1930s Great Depression superheroes battling the magical samurai
of Imperial Japan. Yeah, good luck pitching that genre to an editor. However,
they are also a lot of fun, and the series turned out really well. It starts
out with Hard Magic, then Spellbound is the sequel, and the final book of the
trilogy, Warbound, is coming out this week.
“On this project I was originally brainstorming a regular
epic fantasy story, lots of magic, big interconnected plots, lots and lots of
characters, but it kind of mutated, mostly because I was talking with author
Mike Kupari at the time about how cool the styles of the 30s were and how everybody
loves Zeppelins. So I wound up setting this epic fantasy story in an
alternative history version of the 1930s.
“As a history nut I find the period between the world wars
absolutely fascinating, and it was a period that I’d already studied a lot so I
could add some cultural authenticity. This was also when men wore hats, and
that’s just cool. I’m a big fan of hard boiled crime novels, Chandler and
Hammett especially, so this was my chance to take on those kind of characters. I
love the vibe, I love the style, and as a gun nut there was so much classy
hardware to choose from.
“This world diverged from ours in the 1850s when a handful of
people began to develop magical powers for an unknown reason. As time goes on,
the numbers with magic grow, until by the 30s it is about one in a hundred
people with some measure of power, and one in a thousand capable of truly
impressive feats. The reason it gets a superhero vibe is because each person’s
magic can screw with one part of the laws of physics (and as a writer known for
his action scenes, this meant I could do some crazy stuff). By the time Hard
Magic begins the world has been changed in a lot of drastic ways by the introduction
of magic, which as a history geek, enabled me to have a lot of fun.
“Hard Magic has two main characters, “Heavy” Jake Sullivan,
who is a war hero, ex-con, forced into working for J. Edgar Hoover to catch
magical fugitives. He can control the direction and strength of gravity. And Faye
Vierra, a teenage dustbowl Okie refugee, who is a teensy bit crazy, can
teleport, and is potentially the most dangerous person in the world. Hard Magic
is about them getting involved with a secret society known as the Grimnoir and
their battle to keep a Tesla super weapon from falling into the hands of the
deadly Imperium.

“I like to say that this is the only book I’m aware of that
features a teleporting magic ninja fight on top of a flaming pirate dirigible.
And somehow, despite my unabashed love of pulp awesomeness, Hard Magic has been
nominated for and won some awards and been really well received. I’ve got back
to back Audie wins for the audiobooks of the first two, and Hard Magic was a
finalist for best novel in France!  That
was certainly unexpected.”
     – Larry Correia

The three reviewers have volunteered and been assigned.  I will post their reviews here in two weeks.