Category: Uncategorized

No tyranny lurking under the bed

Now go the fuck to sleep, says Big Brother Obama.  Larry Correia takes exception:

Let’s see… The first American president that’s actually had to argue that he’s not a dictator, who has to have a big debate over whether it is okay to just waste American citizens on US soil without any due process, who broke thousands of federal laws in order to ship guns to Mexican drug cartels to drum up phony stats against his political enemies, and who blamed a terrorist attack on a YouTube video, says that the idea that potential tyranny looms is just silly.

Sounds legit to me!

Sure, Barack Obama has grown the federal leviathan bigger and stronger and more intrusive than it has ever been, and it was already bloated, absurd, and terrifying before, but talking about how this government could become too powerful and thus tyrannical like all of the other governments in human history which did the same thing before… well, that’s just crazy talk!

Why, one wonders, is it important to Obama that Americans “reject these voices”, the voices that “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity” and of lurking tyranny?

We know his executive branch is actively targeting political foes in a way that not even Nixon or Clinton ever dared.  We know that his administration regularly lies to the press and the public, about Benghazi and about the IRS investigations.  We know he is openly claiming the legal right to assassinate any American, inside or outside U.S. borders, without due process.  And we know he is seeking to disarm the American people.

So, with all due respect, I submit it would be unwise to heed his advice.  First, it is  simple fact that government is a separate entity; it is neither the people nor the nation.  Second, while government is not necessarily and intrinsically sinister, the actions of the current U.S. government and the present administration most certainly are.

The working model

Dan Drezner points it out for anyone who has somehow failed to notice:

So, in all, this has been a pretty crappy week for people who dislike conspiracy theories.

I would go so far as to say that unless you accept the basic concept of conspiracy theory and actively look for conspiracies behind most significant current events, you cannot possibly understand history or reasonably hope to anticipate the future in any meaningful way.

It is better to pick up a few false signals than recognize nothing that takes place around you.

To the printers

I am sorry for the delay in getting the new Summa Elvetica out the door.  We had some technical errors caused by a domain transfer problem, did an extra round of errata-hunting edits to ensure a much cleaner text than before, and since the book ended up being a few more pages than anticipated, another revision of the dustjacket turned out to be required.  But it is now off to the printers and should be reaching to those who preordered sometime the week after next.

We may or may not do an ebook version, as all of the stories the hardcover contains are already available in ebook format.  So, if you want the complete-to-date collection of Selenoth stories, this would be your book to go with A THRONE OF BONES.  Kirk redid the spine, so, although it is not part of the Arts of Dark and Light series proper, SE+ should at least look tangentially related next to them on the bookshelf.

The book is a 6×9 hardcover of 488 pages, priced at $25.99.  It contains Summa Elvetica, eight other novellas, novelettes, and short stories, and a very slightly updated map.

It’s been interesting to see how people’s opinion of SE has changed a little since the publication of A THRONE OF BONES, including my own. What didn’t necessarily work all that well as a full-fledged novel in its own right actually holds up rather nicely as a part of the larger series.  Even though I didn’t see it at the time, it seems Jamsco was correct to observe that it held the seeds of something bigger and better all along.

The thing that I find a little astonishing is that with the publication of SE+, the total page count of the complete Selenoth collection now exceeds that of The Lord of the Rings, 1,342 to 1,147.(1) Now, of course, that doesn’t include The Hobbit, The Simarillion, or the various lost tales.  And Selenoth will never rival Middle Earth, although I do hope it will eventually come to surpass Westeros, Malazan, Randland, and the Four Lands.

(1) Knowing that someone was bound to raise the typography issue, I went ahead and tabulated the word counts. They are virtually identical at this point, with a slight edge to LOTR at 475,202 as Selenoth is presently at 471,387.

Spain is the next deposit theft

Or, if you prefer the more genteel term, “bail-in”. Jeremy Warner warns: “Spain is officially insolvent: get your money out while you still can”

I’d not noticed this until someone drew my attention to it, but the latest IMF Fiscal Monitor,
published last month, comes about as close to declaring Spain insolvent
as you are ever likely to see in official analysis of this sort. Of
course, it doesn’t actually say this outright. The IMF is far too
diplomatic for such language. But that’s the plain meaning of its latest
forecasts, which at last have an air of realism about them, rather than
being the usual dose of wishful thinking….

All this leads to the conclusion that a big Spanish debt restructuring is inevitable. Spanish sovereign bond yields have fallen sharply since announcement of the European Central Bank’s “outright monetary transactions” programme. The ECB has promised to print money without limit to counter the speculators. But in the end, no amount of liquidity can cover up for an underlying problem with solvency.

Europe said that Greece was the first and last such restructuring, but then there was Cyprus. Spain is holding off further recapitalisation of its banks in anticipation of the arrival of Europe’s banking union, which it hopes will do the job instead. But if the Cypriot precedent is anything to go by, a heavy price will be demanded by way of recompense. Bank creditors will be widely bailed in. Confiscation of deposits looks all too possible.

I don’t advise getting your money out lightly. Indeed, such advise is generally thought grossly irresponsible, for it risks inducing a self reinforcing panic. Yet looking at the IMF projections, it’s the only rational thing to do.

The amazing thing about this isn’t that there are more deposit thefts in the works, or that a specific country has been identified.  No, the amazing thing is that this isn’t from Zerohedge, Max Keiser, or some other economic contrarian site, it’s the “assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph” and “one of Britain’s leading business and economics commentators”.

If you’ve got money in a Spanish bank, you can’t say you weren’t warned very clearly and specifically.  And if you’ve got your money in a bank in another country, such as the UK or the USA, be aware that your time is likely coming, sooner or later.  In the case of the latter, the Fed is already beginning to send signals that it is not going to “print” forever.

The secret of the Moon water

It came from Earth:

The latest results come from studies on the most extraordinary samples hauled back from the moon, including green-tinged stone collected by Apollo 15 in 1971, and orange material gathered by Apollo 17 in 1972.

The surprise discovery of the green rock, by Commander Dave Scott and lunar module pilot Jim Irwin, sparked a lengthy debate among the astronauts about the boulder’s true colour while Nasa controllers listened in.

Scientists focused on tiny droplets of volcanic glass that were trapped in crystals inside the rocks. The crystals protected the droplets from the violence of eruption, and so preserved in them a snapshot of the moon’s ancient interior.

Researchers found evidence for water inside the glass droplets in earlier work but the latest study goes further, showing that the lunar water is chemically identical to that on ancient Earth.

So, now we know that the water in the Moon rocks came from Earth.  And we already knew that the Moon rocks came from Earth.  At what point is it going to become sufficiently obvious that the “Moon landings” were filmed on Earth?

What more is required, signed confessions from Stanley Kubrick and Neil Armstrong?

There is no scientific evidence that Man landed on the Moon, after all.  Since the scientific evidence points quite clearly to the various “lunar” objects having a terrestrial origin, then must we not, as good rational scientific materialists, conclude that Man never landed on the Moon?

It’s all in the perspective

The fourth image is the one I find most amusing. Unless you play ASL, you can’t truly appreciate the level of awe with which ASL players are regarded in the wargaming community, or understand the suspicions which other gamers tend to harbor concerning wargamers.  On the one hand, the ability and commitment required to master a game of its encyclopedic complexity is, quite rightly, deemed impressive, bordering on insanity.  On the other, there is an idea that the average ASLer is just a little bit too enthusiastic about those 8-3-8 assault troops, especially if he happens to have sprung for those cool black counters provided by Heat of Battle.  For some reason, people who grasp that playing WoW doesn’t make you an elf don’t always seem to understand that playing the role of a German tactician doesn’t make you a Nazi.

I tend to find it more than a little amusing that the only site from which I’ve ever been banned was the wargame site ConSimWorld, when, in response to a discussion about the “right-wing” Nazis, I posted the complete text of the Munich Manifesto.

But I was rather proud of Ender this morning.  When I showed him the latest version of the forthcoming Selenoth-based game, he immediately identified the 1981 Avalon Hill game from which I’d taken the basic hit-damage mechanism.

State Department attacks First and Second Amendments

Defense Distributed was instructed to take down the CAD files for the Liberator, a single-shot 3D printed plastic gun, by the US State Department:

Defense Distributed, the Texas-based nonprofit that wants to empower people to 3D print their own guns, has hit a bit of a legal snag. According to founder Cody Wilson, DEFCAD, the open source weapon-printing project powered by Defense Distributed, received a letter (embedded below) from the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Compliance, telling him to remove the blueprints of the Liberator, his 3D printed gun, from the web so that they may be reviewed by the department.

The group’s website currently has a red banner appended to the top that reads, “DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls.  Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

“We got an official letter from the Secretary of State, telling me who they were, what their authority was under U.S. law and telling me they want to review these files to see if they’re class one munitions,” Mr. Wilson told Betabeat by phone. “That includes blueprints.”

In the letter, embedded below, the State Department says that Defense Distributed may have released data that is controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation without getting prior authorization. This would put the company’s actions in conflict with–oh boy–the Arms Export Control Act.

“Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an export,” reads the letter. It also says that until Defense Distributed has received the legal all-clear, the company “should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled. This means that all such data should be removed from public access immediately.”

Keep in mind, this is the very same State Department that sends tanks, jet fighters, and missiles to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.  But the freely distributed plans for a single-shot plastic pistol is somehow considered sufficient cause to justify violating the First and Second Amendments.

Forget Pirate Bay and the thousands of torrents that are already distributing the files, given that the zipfile is only 2 megs, it seems to me that a few patriotic virus programmers should be able to see that they are rapidly distributed to millions of computers around the world regardless of what the State Department has to say about it.

And if they think they’ve got problems now, just wait until home genetics become as accessible as 3D-printed firearms.  It will bring back the old fears of witchcraft; I can imagine that the unauthorized possession of another individual’s hair and nail clippings, or at least a government employee’s, will becomes a crime.

Diversity is good for you

Except when it results in a lethal post-op infection.  But it’s not as if surgeons and nurses really need to wash their hands or anything before poking around in your body, right?  More lunacy out of Ukistan:

The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim doctors and nurses. From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty. Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves.

Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.” But, believe it or not, from a culturist perspective, the death of some patients is not the main cause for concern that this policy elicits.

The most dangerous problem is that this policy encodes multiculturalism not culturism. Whereas culturism acknowledges that England has a majority culture to protect and promote, this multiculturalist policy implicitly says that England has no core culture. It says that the nation can be whatever pressure groups decide it is. It, therefore, officially ends the dominance of English culture in England.

I suppose we can be grateful that the devotees of the Diversity Gospel are not arguing for the embrace of a culture that is morally opposed to showers, toilet paper, and indoor plumbing.  Yet.

At this rate, John Piper’s killer god won’t even need to send out his tornadoes of doom anymore.

Adios ProFootballTalk

I used to like ProFootballTalk when it was actually about what happened around the NFL.  But I found myself reading it less and less often last season even though I was still actively following the NFL.  Now that it’s an advocacy site primarily concerned with what Tim Tebow SHOULD do, and what the NFL SHOULD do, and what team owners SHOULD do I can’t even stand reading it anymore.  It’s just one stupid left-liberal crusade after another; the final straw for me was the campaign to save Chris Kluwe’s job because he supports homogamy.  Followed, a few days later, by the continued campaign to change the Redskins name; a name that troubles no one, including the overwhelming number of American Indians, outside the media.

Now, I actually liked Kluwe.  But he was bad last year.  Very bad.  When the Vikings needed a big kick, he shanked it.  When they needed him to drop it inside the five, he booted it out of the end zone.  And the hypocrisy PFT showed in distinguishing how they covered Kluwe’s comments about homosexuals (isn’t it wonderful that he speaks out on such an important issue) compared to the way they covered Chris Culliver’s (the NFL should discipline him and the 49ers should consider cutting him), was simply outrageous.

So, besides Football Outsiders, what is the best NFL site to replace it on the sidebar?

He ain’t gonna play Quds City

I suspect there are more than a few secular Jewish science fetishists who are going to feel more than a little conflicted about this announcement by Cambridge University:

Stephen Hawking has pulled out of a high-profile conference to be held in Jerusalem in June to support an academic boycott of Israel, conference organisers and the university said on Wednesday.

The academic and cultural boycott, organised by international activists to protest against Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, is a heated and contentious issue; having the renowned physicist and cosmologist join it is likely to help the anti-Israel campaigners significantly.

“Never has a scientist of this stature boycotted Israel,” said Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

It’s always entertaining to watch the Left devour itself, as it always does in the end.  It should be interesting to see how some of those who celebrated the boycott of Sun City due to South African apartheid attempt to decry the boycott of al-Quds due to the Israeli version.  And it should be informative to see if this affects the subsequent media coverage of Hawking, which hitherto can only be described as “uniformly fawning”.

Now, unlike the boycotters, I support Israel as a Jewish state.  Of course, I also support Germany as a German state, Nigeria as a Fulani/Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo state, and England as an English state. Which raises an interesting line of questions to direct towards those who proclaim the Diversity Gospel, beginning with this: do you support or oppose Israeli apartheid in the interest of maintaining its existence as a Jewish state?

And it raises another question. Can Stephen Hawking sing?