Category: Uncategorized

Bombs at the Boston Marathon

“Eyewitness: “Blood everywhere” after powerful explosions near Boston Marathon finish line.”

So, another false flag, more hatred for our freedoms, or just someone who really hates joggers?  It seems an odd choice of targets. Regardless, the answer is obviously MORE GUN CONTROL.  Because children.

Also, the last time a major American city was attacked, the US government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.  North Korea and Madagascar had better watch out.

UPDATE: 12 dead, 50 injured is the latest, per the New York Post

UPDATE 2: 3 people dead.  More than that injured.

Of Peter, Paul, and Peng

Fortunately, as all we good Keynesians know, there is no problem with large quantities of government debt because when interest on the debt is paid out of taxation, there is no direct loss of disposable income.  It’s literally textbook economics!

“The interest on an internal debt is paid by Americans to Americans;
there is no direct loss of goods and services. When interest on the debt
is paid out of taxation, there is no direct loss of disposable income;
Paul receives what Peter loses, and sometimes – but only sometimes –
Paul and Peter are one and the same person…. In the future, some of
our grandchildren will be giving up goods and services to other
grandchildren. That is the nub of the matter. The only way we can impose
a direct burden on the future nation as a whole is by incurring an
external debt or by passing along less capital equipment to posterity.”
– Paul Samuelson, Economics, 1948

So, the USA is in good shape despite Debt/GDP passing 100 percent earlier this year. Or is it?

Foreign demand for
U.S. Treasury securities rose to a record level in February, indicating
that international investors remain confident in U.S. debt despite
budget wrangling in Washington. The Treasury
Department said Monday that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities
increased 0.3 percent in February from January to a record $5.66
trillion. It was the 14th straight monthly increase.

Stolen gold in Cyprus

They took the credit money.  Now the EU is going after the real money as well:

First they purloin the savings and bank deposits in Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus, including the working funds of the University of Cyprus, and thousands of small firms hanging on by their fingertips.

Then they seize three quarters of the country’s gold reserves, making it ever harder for Cyprus to extricate itself from EMU at a later date.

The people of Cyprus first learned about this from a Reuters leak of the working documents for the Eurogroup meeting on Friday.

It is tucked away in clause 29. “Sale of excess gold reserves: The Cypriot authorities have committed to sell the excess amount of gold reserves owned by the Republic. This is estimated to generate one-off revenues to the state of €400m via an extraordinary payout of central bank profits.”

This seemed to catch the central bank by surprise. Officials said they knew nothing about it. So who in fact made this decision?

Pay no mind to the crashing gold prices, down more than $200 in less than a week. Look at what the elite financial institutions are doing, which is to say, getting their hands on as much of the so-called “barbarous relic” as they can manage.  At this point, Portugal, Italy, and any other EU member state has to be thinking about exiting the Euro before the Eurofascists can attempt to seize their gold.

UPDATE: At Goldman Sachs, a vice-president calls his clients: “Panic! Sell! Sell! Run to the safety of cash! Sell now! Sell it all!”  (hangs up, calls gold desk)  “Yeah, pick up another 10,000 ounces.”

McRapey and McRacist react to criticism

James May criticizes two left-wing starlets of science fiction and fantasy:

Pretending the 21st century is actually the 19th just doesn’t cut it,
no matter how much you argue everyone born before you had the same
interest in politicizing and racializing the most innocuous things, or
even white people today, who show not the least interest by way of law,
institution or mainstream culture in the very things they are accused
of. If you wish to group together people as whites, a thing I detest,
then it is whites who have created the very laws that protect minorities
in America today. In the absence of law, institutions and mainstreams
cultural expressions of racial disdain, one must then of course come up
with theories which assert the unseen, the underground and the
unwitting, showing the “truth” of a thing by its shadow, showing a
dearth of cultural morality while at the same time denying such a thing
is possible by non-white cultures. And let’s be very clear here: there
is no scholarship which can support whites even think of themselves as a
culture racially in the 21st century while the exact opposite in regard
to Jemisin and advocates like her provides mountains of black
symposiums, black organizations and black culture artifacts. There’s
even a black scuba divers association if you can believe in that bit of
idiocy. And don’t hold your breath waiting for either Scalzi or Jemisin
to wring their hands over black basketball players in the NBA
overrepresented by 5 times their demography in America. “Meritocracy”
is a slippery word in the hands of racial bigots. Am I to assume that
lack of diversity in the NBA is a tacit plot by black players to keep
out the white ones, or an example of black privilege?

You can’t have this argument two ways – either skin brings nothing to
the table or it does. If pedagogic racialists believe diversity in and
of itself brings something to the table then it is taking up the
opposite argument of what it claims, because those people are still an
“other,” just a better one, with innate qualities other races apparently
don’t have. But that argument can be turned around in a flash and in
the end, it’s just as stupid to ask a man to stand on a pedestal because
of his skin as it is to ask him to stand in a ditch. In this light, the
obsession the SFWA has with shallow diversity on the one hand while
arguing race and gender mean nothing on the other seems sad and rather
dark. Content of character, remember that? Gives a stupid and whole new
meaning to the term “uplift wars.”

The idea that Scalzi has what it takes to get inside the head of 100
million men based on their skin is an absurd idea and a racist one at
that. It’s no surprise to me that it basically amounts, in principle, to
the exact opposite of what he says he champions, because, at its heart,
political racialism is Orwellian doublethink. Scalzi should be sure to write a follow up where he tells us what 3
million Jewish and 20 million black men think. He mustn’t forget to
explain how he effortlessly rises above the fray while indulging in the
most despicable racial stereotypes, a neat trick. So generic whites are a
safe political target. Try the same thought process on Jews. I’m dying
to read that one. What about gays? How are they all doing? Does he
approve?

And this is how the two starlets react to it, on Twitter, naturally.

McRacist: ‏@scalzi What the — ? HAHAHAHA I’m not a Tor author, you putz.
 
McRapey: @nkjemisin It’s a special piece of writing, isn’t it?

McRacist:
@scalzi Why do champions of anti-racism (anti-anti-racism?) sound so
alike as they endlessly blather on? So much energy, so little *sense.*

McRapey:
@nkjemisin Poor logical skill and underdeveloped rhetorical control are
strongly correlated, i.e., I can’t argue but I CAN go on and on.

Quite
the pair of intellectuals, aren’t they.  And such a devastatingly
convincing response. McRacist is not a Tor author, ergo she must not be a racist black woman and McRapey isn’t a racist, incoherent gamma male who hates his socio-sexual superiors.  HAHAHAHA
EVIL WHITE MALE POWER AND CENTRALITY!  Also, DRAGONS!

Of
course, McRapey is correct.  He can’t argue. That’s why he always talks
about his critics instead of directly addressing their criticisms of him.
That’s also why he flees from debate, both in third-party venues and on his own blog, which is a pity since he is one of the
finest examples of the correlation of poor logical skill and
underdeveloped rhetorical control you’ll find anywhere on the Internet.

Me show all dem me no gamma! Me show dem me no rabbit! Now me haz gammarabbit.com. Agree and amplify DAT, bitchez! No hurtz now… why still hurtz, WHY?

As
for McRacist, someone needs to explain to her that the fact that
something doesn’t make sense to her doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t
make sense at all.

* * *

It may simply mean that she’s not intelligent enough to understand it.

Blue-on-blue crime

It turns out the Texas DA murders were neither white supremacists nor Hispanic gang members, but a Dorner-style blue-on-blue rampage:

A former justice of the peace is reportedly set to be charged with three murders, including a former Texas district attorney and assistant DA, after he was arrested on Saturday. Eric Williams, 46, has been arrested by authorities investigating the murders of District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, last month – and the fatal shooting of ADA Mark Hasse in late January.

Keep in mind, these are the very government agents that the progressive, gun-grabbing Left want to entrust with a legal monopoly on gun violence.

The ideology war in science fiction

Sarah Hoyt tries to convince science fiction’s left wing mainstream to come to grips with the new publishing reality before the ability of the right wing to bypass the gatekeepers does to them what Fox News has done to the ABCNNBCBS media cabal.

At its inception science fiction gave free rein to all thoughts of weird thoughts.  To this day science fiction allows a great leeway to personal behavior.  If there is a place on Earth you can show up wearing a live duck and have people ask you about the technical details of the costume, it’s science fiction.  To that extent, fans and other authors are “my people” and it’s a place I can decompress.  Like gays in the bad closet days finding a place they could be themselves, science fiction conventions allow me to be my own weird self without people shying away from me.  As a friend of mine puts it “we are the plaid sheep of our families.”  And the best place to hide is the flock.

The problem is that any community – ANY community – but particularly an excluded community (see what I did there?) will tend to try to form cohesion along the lines of common thought and common belief.  You might think that Odds would not try to enforce a rigid conformity, but you would be wrong.

It happened gradually.  Part of it is that most of us are used to be looked at askance and treated like abnormal.  A stunning number of us were bullied as children.  This means we tend to have an over developed empathy with any group identified as “victims.”  That, plus the fact that the publishing gatekeepers are the result of the long march and are – no, this is not under dispute – varying shades of red going from slightly to the right of Lenin to slightly to the left of Stalin. (Why is this not under dispute?  Because of the number of authors who identify themselves as communist.  Because there is in Science Fiction a young communist authors group.  People OPENLY identify as communist, and there’s no repercussion in their careers.  People don’t openly identify as conservative UNLESS they came in at a different time and their careers are secure.  If you think that’s because only leftists are creative or that this means the community is becoming more enlightened, you are part of the problem.  Go to the corner and meditate how identifying with a regime responsible for the death of a hundred million is “enlightened.  Or how any community EVER has achieved uniformity of opinion, unless it is EXTERNAL and enforced by authorities.  Good Lord, even today we have flat Earthers.  BUT you think that everyone who writes science fiction just is magically “left”?  I hope you are a fantasy author.)

I swear the eighties was a long slog of abused women in science fiction and fantasy books.  They were always abused by their fathers, too, who were tyrannical evil sobs.  The idea that mothers can be horrible parents too, never seemed to occur to these female writers. There was always a sisterhood of women.  As someone who has known any number of ‘orrible mothers, and who went to an all girls’ school the whole “sisterhood of those who possess vaginas” made me want to shred kittens.  (Shuddup.  I didn’t do it.  I’m just saying how mad it made me.  You know how I feel about cats.)  Even when the books were somewhat acceptable otherwise, it annoyed me to the point a lot of them went unread.

Then came the every woman a hero every man a wimp movement.  (Yes, Athena is more than normal.  Yes, she is strong. She is also hotheaded and foolish and, btw, Kit is far more than a match for her.)  And then…

Well, every fad of the left falls into science fiction and fantasy books, even the patently, absurdly ridiculous.  Like, oh, for instance, the idea that all male sexuality is dangerous, the idea that a society of women would be peaceful forever, the idea–  Too much to go on.  Suffice it to say the most awarded short story in our history – receiving every award in the field – posits that life in an American Suburb is more exclusionary and worse than life during China’s cultural revolution.

HOWEVER commentary by someone otherwise respected in the field, in a CHURCH magazine to the extent that homosexuals might have conflicts with being good LDS members occasions cries of “kill the witch.”

Oh, my people!  Not only are you trying to enforce conformity, but you’re trying to enforce a conformity so out of touch with the rest of society that what you think is right and worthy to publish strikes most people as “OMG, kill.”  Which probably explains the spiraling down print runs.  Those of us already fans and writers yawn, the rest of the world backs away screaming….

News for my colleagues on the left: For years we’ve put up with
whatever you dished out.  We had to.  We didn’t scream, we didn’t
complain.  We are even tolerant enough to like your books and admire
your artistry, EVEN when we think what you’re proposing is wrong and
perhaps evil (a world of all women.  Communitarian worldwide
societies.)  We understand the difference between ideas and those who
have them.

It’s harder for you.  Politics is your religion.

Up till now given a limited output, already pre-vetted, it was easy for
you to freeze out anyone who outraged you.  But indie has opened the
sluice gates.  You might (for all I know.  Again, when a community is
excluded, it goes underground) be a majority in sf writers now for all I
know.  I GUARANTEE you’re a tiny minority in the population.  Now that
the gates have opened and anyone can write SF and sell well and be
admired, it probably won’t be long before you’re a minority in sf/f
writing.

However, I URGE you to come to terms as soon as possible.

I have to say that I don’t think Sarah’s warning is going to make any difference at all.  As a result of my campaign for SFWA president, I have spent the last two months in the bowels of the SFWA forums. What I have seen is that the writers who make up the SF/F community are, to an almost unbelievable extent, delusional.  They genuinely believe they are faster when they have been winning races because a vast quantity of other runners have been barred from even lining up in the blocks to run against them.  They genuinely believe that they are special beings with a superior morality, and at the same time, assert that their ideological views are shared by all the decent members of civil society. And they are very nasty pieces of work, bitter from their long experience of social exclusion and their lowly positions on the socio-sexual totem pole.  They are full of hatred themselves, which is why they see hate in even the most genuine and harmless differences of opinion. 

Most of all, they have no ability to conceive of the mere possibility of separating the personal from the political. They attempt to destroy those who disagree with them or cause them to suffer embarrassment; recall that McRapey’s charity campaign wasn’t an attempt to stop me from trolling his blog or to advance any racist, sexist, or homophobic causes, it was to try to stop me from simply mentioning him because I dared to directly quote him and taunt him for his eminently tauntable words. I did nothing more than do to him what he prides himself on doing to others; you all know what resulted from that.

Nearly two decades ago, a member of the SFWA told me that the battles within science fiction were so bitter because the stakes were so small. But I think he was wrong. It’s more than that. The battles are so bitter because SF/F is largely comprised of gamma males and unattractive women who are very bitter people.  They are openly bitter about their lots in life. They are deeply angry with the world as they have experienced it. The books they write, for the most part, are their wish fulfillment fantasies, places where they finally have the chance to say what they didn’t have the wit to say when it mattered and be the people they couldn’t manage to become in real life. This is why, despite being technically more proficient in some ways, their work is so observably inferior to the science fiction and fantasy of earlier ages that concerned itself with ideas of more grandeur and societal import than the retro-adolescent daydreams of socio-sexually unsuccessful former junior high school students.

I commend Sarah for her graciousness in attempting to warn those who have repeatedly done their best to professionally shun her and undermine her career. But I can tell her that it will not work; I attempted to do something similar in my current campaign for SFWA President. But my warnings about the coming collapse of the traditional professional publishing business of SF/F – which you will note preceded the failure of Night Shade Books – was met with little more than the usual sneers and rabbits shrieking “not-rabbit, not-rabbit”!

So leave them to their fate.  Let the rabbits panic as books prices continue to decline, their royalties continue to fall and their publishers stop paying advances before finally going the way of Borders and Night Shade Books. Let them learn if they are able to compete on a playing field that is not heavily tilted in their favor by like-minded ideologues. Let the obese, unhealthy moral degenerates struggle to pay for the increased costs of their health care under the Obamacare regime for which they clamored.

It’s not our fault. It’s not our concern. And it’s not our problem. The gatekeepers are failing, the gates are swinging open, and the right-wing horde is rapidly approaching the citadel. It won’t be long before the sneering writers of SF/F cease their endless snarking and start crying out for mercy.

At that point, it will fall to us, we established writers of the right who have somehow managed to surmount every obstacle and survive every stone and missile hurled our way throughout what passes for our literary careers, to remind them that it was their decision to declare “no quarter”. We didn’t make the rules, we are merely playing by the ones they established.  I won’t take any pleasure in their suffering, but neither will I shed any tears.

I’ve put a list of standout authors on the right sidebar.  Authors like Sarah and Orson Scott Card, genre writers who have been willing, in some manner of speaking, to stand up against the fascists of science fiction and tell them, no, you don’t own science fiction, you don’t own fantasy, you are interlopers and intellectual parasites, and you have polluted the very literature you claimed to love.  I encourage those fans of the genre who are of the right themselves to support those writers who don’t insult you, who don’t despise you, who don’t hate you for your religious faith or your political beliefs.

Give their books a shot. You won’t like all of them.  I don’t myself.  I will still read China Mieville although he is a Communist lunatic and adore Umberto Eco’s work despite the incoherence of his left-leaning humanism.  But to the extent that I can utilize whatever influence has been granted to me by those who choose to read this blog and support my writing, I will use it to assist those who stand up for Western civilization and human liberty, rather than those who, intentionally or unintentionally, are seeking to destroy it.

Make no mistake.  The John Scalzis of the science fiction world desperately want to see Western civilization destroyed. They despise it and the conceptual aspects of their work largely consists of their dreams of its demise. But what they fail to realize is that the end of all the things they hate, the end of racism, sexism, morality, religion, and inequality, requires nothing less than the end of humanity itself, and that the end of Western civilization will not be the sexy secular scientopia of their dreams, but a two thousand-year relapse into depravity and pagan darkness.

Beating the bete noire

When we read blogs, especially for a long period of time, we tend to assume that we know the writer pretty well and that we have a pretty good grasp of who they are, what drives them, and what is important to them.  And that is at least partially true, but it’s important to keep in mind that one is only seeing what the writer permits them to see.

Perhaps that is an exaggerated, idealized picture of what he truly is, or perhaps it is merely one particular facet of a multi-faceted life.  In either case, the picture we have is at the very least distorted, if not entirely false.

For example, some people have concluded from my regular posts on McRapey that I must care a great deal about the mutual antipathy that has flared up between us. He’s running his little charity operation and has taken full ownership of his Gamma Rabbit persona, I’ve recorded a song with the Pink Rabbit Posse and held up my end of the bargain – perhaps whoever is tracking the donation count for Mr. Scalzi could let me know how many more mentions I have to go before we reach the magic 200 mark that denotes the limits of his charity.  But this is actually little more than one of those blog things that flares up from time to time, runs its course, and so on.  Just as no one accuses me of being obsessed with Me So Michelle anymore, in another nine years nearly everyone will find it hard to recall the name of that science fiction writer with the rabbit rape thing.

Anyhow, the point is that while I have had a bete noire for the last 12 months, it hasn’t been McRapey.  It hasn’t been PZ Myers, or Sam Harris, or anyone else about whom I have written in copious detail.  And yet, I have seen this man when I close my eyes far too many times to count, I repeatedly kick myself for what I did, and what I failed to do on the occasions when I have confronted him, and I replay our various encounters over and over and over again in my mind.

Who is he, this black beast who haunts my nights?  He isn’t a figment of my imagination, he is real, all too real.  He is about 6’2″, late thirties, balding with black hair, a slight paunch, a wide body, and arms that are, at first glance, approximately eight feet long.  He’s strong, but with the thick strength of a manual laborer, not the pumped-up muscles of the weightlifter.

He is the keeper for A Blue, the friendlier of our two main rivals in the soccer league.  I am told he is generally considered to be the best in the league. I don’t know his name. I hate him.

Now, the chances are that he is, like the rest of his team, a very good guy.  They are great sports, they are always amicable, they don’t take cheap shots, and there is a good deal of mutual respect between our two teams.  We are the two-time defending champions while they finished third both years; this year they are in first place and we are struggling in fifth.  Veterans teams are always particularly vulnerable to injuries; I’ve gone from being the fifth option up front to being the number two striker in two years and not as a result of my own merit.

At the end of last season, we had the championship already sewn up, but wanted to close it out on a winning note against them.  The game was tied, 0-0, in the last minute of the game when an attacking defender flicked a header past the defensive line and set me up for a shot inside the area. I broke on the ball and aimed for the upper left corner, but at the last minute, saw the keeper was moving fast to his right, so I tried to change my shot and go upper right.  But my left foot was already moving forward, so the result was that I double-clutched and popped up a weak blooper that he caught without even having to move.  It was worse than pathetic.  It was a grade A choke job.  Everyone told me it was okay.  No one criticized me.  But there were a lot of pained expressions and heads shaking back and forth.  Mine included.

Last fall, we played them at home.  We were losing, 1-0.  Again, in the very last minute of the game, I blew past the defense and broke on a ball passed through by our central midfield.  This time it was on my right. I saw the space the keeper was giving on his left and I didn’t hesitate, I blasted it about chest level just inside the right post.  I knew I’d hit it right.  Only somehow, that damnable keeper dove to his left, extended his gorilla arms, and barely got the tip of a single finger on the ball.  It wasn’t much, but it was just enough to redirect the ball onto the post.  Six inches higher, he can’t reach it. Six inches lower, he doesn’t have a prayer. It doesn’t matter. The whistle blew before we could even take the corner kick.

Two games, two excellent chances, and twice he stoned me.  Twice, I let my team down.  This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.

Last night was the first game of the season’s second half.  We were away at their place. We knew going in that we were probably going to lose, as our number one striker and our field general were both on vacation.  But we played them tough, and we even had them worried when my Dutch friend hit the crossbar with a header on a corner kick.  Unfortunately, I blew an easy opportunity by not playing for the rebound because I thought it was going in. 

Although I very badly wanted to score, and the team needed me to score since I was the number one striker by default, I took myself out of the game after the first 20 minutes.  My hamstring was tight, I wasn’t running well, and although I hadn’t lost a single ball, I wasn’t in sync with the midfielders at all.  But without me, our attack faltered and we were coming under continuous pressure, so the coach and I reached the same conclusion at the same time and I went back in with about 20 minutes left in the second half.

That turned the possession game around again, as my runs against their tired defense opened up more space for our midfielders and our defenders started pushing farther up the field.  We started creating some chances, but we just couldn’t finish them.  Then we fell behind 1-0 after their best player beat three of our guys in succession,
hit the crossbar, and their striker was alert enough to follow it in
and clean up the garbage. Right about then, the weather turned brutal, as the wind picked up and a very cold rain that was practically sleet started pouring down on us.  It was the coldest I’ve ever been on a soccer field, and I’ve played on October nights in Minnesota.

Despite the freezing downpour, we kept attacking. It was the only way to stay warm. I blew past their right defender twice, but my first pull-back pass was intercepted and the second time my fellow striker tried to control the ball rather than taking a first-time shot and ended up losing the ball.  Then I tried to flick a header rather than meeting it squarely on a corner – I’m dreadful in the air – and it went wide by about ten feet.

It looked like we were going down to defeat when one of our defenders hit a hard, long pass from about 30 meters away.  Our midfielder slid for it, but missed, and his effort caused the right defender to miss the ball as well.  I ran onto it just inside the box and hit it without thinking, without even looking to see where that damn keeper was.  I could feel it was going in as soon as I hit it; one of my teammates told me afterwards that the keeper didn’t even move.  1-1.  We barely made it back to the circle before the whistle blew.  One shot, one goal. It was the only shot I’d taken all game.

The keeper knows me.  When we shook hands, he said something about how I always wait until the last minute to pester him.  I told him that as far as I was concerned, the score was now 2-1.  He laughed.  It’s on.  It is definitely on. He is winning, but I’m not seeing that blooper or that post anymore.  Now I’m seeing the ball smack soundly into the back of the net. I’m feeling that solid, unmistakable “thunk” as my foot hits it perfectly. Over and over and over again.

That was my seventh goal of the season, and with any luck, I should have my first double-digit scoring season since I played for Nike in my late 20s.  I’m incredibly grateful that I’m still able to play at my advanced age, that I’m still able to contribute to my team, that I’m still able to feel that incredible rush when you put the ball in the net and your teammates come running towards you to celebrate it. But I’m already looking forward to next season, when I’ll get the chance to even the score.  And I’d happily donate a thousand dollars to McRapey’s charities myself if that would somehow buy me a pair of goals to take the lead in that next game.

Inflation vs Deflation X

Nate posts his latest entry in the Great Debate:

I know I said I would finally be explaining Hyper Inflation here, and I will be.  But there are a couple of points that Vox has made that I simply cannot let stand.  So as much as I loathe the call and response style of written debate, it appears I must resort to it.  I beg your indulgence….

Given that Vox acknowledges that there was a period of time when credit was contracting… and prices were going up, the actual timing of that period, be it July of 08 or Q1 09 is irrelevant.  He acknowledges that it happened.   The rest of this is elaborate hand waving.  Vox here is suggesting that the fact that the federal government is spending the new money, and that it somehow doesn’t count as inflation.   I am beginning to see the problem here.   Vox has literally just said, “Yeah but it doesn’t matter because its government spending.”  If we were arguing about the health of an economy… yes… we could certainly point to the distinction and say, “Its not real growth.”   But we’re not debating that.  We’re debating inflation vs deflation.  Inflation is never real growth.  That’s the point.  Of course its government spending.  Unless Vox wants to claim that inflation isn’t possible in a communist regime, then he must acknowledge for the purposes of this debate, the sector the increase is happening in doesn’t matter.  That just tells you who got to spend the money that was stolen from you.

Read the rest at his place.  My response, as usual, will be within one week.  At this point, all I will say is that in addition to the economics, the astute reader may also detect an aspect of the socio-sexual hierarchy in action.  I must certainly confess to an amount of wry appreciation for the irrational confidence of the alpha.

Mailvox: in defense of “squee”

Perlhaqr attempts what I can only see as a futile defense:

I have to admit I’m somewhat confused by your diagnosis of scalzification via use of the word “squee”.  I use that term all the time, and I’m one of Correia’s Alphas. I don’t see the ideological binding of the term, I’m afraid.

The binding is not ideological, but socio-sexual.  Now, I don’t happen to know what “one of Correia’s Alphas” might be, but I find it very hard to conceive that Perlhaqr is either a sexual ALPHA as per Roissy or an Alpha Male according to the socio-sexual hierarchy. He might as convincingly attempt to defend his predilection for hair-braiding or high heels.  Alphas do not menstruate, they do not use their iPhones to self-shoot in bathrooms, (they seldom have iPhones in the first place), and they most assuredly do not “squee” over anything.

One can be excited.  One can be pumped, jacked, or psyched. One can rejoice, one can enthuse, and one can celebrate.  But one can no more be an alpha male and “squee” than one can queef, lactate, or get pregnant.  Only gamma males like McRapey, who revel in their perverse delusions, consider it not only fitting, but downright cool, to express themselves in terms that are popularized and primarily utilized by junior high school girls.

Should he wish to lower the probability of attractive adult women recoiling in disappointment, disgust and outright horror, Perlhaqr may also wish to consider excising “OMG”, “ZOMG”, “soooooooo”, and “One Direction” from his vocabulary.

Captain Capitalism reviews RGD

It is nice to see that people are still reading RGD, even if its timelines are obviously outdated, to say nothing of incorrect.  I simply did not expect the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank would fail to learn the lesson of the Bank of Japan and prove so stupidly unwilling to force the banks to take their medicine, thereby risking not only their banking systems, but their currencies as well as the very existence of their political unions.  But even so, the underlying principles outlined in the book remain operative, as Captain Capitalism, the author of Enjoy the Decline, points out in his review of The Return of the Great Depression:

First, the book is an outstanding, thorough, but succinct analysis and comparison of the various economic philosophies that are duking it out today.  He compares and contrasts Austrian, Keynesian, the Chicago School and Marxism in ways that shows he’s actually read vastly more books on economics and philosophy than I have and can use words like “praxeology” in a sentence.  This makes him “one of those guys” who while would be considered a Buzz Killington at a party, is the guy you’d probably defer to when it came to matters of economic history and technicality.  Second, like reading other economists, you always pick up a trick or two you weren’t aware of or observe mistakes you may have made (for example his explaining what the GDP deflator is NOT the same as the CPI may not help you pick up chicks at a bar, but will provide for some interesting adjustments to modern day RGDP).  This has not only further advanced my understanding of economics, but plugged some minor holes in my own economic theories and philosophies I’ve procrastinated plugging.  Third he writes very well and very dense, efficiently packing as much information into the fewest and optimal amount of words.  The introduction alone is a perfect synopsis that would benefit everybody in terms of “what economics is.”

I haven’t changed my mind about the eventual outcome or that we are now in the Great Depression 2.0.  I still don’t think we’re facing Fallout IV, and as the Great Debate should suffice to indicate, I remain utterly unconvinced about the inevitability of Whiskey Zulu India.

Speaking of Buzz Killington, what I find interesting is that whereas absolutely no one was interested in hearing about my book when it was first published, now people who have heard of it will seek me out in order to help them understand one facet or another of the ongoing crisis.  That is, I suspect, another negative economic indicator: the desire of people to talk about economics on social occasions.